Month: November 2007

zdepth writes:

I know you [are] a kitchenphobe, but STOP USING CANNED VEGGIES. They don’t have half the flavor of fresh.

I used fresh vegetables in my first crock experiment – well, carrots and potatoes and onions – and they didn’t turn out. They were still too firm and as such didn’t add anything to the dish. That’s why I bought smaller potatoes. For the last experiment I had a yam and I sliced it up, but cleaning and chopping up vegetables is not something I’m likely to get into the habit of doing regularly. So that’s why I used canned vegetables in my last experiment – I knew the carrots would be soft. Would frozen vegetables be preferable? Because if you think I’m going to shuck and cut kernels of corn off of a cob, or picking peas out of a pod, YOU’S CRAZY!

See here’s the thing about vegetables – the ones I like (carrots, broccoli, peas, tomatoes) I’m happy to eat raw rather than go to the trouble of prepping and cooking them. Potatoes are an obvious exception.

Geisel’s saying that the solution may be to parboil the vegetables (not an option for a potless and kitchen-impatient man) or simply keep them in the crockpot longer, but I’m already cooking dishes that are supposed to take 6-8 hours for 8-10 hours. Kenn says to salt the vegetables before I cook them to soften them up. Any other advice?

Day 20: ice cream 100 apple 100 licorice 200 more licorice etc 150 crockery 200 ice cream 100 granoli 110 = 960 calories

Things I’m most looking forward to eating when the deal is done:

Falafully Good!
plate of nachos with lots of guacamole, refried beans and olives
a big bag of candy from The Candy Aisle
pizza with feta, sundried tomato & kalamata olives
Scottish eccles cake and a florentine from Max’s Deli
The Naam’s sesame fries with miso gravy and some hot apple crisp at 1 in the morning.
Kettle Chips cheddar beer flava
Timmy Ho’s sour cream donut
DQ cappuccino Skor blizzard or Ben & Jerry’s Vermonty Python (ps – did you know that there’s a B&J shop in Coquitlam?)
butter chicken (buffet at New India restaurant) and gulab jamun

Earlier today: Picked out the tiniest whitish potatoes that I could find. Some are no bigger in diameter than a dollar coin. I also picked up a white onion (I’ve tried red and uh…regular brown so it’s time for the white) and a couple of thin yams. I put those all in the bottom. A can of spinach on top of that, and a can of carrots and a can of peas, but I drained both those last two and put their water into a bowl with a chicken boullion cube and microwaved it for 2 minutes. While that was happening I dusted the stuff in the crock with a heaping tablespoon of curry powder. I also put in four grape tomatoes for uh…garnish? The hot chicken broth I cooled with a dash of skim milk and into that I put a heaping tablespoon of curry powder, mixed it up and poured it over everything. Then I realized I forgot the small banana, so I chopped that over the pile. Then I put on three chicken breasts and put almost a bulb of garlic on top with the cloves or half-cloves equidistantly spread. Another heaping tbsp of curry powder, a pinch of ginger powder and the bounty was overflowing so I had to squish it down to put the lid on.

Just now: I don’t know what exactly my expectations were for the slow cooker, but they haven’t been met. I’d say I’m about 60% satisfied with the results so far – the smell during cooking is always better than the taste for some reason. Still got a few more experiments to try before I give up on it, though, such as:

pumpkin pie spice & orange
acorn squash & nutmeg
corn & black beans
and when I get off my diet, stuffing & swiss cheese.

All with chicken breasts, of course.

Day 19: apple 100 granoli 110 miscellaneous bits while I prepared my crockery (peas, banana, tomatoes etc) 50 popsicle 25 orange 100 fudgsicle 70 crockery 250 = 800

Oh no! Beowulf is playing at my favourite theater, The Rio! What do I do?

So has everyone gone to see No Country for Old Men yet?

“They” have these 140 calorie ice cream sandwiches which are great. But I learned today that the freezer at work doesn’t get cold enough to keep them in a suitably solid state so I conveniently had to pig out on them today. Normally I wouldn’t eat 3 servings of ice cream (well, not on this diet anyway).

Part of this diet that I haven’t addressed is the frequency strategy. You’ll notice that as I catalogue what I’ve been eating (at the bottom of these posts) it’s all in chunks of about 200 calories or less. The strategy is to eat about 100-200 calories every 2 hours or so. This in some way is supposed to trick your body into losing weight somehow, I’m not really sure what the theory is. But apparently it’s working. On Medifast it was 5 packs of their powdery food, which would be shakes or soup or chili or some such, then a more normal meal of some lean meat and green vegetables, and also they had these delicious bars, basically candy bars, that I think were about 200 calories – you could have one of those a day as well and boy howdy I looked forward to that. Presently I buy Quaker Chewy granola bars (but just the Rocky Road, S’mores and Chocolate Chip ones because they’re the lowest calorie bars and also they have 8 in a box whereas the yogurt ones only have 5 for the same price – also in a strange twist the fruity bars are way more calories that the candyish bars, but I digress). A further strategy I employ is to really slow down and savour these treats. Tonight while I was enjoying a granola bar I picked at it like a bird; it probably took me about 20 minutes to eat the one g-bar. If that’s something you can pull off, it helps under any circumstance because it takes a while for your body to tell your brain that it’s full, and sometimes we overeat because we don’t get that signal in time.

Tomorrow: Crock Pottery Experiment #3

Apropos of nothing, I finally got through Tenacious D’s “The Metal” on Guitar Hero III. Tres dificile!

Day 17: granoli 110 orange 100 creamsicle 25 crockery 200 Goodies 150 granoli 130 crockery 200 creamsicle 25 granoli 140 = 1080 calories

Day 18: ice cream 140 granoli 110 ice cream 140 ice cream 140 chicken 200 granoli 110 peas 100 granoli = 1140 calories