HFCS VS Sugar

Interesting article my mom sent us today about the high-fructose corn syrup vs. sugar debate:

http://www.aolhealth.com/2010/04/26/high-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-sugar/?icid=main|main|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolhealth.com%2F2010%2F04%2F26%2Fhigh-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-sugar%2F&sms_ss=email

Subway, You Scare Us

Today things were a little crazy. We got back late last night and felt somewhat destroyed after watching the blazers get a butt kicking. We went straight to bed without cleaning the kitchen. We also have not been grocery shopping in a while. This morning neither one of us felt like battling the mess and scavenging a lunch. I think the fact that we have an "easy" rule this week did not help the lack of motivation. For lunch/dinner I picked up a noodle salad from Trader Joe's. I carefully read the list of ingredients before I decided on this meal item. Safe. Ryan decided to get a Subway sandwich. No, he did not follow our previous reader's advice who stated she worked at Subway and it is not food (shame on him). BUT, to his credit, he asked the sandwich master if there was high-fructose corn syrup in the bread and was informed "no," so he thought he was in the clear. I was skeptical. I googled "Subway High-fructose corn syrup" and sure enough an article about Jillian Michaels (dated March 10, 2010) stated that the Biggest Loser training star is pissed that Subway continues to use high-fructose corn syrup. Uh-oh. I then went to the Subway website and clicked on their ingredient link. Right to the source. And this is when we became scared. A long long long list of ingredients for their bread (after making homemade bread for the last three weeks I can assure everyone that amazing bread can be made with less than five ingredients). And with this long long long list high-fructose corn syrup is the THIRD ingredient. We were shocked to realize the only bread product that did not contain this dreaded ingredient was their White Bread! WHAT!?!?! The already unhealthy bread just sounded a little healthier. How counterintuitive is that? We also found many of their other products including meats, cookies, and sauces contain the forbidden ingredient. Subway eaters beware! Subway is some scary food-like substance. We shall abstain.

Rule #4: Short and Sweet

Rule #3 was more of a challenge than previously anticipated but luckily my mom came through to help (that's what mother's are for, so goes the saying). On Saturday night we had a great meal at my parent's house, complete with sulfate-free wine (a really good bottle!) and chard, chicken, spinach enchiladas and an amazing salad. We even had ice cream for dessert (thank you Haagen-Dazs Five Ingredient Ice Cream--if you haven't tried this it is a must buy!). Ryan was also able to finally declare his fullness after a meal, a wonderful feat indeed! I would also like to give some credit to the new Whole Foods in the Hollywood neighborhood which provided us with a very fun shopping trip. I would have taken pictures but we forgot the camera (which should no longer be a problem, again thanks to the parents for the early graduation present.....). Tonight we had a magnificent feast of honey ginger salmon grilled on a cedar plank with asparagus. Life is good.

Rule #4 should be a breeze: Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup. For the past few years we have been attempting to avoid high-fructose corn syrup like the plague but perhaps, now that we read the labels on everything like nobody's business, we will be surprised by some of the foods we eat. For example, I spotted a bottle of BBQ sauce in our fridge today that would be OUT. Also, our ketchup, OUT. My mother, again coming through, informed us that Trader Joe's sells a bottle of ketchup that does not contain the evil high-fructose corn syrup. We shall invest. This week we plan to list other foods that previously unbeknownst to the common citizen are toxic. This is a nice week to have an easy rule (please be easy!) because we are hoping to catch a meal at a restaurant and Ryan will be traveling to pay his parent's a visit. Enjoy!

Feeling Great, Losing Weight

When I write the title of this post I need to specify that I (Zoe) am losing weight (10 Ibs!). And much needed weight too, thankyouverymuch grad school. I hope to my higher powers that my skinny-minnie boyfriend is keeping meat on his bones (huh, surarya!). He admitted to me last week that he was very hungry his first week of the experiment. I am assuming he has discovered more food he can eat now that it has been three weeks.... It's not that we are not eating too. According to Ryan, I am taking enough food with me to work/class/internship/etc. to "feed a small army." In case you are wondering what this looks like, I took a picture below.



This would be a big salad with avocado, carrots and salad greens with balsamic and oil dressing, a piece of homemade wheat bread, nancy's yogurt with strawberries and bananas and cut up apples with cinnamon and fresh-squeezed lemon juice (thank you Cimone for teaching me about this--I'm addicted). So you can see, I am eating a lot and am not hungry. I am losing weight because I am not snacking on crap. This takes some pre-planning but it is worth it in SO many ways! Also, please do not feel too badly for Ryan--we had steak topped with blue cheese last night!

Also, we made homemade pizza the other night for dinner! The dough was even homemade and I was surprised at how quick and easy we were able to do this! Looks yummy, huh!?!?! Ryan was the pizza master! Rule #4 is around the corner!

Hold the Salt

Rule #3 and frustration is rising. Maybe we are just going through a "mood" but Rule #3 seems exceptionally hard. It is fairly similar to Rule #1, which was also hard, but maybe that was easier because it was the first rule and we were just more excited?

Yesterday, as I was scanning all the foods we cannot eat, while attempting to think of the foods we can eat, I realized Ryan's heart-healthy salt was out. This salt is half potassium chloride and half sodium chloride to reduce overall sodium intake. Sadly, those are not ingredients a normal person keeps in their house. So, we went to the store to buy normal people salt. While standing in the salt aisle, we realized that all normal people salt has anti-clumping additives, making it out as well. We decided, then and there, we would just go without salt for this week, which Ryan was happy about because he does not like salt to begin with. I must have felt motivated to agree to no salt for a week, because I am a salt lover. This said motivation came crashing down hardcore, however, when we were cooking dinner a few hours later. Stir-fry. We had no sauce to put on the veggies because all of the sauces we normally use (soy sauce, cock sauce, sweet and sour sauce, teriyaki sauce, etc. contain ingredients a normal person would not keep within their home). I test-tasted the veggies and disaster-struck. Zoe: "They need something!" Ryan: "Why? Because they actually taste like veggies instead of sauce?" Zoe: "Yes!!!!" Despite Ryan's attempt to add spices the veggies tasted like veggies, and what is wrong with that I am not sure, but it was not right (which is sad as I reflect back). I insisted we add salt, not ryan's salt, or normal people salt, but kosher salt that we had stored away. Thank god for pure kosher salt. The meal was saved thanks to salt and fresh orange juice mixed with rum.....

Rule #3....and "What Did We Get Ourselves Into?"

The title of this post is what Ryan exclaimed to me at 11:32 this morning. It is the last day of Rule #2 and I awoke at 8am (on a Sunday!) to finish our final great-grandmother meal. When I say "finish" I mean to say that I started cooking this recipe yesterday. Yes, it was a two-day project and I am happy to announce that despite some rough patches, which I will further explain below, the recipe was delish!

I would like to personally thank Erin's great-grandmother for providing us with this treat. Erin volunteered (or was forced) to send me their family recipe for Lebanese Spinach Pies. I made the dough yesterday, and even though we talked about needing to add yeast multiple times, I forgot the yeast. Luckily, this was not a crucial issue, it just explained why I was waiting around for my dough to rise and it never happened. Ryan, being the best boyfriend in all of the world, was in charge of washing all 1.5 KG of spinach. If you are unsure of how much spinach this is let me clarify: it is a GINORMOUS amount (if you still cannot visualize this because you are measurement challenged, like I am, we posted a picture below to help you out). He spent two hours washing it. I am attributing part of that time to him being extremely meticulous because he knowingly did not want to get yelled at by Yours Truly for not doing a good job. I am a bit of a clean cooking Nazi (don't let me get around your mushrooms....). We then mixed the filling in the biggest bowl we owned and I rolled out the dough. I attempted to cut out the dough as directed and failed miserably because their was an issue with shrinkage (when the dough was cut out it would shrink). I then tried to do larger cut outs and ended up with varying sized pies (please see picture below to understand what I mean by varying). I then stuck them in the oven and waited for the aroma to take over the kitchen. And waited. And waited. No aroma. DING DING DING. They are done! Except they were not done as they were still completely raw! I was extremely frustrated and mystified. "There must be something wrong with the recipe!"

Meanwhile, Ryan did not help me cook the spinach pies at all because he was busy fighting a battle, okay, he would like me to scratch the word battle. Let me try this again, Ryan was busy fighting a war! Yes, ants invaded our house in the night. You can blame these amazing scones I made if you like, but regardless of causation, Ryan was very occupied. In fact, he occupied every single one of our burners (pictures below) as he spent all morning pouring boiling water on the ant colony outside our back patio. For now, I think the ants are on the defensive but if they try to pull any funny business I know Ryan will be ready as he is not a person to mess with.

Back to MY story. I started to complain to Ryan about how my Spinach Pies were not cooking and he, being the logical person he is, asked me what temperature the oven was on. I told him I put it at what the recipe instructed, 200 degrees. He laughed. "Zoe, water does not even boil at 200, and you are trying to cook something at that temperature?" "RYAN, I am DOING what the recipe says!" I then showed him the recipe to prove my point and he continued to laugh. The recipe said 200 degrees CELSIUS. So I spent the next few hours cooking the pies at the correct temperature as Ryan made jokes about how I cannot be trusted to hit the moon with a rocket or something ....not quite sure what he was trying to joke about because who in their right mind would EVER trust me to do something involving a rocket and the moon? Yeah, exactly.

Bottom line: I cooked the Lebanese Spinach Pies at the correct temperature, they turned out perfect, I have a full tummy, and we have about 50 extra pies in our fridge and a ton of extra fillings. Life is good. Tomorrow=Rule #3: Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human being would keep in the pantry. We will explain interpretation tomorrow but for now please see our pictures below.

Indian Family Recipe

Tonight we borrowed Jahnvi's great-grandmother's recipe for tehri (yellow rice) and fish. Jahnvi is Ryan's sister's dear friend, who I was lucky enough to meet during Ryan's sister's wedding. The recipe she shared with us stems back to Northern India, as Jahnvi's mother's side of the family is from Agra (also known as the city where the Taj Mahal sits). I was able to visit Agra this past Christmas, so cooking this dish brought back a lot of memories. Jahnvi also had some interesting insights about cooking Indian food in the USA. She said that in India her family never uses garlic and onions to season food because they have so many other spices to choose from, which we do not have here. Sadly, we were forced to resort to garlic and onion, along with some more traditional spices such as turmeric and cumin seed. Ryan thought it was funny that Jahnvi asked us to "wash the rice." I have seen this in other recipes but I forget what you are washing off. Can anyone explain this so Ryan can stop laughing at me? The recipe turned out to be very delicious! I ate it with my hands (to be honest I would eat every recipe with my hands if I was allowed) because that is what we did in India (more south India...and only the right hand....but like I said, any excuse to eat with my hands......).






Jahnvi--I wish we could have shared some food with you and Christian but I'm sure it's better when you make it! You will just have to look at the pictures and give us your critique! :)

"This Looks Like Food My Grandma Would Make!"

The title of this post was quoted from Ryan after he looked at our first dinner on Rule #2. This means we succeeded with our goal! We cooked a recipe tonight from my great-grandma on my mom's side. It was a german beef noodle soup. We made the noodles from scratch, which I thought was pretty exciting. We both really liked the dinner. It was simple, healthy, yet delicious. See pictures below so you can get inspired to cook like your ancestors! We need a few more recipes for this week so send them our way!


Here I am kneading the dough for the noodles!


Ryan preparing the veggies!



Finished product! Cheers!

Thanks for the recipe and your support Mom! xoxo

Wk One Reflections, Which Means HERE is Wk TWO!

So our Rule #1 is coming to an end. Overall, this was a extremely challenging rule to follow and drastically changed our diet. We have discovered new types of food that we like and will probably continue to incorporate into our diet (such as fresh farm eggs, homemade bread, homemade oatmeal, and Nancy's Honey yogurt) and some foods that are not so grand (the sulfate free organic wine we attempted to drink--I am sure there is good stuff out there but the cheap stuff we tried tasted like the very last grainy sediment-like drink that you have with most other bottles of wine, except the WHOLE bottle produced this bitter flavor!).

One of the funniest parts of this rule was our meal ritual, that we apparently must do unconsciously before every meal but had no idea. It goes something like this: I ask Ryan what he wants to drink (for some reason I always get our drinks when we eat--what is up with that p.s.???). I will say, "What do you want to drink?" Ryan ALWAYS responds, "What do we have?" I start to reply, "Water...." AND then, that is when we would both remember we are doing a food experiment, and I would have to answer, "Water......or water?" Yes, drinking anything besides water on this rule is quite a challenge. Just yesterday we determined that microbrewed beer is probably okay, but we never had any.

The biggest realization we had with this rule was the amount of artificial additives that are added in EVERYTHING we eat. It's astonishing. AND WHY?!?!?! AND I wonder what it is doing to our bodies? Even our "100% Lemon Juice" had a preservative in it...."but it's 100%?" I thought.....we really had to read the labels of everything we put in our mouths. While we probably will not be able to realistically follow this rule for the rest of our lives (nor would we want to do so as strictly as we just did because then we could never eat at restaurants, etc.), I believe we will definitely be more conscious of reading the ingredients list and being more cautious of what we are ingesting. It was also fun to make so many things from scratch....except when Ryan was sick this week and I had to do it all by my lonely self....then I would have liked to order a pizza and call it a night.

On to Rule #2: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food! For this rule we are going to say that anything that was not invented while our great-grandparents were alive is automatically OUT. Things that may have been invented while our great-grandparents were on the elderly-side of things will be more questionable, because who knows if they would consider it food? Sadly, all of our great-grandparents are deceased, and all of my grandparents have passed as well. Ryan will utilize his grandparents and ask them about how their parents felt about any sort of questionable foods.

This is where we NEED YOUR HELP! We would like to cook YOUR great-grandparents recipes. Do you have recipes that have been passed down in your family from generation to generation??? PERFECT! Email me the recipe at orcuttzo@gmail.com and we will make your great-grandparents recipes for dinner to ensure that we are properly following this rule. AND it will be fun to see what you guys come up with. We will also post pics of how they turn out and if you live close enough we might even give you a bite! Thanks for your help and we are excited for your recipes and Rule #2! :)

R2-D2

Our first picture! And it's our bread machine (aka R2-D2). This little man kept me up all night a few days ago. We inherited R2-D2 from Ryan's step-mom, Jill. He is very old, quite feisty, and somewhat unpredictable. He likes to cook bread on his own schedule. Sometimes that happens to be when you actually want him to bake the bread, but most often not. Ryan wants to go look at buying a new bread machine but I have a weird attachment to R2-D2. Don't you think he is cute!?!?! Also, we have to put him on the floor when he is cooking bread because he likes to walk all around! SO stinkin' adorable!

Tomorrow is our last day of Rule #1 and at this point I know we will succeed in following it for the whole week! HOORAY! Stay tuned for our reflections and next weeks rule in tomorrow's post. ALSO, we will be needing all of our follower's help for next week.....!

Some Research

We figured out answers to some of the looming questions we had in our last post:

1. Dave's Killer Bread is "food." Turns out wheat gluten is just wheat washed with water basically. So, we are good to go on the bread front. However, one of our readers asked if we would always make our own bread. My answer is that I would like to but I don't think I can count on myself to do this every time. So I like knowing about other good breads. Also, when we make our own bread it's SOOO freaking good it's gone within 24 hours. That would be dangerous on a regular basis. So buying bread won't be such a bad thing. And another issue is that there are certain types of breads I haven't figured out how to make. Such as hamburger buns! Anyone have a good recipe? We want to make buffalo burgers but are discouraged with the lack of bun options. Maybe we can find some good rolls to use that qualify as "food?"

2. Sulfate-free wine is a GO! Now, we have to find out where they sell this stuff. I'm assuming just asking the wine person at the grocery store will be a good way to hunt some down. They have to have it around because I was reading that some people are deathly allergic to sulfates and we can't have those people running around sad 24/7 because they can't drink wine. Anyone have any leads on this?

3. Beer.....sadly, we don't quite have an answer yet. We know that cheap beer such as bud and coors is NOT food. Turns out they use all kinds of crazy artificial stuff. One chemical they add controls the amount the beer foams! We are hoping local microbrews will be safe but haven't found out for sure. Can anyone help us out on this (Ahem, Jason)? We will need to do a consult with our beer expert friend.

4. If you are curious what "enriched noodle product" is, like we were, here is a lengthy definition:
http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/139-155-enriched-noodle-products-19705190

We are staying strong on Day #3. I'm baking more bread and hard boiling eggs.

Just Say NO to Bread on Drugs!

So, I stole the title of this post from Dave's Killer Bread logo, but it all fits perfectly together....Picture this: Ryan and I running
around the grocery store examining and critiquing food labels before placing anything in our basically-empty shopping cart. Frequently, making a fuss or laughing about what we saw on the ingredients list. Less frequently, high-fiving one another and jumping for joy. Other shoppers glaring at us and completely confused. This would sum up our first shopping trip experience following Rule #1.

Overall, I must say this experience was a success. We spent $25, which says a lot if you know how much we normally spend during a single grocery shopping trip (probably double that at least). I think spending less is attributed to not being allowed to buy the products we have grown accustomed to purchasing. Yes, the soda aisle did temp us with their real cane sugar glass bottle cream sodas. And the beer and wine aisle we decided to come back to later this week after some research takes place (i.e. does some beer have flavor additives to get that certain taste? is sulfate-free wine okay?). We are not even going to talk about what the candy aisle did to me....too painful, must repress. Often, when we couldn't buy something, we decided to make it from scratch, to ensure that it would be "food." For example, bread was a problem area for us. Dave's Killer Bread looked to be the best, but it had one tiny ingredient we were unsure of (wheat gluten?), so we stayed away. Instead, we bought ingredients to make our own bread! Finding all natural yeast was a bit of a challenge, but when we found it, we were high-fiving one another in the aisle. Go team Orwick! We also found yogurt we could eat--Nancy's (but only certain flavors!). Another high-five! We are dorks. The strangest ingredient we saw in all of our label reading (yes, we are well on our way to becoming label reading experts by the way) had to be "enriched noodle product." Noodle product, who would ever eat that? We also learned that unsalted butter is a no-no (it includes some mysterious "natural flavors") but salted butter is golden!

Our goal is to start taking more pictures to post to this blog because everyone likes visuals. For example, Ryan found a frozen beef ribeye steak that looked perfectly square. If it weren't for the packaging it could have easily been mistaken for construction material. We tried taking pictures during this shopping trip but we had some technical issues. Pictures to come! Also, please send good thoughts to get me through Cupcakes Jones Day at my internship......cupcake jones is not food and I will stay away (my mantra).

Also, our homemade bread is currently baking and our house is smelling amazing! :)

Rule #1: Eat Food

Tomorrow marks the first day of our Great Food Experiment. After
taking a week to ponder the first rule, which I have grown convinced
is the most difficult, we have finally come to an agreement. By our
definition, eating food will consist of eating naturally produced
substances with no additives (ie preservatives, color, flavorings,
etc). In addition this food should not be highly processed, which
sounds a little subjective, but it's the best definition we could come
up with. I think, I hope, we are ready to go!

I am guessing the most challenging thing will be staying away from milk
(fortified with all sorts of stuff) and white sugar and flour (highly
processed). Our plan will be to eat a lot of fresh fruits, veggies,
meats and whole grains. Another challenge, for me in particular, will
be eating while at work. Technically, staff is supposed to eat what
the kids eat (complete crap--think corn dogs dipped in velveeta
cheese, with the veggie being potatoes, and no, I am not joking).
Also, I will miss my candy. Any kind of candy. I won't be surprised
if I have gummy candy dreams. Or chocolate or toffee or jelly belly
beans....oh my.

Happy Easter Everyone! As I write this I am currently eating a sweet
butter toffee pink himalayan salt milk chocolate bunny rabbit. Keep
following us to see if we make it through this week. We will also be
needing everyone's help for Rule #2 next week.....stay tuned!

Thanks for Ruining My Lunch aka My Boyfriend is Amazing

This story all started yesterday when I went to heat up my lunch in the PSU Social Woker kitchen. As my food was being zapped in the microwave I was inevitably bored and impatient. As I was looking around I noticed some kind-hearted-social-working-soul posted a study from John Hopkins University about how eating food heated in plastic tupperware causes breast cancer. Sure, I have heard this before and was able to dismiss it because HELLO everything causes cancer. But as I ate my food I couldn't shake the fact that I was so proud of eating healthy boyfriend-made food and was still putting nasty cancer causing chemicals in my body. AAHHHHH is there no winning?!?!? In class I tried to pay attention to the light hearted lecture about how your clients killing themselves (or someone else) is not your fault (apparently it's shitty timing), HOWEVER, I could not focus. If you know me, then you know that I take everything to the extreme. The idea of me being rational is laughable at best. So I started feeling breast cancer coming on and I attempted not to panic. By the time I reached home I was highly stressed. I demanded to Ryan that we had to figure out what food is and is not before it's too late. I was panicky. Ryan, my super calm and overall wonderful boyfriend, sat me down and said, "Zoe, if this is going to cause you stress, then we are not doing it." I dismissed him at the time. But he is right. I am supposed to be doing this experiment to improve my health, not add ulcer to my list (long list) of life concerns. You see, Ryan is the ying to my yang. Now that you have all thrown up in your mouths you must understand that I am the one that has crazy ideas and Ryan is the one that grounds me and figures out logistics. When I want to camp at every campsite in Washington and Oregon, he says okay. When I demand that we need to save the world at 2AM he gives me a hug and says not right now. This is why I love him. Why else I love him? He just called me to say he bought us glass tupperware on his lunch break. My breasts will be safe.

Want some more food for thought.......One of our readers just sent me this interesting link:
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-01-what-to-make-of-the-pollan-schlossers-agreement-with-wendys/