Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Usually I eat the same breakfast every day: A Quest protein bar. They're very yummy, but quite expensive, and as I like to also have one in the evening after dinner, I somehow got up to eating two of them in a day. So I was poking around, looking for other (cheap, low calorie) breakfast options. The fact that I don't like eggs much restricts things further.

I subscribe to The Hungry Girl's diet newsletters. And while I don't often have much success with her recipes, when I saw the no cook oatmeal idea, I was interested to try it. A GIANT helping of oatmeal for 300 calories? Especially when the oatmeal has fruit, nuts, yogurt, milk and other stuff in it? I was willing to give it a try!

Then I made it, and I started to have serious second thoughts. Who wants to eat oatmeal straight from the fridge? Cold and probably wallpaper paste-like? But I had made it, so I brought it to work -- worse comes to worst, I could toss it out and eat one of my Quest bars.

But know what? This is absolutely delicious! (Except when I get a bite where I didn't mix the yogurt in enough, those are kind of icky.)

Somehow that it's cold doesn't matter, it almost seems like it works better cold. Even though I had no maple extract, it still tastes pretty darned close to banana bread. Yummy!

( Recipe and notes back here. )

Because I confused the movie Spaceballs with Meatballs, there's a Spaceballs quote for a post about cooking meatballs. Please join the line to the left if you'd like to file a complaint.

Related: Reading quotes from Meatballs when you were thinking you were reading about Spaceballs leads to much confusion. Quite a different tone to the movies!

Anyway, meatballs. After being unable to make them with the Blue Apron stuff, I was determined to do them on my own. How hard could it be? Meat. Balls. I can do both!

Dangerously, I worked without a recipe. The Blue Apron one had been so easy (meat + bread crumbs + spice, then fry), I figured I could do it myself just fine.

And for once I was right!

Hamburger meat + some Panko breadcrumbs (only kind I had) + salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian spices, then into what was probably a too hot pan. On one hand, it smoked worryingly, on the other, my meatballs were nice and crisp on all sides.

Because I was making them myself, I could make them how I like them. I hate big meatballs. And the giant ones? Ugh! To me, the crisp outside is the best and the inside is blah, so why not make them basically all outside? So I did! Nice and small little meatballs, crisp and good.

My only mistake was that I ate them all in one sitting. I had had two small hamburgers worth of meat, so it wasn't terribly excessive, but I had intended to save some for later. I'll probably make them again this coming weekend to use up the last of the (currently frozen) meat.

On an unrelated note, I hope I'm not getting sick. I haven't slept more than 3-4 hours a night since Saturday (bad sinuses, noisy neighbors all night and at 4 AM, and the damned birds chirp nonstop from 4:45 on). Now my throat hurts and my eyes burn. I hope it's just allergies. Knowing my medical record so far in 2014, if I get sick it'll likely be the Plague or Smallpox or Anthrax or something.

Recipe here.
Cooking time: 45 minutes (Blue Apron claims all can be made in 30 minutes, but I'm cooking challenged, so.)
Fire alarms set off: Almost one!
New foods tried: pistachios, wheat berries, shallot?

While I've never had wheat berries before, I wasn't worried about trying them -- I was actually looking forward to it. Turns out they're harmless, seemingly no different than steel-cut oatmeal.

I was kind of worried about trying pistachios; I've never had them before, but they're a green nut and that just didn't seem right. Turns out they're good!

I've seen shallots used on cooking shows, but as far as I know, I've never held one or eaten one.

Everything came out fine. My oven smoked like heck (maybe I used too much olive oil? I wish they'd say "drizzle a tablespoon..." instead of just "drizzle").

The salsa (can you call it that if I left out the jalapeno?) tasted outstanding in the bowl but too vinegary on the wheat berries. It was interesting having all that citrus mixed in with the berries, though I only ate about half the serving.

All in all, it was an okay meal. Not great, not horrible. I'm glad I got to try wheat berries, and I'm happy to discover I like pistachios.

Happily I didn't freeze last night, though I can't say as much for Ellie New Cat. Poor girl kept trying to sleep on my bed, but I kicked her each time (not on purpose!). She bat-bat-batted my foot each time, then fled the bed.

I darned well hope I get heat back today. My apartment is really, really cold.

Sleep study is tonight! Eeek! But VERY HAPPILY I get to do it at home instead of sleeping there. I have an appointment today to pick up the equipment and learn how to use it, then use it tonight and drop it back tomorrow morning. Will take pictures if it's at all interesting! (This is my new icon for all things bariatric surgery-related. :D )

Also, I got my first Blue Apron box yesterday. (One of those services that sends you all the things you need to cook and directions on how.) The recipes are very long and I suspect I might not like any of them, but if not then hopefully next week will be better! I took pictures of all the stuff yesterday, but was so grumpy couldn't deal with editing them and writing up a post. When I cook the first meal, I will!

Happy Thing #13: I'm so behind on these! Alas it's not been a happy time this last, well, year. :P Anyway! The fanfic I'm reading makes me sooooo happy. Not only is it very well written, it does one of the things I really like: It doesn't rush! I'm about a book's worth into it (chapter 24 of 70-something), and the two main characters are barely friendly with each other. (In the canon one tried to kill the other, and the other tried to frame the first for a different murder -- total enemies!) I love it when enemies aren't in love by chapter two.

Happy Thing #14: They seem to have removed the candy bowls at work. They've been gone for a week now, so I kind of hope it's forever. On one hand, of course I love candy! Free and unlimited amounts! On the other, free and unlimited candy is hell on one's diet. I questioned adding this one as a happy thing, because it's sort of not happy too, but in the end I think I'm happier about it than unhappy. Yay not having to use my (very much lacking) willpower to resist free chocolate!

Listen up, brain. I know DST kicked our ass this year, but that should be responsible for ONE hour of lost sleep, not FIVE. Two nights of two hours of broken sleep after a night of four hours sleep is unacceptable. Straighten up and sleep at night or I'll replace you with a sack full of kittens.

No love,
Thistle

I have to stop buying kitchen toys. None of them work out for me and it's just a waste of money.

Soda Stream: Used a few times, bought some flavors, then stopped using it. I should try using up more of the flavors, but nothing I make tastes right (and it's not like it's a complex recipe or something -- carbonate the water and squirt a measure of flavor liquid in). If someone were a fan of knock-off, store brand sodas, I suppose they'd love Soda Stream.

Panini Maker: Okay, the failing with you was totally my fault. I should have realized that the reason "professional" paninis taste so good is that they're dripping with oil, thus they get a really crunchy, fried exterior. Not wanting to make food dripping in oil, you are nothing more than an annoying-to-clean toaster. I take that back, sandwiches I make on toast come out better than sandwiches I make in you. Plus did I mention you're really annoying to clean?

Crock pot: Okay, I like you, this is a request and not a complaint. It makes me nervous leaving things running while I'm off at work. Please don't burn my apartment down. Also, if you'd make my pot roast yummy, I'd appreciate it. The ingredients were expensive ($15, though I have enough white wine vinegar to last me the rest of my life), so I'd like to get a few good meals out of it.

I changed my mind about reading another Michael Grant book next. The thing is, whatever I read after a great series I'll enjoy less, because it's not that great series. I didn't want to unfairly dislike a book that I might otherwise like, so I took something from the bottom of my To Read pile. The third oldest book there, Enclave. A banner on the Amazon page tells me I bought it on July 6, 2011.

I was surprised that I'm actually liking it. Often things sink to the bottom of the pile for a reason, though sometimes not. (The Chaos Walking series was near the bottom, and that turned out to be the best thing I read in 2013.)

I was kind of looking to read something lighter after the darkness that was Gone, but Enclave turns out to not be all light and roses. It's set after the end of the world(?? after another world war?) and people are trying to survive underground.

I see a nutritionist once a month. Not totally by choice, but I need to, so. One of the goals we set was me cooking twice a week. With my mother here (and cooking nightly) there was no chance or reason to, so this week is my first week of trying it. I had intended to cook last night, but I had leftover Chinese food so it got pushed off until tonight.

I poked around online for an easy recipe, perhaps one in the crock pot. I decided on:

Pork chops
Packet of ranch dressing
Can of cream of chicken soup
Stick in the crock pot on low for four hours or so.

In an effort to be healthier, I got "heart healthy" (low sodium) soup. The regular stuff has a whole day's worth of sodium in one can.

Once I was putting those things together I paused, wondering how in the world it was going to taste. Turned out it was pretty okay. It tasted neither like ranch nor like chicken/soup, it just tasted sort of okay. A tiny tiny bit tangy (which surprised me, the recipe was for 6 pork chops, I used 2, so I worried it would be too strong). I wouldn't make it again, but I ate it tonight and I'll eat the other one tomorrow night. (Edit: Must remember to remove all fat from pork chops before putting them into the crock pot.)

Must shop and find something to cook for the weekend. Also, must find things like side dishes or something (my dinner was a pork chop, period). Also, no more 'cream of...' things.

Toe/medical: I'm trying not to be too depressed or distressed, though I feel like jumping out a window. I have an infection in my toe (ingrown toenail), same side as my bad leg. I went to the doctor yesterday and got antibiotics, but she has no idea which one (if any) will work, since I had basically all of them in my system within the last month. (Isn't that a scary thought? I had every single antibiotic that exists in me, except one.)

The doctor wasn't worried, so I'm trying not to be, but all I can think about is it getting really bad and spreading up to my leg, causing that to flare up again. I swear to god, I cannot go back to the hospital. My leg has to finish getting better, not worse. It still looks like I have the plague, all the skin is in the process of replacing itself, it's really dark/grey/red blotchy. Even if I had the energy I couldn't go swimming -- rightfully people would not want me in the pool with them, I look contagious with some horrible thing.

I try to be chipper and happy, especially at work, but I just can't deal with more medical stuff. It's only been 24 hours of taking antibiotics (3 pills total). While the net has no exact figure on how long it takes antibiotics to work, every site I looked at listed something more than a day. I will not panic yet that it's not looking any better.

(I don't know why the doctor only gave me pills instead of cutting the nail like they had last time I had an infected ingrown one. I'm assuming because of the issues with my body and antibiotics, she didn't want to expose me to more potential infection than necessary.)

A while back, when I gave up meat, I still had hamburgers ("hamburgers") -- I'd order it with everything I wanted on it, just hold the meat. At the time I said I didn't miss it, that I hardly noticed the change in flavor at all. People scoffed at me, but it was true.

So it shouldn't have surprised me that, when I tried my first turkey burger today, I enjoyed it. Shouldn't have surprised me, but did. Not only did I enjoy it, it was probably the best burger I've had all year. I would never have guessed it was turkey. I'm trying to cut my consumption of red meat down to 1-2 times a week, so that I like turkey burgers is a great discovery.

Because cutting back on red meat isn't fun enough, I'm trying to cut back on sodium, too. (And add to that that I need to be low carb as well, and it becomes a great puzzle on what in the world I CAN eat.) So tonight I cooked. And, mind bogglingly, it came out well. Simple as pie, too!

Marinate a chicken breast in the juice of a lime, some olive oil (I used EVOO, if it matters), and garlic. (You were supposed to use black pepper as well, but somehow I forgot that. Clearly a recipe with five ingredients is just too challenging for me!) Leave it marinating in the fridge for a couple hours, then cook however you want (I baked it). Amazing. Not a single grain of salt on it, and it tasted really good. Somehow the lime took the place of salt and made it interesting. I used to salt everything, and I didn't miss it at all here.

I'm not aiming for 100% perfect all the time (for me, that's a recipe for failure), and there is a lot of give-and-take (turkey burgers are likely high in sodium), but there are lots of little changes that are easy enough to make. Little steps all add up.

PS: French fries with no salt aren't too bad if they're very hot out of the fryer. It breaks my heart that ketchup is very high in sodium, because I swear I could drink it straight from the bottle. Those things together mean it's easier to get fries and eat only a couple.

Cooking success! I made apple cinnamon steel-cut oatmeal in the crock pot and it came out REALLY well. I used this recipe almost to the letter. When it was done, I added some raisins and a small drizzle of real maple syrup that had been gifted to me over Christmas and I was saving for something special. It tasted amazing. Easily the best oatmeal I ever had (which is damning with faint praise, I know). It tasted more like a dessert, like apple pie in a bowl. Not only did I finish my serving, I would have licked the bowl if I could have.

The one change I made to the recipe was not using cooking spray (I was using a crock pot liner so I thought it would be okay). Bad decision. Instead of getting seven servings, I got four. That's how much was stuck to the side of the liner. (And I think I was never happier to use a liner, I'd never have gotten the pot clean...)

So now I have three breakfasts waiting for me for later this week. It's amazing how cheap this was to make, too. Using the bulk bins at Sprout, I got about a cup and a half of oats for 50 cents. A lot of raisins (4-5 handfuls?) for 50 cents, too. I used almond milk which I had on hand (originally cost maybe $2 for the whole container, and I used about a quarter of it). Butter, salt, brown sugar, and cinnamon I had on hand. The ground flax seed I got for free (with a free eye-roll from the checkout person tossed in) -- buying only a tablespoon of it, the plastic bag weighed more than the flax, so they didn't charge me for it. So for four breakfasts, I paid about $1.50 total (or $3, if you count the entire container of milk -- I'll be using more of it to heat the oatmeal up later in the week).

Books: The 50bookchallenge has no real rules, everyone makes up their own. (Which in some cases annoys me. Some people read 300+ books a year... because they count comic books.) Last year I had to decide how to handle books I don't finish. Seemed fair to say if I read more than half, it would count. Less and it would not.

The Dragon Done It is one of the first ebooks I ever bought, and tied for the oldest in my To Read pile. I bought it because some author I liked had a short story in it. Plus I like fantasy, so hey. I hadn't known how much I disliked mystery books... or at least this sort of mystery. Nearly every story started with a man in his run-down office, gun in his drawer, as a "dame" walked in. He was always broke. The "dame" was always jaw droppingly beautiful. It was almost always raining. The detective always drank and had a great love of coffee. The "dame" was always trouble... (It annoys me just writing all that out!) So I only reached 20% in, and most of that skimming, so this book won't count towards the yearly total. I still wanted to make record of it here though.

Not fail book! I started one of my Library Challenge books ("read a memoir by someone you've never heard of"). Letters of a Woman Homesteader is a collection of letters by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Published back in 1913 (which by chance also meets the challenge point "read a book published in 1913", though I'm not counting it for both), it's an incredible look into what the west was like back then. She was a young widow and a mother, who went west on her own (with her young daughter) because she didn't want to spend her life in the east washing other peoples' laundry.

If that sounds interesting, click the link! The book is free if you have a Kindle or Kindle app (or free in other formats elsewhere on the net). It's amazingly dated, but in this case that's not a bad thing (other than brief mentions of "niggers"). I had a really odd moment when she mentioned Jack London's books (they were published only ten years before she wrote her letters). It was a really strange feeling of connection with her.

So sad! Last week I went to Thai food for the first time, and while I didn't hate it, I didn't like most of it... except one thing. The peanut sauce was amazingly yummy. Like crunchy peanut butter, just a little sweeter and a tiny tiny bit spicy. I couldn't stop thinking about it, so when in the supermarket, I grabbed a bottle. (I hadn't gone into this blind, I checked Amazon reviews first to find the best rated one.)

Today I bought some chicken so I could use it. Two things jump out at me:
1) It doesn't taste like peanuts at all. The heck? The sauce in the restaurant tasted just like peanut butter, only better.
2) It's way too spicy. It's not just spicy, it's tricky. When I first take a bite it seems fine, then a moment later my mouth is on fire.

As much as I hate wasting food, I find I have to throw mine out yet again. It's a wonder I even try cooking anymore!

That Thai restaurant wasn't too close to me, but I might have to go back just for the yummy sauce. :/

Two great tastes that taste great together... usually.

On the bacon I posted about last week: I looked at the package and instead of seeing the individual slices, it looked like it had melted and they had run together, so I tossed it out without opening to sniff it. I suspect I saved my nose.

On the turkey I made today. Positive things: I didn't burn my apartment down. I didn't even set off the smoke alarm. I didn't undercook it. It cooked mostly fine without a roasting pan (the skin it was resting on was pale and nasty, though that's no surprise). Negative: I overcooked it a little, so it was dry. It was also tasteless (which isn't surprising, as it only had spices on the skin).

Lessons learned: Why in the world did I buy a whole turkey breast? I don't like leftovers even when something's really good, and how rare is it for me to make something really good? I feel horrible for wasting food, but I know I won't touch this turkey again. I wish I at least had a dog to give it to or knew where a stray one was. First the whole chicken, now the turkey breast. I'm one person who doesn't like leftovers! Stop buying such big things, me!

Additional lesson: I can bake (roast? whatever) meat in the oven! I've always been really scared to do so, because it might not cook all the way through. Small cuts I was fine with, but things like a whole chicken I never wanted to do.

Ellie, who usually has no use at all for people food, actually ate two pieces of the turkey.

Next year I'm going to stick with the frozen dinners or going out or something. My mother is a firm believer that I should "cook something special" at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but not everyone can cook. If I do try again, I'm going to get a much, much, much more reasonable sized thing.