5/4/10--Dinner and musings

I tried making rye bread today. The recipe calls for molasses, which I don't have. A little astute Googling produced a handy list of substitutions which not only gave me a nice option, but will also probably be helpful for other things as my experiment proceeds. I used brown sugar in place of the molasses.

The bread didn't rise as much as I expected, even though I ended up leaving it for longer than originally planned. The result is a bread that is probably denser than it's supposed to be, (and sweeter than I expected,) but that is quite edible.

So for dinner I used the heels of one loaf and made the same broiled cheese sandwiches with basil mayonnaise as last Friday. To go with it, I figured I might as well use up the hard-boiled eggs I had in the fridge. I cooked them last week to use in sandwiches, but I seem to have lost my desire for egg-mayonnaise sandwiches...some tastes come and go. I made them into deviled eggs (which I have not lost my taste for). Dinner came out to 796 calories and 43 g fat.

Dieting is not a part of this personal challenge, but I find that just the act of recording what I eat and being aware of the fat and calories makes me eat more reasonable portions and snack less. But stopping the fast food and impulse buying is tough. It seems like everywhere I drive, all I see are billboards and signs for fast food that makes me want to go get some. And today when I went to a store to get some non-food necessities (deodorant, dish soap, and wiper blades, if you really want to know), the first things I saw as I walked in were Grasshopper cookies and strawberries, both of which were calling to me strongly. I've successfully resisted all the temptations so far, but it has been difficult. Even more difficult has been not getting candy from the vending machine at school. I probably could, even within the bounds of this experiment, because I would be using the money on my student card, which has already been designated for buying food, same as the gift card I got for dairy and produce this month. But I've still decided that it wouldn't be in the spirit of the challenge. And I'm the one who sets the rules for myself.

In other news, as I was fixing dinner tonight, I noticed a box of curry mix in the back of one of my cupboards, and realized that would be an excellent use for my slightly old carrots and potatoes! So I moved some chicken and ground beef to the fridge to thaw--chicken for the curry, and ground beef to be divided up into single serving sizes and used for things like burritos and enchiladas once I get more tortillas made. I also need to make another batch of crackers; I'm running low.

--Edit, 5/5/10--I realized today that I used the wrong quantity in the drop-down menu on www.nutritiondata.com when I was calculating the calories and fat of the deviled eggs. Turns out there's a big difference between '1 large' and '1 cup chopped'. Yeah. Should have noticed what the default was!

5/4/10--Breakfast

Well, my grumpiness has not gone away yet. So I took the easy way out for breakfast and just had leftover black beans and rice again, this time with a double helping of Jello. Are you catching on to my eating style yet? Yes, it's very usual for me to eat the same thing several meals in a row. Boring, maybe, but easy.

I was planning on making bread today so I can make sandwiches this week. But of the two recipes I wanted to try, I'm missing one vital ingredient of each. I may end up trying to think of something else I could substitute, or just make a different kind of bread, or something.

5/3/10--Breakfast (sort of) and dinner (if you can call it that)

Breakfast was leftovers of the rice and the black beans. No lunch. For dinner I'm cooking one of the chicken bunles and will be reheating some more rice and beans and probably having some Jello and maybe some lemon ice cream because I'm grumpy. No pictures tonight, because it's pretty much all stuff I've already shown (imagine the breaded chicken from the other day rolled up, and that's what the chicken bundle looks like).


Scratch that. The chicken is inedible. Just eating the rice and beans and then going for as long a drive as I can without being late anywhere.

5/2/10--Happy Birthday to Val!

Today is my sister's birthday, although to the best of my knowledge she does not know about this blog. Happy birthday to her, anyway! Due to her 35th birthday festivities (okay, probably not that festive, just dinner and cake), I will be eating at our parents' house today. Which means I'm not going to bother discussing today's meals, since I'm not cooking them. I do know that the cake will be chocolate with peanut butter frosting, which is one of the few kinds of frosting I actually like. I'm getting hungry already....

5/1/10 Dinner

Since part of the reason I'm doing this is to use the meat in my freezer, isn't about time I had a meal with meat in it? Okay, here we go.

I couldn't remember how much chicken was in the bag I'd pulled out to thaw. Turned out it was four boneless skinless breast halves. So I smashed them all flat. For some reason I like chicken better when it's flat.... Anyway, I pulled out a little cookbook my sister gave me when she was living in New Mexico and used one of my favorite recipes: Mexican-style Chicken Kiev. Okay, it's a really bad title, since there isn't that much similarity between this and chicken kiev...maybe it has more of a similarity to chicken cordon bleu. I kind of picked and chose which parts of the recipe I wanted to follow, and made three chicken bundles wrapped around pieces of monterey jack cheese and breaded. Then I put them away to eat another time, and just breaded the other piece and fried it. I ate it along with the black beans I'd been cooking all day and some rice cooked with garlic and chicken broth. By the way--second staple to run out: my jar of minced garlic. Fortunately, I still have some fresh garlic that I don't think has started sprouting yet, and plenty of garlic powder. I should not have a problem continuing to have garlic breath for the rest of the challenge, if I wish!

Sorry, lousy picture. But it was a good dinner!

5/1/10 Breakfast and lunch and the first ingredient to run out!

Well, I've done it. Run out of the first of my kitchen staples: black beans. To go with the chicken that's been thawing, I decided to cook up my favorite bean recipe. I'll be cooking some rice, too. But there weren't quite enough beans. I had a bit less than the 1 cup of dry beans the recipe called for. I'm making the recipe the same way as usual, not reducing anything. But even though I've often gone a whole month without cooking black beans, it makes me kind of sad to know this is my last batch for the forseeable future. I have a lot of other kinds of beans in the cupboard--at least 4 varieties, plus split peas--so I guess I could see what it would be like to cook this recipe using a different kind of bean! Not sure about that, though.

Breakfast today was burritos. I used the last two of the tortillas I made earlier in the week, and finished off the can of refried beans I started on Monday, too. I also used some of the beef fajita strips I'd marinated and frozen. I still have several bags of that meat in the freezer! And because I like cheese, of course there was some cheddar on the burritos, too. Oh, and while the meat was defrosting in the microwave, I had a first course of Jello. (594 cal, 22 g fat)

For lunch I decided I'd better make a salad, since I happen to have a head of iceberg lettuce in the fridge. I'm not sure that was the best idea, since I don't have many other vegetables to put in, and no ham, which I would often include in a salad. So it was a little bland. Lettuce, sunflower seeds, cheddar, a hard-boiled egg, and some ranch dressing I made using a recipe from www.cooks.com. I may need to add some more mayonnaise into the dressing; it was really thin. (382 cal, 28 g fat)

Hopefully dinner will turn out better than lunch. Which reminds me, I'd better go tend to the black beans simmering on the stove!

4/30/10--Breakfast and dinner

Simple breakfast this morning--oatmeal with a little brown sugar and some raisins. With a little milk. (155 cal, 2g fat). I also made some crackers using this recipe to eat for snacks or pack with lunches. The recipe calls for a mixture of whole wheat and all-purpose flour, but since I don't have any whole wheat flour I substituted some bulk seven-grain cereal I'd gotten for making some multi-grain bread. (I have plenty of the cereal to make the bread too, later on.)

I had thought of packing lunch and dinner, and not going home in between the various things I had scheduled for today. But part of what I was planning required the chicken I was thawing, which was still frozen this morning. Actually, it's still kind of icy even now. So I'll probably start using the chicken tomorrow. Anyway, I changed my mind (or rather, hadn't made another decision by the time I needed to run out the door to go to my voice lesson) and didn't pack anything. So after spending some time on campus trying to work on my thesis, I came back to my apartment to eat a lunch/dinner sort of meal.

I'd gotten an idea while I was on campus. I used half of half of the french bread loaf I had left. I cut it in half and spread it with some mayonnaise mixed with dried basil. For the past two years, I've grown fresh basil on my balcony, and had forgotten I had dried basil at the back of my collection of herbs and spices. Due to my plans to move, I didn't plant a garden this year, and I've already been missing having basil around. The dried stuff isn't quite the same, but it works! So. Bread spread with basil mayonnaise, which I then topped with shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheeses and broiled. While it was cooking, I pulled a little bag of last summer's green beans from the freezer and cooked them in the microwave, then sprinkled them with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Some of the jello I made last night rounded out the meal. (Estimated total 555 cal, 28 g fat)
The green beans tasted a little freezer-burned, so I don't think I'll want to use them straight again. Next time I use some, I'll cook them into something with enough flavor to cover. The broiled bread and cheese was fantastic! I'm toying around with the possibility of eating a little of the lemon ice cream I made yesterday morning before I dash off again, or putting together some snack I can eat while I'm off gallivanting around tonight. I've gotten in the habit of getting strawberry limeade from Sonic to drink while I'm on long, late drives, but I need to avoid that and find another way to keep myself alert while I'm driving home tonight!