Lettuce Love

Being Honest with Real Food

whitney — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:27:14 +0000

I have mulled this over since Tuesday and after losing another hour of sleep last night lying awake thinking about this, I have decided to be honest. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share my thoughts but at the end of the day, why the heck not?

Let’s back track to Tuesday evening. I was getting ready to leave the office and decided to check CNN for a few minutes. My CNN perusing usually goes like this: scan the opening page for unread/interesting articles and then immediately click on the Health section. On Tuesday afternoon, the Health section opened to this article: And Inconvenient Challenge: Eat ‘Real Food’ for a Month.

The article explains the challenge that blogger Jennifer McGruther of the Nourished Kitchen gave to her readers. She gave them simple task to “purge your pantry of processed foods.” Organic processed foods had to go too. During the month Jennifer blogged about her forays into cultivating yogurt and making cheese at home instead of buying them in the store. She did this challenge to show that eating an unprocessed diet is doable.

To put it simply, this article infuriated me. I felt like one of those cartoon characters where they are so angry that stream is coming from their ears. I kept reading it over and over hoping I was reading it incorrectly. I stopped my Iamsomadatthisarticle thoughts for a moment and realized that I wasn’t actually mad. I was sad. Isn’t sadness always the underlying feeling when we are angry?

But why was I sad? Why does it still make me sad to re-read this article? I am not exactly sure. Jennifer said that she likes the idea of eating less processed foods but there are healthy processed foods that you can buy too. I completely agree but my concerns came with the term ‘real food.

My first issue is that healthy, useful foods like refined oils, flour, sugar, milk, cheese, bread, and dried pastas are lumped together with soda, candy, cookies, and chips as “processed foods.” Yes, the whole wheat flour you buy in a paper bag at the grocery store is technically processed because your not grinding wheat in your kitchen but to include it in the same category as soda is just asinine. Not all processed foods are created equal.

My concern is how we define ‘real food.’ We don’t need to victimize refined oils, flour, salt, dairy, and pasta as ‘bad’ when they are in fact, perfectly healthy (and delicious!) in most diets. Real food should be food that makes sense. If you understand how something is made or where it comes from, then it is real. If you can’t explain a food’s origin, then it probably isn’t the most ideal thing to eat. Case in point, apples come from apple trees, milk comes from a cow, bread is from wheat, and Strawberry Pop-Tarts… no idea!

I understand the point of Jennifer’s challenge and I think it is admirable to show that eating an unprocessed diet it attainable. It is great that she asked her readers to become more aware of their daily food choices. I completely agree that it isn’t always the easiest way to eat but it bothered me that this article acted as if it was difficult or impossible. One of Jennifer’s reader’s said ” I got rid of tons of stuff — enough stuff, that I had trouble figuring out what to feed my kids.” It wasn’t Jennifer’s challenge that made me sad, it was notion that solely eating unprocessed foods for 30 days is somehow burdensome. It shouldn’t be that way. Nobody should think that eating a diet based on unprocessed food is challenging. It should be easier to order a salad than a burger with fries at a restaurant. It should be easier for kids to chose milk instead of soda in the school’s cafeteria. It should be easier. But often time it is not. What does that say about us? Are we so dependent on boxed, canned, bagged, prepared and frozen foods that we cannot survive without them? That is sad.

My favorite quote of this article comes from Jennifer when she says, “real health comes from real food, and real food never comes from a box.”

Enough of my ramblings, what are you thoughts? How do you define ‘real food’?

Kitchen Sinking It

whitney — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:47:23 +0000

The kitchen sink.

I am sure you have heard the expression “everything and the kitchen sink” (or “everything but the kitchen sink”) when referring to almost all that you can imagine of something. Like going on an overnight vacation and you pack 3 huge suitcases. You packed everything and the kitchen sink. Or maybe you have heard the expression used when referring to communication. When two people are arguing about one topic (let’s say, who is going to wash the car) and all of a sudden one person throws in a old argument (the electric bill that was paid late. 4 years ago). The argument goes from talking about the car to fighting about a past fight. One small fight turns into a huge fight about all of the arguments you have ever had.

Last night, I kitchen sinked (verb?) my salad. Then I did it again this morning with my juice. I will be going out of town this weekend to visit the folks and I have a lot of fruits and veggies to eat in the next few days. Last night, I opened the fridge and just kept adding vegetables until I had one of everything on my plate. I did that again this morning.

My breakfast juice included:

2 lemons
4 carrots
2 collard leaves
3 stalks of kale
1/2 stalk celery
1 green apple

My salad from last night included:

romaine lettuce
zucchini spirals (from the gray day)
kale
broccoli sprouts
vine ripe tomato
carrots
avocado

Are you a fan of kitchen sinking? What do you make where you just add ingredients until there is nothing left to add? Juice, salads, oatmeal and stir-fry are at the top of my list.

A Raw Spaghetti Dinner with a Side of Gray

whitney — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:01:46 +0000

Today is Monday.
Today is the first of the month.
I LOVE when that happens.

March is destined to be a good month in my book. Of course, my month/Monday began with a yummy dinner.

Raw Zucchini Spaghetti

Spiraliaze (or use a hand peeler) the zucchini to make spaghetti. I have found that a quarter to a half of a zucchini is a suitable serving for one. Of course, go to town and it the entire thing if you want!

Raw Meatlessballs

1/2 cup soaked walnuts
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 clove minced garlic
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
dash salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients in a food processor (or Magic Bullet) and blend. Hand-roll the pate into four balls.

Not-Really-Sauce Sauce

I was lazy and didn’t want to make an actually sauce. Instead, I added all of the usual red sauce ingredients on top of the noodles without doing any mixing. All of the flavors were there, just un-blended. The sauce included: 1 chopped vine ripe tomato, 2 chopped sun dried tomatoes, Italian seasoning, dash cayenne pepper, drizzle of evoo, and salt and pepper.

Yes, you noticed correctly. I know what you are thinking. Those meatlessballs are a little weird looking. And if by weird you mean, gray. Yup, I was surprised too. If I think back to the color wheel we learned about in art class in the 2nd grade, combining tan (walnuts) and green (parsley) apparently makes gray.

PS I Googled grey vs gray and learned that grey became the established British spelling in the 20th century and it is but a minor variant in American English. Canadians tend to prefer grey.

Canada can have the gold. But we can have the gray.

Cucumber + Garlic = Funky

whitney — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:38:16 +0000

Lesson learned: Not every meal is a winner.

I worked from home today which meant that I could spend extra time making my lunch and not scarf down whatever was in my way. I turned to a cookbook Santa bought me for Christmas this year (PS Santa = me). Raw Food Made Easy is just that, easy. The book is simple and straightforward. The recipes use ingredients you probably already have in your cabinets/ fridge or ingredients that you can easily find in the store. I have yet to read a recipe that has a fancy ingredient that is impossible to find and costs a fortune. This book is one of my favorites. Learn more about Jennifer Cornbleet and her book on her website.

I decided to make the Cream of Cucumber Soup (page 76 if you have the book).

4 romaine lettuce leaves, chopped I forgot to include the romaine — whoops!
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 clove garlic, minced
1/2 ripe avocado, chopped I used a whole avocado
1 tablespooin extra-virign olive oil
1 tablespoon minched fresh herbs (dill, mint, tarragon, or cilantro), or 1 teaspoon dried I used 1 teaspoon of dried tarragon

Place the lettuce, cucumber, water, lemon juice, garlic, and salt in a blender and process until smooth. Add avocado and olive oil and blend again until smooth. Add the herbs and blend briefly to mix. Serve immediately. For a chilled soup, refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.

I really didn’t like the garlic. I was hesitant to add it in the first place because cucumber and garlic didn’t seem like a food combination that I would enjoy but I followed the recipe like I was supposed to do. Don’t get me wrong, I love cucumbers and I love garlic but putting them together is like putting Tiger and Elin together. They just don’t get along.

Not going to lie, I seriously didn’t like this soup. It was just funky. I couldn’t even eat it and that made me super mad — I wasted a perfectly ripe avocado! I haven’t totally given up though, I really want to try this soup again when I have fresh mint. I think mint and cucumber are perfectly matched. And I would definitely forget out the garlic. The garlic is just a third wheel in this relationship.

Just in time for the Olympics! Who are your Olympic crushes? Bodie Miller, Apollo Anton Ohno, Evan Lysaek. All of the above!

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things

whitney — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:16:04 +0000

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Those aren’t really my favorite things. I guess I could technically agree with the whiskers on kittens line because I think if a kitten without whiskers crossed my path I would be creeped out. However, all of my favorite things involve food. And the more food the better. I love when the deliciousness of a meal exponentially increases with the amount of ingredients you add. Think sundaes. Can a sundae ever have too many toppings? Hot fudge, rainbow sprinkles, cherries, whipped cream, cookie crumbs, chocolate chips, little marshmallows, gummy bears — the more the better! There was always such a moment of panic every time I went to the ice cream parlor as a kid and I had to choose one topping for my ice cream. Just one topping. To a kid, that is pure agony. The fear of choosing the wrong topping is enough to send most kids to therapy.

I felt a glimmer of that agony making a salad/pileoflettucewithguacamoleontop for lunch today. I just kept adding and adding ingredients to the guac that I eventually I had to tell myself to stop. I think I would have been more out of control if I had more ingredients at my disposal. My fridge is still building back it’s power after being emptied before going to Colorado.

This guacamole included:

1 avocado
1 vine ripe tomato
1/4 red bell pepper
1 clove garlic
raw agave syrup
lemon juice
lime juice
Louisiana hot sauce
red pepper flakes
salt
pepper

11 ingredients in one guacamole?! I think that equals awesomeness.

PS Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting this but I have never seen the Sound of Music. That is definitely a lifeskill I am lacking.

Back From the Clouds

whitney — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:39:25 +0000

Holy cow, I have been gone for quite a long time. Did you know that when you don’t check Google Reader for over a week, your unread blog will go to 1,000+? It is as if Google just gives up on you after 1,000 unread posts. That would be semi-depressing but I was gone for a very awesome reason. Where have I been?

Well folks, I have been snowboarding in Colorado for the past week.

My mom and I joined the Charlotte Ski Bees on a trip to Colorado. We went to Breckenridge, Vail and Keystone. This was my first time snowboarding in Colorado (and second time ever riding out west) and let me tell you — it was fabulous. Just amazing. We kept saying that it is completely impossible to explain skiing to a non-skier. Words cannot describe how incredible it is to be on the mountain and see the most beautiful scenery. If you are ever on the fence about skiing, just do it. You will not be disappointed. Next to eating, snowboarding is my favorite hobby

Me and mia mamma (I didn’t tell her that I was posting a pic of us so I hope she doesn’t mind). This picture happens to my favorite of our trip. And let’s face it, we’re wearing helmets and goggles — this picture could of be a me and a random person or just two strangers from the mountain. In ski gear it is hard to even tell who is who. It was funny meeting people from the ski club on the mountain in layers upon layers of ski clothes and then seeing them again later that night at dinner in regular clothes. It was like meeting two different people.

It is like being at the edge of the world.

Have a wonderful hump day. And tomorrow is my favorite day! Love Thursdays.

I am off to watch my obsession the Olympics. Did anybody see the Slovenian female cross-country skier fall into that ravine? Total freak accident. Yikes!