Earlier this week a friend and were having a conversation regarding the ingredients in a popular brand of yogurt. She was asking my opinion on the contents. Overall they weren't too bad... but they did list one item that has always made me wonder: colour. How is it that colour can be a food ingredient? I suppose if they said food colouring this would fit more with my understanding of what qualifies as an ingredient, but would really not be any clearer. So my friend did a little online hunting, and it turns out that many of the colourings we use in our foods are derived from natural sources such as spices, berry juices, and in one case a cochineal instect. While I'm not wild about the idea of consuming "juiced" bug, that's more just me being squeemish than anything. I was far more disturbed by the discovery that several synthetic food colourings, the most distinct of these being Brilliant Blue FCF, E133 or Blue No.1, are derived from a substance called "Coal Tar".
So what is coal tar? I'm going to do something really bad here, which would be frowned upon by scholars the world over... I'm going to cite wikipedia. Before I do I have to say that this is not the only site I've consulted in researching this, it is simply the one that presents most of what found all in one place. Here are some of my favorite bits from the wikipedia page on Coal Tar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_tar):
"Being flammable, coal tar is sometimes used for heating or to fire boilers."
"used to kill and repel head lice"
"Coal tar was formerly used as one of the primary ingredients of asphalt pavements"
"The NPF states that coal tar contains approximately 10,000 different chemicals, of which only about 50% have been identified, and the composition of coal tar varies with its origin and type of coal (eg: lignite, bituminous or anthracite) used to make it."
"According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, preparations that include more than 5 percent of crude coal tar are Group 1 carcinogen."
Now I don't know how carcinogenic "Group 1" is, and I am 100% sure that by the time this becomes Blue No.1 and goes into my freezy it does not contain 5% crude oil. But I can tell you that I'd rather eat bugs... but maybe that's just me.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
So far, so good...
Well two weeks back into eating properly has gone well. It hasn't been perfect. We've ordered pizza twice, but aside from that hubby and I have made every meal we've eaten in that time. Not bad for two devoted eat-out-aholics. So what have I been doing? Mainly, keeping the kitchen clean. Who wants to cook when the dishes are stacked up and your kitchen is cluttered.
Things have been going so well in fact, that I don't have that much to write about. So I thought over the next few days I'd post some of my favorite recipes instead.
Slow Cooker Chili
This chili is so hearty it really doesn't need the ground beef, so if you're a vegetarian, just leave it out. Also, hubby and I substitute the ground beef for ground bison for a lower fat alternative.
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 lb Lean Ground Beef
4 Onions, finely chopped
8 Cloves Garlic, minced
2 tbsp Cumin seeds
2 tbsp Cracked Black Pepper Corns
2 tbsp Chili Powder
2 tbsp Salt
1 tsp Ground Allspice
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 Cup (1 small can) Tomato Paste
2 Cups Canned Crushed Tomoatos
2 Cups Canned Diced Tomatos
1 Cup Condensed Beef (or Veg) Broth (Undiluted)
1 kg (Bag) Frozen Peas, Carrots, Corn
1 Can Refried Beans
3 Cans Kidney or other beans of your choice.
Hot Sauce to taste
Preparation:
1. Heat skillet over med-high heat. Add beef and cook until beef is no longer pink. Transfer to slow cooker stoneware. Drain liquid from pan.
2. Reduce heat to medium and add oil. Add onions, cook until soft. Transfer to slow cooker stoneware.
3. Add all spices, stir.
4. Add all other ingredients, stir.
5. Cook on low for 10-12 hours, or for quicker turn around time cook on high for 4-5 hours.
What we usually do is prepare this in the evening and put the stoneware in the fridge. Before we go to work in the morning we set the slow cooker so it will be ready for that night's dinner.
Things have been going so well in fact, that I don't have that much to write about. So I thought over the next few days I'd post some of my favorite recipes instead.
Slow Cooker Chili
This chili is so hearty it really doesn't need the ground beef, so if you're a vegetarian, just leave it out. Also, hubby and I substitute the ground beef for ground bison for a lower fat alternative.
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 lb Lean Ground Beef
4 Onions, finely chopped
8 Cloves Garlic, minced
2 tbsp Cumin seeds
2 tbsp Cracked Black Pepper Corns
2 tbsp Chili Powder
2 tbsp Salt
1 tsp Ground Allspice
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 Cup (1 small can) Tomato Paste
2 Cups Canned Crushed Tomoatos
2 Cups Canned Diced Tomatos
1 Cup Condensed Beef (or Veg) Broth (Undiluted)
1 kg (Bag) Frozen Peas, Carrots, Corn
1 Can Refried Beans
3 Cans Kidney or other beans of your choice.
Hot Sauce to taste
Preparation:
1. Heat skillet over med-high heat. Add beef and cook until beef is no longer pink. Transfer to slow cooker stoneware. Drain liquid from pan.
2. Reduce heat to medium and add oil. Add onions, cook until soft. Transfer to slow cooker stoneware.
3. Add all spices, stir.
4. Add all other ingredients, stir.
5. Cook on low for 10-12 hours, or for quicker turn around time cook on high for 4-5 hours.
What we usually do is prepare this in the evening and put the stoneware in the fridge. Before we go to work in the morning we set the slow cooker so it will be ready for that night's dinner.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Creature in the Ceiling
I wanted to check back in and let you all know how things are going since I posted my new plan on Saturday. So far so good, even with the universe conspiring to keep me out of my kitchen. That's right, the universe wants me to prove my dedication.
Sunday started out normally enough. I made plans to meet a girlfriend for breakfast at a local cafe. It was my farewell to eating out for the next month. I needed some groceries for the afternoon of cooking I had planned, but finished breakfast before the local grocery store opened. So I headed home and did a preemptive clean of my kitchen. There's nothing better than getting to work in a newly cleaned kitchen.
Despite the chilly, rainy weather, I set out feeling uplifted. I was happy to be back on track, and excited to try some new recipes. I planned to make jambalaya in the slow cooker, a pot of pumpkin soup, and put together an eggplant parmesan to be popped into the oven for easy cooking one night during the week.
By around 1:30 I was all set and ready to start cooking. Instead of buying chicken breast (as the recipe called for) I'd defrosted some chicken thighs we already had in the freezer for the jambalaya. I deboned and defatted them myself, a process which I am usually loath to take on. But it's time to stop being a girl and start being a cook... and a cook is perfectly capable of deboning her own chicken... no matter how grossed out she is by raw meat. It's time to get over it. I took the casings off the Italian sausage, fried that and the chicken up, and had the whole thing stewing in the slow cooker within about half an hour.
That's when I heard the noise... scurrying overhead. Ok, breathe, there's a mouse in the ceiling. So what? You can deal with deboning a chicken; you can deal with a mouse living over head.
Now, before I go on to tell the rest of the story, I have to describe my kitchen ceiling. It's the one part of my lovely character apartment that I really hate. It's a drop ceiling; about 6 inches lower than anywhere else in the apartment. It's made from the kind of ceiling tiles that are found in office buildings, for easy access to wiring, etc. The kind that you can push up on and have access to what's above. I suspect it was added in the last 20 years, out of convenience, rather than properly fixing some other issue with the original kitchen ceiling.
Ok... so back to the "mouse" in the ceiling. It sounds too heavy to be a mouse, and just as that's occurring to me, one of the corners of one of the tiles starts to lift! Holy shit, I've got some sort of super rodent with opposable thumbs, lifting tiles to come down at me from above! That or something with a girth so great that sitting on the opposite side of the tile is lifting the other corner... either way I do not want to meet this creature! I grab the broom and start hitting a solid part of the ceiling and yelling, trying to frighten it away. But why on earth would it be afraid of me, with my dull finger nails and unsharpened teeth? The tile drops back down and I can hear it moving around up there. I'm frozen with fear, listening for it's every movement. The tile starts to lift again and I'm startled back into action, pounding the ceiling again with my broom. We repeat this dance three times. I'm scared that if I leave the kitchen it will get down without my knowing, and even more afraid to stay there.
I retreat to the living room, where I call the caretaker. I tell him there's an animal in my ceiling and they need to send an exterminator. He calls me back to tell me there's a guy on call and he'll let me know as soon as he hears from him.
I'm sitting on my couch with my feet tucked up under me, listening intently to the sound of the ceiling creature scurrying around. Yes, I can hear it from the living room. That's when it occurs to me that I haven't seen my very small, very mischievous, cat in quite some time. I search the apartment top to bottom, checking all her usual hiding places, and any other spot I think a small cat might get into. No luck. I'm starting to think I need to get up the nerve to stick my head up into the ceiling and see what's going on. I'm relieve to find that I am not tall enough to do so even standing on a kitchen chair... even if I worked up the guts to come face to face with creature (or cat).
I haven't mentioned yet, that hubby is out of town, which is why I didn't make the 6'3" man I live with stick his head up there. I frantically call my dad, who lives on the other end of the city. He's at my grandma's for dinner, and can't come for at least a few hours. I'm starting to worry that the exterminator will show up without calling, and I won't know whether or not the creature in the ceiling should be exterminated. I also don't have the money to pay for him, should he find my cat up there.
So I call my best friend. Can she and her partner come to my rescue? He might be tall enough. He's out, but being the excellent best friend she is, she came straight over with her roommate/cousin and two step ladders. We still can't get up high enough to see what's going on. We poke the tiles with the broom, at this point fairly certain that the creature is the cat... or at least telling ourselves that. The whole situation is seeming less frightening with other people there. Unfortunately the creature seems to be long gone. Eventually my friends go, as there is nothing more they can do for me and they have things they need to do.
I call back my caretaker and hesitantly tell him I suspect my cat has gotten up there and to please hold off on the exterminator. He is reasonably surprised to hear my cat may have gotten into the ceiling, but is pretty understanding about the whole thing.
Hours later the cat did reappear, looking annoyingly nonchalant. Only I didn’t see where she came from. My parents had just arrived, and I was feeling rather embarrassed about making them come all the way over. I found myself telling them I saw her come out of the ceiling, which I did not (if you’re reading this, sorry guys!).
So in the end all I got made Sunday afternoon was the jambalaya… but I did spend last night making the soup, and the sauce for the eggplant parmesan.
Incidentally… the cat was again no where to be found when I got home from work yesterday. She eventually reappeared and I’ve heard no more noises from above. So the mystery of the creature overhead remains unsolved.
Sunday started out normally enough. I made plans to meet a girlfriend for breakfast at a local cafe. It was my farewell to eating out for the next month. I needed some groceries for the afternoon of cooking I had planned, but finished breakfast before the local grocery store opened. So I headed home and did a preemptive clean of my kitchen. There's nothing better than getting to work in a newly cleaned kitchen.
Despite the chilly, rainy weather, I set out feeling uplifted. I was happy to be back on track, and excited to try some new recipes. I planned to make jambalaya in the slow cooker, a pot of pumpkin soup, and put together an eggplant parmesan to be popped into the oven for easy cooking one night during the week.
By around 1:30 I was all set and ready to start cooking. Instead of buying chicken breast (as the recipe called for) I'd defrosted some chicken thighs we already had in the freezer for the jambalaya. I deboned and defatted them myself, a process which I am usually loath to take on. But it's time to stop being a girl and start being a cook... and a cook is perfectly capable of deboning her own chicken... no matter how grossed out she is by raw meat. It's time to get over it. I took the casings off the Italian sausage, fried that and the chicken up, and had the whole thing stewing in the slow cooker within about half an hour.
That's when I heard the noise... scurrying overhead. Ok, breathe, there's a mouse in the ceiling. So what? You can deal with deboning a chicken; you can deal with a mouse living over head.
Now, before I go on to tell the rest of the story, I have to describe my kitchen ceiling. It's the one part of my lovely character apartment that I really hate. It's a drop ceiling; about 6 inches lower than anywhere else in the apartment. It's made from the kind of ceiling tiles that are found in office buildings, for easy access to wiring, etc. The kind that you can push up on and have access to what's above. I suspect it was added in the last 20 years, out of convenience, rather than properly fixing some other issue with the original kitchen ceiling.
Ok... so back to the "mouse" in the ceiling. It sounds too heavy to be a mouse, and just as that's occurring to me, one of the corners of one of the tiles starts to lift! Holy shit, I've got some sort of super rodent with opposable thumbs, lifting tiles to come down at me from above! That or something with a girth so great that sitting on the opposite side of the tile is lifting the other corner... either way I do not want to meet this creature! I grab the broom and start hitting a solid part of the ceiling and yelling, trying to frighten it away. But why on earth would it be afraid of me, with my dull finger nails and unsharpened teeth? The tile drops back down and I can hear it moving around up there. I'm frozen with fear, listening for it's every movement. The tile starts to lift again and I'm startled back into action, pounding the ceiling again with my broom. We repeat this dance three times. I'm scared that if I leave the kitchen it will get down without my knowing, and even more afraid to stay there.
I retreat to the living room, where I call the caretaker. I tell him there's an animal in my ceiling and they need to send an exterminator. He calls me back to tell me there's a guy on call and he'll let me know as soon as he hears from him.
I'm sitting on my couch with my feet tucked up under me, listening intently to the sound of the ceiling creature scurrying around. Yes, I can hear it from the living room. That's when it occurs to me that I haven't seen my very small, very mischievous, cat in quite some time. I search the apartment top to bottom, checking all her usual hiding places, and any other spot I think a small cat might get into. No luck. I'm starting to think I need to get up the nerve to stick my head up into the ceiling and see what's going on. I'm relieve to find that I am not tall enough to do so even standing on a kitchen chair... even if I worked up the guts to come face to face with creature (or cat).
I haven't mentioned yet, that hubby is out of town, which is why I didn't make the 6'3" man I live with stick his head up there. I frantically call my dad, who lives on the other end of the city. He's at my grandma's for dinner, and can't come for at least a few hours. I'm starting to worry that the exterminator will show up without calling, and I won't know whether or not the creature in the ceiling should be exterminated. I also don't have the money to pay for him, should he find my cat up there.
So I call my best friend. Can she and her partner come to my rescue? He might be tall enough. He's out, but being the excellent best friend she is, she came straight over with her roommate/cousin and two step ladders. We still can't get up high enough to see what's going on. We poke the tiles with the broom, at this point fairly certain that the creature is the cat... or at least telling ourselves that. The whole situation is seeming less frightening with other people there. Unfortunately the creature seems to be long gone. Eventually my friends go, as there is nothing more they can do for me and they have things they need to do.
I call back my caretaker and hesitantly tell him I suspect my cat has gotten up there and to please hold off on the exterminator. He is reasonably surprised to hear my cat may have gotten into the ceiling, but is pretty understanding about the whole thing.
Hours later the cat did reappear, looking annoyingly nonchalant. Only I didn’t see where she came from. My parents had just arrived, and I was feeling rather embarrassed about making them come all the way over. I found myself telling them I saw her come out of the ceiling, which I did not (if you’re reading this, sorry guys!).
So in the end all I got made Sunday afternoon was the jambalaya… but I did spend last night making the soup, and the sauce for the eggplant parmesan.
Incidentally… the cat was again no where to be found when I got home from work yesterday. She eventually reappeared and I’ve heard no more noises from above. So the mystery of the creature overhead remains unsolved.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Rededication
I've spent the last few days trying to sort out how I was going to rededicate myself to my eating mission.
I spent a lot of time trying to pin point where things went wrong, because unless I can be honest with myself about where I failed, I can't begin to know what to fix.
I pondered Chris' suggestions. I like the idea of having to earn treats, so this is definitely going on my rules. If I want ice cream, I'm going to have to bike to get it. I thought over the idea of making a menu for the week, and only buying those items at the grocery store... but that's just not how hubby and I role. We're not planners in that sense and I think having to decide my whole week on Sunday would make me crazy. I can see this working well for others (as it is for Chris and his lovely lady)just not for us. Shopping isn't really a problem for us, in fact it's one area where we are really good, in that we don't buy any processed junk... when we shop. And that is really what the problem comes down to. When we get too busy grocery shopping slips to the bottom of the to-do list; and when there is nothing inspiring in the fridge we eat out.
So how do I solve this problem? I like the idea of devoting Sunday's to picking some recipes,grocery shopping, making a meal in the slow cooker and having a few things in mind for the week ahead. I can always stop at one of the several grocery stores on my route home to pick up anything else we might need. One thing that was working really well for us before was cooking large batches and freezing half for when we didn't feel like cooking.
I haven't quite figured out how this is going to work when we spend weekends at the cabin. Perhaps we'll have to devote some Monday nights to the cause.
When we were talking about all this the other night hubby pointed out something that I hadn't even realized was a problem, but definitely is. I have to start doing more of the cooking. When we were doing well before he was doing 95% of the cooking, and when he got busy with school, etc. our old eating habits reared their ugly heads. So I have to take on at least half the responsibility for our meals.
I have also decided that I am going to try not to eat out at all for the next month. I need to re-frame how I think about my food, in that eating out has to become the rare exception, not a regular habit.
Lastly, I need to stay inspired. I've long known about myself that I am a "starter", definitely not a "finisher". I have a thousand crochet, jewelery and other projects strewn around my life to prove it. Hubby sighs every time I start something new, wondering if this is going to be the next project I sink time and money into just to abandon it a few weeks in. This might be my least favourite thing about myself... I'm easily bored of things and have trouble seeing projects through to the end. I'm still not sure what to do about this one. I can't seem to help getting all wrapped up in, and passionate about ideas and projects that catch my attention... I just can't remember the last time I saw one through to the end. So I'll have to keep thinking on that one... hopefully I'll come to some sort of answer before something shiny passes my way.
I spent a lot of time trying to pin point where things went wrong, because unless I can be honest with myself about where I failed, I can't begin to know what to fix.
I pondered Chris' suggestions. I like the idea of having to earn treats, so this is definitely going on my rules. If I want ice cream, I'm going to have to bike to get it. I thought over the idea of making a menu for the week, and only buying those items at the grocery store... but that's just not how hubby and I role. We're not planners in that sense and I think having to decide my whole week on Sunday would make me crazy. I can see this working well for others (as it is for Chris and his lovely lady)just not for us. Shopping isn't really a problem for us, in fact it's one area where we are really good, in that we don't buy any processed junk... when we shop. And that is really what the problem comes down to. When we get too busy grocery shopping slips to the bottom of the to-do list; and when there is nothing inspiring in the fridge we eat out.
So how do I solve this problem? I like the idea of devoting Sunday's to picking some recipes,grocery shopping, making a meal in the slow cooker and having a few things in mind for the week ahead. I can always stop at one of the several grocery stores on my route home to pick up anything else we might need. One thing that was working really well for us before was cooking large batches and freezing half for when we didn't feel like cooking.
I haven't quite figured out how this is going to work when we spend weekends at the cabin. Perhaps we'll have to devote some Monday nights to the cause.
When we were talking about all this the other night hubby pointed out something that I hadn't even realized was a problem, but definitely is. I have to start doing more of the cooking. When we were doing well before he was doing 95% of the cooking, and when he got busy with school, etc. our old eating habits reared their ugly heads. So I have to take on at least half the responsibility for our meals.
I have also decided that I am going to try not to eat out at all for the next month. I need to re-frame how I think about my food, in that eating out has to become the rare exception, not a regular habit.
Lastly, I need to stay inspired. I've long known about myself that I am a "starter", definitely not a "finisher". I have a thousand crochet, jewelery and other projects strewn around my life to prove it. Hubby sighs every time I start something new, wondering if this is going to be the next project I sink time and money into just to abandon it a few weeks in. This might be my least favourite thing about myself... I'm easily bored of things and have trouble seeing projects through to the end. I'm still not sure what to do about this one. I can't seem to help getting all wrapped up in, and passionate about ideas and projects that catch my attention... I just can't remember the last time I saw one through to the end. So I'll have to keep thinking on that one... hopefully I'll come to some sort of answer before something shiny passes my way.
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