Tag Archives: food

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Making icelollies (and drawing it)

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Salads

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Partially homegrown salad
Today I made another salad, a great way to let of some steam creativity wise. I read somewhere salads look (and taste) better if they have more colours, so I added some yellow and red and brown to my greens. I've grown some lettuce (cut-and-come-again variety), and today I started eating it. I cut off about 15 grams of it, and added some arugula and garden cress for flavour. I also tossed in a sprout mixture of fenugreek, mustard, daikon and horseradish (last three all fairly spicy). I found some leftover sweet bell pepper (yellow) in the fridge, along with a few cherry tomatoes. After I added those I still felt it needed some more. I chopped up some shiitake mushrooms and grilled them with a sauce of soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil (very tasty by itself btw). When the mushrooms cooled down a bit, I plopped them on the salad and used the small oven-dish to mix up some more soy sauce, sesame oil and rice vinegar. I used this as a dressing over the salad, preparing it in the used oven-dish gave it a bit more of a grilled taste, very nice! I have sown plenty of salad-greens and decided I could use a challenge (oh yes, another challenge!). I want to try my best at not buying any salad greens in the store until at leas way into autumn. This excludes eating out, but includes all salads at home :D I should get my box of shiitake mushrooms started soon too. It will take a while before I can use my own tomatoes and peppers in my salads, however, I have a lot of greens already. I like salads, I should manage to pull this one off :) --p.s. recipes for salads and dressing very welcome--
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I know I should just draw…

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Sprouting sprouts

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New foods.

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I’ve tried a few gluten-free options this week, including a pre-made gluten-free bread. It doesn’t taste much like wheat-bread and it crumbs easily without having that spongey texture — somewhat like a loaf cake — but it works as a base to spread something (peanutbutter, creame cheese) on and it gave me no issues. Success!

Today I also tried some quinoa with grilled shiitakes and that didn’t go so well. I thought the quinoa did not work for me, however, on testing, it turns out the shiitake caused the problems. When I checked the date it had passed its sell by date for some time already, oops. The rest of the quinoa went well, so I’ll call it success too, hurray!

I found out it helps a lot if I keep on snacking / eating all day long. It prevents those moments I feel blown up because I ate too much. This makes it clear to me I have to stick to eating small meals, because my body can’t handle the bigger once — unlike some other people in my family.

Some time after surgery I went to see a dietician and she told me to eat at least 150 gram potatoes, 200 grams of veggies and a good chunk of meat (100-150 gram) for dinner1. This qualifies as a normal meal, for people with a stomach. This will never ever fit into me during a normal dinnertime. Apart from the amount, the time I need to eat has changed too. It takes longer. I could technically eat the above meal in around 2 hours or so. I don’t like that, I don’t want to spend more than 30 minutes on each meal, unless I go out to eat with friends. I want to have time away from food too :)

  1. This, by the way, despite me telling her at the beginning that I don’t eat meat and she still thought she had to suggest the 100-150 gram portion, and suggest it several times. Stoopid. And tiring. ↩

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The plants, they grow.

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Shopping lists

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20090426shopper

[Updated: 2009-12-11: I no longer recommend Shopper, as of version 5.0. This paid app started to display ads and other cluttering info. See my newer post for more info ]

I generally make a shopping list when I go out buying groceries (about once per week). I used to go nearly every oter day, and spent money on food I hoped I could eat (but usually couldn’t) which turned into one big waste pile which didn’t feel good, money and waste wise.
I put myself on a ‘shopping list diet’ basically, not buying anything that’s not on the list. I check the pantry and the fridge before I go out and note what I need to buy. I read somewhere that if it wasn’t important enough to put on your list while checking pantry and fridge, it’s certainly not important enough to buy in the store just because you see it.

I do stray from this a bit, sometimes, when in the store I remember I need to buy dog-cookies (not in my pantry, so I don’t see that I need too) or better, when they’re on sale. I want to have a good enough stash of dog-food and treats for my dog. So occasionally I will stray from the list a bit, however, in general, the list really works. I have basically cut my grocery spending by at least 40% (yes, I did overspent horribly on groceries for a while).

For my shopping list making I’ve used Shopper for iPhone since September last year (and I admit I’ve strayed from the list a lot until last month, nothing to do with the program). I love the way it works, though I have flirted with other programs in the meantime. See, what I missed was the option to set the price based on store (to see where I could get the best deal). Realising today I had never e-mailed them to tell them that, I went to the website and found an entire page about Shopper v3 with all the functions I missed.

Now I can’t wait for it to come out. I’m sure I’ll love it. I love Shopper v2 for its simplicity already. Can only get better… ;)

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Cooking and such.

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Cheese snacks

I seem to have lost my cooking-foo. The whole meal / menu-planning doesn’t work for me, I can’t figure out the big secret. I did stumble on Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday which hopefully give me some inspiration / ideas on how to tackle this.

I did some laundry and cleaning today and paused for drink and food, and then stumbled upon Kay’s cheese-onion butterflies and I thought ‘oh yes! want those!’ so I chopped up my last onion (oops, how can I run out of onions), got the grated Gouda from the fridge, the puff pastry from the freezer and it went completely wrong. It fell apart and I ended up smashing it a bit. It doesn’t look very presentable anymore, and I put it in the oven anyway.

Not feeling the cooking-love today.

ETA: They tasted very good. Ate them all. Tummy hurts now… Cheese snacks

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Random casserole recipe.

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I came up with a random casserole recipe by just tossing stuff together. I have tons of cans with food from my compulsive food-buying so I just mixed what I thought would work (my cans are mostly 1 person portions):

  • 1 small can of brown lentils
  • 1 small can of baked beans in tomato-sauce
  • half a courgette (zucchini I believe you weird USians call it)
  • about 200 grams of baked mushrooms (a leftover, baked in butter and garlic salt, tasty!)
  • 1 small can of cream of mushroom soup (at least, I think you call it that, I’d just call it ‘creamy mushroom soup’)
  • two handfuls of grated cheese (ah well, cup, handfuls, who needs exact science!)

I mixed everything together apart from the cheese, put it into oven-dishes, and topped it with cheese. My cans contained about 200 grams of lentils / beans (about 7 US-oz). The soup was a one-person portion, around 230ml / 7.5oz. I don’t think the exact amount really matters, the general idea / proportion counts more. I think replacing either the lentils or beans with ground beef/pork will also work pretty well (I want to try a tofu version some time soon).

I just love courgette and mushroom…

I did forget to season it with pepper and salt and herbs, but it tasted pretty good just like this, probably thanks to the soup being already seasoned. I liked the mixture of creamy soup and tomato sauce.

I put it in my toaster-oven for about half an hour on 400°F / 200°C, but it’s a toaster-oven, so YMMV.

I ate a tasty portion, put another in my bento for tomorrows lunch and have two portions left for later in the week / freezer. Normally this would make two portions I think. Or maybe one and a half.

My first attempt to cook from my pantry has turned out pretty well. Very pleased :D

Now I have to think of something to cook with my forgotten-but-stil-ok small sweet peppers…

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Mmm bread.

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I still have issues eating bread, so I’ve made a bit of my own (totally abused my rice-cooker for it too!). I like pita-breads, they seem to work well, so I searched for a recipe and found one. I will cut the recipe into 1/3 (this worked pretty well with my previous bread), because 1/4 means too many calculations and weird things (call me lazy ;) ).

I’ll still make eight, just eight small ones :D

They’ll fit in my bento too!

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