My new FAVORITE pizza!

The weekend started out PERFECT. A co-worker and friend of my, Kris J, decided to head to Pi (think the Pi sign) to eat some pizza. Pizza? You ask. But you can’t have pizza!! Oooh, yes I can!! Pi has many, many options. Their thin crust dough happens to be vegan. To top it off they have sauce (of course), any kind of topping you could think of and one of my new favorite things in the world - daiya cheese (http://www.daiyafoods.com/ ). I don’t really like vegan cheese. It kind of tastes weird. But I think I like daiya cheese more than I like Imo’s cheese. I know that is blasphemous to any true St. Louisan, but it is REALLY GOOD. So I got the vegan pizza with spinach and zucchini, which sounds weird, but was actually really good. My dad called it the vegetarian Canadian bacon and pepperoni.

Anyway, Kris and I had a ton of fun solving the world’s problems, chowing down and having a drink. Thanks for a fun Friday!!

Another cool thing about Pi is that back in the election year, Obama fell in love with it as well. He actually liked this St. Louis restaurant’s version of Chicago pizza more than the pizza from his hometown of Chicago. So, the Pi guys were flown to the White House to prepare some pizzas in DC. Pretty cool, huh?? Here is Pi’s website, and I think it has an article or two about this visit on the website as well. http://restaurantpi.com/

Please consider trying Pi. It REALLY is that good!!!

BTW, I forgot my camera, so I only got a picture of my pizza on my iphone. I guess you will have to go there yourself to see the pizza. Please invite me when you go!

Mochi

Mochi is a crazy weird food that is so cool that I recommend everyone make it sometime. Its basically brown sweet rice all mushed together. You buy it in these hard, then blocks and then cut it to meet your needs. This is the stuff I made waffles with on my first day of the experiment. So its in these dense blocks and then when you start cooking it, it starts puffing up. Its Craziness! (and tastes pretty good too!) Here was my attempt at fried mochi for breakfast (not really "fried" - only has 2 tsp oil)...



This is how the mochi starts out. Just little dense blocks....

This is a picture of the picture from The Kind Life of what it was supposed to look like. Cool, right?

These are what mine looked like...not quite the same, but I'm willing to bet that they were just as good. I drizzled them with maple syrup...this is a good weekend breakfast indulgence. Yum yum!!

Try mochi - you will be amazed too!!!

More Superhero Pictures

Here are some more pictures from Superhero week:


Okay, so this was just Miso from the packet. Miso soup is awesome...this is good in a rush, but when I have time, I make it homemade.

This was the beginning of the end. These were peanut butter rice crispy treats with chocolate chips. FABULOUS! Gooey, sticky, and wonderful. I think I ate too many of these, and it kind of made my belly hurt. Still SO good!! Took them to work and people liked them too.

This was polenta and corn cereal. Never had polenta before, and it didn't look very good, but was actually really really tasty. I love hot cereal in the morning and I have a lot of great hot cereal recipes now, thanks to these recipes! Yum Yum.

This was supposed to be steamed watercress with that Ume-Sesame dressing, but I didn't have enough watercress so I added some spinach as well. That dressing is way too good!!

This is (although a little hard to see) going to be a regular for me. This was fried udon noodles. Onion, cabbage, paprika, and udon - simple, quick, and really flavorful. A combination I would have never thought of, but I REALLY liked it!!

All of these recipes came from the Superhero recipes in The Kind Life, but after day 3, I started switching the order of things around based on time constraints, and being so full from yummy food all the time.

Not a Superhero...

Superhero Experiment Grade = Incomplete

Well after eating peanut butter and bananas wrapped in tortillas, and hemp ice cream, I think its safe to say that the Superhero experiment officially stopped with day five. Now I still have lots of veggies in the fridge and I will do my best to not let anything go to waste - I hate waste!

So I guess I'm not a superhero...just the regular kind. Life happens I guess.

I did learn some good things though.

1. I was able to try lots of foods that I would have never thought of putting in my mouth that were both good for me and DELISH! I eat seaweed, and that's just weird, but I liked it. I fried something for the first time (even though I'm not sure that this is a good accomplishment for an RD). I liked almost every meal that I had, and while I will try variations, in just 4 days I was able to find countless combinations of foods.

2. Cooking from scratch can be time consuming. This was the hardest part of the experiment. I, like many others, don't have the time or energy to cook full meals daily. However, I think I am fully capable of making a plan for myself to cook a couple days of the week and have healthy leftovers for the other meals. Daily, I hear single men (at work - I don't just go around interviewing random men) tell me that they can't eat better because they think its a waste to just cook for themselves. That's a crock! A) You can make any recipe work for one person, or at least you could freeze leftovers so you have something on the days that you don't want to cook. B) I 100% believe that your health is in YOUR hands. As a society, we watch countless hours of TV, spend lots of money on cable and phones and cigarettes, but when it comes to ourselves and what we put into our bodies suddenly its just too time consuming. Taking care of yourself is YOUR responsibility whether you live by yourself or in a family of 10. Which brings me to...

3. Although many gobs of people will disagree, including some fellow RDs, you can eat healthy on a budget. This experiment used some weird/specialty ingredients, which caused my bill to go up. But even a vegan who relies mainly on grains, veggies, and fruit can eat VERY inexpensively. With about 30 bucks, I have enough grains and beans in my pantry to last me 2-3 months. Since those things are so cheap, I can spend my money on fruits and vegetables (local, seasonal are great options this time of the year to get on the cheap, and frozen and canned are good options as well). Again, we spend our money on beer, cigarettes, cable, cell phones, but we can't spend money on food that will nourish our bodies and keep us healthy? I think our priorities are really messed up in this country. I'll leave it at that.

4. My body feels its best when I feed it with good, plant-based whole foods. Most of you know about my never ending belly issues (and if you don't, consider yourself lucky...hehe), but since becoming vegan, I really have had minimal problems. yippee! Even eating the fried dish I made this week, I didn't feel icky like I usually do if I eat fried foods. When I eat a good balanced diet, I don't crave sweets, and other junk foods. I feel more content, and I am able to listen to my body's hunger/satiety cues much better. And finally...

5. Even though I didn't make it through a whole week of being a superhero, I am continuing to learn that life is not about being perfect. Today, I needed some peanut butter banana to keep my sanity. But, I can already feel myself craving some veggies, so you better believe I'll eat a bunch tomorrow. I struggle with it, but I keep trying to learn this balance thing.

So, looking ahead to what will likely be a difficult week for me, I will be armed with some good-for-me leftover veggies, and another lesson in this balancing act. Hopefully I will be kinder to myself if I have a hard day, and push myself to try new things when I can.

Superhero Experiment was a success afterall. (by the way, I have a few more pictures to share in the next few days of the rest of the food I made - I am very intrigued by mochi!)

New Additions!

Okay followers - all 5 of you!! hehe - be excited. I've added some AMAZING additions to the blog. On the top right corner you will see a funny cat picture. Yes - that's right, funny cat pictures. I know you are excited.

Next, at the very bottom, you will be greeted each day by a Mr. T quote. This addition might bring my followers list up to a million or so. Let's face it, I pity the fool that doesn't like Mr. T.

Finally (and this one is more serious), I added a function at the bottom of the page that shows in season produce for Missouri each month. You can use the drop down boxes to find seasonal produce in your state. Please think about supporting your community and local farmers by buying in season, local produce.

Enjoy my new and improved blog, and try not to get fired from looking at it so much.

Day 3 - the most exotic (??) day yet...

Well, day 3...was interesting. As noted in day 2, I didn't get around to making dinner on day 2, and I'm way too type A to let that mess up my lunch for Day 3 which was supposed to be leftovers. So, I dragged myself out of bed at 5am to make the meal. Now, realize I would NEVER go to this much trouble to make a special lunch to take to work on a normal day...but I'm determined to follow the experiment to my best ability.

Oh - and I just had leftover breakfast from day 2.

So...here is what I made. So weird....

Above is hijiki-tofu croquets...yeah, I think they look and sound gross too. Plus, hijiki is seaweed and I'm still getting used to this whole sea vegetable thing. PLUS - I have never fried a food in my life. So as I pour oil into a pan, the dietitian in me was disgusted, and the frugal person in me was thinking how much of a waste I am making with using all this oil. THEN, when the oil started bubbling, I was all panicky that the whole thing was going to just explode. Terrified, I threw in the croquettes (tofu, hijiki, carrots, and burdock root) into the oil standing as far away from the pot as I could. Shockingly - these were pretty darn good!!! You dip them in a mix of mirin (diluted sake, basically), soy sauce, and lemon juice....DELICIOUS!! The recipe made enough that I could freeze them for another meal...
Scarey-weird food #1 - really good

Then we move on to the Pressed salad. Now I tried to figure out why pressed salads were so important for macrobiotic diets. I found this on about.com:

Pressed salad is a dish indicated for promoting flexibility and can be made anytime of year. Salting and pressing has the effect of "cooking" the vegetables in the sense of making them more digestible, but preserves the active living enzymes.

I think the main thing is that macrobiotic diet pickles a lot of things, and its supposed to increase "good" bacteria and help with digestion...I'm going to keep eating this salad because its weird and it tastes good. Isn't it pretty??

So I sliced cabbage, scallions, radishes, cucumbers and a sliced orange added a few vinegars and pressed it with a full tea kettle for a half hour, and voila!! Delish! I added sunflower seeds just before eating for a crunch. This I recommend for veggies and meat-eaters alike.

Lastly I made Quinoa and Walnuts with fresh basil from my garden. It was a very simple side dish, and again, not too weird for anyone to eat. Just cook up some quinoa, add some oil and walnut, then add fresh basil, shove into mouth.

Needless to say it was a LARGE (but fabulous) lunch. I was very satisfied at the end of the meal. No complaints for this one, and I will probably make all of these dishes again.

And FINALLY it was time for Sushi. This is one of those things that I swore I would never eat. Yuck! Freaks me out...but going to a sushi restaurant was on the list, so I had to do it of course. I enlisted the help of a friend of mine, and sushi-lover, Kris. We went to a little sushi place, and she helped me order some veggie sushi rolls. I got the vegetable roll and the asparagus roll. We had my personal favorite - edamame - for an appetizer.

Below is our pretty sushi plate!! Kris got all sorts of raw fish sushi, which freaked me out a little, but as far as I know she hasn't died yet, so I guess its okay...hehe...mine were the bottom two sets of rolls on the left and middle. I will say...it was different. We couldn't figure out what was in the vegetable rolls, but I think there were some pickled radishes and avacado. I didn't like those too much, but the aparagus rolls were pretty good. I dipped them in lots of soy sauce and wasabi. I also tried pickled ginger. As Kris said - "It kind of tastes like you're eating perfume." uh... it was...strange.

Overall, Day 3 has been the funnest day yet. I tried all sorts of crazy things that I would have never thought of to try before - and I liked most of it!! I think sushi will be an acquired taste, but I will definitely try again. Plus I had excellent company :) Thanks, Kris!

I'm doing my best to keep up with my dishes...its starting to slack a little, but I think Day 4 I will have time to catch up. Even if its not this weirdo food, think about trying something new this week. You might be as surprised as I have been!

Day 2...not quite as triumphant...

Well...this is the only picture of Day 2. Really, its Day 3 that I've just finished, but I ran out of energy yesterday, so here goes...
Breakfast started out absolutely wonderful. Millet and Sweet vegetable Porridge, think savory oatmeal with vegetables...kinda...and steamed kale with Ume-Sesame Dressing...now I'm not a kale fan, but with this dressing, I could eat pounds and pounds of it. Although I did make it wrong...I accidentally used sunflower seeds instead of sesame...but like it said, it was amazing! Ume is short for Umeboshi (pickled) Plum Paste, which sounds disgusting, but is actually quite good when added to food. So, as I said breakfast went well.

Then it was off for Memorial Day lunch at Pasta House. I got the Pasta House salad and Pasta Primavera (penne, tomato sauce and a mixture of veggies). It was really good...however, by this time after eating my yummy breakfast and the filling lunch...I was in no shape to make a big dinner. And, it was a big dinner planned - Quinoa with basil and nuts, Hijiki-Tofu Croquettes, Scarlet roasted Vegetables, Steamed greens, and Plum Soup for dessert. I couldn't possibly eat all that, but since leftovers were planned for Day 3's lunch, you'll have to see the next blog about all that.

Overall the food that I did eat was delicious, and I am definitely getting into eating greens for breakfast...but this is a pretty involved menu, and I couldn't hack it for Day 2. Better luck tomorrow :)

Also, amongst all my chatter about the mass quantities of food I'm eating, I want to make sure that I take a moment to remember all of the amazing veterans out there that have served, are currently serving, or who have lost their lives in their service to our country. You are not forgotten. You amaze me everyday, and I am so blessed to be able to work with veterans daily. Thank you for your courage and selflessness. God bless.