After years of my love and devotion, finally, my favorite valentine reciprocates my love.
I love you, too, Lofthouse Cookies! Be mine forever!
Filed Under: food
Review: Green Lite Bites cookbook
Disclosure: I was sent a free copy of this cookbook to review. Also, Roni is a cool chica I’m proud to call my friend.
Roni from Green Lite Bites (and a couple zillion other sites) published her first cookbook this year. It’s called Favorites from the First Three Years and contains—you’ll never guess!—her favorite recipes from the first three years of food bloggin’.
I’ve got to give Roni big props because her cookbook is beautiful. She put it together while raising a kid, incubating a new one, planning a blog conference and working for herself full-time, so honestly she’s making us all look bad. It’s got lots of large, full-color photos that make you want to eat the pages. Each recipe also has three tips or suggestions for variations on the recipe in case you don’t like one of the ingredients or just want to switch things up. She even calculated the calories, fat and fiber information for each recipe, which means she’s good at cooking and math. I also enjoyed the short introduction that explained what cooking and healthy eating has meant to her. The only thing that could have made this cookbook better is if it had come with the food it tells you how to make.
The cookbook is a paperback coming in at 80 pages, but she packs a lot of content into those pages. I prefer to have a smaller cookbook where you actually make the recipes instead of having a big, fat, heavy one that you use for 2 or 3 meals at most. You can buy the cookbook here for $19.95 and also view some companion videos. Tell ’em PastaQueen sent you! (It won’t get you a discount or anything, but I sure will feel special!)
Eat your fruits and…what were those other things?
After looking at the food diary I’ve been keeping for the last two weeks, it’s hard to figure out when the last time was that I ate a vegetable. Fruits? Check! I have devoured pears, mangoes, and even little pineapple bits in my yogurt. Vegetables? Hmmm, well the Subway sandwich had some lettuce, tomato and red onion on it, so technically that counts. And the Palek Paneer I got at Whole Foods was full of spinach, but I was eating it more for the cheese.
I used to snack on baby carrots and hummus, but I can’t seem to find the baby carrots at the grocery store I visit most often, so either they’re hidden or the baby carrots grew up fast like kids do these days. I also used to snack on celery, mostly because of that delightful crunchy texture, which is almost worth getting celery veins stuck in my teeth. I just haven’t bought any lately. Otherwise, I’m not much of a veggie fan, mostly because of the work involved to make them taste good. I enjoy eating most fruits without any preparation, but to make vegetables palatable I have to sautee them, roast them, or sprinkle them with spices or seasonings. Honestly, that’s not that much extra work, but it’s enough to make me choose an apple instead.
So, mental note, more veggies! They have important vitamins and nutrients. They are typically not calorie dense and fill you up. One question though, does popcorn count as a vegetable?
The self-checkout and a shame-free shopping experience
Photo by pin add / by NCND 2.0 CC
Last week I had a mad craving for cookies. After fighting it for hours, I decided to just give in instead of obsessing about it. So I drove to the grocery store at ten o’clock at night, grabbed a box of Lofthouse cookies (with pink icing and sprinkles) and headed to the self-checkout lane. This is when it occurred to me that although the self-checkout lane has saved me hours of time I would have spent in longer, slower-moving lines, it’s also been bad for my waistline.
Before the self-checkout, a cashier had to scan all your items for you. I would always imagine the cashier was judging my purchases, silently snarking at my choices. It’s more likely that the cashier didn’t care how many bottles of soda I was purchasing, but was more fixated on the wall clock and how many more minutes were left in their shift. Still, the possibility that they were judging me always made me slightly uncomfortable.
The self-checkout machine does not care how many minutes there are left in its shift because it doesn’t have one. It does not have self-consciousness, let alone the ability to judge my purchases. The worst thing it does to me is refuse to scan the barcodes on my items even as I wave them twenty different ways over the damn scanner. (WHY WON’T YOU SCAN?! WHY?!) There is one cashier that oversees all four of the self-checkout machines, but I’m not sure if they can see my purchases, and even if they do I don’t have to look them in the eye or interact with them in any way.
If I had to set my lone box of cookies down on the conveyor belt and interact with a cashier to resolve a late-night cookie craving, I might have stayed in my apartment and just waited it out. However, I knew I could skate through the pseudo-anonymous self-checkout lane, so I got the cookies without facing an awkward social situation. Essentially, the self-checkout machine has eliminated the element of accountability that used to exist, and as you probably know, accountability is key to weight loss and weight maintenance.
I suppose this is a bad thing, but I would never give up the convenience of the self-checkout lane. Perhaps they could insert a subroutine that would flash the message, “Do you really want to buy that?” whenever I scanned something particularly calorie-dense. I guess that would be bad for sales though, so I don’t see it happening unless a rogue programmer from a competing grocery chain hacks the machines.
On the flip side, the fact that I’ve been recognized by two blog readers since I moved here has made me a little bit paranoid that I’ll be spotted when I make such high-calorie purchases. I lived in Indianapolis for ten years, five and a half of which I spent blogging regularly, and I was only recognized once. That person didn’t say hello, either. They just emailed me later, which was WAY MORE CREEPY than if they’d just introduced themselves. I’ve lived in Chapel Hill for less than six months and I’ve already been made twice. I don’t think that paranoia is any match for the anonymity of the self-checkout machine, though.
When’s dessert?
Photo by Svadilfari / Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic
Two seconds: The amount of time I wish would elapse between eating my last bite of Thanksgiving dinner and starting on Thanksgiving dessert.
Two hours: The amount of time that actually elapses.
Complete hell: The amount of time in between these two events.
Over the years I’ve had varying opinions about whether food addiction exists and if I have it, but the single-minded focus I felt in anticipation of devouring some dirt cake and apple crisp on Thanksgiving presented a strong case for its existence.
Literally the moment I finished eating dinner, I wanted to eat dessert. I love sweets and I knew there was a delicious concoction of crushed Oreos, whipped cream and cream cheese sitting in the fridge. I found myself sitting at the table while other people were still finishing their meals thinking, “Oh my God! Eat faster! Don’t you want dessert?!” Then when we were all done, we helped with the washing up. (I supervised!) And people mingled. And went to the bathroom. And started chatting. And while it really is lovely to catch up with family and friends, OH MY GOD COULD WE PLEASE HAVE DESSERT?!
Of course, I couldn’t just scream that to everyone in the dining room, because it would be totally weird and embarrassing. Instead, I had to sit around pretending I wasn’t thinking about doing horrible things to my blood sugar levels. Secretly, though, I was wishing we could get the dessert plates out already. (I’d be happy to help!) And when I wasn’t thinking about crushed Oreos, I was thinking of how disordered this way of thinking is, and how “normal” people probably don’t feel this way about dessert, and wishing this craving would go away please for the good of both my health and my waistline. But it didn’t. Addiction never goes away. The lil’ fucker.
Eventually we did have dessert and it was very good. Yum. Yum to the yum, yum, yum. I enjoyed it very much, and somehow managed to eat until I was full but not stuffed. Small victories, y’all. Small, small, victories.
