Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Too Much Fast Food

I've been eating way too much fast food lately. My kind of fast food is mostly snacky kinds of foods that simply require slicing, popping in my mouth, or scooping out of a container. Cheeses, nuts and dried fruits, cottage cheese, hummus, peanut butter, etc. And if you stretch the definition....fruits! Everything from grapes, watermelon (s), and the last of the seasons stone fruits, like nectarines. Even exotic fruits like jackfruit and mammey....but as summer ends, fall begins, and new fruits start to make their yearly apperance, like the Honeycrisp apples!



Here's an example of what I mean by fast foods......this is the lunch I packed for Mark, and myself, before we headed off to the SF HKC a couple of weekends ago. "Tracy's All Day Lunch", manchego, and string cheese, crackers, salami, eggs, hummus, Indidan lamb and lentil stew with greens, carrot & celery sticks, fuji apple, walnuts, prunes and my favorite candy these days....dried cherry tomatoes! I found these little nuggets of sweet tangy goodness at the Vietnemese Market.
Usually I would pack a salad, but no salad was prepped (can you believe it? yikes), and so all there was to pack that morning was snacky, snacky, snacky, snacks! Minus the lamb and lentil stew...that was the only thing that day that did not get eaten...no spoon. again, can you believe it? I never, whoops, I mean, rarely if ever, do not have a real spoon and fork with me at all times (I thoroughly dislike plastic...can't eat a salad with a plastic fork, yuck!) My point is that this is how I snack most days and this is why I've been too lazy to prep salads! It's too easy to just slice, pop, or scoop!


I know we are all busy, like myself, and thank goodness for my pressure cooker, I always have big batches of soups, chilis, stew, beans, grains big slabs of proteins, like pork shoulder or whole chickens. But I admit to the letting the salads slide.....



Recently I've been reassessing my time, and my "time wasters"...that's the important bit, the time wasters! I have plenty of time, I just haven't been spending it on the important things. Why do I feel like I need to ruch off to a 5:30am yoga class, when I can go to a 7:15am yoga class ane get all of my food prep done before I even leave the house? Why do I feel as if I need to go shopping, for more stuff I don't need, when I can go home and heat up a nice bowl of stew, instead of grabbing an expresso, with whip cream, to stave off hunger until I get home....already starving and too hungry to wait 2 minutes for the microwave, so instead, I start, yep, slicing, popping and scooping! Fast food is a bitch!



I finished off my last package of dried cherry tomatoes.....and I ran out of peanut butter a couple of days ago....somehow I think I can survive without more fast food.



PS at the risk of sounding like a snob, I never eat bars of any sort. Energy bars, protein bars, granola bars, call them what you want to. I call them candy, and when I want candy, I'll eat candy.

8 comments:

Fatguy said...

That fast food looks delicious. Out of curiosity, how do you cook your hard boiled eggs? I have some kind of incompetency when it comes to making them, the shell sticks too hard to the egg, and I spend WAY too long peeling a single egg.

Diana said...

Honeycrisp Apples!!!!

They are a definitely my little slice of heaven on earth! I'll even give up my Tootsie Rolls while the honeycrisps are in season!

Tracy Reifkind said...

FG,

eggs can be tricky....I could be wrong, but I think the fresher the egg, the more likely the shell will stick when peeling! Of course you don't want "old" eggs, but keeping them for a few days in the fridge before you cook them may help.

The goal of a perfecly hard boiled egg is to not overcook them so they have that green sulfurous ring around the yolks. So you should never "boil" them for long, if at all. Here's what I do,

Put cold eggs, covered in warm water in pot (about 1 inch above eggs). Cover the pot and bring water and eggs to a boil, or just under a boil. It's hard to catch the water just before it boils, but as soon as it boils turn the heat completely off!

Keep the pot covered for at least 10-12 minutes, again the heat is off but the eggs are still cooking. Remove the eggs from the hot water and let sit to cool.

Since I'm not an expert, it's still a crap shoot, lol!

Tracy Reifkind said...

Diana,

I heard you say it....no Tootsie Rolls while Honeycrisps are in season!

Fawn told me that Honeycrisp apples are a Minnesota invention, which makes them that more special!

Diana said...

Tracy,
I was going to comment on FG's question with the eggs, but figured you'd have an easy time with it.
Here's what I do for "perfect" every time hard-boiled eggs!

Eggs in pan with water approx 1-2 inches above eggs, pour in about 4-6 drops of vegtable oil. Bring to boil, when it boils rapidly, turn heat way down and leave to simmer covered. Set timer for 20 minutes. The second that timer goes off, right into extremely cold water to stop the cooking process. I even put actual "ice" in my rinse and let them sit for about 10 minutes in the water. When I peel my eggs, the shell comes off in like 2-3 big pieces! Never sticks to the egg-thanks to that oil-does it add calories and other bad things? Who knows. The yolks are a perfect golden yellow color with none of that "green ring" around 'em!
Hope that helps!
Also.....
I know about the MN apple, all our stores and farmer markets get them shipped from MN every year this time-it's an early crop this year, usually it's about 3 weeks later. Bonus!!! Those honeycrisps are AWESOME......

Tracy Reifkind said...

Diana,

Wow, 20 minutes! If you say so...

I would not think adding oil would add too many calories, if any. jmo

Roland Denzel said...

Tracy,

The irony is that you seem to feel bad about relying on these healthy "fast foods" when you don't have full meals planned out and organized. Yet most people rely on TRUE fast food when they don't have the perfect meal to eat, cook, or pack.

As many people throughout eating history have so cleverly said, "it all ends up in the same place."

It doesn't really matter if you eat the dish if you are good with the ingredients. What matters is that you are eating healthy ingredients, whether as ten individual finger foods or a one pot meal.

Roland

Dawn said...

I think after everything you've done in your life to better your health, you have every right to "risk sounding like a snob" and call foods candy. Your food posts & comments make me think & re-evaluate my own choices.