Food Stuffs

Let’s talk about all the things that I’ve been eating recently that have made me feel awful. 

For starters, I’ve realized that I snack too much at work. We have mini Snickers and Hershey’s nuggets and M&M’s just lying around. Initially, I was pretty addicted these. I’ve pretty much toned it down to 2 pieces per day. But I’m still reaching for the junk even though I’m not hungry. It’s just there, right? So, it’d be rude not to partake. I made the decision a few weeks ago to start ordering apples, so apples and peanut butter is a go-to snack of mine in an attempt to keep away from the shitty chocolate.

I think coffee may be making my head hurt, too. I only drink one or two cups a day, but I need to drink more water. (Which I have been, but I need to drink more because: hot weather.)

But let’s talk about the baguette I ate last week. 

I’d packed my lunch – super healthy grilled chicken and zucchini noodles with pesto sauce. But I was like, “it’s shark week and I’d like something heartier to go alone with all of that healthy shit,” so I went to Eataly, which is conveniently located across the street from my office, and walked around until I found a small counter that sold baguettes for two dollars. I immediately bought one and I ate about half of it with lunch and throughout the afternoon.

When I say I felt like trash for the rest of the afternoon, it is a complete understatement. I felt like steaming hot trash that had just been bathed in a tub of burnt olive oil.

I don’t have celiacs. I’m not glutarded. I’m not giving up all bread because bread is great. But based on the complete meltdown that my body had last week when I consumed a stupid amount of baguette, I think I should lay off the bread that’s void of any nutrition at all. 

I think I could’ve trained myself not to be OK with feeling like shit after eating bread and pasta. I used to consume a ton of pasta and I ate regular bread all the time. Usually when I buy bread, I’ll buy Ezekiel, which is gluten free, and the last time I made actual pasta (and the only time that I even have a faint memory of) was July 4th. After J bought the Inspiralizer for me, I haven’t made an ounce of pasta. 

But lesson learning is never easy so I had to eat bread once again on Saturday night. More specifically, garlic bread. These were small pieces and there were four of them. I only ate two because of The Baguette Incident. Luckily, showing some restraint paid off and these didn’t actually make me want to start clawing at my stomach. Still, I was incredibly sad to be leaving two gleaming pieces of garlic bread behind. This is a feeling that I will have to learn to deal with. I hate wasting food. 

The margaritas I had later that night had zero effect on me. Nor did the tortilla chips (thank goodness these are GF) and queso. 

I have a love/hate relationship with my consciousness around food now. I notice when things make me feel like dying and I make a conscious decision not to fuck around with those foods anymore. This is for the best, but it also sucks. Who doesn’t love a good bread basket?

Aside from cheap chocolate and bread, what isn’t making me feel shitty? Fruits, vegetables, and smoothies. Pretzels are toeing the line right now. I would really, really, really like to eat a burger or pizza right now but I don’t want a food hangover. 

I made this dish last night, complete with spiralized sweet potatoes, red pepper, green pepper, yellow squash, a little bit of cheese and spicy black beans. It was delicious and I didn’t want to die after. I have to start making more dishes like this again. 

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Inspiralized @ Whole Foods

J bought the Inspiralizer for me a few months ago and I use it in over 50% of my cooking now. I haven’t made actual pasta in months. And aside from when I had penne vodka over the weekend at a restaurant, I haven’t eaten it. When I did, it made me feel gross. Anyways, when it was announced that Ali Malfucci, founder of Inspiralized, was doing a demo at the Upper West Side Whole Foods, I was super stoked.

She demo’ed how to to inspiralize a plethora of vegetables, showed how to clean the Inspiralizer, talked about how she got started, answered questions, and then made a pesto dish with zucchini noodles. It was so good.

I bought her first cook book and she was super sweet – exactly the same as how she comes across in her videos. She clarified how to stabilize my Inspiralizer to my granite countertop; which was something that I’d had a load of trouble with.

I can’t recommend this kitchen tool enough! It’s changed my life and my palette. 

Digestion

Last year when I read Skin Cleanse by Adina Grigore, I kept track of everything I put in my mouth for three days straight. Not just that I ate a banana for a snack or pizza for lunch. I wrote down those three Reese’s Pieces and the two grapes that I consumed too. This was an attempt to figure out what made my digestive system feely shitty and probably wasn’t doing my skin any favors either. 

Ever since I did that, I was acutely aware of when I was feeling bloated or just shitty after a meal in general. But did I write it down? Oh no. That would make way too much sense.

But now? I’ve decided to do it again. I created a document on my iPhone and I’m going to keep track of all the times when I’m feeling shitty after a meal and what exactly I ate before I started feeling that way. 

This decision was made because I felt shitty after lunch today. I had homemade turkey chili on top of zucchini noodles, with a side of guacamole and five tortilla chips (weird, I know, but that’s what I ate) and a pomegranate seltzer. I’m very, very bloated now. I think it might be the seltzer, which blows because I love seltzer and we keep it in the office. It tastes better than water, but it’s not filled with sugar like soda is. 

I’ve never done elimination from my diet before but I’m curious to see what I find out. If I can eliminate the foods that make me feel shitty it’ll be for the better (duh). 

I’d encourage everyone to do this if you ever feel crappy after a meal. 

Fan Girlin’

Not really, but I think it’s super cool that @inspiralized herself replied to my photo of my dinner on Tuesday night! After her video (in which she spiralized an entire rutabaga) dumbfounded my dude and I, I went out and bought a rutabaga and last night I gave it my best shot. It’s a rather hard vegetable to spiralize. To be completely frank: It was a huge pain in the ass.

But I spiralized half, drizzled olive oil, salt, and pepper on the pile, and baked it for 10-15ish minutes. I heated up some sauce, sautéed broccoli in said-sauce, and the turkey meatballs I’d made the night before, sprinkled 1 tablespoon of cheese on top and voila

For lunch yesterday I had more of the rutabaga pasta, turkey meatballs, and also sweet potato noodles. 

I’m eating a lot of vegetables lately. And they taste so good.

(PS: Follow me on Instagram here.)

Future Obsession: Inspiralizer

I first learned about the Inspiralizer instagram account from Well & Good or Gabby Bernstein’s Instagram. I don’t remember which, but it was one of those. I received a tiny, hand-held vegetable spiralizer for the holidays and I’m still getting the hang of it and learning how to use it.

I’ve been watching a lot of Ali’s (founder of the Inspiralizer website and blog) videos and last night I made the baked chicken parm with zucchini noodles (and some quinoa spaghetti) that she makes for dinner in this video

It was so good and even Justin didn’t completely hate the zucchini noodles. After we watched a few more of her videos together, he asked if I’d really use the Inspiralizer and I said yes, so he insisted on ordering one for me.

Now we can eat noodles made of vegetables all the time. I’m especially excited to make this shrimp scampi and carrot noodles.   

I’m very, very excited to spiralize all my vegetables. 

Rockin’ Lunch

For the last two weeks at work I’ve been consistently bringing my lunch every day. For someone who used to buy Starbucks every single morning and buy their lunch every day, this is unbelievable. 

As I wind down on Sunday evening, I once again start to ponder the week and what I’ll eat this week. I watched a few of the vegan videos on Essena O’Neil’s blog and her recipes look SO good. They were partially the inspiration for the wraps you see above. Of course the sauce on them isn’t vegan, and neither is the tiny bit of chicken, but they were tasty and healthy regardless. 

The wrap on the left has zucchini, cucumber, spinach leaves, and brown rice on it and the wraps on the right include spinach leaves, avocado, sliced peppers, and chicken. I’m not a huge fan of wraps and burritos normally because they’re so high in calories, but I’m working on finding rice wraps. 

I also have some of this leftover from when Steve was over on Friday night – this dish is honestly so good and lots of protein! I cooked up some chicken, there’s some rice currently cooking away, and I’m going to sauté some butternut squash soon.

This is such an expensive time of year that if i can save money and not eat out during the week, you better believe I’m doing it. Also: healthier. 

Guys, eat more vegetables. Seriously, my diet has been SO CLEAN over the last couple of weeks. Sure, I had a few beers over the weekend but that gets a pass, right? I mean, I went to Cascabel and got a quinoa and kale salad instead of a taco. Major restraint showed there. 

Fruits, veggies, eggs, chicken, brown rice, Ezekiel bread, and peanut butter have been my food staples as of late and I feel awesome.