Camping Food

Matt and I spent Saturday night on Assateague Island off the Maryland coast.  If you grew up reading the Misty of Chincoteague series, you'll know Assateague as home to a herd of wild ponies, as well as many different sea birds. 

Traditional camping food tends to be pretty pointy and pretty meaty.  So it's a challenge to find plan food for a camping trip.  Breakfast is easy - we usually just have instant oatmeal and coffee.

We cooked dinner over the fire.  Getting a fire started was the hardest part.  I have distinct memories of my dad teaching me how to start fires, unfortunately, I don't actually remember what he said.  It also didn't help that the wood we bought from the park was damp.  After a few false starts and a drive into town to buy some fire starter, we finally got it going.

Dinner was Tofu Pups and Hobo Pies.  To make the Hobo Pies, we chopped up two potatoes and onions, and added enough oil to coat, and salt and pepper.  We wrapped them in heavy duty foil.  Normally we'd put it in the coals, but by the time we got the fire started, I was pretty hungry, so we set up a grill over the fire itself.  Once everything was cooked, we added ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut.

Still a little pointy, but hiking on a beach will earn enough activity points to make up for it, along with the beer.  Beer and hot dogs - I love that I can have food I love and not feel guilty about it!

Sweet-and-sour Mock Chicken with Cucumber and Cantaloupe

I was looking through my small collection of old-school cookbooks looking for ideas when I opened my 1976 edition of Creative Wok Cooking and found this astonishing recipe.



Our dinner plans were hampered only slightly by a damaged water main somewhere in Virginia that kept our water off from noon-ish to about ten in the evening, but as I am a resourceful and level-headed cook, I opened up a gallon of "emergency water" and got to work.

I chopped up some gluten and set it aside to marinate in soy sauce, corn starch and michiu. The original recipe says to use sherry, but rice wine works just as well.



I got some rice going in the cooker and then, because I am a gourmet powerhouse (and not, as some people in the household contend, because I am too cheap), blanched and peeled my own almonds. This turns out to be much easier than I thought, but feel free to remain impressed.



Thirty seconds in boiling water -- just until the skins wrinkle, and then straight into some ice water. They just sort of jump out of their skins when you squeeze them, kind of like edamame.



Then I set about chopping up half a red bell pepper, half a cantaloupe, and half a peeled, seeded cucumber. The original recipe just says to score the cucumber skin with a fork, but sometimes when I am cooking I forget that I am trying to follow a recipe and just go nuts with a vegetable peeler.



With the fruits and vegetables all chopped up (whatever haters I know those are all technically fruits I went to college you can't trip me up), I mixed up a little sweet-and-sour sauce from pineapple juice, sugar, cider vinegar, soy sauce and corn starch.



Then, after having bravely struggled with the genuinely first-world problem of a temporary interruption in my supply of unlimited clean safe drinking water, I got my stir-fry going.

First the gluten -- next time I make this, I may not marinate it, the corn starch made it sticky and weird, and I don't think chicken per se would have reacted the same way. There was just a little too much moisture to get a good crunchy sear going.



When the gluten is done, toss in the fruits and stir for a half a minute, then stir up your sauce and toss that in. When the sauce is glossy and delicious, stir in the almonds and serve it up.



I plated this with some black japonica rice (mixed with some short-grain brown rice because I didn't have enough of either to make a full cup) because I thought it would set off the vibrant colors of the stir-fry. I was right.

Ingredients list:

Stir fry:
14 oz. seitan
1 1/2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. michiu (can also use dry sherry)
1 Tbsp. cornstarch
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cucumber
1/2 cantaloupe
1/2 red pepper
2 oz. blanched almonds

Sweet and Sour Sauce
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
3 Tbsp. vinegar
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. cornstarch

It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle

People that have done Weight Watchers have heard this before.  A diet is something you do until you lose the weight you want to lose.  A lifestyle is a permanent change that you make in your life.  The idea is that you will be active and eat healthy for the rest of your life.  This mindset is what helps people keep the weight off once they lose it - after all, it was an unhealthy lifestyle that made them overweight in the first place.  If that's what they go back to once they get to goal, the logical result would be that they would gain the weight back.

It was Einstein that defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  If it was your lifestyle that caused you to be overweight, it would be insane to expect to return to that lifestyle and not regain the weight.

I guess that would make me insane, because I've started and stopped Weight Watchers at least 4 times.  I don't know the actual number - I went to my first meeting with my mom when I was 16.  It always starts really well, I lose 10 to 20 pounds, and then things just kind of fall apart.  There usually isn't a specific thing, I just get lazy.  I come up with excuses to skip the gym, or to "cheat" and not track.  I inevitably end up gaining when I start cheating, and then I throw in the towel and give up altogether.  I usually gain the weight back, and then some.

So what's different this time?

I think I finally understand what it means to change my lifestyle.  When I did Weight Watchers before, I tried to make it fit my life.  I am a stress eater - when life gets stressful, I stuff my face with sugar and carbs.  I used to stop by the gas station on the way home from my bar prep class, and load up on 4 or 5 king size candy bars.  I might have one left by the time I got home - and it was a 4 block walk.

When I've gone on Weight Watchers in the past, I didn't deal with this.  I wouldn't eat 4 candy bars, but I would devour sugar free jello or light cool whip.  I made myself sick eating candy with sugar alcohol.  I barely tasted it, I just needed to eat it.  And eventually I would need to eat something, I wouldn't have access to my "diet" food, I would eat junk food, and start down the slippery slope that lead to me giving up completely.

I don't enjoy fake food.  Fake food doesn't satisfy my cravings.  If I want chocolate, I can have chocolate.  It's just that I choose to have a small piece of good dark chocolate, instead of a King Size Snickers, or a weird, sugar free candy bar.  And I track it, and I move on.  Or I go for a walk, or have a cup of tea.  The truth is, since I stopped eating food like sugar free jello, and I haven't eaten a lot of refined sugar, I don't crave sugar.  I do still crave sweetness, but usually something like a piece of fruit or a small piece of dark sugar will satisfy that.

This time, I realized that I deserve healthy, filling, real food, I just deserve it in moderation.  Food won't solve my problems.  I can eat an entire bag of M&M's, I still have to get my work done.

I know that substitutions work really well for some people, and if they're working for you, I'm certainly not going to second guess that.  But I know that I needed to deal will my stress eating, I needed to deal not only with what I was eating, but with the fact that I was eating at all.

Sunday Picnic Panzanella

On Sunday, we decided to be savvy Beltway insiders and see the azaleas at the National Arboretum.

I wanted something quick and savory to picnic lazily under the Grove of State Trees. So I packed a couple of oranges, a thermos full of iced tea, a little chocolate, and a quick bread salad.

Bread salad, or panzanella, is a staple of every cuisine that has stale bread, and comes together quickly and beautifully. I like to add beans for a little earthy protein, but that's not a super-traditional way to do it.



Planning ahead, I had a half a loaf of ciabatta that was just stale, and I chopped that into cubes.



I tossed these with a can of canellini beans, a can of diced tomatoes, a half cup of chopped kalamata olives and a big handful of chopped parsley.



When the salad was mixed, I dressed it with a glug of olive oil and plenty of cracked pepper. A little salt, a little oregano (because I would put oregano on basically all foods), some chili flakes, and it went into the cooler bag to chill.



I think it turned out molto bene, but we may have just been in a good mood because of the azaleas.

Seitan Ribz and Plantains

A lot of vegetarian food doesn't photograph well, but every once in a while you get to take a picture of a really amazing center of the plate.

When we were talking about talking about what we wanted to have for dinner on Thursday, I was looking for something to put next to some plantains I was planning to roast.



I decided to make the seitan ribz from FatFree Vegan Kitchen, a recipe I originally discovered on everydaydish.tv.



I like this recipe because I make a lot of simmered seitan cutlets, but the combination of baking and grilling makes an amazing, meaty entrée.



To the easily intimidated, it may seem like there are many steps, but one you get comfortable working with vital wheat gluten, it's a pretty straightforward application. Throw your gluten flour in a bowl with some seasonings, mix up your wet ingredients, knead for six seconds, stick it in the oven, when it's firmed up, slather (yes, slather) with barbecue sauce and sear it on a hot grill.



I didn't have any liquid smoke, but I added a couple teaspoons of smoked salt to the liquid ingredients. I used a pizza cutter to score the seitan, which seemed to work really well.

The plantains were peeled, cut into chunks and tossed with canola oil, salt and pepper. They went into the oven with the seitan and just continued to roast when the ribz came out to be grilled.



I brushed the ribz with Annie's Naturals Sweet & Spicy BBQ Sauce, and turned them about four times each on a hot grill pan.



I plated up a handful of plantains with some ribz and some steamed green beans. Yes! Crusty, chewy, caramelized goodness.

Sprouted Lentil Salad

I love sprouting! I love sprouted lentils, and Liz does too, which is good, because that means I can make sprouted lentil salads for her to take for lunch.

The hardest part about making sprouted lentils is waiting for them to sprout, which is like 99.5% doing nothing, so it's pretty easy.



I sprout in a wide-mouth mason jar. The first thing you do is pick out any broken lentils, pieces of lentil skin, rocks, or other detritus from your lentils. Then you wash off your lentils and let them soak for a couple of hours.

After they are done soaking, you can either get a fancy sprouting lid or just gin one up with a canning ring and some cheesecloth. Drain the lentils out, then rinse and drain them a couple of times until the rinse water comes off clear.



Shake out the excess water and set the jar up at an angle so that water can drain out and air can circulate in. Repeat this rinsing and draining once a day until your lentils are sprouted.



These were grey pardina lentils -- they sprouted all the way in about two days, sometimes I've had lentils that took longer than that. You can do this exact same thing with mung beans, adzuki beans, or chickpeas.



After they are fully sprouted I like to throw together a sort of half-composed salad. Today I topped about a cup of lentils with a half of an avocado, a tablespoon of sweetened shredded coconut, some raisins, some salt and pepper, and some black sesame seeds to make people think I am a super-fancy gourmet. I made a little vinaigrette to put on the side.



I've also made this with curry powder and cashews. That's also pretty good, but a little "pointy," as Liz might say. You can add diced red onion if you like the taste of onions. (There is some contention in the household re: the deliciousness of onions.)

They are pretty earthy and hearty, so you can really stack some bold flavors against them. Sprouted lentils are way healthy for you and are always delicious.

Weekly Weigh In

So I didn't grow the food that led to my scale victory, but this picture still seemed fitting, since I feel like I won a major battle this week, and it was "Victory Garden" (aka my "Victory Produce Aisle") that helped me get there.

After struggling with the same 3 pounds for 3 months now, I've finally broken out of that rut with a 2 pound loss!  I made some major changes this week - I switched from Points Plus, the new Weight Watchers system, back to their "old" system, Momentum.

The new plan was sold as a way to get you to "eat cleanly" - healthy, whole foods had a lower points value than processed "junk" with the same number of calories.  The problem was, I was already eating almost all whole foods.  Matt and I just don't eat a lot of processed food.  So when the foods that I ate the most of went down in points, I ended up eating a lot more.  And eating a lot more meant some serious stalling at the scale.

I've had people ask me how I can eat a plants-based diet and still struggle with my weight.  There is so much literature out there that pounds just melt away when you cut meat out of your diet.  And for some people, that's true.  But what I've learned in the last 6 months of doing WW on a vegetarian diet is that calories are still calories.  If you eat more calories than you burn, those calories turn into fat.  Keeping this math as simple as possible is what helps me lose weight.  So, at least for the foreseeable future, it looks like I'm back on Momentum.