#158 Christmas Baking & Diets (12/20/12)

My willpower over Christmas baking is almost nil.  We are trying to be good and do up lower calorie jams, candied ginger (high sugar, but you only eat one or two), etc for our general baking.  But then there is the stuff out of the daily recipe book that we are trying.  December seems to be mostly deserts.  We have skipped a bunch for caloric reasons, but some are just too tempting to skip. 

Then a co worker of mine gave me some homemade fudge and a marshmallow chocolate log slices.  My wife and I have been sharing them.  However on the day that I received them and they were sitting on my desk, they were calling my name and I couldn’t resist trying some of them. 

The other day, my wife’s desk was the hub of activity so all of the boxes Christmas chocolates that customers were leaving for the office sat on her desk.  She had greater will power than I would have; she just tried two of the truffles and skipped the Pot of Gold.  I would have tried some of each I’m sure.

Our MIL brought over some Christmas baking too.  Some cakes and something else that is perfectly dangerous.  Popcorn Twists Caramel Corn.  We have been pacing ourselves on eating that, and we are probably thankful that she only gave a small container.  This is a recipe that would be diet derailment to make I’m sure, because I wouldn’t stop eating until it’s gone. 

At Christmas there is just a myriad of things to try and most of which are delicious.  It has been a lifetime habit to try at LEAST one of everything offered.  It is a very difficult habit to break.  At this point I guess the compromise is not to try everything on the same day.  Try one or two things today, another tomorrow etc, instead of trying everything now, and seconds on things tomorrow, with new options as well. 

The other hard thing is, with most items being other peoples homemade baking; it is very difficult to log it on MFP.  I am trying to log with best intentions, but finding it frustrating and a little annoying to see my calories be over most days this past little while.  But I am trying to log to be true to the system, and that is helping keeping me from grabbing another nibble in the late evening.  

I guess this is Excuse #10 – Holiday Cheat/Treats.  There really isn’t a rebuttal for this.  It is just that, an excuse.  Just break the habit and remember moderation is the best I can do.  I’m working on curbing that habit, but I don’t think I will have that licked this holiday.  The goal is to not gain weight though, so let’s see how I do.  We are also keeping priority on making some time to work out so maybe, just maybe there will be a loss in the next two weeks. 

#153 Update in General (11/08/12)

Well, I was right, I didn’t get in and out of IM appointment as quickly as last time.  I got in to see the nurse right away, but then was waiting for the doctor for two hours.  Apparently the doctor I was supposed to see got snowed in, so he was filling in.  He said I was a low risk patient for surgery next week.  That is good news, nothing I didn’t know though.  As a precaution he might order a nebulizer before surgery to make sure my asthma is calm.  Not a bad idea, so that at least made it a little worthwhile for an appointment. 

While I had someone, I asked him about weight loss and nutrition.  He in general said to go to a nutritionist, as he didn’t want to give me bad advice.  So I did say what we were doing for Carb/Protien/Fat proportions, and asked where squashes fell in the vegetable category ie potatoes > broccoli.  It is somewhere in the middle, which is what I had figured.  Overall, our diet plan is pretty good, from what he was saying.  The problem is sticking to the plan. 

As far as our “diet” is going, the past few months have been a valley of denial.  Not going completely off the rail, but we’re not really making progress either.  My wife stopped logging onto MFP a while ago now.  Without her doing it along side, I’ve been lazy with my logging, and not doing it to the extent it should be done, as well as missing days entirely. 

I’ve stopped walking at lunch, even before the snow arrived.  The main reason was sweat.  The more I walked, the more I wanted to walk.  That is great in theory.  The downside to this is; it is a break at work, and the first place I sweat is my head.  My hair was beginning to look pretty slick in the afternoons.  Yuck.  The doctor gave me an idea though.  Nearing the end of the day, go up and down the flight of stairs in our building a few times.  It is only a few minutes of workout, but it is more calories burned than walking, and it is at the end of the day, so I wouldn’t need to worry as much about the sweat in my hair.  So I’m hoping to get that into action, maybe even today.  I say this as I snack on Kellogg’s Krave cereal, with 0 nutritional value, other than “fortified vitamins” I’m sure, as an after lunch snack.  It is a good think I only have a measured portion of this, as this cereal is a very moreish item.  If left unchecked I’m sure I would eat the entire box.  Alas, I think we will buy these anymore once the box is done. 

 

On the hopefully up side of our diet, we have purchased a book; A Year Full of Recipes.   So far this is inspiring us to cook from scratch, thus having less processed foods.  With some modifications to reduce oil used and various spices we don’t care for, these recipes have been a hit, and most meals being between 300-500 calories with sides on the recipe.  My wife has been doing the cooking so far, which is a lovely thing for her to do.  They are very filling dinners that are fairly nutritionally balanced, without overdoing it on the calories.  Yes they have some deserts, and we will probably make them, but the idea is only have deserts once/twice a week, instead of every day, which is a routine we have fallen into, even if they are small desserts.

 

I hope this meeting with the doctor is enough to help get me started again, be more focused on losing weight, while I have the time, before I try to get pregnant.  In the past year, since we bought the Wii Fit, I have lost about 12 pounds.  That is one pound a month.  This is not a large progress, but it is solid progress in my eyes.  We’ve made small changes here and there, but seem to lack the combination of using the small changes together to make a larger difference.  Hopefully over the next year we can work on that.  The one thing is though, we have been at this a year.  We haven’t been 100% goal oriented, but have majority kept going, kept plugging away.  I think this is the longest period of time where weight management has been at least remotely on my mind.  Some things have taken the focus off, Deb quitting smoking, going on a vacation, clearing a hoarder house, and a cruise full of buffets, but we have kept going and kept most of the weight loss off, so now is a time to start going down again. 

Everything in life has peaks and valleys, but at least life isn’t flat and boring.  

Sorry for the long winded post, just a lot to say today I guess.

#135 Adventures in Apple Sauce (09/26/12)

Well, as mentioned in #130, we have a LOT of crab apples.  This is our adventure in making about 150 pounds of apple sauce.  This post is picture heavy. 

To start the mass production of apple sauce, we needed a plan.  This is what I came up with.  First day we tried this procedure. 

Pick large bowls of apples using the parachute method, holding a sheet under the person picking to catch the apples.  After the first afternoon of picking two bowls at a time, we then switched to picking a Rubbermaid tote at a time, and for the de-bugging (literally) fill the bowls and leave outside while processing the previous bunch. In the picture below, is my wife (left), me (middle), and my FIL (right). 

Here are a few pictures of our crab-apple trees. 

  

We then leave the bowls outside for a while to de-bug.  The freshly picked apples have a lot of lovely lady bugs, and a few other icky things that we try to have vacated from the bowl before bringing into the house. 

Alas, only a portion of them do leave, as this is our capture container that we empty after each bowl set.

  

We bring the mostly de-bugged bowls inside to our sorting station; our couch/coffee table with a chuck-it platter/bucket and a container for the good ones.  When full the good bin is approximately the two large bowls sorted down, which will fill our two cooking pots well. 

 From there we take them to the wash basin; our kitchen sink.

Then, as is, the apples go into the boil pots.  We add water to the pots, just below the top of the apples, about two depths down.

We bring the pots to a boil, and then let them simmer for about an hour.  Till they look like that, and can be smooshed with a spoon.

None of the water gets drained off.  Per put the contents into our food mill. 

Once a pot is process this is what remains, one pot equals about one of these bowls of apples sauce, and a bunch of stem/seed/pulp mess.  In this whole process we found, we have three crab apple trees, one tree that produces rose wildish apples, and one that produces white apples.  The picture below shows the variation of sauces; rose (left), white (Top Right), crab-apples (Bottom Right).  The two wild apple trees didn’t yield much.  The shown apple sauce was the total yield. 

 

We leave the apple sauce in the bowls to cool, usually ends up being overnight, due to timing.  Then we put about 4 cups of apples sauce into Ziploc baggies, in order to freeze them.  This is a very small portion of the apple sauce bags.  Each bag weighs just shy of two pounds, and we have about 150 pounds of apple sauce, so far.

 

While talking with a neighbour, he let us know, apples run in three year cycles, small, medium and lots yield.  This was the LOT’s year.  Our first run at sauce was just picking the apples that could be easily reached from the crab apple trees. 

In our first bunch of turning sauce into something we made fruit leathers with just crab apples and some corn starch.  They were very sour/potent.  The next run we tried something a little different.   We followed this recipe inspired by Sunrype fruit/veggie leathers.

               3 Cups Crab Apple Sauce

               3 Cups of Boiled Carrots

               1 Cup of White Sugar

               1 Cup of Boiling water

               Blend the sauce and carrots together. 

Add the sugar to the water to create syrup

Add Mixture to blender

Mix a bit more. 

Pour onto dehydrator tray liners.

Run the dehydrator for about 8 hours.  This yields about 12-16 fruit leathers.

In an epiphany, we also tried the same recipe substituting carrots for yams (sweet potatoes).  Both recipes turned out quite nice, however fairly sweet.  On the next bunch we are going to try and cut the sugar in half.  Each fruit leather has about one fruit serving and one vegetable serving. 

Once we had finished the adventure of saucing, there were still so many crab apples left in the trees.  That added with the knowledge that next year we might not get as many, we decided to pick more.  Last night we picked another 110 pounds of apples.  We still haven’t picked the trees clean, just got a little higher with a small step ladder.  On our first bunch, we did our first run at actual canning.  We just heated the sauce to boiling again, sanitized the jars by added boiling water then emptying, and putting the sauce directly into jars and adding the snap lids.  This morning, they had snapped.  Yay.  A movie quote comes to mind where a city lady inherits a farm and starts making baby food with the produce.  As she is leaning to can, she says “I will be domesticated.”  We have officially, successfully canned.  We are domesticated. 

I will try to remember to take a photo of the frozen apple sauce, and whatever we can right away, along with a picture of the finished reduced sugar fruit leathers. 

Any suggestions on recipes involving crab apples and sauce would be appreciated.  I think our next trial run, other than leathers, is apple butter. 

#130 Crab Apples (09/14/12)

As I have probably mentioned before, we have fruit to deal with, and lots of it.  We have managed to process the Nanking Cherry tree of my MIL.  We have a bunch in our freezer to do something with later.  Our next major project is crab apples.  OMG we have a lot.  On the first “pick” we got two huge bowls of crab apples off of one branch and a half.  We have 4 trees to do (and one wild apple tree). 

We have figured a fairly quick way to pick.  It requires three people, but we can fill two-three bowls in about 10 minutes.  Two people hold a sheet as a catch cloth; the third person pulls rapidly and just drops them.  As a sheet holder you can sometimes help with the picking with one hand, but main focus is making sure there is a large catch area. 

The first night we were picking we brought the bowls directly into the house; bad idea.  There was a Lady Bug parade.  We kept putting them in a glass with leaves, but out they came, so we covered it a bit and added as we found more, but sometimes the ladybugs would climb out as we were trying to add to the glass.  As small as they are it was hard to keep them wrangled.  We had to empty the glass a few times through the processing.  When the lady bugs were left to themselves they would climb the bowl to the rim, and just start walking around the bowl, hence the parade.  (There were a couple spiders too, but I ignored them and my wife took care of those.)  The next night of picking, we left the bowls outside for about an hour or so and most of them had vacated the bowls. 

As far as processing the apples first night we tried two kinds of batches.  Once batch, we topped and tailed the apples to get rid of the stem and the bottom fluff, which took a considerable amount of time considering the quantity of the apples.  The other batch we just washed and threw in the pot, to see if we could negate the topping and tailing to expedite the process.  Once they were boiled for about an hour we processed them in the food mill we bought from Bed Bath and Beyond to get rid of the seeds and what not.  We have come to the conclusion, we can save the topping and tailing and just boil them.  Once through the food mill, it takes all the needed stuff out, and tastes the same.  Yay on that one. 

For the first batch, we made 7 trays of fruit leathers by just taking the apple sauce from the food mill, adding corn starch to taste, and pouring onto the dehydrator.  In one of the trays we added cinnamon.  The second batch we have processed so far, we just froze into Ziploc baggies as flat bricks.  

As a little note, it is easier to process the apples while still warm in the food mill, than processing them cold.  More pliable I guess. 

This weekend is going to be an apple processing fiasco.  The frost is coming and so we have to get as much off the trees as soon as possible.  In order to accommodate the huge amount of bricks we will be freezing we have purchases a second small upright freezer.  I will try and take photos this time around to give an idea of the process.  By the end of this weekend, I may hate crab apples, or love the process. 

This year we probably won’t make it to do anything with the berries we have, as we think some are choke cherries, and some others that might be edible, but haven’t confirmed, so we haven’t got the time to organize what to do with them.  I guess that will be next year’s project. 

When trying to figure out the best way of processing the crab apples, we ended up watching a YouTube video of making crab apple jelly.  It looks a lot easier than I thought, so we will probably give it a try, once we have everything processed into apple sauce and frozen. 

#119 Too Much (08/21/12)

Do you ever feel like there is just too much going on?  Like you are juggling and you start with one ball, then add another, and anther.  Three balls not too bad, but then more keep coming, you keep adding to the circle of balls you are juggling until you feel if anything else comes at you everything will come crashing down. 

Crohn’s is somewhat new to my life.  My mom lived with it from her 20’s and in the end died from a spinoff of the disease.  It is funny though, it never seemed to be a topic of discussion in our house growing up.  I knew she didn’t eat green vegetables as they hurt her stomach, and a few other things here and there.  She occasionally had to have Boost meal drinks on top of her meals to help boost her calories.  Over the years she had multiple surgeries to remove pieces of her intestine.  I’m pretty sure she was on prentizone to help manage the crohn’s.  Even though I lived with someone majorly affected by crohn’s all of my juvenile life, I don’t know much about the disease, probably more than the general population, but not much.  Now that I have it, (one juggle), my Virgo self needs to research it (two juggle). 

In the attempt to lose weight (three juggle) in order to get pregnant (four juggle) my wife and I are eating healthy, which is helping for the diet requirement for Crohn’s which was suggested, basically eat from the Canada Food Guide, and minimize animal fats. Originally I didn’t think that was much of an issue, but my wife brought up the question “Does that include dairy and eggs?”  In our house that is a major source of protein. Thus we may have possible major changes in diet (five juggle), but at the very lease tracking my diet through My Fitness Pal back to a higher degree of accuracy to get a better view of my macros, including the vitamins I take to make sure I’m getting the nutrients I need, especially for when I’m pregnant.

Also along the trying to get pregnant list, the polyp is the next issue (six juggle). Not a major thing (hopefully), but still something bugging my noodle. 

Then we have the general living category, learning to can fruit and deal with a mass harvest (seven juggle).  My job, thankfully isn’t that stressful, but does occupy a fair amount of my day (eight juggle), preparing the house for before I get pregnant (pre nesting), like personalizing the master bedroom (nine) organizing our storage (ten), clearing out non essentials to make room for baby stuff (eleven), preparing for the cruise (twelve).  That is a dozen things up in the air right now, some more stressful than others; the last one a good one, but we’ve never been on a cruise so I don’t know what to prep for. This is all stuff that is either a have to deal with or really want to deal with but I’m feeling very overwhelmed.  I just feel I could sleep for a week to let things settle in my head then have a game plan.  But for the most part, everything is happening as it happens.  As long as the dozen juggles doesn’t turn into a baker’s dozen before the cruise, I think the cruise will give me the much needed rest from the regular day to day to come back with Vim and Vigor to attack the next thing that needs to be dealt with.

#109 Finally past 12 (08/14/12)

The past month or so it seems that I have been going from 10 pounds to 12 pounds to 10 pounds back to 12 back to 10.  It has been really annoying.  Finally this past weigh in I made it to 14.3 pounds.  Finally. 

This past Sunday we cooked up a storm, my MIL, my wife and I.  We made some scones, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, chuckin popcorn, nanking cherry pudding and candied pecans.  I know, I know, not too healthy, but when cooking we were a bit more heath conscious, so snacks for alternate store bought ones.  Then for dinner I made a rose parmesan sauce with tortellini, garlic toast not sopped in butter, and the appy was a boccacini cheese, tomato salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing.  We found it was just as good as our favourite dish from the Olive Garen, but a lot less fat and crammed calories, and a fraction of the cost, which makes it better. 

Here’s to hoping to reach the 15 pound mark this weekend. 

#38 Cooking Disaster (05/01/12)

Last night as mentioned in yesterday’s blog, I was going to cook a lovely stir fry (No oil in the cooking though).  We have been getting fairly good at them.  HOWEVER, last night turned out horrible.  I wanted to make a curry stir fry, and thought we had some curry seasoning to create this piece.  We didn’t.  What we did have was this Thai Red Curry packet; just add chicken, kind of thing.  I’m not sure if it was just past expiry or just bad to begin with.  When opening I smelled it and it wasn’t bad per say, but the smell didn’t woo me.  I should have stopped there.  Into the pot went the sauce, and then I added some stuff to make the sauce go further.  Then I added all of our last week’s cut vegetables; continued cooking. 

Once it started cooking, the smell seemed to be getting worse.  We tried the sauce taste, it wasn’t the best taste, it was a little flat, so we added some more seasoning, trying to liven it up.  I fried (no oil, just some soya sauce) up some tofu to keep it firm then added to mix; tasted the sauce again.  It was a little better, but no woo factor.  The smell didn’t seem to be getting any better either.  We left it be though.  By this time my wife and I were getting fairly hungry, so we figured we would just deal with it, it couldn’t be that bad.  I cooked up some noodles to have with this mix.  To have dinner, we put the mix overtop of the noodles.  We sat down to eat, had a bite of the cauliflower that was in the mix, and the aftertaste from the sauce was BAD.  Horrible. Terrible.

Alas, we threw out the meal.  We were very disappointed.  We hadn’t had veggies for lunch, and now our veggies for dinner were ruined.  We were very hungry by this point, so we cooked the fasted almost balanced meal we could; KD, Tuna, Peas, and Corn, with cheese sprinkled on top.  Yesterday was a very disappointing food day.