When Hunger Strikes…
This is how I feel today! I feel amazing but, every time I see food today I want it! I don’t care how good or bad it is for me and who it belongs to, I WANT IT!
foodie
ColorLESS food…BLAH
OMG i never thought I cared so much until now. I absolutely feel embarrassed and cannot stand to see my plate have all one color on it now. I enjoy seeing a colorful plate. I know it means healthier options and more effort and time went into my meal. It’s not just a fried mess or starchy concoction. I do not even like to grab a pre-made salad anymore. I prefer to make one if they have a salad bar where this is the option. I like to choose what I put in it. I prefer baby spinach instead of lettuce of any type. I enjoy a bit of just about everything in my salad. in small portions. Even if it’s only a small tablespoon amount. It makes me happy to know it’s in there. I feel like a queen when I eat it.
When people see it they tell me how great my salad looks. Considering the fact that I do not eat very much all day long the salad may have about 500-800 calories due to cheese, eggs, bacon bits, and sometimes pasta or meat, and dressing I add. Most everything else carries little calories content. The salad I had today probably had less than usual because I barely had anything that has high calorie content lots of veggies. I had 2 cups of spinach, 1 cup of broccoli, a few slices of cucumber, 2 ounces of cheese, 2 eggs, 1 cup of grape tomatoes, 1 ounces of sunflower seeds, 3 green olives, 1 ounces of bacon bits, and 2 ounces of ranch dressing.
It was delicious and colorful. I was excited about my salad. People kept asking me where I got it and I kept reminding them that our cafeteria at work does have a salad bar, LMBO. That they did not have to buy the pre-made salads with lettuce and whatever was in them.
For my next meal in about 3 hours I have a BLAH meal that I had to throw together this morning…shifty wannabe chicken alfredo. I had leftover noodles from spaghetti the other night added some alfredo sauce and some canned chicken and there ya go, LOL. It will stave of hunger but it’s all one color and a bit fattening. So I am not happy. I feel like it set me back a bit. I feel like I need some green things to fall into it and garnish it at least. Oh well. I cook really well when I have time and when I do not this happens. I get salty or fattening meals that are not take out at least which is better than usual but they are not exactly the best either.
Made from Scratch Meatball & Spaghetti
I was so inspired to make this dish after making made from scratch salisbury steak last week after an accidental discovery. While making my made from scratch salisbury steaks I made one entirely too small and said to myself, “well this will be the tester/ taster, to see how things turn out.”
The recipe called for making the salisbury steaks with hamburger and then adding breadcrumbs and eggs to bind them as well as your own mix of dry ingredients (dry onion soup) and so on. I instead used my food processor and pureed some onions and made my own dry ingredients to taste with a bit of cumin, seasoning salt, garlic powder, parsley, oregano, chili powder, and about 2 ounces of homemade cream of mushroom soup in the mixture not on top because we like the flavor. However, you can omit the cream of mushroom altogether if you like.
I browned the meatballs for 2 minutes on each side in a skillet and the put them in my crock-pot for high for 1.5 hours with a bit spaghetti sauce. I did not cover them in sauce it was just enough to cover the bottom of the crock-pot. Make they are also in one layer if possible.
I’m going to give you the “book recipe” to follow but as you can see from above I did my own changes and I made mine from scratch because I had the time and inspiration. You can do it so much easier this way though and I have, and it works really well too!
Easy Salisbury Steak—Which I converted to meatballs (just do not use the cream of mushroom soup)
Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1 egg
1/2 cup plain dry bread crumbs ( but Italian works best for flavor)
1 package (about 1 ounce) onion soup mix*
1 can (10 1/2 ounces) golden mushroom soup, undiluted
you may pulse onion soup mix in a small food processor or coffee grinder for a finer grind , if desired.
- Coat inside of crock-pot slow with nonstick cooking spray (or buy crock-pot liners). Combine beef, egg, bread crumbs and dry onion soup mix in large bowl. Form mixture evenly into four 1-inch thick patties.
- Heat large skillet over medium-high heat. Add patties; cook 2 minutes per side until lightly browned. Remove to crock-pot, in single layer. Spread mushroom soup evenly over patties. Cover; cook on low 3-3.5 hours.
Makes 4 servings
My husband and I had a ball making these and now he knows how to make meatballs and not just brown hamburger. We are becoming quite the little chefs. These are things I want him to learn because they are fun activities that can be done with children when we finally have some.
My Love Affair With Spices
Lately I have been obsessed with the the world of difference that one spice can make in a dish. I mean people just do not understand how using one different spice can change the way a dish smells and tastes and puts the whole atmosphere into a completely abstract state of mind.
By adding vanilla you can have a warm sensual or romantic sense. By adding a touch of chili powder a daring edge. Or by adding chamomile the relaxing effect you are proving. The point is that everything you add should have a purpose, not just thrown together. I feel like lately when I cook I am cooking with purpose and if I am not then I do not want to cook that night and it’s my husband’s night to cook. Then he can do as he wishes, which usually has no rhyme or reason, but his goal is to make sure your belly is full. Though I do try to coach him a bit.
When I was younger I always loved Italian food. I loved the intense aromatic spices of the peppers, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, cilantro, parsley, rosemary, and so on. I still do. However, since college my shift has been middle eastern and Asian. I have fallen in love with cumin, turmeric, curry, coriander and the like. I have found these flavors and scents soothing and delicious. They have great benefits to the body as well. Such as antioxidants and anti-inflammitories. I enjoy sharing them with my family and my husband.
Have you ever seen the movie Mistress of Spices? It’s about a woman who harnesses the magic power of spices and helps her clients find the spices they need to be successful in their endeavors in life (healing sick people, keeping relationships healthy, finding love, etc) however, she is not allowed to fall in love because her only love is that of the spices.
You get the idea it’s a good movie little movie if you ever want to watch a little romantic movie and fellows score romance points with your lady. It’s not a comedy just a love story. Sorry fellas. Â I mean the scene where she runs her hands through her spices sifting and touching them; I love doing the same thing. I would love to go to a bazaar or farmers market and just buy spices buy the bagful and jar them. I would be so tickled. (i know that sounds a bit silly but I would, it’s exciting me as I think about it). I am already looking for jars for the bags I bought at the store in the ethnic aisle and the Asian supermarket recently. It’s cheaper than buying regular spices of brands Americans know that would cost $5-8 for 1-3oz. When I get 1lb and pay $2-3 for a well known brand that you eat in the Asian restaurant or overseas. I prefer authenticity.
Anyways. The point is I felt like her, I feel like with my spices I can do anything. I can smell them and put my hands on anything in my pantry and put something together. It is quite empowering and so far it has opened up my husband’s picky “I don’t eat this or that” attitude quite a bit. He eats quite a bit more than he would normally eat thanks to my spices and experimentation.
Tonight I will have him make spaghetti, but instead of his usual brown some hamburger and then add sauce and simmer style, I will help him make homemade meatballs which he has never done and I did for the first time last week (but he wasn’t there to get any). So he will get to try and make them and eat them. This helps us grow together and have some fun as well. I can already smell the fresh Italian spices filling my nose. I can’t wait to get dirty, lol. Aprons ON! LET’S COOK!
ME NEEDS COMFORT FOOD
Of course this has been proven on so many levels and I hate that I am struggling to resist it so badly…but I want all my favorite comfort foods while I am sick. I am of course using it as an excuse but it is just how I feel!
I feel like surely God, my husband, and everyone I know will take pity on me and give me a pass for they know I feel like crap…Yet I know as soon as I eat all the crap I will feel even worse so I have made sure that I do not eat crap. I have forced myself to eat the basic routine healthy foods I eat when I am sick to help boost my system and keep me energized. Yet I tell you I am ready to throw it out at any minute for some baked potatoes, cheese galore, pie almighty, and a nice burrito bowl.
Instead I will eat some soups, oranges, plenty of fluids (especially my teas), and veggies! So far so good! But if that monster ever appears…
Budget Grocery Haul // Week of 1.10.16
Orange Curried Pork Chops
**Before I begin you should know that pork is not a traditionally Indian meal or curried dish. We also served it with plain white rice instead of the traditional basamti rice just because it was what we had on had at the moment.
Ingredients
1 h 4Â servings
- 1 cup orange marmalade (we use the type with actual orange zest pieces in it which was delicious)
- 1 tablespoon curry powder (this was not enough for us so we doubled it for more spice)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup water (or chicken broth)
- 4 bone-in chicken breast halves, with skin (or in my case pork)
- Prep
15Â m
- Cook
45Â m
- Ready In
1Â h
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- In a small bowl combine the marmalade, curry powder, salt and water. Mix together. Place chicken pieces, cut side down, in a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking dish and spoon marmalade mixture over chicken.
- Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 minutes, spooning sauce over chicken several times. (Note: If sauce begins to stick to the baking dish, add an additional 1/4 cup water).
- Remove chicken from baking dish and skim fat off of the sauce. Serve sauce hot with the chicken.
- Tip
- Aluminum foil can be used to keep food moist, cook it evenly, and make clean-up easier.
My FOOD Epiphany
So my sister is always telling me how she has baked a concoction (her words not mine) that tasted pretty good. I believed her. I mean though my sister is single, she lived for a while with my parents before moving out on her own after graduating form grad school as did I. And you learn two things from that experience; 1) how to survive on your own (save your money and be responsible so you can be on your own) and 2) how to make more than 4 dishes once you leave, LMBO. Because my parents love their staples. They have no problem eating the same things but it will drive you crazy if you have an adventurous palate. I had to learn how to cook. My parents teach you basics, but they laugh at some of the things I desired to cook. I became way to adventurous for them (my mom’s skin crawls when she thinks of some of the things I eat, lol). All I will say is I love Andrew Zimmern’s Bizzare Foods on Travel Network. I try things just  because he says you must!
After I learned how to cook, I had to learn how to buy the proper utensils to make it happen easier and to make it look presentable. These are the things I am now teaching my older sister. She definitely has the cooking adventurously thing down, but now she has to learn how to buy the right supplies to make things easier on herself and her dishes. Sometimes you have to swap out (and slowly over time if money is an issue) your dishes to higher quality ones as well or buy additional things that may help like parchment paper so you do not have to chisel your goodies off your baking sheet and nibble on them piece by piece, LOL. She said they were yummy but when you cannot take a picture and they did not look like the yummy balls you planned for and then you had to chisel and chip them to snack on them I sort of giggled because it reminded me of my earlier projects.
I was determined to eat them because regardless of how they looked, they tasted WONDERFUL. I just could not take one picture because they were surely pinterest fails in that looks department. So she asked me, how do you make your baked goodies? She asked if I just followed the recipes? I said yes at first then I thought about it and said no, actually I don’t. I always fudge it. I always either do double with a ‘bump’ (I may add an extra pinch or splash of everything –no actual measurement just literally another pinch or splash here and there until I am happy) or eyeball certain ingredients that I believe would make the recipe better. So if I want it to look like the pinterest picture and to still taste good I try to add equal parts of everything even if I’m only eyeballing it but sometimes I may add a bit more flavor of something I like just to give it a punch.
So far I guess you can call it luck but the trick it tasting your food. Get in there. Smell it and taste it while it’s going if you can. The more you cook and bake the more you will become familiar with measurements and what they look like and with how certain smells/ flavors mingle and what you feel you would like to taste and create. This will help you find or add ingredients accordingly. I mean there are times I do not have something and I will either leave it out or substitute it with somethings random and it works out perfectly and my husband never knows, LOL. I even sneak in things he swears he doesn’t eat (he’s not allergic, he just doesn’t like the taste he says). It’s hilarious. That’s the sign of a good cook.
Bucket List Heros
So recently others have been seeing my bucket list and apparently they have made comments about it and found it just as interesting. My younger brother made the comment that I was too young to have a bucket list. He was not aware of the more trendy phenomenon of people creating them just to be sure that they live life to the fullest so that they have no regrets. It’t no just for those of us who are sick and have chronic illnesses. I know when I first told him it alarmed him though because I do have a chronic illness and he probably thought the worst. But I explained that people with MG live LONG healthy lives and that I created my list to ensure that I do not allow myself to sit and wallow in my disorder. Bucket list are meant to inspire you to do these things not just before you DIE but just to get out and do something more than get up, go to work, come home, repeat!
SO with that said I have a master bucket list that will not change but will slowly grow over time as I see fit an accomplish things and I have an annual list that I will create around the 3rd quarter of each year and have from that time to the end of the following year to complete. It will give me great joy to complete the list because I enjoy creating to do list and crossing items off of them as I tackle them. I also enjoy planning and organizing events.
Anyways, I have been enjoying finding new ways to tackle the list and when I can get them done. Some of them have been harder than others due to time management. I have found that I am not the only one who wants to see me accomplish these goals and that feels great too. I always tell people I do not want anything for Christmas or my birthday. It’s not because I do not feel worthy or I feel people cannot afford it, it is because I honestly feel blessed enough and would rather give than receive. I also feel that my family has given me so much already that I could want/need for anything. However, my dad saw my bucket list and he decided to scratch one of the items off of it for me and I even more grateful.
My dad bought me my go pro. I can take it with me on my adventures now. I am ecstatic. My mom said he was really looking for it. I’m proud of him because he really went above and beyond. Usually he defects to my moms for what all of us want for different events and this time he knew. Handy detecting dad, lol. I shall call it my PRECIOUS. Can’t wait til our trip overseas!
Annual Bucket List: 2016
Do a local bike race
get yoga mat/basic training
Visit wizarding world of Harry Potter
Read 50 books — at 22 books almost halfway
Buy a Go Pro
Go Sky Diving
Go to a State I have not been to before
Go to 5th Cirque Du Soliel Performance
Paint Pottery
Throw Pottery (as in make my on pottery)
Decorate my house for fall
Decorate my house for Christmas
Take a romantic trip with my husband
Volunteer with a charity monthly
Take a culinary class
Go swimming (you would be amazed that since being diagnosed with MG I have not swam once because I have started to have fear that it would become over exterted and not be able to get out of the water….says the former lifeguard and scuba certified person)
Be sling shot (it a weird bungee course thing that looks like a giant sling shot)
Go to Canada
Master Bucket List
Write a book
Have a baby/ adopt a child
Create a Charity
Run a business
Travel overseas like a nomad (England, France, Italy, etc)
Go to Disneyland
Go to a bioluminscent bay
Have my music music produced and perform it
Help Find a Cure for MG
Go to Alaska- see the Northern Lights
Pose for a sexy calendar
Indulging My Strangeness
So there comes a time in every relationship when you wonder or just plan learn that you married a weirdo! My husband happened to know that long before he ever married me! It was plainly stated in simple English from my very own lips upon one of our first dates, whether he chose to believe it or not, not my responsibility anymore, I told him, I did my job.
He tends to be the more even killed husband while I tend to have the larger than life personality. He soon realized that even while dating this was true and he stayed and still married me. He gets what he gets was my thought!
So there is no easing into the weirdness, there never was. I figure let’s dive straight into who I am. Don’t be that person who tries to slowly introduce who you are and then one they really find out and then run away screaming.
So not to test him per se but he got all of me. I did not do anything extra, but my family would laugh when they would see me do things that most women would NEVER do in front of a guy I guess…I really had no reference aside from keeping your manners which um duh I did have those still, LOL. But I would be overly comfortable in front of him, dressed down, and bring him around family often and for many events.
Now that he accepts all my weird moments, the funny part is he just laughs at them when others question them. Yesterday was one of those days. I was at work and had Jimmy Johns ( a sub place) deliver a sub a pickle to my job. Mainly because I wanted a dill pickle). I tend to get cravings all the time. It started when I was like 15 and now whenever I get a craving I have to have that food it won’t stop for MONTHS until I get it. I mean the desire is so strong that I dream about ti sometimes and day dream about it. I wonder if it’s like this for pregnant women. MAN! SO anyways. I got my pickle. I was happy, or so I thought. Then I thought…I want  a spicy pickle. OF course I did. Not only did I want something that many pregnant women crave so people would be staring at me weird if I asked if their store carried it…but then I know for a fact that only country stores and very old school stores or mom and pop stores (sometimes in not so good neighborhoods) carry them. Generally these are like gas station type mom and pop stores too. So I went to 3 different ones and still didn’t find one. They just were not far enough away from the city. They I finally went 20 minutes from my house and after an hour of searching in another city and found my spicy pickle called a Hot Mama for those who do not know.
I was excited. It took my husband and I all night to eat it because they are very spicy. We took turns lighting ourselves on fire. I took a few bites, and yelled woo in my Rick Flare voice!
Then he took a few bites and I would watch the color in his face slowly turn red from bottom to top.
We also snacked while watching our movies eating sour straws and salt and vinegar pork skins… I can tell you the last time I ate such a concoction was over 3 years ago. We both remember that time too. It was hilarious. I have not craved a hot pickle in that long. By the end of the night…I dared him to drink the juice of the hot pickled from the package and said if he did I would give him one of my gift cards I had. Now I did a similar challenge when I was younger with regular pickle juice and it did not sit well in my tummy. I can only imagine how that sat last night. I intentionally drank all the milk before it too. He said his whole esophagus was on fire and he drank water and laid in the bed for like 15 minutes and just sat there, he said he only did it because I called him out…dumb male ego…LOL.
Myasthenia Gravis 