eat yer greens!

It feels good to detox a little. It feels great, actually.

A little bit of background, to explain why we are doing the lower carb diet right now. Partly, it’s to detox after months of having cookies, cakes, pies, etc in the house non-stop. Sure, it’s been fun, but it’s also made for many days where the idea of eating sweets sounded unappealing. And then you feel the sugar blahs, your pants start getting tighter, it all goes downhill from there. It’s all about moderation.

Aside from that, right after starting on the cookbook this fall, I had full blood work done and found out I am pre-diabetic. Yikes. Last year Jim and I really fell into a cooking slump, as my job became more demanding, I started school again, we were constantly on the go, so we fell to eating a lot of convenience foods, and I know that didn’t help. Plus, I have some weight to lose and I have a good handful of people in my family with Type 2 diabetes and there is no way I’m going down that road. Had I been living a normal culinary life, it wouldn’t have been hard to start adjusting accordingly but still enjoy some cookies here and a piece of cake here, but I was just starting on the book, so I decided to put diet woes on the back burner until all of the baking is done.

And it’s done, all but a few loose ends that I am rapidly wrapping up (the manuscript is due April 1!) and so it was time to start the cleanse!

One resource that I think is amazing, but that I have never fully utilized is sparkpeople.com. Think of it as kind of like Weight Watchers online, but without the points. You track what you eat via their database of thousands of foods, foods submitted by others (I’ve been pleasantly surprised with some of the things I’ve found other people already input) as well as by entering foods you eat yourself. You track your water consumption, exercise and weight in. There are tons of resources with recipes and forums to meet others and it’s free. Why haven’t I continued using this even though it has fifty million pros and no cons? Because I’m lazy. But they just created an app for the iPod Touch, so I’m thinking it might be easier for me now. I always like the system and layout when I use it because it’s really user friendly, so here’s hoping on that. Having to actually see what I am consuming and own up to it later in this format always causes me to pause before shoveling something in my face.

This weekend we geared up and made our way through the madness that is Costco where I got a 4 pound bag of asparagus for $3.99. The people there are crazy, but the deals can be worth it. I had been fantasizing about ways to eat the pesto ricotta that didn’t involve noodles. Yes, tofu ricotta is what I fantasize about. Don’t judge.

Asparagus, broccoli and snow peas smothered in pesto ricotta with a slice of toasted bread (which Jim and I shared) to mop up the cheese with. SOOOO good and having a big, beautiful plate full of green never hurt anyone.

Again, I made a giant pot o’ food on Sunday for us to have for lunch this week. Whole wheat and flax penne from Trader Joe’s, tossed with some sauteed red bell pepper, a can of roasted tomatoes, chickpeas, asparagus, and snap peas.

We’ve been eating it topped with a dollop of the remaining ricotta… num. I apologize for the “over the pot” shot.

Ravi is our shy kitty and other people rarely get to see. You wouldn’t know that right now, because he’s persistently yelling at me to play fetch with him and dropping his little pom-pom balls, sopping with spit, at my feet, but normally he’s quiet and timid. But he felt left out from not being in any posts yet on this new blog. Sorry, Ravi! Here he is, stopping by to say ‘hi’ in his Ravi sort of way, unknowing and asleep.