Dinner!

After a weekend of partying for the 4th and my mom's surprise birthday party, I came back this weekend committed to being healthier. Especially since Sunday I just felt awful from eating awful things. And really, I don't enjoy junk food much anymore (except for sweets, and even that is lessening as I don't want to deal with the aftermath). I did a lot of baking last week and hopefully I'll get an update up about that soon, but in the meantime, back to the health update.

Yesterday I did very well, I had a great healthy lunch a salad with spinach and romaine (not local, sorry, the local lettuce was very bitter to me last time) with feta and almonds dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. For protein I had a grass-fed beef bratwurst. Yummy, though not in the traditional bratwurst way. Dinner was stir fry with zucchini, summer squash (both from the CSA), chicken, the last of the peas from the CSA, green onions (local!) and brown rice. Oh, and homemade egg rolls (from the freezer which I had made to use up the last of my bok choy). Breakfast is always pretty healthy for me.

Today I still did pretty well. Lunch was a frozen dinner, but from "ethnic gourmet" it was chicken tikka masala and pretty tasty. Though I was hungry by 1 and ended up with some Kashi dark chocolate and oatmeal cookies (and a bite of my co-worker's brownies with cream cheese icing). Dinner today definitely took the cake and is the whole reason I'm writing this entry. It was half local ingredients and had I been able to get to the Worthington Farmer's market last weekend, could have been all local ingredients. I made beer battered pork chops (with green onions and mushrooms) with roasted rosemary potatoes and roasted green beans. So yummy. And so colorful I had to take a picture beforehand.

Pictured are the potatoes from the farmer's market and purchased from a lovely little amish girl. They're heirloom. Rosemary from my garden (0 miles), green beans from my CSA (50 miles), Rainier cherries that I got a steal on at the grocery store and are wonderfully tasty (too many miles), and shredded zucchini that went into zucchini bread (more about that on the baking post) from my CSA (50 miles).

Here's what dinner looked like cooking:
This is pork chops and mushrooms (from the grocery store), green onions (farmer's market), thyme (from my porch, 0 miles) and beer (leftover from a party, made in San Fransisco). This is adapted from a recipe originally from www.savingdinner.com.

And last but not least, the potatoes that were so good my husband didn't even put ketchup on them. I simply sliced them up, sprayed with olive oil and sprinkled with garlic salt (nonlocal) and put rosemary on top. They were accompanied by roasted green beans which is a recipe from my Garden Fresh Vegetable Cookbook. These were also sprayed with olive oil (I suck at drizzling) and roasted at 425 degrees for approx 15 minutes and then sprinkled with salt when done. This wasn't my best batch because the beans were a little over grown, but still tasty. AND all of this was extremely healthy and pretty low cal. And it could have been all local except for the spices.

I feel proud that I whipped up a dinner that was healthy for me and (getting there) for the planet AND my husband proclaimed that it was a great dinner and he was full. Then I went and walked 2 miles with my friend Laura. Yay!

I've definitely noticed that I enjoy food I cook much more and that good vegetables just taste better and I don't mind eating them. If you told my family I bought cherries they'd probably be shocked. But they're tasty and make a great dessert.

Now, in the interest of being healthy it is time for me to meditate, read, and go to bed.

Where in the world have you been?

Well, I'm back. Hopefully. Thank you to those of you who inquired about my health. My ear infection seems to have cleared up and I'm working through the last couple of days of antibiotics and trying to kick this cough.

My goal as of late is to continue to be a healthy balanced person. Eating as little processed (or at least not processed by me) food as possible. June was a busy month and I did lots of yummy at least partially local eating and baking. I do hope to get up some recipe specific entries. I found a local source for flour and the farmer has whole wheat and spelt bread flour. He also said he grows soft wheat on a rotation, but I wasn't quite sure what that rotation is. I also have a local source for organic (though not certified) non-homogenized milk and butter. I haven't tried the butter yet. It's hard for me to go from paying $2/lb for butter to $4/lb. Especially since I've been baking a lot.

Yesterday, I did my third 5K of the year. I'm pretty proud of the results. This was my first outing where I was on my own for the whole race. My brother and I both did the race, but as he is an actual serious runner, we don't run together. I finished in just over 42 minutes, which sliced about 3 minutes off my time. The Garmin (the gps running gadget that gives me my time and pace) and my ipod really helped me keep my time in check. It seemed like my pace was always sub-15 min miles which is good for me. I know I'm not going to be winning any awards just yet, but this was a big victory for me. Plus I was about to run for about 3 minutes at a time which is also pretty great especially considering I've not done any training for this at all.

My friend Laura and I have been doing 3 mile walks together, but definitely not at any particular pace. And I'm still struggling with that last mile. Miles 1 and 2, no problem, mile 3, omigod, when is it going to be over? My brother's suggestion for that was to start doing longer walks so 3 doesn't feel like so long. I'll have to start walking another mile or so. I'm also hoping to be able to get a heart-rate monitor soon. I think it will help. I've also been meditating and doing breathing exercises some in hopes of helping the asthma. It did seem to help yesterday when even though it was humid, my lungs didn't feel like they were going to explode.

In other news, my husband and awesome mother-in-law (and mother-in-law's "best guy" as she calls him) have gotten me a new bike for my birthday. I'm very excited to be able to ride more often (my other bike has become uncomfortable and well, is 14 years old which my husband points out is a long time ago) and hopefully to be able to bike commute at least one day a week (the issue being that there's no where to shower once I get to work. So I have to do it on days I don't care so much about being a little sweaty at work. Luckily my office is very casual). Plus, I definitely want a basket so I can bike to the farmer's market and to the grocery store for those short trips. Oh and the library. I love biking to the library.

I'm now out of battery, but I hope to get some more posts up this week about all the baking I've been doing.