Chattavore

What I ate, plate by plate.

Friday List: Websites to Help You with Your New Year’s Resolution

I am not a New Year’s Resolution person.  In fact, my yearly New Year’s resolution is not to make any resolutions.  It seems to me that resolutions are made to be broken, so while I may make attempts to make changes in my lifestyle (not necessarily my eating habits…perhaps I am seeking to be neater or more organized or whatever) I never make a proclamation of a resolution because I feel like I’m setting myself up for failure.  Besides, what if I want to make said changes in April?  I get it, though.  New year, new start.  It makes sense.  Of course, the most common resolution seems to be to make dietary changes, whether to lose weight or just become more healthy, and I can respect that.  I am not necessarily endorsing the diets advocated by these websites (and I say that in the “diet as a lifestyle” sense since none of these websites are “diet for weight-loss” sites), here are ten websites to help you with your New Year’s resolution (all of these are websites that I read regularly).

1. 100 Days of Real Food

It’s no secret that this is one of my favorite blogs.  Lisa Leake has built an empire on her 100 day experiment to eliminate processed food from her family’s diet, which has turned into a permanent lifestyle for her family.  While they have become slightly more “moderate” since the original 100 days (now allowing occasional white sugar or flour or tiny amounts of other processed ingredients into their diet as a “treat”), Lisa’s family tries to follow “the rules” the vast majority of the time: no white flour, no processed sugar, no packaged foods with more than five ingredients, try to eat mostly organic, etc., etc.  She has faithful followers and faithful nay-sayers; all you have to do is follow 100 Days of Real Food on Facebook to find out just how passionately people feel about eliminating-or not eliminating-processed food.  Personally, I love her food philosophy and her recipes.  Lisa is currently working on a cookbook as well, which I am sure that I will purchase as soon as it is available.  Her website is great for anyone who would like to take a more “whole foods approach” to their diet.

2.  Food Babe

If Lisa Leake is the voice of moderation for the whole foods approach, her fellow Charlotte-based blogger (and occasional contributor to 100 Days website) Vani Hari is a whole foods teetotaler.  The Food Babe has devoted herself full-time to investigating what ingredients the food industry is feeding us with zero transparency and trying to convince them to take the nastiness off of the ingredient list (for example, the fight that she and Lisa from 100 Days waged a fight against Kraft to stop putting ingredients in the boxed mac & cheese that they sell in the States that they do NOT put in their European products).  She’s also a huge GMO-labeling advocate.  Food Babe’s website is a great place to go if you want to learn about juicing, vegetarian food (Vani is mostly vegetarian), and exactly what you’re eating when you visit chain restaurants and purchase packaged foods.  Read at your own risk!

3.  Kath Eats Real Food

I discovered Kath Younger’s blog not that long ago when she was a guest blogger on 100 Days of Real Food (notice how it all seems to come back to that?).  Kath is a registered dietitian and her husband runs a Great Harvest bakery.  She blogs about the simple but healthy meals that she cooks and eats (there’s a lot of oatmeal in there) and advocates dietary moderation (yes, you can have chocolate! Yes, you can have alcohol! Yes, you can have bread!).  Her “lately” posts series is one of my favorite things on the blog; she posts photos and descriptions of the things that she eats all week long.  This is one of those things that helps to convince me that I too can eat healthfully (with an occasional treat) every. day. of the week.

4. Deliciously Organic

Carrie Vitt’s website is packed full of information about organic cooking.  Carrie’s blog has been around since 2008, and it’s an amazing recipe resource for anyone who wants to cut their consumption of processed foods.  She started using organic foods in a (successful) attempt to quell her migraines.  When Carrie was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease, she began to focus on a grain-free diet, and in doing so also made her website an excellent resource for readers who are following a gluten-free lifestyle.  She also has many recipes that are suitable for Paleo or GAPS.  Carrie also has a cookbook, titled-go figure-Deliciously Organic.

5.  Sprouted Kitchen

 

Sara Forte’s blog is gorgeous, adorned with her husband Hugh’s amazing photographs but otherwise very clean and simply laid out.  With her nearly 100% vegetarian approach to cooking, Sara inspires me to be a better part-time vegetarian, because the food she cooks just looks so darn good.  Like the bloggers I mentioned above, Sara focuses on nearly all whole, unprocessed ingredients…and oh, those photos.  Did I mention I like the photos?  Hugh, can I be your intern?  Sara and Hugh’s cookbook, The Sprouted Kitchen: A Tastier Take on Whole Foods, is just as gorgeous and inspiring as their website.

Some runners-up…. 

I don’t follow or advocate any specific “special” diets.  Aside from the fact that Deliciously Organic no longer uses grain because of her health and the fact that Sprouted Kitchen is mostly-but not completely-vegetarian, the blogs listed above just take a whole foods approach to eating, which is the approach that I try to take in my life.  However, I know that there are many of you who follow a specific lifestyle for health reasons or just because it works for you, and I respect that.  I have used recipes from the following websites and read them on a regular basis, so whether you are following the diet specific to the website or not, it’s just good stuff.

Vegetarian

The Chubby Vegetarian – Southern vegetarian cooking at it’s best, and authors Justin Fox Burks and Amy Lawrence have a cookbook, aptly titled The Southern Vegetarian Cookbook (no, Southern vegetarian is not an oxymoron).

101 Cookbooks – Author Heidi Swanson is definitely a vegetarian blog guru, with three cookbooks and her own restaurant to boot.

Vegan

Oh She Glows – Angela Liddon is another blogger who nursed herself from sickness to health with dietary changes.  Her recipes and photos are amazing, and she’s got a cookbook very close to release!

Chocolate-Covered Katie – While not every recipe on this blog is dessert, it’s definitely what I would consider a “dessert blog”…but Katie is a vegan, so her recipes follow suit.  She also has lots of amazing oatmeal variations.

Paleo/Primal

Nom Nom Paleo – I know a lot of people who follow the paleo/primal blueprint, and while I am not about to give up my crusty bread or my potatoes, Michelle Tam’s awesome blog and recipes makes me think I could definitely eat this way a lot.  She has a new cookbook (Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans) and the graphics and photography on her site are great too.

Stupid Easy Paleo – Steph, the blogger at Stupid Easy Paleo, not only shares delicious and beautiful recipes on her blog, she also offers a variety of resources to help readers get started on their road to a paleo lifestyle.

Low-Sodium

Sodium Girl – Because my dad has renal issues, he must follow a reduced-sodium diet, so this is a dietary lifestyle that’s important to me.  Jessica Goldman Foung, the blogger, healed her body from kidney failure and got herself off the transplant list by transforming her diet, and she’s made it her life’s work to make sure that others who need to follow a low-sodium diet don’t miss out on eating great food.  Jessica also has a cookbook, Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook.

Gluten-Free

Elana’s Pantry – Elana has a wealth of gluten-free recipes, but she also has lots of recipes to address other food sensitivities as well as lots of paleo recipes.  Elana has a book, Paleo Cooking from Elana’s Pantry: Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, and Dairy-Free Recipes.

A Year of Slow Cooking – As I stated in this review of her cookbook 365 Slow Cooker Suppers, Stephanie O’Dea was the first blogger I followed faithfully.  While her blog and books are not expressly about gluten-free cooking, Stephanie’s family follows a gluten-free diet due to her child’s diagnosis of celiac disease, so her recipes are all gluten-free or include a GF adaptation.

Obviously, this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as blogs that I follow, but these are some of my favorite that advocate a health-concious approach to eating or a specific dietary lifestyle.  What are some of your favorite blogs that address these subjects?  Do you make New Year’s resolutions?  Care to share?

Pay the Farmer (or Grocer) or Pay the Doctor

I love that saying.

Obviously no matter how healthy your diet is, you could still have health problems….there is no disputing that and that is not what that saying is meant to imply.

However, I don’t think you can argue that “you are what you eat”.  If we choose to fill our bodies with fresh, whole foods, we are more likely to live healthy, long lives than if we find our sustenance in processed junk.  I’m not even talking about saturated fats and all that jazz, because Lord knows I eat my fair share of bacon, eggs, milk, cheese, and butter.  I’m talking about real food, food that has been minimally processed-as in no added flavors, colors, or other chemical alterations.

I’ve been eating this way for about five years.  You know what?  I haven’t gained a pound, even though I used to eat lots of lowfat cheese and reduced-fat chips and crackers and mayo and sour cream.  Now I eat the full-fat (less-processed) versions of all of those things (and even make a lot of them myself) and I weigh exactly the same as I did five years ago. And I have my numbers (cholesterol, blood sugar, triglycerides, etc.) checked annually, and they are better thank they used to be (admittedly, I eat a 75% vegetarian diet now…but still). Gasp.

Still, it isn’t easy for me sometimes.  I just went to Whole Foods (a little less than affectionately known as “Whole Paycheck” to many) today to stock up on a few items that I can’t get at Publix or Bi-lo (the grocery stores close to my house).  I bought several bulk items (I love bulk bins more than I can put into words), some store-brand virgin coconut oil (usually it’s refined coconut oil sold at the larger stores….it’s, well, refined, and the coconut taste is gone, and it costs more), and some local milk and buttermilk (from Cruze Family Farm in Knoxville).  $59.00.  I cringed.  But then I reminded myself of the title of this post.

paythefarmer

I spend a lot of money on food.  A lot more than most people spend per person at the grocery store, probably…definitely a lot more than I used to spend.  The vast majority of what goes into my cart is fresh (perishable) food, and the rest is usually baking supplies.  It’s been a process.  It’s still a process, and I still crave (and occasionally eat) Doritos.  I like to remind myself, though, that (a) it’s still a lot less expensive than eating out, even at fast-food restaurants; and (b) dang, I eat well.  It’s all in the perspective.

Friday List: Ten Reasons to Cook for Yourself

I hear it all the time.  “I hate to cook.” “I can’t cook.” “Really it’s cheaper for me to eat out.”  Yada yada yada.  I’m not buying any of it.  We live in a society that’s increasingly dependent on others to feed us, from the basics (like the fact that most of us don’t have backyard gardens any more, and yours truly is guilty of that as well, at least until I get my raised garden beds planted this weekend-yippee!) to the not-so-basic (when was the last time you went to a birthday party where the cake and ice cream were made from scratch?).  There are lots of good reasons to good for yourself.  Here are some of my favorites.

1. To save money

Let’s start with the obvious.  You can argue with me all day long that if you are single or married/attached but don’t have children, you can really get by for less by eating out than you can buying groceries and cooking for one or two.  You know what?  It’s just not true.  I know this because I’ve been cooking for two for the last twelve years.  We can’t eat at a fast food restaurant for less than we can make a great meal at home that usually produces enough leftovers for one meal and sometimes more.  Period.  Unless you are dining on beef tenderloin, truffles (the fungus kind), and out-of-season artichokes at every meal, this argument is not going to fly with me.  Except that you could most certainly cook those foods at home for a whole lot cheaper than you could order them in a restaurant, so there.  My favorite exercise when I get stressed out about how much I spend on groceries is to calculate the cost-per-serving of specific meals and compare that cost to a comparable restaurant meal.  Never. Even. Comes close.

2.  You know what you’re eating

While the practical cook in me knows that cost is the original and most obvious reason that we take most of our meals at home, as I get older the ingredients really become the primary factor drawing me to my own kitchen rather than to restaurants night after night.  When I was younger I didn’t think too much about the ingredients in my food and wasn’t too turned off by processed foods with lots of ingredients.  When I became a label-reader, I discovered that even the most seemingly benign-even wholesome-foods (think bakery bread) were pretty heavily-laden with not-so-wholesome ingredients.  This led me on a quest to figure out how to make pretty much every thing I could from scratch.  You may not be quite as on the made-from-scratch bandwagon as I am, but the bottom line is this: if you cook it at home, you can know the ingredients.  100%.  If you eat it in a restaurant, this is nearly impossible.

3.  You can have whatever you like.

What are you craving?  Well cook it!  You can make whatever you want if you cook for yourself.  If you go to a restaurant, you’re at the mercy of the menu.

4.  If you do it enough, chances are that the food you make will start to taste better to you than restaurant food does.

Philip and I talk about this all the time.  Obviously, trained chefs in restaurants know more about cooking than me….but since I don’t really have the money to be going to restaurants with trained chefs all the time, I prefer the food I cook at home to what is offered in many of the restaurants that I can afford to frequent.  Really, restaurant food is often disappointing these days.  I’m definitely not stuck up about my cooking, but these days we have a lot of “we could have made this better at home” moments.

5.  Leftovers.

No, I don’t want to cook every night.  For that reason, I usually make meals that serve four.  Then we eat them twice.  Or I take the leftovers in my lunch, since packing a lunch is the bain of my existence.

6.  When you cook for yourself, you’ll eventually learn how to scrape together a pretty decent meal seemingly from thin air.

Saturday we had no plan for lunch.  We could have gone out to eat, but instead I made grilled cheese sandwiches with pesto, prosciutto, and  provolone.  We ate them with cauliflower soup that I had frozen.  If we didn’t cook for ourselves, we might have ended up with a frozen pizza.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

7.  You get to spend more time at home

As I get older my hermit nature really becomes more and more prevalent. By the time I get off from work, work out, make the commute home (not necessarily in that order), and kick off my shoes, the thought of leaving the house again generally makes me throw up in my mouth a little.  So cooking at home means that I don’t have to leave the house.

8. …..which means you can have dinner in your pajamas

Or your grubby running clothes, which is generally what I’m wearing when I eat dinner.  In fact, despite everything I said in #7 about not wanting to leave the house, there are many nights when the only thing that keeps me from getting Domino’s carry-out is the fact that I don’t want to get out of the car in my tank top and sports bra.  Well, that and #4.

9.  And you can watch the news while you eat dinner.

Dirty confession time.  Full disclosure.  Chattavore eats dinner in front of the television. TV trays and all.  Brian Williams tells us all about the news while we stuff our faces.  I know all the stuff about not eating in front of the TV.  Blah blah blah.  But I don’t have kids and when I do I’m sure we’ll eat at the table…but I like hanging out on the couch while I have my dinner.  So there.

10.  Family bonding time!

Cooking is one of Philip’s and my favorite things to do together.  He doesn’t fancy himself much of a cook but he sure can stir.  If you have kids, I’m sure you know how valuable cooking with them can be in terms of bonding time and teaching them good eating habits.  Many of my favorite memories of my grandparents are food-related in some way.  Food is an amazing bonding tool!

What are your favorite reasons to cook for yourself?

 

Blog Apathy

As I type this, it’s been nearly a week since I published a new post.  Sure, I had a meal at a locally-owned restaurant late last week that was decent enough to be blogged about.  Yes, there were Christmas goodies that I had the best of intentions to share the recipes with you.  But here’s the problem: apathy struck.

It’s not permanent, I promise.  The deal is, Christmas is already a little nuts.  My kitchen is an über-mess and of course we did the family thing on Christmas Eve and Christmas day.  I attempted some photos in my sister’s kitchen on Christmas morning but when you’re taking photos under duress (i.e. people want to eat) of things that are covered in icing (sweet rolls) in a kitchen you aren’t used to (where’s my step stool????) your photos probably won’t turn out and you’ll roll your eyes and delete the entire folder instead of just using the crappy photos.  I have to draw the “standards line” somewhere.

Then, of course, there’s all the couch surfing I’ve been doing lately.  A minor knee surgery last Friday has affected me way, way more than I anticipated.  My knee feels great….hardly any pain at all (a little itching, but I guess that just means it’s healing) and I popped out of general anesthesia with almost the energy of a marathon runner, telling my husband while I was in secondary recovery that my nurse better hurry up and eat her lunch because it was like two in the afternoon and I had not eaten since the midnight the night before and I needed to get some sustenance in my body.  I really wanted to go to Five Guys and get a ginormous burger but since traffic was insanity we settled for the Subway next door to the CVS where Philip filled my prescription for pain pills that I’ve barely touched.  Anyway, I have veered off topic.  Couch sitting. Surprisingly you can handle anesthesia like a champ and have almost zero pain and yet every activity you complete makes you feel like you need a nap.  On Sunday I removed my bandages and showered for the first time since the surgery then I had to come lie on the couch.  I am not joking.

I’m building my activity tolerance back up.  Yesterday I walked around the mall then came home and pouted because I felt like hot death and I can’t take a bath (sutures) and my back and legs were killing me.  Needless to say, there hasn’t been much cooking in my house and there’s been even less photography.  I am taking a Photoshop class and re-reading Plate to Pixel for like the third time and still considering what I want my mark on the food blog world to be (besides my restaurant reviews, obviously).  Hopefully I’ll be back in full force by this weekend, because I can at least eat food that someone else cooked.

Sorry if this is TMI all the way around.  I suppose I just needed an outlet and God knows my poor husband, who has waited on me hand and foot (I love that man!) has heard me whine enough over the last week about how tired I am and how much I feel like a big baby because I can’t do anything without needing a nap and (ironically) I am tired of being so whiny.  Hopefully my apathy ends soon.  Anyone need any recipes for New Years?

How Chattavore Celebrates Small Business Saturday….

Here’s the thing…Black Friday doesn’t do it for me.  I’d much rather be hanging out with my family at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving (did someone miss the memo that Thanksgiving is on Thursday and therefore does not qualify as Black Friday?) and I’d definitely much rather be in bed at the ungodly hours of the morning that “door busters” start.  I get that there are lots of deals and I’m sure the people-watching is extremely entertaining…it’s just not my thing; never has been.

What is my thing, though, is Small Business Saturday, which was the brainchild of American Express.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a “Small Business Saturday” banner for my blog because I don’t own an AMEX-accepting business.  Suckage.  Oh well.  I still love the idea of it.  I’ll tell you what I love more….Small Business Everyday.  I’m not going to lie.  I love Target and since I (somewhat begrudgingly at times) live in Suburbia I do plenty of grocery shopping at Big Box grocery chains.  Such is life in these parts.  However, I do my best to support locally-owned businesses whenever possible, which is why you’ll never see a true “chain” (small, family-owned chains don’t count) reviewed here.  I still buy as many of my groceries as possible straight from the hands that grew them (or processed them, whatever the case my be) at Main Street Farmers Market.  Chattanooga’s clothing market is somewhat abysmal for those of us who like to be fashionable on a not-that-large budget, but I’m hopeful that one of these days I’ll be able to purchase the majority of my clothes and shoes from local companies as well.  The bottom line is that a percentage of every penny that you spend in your community goes back into the community, but a larger percentage goes in from pennies spent at locally-owned businesses, and our country was built on Mom & Pop shops.  Anyway….here’s what I did today:

Untitled

We ate lunch at Sugar’s on Broad Street. Since I’ll be writing a full review to post in the morning, I won’t go into too much detail….but suffice it to say that my hair still smells like smoked meat, and that is NOT a bad thing.

Next we visited the soon-to-open Dish T’Pass Cooking School & Catering Company. I’ll be posting more about them later too….their physical location (in the old St. Barnabas building across from the downtown YMCA on 6th Street) is still a work in progress but I stopped by to meet Amanda Varnell, who co-owns Dish T’Pass with Sarah Hooper and is the managing partner and primary cooking instructor. Amanda started the company teaching cooking classes as Cooking Live in 2006 and after a series of serendipitous events the two are opening the Scenic City’s first cooking school. Excitement! I will visit and do a full-on post with before and after pictures and loads more info once their location is all bright and shiny and beautiful (they’re getting close)!

Our next stop was Mia Cucina, my favorite kitchen store (and, to my knowledge, the only fully-stocked locally owned kitchen store in Chattanooga) to dream about Le Creuset and pick up a pie shield, which I determined I needed (not wanted, needed) after adapting a recipe for a pecan tart into a pie on Wednesday and nearly charring the crust. Disaster was averted but only narrowly. We also made an unplanned purchase: a great pot rack that I am so excited about because this means that I will be able to free up most of a cabinet. It’s the little things….

Diptic

Last, but definitely not least, we made a stop at the River Street Makery to buy some soda from one of our favorite local businesses, and look what we found…..

Wait for it…….

Diptic

The Pure Sodaworks bottling operation is up and running! We’ve been waiting for this with baited breath. Right now, they have Café Cola (with Velo Coffee!!!!), Apple Pie, Hibiscus Lemon, and Honey Lime. We bought a 4-pack of cola and a mix & match 4-pack of the others. Then we went ahead and ordered from the fountain….

Philip had a strawberry-jalapeño, which he said was especially spicy today, and I had the special seasonal flavor, pumpkin pie. It really, REALLY tasted like pumpkin pie. They are truly amazing soda jerks (and alchemists)!

Pure Sodaworks on Urbanspoon

And that, my friends, is how Chattavore does Small Business Saturday!