No Twinkies?!!

I am curious...who was the moronic person (i.e. doctor, nutritionalist, etc) that came out & said that in order to eat healthy you have to also cut out all of the "good crap"?

Someone explain to me how a "healthy" diet excludes all psychology, common sense, & rationale? Sure we all think of eating healthy as the green stuff, along with a good portion of lean protein. Cut out the sugars, the sodas, the ingredients you can't pronounce, the salt, etc.

Great! You will be a green lean cutting machine! Right? And your body will be so happy.

But how will you feel?

Seriously?! If you are going to go "healthy" there is no need to cut the sugars, just make it real natural sugar in which your body will digest easily unlike the "fake" sugars. I can go on for days about how skim milk is worse for you due to the process in which to cut our fat & then re-add the nutrients that the fat took with it.

By cutting out the twinkies, the sodas, the "good crap" you are setting yourself up for failure. Your expectations are too high. Sure we all want kids who want to eat the yogurt over the oatmeal cream pie. But what happens when the do get to finally eat an oatmeal cream pie? Binge! Just like you! You will binge.

And just like binge drinking is more deadly than daily drinking, so is binge eating. It does more harm to your body & your psyche than just having a soda a day, a twinkie, or even potato chips in your daily diet. That is the healthy choice!

Government Cheese Anyone?

So I was thinking...which really should not be allowed, but I was doing it....

Back when I was younger, poor as hell, we used to get the government cheese, dry milk, beans, peanut butter, honey, the occasional ham in a tin, etc. Sometimes what you got depended on what the government had on overstock, but we always got cheese! It was the best cheese ever! And we never ran out of peanut butter or honey because they came in these huge cans! HUGE!

That program soon ran dry or was traded in for another much like WIC, making limitations on how long you can receive these handouts. OK. So what if we did that today?

All this talk about the amount of money that we need to help the "poor", then why aren't we doing this again? Also all the talk about needing money to control this or that, etc...helping the "Americans" learn how to eat probably to beat the obesity issues, etc.

Last I checked it is not the governments place to tell me what to eat or how to eat, maybe just make their usually recommendations & regulate things on their end...such as....

Secondly, if they want to fight obesity & diabetes (yes, which is on the books of bills to be passed), then how about changing the FDA regulations & ditching those ingredients that they added that put us in this state (i.e. High Fructose Corn Syrup & Trans Fat) instead of telling me what I can & cannot eat?

Adding to it, let's not stop there! Let's regulate the hormones, from what kind to how much, can be added to the feed we use on our livestock! You know, those pesky little hormones that don't cook or process out of our animal products & are then absorbed by our bodies causing us "growth" in all directions too...just like the animal byproduct we ingested. Remember the 80's anyone?

People were never as big as they are today thanks to these growth hormones...nor did they have the diabetes rate we have today thanks to high fructose corn syrup...or heart problems due to the wonder trans fat to make things sit on a shelf longer without going bad!

Well this all in turn has made me give up the idea of the "government cheese program" (as I so affectionately call it). Because I can guarantee, with the way things are & the way that they are going, we would all be fat, diabetic, cancerous, or even dead from any government cheese handouts!

A New Theory

I have a new theory on why people overeat. I am not discrediting those with real issues, you know the kind of internal emotional issues that make you plum to hide or whatever. Which in itself makes no sense since it really just makes you more noticeable but in a bad way.

Beside the point, so I was making my lunch today. I great big sandwich with avocado & all. It was so tasty. Anyway, I could still remember the taste of the chicken we had last night in our homemade enchiladas & was thinking....

"Wow! I had forgotten that chicken could taste like that...like homegrown, just rung it's neck chicken. No wonder I had never really been a big meat eater growing up."

That reasoning then played into the knowledge I know about today's chicken. It is so chalked full of hormones that when we see a little breast for $6.00 a pound, we go with the big one for $1.50 a pound instead. But that chicken really has no flavor. Not a gamey, chicken flavor at all. It is just a white meat kind of flavor & is often dry. So we do our absolute best to cover it up with juices & seasonings abound.

This chicken I had the other night was a local Japanese selection from the local Co-Op (farmers market but like a real store). They were small in American standard size, still had some skin on them, & lots of juice once frozen & thawed. I thought for sure that the freezing then thawing took all the juice out & these were going to cook up try.

Not at all! Instead they were still really juice with some FAT still in the juice. They even plumped with cooked. When was the last time you saw your chicken "plump", none-the-less, your hot dog?

I am not a meat eater in any capacity, but I do like really got piece of deer or elk. Having a chicken taste like a real chicken yanked up out of the wild, that was a treat. Why? Because I could taste it!

If our senses all work together & our sense of smell plays the biggest roll in our sense of taste...I am going to assume that our obesity problem in America isn't just the FDA allowing crap in our foods, but that they also have no taste. They all have a generic taste instead. Yep, white meat, red meat, some green thing, etc. Even the tomatoes here remind me of my early childhood. So freaking good!

When we can taste what we eat, we can enjoy it & need a lot less of it. Hence the reason God gave us the sense of smell & taste combination. To enjoy His great works!

A Little Prep Work Goes A Long Way

As I was chopping up everything there was to chop in the fridge today it hit me that I wanted to share with you some of my tips on making our produce last until we can get it consumed.

See there is only two of us in our household & only one of us will eat fruits. However, we are both guilty of not eating enough fruits & vegetables. To add to that frustration, the prices of these products keep going up while the quality keeps going down.

So how do I get all this produce to last us & actually get us to use it? Well, a little help from my Grands & a little trial & error. The trick is to trick the mind! If you break it all down into usable sizes or servings sizes, ready to eat/use immediately, you are more likely to grab it & use it. But if you have to take it out, wash it, prep it, etc. just to get to a point to use it, you will skip over it more often than not.

First you will need:

• one day to just prep food (Sundays while doing dinners or during the day when baby is napping)
• produce of choice
• lots of Gladware, Ziploc containers, or Tupperware (or all the above) in various sizes
• a few Ziploc bags
• 1 great & sharp cutting & chopping knife or a block of them (as is my case)
• scissors
• cutting board
• trash bowl or can ready to be used

When it comes to lettuce, we are picky about it being only Romaine Lettuce. Besides being the healthiest lettuce to eat of lettuces, it also will last longer than most others we have tried. I shred the lettuce down by hand, pulling it off the main stalk (center part that will turn brown quickly) in bite size tears. I dispose of the center stalk from each leaf. You may use it, calling it a waste to throw it out, but it turns brown fast & no one wants to eat it then or anything that has touched it. I put my torn lettuce into a large square Gladware container & then in the crisper. I don't add a sponge, or paper towels, etc. Just like that into the crisper. I can get up 1-2 weeks of it being of good use, enough time for us to eat it. With it already torn, it is so easy just to pull out the tub & add lettuce to our sandwiches & burgers, or make a salad. We actually use the lettuce! It is gone before it goes bad!

Cilantro is one of those amazing herbs that no one really uses, mostly because it costs so much & you get this big bundle that you can't use before it goes bad. Like the lettuce, I chop it up, minced is more like it, and I put it in little tiny Gladware mini rounds (1/2 cup) containers. We never need much more than that per dish, including guacamole. I toss them also back into the crisper.

Grapes. I am the only fruit eater in this house & grapes are a pain to get down. They come in one big bag. I have learned that if I wash them, sort them, & divide them into little servings, I will grab a bag & eat them. But you can't just toss them into a Ziploc bag, the get all gooey & rot. I take a pair of scissors & I nick then bottom of the back & the bottom 1/3 of the bag sides to great little airflow vents. Yep, then back in the crisper! You got it! 2-3 weeks usually!

Carrots, Celery, Broccoli, & Cherry Tomatoes get mixed & matched into the small Twist & Lock Ziploc containers. This is a great lunch pack or snack to just grab! I buy the baby carrots & cherry tomatoes (to prevent getting gooey & chopping off a finger...carrots & I aren't friends), but the rest I buy in the normal natural size & cut down to finger food size that fits in these containers. I make up 5-7...a weeks worth to be shared between 2 people. B used to never snack on these kinds of foods until I did this. Now, he will crab them & some ranch & go to town!

Any broccoli or celery left over gets chopped down into "cooking" sizes (what we would normal want to cook with) & put into more Ziploc Twist & Lock containers & into the freezer! If you are going to cook with the celery you can take it out the day of or before, drain any water off, & toss it into the pan (like for potato soup). **If you pack the containers really tight, you will have less water when thawed.

I continue this pattern with just about everything from watermelon, strawberries, to tomatoes pre-sliced. I DO NOT attempt this with avocados, apples, bananas, or other like fruits. Even with the club soda or lemon tricks, they still go bad or turn brown quickly. I might save half an avocado (the seed side) with a little lemon juice on it to prevent browning if I know I will eat it in a day or two. I even cut down blocks of cheese to snack on & put them in small containers.

Imagine if you did buy in bulk? You could easily do this kind of prep work with bell peppers, spinach, green chiles, etc. Not only do you get to cut down on your grocery bill loss, you increase your diet potential all while also making dinner easier to make! The best part...the containers are washable! You can reuse them & be green!

Eating healthy is a lifestyle. That was the hardest thing to learn. And a lifestyle is what we have created. We are eating fresher by the day & we know what we are eating. I hope you got something fun & useful out of this blog.