Toren Atkinson

Well today was exciting if your idea of excitement is other people’s kitchen stories and meetings with financial planners.

I was keen to try out my new crock pot so I picked up some vegetables and spices. I figured instead of getting a whole chicken, as suggested, I’d get a pack of chicken breasts. That way it would be both healthier and easier, as they’re all pre-cut and whatnot; I don’t have to pick anything off of bones, skin the thing, or otherwise “process” the meat. I got free range chicken from the butcher on Granville & 11th. I put it on a bed of tiny potatoes, onions, garlic, lemon, carrots, mushrooms and cranberries, and put some typical spices on top like rosemary and oregano, plus a couple of different mustards. As I type this it’s been in there cooking for over 6 hours so before I go to bed (my bedtime is somewhere between 1am and 3am) I’m gonna see how it all turns out. All I know is that right now it smells great!

As you may guess, I’m not used to cooking things. I am a lazy, lazy man and perhaps just as significantly, my palate is so easy to please that I’m perfectly happy eating my presliced turkey cold, right out of the bag, and I do the same with corn, green beans and other canned vegetables, chili, et al. Normally heating food up is, to me, a superfluous step that doesn’t notably improve the eating experience, and it just takes valuable time standing in front of a stove or microwave when I could be shoving something in my mouth during that time. Obviously there are exceptions. I don’t like cold refried beans, for example. And conversely there are some things that I prefer cold over reheating, like pizza or most takeout, especially Chinese food. Reheated potatoes are practically inedible.

UPDATE: Stuffed! Well my first crock attempt went over pretty well. The carrots & potatotes weren’t as soft or moist as I thought they would be. The cranberries and lemon and mustard were tops, however. I put in a whole bulb of garlic and I think next time I’ll use two. Really I could eat a meal of just roasted or stewed garlic. Well maybe not, but I like to have a clove with each bite of whateverelse. The meal as a whole was not as good as say buying a roasted chicken from Max’s, but it was only my first attempt. The biggest downfall is that unlike everything else I’ve been eating, I know exactly how many calories I’m taking in, because for the most part it’s prepackaged, except the fruits & vegetables. Figuring out how much to eat to fit within my current regime is really just guesstimation, to use the parlance of our times. This may be the first day I’ve cheated on my diet, and if so it’s out of ignorance.

In financial news I invested in mutual funds today. I was just going to take the two old, lame investments I had and fold them into my checking account but the financial planner was such a cool guy that he convinced me to…do what I just said I did above. I explained to him that I don’t care for money, I don’t like thinking about or dealing with money, that more or less I didn’t want to be there and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t have to decide what to do with my maturing GIC, and most importantly I don’t understand 99.99999% of what goes on in a bank. So he talked slow and used small words with lots of diagrams in crayon and to sum up: maybe in five years I’ll have more money than what I invested. And if not, boo schmoo hoo. He did make a point of making part of my investment part of the “Global Sustainability Fund” so with luck my investments aren’t going into Zyklon B factories and suchlike. It made me think that probably the most useful Slackademics class for me would be money management/investments.

Day 12: Leftover slackademics apple cranberry pie 220 (all carbs) smallest banana I could get with cocoa & Splenda + Thinsations 300 grilled turkey avec mustard 180 crock pot experiment ???probably 300-500 calories??? = 1000-1200 calories???

I went to a callback this morning after a fitful sleep and for some inexplicable reason I didn’t feel like riding my bike downtown, so I took the bus. I think it was because subconsciously I knew it would give me the opportunity to pick up a $30 slow cooker at London Drugs, which I did.

Day 10: orange 100 candy 200 cookie 70 orange 100 turkey 200 can of green beans 50 vegetable chili 180 = 900 calories

Day 11: apple 100 granola bar 110 ice cream 100 ukulelology pie 200 more ukelelology pie (not looking good here) 200 Breyers fudgy bar 70 carrots 120 = 900 calories

I covered some of this stuff in this post from April, but let’s review some more Fat Facts. This is important setup for some of my points later on, so slog through it. This I ordain.

90% VEGETARIAN

I don’t eat fish or really any seafood. I rarely eat pork (I’ll have ham on a sandwich or pizza occasionally) and beef even less. I do eat turkey and chicken. They’re the healthiest meat (minus fish which I can gloat about not eating for environmental reasons but really I despise the taste) and poultry is delicious. However, I only eat the white meat, and avoid the skin.

POINTLESS FOODS

There are certain foods I call pointless foods. Rice, pasta/noodles (of the Orient or otherwise) and bread are pointless foods. They’re pointless because they’re starchy carbs, so they’re off diet, and I don’t find them satisfying. When I order Indian or Thai I skip the rice, but will take naan instead (I know I just said I don’t enjoy bread but naan’s an exception). At Thanksgiving dinner there may be rolls right next to the stuffing, I’ll skip the roll but take extra stuffing. The problem with pointless foods is that if they’re still around after I’ve eaten everything else, oh, I’ll eat them, just like anything else that’s put in front of me. So I make a point not to get them in front of me. Simply put, these foods are not worth it to eat, as far as I’m concerned.

THE CUPBOARD IS BARE, THANK YOG

Another aspect of what I’d like to call my eating disorder is that I eat when I’m not hungry. This happens for two reasons: a) I’m really craving a specific food, usually instant-gratification junk foods such as cheddar beer chips, taro bubble tea or a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Vermonty Python ice cream (which I can’t find anywhere anymore – was it a limited edition or something? Not that I should have access to this anyway); 2) I’m bored or procrastinating, like for azzample when I draw, I’ll make some weak passes at a difficult bit (and starting a drawing is always a difficult bit) and then take a break which may involve a video game or eating or both. As a result of the Cravy Craverson Effect and the Bore Me To Munchies Effect (especially the latter) I’ve learned that a successful strategy is not to keep any food in the house. This has the extra bonus insofar as when I really do have to eat something, I have to get on my bike and exercise in order to fetch it. That’s one of the boons of having been evicted actually – I am no longer two short blocks from butter tarts and eccles cakes at 11:45pm.

zdepth says:

Get a crockpot. You can usually find them at thrift stores. Here’s what you do: [explains how to cook a chicken & vegetables with ease] When its done cooking eat it. Or some of it anyway. The rest put in a container for later. Except, leave the fluid in the crockpot. You should remove the meat from the bones. Put the bones back in the crockpot. Cook it for another hour or two. Strain all the non-fluid stuff and as much of the chicken fat as you can get. You now have chicken broth. You can make soup or you could use it to cook rice (and you can use the crockpot for that) and have yummy rice. In total, this should take maybe twenty minutes of your time (prep, finish, etc). It’s healthy and yummy and easy.

Okay, I’m listening to what you’re saying. This is intriguing. Permit me to respond, and don’t take this as naysaying or dismissal, because I am actually considering the benefits of this and trying to fairly weigh the idea vs reality. Additionally, I don’t want to pooh-pooh feedback because I do like the ideas and suggestions all y’all are providing in the comments.

Alpha Phase: Get a crockpot. This is probably something to put on my Christmas wish list because I don’t envision this as something I can ride home with in my backpack. I guess I could take the bus. I’ll contemplate this on the Tree of Woe.

Beta Phase: Buy a whole chicken. This is an intriguing notion. I never buy raw meat so going into this area of the supermarket will be a new adventure! Normally when I want poultry I do one of three things:

1) Buy one of the roasted whole chickens from Safeway or Max’s Deli. It’s been a while since I did the Safeway thing but the chickens at Max’s are stuffed with oranges and onions and seasoned with rosemary. Good stuff.
2) Buy a package of precooked grilled turkey strips and crack a bottle of Grey Poupon.
3) Buy peppercorn or sundried tomato or flavour de jour sliced turkey in the deli section of Safeway and do as 2 or occasionally make a sandwich with it.

Gamma Phase (optional): Storing the chicken. I’d pretty much have to get the chicken on the same day that I’d cook it. There is no room in the 2 fridges here. No problem if I plan properly.

Delta Phase: Eat the chicken. Yum.

Epsilon Phase: Leftovers. See CUPBOARD IS BARE DILEMMA listed above. This is probably the biggest drawback to the idea.

Zeta Phase: Broth benefit. I of course would have nothing to do with broth because I don’t make soup or rice (again, having no pots or pans or a strainer for that matter, and generally not being a fan of soup or rice!). I guess Kodos would be a fan of this phase though.

Eta Phase: Washing the dishes. I think we all know my feelings on this matter. If I had to choose only one reason not to cook, this would be it.

All of that said, this sounds like an interesting project and I’d like to do it just to see how it turns out. A fun and delicious experiment! Would I do it on a regular basis? Depends on initial success. Certainly not as convenient as just buying cooked chicken. Is there any difference in how healthy a roasted chicken is vs a slow-cooked one? Or in taste?

Next exciting issue: Pizza Party

Day 8: granola bar 130 + apple 100 + granola bar 110 + orange 100 + ice cream 100 + granola bar 110 + turkey in a can! 200 + misc party snacks (about a 6-10 chips some with bean dip, a chocolate covered espresso bean, 3 grape tomatoes and a couple carrot sticks) 100 = 940 calories.

Did anyone notice that I used a) and 2)? If you did, you win. Maybe there’s a puzzle in every blog entry here on thickets.net/toren – think about it!