Mothers are Wonderful, Especially Mine

In the craziness of last week I forgot to mention how my mother saved me from complete destruction. I think I have mentioned a billion times how important it is that I eat every 4 hours. The reasoning behind needing food on such a regular basis is that I suffer from hypoglycemia. It does not matter how big of a meal I eat that day, four hours later I promise you I will need to refuel. Some days I need less food than others and I am not sure why. Some foods make me feel better than others and it usually does not make sense. I can also go throughout the night and feel fine in the morning, not sure what is up with that. The only thing that I know to eliminate the bad mood-tremors-dizzy-can't think straight-feeling like I am going to hurl-and then passing out cold--is regular eating. Last week was near impossible because I ran out of farmer's market snacks and became too busy to get more. This left me with a time span of 12:20 (usually when I finish lunch) to 7pm (usually when we eat dinner) gap. It was not good....huh Ryan? On one particular hypoglycemic day I visited my mom and was feeling like I was going to die. Instead of dying, I came to a table that looked like this:


My mom had gone to the farmer's market for me and picked up a tamale and a homemade raspberry vinegar soda! THIS is why mothers are WONDERFUL, especially MINE!

In other news, we made pesto pasta for dinner tonight. I can assure you it was ALL cooked by humans because Ryan and I made everything! Here is some of the pasta that was drying. We made so much that we almost ran out of counter space drying it all. The basil in the pesto was from our garden! aaaaaawwwww..........love.






Also, we got our Organics to You bin today and are wondering if anyone can tell us what this vegetable is????? GUESSES PLEASE? Also, if you know what it is.....how about recipes to use it? Allison, I'm looking at you! :)

Rule #17 & Hello Monday

I was not able to post this on Sunday because we got back from a weekend in Seattle too late. Eating snacks only from farmer's market was the most inconvenient thing ever. Yes, Portland does have farmer's markets almost every day of the week. BUT NO, these farmer's markets are not easy to get to, as they are at the most useless times ever. They seem to run strictly during the day, while Ryan and I are stuck at work. OR when Ryan and I are trying to get home from work and beat rush hour. I would like some early morning farmer's markets. Or some late night one would be nice. But when they run 2-6.......ugh. And the second most inconvenient thing in the world is that you must have cash money. I never have cash. WHO carries cash anymore? This means that going to a farmer's market during the weekday includes getting off work right on time, driving to the bank to get some cash, then driving aalllllll the way across rush hour traffic to get some produce. Let's just say I love to shop in farmer's markets on the relaxing weekends but on the weekdays my hungry tummy is thankful for having the convenient neighborhood supermarket.

Our next rule, Rule 17: Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans, is a toughy. We are counting ingredients in this rule, which means that anything cooked by non-humans (meaning corporations) is an OUT. We will be living off of fruits, veggies, rice, eggs and.....hopefully we will discover some other stuff. Ryan is being very supportive of this rule, most likely because wine is not cooked by corporations.

Included in the picture below is our cooking this past week. We managed to use all four burners! QUITE the feat!

Buffalo Steak

We had an amazing date night dinner the other day. Ryan grilled the buffalo steak to perfection. We didn't marinade it or use any seasoning. The flavor was amazing. This is like the farm egg situation in that we can't go back to white store eggs.....we can't go back to beef. If you are reading this then you should stop because you will start wanting things you never knew you wanted and you down right cannot afford. If anyone knows how we can get buffalo for cheap PLEASE let us know!





Farmer's market snacking has been difficult because maybe it is psychological, in fact I am sure it is, but fruit does not fill me up! Perhaps the point of snacking is not to get filled up but to hold you over....it's amazing what revelations you have due to blogging. I think I need to start playing some mind games and change my whole philosophy around snacks. I am one of those people who needs to eat every four hours or I become extremely cranky. You can only eat so many cherries and apples before the sweet taste causes you to crave something more substantial. This rule has caused me to be more conscious of why I am wanting to snack. I probably don't realize how often I choose to snack due to boredom. When you have to think carefully about what you can snack on it opens a whole new can of worms.



We are down to apples and cherries from the farmer's market. This means that I will be heading to another one to re-fill on snacks. Portland is fortunate enough to have a farmer's market on almost every day of the week. See the following website for details: http://www.portlandfarmersmarket.org

Crazy Week and Rule #16

So, usually when it starts off as a crazy week and you complain about it to everyone you know, it starts getting a little better. Instead, my week just got more insane. After being in extreme pain and hardly able to move with my "broken spine" my family got attacked by a dog. By family I mean Opiedog, Mom, and Dad (who got the worst of it and saved Opie's dear life!). My sister was safe and sound in LA. Aside from daily hospital visits, and concerns over my dad's health, my family was also attempting to entertain my 16-year-old cousin, who is here visiting and I am sure bored out of her mind. Between Ryan and I helping out with everything we hardly had a chance to explore all of the various food options while avoiding the supermarket.

We did manage to live off of our bi-weekly farm bin from Organics to You, went to a farmer's market, ate a few things from our garden, and shopped at a cooperative food store. In all honesty, most of our meals were at my parent's house and cooked by my mom. We even lucked out and brought my mom some of our farm fruit and she made us a pie (she definitely got the short-end of the stick in that deal!). See some pictures of our adventures below. We realized that farmer's markets are a lot more accessible in Portland compared to the middle-of-no-where we live. If you need something a lot more driving is required compared to venturing to the local supermarket. Also, some items are hard to find outside of the supermarket, such as tortilla chips to go with Ryan's homemade guacamole, which is still oddly sitting in our fridge because we had nothing to go with it. Usually this would be gone in mere minutes.

The PIE


SO many spices. We bought some saffron for a sauce we were making.


Sampling food at the PSU Farmer's Market


One of the first pepper's from our garden


Our next week's rule is another exciting one: Rule 16: Buy your snacks at the farmers' market. I snack a lot so this one is going to be tricky for me. At the farmer's market this weekend we were reminded how expensive things are. We bought two buffalo steaks for $40 (a real splurge for date night!). I really wanted some nuts to snack on but they were $7 for a tiny little bag. I think we will be snacking on a lot of fresh veggies and fruit this week! If it's not from the farmer's market and it's not part of a meal we won't be eating it this week!

Soap Box Rant Fail

This week is not turning out to be as fun as previously anticipated. I woke up at 3:30am the other morning, turned my head to the right, and heard CRACK. The loudest sound I have ever heard coming from my spine....because spines are not supposed to make a sound FYI (in case you have not noticed). The next noise came out of my mouth and sounded something like: "RYAAAAANN, I just broke my spine!!!!" A groggy Ryan was surprisingly (and very sweetly) concerned. The next two days I was not really able to do much. As far as exploring food options outside of the supermarket we have so far failed. Even the place we advertised on this blog as providing the rainbow colored fresh farm eggs has been a no go. Apparently we told too many people because all of a sudden they are always out of eggs. We can't go back to the white store eggs. We tried. But once you have had the amazingness of farm eggs the white eggs just taste too Blah. You can tell the difference! We tried to rectify this issue by ordering eggs from our food co-op. Sadly, our order of produce came and there were no eggs. They must have forgotten to include them. OHHHH, and while we are are on random rants, can we discuss samples at supermarkets? I have decided they are the devil. It's good we are out of the supermarkets this week because if I see a nice lady with a hair net cutting up random substance and placing the tiny bites on little pieces of of individual wrapper I AM IN! Before I know it I have eaten X, Y, and Z and completely have broken the weekly food rule and if we are at Costco I have probably eaten the equivalent of a whole meal. Okay, soap box complete. As soon as my back feels better we are ready to explore some different types of food vendors......

Excited for Rule #15!

We survived Rule #14 with ease despite Ryan's nightly, "Are you sure we can't drink wine this week?" "Only wine without Sulfites...."

I am SO excited for Rule #15: Get out of the supermarket whenever you can. We are going to take this to the extreme and say that we are not going to buy any food inside the supermarket. Goodbye Freddy's, Safeway, Trader Joe's, Albertson's and Whole Foods. We are going to be looking to farmer's markets, our neighborhood farmers, and food co-ops. Any other ideas of places we can buy food?

Our Fourth of July Buns Plus Some

I have not been good about blogging with my new job. Now that Ryan and I have the same work schedule (gasp, I thought the day would never come) I find myself wanting to spend time with him instead of being on my computer. Due to this lack of blogging I have not shared the story of our Fourth of July buns! Remember how I said that we were going to be cooking buffalo burgers and I hoped that we could find buns that fit with our rule? Well, there were no buns. We went to several stores including Whole Foods and apparently all buns require salt. SO, we decided to make our own buns! I found a recipe, mixed some ingredients, let the dough rise, and put the buns in the oven! We 1/3rd the recipe because we didn't want the 24 buns that the original recipe produced. Because of this change I did not know how big of dough balls to form because it just said "form 24 balls." I was left to guesstamation and if you know me then you know that I am the world's worst approximator (Ryan just informed me I am making up words left and right but it's not my fault there aren't words to describe what I need to rely to you all!). So, please see the pictures below to see our finished product. They might have been tiny but damn they were good!!!!






Last night we grilled steak and finished it on the stovetop by lighting some Jack on fire. I didn't get the most impressive pictures but any cooking involving lighting the food on fire I must document.

Whoops, Happy 4th and Rule #14

We had a lot of "Whoops" moments this week. It was hard to determine a definition for "rot." For example, baking powder loses it's leavening effect as it ages but it never really rots (we ended up deciding that counted as rotting because it's food purpose deteriorated). Salt was another tricky one. If salt is exposed to moisture it hardens but it does not rot. Apparently, it can be broken apart and be just fine (we determined salt was out, but we accidentally used it a few times). We made our own wings this week with homemade bar-b-que sauce and blue cheese dipping sauce. AMAZING. Then we realized that vinegar (in our organic ketchup) never rots. Another WHOOPS. I took pictures of the beginning of our wing-making experience but was so excited to eat them that I forgot to take pictures of the finished product.






Happy Fourth of July everyone! Our mission today is to find hamburger buns we can eat, I hope stores are open today because we did not plan ahead on this one......

For next week our rule is: Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature. At least we can eat salt because I can definitely picture those Salt Lake City salt flats.

PS: We are dog-sitting my childhood puppy this week and I have to include a picture of him because I think he is the prettiest and best dog in all of the land. Here he is playing in the meadow next to our house: