Week 2 Cooking

Week two’s cooking felt like it took about half as long as week one’s session. In reality I think it was about five hours, start to finish. I think that’s because I’ve got the flow of the recipes and ingredients down – oh yeah, and my garlic peeling time went from approximately five million hours down to about five minutes with the knife blade trick. If you are following the Perfectly Produce plan, READ ALL THE NOTES AND TIPS, they are there for a reason and they actually work! Promise.

Check out my Goulash, y’all! Doesn’t it look super yummy? It lives up to the picture and then some. Note that I used pearl quinoa as opposed to other varieties. I’m not sure what all other varieties exist, but apparently there are some options here. I grabbed what I could find on the shelf at QFC and that worked fine.

I haven’t tried the soup yet but that’s on the menu tonight! I’m excited to actually ingest the Okra of which there has been so much talk. So…The occasional chunk of corn that you see here is actually a mistake. I read the recipe too quickly and added yellow onions, but thought I was also supposed to add yellow corn. I pulled most of it out after I dumped it in and realized my mistake, just because I think that would throw the carbs off if I left much more of it in there.

For those of you who have not cooked brown basmati rice before, you are in for a treat. It SMELLS so good. I’ve never taken notice of the smell of rice before, but I wanted to eat this stuff just plain after smelling it. Weird, but good. Oh, and rosemary can join the Happy Nose club along with cilantro and dill. You know, you walk into bakeries and ice cream shops and stuff and you’re tempted by good smells, but they’re usually FAKE good smells, and there’s really only one or two varieties of the super good baked good / waffle cone odor. I am impressed by the diversity and complexity of smells I have encountered thus far using natural ingredients and fresh herbs that I have never really dealt with before. I’m reading this and realizing that I sound like a dog or something, what with all the emphasis on smells, but it’s one of those things that strikes you when you’re not used to it.


Think about it – your food SHOULD smell good. Have you ever gone through the drive through at a burger joint, only to find that your car REEKS for DAYS afterward, just from the greasy bag being in it for a few minutes? Think about that for a minute – that is SO gross and disgusting. Whatever was in that bag should not have been ingested by humans, certainly not as a primary diet staple. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never stop loving (or eating) fast food French fries – occasionally. Occasionally would be the key.

So far this week, the only thing that I’ve had any trouble with was the apple maple greek yogurt breakfast thing. It’s super good, don’t get me wrong – but I think I portioned it out wrong, or didn’t use the right amount of yogurt. I used about 6 ounces of greek yogurt to make the dressing, but then I had some leftover yogh's sitting in my fridge (2 little cups of 6 oz each). I’m wondering if I should have used 6 cups? I don’t know. Anyway, I got two breakfasts out of the main dish and then threw a yoghurt cup on the side, so I’m thinking that should work.

The white bean avocado salad is way more filling than you might think, and really tasty. I find my stomach sometimes gets upset when too much raw spinach is in a recipe, so if that’s true for you too you might want to add a little more oil. That usually works for me.

Tomorrow I am due to weigh in which I’m not really too eager about – I think I will see some more gain. Not at all unexpected though, I only worked out 3 days last week and they weren’t very strenuous sessions. Also, I have not been disciplined in the Late Night Munchies department, though I have gotten some advice that Magnesium Glycinate a couple hours after dinner should help with this. Sorry about the link source, I had a little trouble quickly finding a neutral reference to link to on this. Anyway, I just got some today and will give it ago tonight.