Aloo 2

Tonight I used last night's leftover potatoes and cauliflower to make more Aloo Gob(h)i.  I haven't decided on which spelling to adopt.  Anyway, I added a campari tomato (for lycopene and colour) and threw some shredded cheese on top for sauciness.

I read some textbooks today:

"Because behaviour can evolve, we expect to find that behavioural development has adaptive features.  Some adaptive features include developmental switch mechanisms, which guide development into one of two or three alternative developmental pathways in response to specific environmental cues. Each of the resulting phenotypes can master the distinctive obstacles to success associated with its particular niche within the larger environment." (Alcock, John: "The Development of Behaviour," Animal Behaviour, 8th Ed. 2005) 

Supplementary Reading: "The Kind Die" by Alicia Silverstone.

Aloo Gobhi and Cookies

I made Aloo Gobhi/Gobi (Indian dish of cauliflower and potato) tonight.  I followed this recipe as it's a pretty basic dish, but the result wasn't as spicy as it was the other time I ate this.  I think I mis-measured.  Because I didn't measure.  Here are some photos from my cell phone. I forgot my camera.

Aloo gobi.

Chocolate chip butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies.

Mr. Man not caring about the hockey game.

Today I ate cashews and bananas for breakfast, then the usual spinach smoothie, and later some organic refried beans with avocado.  An hour before tonight's exercise, I had half of a veggie footlong sub (from Subway, which I patronized mostly thanks to the advertising on Biggest Loser) on honey oat with honey mustard and loaded with everything except for the hot peppers.

Exercise in the rain is refreshing!  I say that now that I'm home and warm and showered, but at the time I'm out there, I don't really believe this. ;-)  Yes, I am using an emoticon. Came home and ate the rest of my sub, showered, then looked for a torrent to download the Biggest Loser Special Episode I'd missed while GETTING OFF MY BUTT AND MOVING AROUND OUTSIDE.  A good day.

I'm watching the Biggest Loser while drinking water and congratulating myself on a week of mostly wholefoods.

 

Nov.21: Sweet potatoes and avocado...mmm.

 

My daily strawberry-cacao-spinach smoothie.

 

Nov. 24: Quinoa and another red cabbage & cucumber sandwich.

 

Nov. 25: Today, I ate a pomegranate (among other things).

Wholesome foods plus canned organic refried beans. Do not mix.

These are all the foods I've been eating lately.  Spinach and red cabbage salad with grapefruit was my main course yesterday, preceded by a spinach smoothie with strawberries and cacao.  Today's menu featured refried organic beans with green chili peppers and avocado.

Check out the spread of groceries on my desk.  I know you want them all in their wholesomely fruitastic glory.  You can't have my harddrives, though.  I left that Mozart cd in the photo because it's always sitting there, and also I wanted to look pretentiously learned.  It was a gift from my Grandmother a few Christmases ago (the cd, not the pretentiously learned look).  Usually I download music.  Why do I feel myself getting defensive?  I KNOW HOW TO DOWNLOAD MUSIC, PEOPLE!

For dinner, I ate the remaining half of a pineapple. I got some exercise this evening and came home to some pinto beans, avocado, cucumber and carrots. I'm not sure if that's a great combination. Should be fine. I have some quinoa on the stove, steaming, but I'm too full already.

Week's Worth

Last night for dinner: A reading of short fiction, walked around Vancouver for an hour at night, and then walked home to thaw my hands and snack on cashews and a chocolate muffin ('muffin' sounds healthier than cupcake).

Night before last: Sizzling veggie fajitas at Primo Mexican Grill (hidden at the intersection of 12th and Granville).  The place gets points for ambience -- dark, cozy yet open, music.  I was too full to finish the fajitas and Lori wouldn't let us bring leftovers in her car, so into the garbage went my remaining 1/8 cup of sizzled onions and green peppers.

A few days ago: Steamroller burritos (the veggie and pesto and Shanghai noodle versions).  So many steamrollers... Don't tell anyone, but one night I ate two steamrollers in one sitting.  I didn't feel so great afterward.  Why did I eat two large steamrollers?  Well, I wanted to try two different veggie offerings but didn't know which one to pick, so I ordered both, brought 'em home, sat down at my computer and was reverse-inspired to glutton-binge while watching an episode of The Biggest Loser.  Jillian Michaels can whip me into shape any day.

Today: Quinoa with avocado and red cabbage.  Spinach-strawberry-grapefruit-banana-cacao smoothie. An apple. Another smoothie.

Happy Birthday, Jennifer

Friday was Jennifer's (SweetOnVeg) birthday, and she chose to celebrate with potatoes and cauliflower at the cozy, low-lit India Bistro on Davie.  It was my first time there, and I liked it.
I also had the Aloo Gobhi: "A unique combination of cauliflower & potatoes cooked in garlic, ginger, tomato & traditional Indian spices."  I did not take this photo, but I did take some of the restaurant's over-sized silverware.  Juuuuuuust kidding.  I thought about it.

  Last night I played scattergories (horribly) and snacked on Kim and Lori's generous spread of fruit and cheese.

For breakfast I had a big bowl of leftover red cabbage and avocado. Blogger's post formatting upgrade isn't doing it for me.

Red cabbage

A departure from my usual sweet potatoes 3X/day, I ate two of these wholesome sandwiches for brunch: plain wholewheat bread I scored from my roommate's recent trip to Costco, buttered with half an avocado, shaved red cabbage, kale, green leaf lettuce and sliced tomatoes.

I have two strawberries left for my smoothie.

A fun thing to do with red cabbage if you have a lot of extra time on your hands and you're chemically inclined:  Make a Red Cabbage pH indicator.  Going by the purple of my red cabbage, I'd guess its soil was of a neutral to acidic pH.

Root vegetables again

Today I made the root vegetables again but this time I cooked/steamed them on the stove with a bit of water and a lid.  No heated oil; the much cleaner and less carcinogenic option.  (Less carcinogenic except for the second batch which I forgot about and let burn into the bottom of the pot.  My apartment smells of burnt veggie flesh.)

The plot twists: the yams I thought I'd been eating, are actually sweet potatoes.  According to this fact sheet, sweet potatoes are even better for me, so I'm fine with it:

Unique Proteins with Potent Antioxidant Effects

Sweet potatoes contain unique root storage proteins that have been observed to have significant antioxidant capacities. In one study, these proteins had about one-third the antioxidant activity of glutathione-one of the body's most impressive internally produced antioxidants. Although future studies are needed in this area, count on these root proteins to help explain sweet potatoes' healing properties.

A Sweet Source of Good Nutrition

Our food ranking system also showed sweet potato to be a strong performer in terms of traditional nutrients. This root vegetable qualified as an excellent source of vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), a very good source of vitamin C and manganese, and a good source of copper, dietary fiber, vitamin B6, potassium and iron. 

The intensity of the sweet potato's yellow or orange flesh color is directly correlated to its beta-carotene content. The beta-carotene in orange-fleshed sweet potato, which our bodies can use to produce vitamin A and is therefore called "Provitamin A," has been reported to be more bioavailable than that from dark green leafy vegetables. Purple-fleshed sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are a good source of anthocyanins and have the highest antioxidant activity among sweet potato varieties. In one study, the antioxidant activity in purple sweet potato was 3.2 times higher than that of a blueberry variety! Interestingly, the antioxidant activity in sweet potato skin, regardless of its color, is almost three times higher than in the rest of the tissue. 

 

Roasted Root Vegetables are Not Raw

I wrote most of this post a few days ago while I was high on raw carrot sugars.

Tonight (a few days ago) on my trip to Choices Market 15 minutes before it closed, lots of people were asking me for change (instead of to change, which was nice).

I filled my green grocery box thing with a rutabaga (a.k.a yellow turnip), parsnips, avocado, lemon, onion, garlic, olive oil, red and white potatoes, carrots and I think that's it.  Oh, I also scored the last container of rosemary!  It was shoved to the back of the herb shelf, waiting for me to reach over the fruit cups and dip my shirt into the pineapple juice for the win.

I oven-roasted root vegetables for the Thanksgiving potluck.

This is sort of what I did (depicted in the video), except I used finely chopped rosemary instead of thyme, I applied olive oil liberally to the mix, I didn't use my hands to mix everything together, I went easy on the sea salt, and the vegetables were sure as hell not spread out on parchment paper with spaces separating each perfectly cubed morsel.  Whatever.  I stirred the veggies twice and squeezed a lemon on top before drenching the left corner with too much balsamic vinegar... covered the tray of veggies with aluminum foil... 30 minutes later, I remembered to turn on the oven.  Preheated oven to 350, put in the tray... 30 minutes later and sha-bang.  I have to remember that other people like things to taste good, so I threw some sea salt and black pepper into the mix.  Then heated it some more, because I was on a roll.

Roasting root vegetables

Daily smoothies are still going strong.  (And the avocado was for my quinoa lunches, in case you were wondering... not for the roasted veggie dish.)

The delicious Michelle has been making delicious salads all week, so I've had no reason to update this blog.  Thanks, Michelle!  hahaaa.

Still eating my spinach smoothies every day.  For the record, there is nothing gross about a spinach smoothie!  Is it the thought of drinking spinach that turns some people off?  And how it looks?  And thinks?  

I threw a bunch of quinoa seed into a boiling pot of (Himalayan salted) water, added lid, turned off heat, sat down to read a book; returned in 20 minutes and dinner was ready.  For a moment I went crazy with the effort and topped my bland base of 2 lbs of quinoa with a few haphazard chunks of sweet red bell pepper and green avocado.  Green and red because xmas is near.  Joy to the world.  The three tastes and textures and temperatures combined in one dish made for some interesting internal dinner conversation. 

Vancouver!  Thank-you for tonight's autumnal sunset of deep violet + surprising pink + trademark orange hues.  I wouldn't have the balls to wear all those colours at once, but you pulled it off to an appreciative audience.  Nice and slow.  Let's do it again tomorrow night and the next night and every night forevermore.  Bedtime.

Guess who is simultaneously steering the momentum train and enjoying the ride?!  That guy on the left and also, Me! Yes!  I've finished all my exams as of... NOW.

I have the best friends in the world.  Yes.  And they live by their own rules -- their own inner code of just lawlessness.

Was up way too early again and sleepwalked through the eating of one tasteless white peach for breakfast.  After my exam I replenished my silo for mental fuel with some day-old quinoa and a spinach smoothie with strawberries and cacao.  (And a chocolate brownie cookie for dessert.)

While madly scribbling out answers today and rewriting the rules of logic, I flung my eraser behind me.  I didn't swear outloud, though.  I just sat there for a moment, too nervous to turn around to pick it up lest the supervisor suspect I was trying to cheat by looking at someone else's calculus exam.  (Yes, each of us were writing an exam for a different course, but I'm paranoid like that during exams -- I never look anywhere but at the front of the room or down at my paper.  My back is ready for a massage right about now.)  Anyway, a thoughtful girl noticed my eraser come flying at her so she retrieved it and placed it gently beside me.  I let out an appreciative, "Thanks!" to which she gave an automatic, "You're welcome."  And then we both got automatic zeros.

Kidding.  Hot action time!

Hi. I've been living on veggie burritos, frozen yogurt, spinach smoothies and fruit.  And adrenaline.

More later.

Finished my final stats unit today.  I feel relieved but concerned, as I don't recall the reasons for utilizing (I don't like that word) certain equations to calculate whatever solutions I judged to look like something that the answer should look like.  But the units = completed!  Now for the final exam.  

I didn't leave the house very much at all today, and thanks to bowls of life-sustaining quinoa seed, I maintained my course along Priority Route.  Not the scenic path, but it gets me places.  Somehow during this time of grindstoning it I managed to watch the Twilight movie and become obsessed.

I did not eat an apple.

Today I did a lot of planning and a lot of coursework, which is code for I sat around and stared at the wall while my books rested undisturbed upon my lap.

Really, I was in productive-mode -- until someone brought the above countdown distraction to my attention... at which point I sat around and thought about action comma the taking of.  [My courses' completion date coincides with Hot Action weekend! Coincidence? -- or the definition of Hot Action? Either way I'm looking forward to it.]

Some of the action witnessed by my windowsill basil plant:

I enjoyed quinoa; a strawberry smoothie with cacao and two bananas; a panini with avocado, strawberry tomatoes, arugula and monterey jack cheese (which had what I imagine to be a dirtysocklike aftertaste. The cheese boasts a 'low content of tyramine, an organic compound thought to be associated with headaches,' so I went for it anyway); a nectarine and I think that's it.

Bike ride from west end to West Van = 11:54pm-12:36am.  42 minutes.  During tonight's windy ride, my thoughts after studying all day: this ride is feeling harder on my legs than usual... hypoxia... cyanosis... alveoli...emphysema... Going through Stanley Park now... it's dark and the moon reminds me of something... I wonder if the zombies that run fast are scarier than the original type... how do they run so fast?  Must be some sort of muscle tetany.. no that doesn't make sense...  Etc. I'm certain that I took an extra two minutes longer thanks to the cumulative 2-second over-the-shoulder checks made throughout the forested portion of the ride.  And on the bridge.  They come when you least expect it.

And good things come, too.

Cary Fowler's TED Talk on Agricultural Importance of Seed Biodiversity

"Cary Fowler takes us inside a vast global seed bank, buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse group of food-crop for whatever tomorrow may bring."

Fowler: Agricultural biodiversity is the foundation of agricultural systems and therefore of human systems.

Hempseed hearts were the magical ingredient in my morning and after-softball-game smoothies yesterday.  And magic (Duncan hitting balls out of the park) was almost enough to pull off a win for the Youthco Darlings, the team I adopted for the afternoon.

I'd slept-in slightly (it was technically still morning when I hopped out of bed...), so I had time for just a sip of my smoothie before biking to Stanley Park. What a good Sunday -- sweaty softball action under blue skies with good people and supportive spectators cheering @ Softball Smackdown 2009. The final score for our last game was a 9-8 heartbreaker.  So close!  Good game once we found our rhythm (the games were only 4-innings).  Despite the loss, my mood was buoyed by the familiar baseball feelings of happy times, so I biked home and took advantage of the momentum by channelling my enthusiasm into completing stats assignments. A good day.

Smoothies yesterday and a homemade avocado/salad/campari tomato panini sandwich. For breakfast today I had nachos and goman salad (chickpeas, sesame seeds, quinoa and spinach), which were left over from yesterday's late night snack with Michelle @ The Foundation. So good. So sleepy. So sunny outside....