Eating Outside of the Box

In the early days of this blog, I posted a photo of the inside of my fridge. Admittedly, I did happen to catch my fridge on a particularly cleanish day, which left several of you wondering…”are these people REALLY that tidy?”

In an effort at full disclosure, I present to you…MY STOVE! (And, this is not – - I repeat NOT an exception to the rule…my stove is pretty consistently slopped all over! In my defense, though, I do use the heck out of it!)

Doesn’t look dirty to you? Click on the photo to enlarge…but consider yourself warned – it aint pretty!

Lucky for me (or so I thought), my cousin Mandy was hangin’ at my house when I took this picture. And, since she had been very much involved in the culinary devastation that took place in my kitchen on this particular today, I guilted her into believing that SHE should “take one for the team,” and clean the stove. Actually, I think the scene technically played out more like this: She was scoffing at me and saying that she doesn’t understand why I don’t just “wipe it down real quick because baking soda and a little elbow grease would take care of it lickety split!” So I invited her to demonstrate

Look at her go, folks! Just look at her go!

Unfortunately, she ended up “having to go home” before the job was done. (Big surprise there!) And since there was baking soda all over my stove, I was kinda forced to finish the job.

So, clean the stove I did. But it’ll be a while before THAT happens again!!

When it comes to food, lots of folks seek out items that are “fat-free.” I still have not been able to understand exactly how you end up with fat-free ice cream for crying out loud! I mean, cream = fat, the last time I checked!? But I digress.

My point is that, unlike many folks, “fat-free” is NOT a goal of mine. In fact, I am much more concerned with free fat – like the nearly 10 pounds of free beef fat that I scored during my last visit to the Bag ‘N’ Save store on 108th & Maple.

Oh, don’t worry….it’s not for me! It’s for our dog, Jackson! We supplement his diet with this free stuff. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to find because most butchers sell it off to rendering plants….yes, to be added to commercial animal feed.

But this particular Bag ‘N’ Save location ROCKS! They save the fat scraps in their back freezer because they have customers who come in and request it. And, it’s perfectly priced at $0.00/lb.

Want some for your po0ch? Just ring the magical doorbell in the meat department, and a butcher will appear Tell them you’d like some fat scraps for your “best friend,” and they’ll hook you up if they have some on hand!

Well, it’s Saturday night! So, what better to do than workout with Tony Horton and then…try our hand at shelling and deveining some shrimp!? We had to Google for instructions – sad, I know! But we’d never done it before

How did I end up eating fried eggs and leftover spicy asian slaw for breakfast today?

Well, the eggs just sounded good – they are warm, I was cold – seemed perfect!

And the slaw, well….we seem to have a lot of random “left overs” to use up these days due to my “experimenting” for my cookbook project…and someone’s got to eat ‘em!

Do I recommend this meal to others! NOPE! (especially when the slaw juices run over into the egg…not the most pleasant combo – LOL!)

For the first 13 years of my relationship with Chad, I soooooooooo looked forward to the nights we would go out to eat. Toss in a movie with popcorn, pop and Milk Duds after that, and it was a date made in heaven as far as I was concerned!!

Needless to say, our idea of “fun” changed quite a bit once we started to learn about what exactly we were putting into our bodies on date nights like these!

Nowadays, we just prefer to make our own meals at home because:

A) Then we know for sure what we are eating.

B) I am extremely sensitive to glutamate, and it’s not worth the risk to eat out at most restaurants.

C) Now that we know how to cook for ourselves, we are generally disappointed with most restaurant fare – - and we’d prefer to cook our own meals, rather than pay twice the price for something we like half as much!

However, on occasion we do end up at an eating establishment for fellowship purposes (e.g., meeting up with friends) or because we are on vacation, etc. Today was one such occasion.

Shortly after sitting down to my lunch at Jason’s Deli this afternoon, I began to realize that my version of dining at the “all you can eat” salad bar was attracting a wee bit of attention from passers by. So I did what any dedicated blogger would do… I snapped a quick picture of my plate. Hmm….ya… now that I think about it, I suppose this wouldn’t strike most folks as a lunch worth eating. LOL! But it was actually VERY tasty…and filling!

Oh, and I even managed to find some dessert that seemed pretty “safe” for me to eat. At the waaaaaaaaaaaaay end of the salad bar there was some organic granola — it was very tasty…almost suspiciously tasty. LOL! I was pretty darn full from my plate o’ veggies, but I still managed to pack in some granola for good measure! Ya know, for “research purposes.”

P.S. – Jason’s Deli even offers quite a few organic options, both on their salad bar and as choices in their other menu selections.

P.P.S. – Don’t let my plate scare you away from Jason’s Deli. There were countless other super tasty-looking items on that salad bar, including salad and a variety of dressings (which just happen to be “off limits” to me). So don’t feel like you’d be relegated to my kind of “feast” should you decide to dine there

Our dog Jackson LOVES raw eggs and usually eats the shell with so much enthusiasm.

Unfortunately for me this morning, he decided to leave the shell behind. Well, after crunching it into bits on the rug first, of course.

He only gets eggs occasionally. However, this was his second egg today because he got one with his breakfast and then I only needed half of an egg  for a recipe, so he got the rest as scraps.

Whenever he’s offered a second egg in one day, he almost never eats the second shell. Guess he knows what’s best

Total score! Look what I found at the dollar store…these cute little trash can pails. For those of you not familiar with my kitchen, I usually have 2 bowls on my counter (inspired by Rachel Ray’s “garbage bowl,” of course!). Because my kitchen trash basket is not located near my cooking prep area, I find it more convenient to just keep a bowl on my counter (that I empty at least daily) that’s designated for this purpose. Of course, we compost at our house….so 2 bowls are needed. I’ve had my eyes out for some sort of covered bowl situation…because of course it would just look less tacky (and I’m all classy ‘n’ stuff, as you know). So I was pretty excited when I found these last week, and the price was right at $1 each!

I just entered a contest with our new Vita Mix machine!! The concept was to basically create a “pitch” for the product in 3 minutes or less. Check out my entry below. For this video, I demonstrated a “Rainbow Juice” that we enjoy making with the machine…

P.S.- This was one of the most embarrassing things I’ve done in a while. (blush)

http://community.vitamix.com/_RAINBOW-JUICE/video/876627/22442.html

We’re often asked about what we feed our dog. See for yourself, here:

Doesn’t really cost us any more than the dry commercial dog food we used prior to our “real foods” life-style. See here (please note, I accidentally said, “chicken breasts” in this video…but they are chicken thighs):

Here he is eating one of his favorite “snacks”…

I’ll try to make a video next time we make his veggie puree, so you can see exactly what we put in there…..

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t Santa (but I had to get your attention somehow!)

This was quite a surprise this morning because Chad and I do not exchange gifts – ever!

Apparently I had mentioned on enough occasions how nice it would be to have this Cut & Serve utensil from Cutco that Chad thought it’d be nice to get one for me (because he KNOWS I would never spend that kind of money myself for something like that – especially if I wouldn’t use it every day)!

And, yes, he even got it engraved with the words, “Made with Love.” (You can double-click on the photo for a closer view.)

That phrase is a bit of a (formerly) “inside joke” because if I ever make us a less-than-healthy sweet treat, I will say, “It’s okay, enjoy, because I made it with love”! Or if Chad ever seems less than thrilled with the flavor of some experimental dish I’ve whipped up, I will scoff at him and say, “But I made this for you with love…hmmfff!”

Do you consider it strange that I (literally) cried over receiving a glorified spatula? Oh, come on….it was the thought and the meaning behind it that had me verklempt. I mean, seriously, who engraves a kitchen utensil?!?!? It was really sweet – especially for a GUY (no offense, guys)!

Hmmmm… so maybe it’s more than just our eating that’s “Outside of the Box” – maybe WE are a bit different, too!