I had a very green salad for dinner last night. Romaine, a gifted avocado and a small Green Zebra tomato just picked from the back yard. I'm blown away by the taste of this tomato; it's so opposite on the scale in taste from the store bought stuff that I can't believe we haven't all revolted against the grocery stores for what they are trying to pass off as a tomato.
Right now the small raised bed that I have on the South side of our house doesn't get a full 6 hours of sun so the the tomatoes are on the smallish side. All I have to do is get that front yard landscape to a point where I can grow my veggies out there. Our fence is halfway up and the sheet mulching is about a third of the way there. The sheet mulching is several layers of newspaper topped with several inches of mulch. The idea is that it will all break down over several seasons and I can avoid rototilling. Info on this can be found in the wonderful permaculture book Gaia's Garden.
Sunset recently posted a blog entry on tomatoes which I think is great. It lists several "best of" tomatoes including a drought tolerant one for those of us who sometimes forget to water and a cherry tomato with great ratings. I myself just planted an heirloom called "Ananas Noir" that I was lucky to get for free at a presentation I went to for work. Sounds mysterious, no?
My friend Heidi just sent me a link to this website that she discovered: Culinate. How good does this sound?: Roasted Squash, Pear, and Ginger Soup.
My copy of Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times
An annoying "problem" that picked up over Christmas was this obsession with soy chai. I've never had tea with milk. It just tasted weird to me that way. But, while I was back on the East coast, I was hanging out with my sister-in-law and she ordered one of these soy chais because she doesn't drink milk. I ordered one too, so I could try something new (one of the suggestions in French Women Don't Get Fat). Damn it was good. The problem is that I now crave them all the time. The only good thing about this new obsession is that I force myself to walk to get one.
This downfall that leads me to drink several soy chais a week is is probably a direct result of what happened before Christmas. My attempts at eating like a French woman were seriously derailed right before Thanksgiving. I actually know the moment of my downfall. One night I had this overwhelming craving for potato chips (we do not usually buy them or keep them in the house). I was in the middle of a knitting project and my husband kindly ran out to the local convenience store and bought one of those big bags.
The problem with this type of thing that occurs while you are trying to modify your behavior is that it's a slippery slope. Sometimes, you don't even realize just how detrimental that one first slip is going to be. Sometimes you do, and you choose to do it anyway. In my case, it was the former, but I know realize that every choice I am currently making falls within the realm of the latter.
During Thanksgiving and the few days after it, I would eat the potato chips as a snack while I was doing something else. This is something I had previously avoided doing per the suggestions in French Women Don't Get Fat. At that point, other healthy French woman habits that I had started adopting began to be ignored as well. By the time January rolled around, I had re-gained the 3 pounds I had previously lost and gained another 3 on top of that to boot.
At that point I realized just how dangerous that first time you blow off your new habit is. And this applies not only to modifying your eating habits, but also to all those times you ignore your exercise schedule and say, "today I won't lift weights because I don't feel like it". For me, saying that I will do that weight workout tomorrow, means I probably won't do it at all. And then the next week, the same thing happens. The next thing you know, you've completely stopped your workouts.
So it's back to the beginning for me. I'm going to do a food journal for a couple of weeks and then listen the book again and reinstate Mireille's helpful suggestions. Wish me luck.
I went to a book signing on Monday at Warwick's in La Jolla (very cute little book store) for a reading by Mireille Guiliano from her new book, "French Women for All Seasons". I have listened to part of the audio book that I ordered but it's only 2 hours long and doesn't cover a whole lot. This new book has a ton more recipes than the last, and has at least 4 menus per season which I really like because it gives you a better idea of just how much and what type of food one can eat on a daily basis.
I'm hoping to find some recipes in the book that I can use for Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite holidays. I've already tried the Buttersquash Soup recipe which is excellent and you can find the recipe for it online here.
On an unrelated note, I think I'm going to see the new James Bond flick tomorrow afternoon. A blond Bond....weird. Meanwhile, I found this fun article while talking to a friend who is planning a trip to Paris: 007 Ways to Feel Like a Secret Agent.
...than I'm eating a cheese course too!
