Oils, LA, and Rule #39

I am late writing this because I went to LA for the weekend. My sister goes to school there and is studying to be an opera singer. I was fortunate enough to get to see her junior recital. It was so good that she made me cry and if you know me I am not the crying type.

As for eating traditionally stoned ground oils I can say that I didn't cook with anything that wasn't traditionally stoned ground; however, I sadly had no time to really cook this past week, much less experiment with different oils. This will have to come at a later date. On the bright side my sister was able to show me the wide range of cuisines that Portland lacks....sure, we have Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, etc. but it does not compare to the authenticity that I experienced in L.A. We went to a Chinese restaurant where nobody spoke English and the cooks made their own noodles. They cut them into the soup. We then went to a Polish restaurant thanks to my Aunt and Uncle. I got a spicy sausage and some of the best cabbage soup I have ever had. We had good Thai thanks to Andy and his parents. We also had good Indian....Indian that actually served Indian food opposed to what Americans think that Indian food should be. I was in heaven. I know my sister is going to kill me for not posting pictures yet but they are coming Lily...! Ryan and I finally had time to cook our first meal in what seems like a long-time tonight. I love this weeks rule #39: Eat all the junkfood you want as long as you cook it yourself. Awesome!

The Dread of the White Bread and Rule #38

We attempted to be extra prepared this week by starting it out with the best smell in the whole wide world: home baked bread. We got a new bread machine as an early wedding present (thank you!). We missed R2D2 (our old bread machine that was the cutest bread machine ever and had the best quirks) but this new bread machine makes bread a whole lot faster.





Ryan broke down towards the end of the week when we went out to dinner at a place with amazing burgers. The restaurant didn't have whole wheat buns and Ryan's craving for the burger got the best of him (I am guilty as well because I took a bite). For the most part, however, we ate whole grains.

Next week will be Rule 38: Favor the kinds of oils that have traditionally been stone-ground. After doing a handy-dandy google search I have learned that this includes olive oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, and palm fruit oil (not sure what this last one is....?). We might try to find some palm fruit oil to spice things up.

In other news, we ended up buying something off our own wedding registry because Ryan got so excited he could not wait! This is a problem because we are such cooks that we hardly had anything to register for in the first place. BUT I am glad we ended up doing this because life just got a whole lot simpler. We ended up buying glass jars to store all the foods we buy in bulk (think flours, sugars, etc.). This was a necessity because storing all our bulks in plastic bags was the biggest nightmare if one of them developed a whole (think flours, sugars, etc. all over the floor!). Here is a wedding present to ourselves!:




HOORAY! Hopefully this trend will not continue because (a) we cannot afford presents to ourselves and (b) getting gifts from others is fun because then we can think of all the special people in our lives every time we use them!

My Milk Stayed White & Rule #37

Well, my milk stayed kind of white this week...except when I made smoothies for breakfast and blended my smoothies with berries.



But I did not have any artificial coloring, which I think was the point of this rule. This upcoming week Rule #37 we will have to pay attention to color again because: The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead. Aside from the occasionally baguette we have stopped eating white bread already. When I bake I also try to incorporate whole wheat flour. Sometimes this doesn't work out so well (ie dutch babies) but every once in a while we get an extra nice surprise (ie gingerbread cake).

Sweetened with Sunshine & Rule #36

We avoided unnatural sugar this week. After researching we found that there are lots of differing opinions when it comes to the term "natural." We defined this term by clarifying that the sugar we ate didn't contain any additives (such as coloring). We pretty much stuck to sugars that are naturally found in fruits and vegetables. Here are a few of our favorite naturally sweet things we ate this week:

My sweet fiance sweetening his whole grain waffle with some maple syrup!


Tangerines


Sweet Potatoes


Carmelized Onions (we have these at least once a week)


Honey


Next week we will be following rule #36: Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of your milk. This rule is straight forward and will be easy for us because we have not had this type of cereal since we began this food challenge.

In other news Ryan and I signed our catering contract this week for the wedding. Because food is so important to us we went with a small catering company called Phresh that uses local and organic products. The owner said that he will often go to farmer's markets the morning before they cook to purchase their food. I'm not giving away all of the surprises of the wedding but I can promise that we are having some atypical wedding food (the caterers worked with us to create a special menu of things they have never cooked before!). The tasting was amazing and Ryan and I are so excited!!!