2008 Goals & Spicy Lentil Carrot Soup

It’s a new year! And I celebrated by cutting all my hair off. I have a cut that would now blend me perfectly in both the 90s and a group of soccer moms and I love it. Gone are the days of brushing my hair, a laborious task as it stretched further down my back, and my family and personal obligations continue to grow.

I made the decision after spending the first 12 days of 2008 with something reminiscent of a plague running through my house. There were fevers, chills, vomiting, and diarrhea. We had a great holiday and celebrated my son’s first birthday on New Year’s Eve, and then I was puked on in the face concurrently. To make matters worse, I was way behind on my work, and was trying to do too much. The sickness stopped me right in my tracks. We spent days laid in the house, doing absolutely nothing. We were forced to stop.

I took an absurd number of naps with my babe in arms all around the house in places I had never thought to nap before. We rested. The house became filthy in a way I have not seen it since we have had a child in it. It was kind of beautiful in a sick way. Literally. Slowly, with the ever changing nursing duties split between my husband and I, we brought things back to healthy, but are still recovering.

Through all of that, I had one nagging problem…damn, it is hard to squeeze a shower in with all this sickness going on. And then, when I did, I didn’t feel like the bother of washing my hair. And then after several days of that, it got kind of tangled. That annoyed me, so I cut it off. New year, new things! I feel lighter, which I need to float through the challenges before me.

I started winemaking school this week, which has left me extremely stressed out and busy. I am so excited about this, but will have to save that for another time, as I have too much reading and work to do write clearly about it right now. Needless to say, with three-quarters of a full load of classes added onto my schedule of FT mom and marketing manager, I am busy!

So for the new year, a couple of things I would like to do more of:

1. Crafting: I read many great crafting blogs and even got inspired to make some felt animals for my son. I really want to keep doing this more this year to explore my creative side and give an outlet for my imagination.

2. Blogging: I want to write more! I barely posted in 2007 and want to change that. I have so much to say about so many things and would love to meet likeminded people to share with. And I want to connect with family and friends far away, and let them know what is happening with me.

3. Bath Time: I want to pamper myself. I have been taking one bath a week lately and I love it. Nothing too fancy, just me and some bubbles and a good book. It is amazing how relaxed I feel after a nice hot dip.

4. Reading and Running: Balancing extracurricular activities has never been more difficult. But not balancing them has more dire repercussions - a funky attitude about everything. I need to keep my mind and body in shape to drive away negativity and depression that often wants in during idle times.

5. Meal Planning: I have finally accepted that this is the only way to efficiently cook on a regular basis. I don’t have time for daily trips to the store anymore, so I need to make my shopping count. The best way is to plan and I am starting next week.

With that in mind, below is the recipe for an amazing soup that I have made a couple of times now. The original recipe is from a great little book I thrifted from my favorite (so far) neighborhood Portland thrift store – the Value Village on SE 82nd. The book is Practical Soups from P3 Publishing. I have adjusted the recipe slightly to my taste. This soup is easy to make and relatively effortless.

Spicy Lentil and Carrot Soup

4 oz lentils
5 cups of vegetable bouillon
1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced
2 onions, chopped
12 oz can of chopped tomatoes
4 garlic cloves, chopped

2 T veg oil
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1 t chili
½ t turmeric
1 t lemon juice
salt

1 ¼ skim milk
2 T fresh cilantro, chopped
plain yogurt

1. Combine 4 c of the bouillon with lentils, carrots, onions, tomatoes and garlic. Bring to boil, simmer for 30 minutes or more until everything is soft.

2. Heat oil in separate small pan. Add all dry spices and cook carefully for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Add lemon juice and salt to taste.

3. Puree soup in blender (I use a food mill) and return to pan. Add spice mixture. Add remaining 1 c bouillon and let simmer 10 more minutes.

4. Add milk and cilantro and heat gently a few more minutes.

5. Serve. Add plain yogurt dollop to each bowl for individual added goodness.

Back In the Swing of Things

After a cross-country relocation, I am settling back into cooking like mad. I have found rhythm in making baby food and strive daily to make delicious and healthy food for my family. My son has been off the Gerber food for a couple of weeks now, and he seems to be loving the additional flavors that I add into his mashed creations. One of my favorite things to eat is ramen. From the time I studied in Japan, nearly 10 years ago now, I have striven to
find the elusive excellence of traditional Japanese ramen. I have tried ramen in restaurants, I have tried to make it myself. I still don't make it quite right, and barely want to even call it ramen because to me that signifies its excellence, whereas to many it signifies the noodle of broke pocketbooks.

Still not altogether successful, but I do make a nice bowl of Asian-style noodle soup.

Above is the final result. The two bigger bowls on the outside are mine and my husband's. We split the gyoza on the middle plate and our son ate the applesauce in the front left and the egg yolk, steamed carrots and gyoza in the front center bowl.

Post Pregnancy - Cuttin' Back

I haven’t been writing because I have added duties at home – my husband is out of town working, and it’s been just me and the kid at home for nearly a month now. This shift has rendered every free moment in the day either dedicated to working for my job that pays the bills, or working around the house for my job of mom. So I haven’t been cooking like usual, opting instead for the more expedient options of take out, pre-made frozen meals, and things that come out of a box.

In an effort to get serious about dropping some of this baby weight, I must get back on track. I am not one to diet per se. I am more of the mindset that I can eat whatever I want, but in moderation. I love all the carbs – bread, rice, potatoes and have always lost weight with never cutting them out. I eat relatively healthy, but do have a serious weakness for fried and salty things. I generally exercise regularly, but since my husband has been gone, I have failed to even once, outside of walks with SoulBaby, which are more a mode of transportation to the park than exercise.

I have always been able to lose weight if I follow my own criteria:

1. Do not keep any junk food in the house – being that my weakness is salty things, I never buy them, because I know I will eat them all in one sitting when I am starving. I have no problem resisting sweets like ice cream, so I keep that stocked for my husband and rarely feel it necessary to eat any. Do what works for you to avoid temptation.

2. Keep healthy snacks on hand – most of my junk food eating happens at times when I am in a pinch and need something satisfying fast. I literally have a McDonald’s in my backyard, and its lingering French fry odor has rendered me defenseless many times when I have waited to long to eat. If I stock plenty of nutritious snacks like fresh veggies, cheese and crackers, and fruit, and eat them on demand, then I am less likely to eat something indulgent because I am already full.

3. Cut out all unnecessary sugars – I used to love Coca Cola. We had a long affair that lasted many, many years. The dentist identifying the discoloring on my teeth to be a direct result of the beverage could not break us apart. I could easily drink 6 ice cold cans of this stuff a day. That is until I realized the direct relationship with this and my inability to lose that extra 5-10 pounds I wanted. I cut the Coke out, and like magic, lost weight.

4. Drink lots of water. I drink nearly a gallon a day. I rarely ever drink anything other than water (except for my daily cup of coffee and, of course, wine) and it is in my opinion imperative to do this if you are going to lose weight and maintain it. It keeps you feeling good and gives you more energy than you think.

5. Cook from scratch as best you can. When I first got serious about cooking, it was because I just love to eat. I soon learned though that in addition to being able to have delicious meals everyday that I could never afford in a restaurant, I could also see what goes in everything that I eat. This allows me to better monitor my overall nutrition.

So in light of trying to cook everyday again, I made my favorite Indian veg dish tonight – Aloo Gobi, or curried cauliflower and potatoes. Delicious. I ate it with white rice and steamed beet greens.

Back to the Basil

Many years ago on a trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand with my good travel buddy Larichan, we took a one day cooking class at Thai Chocolate Cookery School. The name Chocolate in the school's title, as explained to us, referred to Thai chillies as they are such an addictive, integral part of Thai cooking that they are similar to chocolate. After not being able to buy these fiery hot chillies anywhere near my current home, I could not agree more. The piercing, yet fresh heat from these chillies makes so many Thai dishes addictive and keeps my mouth watering for more. I substitute anything I have, but Thai chillies are the optimal choice for this recipe.

As part of the course fee, we received a small book containing the five or six dishes we had made, in addition to a handful of other classic Thai recipes. I have made nearly everything out of the school’s simple, no nonsense instructions and everything has turned out far better than any other Thai cookbook I have used since. My favorite from the book has always been the green curry, while FunkDaddy has always favored the Basil Chicken. Tonight he won:

Basil Chicken (modified from the original recipe, as I left my book at a friend's house and have yet to retrieve it, and we like it saucy)

1 pound Chicken, cubed
4 T oyster sauce
4 T fish sauce
4 t sugar
lots of basil leaves (about 30)
oil for stir frying
many cloves of garlic, chopped
1 to 2 small chilis (your preference for heat and kind, preferably you would use Thai chilis, but if not use what you can - I have used jalapenos, habaneros, chili flakes and serranos.)

Marinate the chicken anywhere from hours to 15 minutes before with the oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and about 1/3 of the basil. Refrigerate.

Make rice.

Heat oil in a wok. Add chopped garlic and heat till you can smell it. Smash the chilis so that they are broken (just so that the juice can come out) and add to oil. Add chicken and stir fry until it is all cooked on the outside. Add the remaining basil chopped up a bit, continue stir frying 1-2 more minutes and you are done. Serve over rice. Delicious, healthy and quick.

Steak & Chicken - You Can't Go Wrong

My husband said today – “This is why you married me” as he fed me a piece of grilled chicken freshly removed from our new charcoal grill/smoker. Though it is by far not the only reason we wed, FunkDaddy does make a mean piece of BBQed meat. The way that the juice flows from any meat he grills is astounding.

For dinner we had steak, chicken, grilled potatoes, and beet greens. Also, we had a salad with baby greens, feta cheese, cucumbers, radishes, daikon, and chow mein noodles. I topped mine with a ginger vinaigrette dressing that fits perfectly with the salad’s Asian fusion theme. This meal alone makes me hopeful at the start of grill season.

The beet greens for this meal came from Cut N Clean Greens. I absolutely love that they carry these in so many grocery stores now, as they have made a quick and easy way to incorporate greens into my everyday life, where I may not always have the time to clean a couple bundles of collards or kale on a busy day. They come in a ton of varieties from collard greens, kale and mustard greens, to the country and European blends. Check them out!

Beefing Up on Dairy

Lunch today was rushed. Hunger came upon me and hadn’t thought of anything to make or planned appropriately. So I went back to one of my favorite things and most time-trusted standbys – breakfast.

The ordinary part was the two pieces of French toast on plain old wheat bread. The extraordinary part was the eggs. I sautéed three cloves of garlic in olive oil, added some sliced mushrooms and green onions and cooked until they began to get soft. I added the eggs and let them begin to set before scrambling them a bit. Right before they were finished I added feta and Monterey jack cheeses and voila – delicious.

Experimentation Gone Bad

Last night I tried to make something healthy to eat. See I have been eating out for days now because FunkDaddy has been in the studio all day all week and with my schedule, after working, there is little time to grocery shop, let alone cook. Determined to turn things back around, I went grocery store last night and was all psyched to cook something light and refreshing for dinner.

I set the rice cooker and went to work prepping the ingredients. I have to split the cooking task up, as SoulBaby at five months old has not quite got the hang of being patient. I chopped a head of cauliflower, a handful of carrots, several cloves of garlic and a pound of chicken. That was the point that SoulBaby had enough; I bathed him and put him to bed.

An hour later, I came back downstairs and stir fried the ingredients – first the garlic in some vegetable oil until the smell rose, then the chicken until brown on the outside, then the veggies till done. I added some fish sauce, lime, and chili for flavor, similar to the seasonings used to make pad thai. I had high hopes.

To say I have any culinary training is really overstating things. I have learned a handful of healthy staples from my parents, studied several different kinds of cooking on extended stays in other countries, and scavenged more than a handful of cookbooks for delectable treats. Basically, I am real basic. And then come my experiments, like dinner tonight, that in some corner of my mind seemed like it would taste good.

FunkDaddy didn’t eat it. I ate a bowl of the finished product over rice and it was definitely edible, but not good. I need to stick with some cookbooks for awhile until I get back into cooking. After months of pregnancy backed with months of newborn care, I am ready to start cooking seriously again. By that I mean from scratch.

Since having a baby, I do not have the leisure time or energy to make three courses and bake bread and dessert. I will pick my battles and take shortcuts where available while trying not to compromise my desire to eat healthy and delicious food. My task ahead of me is to grow in the ability to output said food in an extremely quick and efficient manner so that I can be done when SoulBaby is ready for me. What a balancing act.