Eating to Win

It's been a busy few weeks here at Optimum Omnivore HQ. I raced my first aquathon of the summer, and the USMS Open Water National Championships, in addition to working my actual job and preparing for the 4th anniversary of my 30th birthday. Said anniversary is being celebrated in DC, possibly the world's epicenter of shittastic weather. But I digress.

I'm so hot I can't be bothered to draw my other leg.

With the aquathon on a Thursday night, and the National Championships the following Sunday morning, nutrition should have been my first priority. Unfortunately, the workweek was hectic and stressful, and there were a lot of social engagements, so my priorities wound up looking something like this:

1. Don't get fired 
2. Drink with co-workers to relieve stress 
3. Drink with friends to relieve stress 
4. Eat whatever food is located close to where I am drinking 
5. Lament how I could have eaten better to prepare for my race 
6. Race 

Given this priority distortion, I am exceptionally pleased with my race results. However, I fully recognize that said results could have been improved by better nutrition, and less drinking. Since my next race is two weeks away, I have resolved to eat cleanly while I train, and avoid falling apart immediately prior to the event. I hope this plan will not only improve my race results, but also the actual racing experience.

This is what racing the one mile open water championship race felt like on a stomach fueled by a bottle of red wine and about 1.5 cups of freshly whipped cream

Normally I try to eat as much "real food" in support of my training as possible. I don't go in on a lot of supplements, or recovery drinks, etc. However, my husband was recently inspired to buy me a large container of Hammer Nutrition's strawberry flavored Heed. I give it 10 cool points for being vegan friendly, kosher, and gluten and MSG free, but I have to deduct 20 cool points for tasting like flat strawberry Fanta mixed with milk. Maybe they should have left the MSG in the formula after all.

No word yet on whether said beverage is going to make me the next big thing in masters women's open water racing. But these Hammer people are obviously very popular with athletic overachievers like myself, because there were large chafing dishes at the open water championships filled to the brim with their gel product. While I already knew that their flavors were suspect, I'm really cheap, and these were free, so I simply couldn't stop myself from stuffing my pockets.

Who else thinks "mountain huckleberry" is probably an overly ambitious description of the flavor?

Anyways, I hope to report back in a few weeks about how said Hammer products are helping sustain me during my training. In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you the dish I should have eaten the night before my races. It's not dairy free, but it is a great mix of protein, carbs, veggies and fat (I find food with those properties, in that descending order of quantity, are the best for dinner before my race). Enjoy.

Greek Quinoa Salad

Ingredients: 

1.       1 cup whole fat plain greek yogurt
2.       Zest of 1 lime, juice of one lime
3.       Zest of 1 lemon, juice of one lemon
4.       1 cup diced English or Persian cucumber
5.       1 cup diced red pepper
6.       ½ cup diced red onion
7.       ½ cup basil chiffonade
8.       ½ tsp salt
9.       ½ tsp pepper
10.   1 tsp dried oregano (or 2 tbsp of the fresh stuff if you've got it)
11.   1 cup white quinoa (or red if you like)
12.   2 cups vegetable broth

Directions: 

1.       In a large bowl, mix the first 10 ingredients thoroughly. Let stand for at least 15 (I’d prefer 45) minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Could be made up to 12 hours ahead and left in the fridge, covered.

2.       Prepare the 1 cup quinoa with the 2 cups vegetable broth according to either:

a.       Your method
b.      A method you like on the Internet
c.       The way I do it: I pan toast the cup of quinoa in a saucepan until it smells nutty, frequently stirring, on medium heat, for about 3-4 minutes. Then I add the 2 cups vegetable broth and bring the whole saucepan up to a boil. Then I drop the heat to low and cook, uncovered, for about 15 minutes, until all the liquid has evaporated. I remove the quinoa from the heat and let stand for another 20-30 minutes. At this point, I can fluff it with a fork and it has cooled sufficiently for me to add it to the bowl with dressing I’ve made above in instruction one. I mix to coat and serve immediately.

3.       You could eat this as a side dish, or as a main dish, or on top of a salad, etc. My favorite way is to make a salad of spinach and pine nuts, and to top that salad with a cup of the greek quinoa salad. I also like to use the greek quinoa salad as a base to serve turkey patties (a turkey hamburger). Lots of options.

I want chicken, I want liver.......

I had great plans for this blog post. It was going to be all about my muesli breakfast bars, which I was going to perfect over Memorial Day weekend. You were going to be blown away by a home made breakfast bar that was inexpensive, easy, quick, and delicious. I was going to put Nature Valley out of business with the push of the "Publish" button. It was going to be like this:

 

 

This is how everyone was going to react to the muesli breakfast bars

Unfortunately, I had to race last weekend, and that stressed me out, and when I am stressed I like to watch bad television, not bake. So instead of perfecting the breakfast bars, I was busy watching re-runs of The Real Housewives of Tragic Places in America and drinking hard cider. None of which I would recommend as a pre-race routine. But I digress.

So, I have no perfected muesli bar recipe. But I do have a fun food story about my cat, Jack. And before you decide I'm an over-trained crazy cat lady, just lay eyes upon him for a moment:

I don't always pose for photos, but when I do I look way better than your dog.

That is Jack. Steve and I adopted him from the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter back on Thanksgiving weekend in 2010. When we first adopted him, he had terrible stomach issues (that's polite-speak for "my house was constantly falling victim to explosive cat poo). After a few months of trial and error (and repeated steam cleaning), we learned that a lean protein diet is the key to Jack's gastrointestinal happiness. Which makes a great deal of sense because cats are carnivores, not omnivores.

You'd think this would be easy: buy some chicken breasts, a few cans of tuna, voila! Wrong. Carnivores get complete nutrition by eating the whole animal. Which is problematic when you have a job and live in an apartment. On the one hand, I don't have time to dispatch whole chickens or whole tunas in the food processor. On the other hand, releasing field mice in my apartment would almost assuredly get me evicted. Also, I am pretty sure if I released field mice in my apartment, this is what would happen:

So instead of making Jack's food, I buy it. I've tried a bunch of different brands, Origen, Primal, Wellness, etc. Today I went to the store and they were out of everything I normally feed him. And so, after some chatting with the ladies about comparable brands, I walked away with a bag of Nature's Variety Instinct rawboost, a blend of high protein lamb kibble and freeze dried raw salmon. $29.99 for a 5.1lb bag. Some men worry about what their wives will spend on shoes while they are away. My husband's main concern is the damage I'm doing at the local pet store.

Jack's allotted 1 cup of this per day. Given that there are approximately 30 cups of cat food in that bag, it represents one month of cat food. I spend $300 a month on myself in groceries, and I weigh 9 times as much as the cat, so, I think I have mathematically proven that this cat food does not represent a shameless waste of money.**

Next week I promise there will be a real food story, with a real recipe. Unless of course Bravo decides to start showing re-runs of Top Chef Masters before next weekend's race.

**Shame on all of you who are sitting there with a calculator trying to use that math to figure out what I weigh.

Neolithic man would eat a cupcake

It's always stressful trying to train on the road. The running part is easy enough (Did you bring sneakers? Get after it!) but the swimming requires more planning. I was down in Riverside for work a few weeks ago and struggled to maintain my training schedule. I found a master's swim team, but learned they wanted their monthly rate ($55) should I want to join them for one workout.

This is how I feel about asking someone to pay $55 for one swim

Next up: Public pool with open swim. I discovered that UC Riverside has a pool, open from 11-2, but UC Riverside's campus doesn't seem to allow visitor parking until after 4pm. Or perhaps the magic parking lot is well hidden. Either way, well played UC Riverside, there's no riffraff clogging up your open swim lanes. There was a local municipal pool, but it appeared closed to the public. Or perhaps, open to the public only once a month on the full moon. Who knows. They didn't have a sign or a front desk.

This isn't a fancy blog. We have no skilled artists. Apologies.

Bordering on desperation, and knowing I needed to train not-the-run that day, I remembered that my friend Nate just recently opened a CrossFit gym in Riverside. I know nothing more about Crossfit than a few choice jokes about sweaty boxes, but my husband swore it would be an amazing workout, I couldn't find a pool, and so off I went to CrossFit Kratos.

I learned many things during that workout. First, I can't do squats. I thought I could do squats. Apparently liz squats are to real squats what an apple is to a tire iron. Second, a 7 minute segment of wall balls alternating with burpees had me wishing that I had decided to do a 3000 yard swim workout in the hotel's 7 yard pool. And third, if you are ever in Riverside, need a workout that's not-the-run, and it's not a full moon, you should go to CrossFit Kratos. Because Nate is amazing. 

Photo deliberately fuzzy so you can't see how gross and worked I was from Nate's training 

Lest you think this is all just an advertisement for a gym....I'm taking the long way to my point. Which is that I have always associated CrossFit with the Paleo diet. And I don't like the Paleo diet. I get encouraging people to remove processed food and refined sugars from their diet as much as possible. But legumes, grains and dairy?

Neolithic man was a hunting, gathering wanderer. The neolithic period started to advance towards more awesome periods like the bronze age right about when neolithic man started feasting on early wild cereal grains, initially obtained through bartering, and farming them to sustain that tasty feeding habit. Cutting the modern processed food culture out of your life is a good idea. But there's no need to go the extra step against the evolutionary development path of your species.

The backbone of your diet should be lean meat, vegetables, fruits and nuts. But there's nothing wrong with tossing in some tasty flavor enhancements of high quality if you can get them. And this leads me to my below recipe, which is Paleo in that it highlights meat and vegetables, and not Paleo in that it allows for the addition of things like wine, butter, tomato paste and a little bit of flour.

Beef Stew

Hardware: Dutch Oven (or a regular soup pot that is oven safe), Spatula, medium size mixing bowl

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp butter 
• 1/4 cup flour (gluten free or regular) 
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1 tsp pepper 
• 3 tbsp tomato paste (you could process a half cup of sun dried tomatoes in your food processor if you wanted instead)
• 3 tbsp honey
• 1 Red Onion (chopped)
• 1 Fennel (bulb chopped, fronds minced)
• 4 cloves garlic (minced)
• 2 carrots (cut on the diagonal)
• .25 lb mushrooms (whatever kind you like, cut into manageable bites)
• 1 - 1.5 lb stew meat (beef or lamb) 
• 2 cups Beef or Veal Stock 
• .5 - 1 cup black coffee (i use whatever is leftover from the morning)
• .5 - 1 cup Red Wine (if you didn't drink all of it last night, I don't know your drinking habits)
• 1 8oz can diced tomatoes in juice (or, 4 small tomatoes diced with all their juice)

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350
2. Put the dutch oven on a burner on medium low. Melt the butter in the dutch oven 
3. While the butter is melting, put the flour in the mixing bowl and add the stew meat, tossing to coat in the flour. 
4. When the butter comes up to temp, start browning the meat in the butter in batches. When browned on all sides, remove to a dish while you work through all the meat. If you need to, add more butter to keep the saute process going. 
5. When all the meat has been browned and removed to a dish, add the onion, fennel, garlic, carrot, salt and pepper to the dutch oven and saute until the red onion is translucent and all the brown bits are off the bottom of the dutch oven. 
6. Add in the tomato paste and saute with the veggies for about 2 minutes. 
7. Add the stock, coffee, wine and tomatoes to the party. Mix well.
8. Mix in the honey. 
9. Bring the mixture to a simmer and then add back in the meat, making sure that it is submerged. If it isn't, add water to the mix until it is. 
10. Once the meat is in, put the lid on the dutch oven and put it in the real oven. Set the timer for 2 hours. 
11. At the two hour mark, give a stir to the stew to make sure it isn't sticking to the bottom of the dutch oven. Add the mushrooms in at this point. 
12. Reset the timer for an additional 30 minutes 
13. At this point, your stew is done. If you think it isn't thick enough, let it go for additional half hour increments in the oven until it reaches the thickness you want. 
14. Makes 6-8 servings

.

Dear Beer, I miss you.

As someone who prides themselves on eating, or at least trying, everything, I have a shameful not-so-secret: I'm gluten free.

I'm that person, the one who orders her burgers without buns, who can't have beer at the local brewery, and who makes sad faces when other people snarf cupcakes.  You can find me in the grocery store, walking around aimlessly, trying to figure out how people managed to get gluten into every single condiment and most of the canned goods. This is what I look like:

It gets worse. I don't have celiac's disease. Or a wheat allergy. As a result, I often look like one of these lame people who display their commitment to a certain diet like a badge of honor.

This gentleman is a devotee of the Paleo Diet. Other Google image searches for the Paleo diet looked like NSF selfies taken at your local Gold's gym so I went with this guy, who's on lunch break from his job at Brooks Brothers

Life long story short, my stomach is often upset and non-functioning. I decided to cut out the gluten as part of an experiment to see if my digestive system would improve (it was either gluten or dairy, and I'd shank anyone who got between me and my cheese). And my digestive system has improved. Please note, my hair is not shinier, my skin is not clearer, and angels do not sing to me every time I pass on a doughnut.

It's actually reasonably simple to be gluten free, with the following three exceptions:

1. Breweries: You can enjoy really overpriced gluten free beer that usually sucks 
2. Restaurants: Welcome to your own personal hell of ordering like Sally from "When Harry Met Sally", you'll have the burger, no bun, and fries, but not the cajun fries because you've heard those are sometimes coated in flour. 
3. Baking: Invest in Xantham gum. It's expensive. And your bread will bake up like a brick if you try to skip it because you're cheap.

I've found a couple of gluten free "ready to make" baking solutions that I love and regularly employ (Thank you, King Arthur Flour Company, for your idiot proof Gluten Free Bread and Pizza Mix, for allowing me to continue to enjoy sandwiches). But I have been slightly less successful with my own impromptu baking. I've accidentally made hardtack more than a few times and experiments with improvised gluten free flour mixes of my own making have led to some very dense, crumbly bread.

Because of these many failures, I get really excited when I stumble upon a successful gluten free baking recipe. Recently, I saw a lot of posting on Facebook about the best Paleo chocolate chip cookies. Intrigued, I set off to the grocery store with the intention of making them. But the bag of almond meal was $14. And I am cheap. And there was a bag of gluten free muesli that was only $3.49. And frugality is the mother of invention.....

Obviously, taking out the almond meal and adding in the muesli (Bob's Red Mill) resulted in some substantial restructuring of the initial recipe. And by substantial, I mean the recipe I developed isn't Paleo. But it is gluten free. And more importantly, it was successful and the resulting cookies were delicious. I swear. Several people in my office ate them and said so. And they didn't look like they were humoring me.

I do not think this is what happened. You may need to check with my co-workers before making the recipe yourself. They might be really good liars....

Recipe: Formerly Paleo, Now Just Gluten Free, Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

Hardware: Large Plastic Bowl, Cookie Sheet, Ice Cream Scoop

Ingredients:

2 cups gluten free muesli (Bob's Red Mill)

3/4 cup gluten free flour (King Arthur)

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons honey

1 egg

3 teaspoons vanilla (or could be one seeded vanilla bean and 3 tsp water)

6 tablespoons coconut oil (melted)

1 large chocolate bar (your fave) chopped into chunks.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 
2. Grease your cookie sheet 
3. Mix muesli, flour, soda, cinnamon, salt in a bowl. 
4. Add honey, egg, vanilla, and oil and stir to combine. 
5. Mix in the chocolate chunks last. 
6. Use an ice cream scoop to portion onto your greased baking sheet. 
7. Bake for about 12 minutes or until they are golden brown around the edges. 

Makes 12-15 cookies.If you didn't eat all the raw dough first.

Happy National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day

I wanted to start this blog with a witty and intelligent quote about eating and nutrition. Sadly, my Google search for "quotes about eating" led me down a rabbit hole of self-help, moral imperatives, and hedonism. I think we've all had enough of that. So I went old school and obvious: 

Moderation in all things.

 - Terence (Roman comic dramatist)

Leaving aside the irony of that phrase being coined by a Roman, that saying is the essence of this blog. I want to talk about balancing the things you need to eat with the things you want to eat.

I understand that many people do a great job of removing ALL the questionable foods from their lives. They forgo all processed items. They don't eat inflammatory foods like sugar and dairy. They sustain themselves on ginko leaves and the energy of the universe. But from my perspective you could get hit by a bus or struck by lightening at any time and who wants to die not knowing what the black and tan sundae at Fentons Creamery tastes like*?

 

 *It tastes like it looks. AWESOME. 

In addition to being a lover of home made caramel sauce, I'm an athlete. Which is part of how I get away with eating black and tan sundaes at 10:30pm on random Tuesday nights. I log about 10 hours a week (a combination of swimming, running, and cross training). As a result, food is both fuel, and a reward, for my hard work. This duality influences the choices I make when cooking and baking. I'm hoping to share my recipes, my experiences trying different types of nutrition while training, and lessons I've learned about the useful properties of different kinds of food.

Today is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.  I thought about posting my recent triumph of a gluten free chocolate chip cookie recipe. But I baked and then ate about a half dozen of them last night instead of going to swim practice and am feeling, understandably, a little repentant. So I'm going to talk about kale.

Try to curb that enthusiasm

I know that kale, in comparison to cookies, is not the way to win hearts and minds. But if you, like me, have a tendency to eat a half dozen cookies at a time, you should probably look into eating kale when you aren't going godzilla on baked goods. Remember the plan: moderation in all things.

I'm not going to bother extolling the virtues of kale, or try to convince you to eat bushels of it raw. I don't like raw kale. Full disclosure, I also don't like what's known as "dino kale". I like curly kale, and I like it well dressed in salads and cooked tender in soups. It's easy to find in almost all grocery stores these days but I like hitting the farmer's market because I enjoy the thrill of getting a lot of vegetables for very little money.

During my most recent trip to the market I walked away with kale, heirloom carrots, fennel and some really nice red onions. The below recipe is the soup I made on Sunday after realizing that work had sucked my upcoming work week into a vortex of doom. Every moment was committed and I wasn't going to get the opportunity to cook those vegetables separately into sexy dinner dishes. Soup is the solution to a workweek gone bad. You can put a lot of ingredients into soup. You can reheat it at work for lunch. You can freeze what you can't finish during the week. And then you have something to eat the following week when you are too tired to even bother buying groceries.

Kale Soup: 

Hardware: Large Pot, Spatula, Slotted Spoon

Ingredients:

3 cups curly kale (removed from the rib and chopped)
2 cups fennel fronds (chopped)(reserve the fennel bulb for addition to salads or whatever else you want to do with it)
1 red onion (minced fine)
2 cloves garlic (minced fine)
4-6 small heirloom carrots (cut on the diagonal)  
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1 lb loose sausage(turkey or chicken if you want, I used pork)
2 meyer lemons
Salt and Pepper to taste 

Instructions:

1. Sauté the sausage in the pot until browned and rendered. 
2. Remove the browned sausage from the pot, leaving drippings in pot, and placing the browned sausage on a plate covered in a paper towel. 
3. Add the minced onion, garlic, cut carrots, and sauté until the onion goes translucent. 
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.  
5. Add in the chicken stock and water. Bring to a boil.  
6. Reduce to a simmer, add the kale and fennel. 
7. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, skimming any gross stuff that rises to the top, until the kale is tender.  
8. Turn off the heat and juice the two lemons into the soup. Stir to mix, 
9. Makes 6 servings if you are me. Probably more servings for you.