Today in Important Thoughts: Avocados

It occurred to me recently that the difference between a good avocado and a bad avocado is as vast and as significant as the difference between Benedict Cumberbatch dressed up as Sherlock Holmes and Benedict Cumberbatch dressed up as Julian Assange.

Good avocado:

Bad avocado:

And while we're talking about healthy foods and captivating faces, here are some "Featured Members" from the home page of veggiedate.org :

And here's a photograph I took recently of some very healthy foods:

(includes an avocado)

How to Keep Three Small Dogs Entertained for Five Whole Minutes

#41. Granola

I've been making this granola for breakfast for months now. It all started when I decided to try a variety of different packaged cereals, even some expensive ones. One of my favorites was Udi's brand original granola. What I didn't like about it, though, was that it was a bit overcooked, had too much sugar, and was rather expensive--at the store where I bought it, it cost $5.50 for a 13-ounce bag. So I decided to try making it myself. 

If you buy the nuts and raisins in bulk--I get them all (except the almonds) at Costco--you can cut down the price considerably. Making your own also means you can put consistent amounts of each kind of nuts in each serving and experiment and adjust those amounts to your liking.

Here's how I make it:

Heat a skillet (Warming the granola brings out the flavors of the ingredients. I used non-stick at first, but I've decided that that is unhealthy, so now I use a regular steel pan. It gets too hot very easily, so I turn the heat on and off as I'm cooking.)

Add 1 teaspoon of sunflower (or other) oil (You can omit this to be healthier. Don't get the oil so hot that it sputters.)

Add 36 g (about 3/8 C) rolled oats (They'll start to sizzle, so be ready to stir them immediately with a spatula or cooking fork. If there's sputtering or hissing, take the pan off the heat immediately or your house will smell like burnt popcorn.)

Stir after each addition, making sure to regulate the heat:

15 g (about 1/4 C) sliced blanched almonds 

28 g (about 1/2 C) walnuts (These are surprisingly critical to the overall flavor. If you're lazy like me, you can break them in the pan with the spatula instead of chopping them first.)

28 g (about 1/4 C) cashews (I used the roasted, salted ones. If you use raw, you may have to add salt to the granola.)

14 g (about 1/8 C) pistachios (Mmm-mmm-mmm!)

30 g (about 1/4 C) raisins (These make the granola sweet. Without them, you'll need sugar or honey.)

1 teaspoon (about 4g) flax seeds (Very healthy. I've read that the ground seeds are healthier because your body can absorb more of the healthy oils.)

Put a banana in a bowl (NOTE: if you don't have/like bananas, this is also good with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, and/or apples!), then pour the hot granola over it and eat immediately (assuming you haven't gotten it hot enough to burn your tongue!) I used to add almond milk and honey, but the calorie count is already very high. I plugged the ingredients into fitday.com today, and I was surprised that what I thought was a 700-calorie breakfast was actually over 900 calories!! So I guess you could say this "Serves 2," although I eat it all by myself!

(Pictured served with honey, plus a giant mug of tea to wash it down--highly recommended.)

Here's the calorie breakdown:

Even worse, half the calories come from fat! (One third is considered ideal.):

But it's got lots of good nutrients:

So it's a bit of a trade-off. A+ for flavor, B+ for nutrition. C- for making me pig out.

Hot Dogs

Max

Lizzie

Joey

SHOCKED!!

... Admits He "Never Really Knew Where Babies Come From"

Things I Did in June and July

I missed my last "Things I Did" posting because around the end of June and the beginning of July, my mood was nearly as low as it gets. Probably the less said the better since I'm with-it enough now to finally put this together.

PHOTOS: I'm still using my terrible 11-year-old Canon point-and-shoot. I have to take 7 or 8 pictures before I get one in focus. However, with summer in full swing, I had a lot of good subjects and a lot of good light.

(A ceramic cicada my parents brought me from Provence, years ago. You put lavender oil on it and it scents the whole room.)

(One of my roommate's beautiful pots in front of a tree with ivy growing on it, late afternoon light.)

(A rock rose, one of several plants my mom bought me for my birthday a few years ago that still bloom now and then.)

(Caladium shoots with cicada husks on them--enlarge the photo to see!)

(Crepe myrtles, one of the highlights of the Texas summer)

(a tiny weed I cannot identify that took nearly fifteen minutes--and half a dozen mosquito bites--for me to get in focus)

(another of my roommate's lovely potted arrangements, this one several varieties of hens-and-chicks)

(I was sitting down for a snack one day and looked at the foods assembled and jokingly thought to myself, "Still Life: A Study in Primary Colors." Fig Bars are a recent discovery of mine. They're a cross between a Nutri-Grain bar and a Fig Newton, but healthier and more delicious than either.)

(Japanese maple leaves start out red and progress to green. You can see the shadow of my hands and the camera.)

(This isn't a very good picture, but it's an interesting plant--it's called a shrimp plant for obvious reasons.)

(Ivy growing over a doormat. I like the painted look of the leaves.)

(Lichens on a tree trunk after rain. We had a week of wonderful cool, rainy days. If only we could have  more of them; then Texas might be worth living in.)

(An apricot hibiscus, another of the flowers my mother bought me. The color has gotten richer and darker, I think.)

(I don't usually include pictures of the puppies here, but this photo was taken with artistic intent. I wanted to take a picture on the theme of "dog eat dog." I sat in the playpen while the puppies "fought" and took occasional pictures with the flash, not just to capture the fast action, but also to get that more lurid look. This is Joey and Max, biting at each other's faces.)

ARTWORK: Nothing new this month, but my mom did ask me where the drawings I made for her on Mother's Day were. She was afraid she had dropped them. I told her I had kept them because they were so bad, and she said something like, "Oh, no! I thought they were cute!"

ESSAYS: I feel like I'm getting a little better in this category, though it's still all so personal. This is a blog, so I guess that's no sin, but I'd like to provide "content" or at least be more entertaining. Okay.

"Daddy"

thoughts about my dad and our evolving relationship, from Father's Day

"Potato is Mine"

childish in tone, but short, and worth a glance for the pictures

"A Potentially Lucrative Idea: Face Date"

a weird idea I had while I was feeling cynical about dating

HEALTH GOALS: This used to be called "Exercise Goals," but I'm branching out a bit. For example, in the hope of dragging myself out of the depths of despair, I started taking a B-12 supplement (500mcg cyanocobalamin) since I've given up dairy and haven't been able to get my only other source of B-12, eggs, since the refrigerator broke. I was going to say that the B-12 hadn't helped at all, but then again, after about a month of taking it once daily, I'm writing this right now instead of sitting curled up in a corner, scratching my face. (I more recently started taking a twice-daily multi-vitamin.)

My goal for June was to work through my dance exercises book. I only did that for a couple of weeks because I usually exercise right before my shower, but after taking care of the puppies in 100-degree heat, the last thing I wanted to do before a shower was lie down on the floor and do fussy little stretches. I found that they didn't do much for me and that a few were even painful. Maybe I'll try again in the fall--or not.

A previous goal (from May?) was to start using fitday.com again. I finally did plug in several of the meals I eat regularly and discovered that I get LOTS of vitamins and nutrients, except for B-12 and calcium, and my iron intake was right on the cusp. And contrary to what every idiot thinks, I'm getting plenty of protein in my vegetarian diet. The problem is, most of my protein sources--nuts, seeds, eggs, avocados--come with lots of fat. Most of these fats are "good" fats, but still, I discovered that calories from fat account for 50% of my caloric intake (20-30% is considered ideal). My solution will be to eat more lentils, peas and beans, which have almost no fat, but plenty of fiber, protein and iron. I think I'll aim for half a can per day, which is about all my digestive tract can handle!

Oh! Big thing! I finally got a slightly bigger jog bra from my overseas catalog company so that I won't have to starve myself before I can start running again! I've already run short distances with the puppies a few times and they love it! It's horrifically hot, though, so I'll have to start getting up before seven. Running is good for several things: 1) hopefully it will improve my physical endurance so that (in the long run, at least) I will feel less run-down during the day 2) I've read that it helps with digestive health, which is a problem for me 3) I've read that it helps with mental health (and if it improves digestion and energy, that alone would surely lift my mood) 4) I'd like to finally get a slimmer waist, and yes, smaller boobs. I found this WebMD article that mentions what I've long suspected: that excessively large breasts can cause numbness in the fingers and hands, not just from the weight on bra straps cutting off circulation and nerves, but from deformation of the spine as well!! If I can lessen the numbness, maybe I'll be able to play guitar and viola again! But let's just focus on the more socially acceptable topic of my waist and say that I'd like it to vary from 26 to 27 inches throughout the day/month, instead of 29 to 30 inches as it does now. Then maybe off-the-rack clothes will fit better, and I'll feel more confident investing in a decent wardrobe. I'm going to be 30 in THREE MONTHS, so if I could slim down by then, I could buy myself some nice new things for my birthday.

So my new goals are to run, run, run and to eat more beans!!

BOOK REVIEW: In June I read States of Confusion, which I bought after seeing this hilarious book trailer. The star of the video, Paul Jury, kept a blog about the road trip he took the summer after the summer after college, which he then developed into this book. This was back in 2003 when we already thought we were in a recession, even though the shit hadn't truly hit the fan yet. Paul had been a film major at Northwestern, and he got fired from his Hollywood editing internship after refusing to be even more of an unpaid slave than he already was.

So like a lot of lost people in his generation, Paul set himself a big, marginally pointless goal in the hope of at least learning a few life lessons: to drive through all 48 states in 48 days, avoiding major highways, never going back, and trying to have some kind of an adventure in each state. I almost didn't get past the first few chapters since several of his early "adventures" involve things like: finding a place to charge his cellphone, arriving at tourist attractions just after they have closed, or being woken up by the cops for sleeping in public. But the pace picks up about a third of the way through, and I'm glad I stuck with it because he does eventually get into some interesting situations with some interesting characters.

Poor Paul, a self-described "pusher" (basically a Type-A person) tries to force a life lesson out of every random occurrence, but eventually he lets go a bit, and the lessons start pouring in. One lesson that took me seven years to learn, he learned in one night, by breaking into a corn maze in Kansas after dark, and inevitably getting lost in it: when you're stubborn enough to chose your own path, there's no one but yourself to blame when you can't find your way. Other good lessons come from old high school and college friends he meets up with, seemingly in every other state, and the best lesson of all comes near the end, from a surfer he meets in California (that one actually made me cry a little, so I won't tell you what it is.)

Overall, the tone of the book is light and jokey and self-effacing; Paul knows that what he is doing is a bit self-indulgent, and understands that previous generations simply took whatever they could get from life and made do. This isn't a "great journey" book--it's no "The Places in Between" by Rory Stewart, no "Tracks" by Robyn Davidson. But there is something epic in these minutiae--the book reminds you that little things can nudge you this way and that, or at least hint at the big things that have been shaping your life from the beginning.

Four out of five stars.

100 RECIPES GOAL: The fridge died in June, and while a new one is on order, my roommate and I are sharing a mini-fridge. Between that and my other issues, I only managed three recipes in two months. All of them were good, though!

#38. Lentil Feta Crepes

#39. Sauteed Mushrooms on Toast

#40. Vegan Pizza and Pizza Toast

#40. Vegan Pizza and Pizza Toast

I had originally planned to reverse engineer an Amy's brand vegan pizza, which has neither cheese nor tomato sauce, but then I needed a meal at the last minute, and all I had was some flour, some yeast, a 14 oz. jar of sauce, a jar of roasted red bell peppers (how great are those?), a can of olives, some fresh mushrooms, and an onion.

I made a pizza crust using the recipe in Joy of Cooking, which was pretty easy and came out well. I had less flour (white whole wheat, of course) than I thought, so when I needed extra for kneading and "dusting," I used ordinary rolled oats, which absorbed most of the excess moisture and worked fine. I only needed about half the jar of sauce. I used DeLallo brand, which was good, but not very flavorful. I would have added more oregano, at least, had I known. The onion I sliced and sauteed ahead of time, trying and only sort of succeeding in imitating the caramelized onions on the Amy's pizza. For one approximately 14" pizza, I used two of the roasted red bell peppers (minus the bits I popped in my mouth while slicing), 4 oz. of mushrooms, and less than half the can of black olives.

You're probably wondering about the lack of cheese. I was too. I'm only gradually accepting that I'm lactose intolerant, and like most people, I think of cheese as being an indispensable component of a pizza. This turned out okay, though, and it was nice to think that, aside from using an egregious amount of olive oil in cooking the onions and making the crust, I had prepared a really healthy vegan meal that was also highly edible.

B or B+, depending on how much you miss the cheese

The next night, being out of flour, I put all the same ingredients (minus the onion) on stale bread instead of crust, which was much quicker, and since I didn't have it in my mind that I was supposed to be eating a pizza, I didn't miss the cheese at all. I also put a sprig of oregano on each little toastlet which bumped up the flavor. I cooked them at 350 for about 15 minutes. (The pieces of bread are irregularly shaped because I tore off some mouldy patches.)

B+ or A, I was watching a really distracting TV show while I ate, so I'm not sure which