Today marks the one week mark of my going dairy, gluten, sugar, processed foods and starchy veggies free. It's been a challenge (I'm not going to lie) but it's also been good. My skin has never felt softer. And although the scale says I've only lost two pounds (which seems very very low for a week of starving and really healthy eating), I have already lost a couple inches around my hips, waist and bust areas. I'm not giving up.
I am quickly learning that the best way to make smooth smoothies with my Ninja Professional is to mix it all up using the single serving cup versus the big blender. For some reason the big blender leaves my smoothies with a grittiness that is not at all appetizing. Using the single serving cups makes things much smoother and it's easier clean up. If all the goodness won't fit in the single serving cup at first (it's pretty small), I'll mix it all up in the big blender then smooth it out in the single serving. Thank God I figured this out. I thought I was going to have to upgrade to the pricey Vitamix and be stuck owning three blenders. (I also have an Oster with a glass blender that I refuse to give up.) What is your favorite blender to make smooth smoothies? Yes, I'll admit it. I'm starving. Have been hungry all day. I'm probably not snacking enough (something I need to do here in a minute). When I start something new like this, I tend to go to the lets-not-eat-nearly-anything extreme even though I know that's not sustainable. I will start eating more. I promise. In the meantime, I've been cleaning and purging my apartment. Seems to go hand in hand with cleaning and purging out my insides. I'm the sort that likes to keep EVERYTHING and one day I fear I'll wake up a serious hoarder. (My husband assures me he'll never let that happen but we'll see.)
Since my normal is to have eggs everyday (usually fried sunny side up in butter), I decided to try poaching eggs this morning as a fat free way to have eggs. Yes, I know there's boiled eggs (and I have some in the fridge) but I thought poaching would be cool. There's a real art to poaching eggs and I haven't attempted it in about 20 years. (And I was not very successful 20 years ago.)
I do what I always do when I'm trying something new, I googled it. I found Alton Brown's recipe for Perfect Poached Eggs, which includes swirling the water so you don't get all that feathering, and gave it a go. The first trouble I encountered was the need for white vinegar. You'd think I'd have something that simple laying around but I don't. I have balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, cooking sherry and red cooking wine but no simple white vinegar. Not to be deterred, I opted to go with the white wine vinegar. Yes, it felt a little wrong to be cooking with "wine" at 10 AM but whatever. I knew vinegar was an important ingredient and I was determined to get it going. I simmer the water, got it swirling (neat trick) and dropped in two eggs and covered them. Instead of cooking them for the suggested five minutes, I cooked them for ten. I do not like runny eggs. In the meantime I also pan fried (in olive oil) some mushrooms and red pepper and mixed all that with scrambled eggs just in case the poaching didn't work. I wish I had taken pictures to share with you but I didn't. They weren't pretty to look at. But it worked!! Two very well done poached eggs that I was afraid to eat because they looked just kind of weird. But I ate them and they were ok. I could definitely taste the white wine vinegar. Later I ran to the store and bought regular old white vinegar in case I attempt this again. Starting something new is rarely ever easy, especially when it's asking you to break out of your routine and try something that you're not sure how you're going to like. That was me this morning. Woke up starving. Fed the cats first (otherwise they'd be whining at me). Took about an hour to prepare a very non-sweet green smoothie for breakfast. To be fair, the recipe warned me that it was very not sweet. And they weren't kidding. After years of my strawberry/banana/spinach/almond milk smoothies, this one was like drinking grass.
And, yes, that is my cute smoothie glass. Took me over an hour to get all of it down but I did it. For lunch had a smoked salmon salad. Since I was still hungry after breakfast and lunch, I made myself a strawberry mint smoothie out of my SUPERFOOD SMOOTHIES book (which I highly recommend). I am discovering that my blender (a Ninja Professional) isn't all that great at making things smooth. All my smoothies today have had a bit of grit in them. Maybe I'm not blending long enough. Will try blending longer next time. Although I think I'm going back to my eggs in the morning (minus the butter somehow).
I'm currently in a search for non-dairy (meaning non-butter) toppings for the popcorn I'll be having later as I tuck in with the season premier of the Bachelor (8/7c on ABC tonight!). I'm open to ideas!!
Here are some popcorn ideas I've come up with so far (with help of extensive internet searching and Facebook polling): Popcorn Flavor Ideas without Butter
More to come (hopefully). I'll be posting my favorites with my personal tweaks. In the meantime, I'll be sitting on my hands over here trying not to eat the potato chips I forgot to throw out. |