Mmmm, Bacon (almost)!

I have been in a deeply committed love affair with pork products most of my life. I know, I know; we all love bacon, the golden child of pork, but I love the lesser heralded cuts, too. Some are pretty obvious: ribs, ham, and more bacon. But what about sausages and pancetta and even the maligned and lowly pork chop?

Now, I know none of this is good for me. I know I should limit not just my pork intake, but try and make more of my meals vegetarian in general. Oh, but I do so love the puerco!

This morning I had a hankering for one of my favorite sandwiches, a FEBLT: Fried Egg, Bacon, Lettuce, & Tomato. It indeed makes me "feebled" (get it?) in the knees just thinking about it. I prefer topping the over-easy eggs and oven-baked bacon with micro greens or a so-called spring mix, and summer-ripe heirloom tomatoes, lightly dressed with a just a teensy bit of EVOO and fresh cracked sea salt and pepper, all on toasted sourdough or a ciabatta roll.

So, I dug into the depths of the freezer and found a package of Morningstar faux bacon, normally reserved for when we have veg-head guests or our annual Lenten "no-meat" sacrifice. Baked in the oven at 400 degrees, I now have a tidy stash of perfectly crisp almost-bacon to use over the next couple of weeks AND I satisfied my hankering for a FEBLT.

Happy tummy, happy body. Talk about a win-win.

Scales of Injustice

If you have been following my C25k progress, or if you saw my Facebook post early last week, you probably saw that I thought I had lost 16.8 pounds since starting the running program.   THOUGHT.


Unfortunately, when I went to weigh myself this morning, I discovered a major malfunction with our scale.  It said I weighed 287 pounds.  I stepped off, and stepped back on. 68 pounds.  What the heck?


So I swapped out the batteries, grabbed an unopened sack of rice flour and tried again. 5.2 pounds. Now we're getting somewhere.


Except that when I stepped up, I hadn't lost nearly as much as I thought, only about 10.7 pounds. Instead of  feeling let down, I reminded myself that 10.7 pounds is nothing to shake a stick at, a point driven home much faster as I hefted the 5 pound sack of flour back into the cupboard. Wow, two sacks of flour lighter than when I started.


I am proud of that small accomplishment, and remain motivated.  Maybe even more so now.


I guess that is what I get for being prideful.

A Roya-l Lunch

I am always hunting for new ideas to jazz up the lunch hour standards: a tuna sandwich, a garden salad, leftovers... Blah, blah, blah.


And then I saw this post from a friend and fellow blogger Roya (Dirt Don't Hurt) and have been dying to try it: Curried Chicken Salad.  Why haven't I thought of this before?!

Roya's Pic. YUM!

Here is her recipe as she posted a week or so ago:


"This recipe can be eaten right away, but it is better if it's refrigerated for a few hours.
This can be doubled, tripled, quadrupled!
I used leftovers from a roasted chicken, and wish I had made more.


1 cup chicken, chopped up small
1/2 apple, chopped finely
¼ bulb fennel, finely chopped (or 1 stalk celery, but the fennel makes this amazing)
1 handful of dried cranberries 
Handful of chopped nuts (totally optional)


1 T mayo
Splash of apple cider vinegar (to taste)
Salt and pepper
Dash of celery salt
Curry powder (optional)


Mix all together, then add the curry powder to make it as yellow as you like it.


I start with just a dab of mayo (I don’t like it to be too “wet”, just a little coating, and add more as needed. I’ve made it with greek yogurt, and it’s just not the same. You could probably go 50/50 yogurt/mayo though. It’s really not that much mayonnaise ;)
I added about ¼ cup of leftover faro which added some good chewiness to it, but that is totally not necessary. I can see quinoa or brown rice being good too.


Served in lettuce wraps, or over a TON of cabbage, this is the most delicious thing ever. Eaten by the spoonful out of the Tupperware in your fridge it is also delicious ;) "

How could I NOT want to eat this?!  Having just returned from Poland, I realized this morning that there is almost NOTHING in our fridge that is still edible. And then I found this in the back of the fridge:

And this:

Oh, heck yeah, it is ON!  Although I didn't have the exact ingredients specified by Roya (I would have LOVED fennel in this), I whipped up a close approximation, with a few additions of my own.

Although I normally prefer to use leftover chicken for my chicken salads, in a pinch the Kirkland chicken is pretty yummy.  It's packed in water so no extra fat, calories, or flavor, and has really large chunks of white meat.

Kirkland Chicken

I opted to add a little bit of red onion.  I add onion to almost every recipe, including salads.

Red Onion

I definitely opted to add nuts to my salad.  I love the extra richness and crunch these toasted pecans added to the salad.  If a recipe calls for nuts of any kind, I usually try and buy the biggest bag I can budget for, and keep the remainder for future use, like today!

Toasted Pecans

Even without the dressing and the apples, I was already salivating a little at this point.

Salad pre-dressing (sans apples)

So for the dressing the debate raged: Veganaise or Mayo?

Veganaise: 90 Calories, 9 Grams of Fat

Olive Oil Mayo: 45 Calories, 4 Grams of Fat

Guess who won?  Yep, the mayo.  I always mix my dressings, whether it is for potato salad, cole slaw, or in this case, chicken salad, in a separate bowl.  That way if I screw up the dressing I haven't botched the whole meal.  In my case I added LOTS of curry (very yellow), garlic powder, a squeeze of spicy brown mustard, and a touch of cayenne to my dressing.  I like my curry with some heat!

Curry-Mayo Dressing

Mix it all together, cover and chill.  Waiting was the hardest part.

Chicken salad dressed, with apples

Finally lunch time arrived!  I dressed my greens with the barest kiss of EVOO and some fresh ground salt and pepper, topped with the chicken salad, and took this quick picture before I dove in.

How pretty is that?

And there it is, sitting on my desk as I type this, except that by now, I have an almost empty plate!

LUNCH!

Recipes like these are so quick, easy, and flexible depending on what you have on hand.  In my case, purple instead of green cabbage, celery instead of fennel, green apples instead of red, raisins instead of cranberries.  It was delicious anyways.


Thanks again to Roya for a great idea and a happy lunch.

New Year, New Me?

Nuh-uh. Not this year. I don't think so. 

I am not keen on New Year's resolutions in the first place, and I am even more against the idea that once year (and every year) I decide to reinvent myself. 

There are the easily measurable versions of "the new me": losing weight, saving more, eating and using less.  Then there are the more indefinite promises: the "to live more in the moment" me, the "be a better friend/partner/parent" me.

And what do I notice most about all of these?  The resolutions are all internally motivated; however you look at it, it really is all about me.

And I find that incredibly selfish.  I mean, what kind of resolution is that: to spend the next year making myself the ultimate priority?

Now, I am not saying that putting a higher emphasis on my health or personal relationships is a bad thing, for me, or for anyone else.  In fact, I am starting a new running program with my husband to raise our level of fitness AND spend more time together not in front of a TV or a machine.

But I refuse to make that my resolution.  I refuse to have ANY resolutions for 2012.  I just want to continue living, heart open and thankful for the friends and family members in my life, and many opportunities that I have been blessed with.