Sunday, March 18, 2012

Life Change Week 2 - New Toy

So I have made it through the 2nd week of my life change effort. It was a little harder than the first week because I found myself craving sweets. That made it a little tough, but I did not cave and eat anything bad. A new food I have taken quite a liking to is quinoa. I had never really heard of it before and when I did, I had no idea what it was. This is what multi-colored quinoa looks like (for others like me who are in the dark).
It is a little bit like crunchy cream of wheat, for lack of a better explanation. I like to put it on my salads to give them a little oomph. I also really like just eating it plain with a little bit of coconut milk (another favorite on this change) and maybe a little banana or blueberries thrown in. It has an interesting smell that doesn't come through in the flavor thank goodness.
These photos came in out of order to the next one is Spencer with my new toy. We had a Dell laptop for about a little over a year. I really liked working on it. You might say I got a little addicted. Anyway it died (yes, after only about a year). Dennis got an i-pad for his birthday, but I was missing the laptop. He kept bugging me about buying a macbook so finally this weekend went out and bought one. I get a little discount as a public school employee which helped--a little. We bought a MacBook Pro with a 13 inch screen. I am having lots of fun with it.I had another picture where Spencer was taking a picture of the back of the computer but I loaded in two copies of the same picture. It is so hard for me to get pictures where I want them in these blogs that I am not going to bother adding the other one.
This is this weeks rendition of the muffin. The last two weeks I have used squash to make my muffins. This week I am trying pumpkin. I also added some cinnamon, cloves & nutmeg to "spice" them up a bit. They are made with eggs, almond flour (or meal), bananas, pumpkin, salt and well you are supposed to put in some olive oil and as I was sitting here typing this I realized I forgot to put the oil in. Well, they seem to taste alright anyway.
These will be my breakfast for the week and they are very tasty (even without the olive oil). They also have a little bit of quinoa flour in them too. I meant to take a picture of one of my salads, but it's just a salad so big deal. I make a dressing with 1/2 olive oil, 1/4 balsamic vinigrette, 1 tsp dry mustard and some minced garlic. It is super yummy and I find that I like it on lots of other things besides salad. Week two sounds a lot like week 1 and week three is sounding a lot like the other two weeks. I will let you know how things go when I reintroduce some of the stuff I have been doing without (wheat, dairy, corn products). I'm finding this food so yummy who knows if I really want to bother!

3 comments:

Lost Woman said...

Aaahhhh Quinoa, ("keen Wah" for you newbies)
The celiacs staple grain. I'm a fan of red quinoa myself. I think it has a slightly nuttier taste than the plain.

I'm sure you know this, but just in case you don't, it works perfectly in a rice cooker.

You must be excited about the Macbook! As a longtime Mac fan of course I'm excited about your new tool.

They are so intuitive and make so many things super easy.
I'm jealous of Dennis' iPad. I want one of those... but certainly don't NEED one. Those won't be in my budget for quite some time I think.

I appreciate your updates. I'm reading the abascal way book right now. Always interested in theories on digestion, health, weight, etc. One day maybe the right thing will come my way.

The Desiree said...

Good for you! I too crave sweets, and I just cave. I am not a very strong person.
Your Dell stopped working? That makes me a little nervous. Jason bought me a Dell laptop (I don't know why but I always want to call them labtops) for Christmas 2010, so mine is just a little over a year old right now! I really don't want it to stop working!

michandler said...

Desi, I hope your laptop doesn't die. Tucker's is still going.

I actually tried cooking the quinoa in the rice cooker and it didn't work out so well. It stuck to the bottom of pan--but then again so does the rice. :-) The quinoa is easy to cook on the stovetop.