Happy End of 2013+One More Goal

Today I was looking through my blog for recipes to use at a class I'm teaching next weekend. It's hard to believe that I have been blogging for almost a year, and I was really happy to see what a great collection of recipes I've compiled in that time. I  realized that I've never included a search feature on my blog, so I'm going to look into that and see if I can add one- that would make it a lot easier to look for specific recipes. Blogging about cooking is definitely the thing I've enjoyed most about my experiment here, and I plan to keep using my blog for that purpose even though my year of goal making has come to an end.
For my last goal of the year- #52, I'm going to try eliminating cow's milk, cow's milk yogurt (which I eat a lot of), and cow's milk ice cream from my diet for a month. I'm going to leave cheese made from cow's milk in there, as I don't eat a lot of it, and when I do, I really enjoy it.  As I've probably said to many of you in the past, unless a food allergy is life-threatening, I'm not likely to pay too much attention to it. In this case, I've had  digestive problems a few times that seem like they may coincide with eating cow's milk (and associated products), so I'm going to cut them out for a month and see if it makes a difference. It may be one of those things (like bell peppers) which have an annoying side-effect (skin flushing) that I have to accept if I choose to eat them (with peppers I do because they are so delicious!). At any rate, I've already tried giving up a couple of other things this year for a month, and honestly, it's not that hard.
 I've looked over the other goals I made this year, and I'm pretty pleased with how I've done. With the ongoing goals, I didn't do every goal every time, but I did these things A LOT more than I ever did before. I think writing them down was key- there were many days, for example, when I felt like having an unhealthy snack, but I ate an apple instead since I had committed to doing that every day. I also didn't have any artificial sweetener this year- that was huge, as I was previously chewing 3-4 sticks of sugarless gum a day! Other highlights include going snorkeling even though I was totally scared (this came out of goal#30, which was to try at least one new activity before the end of the year), visiting a dermatologist and finding out that a mole I was worried about wasn't cancerous, and reading way,way more books than I have in years. All of my goals were fun to come up with, and most of them helped health and wellness goals that have been rattling around in my head for years come to fruition.
Thanks to everyone who has read my blog in the past year! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you keep visiting in 2014...if you'll keep reading, I'll keep writing!

Easy, Cheap, and Healthy Breakfast: Green Overnight Oats

I'm teaching a cooking class in January that will focus on  improving nutrition in the New Year. I think one of the easiest things people can do to improve their nutrition is to add a serving  of vegetables to their breakfast, but I also recognize that most people don't want to eat a bowl of steamed kale first thing in the morning like I do. I've been trying out a few recipes with the hopes of finding something really easy and healthy that incorporates a serving of greens in a way that doesn't taste like it has a serving of greens in it. I think I've found a  winner! This recipe is an amalgamation of a couple of overnight oat recipes I've tried out: this one from the Whole Foods website, and this one from Oh She Glows. This recipe is filling, quick, cheap, and easy to make. It's also awesome because it is ready to eat when you wake up, and can come to work with you if you don't have time to eat it at home. The recipe makes enough to fill four pint-sized mason jars with enough room at the top to add some nuts and fruit if you desire (but it's totally delicious as is). The other thing I want to note is that this has no sweetener in it other than the bananas which I find pretty amazing. I have only eaten this cold so I can't vouch for its deliciousness warmed up, but I bet it would be tasty that way too.
Green Overnight Oats
3 bananas
3 cups milk (I used almond milk, but use whatever kind you like)
4 1/2 Tbs chia seeds
juice and zest of one large orange
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large bunch of spinach, washed
2 cups rolled oats
Combine bananas, milk, chia seeds, juice and zest, and vanilla extract in a blender and blend. Add spinach and blend until smooth (You may want to do this in two batches depending on the capacity of your blender. Also, a blender works slightly better than a food processor for this, but I've used both with fine results). Put 1/2 cup of oats in each jar (or use cereal bowls) and pour approximately one cup of the mixture from the blender into each jar.  Stir each jar until the oats and the liquid are well-combined. Cover and refrigerate overnight (will also keep in the refrigerator for a few days with no problem).  In the morning, top with a small handful of nuts and any fresh fruit you desire and enjoy!

A Few Technology Goals

A lot of the goals I've made this year have focused on improving my diet and exercise habits. Although I've also made a few goals about stress-reduction, as the end of the year is drawing closer, I've realized that this is an area where I could still stand to make some improvements. I was thinking about which things in my life cause me to feel stressed and which things help me to feel relaxed. In thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that my i-phone is contributing both positively and negatively to my health, and my use of it is an area where I could make some changes.

First the positive: My i-phone allows me to download and store a ton of music. I love listening to music when I'm walking, and if I have music that I'm excited to listen to, I'm a lot more likely to walk than I am to take the bus. Extra exercise-yay! Having excellent work-out music downloaded also keeps my time at the gym fun, and keeps me feeling energetic and motivated. But I often wait until I am really sick of the music I have to download more. Why? This must be an area where I'm just really, really lazy. I have a music subscription service through Rhapsody, so I'm already paying for access to lots of music, but I'm not using it nearly as much as I could. Music is one of the things that brings me the most joy in life, and I think it would be great to keep music that I like more present in my life. Goal #48: download new music at least once a month.

Now the negative: I use my i-phone to check my work email a lot, and at times I'd say almost compulsively; when I'm waiting for the bus, when I'm waiting at a restaurant or a coffee shop, when I'm laying in bed at night. Ugh. Having access to my work email via my phone is great when I'm traveling and don't have regular access to a computer, but in my daily life, it just feels like a time and energy suck. I think the best solution is to remove the app I use to check my work email, which is Goal#49 (and is now done!).

The other way my i-phone is contributing negatively to my life is that it is putting a lot of stress on my hands and wrists- especially when I look at my phone in bed. There have actually been times that my hands have fallen asleep when I am doing this, and I know that can't be good. Goal#50 is to limit the amount of time I spend looking at my i-phone in bed to 10 minutes per night (ideally, I'd like to stop doing this altogether, but this seems like a more realistic goal for now).
I can't believe the year is almost over!! Only 2 more goals to go...

Spanish Chickpea Soup

As I said in my last post, it's been a soup kind of week. I've been realizing that I love pressure-cooker recipes that don't call for soaking the beans ahead of time- it's rare for me to remember to, and I love the spontaneity of being able to throw a bunch of stuff in the cooker and have it do its thing while I work on other projects. This week I made a very rich and flavorful chickpea soup in the pressure cooker while I got a bunch of chores done and caught up with my dad on the phone.  This is another recipe that calls for meat, so I added some other ingredients to make it flavorful and still vegetarian. If you want to make a meat version, omit the smoked paprika, chipotle chilies, and tomato paste and add 4 ounces of diced spanish chorizo.

Spanish Chickpea Soup

adpated from Cooking Light, September 2010

2 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

8 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp smoked paprika

2 Tbs tomato paste

6 cups broth

1 1/2 cups dried chickpeas

2 chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, diced

2 bay leaves

6 cups chopped collard greens

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

2 tbs red wine vinegar

salt and black pepper to taste

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Preparation

1. Heat a 6-quart pressure cooker over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add onion; sauté 3 minutes. Add garlic, smoked paprika, and tomato paste; sauté 2 minutes. Stir in broth, chickpeas, chipotle chilies, and bay leaves. Close lid securely; bring to high pressure over high heat. Adjust heat to medium or level needed to maintain high pressure; cook 1 hour. Remove from heat; let rest until cooker is depressurized (I waited 15 minutes). Remove lid. Discard bay leaves. Add collard greens and remaining ingredients, cooking uncovered for a few more minutes until the collards are wilted. Serve.

Pressure Cooker Black Beans

It's been a cold, cold week, and I've been making a lot of soup.
Earlier this week I made this recipe, but instead of using canned black beans, I made them in my pressure cooker. I made a double recipe of the soup so I would have enough to take dinner to my friends who've just had a baby. The black bean recipe I used called for 1 pound of dried beans, which cost about $1.40 and made about 7 cups of cooked beans. 7 cups of beans is a little less than 5 standard cans. The canned beans I normally use are about $2.00 each, which would have equaled about $10.00 just for the beans, so using a pressure cooker really is quite a savings. The other awesome thing about cooking beans at home is that you can season the beans any way you like, the texture of the beans is much better, and homemade beans usually have a lot less sodium than canned beans. The recipe I used calls for a ham hock(1 lb. if you are going to use this), which I don't eat. To give this vegetarian version a little more flavor, I added 2 tsp of smoked paprika, a few extra cloves of garlic, and a tsp of porcini mushroom powder (a great gift from my mom).
Easy Pressure Cooker Black Beans
adapted from foodnetwork.com

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp porcini powder

1 bay leaf

2 cups (about 1 pound) dried black beans, picked over and rinsed

6 cups water

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a 6-quart pressure cooker over medium-high heat, pour in 3 tablespoons oil. Add the onions and cook until they are golden, about 5 minutes. Throw in the garlic, smoked paprika, porcini powder, and bay leaf and cook for 1 minute more. Add the beans and give a good stir. Pour in the water; add the remaining tablespoon of oil, 1 tablespoon of salt, and a couple of grindings of pepper. Following the manufacturer's instructions, cover, lock the lid, and bring to high pressure. Lower heat to maintain pressure and start timing. Cook at high pressure for 25 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest for 15 minutes. Release the steam, again following the manufacturer's directions.Taste and adjust seasoning. Eat beans as they are or add to any recipe that calls for canned black beans.

Crafty Christmas

My newest goal (#47) is to try to do a better job of using/reusing things I already have before buying new things. I, like many people in the United States, tend to buy and accumulate way more things than I actually need. Sometimes, buying things makes me feel happy in the moment, but later I feel really disappointed in myself for spending money on junk I don't need, for contributing to poor working conditions by buying poorly made mass-produced crap, and for harming the environment by creating demand for a bunch of unneeded junk. Having excess stuff around also makes my house feel cluttered. I live in a small house, and the less stuff I have the more comfortable my environment is. I think it's fair to say that having a clutter-free house greatly contributes to my over-all sense of well-being.
The other positive side of this goal is that when I am trying to reuse the stuff I already have, I feel purposeful, creative, and often have a lot fun being crafty. Last night my niece and nephew and my dear friend Kim (their mother) and I made Christmas ornaments out of craft supplies that I already had on hand- colored paper, buttons, glue, and embroidery floss. I made several more ornaments today, and I also made a garland out of felt scraps. Now I have a bunch of really pretty and unique decorations for my tree and they're all made out of stuff I already had lying around my house!

Black-Eyed Peas and Greens

Zach made dinner for us tonight and it was incredibly delicious. As an added bonus, the recipe he used is also inexpensive, super nutritious, and pretty simple to make. It comes from Vegetarian Times, and Zach stuck pretty closely to the original, only making a few modifications which I have included below. I really, really love this recipe and that was evidenced by the fact that I kept making sighing noises as I ate it- it's that good!

New Year's Black Eyed Peas and Greens

adapted from Vegetarian Times

serves 3 as a main dish, more as a side

½ lb. dried black-eyed peas (1¼ cups)

1 bay leaf

2 Tbs. red wine vinegar

1¾ tsp. salt, divided

1 bunch kale, stems removed, leaves torn into pieces

2 Tbs. lemon juice, divided

2 large tomatoes, seeded and diced (1½ cups)

2 Tbs. olive oil

4 green onions, sliced (½ cup)

¼ cup finely chopped fresh parsley

1 tsp dried oregano

1. Set peas in saucepan, and cover with boiling water; let sit 1 hour. Drain, return peas to saucepan, cover with fresh water, and add bay leaf. Bring to a boil, and cook 20 minutes. Add vinegar and 1 tsp. salt, and cook 10 to 25 minutes longer, or until peas are tender but keep their shape.

2. Steam kale for approximately 7 minutes (or until it is tender but not too soft) and then toss with 1 tsp. lemon juice.

3. Toss tomatoes with 1/4 tsp. salt in colander. Let sit, shaking occasionally, 
to drain juices.

4. Combine remaining 1/2 tsp. salt, remaining 5 tsp. lemon juice, oil, 
green onions, parsley, and oregano in large bowl.

5. Drain peas, and remove bay leaf. 
Add to bowl with lemon juice and herbs, and mix well. Add tomatoes, and mix again. Divide kale among three plates and top with black-eyed pea mixture.