Attempts at Cooking

Howdy, readers. I'm enjoying a free late afternoon after a bummer vet appointment for Jasper (I guess you could call it a "dis-appointment"...ha!). He's got a touch of asthma on top of his upper-respiratory infection, just like Brother Beardslee, but luckily it seems to be reactionary based on what's happening in his lungs, and most likely won't affect him long-term. Yay! Unlike his smoker-cough bro.

While at the appointment, it was embarrassingly noted that the little guy has gained weight. Yep, quarter of a pound in TWO weeks. Ugh. At least he's still got his appetite.

So, I have officially switched our measuring cup for the kitty food. We used to use an old 1/3 cup one, giving them each a scoop of Science Diet Natural and Science Diet For Lard Butt Cats - er, the diet kind. In other words, I'd grab a scoop of the Natural and divide it amongst their dishes, then grab a scoop of the Diet and divide it amongst their dishes. Multiply that by morning and night and that equals...well, I suck at math, so let's just say 2/3 of a 1/3 cup, twice. Ha!

They'll be getting 1/4 cup measurements and I doubt they'll even notice it...although, they ARE incredibly hungry boys. Well, Beardslee and Jasper are. Winston could care less. He'd rather work on his diabolical plan to rule the world and harass his brothers, not necessarily in that order.

So, while thinking about my poor lil' dieting kitties (who don't even know they are dieting yet, mwahaha), I decided to make MY afternoon snack something more nutritious - edamame. While it ain't a cheeseburger, it's tasty!

We don't really do "diets" in this household. As I'm sure you've read, we try to eat "important" organic items, when fiscally plausible, and all natural, rather than setting strict guidelines. Not that I'm opposed to trying a diet re-set from time to time, especially if I can take something new away from it. (For example, that whole 4-5 small meals a day thing REALLY seems to work with my blood sugar.) But, it doesn't mean that we're lean.

For one thing, we've got genetics working on us - none of our parents are models (although my father was quite tall and thin - but I'm not sure how he would've evolved in old age). And the diet habits of our parents are hard to break - ie meat and potatoes, Italian, etc. Not that it's ANYthing against our parents. It just gives me a challenge to try and divert from the recipes and ways of cooking more from time to time. If I can land upon some different recipes (from, perhaps, different cultures), I can at least mix them in with our more traditional fare.

Currently, I work on at least making sure that we're eating whole foods. That is to say, rather than using Bisquick for pancakes, I make the batter from scratch with whole wheat flour. (And locally-picked blueberries my mom brought by. Yay!)

There's my favorite "Food to Live By" cookbook. *sigh* It's been one of the best things for my young marriage! Ah, in the second picture, you may notice another "whole food" in the background. It's locally-raised, non-smoked bacon. Just add salt and pepper and it's INCREDIBLE...but not the healthiest thing, in traditional terms. Yes, I know exactly where it came from and that I'm eating nothing artificial...but I realize that it's got lots of fat going on. Same goes for the real butter that we use. C'mon, how could you NOT want to try this stuff??

 
But those aren't things I'm willing to give up. What I know that I DO have to do for my family is create those vegetable-based recipes that actually taste good and use less naughty fats to incorporate them with our all-natural foods.

I'm working on perfecting a homemade pizza recipe (in this case, grilled). While it LOOKS good, I wasn't impressed by the dough recipe I found. I wanted it to be completely whole wheat (rather than partly white flour and partly whole wheat), so I'll be trying to use this recipe but cut back on the amount of honey I used with it. Note to self - you may like sweet stuff, and it does "help" recipes sometimes, but not THIS time. ;-)

If anyone has some "whole foods" suggestions or recipes that they swear by, I'd love for you to comment or email me! The cool thing about blogs is that they're here for interaction. Sure, I love and appreciate the creepy lurkers who read (you know who you are! Shout-out!), but we're living Web 2.0 right now. Share whatchya know! :-D But be respectful and not bossy know-it-alls. Hate those.

Thanks, guys! Side note: I'm trying to use foods up the next couple of days in hopes of doing a bit of farmers' market shopping, supplementing Hannaford for the rest of it.