skinny food-a-holic
About
Unfortunetly they don't really go hand-in-hand since chocolate cake and alfredo sauce on a daily basis lead to clogged arteries, not a sleak physique.
I once told my friend that "I think, I think about food more than a guy thinks about sex." That being the case, here are some of my ramblings about trying to be a skinny food-a-holic.
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Sick-o
So last week I was horribly sick. NO FUN AT ALL. I know that when I am sick all I crave is comfort food. Unfortunately I was the kind of sick where you can’t move and all you do is eat.
Not a good week for me. However I did make some awesome vegetable soup, but we’ll get to that later. Even after I started to feel better I still never made it to the gym to get some miles in because I was crazy busy at work. In addition to being a lazy piece of lard, I also felt getting Taco Bell for dinner would make me feel better. Not only Taco Bell, but pizza and take out too. It was like a free for all! That left me feeling totally down and tired all day today. I so did not want to work out, feeling as I did, but I forced myself to go to my Monday night dance class (because I had paid for it already and I’m cheap) and then to the gym.
OMG. I felt so much better afterward. Not hungry, slightly sore, but in such a better mood. Its amazing what exercise can do for your body. Thank goodness for endorphins I guess! So, my lesson learned, is that I am going to try and do even just a yoga tape the next time I’m sick. No way do I want to repeat that horrible, yucky mood I was feeling this morning. Exercise is my savior!
Now on to that soup. You can make really good soup with simple ingredients. I sauteed some onions and leeks and mushrooms in a large stock pot. Used some vegetable stock to deglaze the pot, and then filled it up with diced sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, peas, carrots, and some white beans. You can add whatever seasoning you want by I like oregano, rosemary, and white pepper. Be creative with your combinations! If you like creamy style soups, that doesn’t mean you have to add cream either! Just puree half of the soup after you are finished cooking and it will thicken the broth. (this works best with tomato, squash or other soups that do not have lots of big chunks in them, for example you probably shouldn’t try this technique with chicken noodle…) You can do this in a blender, in batches, or if you have an immersion it only takes a minute or two to blend and entire pot of soup!
Happy Eating!
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Airplane food. Yummmy
Do you ever notice that when you travel, you either constantly eat, or don’t eat at all? I feel like whenever I travel I always feel like I have to eat the snack they give you and then you have to eat when you are in between fights (in case you can’t get any food on the plane… like that is going to happen). Its especially bad for me on international flights and when you cross a few timezones. The airlines have found that if you eat as many meals as you are supposed to while crossing the timezones, you don’t get jet lagged as badly….so that means they feed you 5 meals because you are switching timezones, even though its only been a 8 hour flight and you really don’t need to eat that much!
The airline companies are scheming to make us fat. And they are going to charge us for it first because now you pretty much cant get on an airplane without charging you for something.
I went to Saint Louis this weekend to see some friends, and it is only a 2 hour time difference from where I live. I think on the way there it might have been the red eye, 1 am flight to Minneapolis and then the 6am flight to STL, but I really wasn’t jet lagged, just tired. This also could have been due to the fact that I swear I ate like 7 times that day. Apparently the eating thing really works…..
So, thank you airlines, for making me regain all the weight i’ve lost for my vacation, before I even make it to my final destination!
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Height/Weight chart - with Photos!
It’s always really interesting when people try to guess how much I weigh. Generally they guess less than I actually do, which is probably a good thing. I was reading another blog about weight loss and apparently a lot of people have this issue where you don’t look your weight. I came across this link while reading the blog and its a height/weight chart, but with photos. Its interesting because many of the people look very similar in terms of weight, but they have drastically different weights. Check it out and see if the person with your stats looks like you do.
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Tailgating Dilemma
It’s finally fall! And that means that its football season! For the game this weekend some of my friends and I are setting up our first tailgate without the help of a fraternity or our parents. (finally!) However, this has created a few problems for me. Being that these tailgating friends are all guys, they were planning on cooking some hot dogs and thats about it (other than the required 2 kegs, booze, and maybe some OJ since it will be 9am). Now tailgating is never a very good time to try and eat healthy because the regular tailgating foods pretty much all involve it being deep fried, full of fat, meat, or covered in some kind of processed cheese sauce. (the required food at our stadium is the “ghetto dog” or a bacon wrapped hot dog covered in grilled peppers and onions, mustard, and mayonnaise. DISGUSTING yet oh so good)
So as my guy friends were planning the logistics of sneaking 2 kegs onto campus, I was planning what food I could make that would be healthy but that the guys would also like. My mom suggested that the easiest thing to bring is a salmon filet. You are probably thinking thats crazy but growing up in the Northwest and doing some quality tailgating there, I know its super easy. Essentially you only need to bring the salmon, some tinfoil and a grill. And assuming that you have the grill already for the fatty foods you are going to be making, its really not a stretch. Put the salmon on a piece of tinfoil and throw it on the grill and thats it. When its done you don’t even need to put it on a plate. People can just cut pieces off of the filet on the tinfoil. Super easy and salmon is a superfood so you will still be getting nutrition while you are guzzling all that Natty Light.
Another thing I love, which is super easy for tailgating are Morningstar Chipotle Black bean burgers. They come frozen so you can keep them in the cooler until you are ready to throw them on the grill. (They tend to stick a little bit though so be careful!) Even my boyfriend who loves meat likes these burgers because they have great flavor and are super easy.
The bean burgers are even better topped with my next favorite tailgating food. Guacamole. I love guacamole in general, but it always goes well with a cold beer so it is perfect for tailgating. You don’t even need to eat it with fried chips, its great with cucumber or bell pepper slices as well! My “secret recipe” uses avocados, cilantro, tomato, onion, salt, white pepper and LOTS of lime. The cilantro and white pepper really make it.
I can’t wait for this weekend! And while my friends will be lugging in the kegs, I’ll be whipping up a few of these tailgating foods so that I don’t starve. I thinking that pancakes will be in order as well since our plan is to get to campus at 9am for a 5pm game. Its going to be a looooooooong day!
Happy Eating!
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This could be one of my favorite articles EVER!
Laughter, Weight Loss and Chocolate
Laugh your way to calorie burning and weight loss.
Lee HarrelsonBy: Tammy Beasley, R.D.
Weight loss doesn’t sound or feel like a laughing matter. But a new study from Vanderbilt University reports that genuine laughter, the kind that lasts about 10 to 15 minutes, burns the same number of calories found in a medium square of chocolate. That translates to about 50 calories, which, if done everyday, can result in about 4 pounds of weight loss at the end of the year (assuming everything else stays the same).
Considering that laughter also produces natural endorphins, those “feel good” brain chemicals that lower your blood pressure, decrease your stress and improve your mood, you have nothing to lose, except maybe a little weight and stress, right? And if that doesn’t sound like a bargain, at least you can laugh your way through a daily square of chocolate and even the score. -
So I made lentils the other night, which my mother absolutely refused to eat of course. I got the recipe out of this HUGE vegetarian cookbook I found in the bowels of our recipe cabinet. Which is surprising enough since my parents think that me becoming veggie is ruining their lives so I don’t really know why they had a vegetarian cookbook. That is besides the point though.
Anyway, the lentils. Now generally I love lentils. They are good and filling and full of protein. However, these ones took forever to cook! I swear it said that it would take 40 mins total for them to cook and I think I left them on the stove for a good hour and a half. Not to mention that I didn’t read the recipe before I went to the store so I didn’t have everything I needed when I went to make them.
Once I finally had everything in order, and finished cooking them (and what I mean here is that my family got tired of waiting for me so I stopped cooking even though they were still a bit tough) the lentils were pretty good. Secondly, the recipe made a huge batch so we definitely had leftovers. They were curried and tasted like Indian comfort food. Yummy.
I think that after this I will leave lentil cooking for cold wintery days on the weekend when there is not much to do…. But until then, I still have to finish all my leftovers!
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food obsession?
I feel like recently the entire world has become obsessed with food. Maybe its just because my family’s favorite channel is now the food network and we get just about every food magazine imaginable delivered to our house, but it seems like the rest of the world is jumping on the band wagon.
There are now food shows on the travel channel and Bravo and they are even coming out with the cooking channel, a knock off of the food network. Food trucks are now swinging hotspots around town and you can go on gastronomy tours of just about every city.
Beyond this obsession, 3 out of 5 other people at my work are now on the South Beach Diet. Meaning that they pretty much can’t eat anything for 2 weeks to “cleanse” and they keep breaking the diet and having to start over again. How frustrating is that? To go for a week and then break the diet and have to start over again.
Either it is obsession with pigging out, or eating nothing. Not that I should talk much, but I feel like everyone else has since caught up with my obsession. Even my mom, who was always a “foodie” but never concerned with what she ate, is watching what she eats.
I guess it probably just has to do with this health kick that seems to be sweeping the nation. Thank you Michelle Obama and Jaime Oliver. If you haven’t heard about Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution, you can watch it online. He essentially entirely revamps a city’s school lunch program and attempts to teach fat Americans how to eat better. While some people are open to the new foods, most of them would rather stick to their deep fat fried foods and fast food. Even though the people of Huntington, West Virginia didn’t listen, many people across America seem to have heard his message.
So there has to be something else driving this health kick and food obsession we seem to be going though… Either being obsesses with food or obsessed with not eating food, it seems like it is going to last a while…
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What the World Eats
This is an awesome photo essay about what families eat around the world in a week. Some of the photos are really surprising! The author has just finished a new photo essay called “What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets” that shows how much one person eats in a day and the caloric content of their food. You can check out the new book here.
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Thanksgiving - does it have to include the turkey?
So as I was talking to a friend last night about my plans for Thanksgiving (a food lovers ultimate holiday) I started thinking about what I was going to eat. I have been a vegetarian now since March, and it has made me feel more healthy and helped me to lose some weight so I don’t have plans to stop being veggie anytime soon, but this creates a problem with Thanksgiving. Every year my family heads down to Los Angeles to visit with my asian side of the family, watch the USC v Notre Dame football game and eat frozen BBQ potato chips (yeah I know we’re weird but they just taste really good that way). We have the normal Thanksgiving feast-y things like a big turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy. But then we also have things like Japanese sticky rice (sooooo good with turkey gravy) and sushi and mochi ice cream.
But with all the meat-related dishes, will I be able to eat more than the mashed potatoes?
I mean my mom makes the stuffing with sausage and turkey broth so thats out. Turkey is obviously out. As well as the gravy. And not to mention the leftovers. My Aunt always makes a yummy turkey soup with egg and greens. So that leaves me with the mashed potatoes, rice, cranberry sauce, and some kind of salad. No one else in my family likes sweet potatoes so I’ll have to make those if I want them… Oh and maybe some bread and whatever sushi we order with vegetable filling. Thats not a very good meal! What do vegetarians eat for Thanksgiving? I am really going to have to figure this out because as a huge foodie Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.
Im thinking that I will have to do some research and figure out some good protein dishes I can make for this great feast day. Hopefully they will tempt my asian family and I wont get weird looks but you never know… My own mom gives me weird looks for some of the dishes I make. Good thing I have a few months to figure this out.
Happy Eating
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My New Obession - Whole Foods Peanut Butter
OMG. This is literally the best peanut butter I have ever had in my entire life. If it wasnt so calorie dense I could probably eat an entire tub of it in one sitting.
In the bulk foods department at whole foods they have this really nifty machine that grinds peanuts and almonds and cashews into nut butters. Its great and there is nothing in them but the nuts, unlike many other nut butters you find in a jar. They are completely natural and oh so yummy. You just flip a little switch and it starts grinding away into 3 different sizes of plastic containers. Last week I went to Whole Foods, which is not very close to my house, just to get this peanut butter. IT IS THAT GOOD.
My favorite type is the honey roasted peanuts but they have regular and almonds and cashews as well. And - here comes the best part - because they only have the nuts in them, these butters are actually slightly less caloric than the good old fashioned nut butters in the jars.
You can find your Whole Foods store by going to their website: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/all/index.php.
Happy Eating!
