tammylc

Speaking of tagging, anyone want to volunteer for next week?

Is anyone still reading, or am I just talking to myself? I have an appointment next week where I have to provide a food diary, so this exercise will not have been totally in vain, anyway. Lunches this week have been a little atypical - I usually rely more on frozen dinners and less on leftovers. But with the mac and cheese and curry leftovers all eaten, today was back to the usual routine. I had my favorite Lean Cuisine dinner - Chicken with Basil Cream Sauce and Angel Hair pasta. Of course the chicken disks are pressed and formed white meat, and it's low fat so you know the "basil cream sauce" has never seen cream in it's life, but as far as frozen dinners go, it's a good one. But I redeemed myself after lunch. A coworker was going over to Zingerman's Bakehouse to pick up something for lunch and asked if I wanted anything. The bakehouse is where all the baking happens for Zingermans, and in addition they have a cabinet full of prepared sandwiches, as well as soup, thin crust pizza, and some other good lunch things. It's a really good thing to know about, but kind of an off-the-beaten path place, located in the middle of an industrial park. But I digress... I was speaking of redemption. The Bakehouse also offers gelato from Zingerman's Creamery - you see where this is heading, don't you? I asked Brian to pick me up a cup of gelato. I ended up with the Vanilla with Dulce de Leche. My first choice was the "turtle" - chocolate gelato with dulce de leche and pecans - but they've rotated out of that flavor. Pretty much doesn't matter what flavor you get though, cause it's all awesome. Very vanilla-y base, with lots of pretty vanilla bean specks, and the yummy carmelly dulce throughout. Yummm. And it even counts as a dairy serving for the day, getting me one step closer to the four I need!

Eat dessert first! Got home from work yesterday and was starving, so I dipped into the Ben and Jerry's. Then I walked over to Sunward to help set up for dinner. The tables were already set and the potroast was bubbling away merrily in the oven and smelling like heaven. So all I had to do was finish up the coleslaw by adding cider vinegar and sugar to a big bowl of cabbage, then fill up water pitchers and put them out on the tables. The pot roast was really good. I never make things like that at home. With just two people, it's too much work and too much food. But I spent some of my growing up years in a house with four kids, and my parents usually did a roast of some kind every Sunday. So I miss it. Although we are a family of rare meat eaters, so pot roast wasn't on our itinerary - I only got that when I went to visit my boyfriend. Even without the rare meat, I love pot roast. The tender meat that just falls apart. The potatoes and carrots and parsnips and onions that have soaked up all of the yummy juices. Yum. For dessert there were cookies and some cake leftover from yesterday's dinner, but I had two helpings of pot roast and was very full, so I just stole a few bites of German chocolate cake from Eric's plate. Later, back at home, Eric realized that the creme brulee he'd bought earlier this week at the new Whole Foods store was still in the fridge, so we had that. I split mine with a friend who was over, as I was still kinda full. After a few days in the fride the brulee part had been absorbed into the creme part, but it was still tasty.

I really like that! Easy to remember, and probably works about right, for those of us without climate controlled cellars.

I finally ate the last of the leftover veggie and tofu curry for lunch. And I snacked on trail mix this morning, but most of the peanuts are gone - I'm down to raisins, a few chocolate pieces, and lots and lots of sunflower seeds.

The usual for breakfast. So here's the story about the potatoes I was peeling last night. Eric and I have just moved into a cohousing community. Cohousing is a form of intentional community that combines private home ownership with an enhanced community life. We know all of our neighbors, and have worked with them for a couple of years to plan what our community would look like. The inside of the neighborhood is pedestrian-only, with all the cars on the periphery, and is designed to facilitate interaction. In addition to our 3 bedroom townhouse/condo, we own 1/37th of the land and the common house. The common house is the big thing that sets cohousing aside from some other types of neighborhoods. It's designed to be an extension of your home. There's a laundry room, so not everyone has to have a washer/dryer of their own. There's a media room, if you like to watch TV occassionally, but don't want one of those either. There's a large children's play room, for those long Michigan winters. There's a guest room that's available for reservation at $5/night - our houses are relatively small, so this will make it easier to have friends and family visit. There are some offices, an exercise room, eventually a hot tub, and some other features that you wouldn't necessarily have in your own house. The centerpiece of the common house is a large kitchen and dining room (our standard dining room set up seats 64 people). The kitchen is used to prepared shared meals, up to several times a week. Community members sign up to take turns cooking and cleaning a couple times a month, and then can eat at community meals throughout the month. The cost of ingredients is divided up by the number of people attending, and gets added to your association fee at the end of the month. Because our community is so new, our common house is still under construction. It should be finished by the end of the year. But since most of us have moved into our houses already, the cohousing community down the street has invited us to join in their common meal program while we're waiting for our common house to be finished. So last night I was off scrubbing potatoes and parsnips (turned out I just needed to clean them, not peel them) for a pot roast that someone is making tonight. I could have gone over early this afternoon to do it, but I have a busy day at work and couldn't make it early enough to the get them done by the time the roast needed to go in the oven. We'll be serving dinner for 18 adults and 6 children. If you'd like more information about cohousing in general, you can visit www.cohousing.org. If you'd like more information about my community (Great Oak Cohousing, in Ann Arbor, MI) in particular, you can visit www.gocoho.org. And of course you can ask me questions!

And I'm looking forward to eating it!

For dinner I met my husband at the Creekside Restaurant and Bar. It's not especially good food, just your standard neighborhood place, but a group of friends gets together there every couple of weeks to play boardgames, and tonight was that night. I wasn't up for playing games tonight (I have to peel potatoes, story of which I'll explain later), so I just stopped in for dinner. In an effort to be kinda healthy and add some roughage to my diet, I had a side salad with my dinner. One thing I can say about Creekside - their salads are good. They're a pretty standard side salad, but with a nice mix of greens instead of just iceburg lettuce, and always nice and fresh and not watery. Then I completely defeated any attempts to be healthy by having a hamburger and french fries. I topped my burger with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and sauteed onions and mushrooms. Then I dipped my fries in the mayo that I didn't put on my burger. Tasty. My only saving grace is that I didn't eat the whole thing, so I don't feel overstuffed. Perhaps that means I'll have room for ice cream later. Mmmm.... ice cream.

Chocolate pudding. About an hour or so ago now, but I got busy.

My ginger always gets almost instantly dried out, no matter how I store it. So I started buying the grated fresh ginger in jars (kinda like the pre-chopped garlic, but ginger instead). I don't like the pre-chopped garlic, but I think the ginger is great for times when I just want some minced ginger for something - it doesn't have as much bite as the real thing, but it's great to have on hand. Obviously I'd use the fresh stuff if I wanted julienned slices or the ginger flavor was central to the dish instead of just one piece.

More mac and cheese. And a ginger ale.

I may have cursed myself with all that talk yesterday of being morning sickness free - I've been feeling kinda under the weather this morning. But I think that it's actually a consequence of far too many days in a row of not enough sleep. I got somewhere between 4 and 6 hours last night, and that's with going to bed at 10 pm! So I started my day at the office with a Coke and a handful of pretzels. Ahh, sugar and caffeine are wonderful things - I feel much more alert, at least for the timebeing. I still have half a can left, but it's after noon so I really should stop - any caffeine after noon will affect my sleep that night - I'm that sensitive! On to lunch. Despite Alex's excellent selection, I went with the mac and cheese. By the time I pulled myself away from what I was doing I was hungry enough that my tummy was upset again, so I went with what I perceived to be the more gentle option. But I only had a small bowl, so I'll probably have the curry for second lunch, later this afternoon.

Poll - What should Tammy have for lunch? a) leftover curried vegetables and tofu with rice b) leftover mac and cheese with chicken and broccoli Sorry, those are your only options - kinda boring, I know.

Fascinating... And I suppose I could break up my own Heath Bars and mix them in. Hmmm... this bears further investigation. Thanks for the tip.

I'm crossing my fingers! Back on the food front, breakfast was - you guessed it - frosted mini-wheats and skim milk. I didn't actually eat any of the ice cream I bought last night. I wasn't feeling well after dinner and was really, really tired, so I ended up just falling into bed around 10. But it's good to know it's there in case I have any ice cream emergencies come up...

I've been extremely lucky so far on the food front. But I've had awful fatigue and exhaustion and insomnia, so it all balances out, I suppose!

Turns out my husband had other plans for the evening, so my planned dinner will have to wait. Instead I cooked myself a comfort food favorite - macaroni and cheese (Amy's Organic) with broccoli and some cooked chicken mixed in. I sauteed the chicken in olive oil with garlic and black pepper. And - of course - I'm drinking milk. Had some fun on my way home stopping into a little deli/bakery/party store on this side of town that I'd heard about but not had a chance to visit yet - Baxter's. They had an interesting array of somewhat gourmet items, and a pretty good wine selection. They had a nice climate controlled cellar for the good stuff, but it was pretty sparsely stocked. And their French wine section was very slim, but still had a couple of things that looked vaguely interesting, were I looking to purchase a random bottle of wine for dinner. I did, however, purchase a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream to treat myself to later. They had my favorite flavor - coffee heath bar crunch - but the caffeine in that keeps me awake if I eat it at night, and I'm having a hard enough time sleeping as it is!

Pathetic, I tell you. Yes, I'm eating again! Hungry day today... This time it's baby carrots (which I really don't like all that much, but six baby carrots is a veggie serving and I don't get enough veggie servings, so I can usually manage to force them down) and a handful of pretzels from the bag someone kindly left on the kitchen table. I'd rather have some more leftover curry and rice, but I'm going home to cook dinner soon.

You want more than the two huge lists of food on page 3?

Knock on wood. So far there's nothing I've had to give up!

Oh, it's a lonely day - just me and my pile of food... Afternoon snack was an orange. I'm trying to be healthy, and it's been sitting on my desk for at least a week, staring at me and making me feel guilty

Unbelievably, I was still hungry, so I just ate a chocolate pudding cup and a piece of baklava left out for the taking on the kitchen table in the office. I am happy to report that at least for now, I've actually managed to eat enough...

I held out as long as I could - eating lunch at 11 seemed a bit excessive. I only made it to about 11:20 before my body screamed MUST EAT RIGHT NOW, so I did. Leftovers from last night - curried tofu, veggies and rice. I only ate about half of what I brought, so I'll probably eat the rest later today. I'm still kinda feeling hungry, but I'm going to drink some more water and see if that helps.

Well - this is certainly topical... A Pregnant Mother's Diet May Turn the Genes Around http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/science/07GENE.html

Today should be a good foodblogging day, if sheer quantity counts for anything. After I posted about breakfast, I puttered around doing some things before leaving for work. And before I even left the house I was hungry again! But short on time, so I just had some OJ. While I was drinking it I noticed two deer walking along the edge of the wetlands that I can see from my back window. How cool! I'm going to miss being able to walk to the grocery store, but the wildlife has something of a counterbalancing effect... Now that I'm at work, I'm munching trail mix to make the hungries go away. Peanuts, sunflower seeds, raisins - and lest you think I'm being too healthy - candy covered chocolate pieces. I brought a bunch of food to work with me - let's see how much of it I manage to go through.