Fireworks! (Also Small World)

Matt, Jeff, Ben and I went over to Jeff's house to play Small World and wait for the fireworks to start. Then when they did, we ran around looking for the best view. Depending on where we stood, we could see the high fireworks from Ft. Vancouver as well as fireworks in many different places across the river in Oregon. At one point, Jeff, Matt and Ben leaned on a bush for better view.

A bad picture of said fireworks.

Then we went back inside and finished the game. It was a great holiday.

Matt and Atlas

Atlas and Matt always enjoy each other's company.

4th of July Celebration

We ate:

I finally got to make the chocolate cupcakes I've been wanting to make. Six with chocolate frosting and six with peanut butter frosting. Both were good.

We played the traditional 4th of July Challenge Croquet. I believe that Matt is telling you there that he won. Although we played two games so there are two winners.

And that was pretty much it.

Matt's 4th of July Bike Ride

First thing in the morning Matt went on a bike ride. I stayed home and made frosting for the cupcakes.

Jeff played a bit of "Hey Ya" (actually quite easy to play) on the guitar before everyone left.

Day two--Feeling Great Menu

We learned by watching yesterday's portion sizes.

Breakfast:
Healthier Lifestyle Tea: Even made according to the recipe (1 teaspoon of lemon juice rather than 2) this was still too lemony.

Breakfast Bagel: I was surprised we got two whole ounces of cheese, as all the other cheese I've run across has been measured in tablespoons. This was delicious. It's not unknown for me to have a bread/egg/cheese sandwich on the weekends, but I never have avocado and tomato with it. This was a transcendent sandwich, even if it did kind of fall apart halfway through. We had cantaloupe instead of grapefruit, partially because Matt doesn't like grapefruit and also because we had a cantaloupe. I only gave us 1/4 of cantaloupe each. Se above re: portion sizes and fruits/vegetables.

Snack:
8 oz low-fat plain yogurt, 1/2 md apple: We had instead the stone fruit from the fruit delivery. I liked this, but I eat plain yogurt/fruit for breakfast all the time. Matt came back and put some honey it, because it was too tart for him.

Lunch:
Healthy Turkey Salad & Blue Cheese Dressing: I really liked this dressing. It wasn't a normal dressing thickness for me, but tasted great. It also used up the entire 1-cup carton of buttermilk. Often I have dribs and drabs of cream and buttermilk cartons. So that was great. Matt liked this salad much better than the one offered yesterday. As they had almost identical ingredients, I can guess he liked the dressing.

Snack:
1 nectarine: It's stone fruit season, so that's what we ate.

Dinner:
Hummus with Crudites: A good, if oily hummus recipe. I'm interested that it had five tablespoons of olive oil and only 1 tablespoon of tahini. Most hummus recipes use much more tahini. It was delicious with the red bell pepper which I rarely buy due to exorbitant cost.

Mediterranean Cod: I find cod to be the most bland fish ever. It's like if scientists created "fish" that had no offensive anything and was just substance. There is no flavor. This is, of course, why it tastes so good fried and with chips, but frying and the World's Healthiest Foods don't go together so much. This recipe was good, as it gave about three times the amount of stuff that goes on top as it did cod. That way, I could have a bite of cod (bland) and a bunch of topping (delicious!). Matt even ate it, though it had tomatoes in it. I tried to cut them up very small, so they would cook down enough that he would eat them and it worked.

5-Minute Kale with Sea Vegetables: I eat a lot of kale. I love it very much. And this recipe elevated kale to another level it was so good. The agar was salty and delicious and next time I will use less than the 3.5 tablespoons called for, because it seemed like a lot. Again, 1/2 lb of kale is a lot of kale, but so delicious.

5-Minute Raspberry Almond Parfait: I'm really rethinking this fruit dessert thing. This was also delicious and I would make it again. It helped that these were very ripe fresh picked local raspberries, but in general, it was fabulous!

So, after two days, do I feel great? I feel good, I guess. I have a strange sensation of being overfull of vegetables, which is a different sensation of being over full of carbs, which is usually what I'm overfull with. We're taking the fourth off as potato salad and Polish-style hot dogs are not on the World's Healthiest Food list, I'm guessing. The next five days will be focused on adjusting the vegetable and fruit portion sizes so I don't end up over full of anything.

Day one--Feeling Great Menu

Or so it says on the menu summary. Here's what we ate today:

Healthier Lifestyle Tea. I didn't love this. The added lemon juice to the green tea overpowered the green tea taste. I may have just as well drunk hot water and lemon juice. After I finished drinking it, I glanced at the recipe and found I had doubled the dose. Oops. Tomorrow I will try it with only one teaspoon of lemon juice and see if that makes the difference.

10-Minute Energizing Oatmeal. I've never been a fan of cooked oatmeal. I can remember in first grade being served it at Lori Tollinger's house--that gelatinous lump of hot yuck. I added brown sugar. No help. I added milk. Nope. I pretended to politely eat it, while stirring it around. I eat oatmeal raw daily, but making and eating this recipe was a big stretch for me.

You know what? I didn't hate it and probably could eat this again. The cinnamon/molasses flavor was quite a good combo and adding the milk after the fact made it more like soggy cereal. A good find, and worth the adventuresome eating. Matt liked it too.

I'm noticing we were also supposed to eat 1/2 cup blueberries and 1/2 fresh papaya with breakfast. Oops.

Snack: 1 medium banana, 1 TBS almond butter. I will not eat bananas. I don't like them. My one pass this week is anything involving bananas. We had an apple, sliced and peanut butter. But I have a genetic abnormality that precludes scooping only 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. We had more. I was worried too that I would be very hungry, so I was padding our diet with peanut butter.

Lunch:
Healthy Turkey Caesar Salad 2. Can you visualize four cups of lettuce? It's roughly the mass of a 12-week kitten. It's a lot of lettuce. A lot. Then I added a tomato, 1/4 cup cucumbers, 1/4 cup mushrooms, 1 cup kidney beans, 2 oz turkey and 1 tablespoon sunflower seeds. This was a huge salad. It involved a lot of chewing. The dressing ratio was totally off: 2 tablespoons lemon juice to 1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil. I would have reversed those numbers if I was making the dressing. Also, I'm not sure what makes this salad "Caesar" unless it is the 1 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese added to the dressing. Kidney beans in a Caesar salad? Mushrooms in a Caesar salad? I quibble with the naming.

Remember how I was worried about Matt and having enough food? He could only finish half. When I asked him how he liked it, he said, "The flavors were weird at first, but I liked them eventually."


Snack: 1 medium apple. Ate it.

Dinner:
3-Minute Guacamole with Crudites: This was easy to make (though not actually three minutes) and I thought it was very good. It made a nice portion, too, for an appetizer. Matt's feedback. "What is that tart taste?" he asked me. We figured out it was the lemon juice. He's not a fan. And there is a lot of lemon juice in the healthiest food, it appears. I juiced three lemons yesterday in the course of cooking, which is more than I have juiced in the last three months combined. WHF loves lemons, so I will be buying more when I go to the store. Matt didn't eat much of his guacamole.

Salmon with Dill Sauce: Do you know how small a serving 1/3 of a pound of salmon cut in half is? Very tiny. The guy at the counter claimed he couldn't cut me 1/3 of a pound, instead, I took home .44 of a pound. Which was good, because I was splurging a little on the fancy salmon. Then, the dill yogurt topping makes a ton. I just went with it. It was actually delicious and I really liked the salmon cooking technique. This one is a keeper.

5-Minute Broccoli: Once again, can you visualize 1 pound of broccoli? A huge amount. HUGE! We both couldn't finish. Eating a half pound of steamed broccoli was too much for us. While I was making the recipe, I was wondering, would I ever combine feta and broccoli? Nope. It was fine. I may make this again.


Optional Dessert:
5-Minute Grapes with Honey-Lemon Sauce: I bought stuff for the optional desserts because I was worried about being hungry. It turns out that wasn't necessary. But this was another winner. I'm not the biggest grape fan, but the honey lemon (with lemon zest) topping was a great balance to the grape flavor. I also kind of sniff at the idea of fruit for dessert, even if I know fruit makes a delicious dessert for many people. This was delicious, and very dessert-y. We both ate it all.

I spent about two hours cooking today. Not sustainable during non-vacation times, but fun for vacation.

Day one summary in 9 words: no longer worried about being hungry, out of lemons.

Heathiest Way of Eating Plan

Of late, I've been needing a reset on the whole eating thing. I haven't been cooking as much, and thus, my consumption of vegetables especially has fallen off. Fruit consumption has remained the same because most fruit takes less preparation than vegetables. I have 10 days off starting tomorrow (I love working at a school during the summer!) and figured it would be fun to eat from the menu published on the website The World's Healthiest Foods called The Healthiest Way of Eating Plan.

I've enjoyed recipes from The World's Healthiest Foods since at least 2005. There are a lot of good things to do with vegetables on the site and there are very thorough nutritional profiles included with many of the recipes. I decided to follow the meal plan exactly (one exception: no bananas!) partially because I easily tumble down the slippery slope once I start tweaking menus and also because I'm in the sort of mood where someone should just dictate what I eat. I asked Matt, and he will be joining me on this venture, which is handy because the majority of the recipes make servings for two. I already have a feeling that he will need to supplement the menu with extra food. He eats a lot.

Here is a PDF to the week's menu. We will be taking off July 4, for obvious reasons, but will begin tomorrow.

Yesterday, I made the shopping list for the first two days and today I went grocery shopping. Looking at the shopping list I understood why the web site says this in answer to the question of "how much will this cost?"

The money you spend on the Healthiest Way of Eating Plan is like purchasing health insurance because every penny is being spent on optimally nourishing foods that provide an abundance of nutrients; you aren't wasting any money whatsoever on low-quality, highly addictive, highly processed (high in sugar, fats, and cholesterol) empty-calorie foods. You will also avoid unnecessary processing, unnecessary packaging, and unwanted contaminants so it's also good for the environment. With the Healthiest Way of Eating Plan, you are only paying for foods that promote health.

Yep. It's expensive. I bought about a quarter of the food at New Seasons, the fancy grocery store where I usually buy meat, produce and cheese. The rest I bought at Fred Meyer. The total for the two bills?



Yikes! $77.22 cents for two days worth of food! This was with me buying a lot of the things I only need a quarter cup of in the bulk department. I'm glad I only bought two days worth of food because I think I would have had a heart attack paying for seven days of food all at once. Besides, I don't think I could have carried home all that food. Two days worth filled three shopping bags.

The biggest cost for something I'm not convinced will be worth it?


$7.99 for a little bag with 11 tablespoons in it! What the heck is this? It better be good.

At any rate, I think my digestion will improve. I'm hoping my energy will too. Matt and I will report back tomorrow with our results.