Week Fifteen Roundup

By John | Published: April 19, 2010

Wow, fifteen weeks. Time is chugging along. This week’s numbers: Waist size is 41 1/2 inches, that’s up an inch from last week, something that I’m going to blame on beer gas. Maybe this week will appear to have a huge drop because of that. We spent $225.93 on food this week. That seems kind of high, but we celebrated a birthday, (not one of ours, but we supplied the meal), and had in incident with pepper.

About the pepper. We’re trying to reduce the amount of packaging we throw out so have been trying to buy from bulk stores and reuse the bags. However, around here a bulk store often means a health food store, which means organic food. We were out of pepper so bought some more, in bulk, therefore organic, and I kind of put more than I needed in the bag, (something I realized after we got home). The pepper cost $17. Joanie says that it had better be magical pepper at that price, and I kind of agree. We have already identified another bulk store where we can buy non-organic pepper for 1/3 of the price.

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Chickpea, Pork, and Mango Tagine

By John | Published: April 12, 2010

After reading Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column An Expedited Tagine the other day, I thought I would try it myself. The New York Times was kind enough to provide his recipe for Chickpea Tagine with Chicken and Apricots, and I adapted it for myself.

I had been going to use a piece of pork that was in my freezer instead of chicken, but that pork is super freezer-burned, so I went to the store, looked at the meat, and found some pork “riblets” a.k.a. the strange ends of the ribs that are hard to cut up. I used those for the meat. I nearly doubled the recipe, and used brown rice instead of bulgur. Also, I’m allergic to apricots, so dried mango and raisins went in to my expedited tagine as my fruit. After nearly burning everything and transferring to a new pot, having to run, again, to the store mid-recipe to get some cumin, (the jar was in the spice rack, but there was nothing in it), and a long simmer process, (brown rice takes a while to cook), I came out with a really tasty dinner. This is something that I would like to try again, maybe with a bit less cumin.

One thing that I discovered was ground coriander. I’ve never really been sure what the scent & flavour of coriander is, but after mashing some up today I know, and it smells spicy.

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Week Fourteen Roundup

By John | Published: April 12, 2010

Here we go, fourteen weeks in and here are the stats: Waist size: 40 1/2 inches, dollars spent this week: $254.77. I actually think that there’s an accounting error and $75 should be attributed to last week, but I’m not trying to be scientific here, so I’ll let that slide.

How are things? Generally good. I’ve discovered it’s pretty easy to lapse back into the old processed starch, lots of animal products ways, but when I’m strict with myself I feel great and love it.

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Sweet, Sweet Honey

By John | Published: April 11, 2010

I went down to Atwater Market today and got some natural, local, unpasteurized, clover honey, then came home and enjoyed really good honey & butter on my bread.

A photo of the jar of honey that I bought today from Marois et frères at Atwater Market.

A kilo of clover honey from Marois et Frères at Atwater Market.

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Pistachios are really good, except…

By John | Published: April 9, 2010

The other day I tweeted “Just hit my gross threshold for the day.” So, what happened? Here’s the answer.

I was eating pistachios. They’re a good, healthy, snack. In fact, Dr. Oz says they’re his top high-fiber pick. All was going well until I went to put this nut into my mouth:

A photo of bug larva in my pistachio

Good think I looked at this nut after it came out of the shell!

That’s right, there’s some sort of young bug that has made a home in my pistachio. I am an adventurous eater, but roasted salted unknown bug larvae are not my idea of a good meal! It’s a good thing that I was opening these nuts before they went into my mouth, and a good thing that I saw this. The other side of the nut looked normal. Gross!

Here are a couple more pictures:
Another view of the bug in my pistachio
A third view of the bug.

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Business Meetings that Matter

By John | Published: April 9, 2010

I spent yesterday in an all-day meeting/conference type of thing at a corporate office downtown. The invitation said that there would be a light lunch served, so I didn’t bring any food or anything and tried to eat like food matters using what was served. It was surprisingly easy, except for one thing.

The easy part was the food. They served some salads and sandwiches for lunch. I was able to have a wrap with some sort of peppers & mushrooms in it, some caesar salad, and a little of a pasta salad. The wrap and pasta salad would have had white flour in them, but in general the lunch was a good sensible lunch. I also had a pastry in the morning. They’re not exactly whole-grain, but it tasted really good.

The hard part was drinking. Coffee was fine, served in normal ceramic mugs, but the only way to get water was in bottles. This isn’t really a big dietary problem, but if I’m trying to eliminate waste it is. When I got home and told Joanie she said that I would have to start carrying a jar like Colin Beavan, however, in the building the taps are all modern, motion-operated, and dispense nice warm water to wash your hands with. So, I could start drinking warm water, or bringing my own water everywhere, (from home), or simply hope that for the couple times a year that I am in a meeting like this simply hope that the bottles are recycled.

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Photos of the Amazing Pasta

By John | Published: April 8, 2010

The meal, pasta, wine, fresh olive oil, drool.

I while ago I posted that we had made an amazing pasta with squid rings, fresh basil, and more. We’ve made it twice since, the second time we made it it wasn’t so amazing, we kind of messed things up, however, last week we made it again and it was even better than the first time. With the addition of shrimp, a bit more hot pepper than before, and enough basil from our plant to make things really tasty we had a great meal. Here’s what it looks like:

Look at all of those tomatoes, shrimp, and other tasty things!

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Bread-making Continues

By John | Published: April 8, 2010

Full of seeds and fresh out of the oven.

I’ve continued making bread, improving, (usually), on my original attempt. I’ve discovered that I had started putting too much liquid in the dough, which made the bread overflow the pan as it cooked. there are now oddly-shaped burned chunks of bread on the bottom of my oven.

However, there have been some real successes as well. I made this loaf last week with the right amount of water and added a bunch of sunflower and pumpkin seeds before cooking it. It was by far the best loaf so far.

Seedy Closeup

This week on the other hand I messed up the amount of liquid again, (I went from memory for the recepe, and even though there are only 4 ingredients, apparently I’m not quite there yet), so my loaf overflowed the pan, came out in pieces, and was a bit gooey inside. I’ve left it for a couple of days now so maybe it has improved. Speaking of which, this bread actually improves in the first couple of days after cooking. It goes from being sticky to being moist. This is really something to remember.

Update, (a few minutes after posting): I found another photo of the amazing bread, this time with butter and jam from Avonlea, (you know, where Anne of Green Gables is from):

Bread, butter, and jam bought in PEI on vacation.

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Week Thirteen Roundup (a bit late)

By John | Published: April 8, 2010

Well, it’s Thursday and I’m posting information that I wrote down on Monday, and should have posted on Monday. Oops! Anyway, here they are.

Monday’s numbers: waist size of 41 inches, (up 1/4 inch – yay easter candy, ham, beans, and also Chinese buffet). Money spent: $152.09, pretty much in line with how things have been going.

Over the past week and a half I’ve taken some videos of some things I’ve made and eaten, which I’ll take some screen captures from, (a hack to make up for not having a proper still camera), and post in a few minutes.

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Early Spring Gardening

By John | Published: April 2, 2010

One place to get fresh, tasty, and healthy vegetables is from the garden. The apartment where we’ve lived for the past few years has a garden, and I’ve planted vegetables ever since we’ve lived here. We’ve had tomatoes, peas, radishes, potatoes, hot peppers, and more. However, this year we’re moving, so as of July 1 I won’t have a garden anymore! This means I needed to drastically alter my planting this year.

We’ve been having an incredibly mild spring here in Montréal. This weekend, Easter weekend, we are having summer-like temperatures. With any luck our last killing frost has passed. We may still drop below freezing, but I’m hoping that it won’t go so far below as to kill cool-weather vegetables. With the warm weather and move-out date in mind I planted the garden on Sunday with sweat peas, snow peas, turnips, beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and radishes. All are varieties that should reach maturity a few weeks before the garden is no longer mine, and all cold-loving vegetables. Hopefully this means that we’ll have garden-fresh vegetables starting in a few weeks and lasting right up until we leave this apartment. After that I’ll have to rely on a few vegetables in pots and our CSA baskets.

On the other hand this is Montréal. The chance always exists that we’ll have an April blizzard or a deep freeze, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

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  • What is Choices That Matter?

    I'm a guy named John, and I do most of the writing around here. I went from a really active lifestyle to a really inactive lifestyle very quickly and my body is noticing. On top of that I'm worried about what's happening to our planet, so, I'm trying to do something about it.

    For Christmas I received the book Food Matters, which I found very interesting and inspired me to start changing. Check out my first post for the beginning of the story.