Beans, Beans, Good for Your Heart

Why, hello there, dahlinks! How have you all been in the (enter large number of months here) since I’ve seen you last? Me? I’ve been doing well, actually. I mean, for a while there, I may have gone just a tad (but really a lot) cuckoo, but now? Now, everything has been going swimmingly and I finally feel like I can sit down and actually type at this here computer without banging keys randomly while sobbing uncontrollably. It’s a marvelous feeling, actually. Not having panic attacks and sobbing, I mean.

One of the main reasons I’m doing so well has to do with why I started this blog in the first place: crochet. You see, about a year ago (has it really been that long??) I started up a new crochet group (because, due to my intense embarrassment, I couldn’t bear going back to that other one again…) and have actually been hosting it in my house each week. (!!!)

I KNOW! Me! Not only socializing but actually hosting people in my hovel! You would think that would indicate a turn for the worse- obviously I’ve gone truly insane… But I assure you, it actually signaled a turn for the better for me, and I’m so thankful for the power of friendship, creativity, and above all, YARN, to actually bring me back from….well, wherever the heck I was.

It’s because of this (still growing) group of ladies that I have finally felt like me again. It’s been a long, long time coming, but, man. It’s really good to be back.

I started hosting at my place so that I would be able to put SweetPea down for her naps while Little Mister played with the other kiddos his age. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but our morning crochet group gradually turned into a Crochet-and-Lunch group. I think it started because I was hungry (breastfeeding does that to you) and told my guests that I was going to make myself some food, but it was more than enough to share, so PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME! And then it just blossomed from there.

Now, after telling them what I was going to make that day, you’d think they’d have checked their watches, made some excuses, and then bolted for the door.  But they did not. They stayed, they ate, they were amazed, and then they asked for the recipe. I told them, “Oh don’t worry! I’ll post it on my blog for you!”

And then I didn’t blog for an awfully long time.

Well, in honor of my dad’s two year anniversary last month, I knew that I *had* to post this recipe. One, because I’ve promised, and two, because he’d laugh and laugh at all the gas. And then he'd probably say his favorite joke, "You have to let them out- they don't pay no rent!" 

You have been warned.

You see, what I offered to make them (well, actually, I was craving it for myself….I really didn’t take their preferences into consideration- heh!) was a bean salad. I love this bean salad. I love LOVE this bean salad. I crave this bean salad. I made it for My Mister and he was all, “Really? Bean salad? I’m not sure this is going to be one of my favor……HOLY FRIJOLE, BATMAN! MAKE IT AGAIN!”

My kids love this bean salad. They love beans in general. They also love farts, but with their genetics, that was inevitable. And now my friends (and their kids!) love this bean salad, so I hope you will, too.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
 
Beans 

As you can see, they are high in fibre, which is Australian for "fiber."

Canola oil

Apple Cider Vinegar

Salt, pepper, sugar, and garlic.

Celery, carrots, and green onion.

Yes, garlic, too, but with the other ingredients above. He's just trying to be with the cool kids.

And, possibly most importantly of all, BACON. (Aussie bacon is more like Canadian bacon- I actually prefer it to American bacon since it has more meat and less fat.) 

Lower fat bacon = HAPPY BACON!

WHAT YOU DO:

Salad:

Drain the beans and lightly rinse. 

Mmmmm....looks good, right? WAIT! Don't go yet!! It gets better!

Chop the celery and carrots into a medium dice. Thinly slice the green onion- both the white and green. 

Add them to the beans

Cook and roughly chop the bacon and also add to the beans. (If you are either vegetarian, or even vegan, simply omit the bacon. It'll still be good, but you will be missing out. Because BACON!)

Mmmmm....bacon

Salad dressing:

Add the oil, vinegar, salt, sugar, pepper and diced (or super squished) garlic and mix it all.

Pour the dressing over the salad. Mix it all up. 

I only photographed a portion this small so you wouldn't see how much of a pig I am.

Try not to devour it all in one setting.

"Here, mama. I'll show them how much of a pig you are."

*******************************************

Gege's Beans, Beans Good for Your Heart!

For Salad:
5- 14oz/400g cans of beans (I use a mixture of various kinds- chickpeas, kidney beans,  cannellini beans, butter beans, and even a can of 4 mixed beans.) 

2 large carrots, diced
2 ribs of celery, diced
1 large green onion, thinly sliced

5 middle rashers Australian/Canadian bacon (or regular ol' USA bacon), cooked and roughly chopped or crumbled.

For dressing:
1/4C Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4C canola oil
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, diced (or use a garlic press)
1/4 tsp pepper

Mix all salad ingredients together. Mix vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and garlic together. SLowly add oil and mix well. Pour dressing over bean mixture and stir together. 

*Enjoy!

 *Please do enjoy responsibly. There is a lot of fiber in this delicious salad. If your body is not used to a lot of fiber, then I hope you enjoy your....musical interlude....after devouring this meal.

Beets Me

I may have mentioned once or twice that, by education and until recently also by profession, I am a nutritionist. I've spent many a year studying nutrition and so I know quite a bit about food. However. Apparently there are new things for all of us to learn, so I am now passing on my knowledge to you guys.

First, some background. I am not a picky eater. Never have been really. I remember as a kid, I didn't like onions- I'd even pick out the tiny little ones in a McDonalds hamburger Happy Meal on those rare occasions we were lucky enough to eat out at one of those high-falutin' restaurants. I also didn't like zucchini, unless it was in my aunt's zucchini bread which is basically banana bread with zucchini instead of banana. Moral of the story- sugar makes everything better.

There was just one other food that I knew of that I DID.NOT. like. The culprit: beets.

Beets were one of those tricky foods- they look so gosh darned purdy with their purpley purpleness oozing out in a, "Hey baby....you should taste me because I'm purple and you know you can't resist purple so why don't you take a nice, big juicy bite out of my tasty purpleness. You know you want to. Baby," sort of way. Apparently beets are also quite the sleazeballs of the tuber family.

(An aside: My mother-in-law's first language is not English, so she sometimes still to this day will have very amusing turns of phrases. This past Thanksgiving, she was talking about a really unsavory person she once knew- a real jerk. She said, ever so seriously, "He was a really big squeeze-ball!"  Oh dear me...I don't think I'd laughed so hard in a really long time.)

The only problem with beets is that they kinda sorta really taste like....well, like dirt. Or at least what I assume dirt tastes like because that is not something I'd know from experience. Nope. Surely not.

So, I pretty much have avoided beets, no matter how purpley they were nor how much my coworkers told me they tasted good and were good for me. Yes, I'll grudgingly admit that they are indeed a very healthy food. But still. DIRT.

HOWEVER. At a work conference I attended two years ago, there was a beet and walnut salad available on the buffet and, since my coworker told me that it was a really good salad, and since I was a new employee and wanted to look tough and adventurous, I decided to try that darned salad. If anything, it would test my acting ability- could I get it down without making an, "EWW GROSS!" face? 

Much to my surprise, that darned purpley salad tasted as good as it looked! Well blow me down and call me Popeye! I couldn't believe it! Beets that didn't taste like dirt! They had some sort of vinegar on them, that I knew- whether balsamic or red wine, I don't recall- but ever since then I've been on the hunt for the pretty, non-dirt tasting beets but to my dismay have not been successful.

Until now. I found a recipe on Epicurious for Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens and it had decent reviews, so I thought, "I am going to try this one more time and if they taste like dirt, well, at least I'll now know what dirt tastes like because I have never tasted dirt before in my life. Ever."

So I made the salad with a few modifications- I didn't have the sweet onion, so I omitted that, and I really just wanted the beets and not the oranges, so I used a little bit of orange juice instead of the orange slices.

OMG. I don't remember dirt beets tasting so good! I really really REALLY enjoyed them. My Mister...not so much. He thought they were good, but they didn't float his boat. HOWEVER. He's not writing this blog so his primitive taste buds don't count. I really liked this salad A LOT. A lot, a lot. I ended up eating most of it last night and then finished it off for lunch today. That's right- I, an avowed beet hater, ate beets TWO DAYS IN A ROW!

And now comes the, "Wow- I did not know that," part. I feel like I should have known this since I am a nutritionist, and I may have learned it many years ago but may have repressed that knowledge along with any memories I may or may not have had about eating dirt. I'm also sure that had I been a beet eater all my life I would have also known this so my ignorance is justified.

Apparently, what goes in purple.....COMES OUT PURPLE. There is no need for alarm. You are not dying. Your intestines are not falling out and you don't have cancer of either the urinary or digestive tracts. There is absolutely no need to call your husband over to take a look and see if he thinks you are dying, as well. NOPE. All completely normal.

And you can take my word for it because I'm a nutritionist. A really really edumacted one. 

Best Laid Plans and All That

So, I planned my weekly menu yesterday counting on being fed tonight but, being the ravenous smart girl that I am, I planned for some sort of cheese heavy meal and ate dinner prior to going. Well, I ate a bowl of cereal, actually, just in case there was some delicious dessert that would be offered and I could snarf it down guilt-free. (FYI- I've been using rice milk in my cereal and I must admit I really really like it. It may be a challenge for me to go back to skim milk once Little Mister outgrows his allergy. Rice- it does a palate good.)

Well. The "food" offered? CHEESE AND CRACKERS! With some cream filled cookies to tempt the gourmands in attendance. Smart girl, indeed.

So, this means that we weren't able to eat dinner and I had to move up my plans for the Thai Basil Beef meal I was planning on cooking tomorrow. This happened to be the best decision EVER! That meal was DA BOMB and I don't usually say DA in real life unless I'm in a wool induced coma and am all, "DAAAAAAAA," with drool dripping down my chin.

We got home later than our usual dinner time and I was really afraid that Little Mister was not going to handle it well. He has his cranky time around 6:30/7pm if we don't nail his nighttime feeding just right and he had already fallen asleep in the car after sucking his poor little fists at the "party" until they were little bitty nubs. My poor poor hungry little nubby-handed boy.

FYI: I am totally blessed with my Little Mister. He is actually a really REALLY good baby. He only gets fussy when he's hungry, but if he's tired and hungry, he transforms into El Diablo. Takes after his mom in that respect. Because of that, I get VERY anxious if we are out anywhere during The Cranky Hour because he's such a happy little chap if I feed him right away and he will actually fall asleep by himself in his crib without fussing IF I time it just right. Well, at least that's been happening for the last few days. With his track record, that may very well change tomorrow. The only thing predictable about him is that he's unpredictable. So, as you can imagine, I was getting just a wee bit anxious the longer we stayed out tonight. Thankfully I didn't insult anyone we met (I hope) but I know I interrupted a few people while I tried to get Big Mister's attention as Little Mister's hand started disappearing down his gullet. ("Honey? I think we have to leave pretty soon." "Uh, Mister? it's almost time to go." "HEY! WE NEED TO GO NOW. Thank you. Teehee."

So, we finally get home and Big Mister is hungry so I start making the Thai Basil Beef meal since Little Mister was still asleep in his car seat. I was able to get a pot of water boiling and put the meat in the pan when the frightened, panicked cries of my sweet Little Diablo let me know that we would have to wait a little longer for dinner.

Well! Big Mister was way too hungry to wait for me to finish feeding our little guy, so I told him what to do- just follow the recipe and make the dinner. (He ran interference for me and changed Little Mister's diaper and put his pajamas on which gave me enough time to get the asparagus washed and trimmed, but not cut, so Big Mister had some prep work ahead of him.)

Now, just so you can understand the magnitude of this: Big Mister does not like cooking. DOES NOT. I would ask him to help me make a lasagna by grating the cheese for me, you know- thinking it would be all romantic and stuff. He ended up buying the cheese that was already sliced just to get out of it. The closest he gets to "helping" me in the kitchen is tasting the food for me for Quality Control. This is why his offer to help me cook our Valentine's Day meal is such a huge, romantic ordeal. It's a real big sacrifice on his part and I love him for it. (That being said, he does do the grilling. Must be a man thing.)

JUST SO YOU KNOW- as a testament to both how hungry My Mister was (although he doesn't transform to a murderous snarling creature from the underworld as I have been known to do), AND how very easy this meal was to prepare, HE COOKED OUR DINNER TONIGHT!!

DUDE!!!!

Granted, he did have to go back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom to ask me questions, but the fact remains that, when given enough motivation, My Mister can cook me dinner!!! DOES HE REALIZE THE POWER HE'S GIVEN ME?!?!

Thai Basil Beef...totally DA BOMB.

What the Devil?

OK- as promised, here’s the first installment of my dairy free (well…almost) week. My goal is to find healthy, dairy free foods that actually taste good because 1) I like to eat good food and 2) Big Mister, who not only loves my cooking but is also a Dairy King himself, pouted and said, “Don’t punish me just because you can’t eat dairy anymore!” Uh, HELLO Honey! This is for the benefit of your son! So, if mama can’t have cheese, ain’t NOBODY gonna have cheese!

First up this week is actually something that I did not make for dinner, was not from Cooking Light, and was not necessarily something I’d brand as “healthy.” BUT! It was dairy free and delicious, so I could eat it to my heart’s content- clogged arteries and chunky thighs notwithstanding.

Turns out I was invited to a potluck brunch Tuesday. Look at me- already making friends and all. *aww shucks*

The hostess, as well as some of the attendees, attend the Friday Fibre Friends meeting- basically a knit and crochet group of women who can’t spell “fiber” that meets on Fridays. Yes- I searched out all things yarny when I found out we were moving here and attended my first meeting the first Friday I was here- jetlagged and all. Don’t get between me and my fibre, yo. (HAHA! My MS Word is obviously smart American and is giving me the red squiggly line under “fibre” because EVEN A COMPUTER PROGRAM KNOWS IT’S SPELLED F-I-B-E-R!)

Anywho, my contribution to the potluck was Deviled Eggs. I LURVE Deviled Eggs and I usually always make them if there’s a potluck we are attending. My Mister loves them, too, so I knew I had to make a few extra otherwise he’d be upset that I made his food for people other than him and that goes against our marriage vows. And, of course he’d know that I made Deviled Eggs for someone else because it made our house smell of boiled eggs which, if you have never smelled boiled eggs before, well…they smell like farts. Like the really bad ones from your old Uncle Charlie who you are pretty sure ate nothing but cabbage, beans, and rotted road kill.

Actual phone conversation with My Mister:

Me: I made Deviled Eggs for the brunch and now our whole house smells like farts.

Mister: What else is new?

Thanks a lot, Uncle Charlie.

Even though I have made these quite a few times, it’s been a while since I made them last and needed to look up the recipe to refresh my memory. And that was roadblock number one. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I MOVED TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD and do not have access to my household goods, including my cookbooks. Yes- I mailed my yarn, but my cookbooks were much lower on the totem pole of important things in our lives. What good is food if you don’t have your yarn? EXACTLY. There would be no point in living anymore.

Well, considering we live in an amazing time in history where we can access just about any information ever conceived by the quick click of a button, I thought- no biggie! I’ll just google the recipe. It’s from the Betty Crocker cookbook- the red checkered one. “Betty Crocker Deviled Eggs” goes into my google bar and the extremely simple recipe comes back. Right?

WRONG!

They had 300 thousand bazillion recipes for deviled eggs, but not MY recipe for deviled eggs. WTHemorrhoid?!? GAH!

So, I had to reconstruct the recipe from memory. All of the other recipes I saw had quite a few ingredients like relish and eye of newt. The recipe I use is basically just mayo, mustard, and vinegar and they are FABULOUS.

So, I know I have the right ingredients, but I’m not completely sure about the quantities EXCEPT! I remembered that both the mustard and the vinegar were 1 teaspoon each. I just couldn’t remember how many eggs with which that corresponded (but I think it may have been 6), or the amount of mayo needed. Oh well!

The keys to the tastiest farts you'll ever eat

I used:
10 hardboiled eggs (it's best if you don't count them in my pictures. Just take my word for it.)
5 Tbs. Mayo (they don't have Kraft mayo- theirs is a little more translucent, so the filling was...different than I remember it.)
1.5 tsp yellow mustard (they do have French's Mustard. Score one for the Australians.)
1.5 tsp white vinegar
salt and pepper to taste (though I think I put a tad too much salt in mine.)
paprika sprinkled on top. (Gots to have the paprika)


Remove the yolks from the eggs and mash them up with all the ingredients except for the paprika. Place the mixture in a zip-top plastic bag for easy piping. Just snip off a small corner and pipe away.

Yep...ten eggs. Ten whole eggs.

Unfortunately I also don't have my pretty little Deviled Egg platter, so I had to do the best with what I have.

Hmm...not quite there. And there's a funky one in there somewhere

STOP WITH THE COUNTING ALREADY!

I covered them with plastic wrap, but to protect them from getting smooshed from the wrap, I used toothpicks to keep it aloft. Oh wait. No I didn't because I don't have any toothpicks.

Give me some duct tape and a knife and I'll out MacGyver MacGyver

I used plastic tie wraps that came with some freaky freezer bags they have here. I guess they don't do zip top freezer bags- just sandwich bags. Silly Australians.

So, my brunch went well, but unfortunately my eggs were the only non-dairy fare available except for some tasty butternut squash soup. Since I'm breastfeeding and thus need to eat a metric ton every half hour to keep up my milk production, and since I didn't cheat and snack on any of my eggs prior to arriving (you didn't count, right?), I ended up eating a quesadilla and some quiche. One of them has cheese IN ITS FREAKIN' NAME! It should be called the Devil and not my delicious eggs! Stupid satanic cheese.

So, hopefully next week will be my first truly, absolutely, no excuses dairy free week.

Oh, and My Mister did want the leftovers....but then he didn't eat them because he's some germaphobe freak and saw my twisty ties in the eggs and questioned their food grade safety and then said something about not trusting the Chinese. Don't worry- I hid the aluminum foil so he can't wear his hat tonight.

(ETA: HAHAHA! My Mister just read my blog and said, "You're not being fair or specific! I don't know what were their manufacturing conditions!" The aluminum is FAR FAR AWAY!)

Resting and Planning and Thinking

My Mister, whom I love very, very much, has been driving me crazy with all of the exploring he wants to do in our new town. Yes, honey, we have a car and can go out and about now, but that doesn't mean we HAVE to. It's not like we're moving back next month and need to cram in every single touristy thing there is to do RIGHT NOW. Just calm the heck down already!

I’m ready to stab people in the throat and tear my hair out (which doesn’t need much coaxing to leave its follicles- the whole postpartum balding season is upon me) to get some much needed R&R and the weekends are my only time to take advantage of having someone to watch Little Mister so I can go to the bathroom to, oh I don’t know- pee? read? sleep? without yelling, “IT’S OK! MAMA JUST NEEDS TO WIPE AND SHE’LL BE RIGHT THERE HONEY!” making an even better impression on my new neighbors. The only way I can make myself and possibly all Americans look worse in their eyes is if I marched down the streets draped in an American flag while chanting, “We’re Number One! You’re Number Two! Australia is a dumb hunk of poo! SanDimasHighSchoolFootballRULES!”

Anywho, Big Mister could sense that I could use some extra sleep- he’s good at reading my extremely subtle hints of gently snarling, hissing and spitting randomly throughout the day- so he offered to take Little Mister on a walk Saturday morning so that I could sleep-in a little. Even though it was only an extra hour (though it felt like 2 minutes), I so appreciated those precious minutes alone. On a bed. All by myself. (!!) He also eased off of the, "Oooo OOOOO! Let's do this and go there and wake up early and put the baby in the car seat so we can go and drive now that we have a car and we can do things that are not sleeping!" Yeah....I really needed the break. It helped take the edge off- now I only want to poke people in the throats with a dull stick.

I used this restful weekend to start my normalization process. Well…”normal” is relative. Considering the whole “dairy free” issue has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while, I’ve got to start a whole new normal- and I mean more than a life without cheese, although that does play a big part. You see, I tend to fly by the seat of my pants when it comes to meal planning since I tend to have a stock of ingredients necessary for the meals I generally rotate through. Unfortunately, many of these meals do have dairy in them one way or another so I need to rethink my meal planning. Gah. “Thinking.” Totally overrated.

So, now it’s time to emulate my favorite Belgian detective and start working out those little grey cells again by putting on my Nutritionist cap at home and start planning healthy meals that are dairy free for me to make throughout the week. It’s always been my goal to actually make a meal plan for the week, go grocery shopping on the weekend, and then stick to my meal plan so that I don’t have any extra food to throw away at the end of the week. Unfortunately, the reality is that I suck at it. The whole sticking to plans thing. Since it’s just been Big Mister and me for so long, if we wanted to eat out (read: me no wanty cooky), we could just hop in the car and go wherever our taste buds took us. Now…it’s not that simple anymore. Now I start freaking out if we are out past 7pm since that means Little Mister’s new sleep schedule will be thrown out of whack and how the heck will we ever get to sleep a full night again if he never establishes a good sleeping pattern and why the heck are we eating out just so that I can be tempted by that glorious cheese that I can’t eat anymore but, hey- what’s one teensy little bite, right? OH NO! Little Mister has blood in his stools again! DARN YOU CHEESE YOU EVIL TEMPTRESS!!! (And, sadly, yes- this has happened since I apparently have the willpower of popcorn fart when it comes to cheese.)

However, now that I’m a mom, I’ve found that I’ve somehow inherited the Mommy Superpowers that allow me to clean the kitchen, eat breakfast, start a load of laundry, and catch up with my Twittering (tweets? Tweeps? Tweeterers?) all before Little Mister wakes up. Normally I’d be zonked out in Drool Land until 10am if I had a day off, as well as NOT CLEANING MY HOUSE so this transformation has been extraordinary. So, I put my newfound superpowers to work this restful weekend and I actually planned out the meals for the week. Dairy free meals! Without cheese! And we went grocery shopping this weekend so I have food for all of the meals I planned so that we don’t have to eat out and I won’t be tempted by that cheese. (Weeeelllll…..even the best laid plans aren’t fool proof….as I found out yesterday. More on that tomorrow.)

So. Here’s what I’m gonna do. Every Sunday, I’ll post what my weekly meal plans are. They’ll either be brand new recipes I’ve never tried before, stuff from my normal rotation that happen to be dairy free, or new creations that I throw together. I’ll provide the links to the recipes if available online, too. That being said, many of the things I make originate from Cooking Light magazine. If you do not have a subscription to this wonderful resource, I highly recommend it. Their recipes are amazing and they have so many good health tips and information. I LOVE Cooking Light!

If you have any dairy-free meals you'd like to share, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!  For reals. I'm sure other readers wouldn't mind some new recipes- I know I wouldn't- and I'd love to hear from ya!

Since I've already started my meal planning this week, I'm going to finish out this week- blog wise- commenting on some the things I've made so far- starting tomorrow. Gotta give myself some goals to work towards now that I'm a SAHM and not out in the workplace anymore. As much as I'd like to just sit and eat tea and crumpets all day (which are VERY GOOD, btw!), I do need to get a move on and start the whole pregnancy weight loss plan in earnest now, starting with planning healthy meals.

Right now, I've got to head to bed. Strange- most of you are just now waking up....to begin the day that has just ended for me. I'm talking to y'all from the future! ooooEEEEEoooooooooo!

Catch ya on the flip side.