Salt & Humor

During my cleanse I am realizing some things that I will be changing.  While I can’t see myself completely giving up coffee, sugar and bread (gluten).  I will most certainly be reducing my intake of these food.  While I am giving it my best effort to stick to these dietary exclusions during my cleanse I realize just how darn hard that is.  I made veggie sushi one night and only afterwards did I think to check some labels! Wheat in the soy sauce and sugar in the Sriratcha!!

SERIOUSLY!

Some meals I think I pulled off pretty good.  I wasn’t too into taking photos because salads get a little boring after a while.  I made lentil, bean and sunflower sprouts.  They were great in salads and wraps. 

Salad with avocado, lentil sprouts and tahini dressing with

brown rice wrap of hummus, sweet potato and marinated tempeh

Each day I had 1-2 servings of green juice. Mine usually consisted of cucumber, celery, romaine, kale/collards or dandelion greens, green apple and ginger.

Also, daily exercise, about 8 hours of sleep, meditating, dry brushing and journaling have been daily tasks.  While this has been what I have been up to, I realized how little time left I have had to read, draw, paint, sew, talk on the phone, clean, play or BLOG.  I have been getting up at 5:30 to have ensure enough time to meditate, dry brush, make lunch and juice before work.  It has been quite the project and adventure.  I realized that it isn’t all that bad to get up at that time and if I can make it a habbit I want to start exercising at that time rather than after work.  The chances of getting it done after work are about 50/50.  This is a stretch but I would LOVE if I would make it happen.  So this is my goal.  I also realized that my heart just isn’t into blogging like it used to be.  I have so many other things that I need to be focussing on right now.  So as I am not sure what this might mean for Salt & Humor, I do think it is time for a BREAK.

I wanted to leave you with a happy accident recipe for a salad I made last night and the recommendation of Kris Carr’s book; Crazy Sexy Diet. I am really glad that I came upon this book.

WILD SALAD

sliced red cabbage

sliced fennel bulb

chopped celery

chopped green onion

very lightly steamed broccoli, chopped

sliced almonds

raisins

chopped cilantro

toasted sesame seeds

poppy seeds

Dressing: tahini, apple cider vinegar, salt, garlic, and stevia

As you know, when it comes to providing recipes I am a bit vague.  Those are the ingredients I used, as for the measurements, uh, I just go with it.  I can say this though, please try this salad! It was fabulous!!

XOXO

I have too much to blog about and I think I have officially fallen behind.  I randomly took some fun photos over the last three weeks but certainly never got around to blogging about it.  I have no idea where time goes.  No, honestly, I really don’t.  It seemed I was anxious for the Holidays and family to visit and now as I type this, it has come and gone. Gal! I will try to get some of these photos organized and get to posting.  For now I just want to share a bit.  Have a lot to get done tonight, so I’m making it quick.

It is safe to say that my dinner tonight was EPIC! I love the way something simple can end up being amazing!

My favorite masaged kale salad with avocado and tahini, steamed tempeh with dijon mustard sauce and chayote squash. Why on earth have I never tried chayote squash before!?! I prepared it with this recipe and am hooked!!

I had a great Christmas with my brother and his fiance. <3 I miss them already!!

A while ago I cooked a buttercup squash and discovered that two out of the three kitties liked it.  I wasn’t actually planning to give them some because if you know one thing about cats, it is that they are finicky eaters.  Well, when I took it out of the oven and was scraping away thee skin, Yoshi and Choopey were at my feet just staring up at me, begging.  So, I put some in their dishes and was amazed at what I saw…

Little Yoch actually had seconds!

I know I have talked about how much I like massaged kale but I must tell you at least one more time.  I made this one with avocado, lemon and salt.  I promise you, it is fabulous

The combination of this dinner is one I might just have to duplicate the exact same way.  Yup, it was that good.  Avocado-massaged kale salad+ buttercup squash with tahini+ tempeh= perfect.

You know how I talked about kitties always wanting to get in the photos, well it didn’t fail this morning.

I almost forgot to mention the tasty zucchini muffins I made from ED&BV.  This morning I toasted them under the broiler in the oven. Let me just tell you about a really rad memories real quick.  My mom used to make the most fabulous sourdough biscuits (one of the best foods I have had in my whole life) and we would toast them in the oven this way.  Told you it would be real quick.  Have a great night

I planted arugula, kale and lettuce for our Fall garden last month.  It seems that the arugula is ready and I feel like I have almost been forgetting to get out there and well, EAT from our own garden.

Lacinato Kale

Roquette Arugula

Flashy Troutback Lettuce

I have honestly never heard of such a fancy named lettuce.  That is the surprise of growing it yourself I guess.  I also didn’t even realize that I would be able to plant and grow these this late in the season here in the North West.  I’m still learning, that’s for sure. I am very excited about the fancy Mr. Flashy Troutback though. (just seems like a guy’s name, right)

I think the lettuce and kale have a few more days to go so I picked the arugula for a salad this afternoon.

I had a simple salad with leftover beans and rice.  I am finding that I really like nutritional yeast.  I tried it last summer and wasn’t so sure.  I have been using it in sauces and dressings.  The other night I stirred about 1/3 cup in with brown rice, kidney beans and salsa. Let me just say, I was not expecting it to be as tasty as it was!

I must say, warm toppings for salads are my FAVORITE!

(topped with hemp seeds)

So, roquette arugula is very SPICY! I was definitely not expecting that.  Let’s just say I will be mixing it in with other greens from now on.

I almost couldn’t grab my camera fast enough to catch this little bit of amazement…

Nature is simply amazing! That’s all I have to say.

Well, two wonderful food discoveries for me over the last year would be tempeh and massaged kale.  Yes, I have heard of kale but it’s not like I was really eating it.  When I did, I think I only put it into smoothies.  Well, one day I discovered massaged kale.  Crazy right?

Massaged Kale

I start with a bowl of rinsed kale pieces

Next, add salt. (hopefully sea salt)

Then add lemon or lime juice. (I used 1/2 of a lime.)

Lastly, massage the kale.  I mean use your hands and mix and squeeze. If you let it sit for a few minutes it breaks down even more.

Then add your topping and dressing.  I recommend using less dressing than usual because of the tangy juice.

This salad was topped with tempeh, marinated in dijon mustard, olive oil and basalmic vinegar, purple bell peppers and tomatoes.  Which brings me to my next favorite discovery, TEMPEH!  If you have followed this crazy blog for a while, you may have noticed it pop up from time to time.  I LOVE the stuff.

I added some tahini sauce for my dressing.  I was at Trader Joe’s the other day looking for tahini, which I discovered they DO NOT have.  Will have to make a seperate trip, gal! However, they do have tahini sauce.

Well, this stuff is WONDERFUL! The ingredients are tahini, lemon and garlic.  It is like whipped tahini goodness!  Is it too late to mention that another favorite food would be tahini.?  Anyways, do get to your nearest Trader Joes and get some of this stuff.  I could practically eat it by the spoonful.

How about you, any new foods lately?  What is a favorite food discovery you have had?

Why is it that some of the best meals look awful?  Sometimes, by the time I stir my salads up they look pretty weird.  Then I say, “that was the best salad ever!” Well, with a bit of a bloggers block, looking through recent photos to make a semi-decent post this morning, I noticed that some of my best eats weren’t so pretty.  I am that person who takes tons and tons of photos and then ends up deleting all but a few.  Sometimes, what looked good at the time, ends up looking terrible in my photo.  What better idea than to even share the odd stuff.  Not all post, can be my favorites right…?

When I sat down to eat this, I told Jason, the name of this salad is, “The Shit!”  He told me not to post that.  Oops, I am sorry Jason. Really though, this salad was truely, the shit! Sometimes when you are putting ingredient together you don’t really have any expectation, then you eat it and are amazed at how good it turned out.  Well yes, my friends, that is what happened to me with this. Salad: red leaf lettuce, kidney beans, grilled zucchini and yellow squash, fresh tomato, cooked millet with fresh salsa and taco seasoning, crumbled up corn chips and quacamole for dressing.  All stirred up; not so pretty, tasty though!

Tuesday night we made burgers.  Mine consisted of a grilled portabello mushroom and zucchini, tomato, mustard and lettuce with beet chips.  Beets would have been better, had I not over charred them!

Eggplant Bruschetta and Beets

Not wanting to overcook the beets again, I grilled them in the Forman grill with some yellow squash.  More exciting than that, was the eggplant bruschetta of course!  I liberally salted the eggplant in a colander and let is sweat for 30 minutes, then rinsed thoughly. Cooked in the oven on parchment paper at 375 for 40 minutes, flipping once.  After it cooled a bit, I cut it up into chunks and combined with tomato, half a juiced lemon, 1 jalapeno (it wasn’t hot), some dried basil and sea salt.  It would have been better with fresh basil, I admit.  This was one of those meals that is so good that you keep saying so, after it’s gone.  For some reason, I kept wanting more, even though I was full.  That is the beauty of making just enough for your plate sometimes.  If there aren’t leftovers, you can’t go back for seconds!

In more exciting news, I am going to the VegFest today!  I am even toting Jason along.  Can’t wait!

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a wonderful lunch and canning demonstration at Wildwood. Chef Dustin Clark demonstrated the simplicity of using the new Ball canning Discovery Kit.
I was so glad to receive this invitation because I had not yet been to Wildwood.  I promise, I will be going back!  Lunch started with an amazing salad.  
Followed my some of the best chicken I have ever eaten, with corn relish.  Lucky for me, I got the recipe.  I shall be making it real soon.  After eating that chicken I realized that I have been overcooking mine for sure.  Wow, what a difference.

Dessert really could not have been any more perfect, for me that is!  I love lemon “everything!”  Lemon tart+ blueberries+cream=PERFECT!

The recipe that was demoed was the Zesty Salsa.

Really, I am thinking I can do this.  I laugh, well, of course I can do this.  You can do anything you put your mind to, right.  It’s just that I have wanted to make pickles in the past and was always a bit intimidated by the canning process.  I know some of you might be laughing, thinking that making pickles is so easy.  It’s just that it seemed as though there were a lot of steps and I was always concerned about the sterilization process.  Not to mention, didn’t have the supplies and equipment.  After checking out my sweet new kit I really can’t wait to start trying some of the recipes.  Plus, the Discovery Kit is pretty inexpensive!  I will be trying the dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, corn relish and salsa very soon.
Hope you are as excited as I am because I will be posting about it all sooner than later.  I think the cute kit will really help me start canning.  We shall see…

As for Wildwood, get there ASAP if you live in or near Portland!! If you love eating local, fresh and seasonal produce this is your place! I will be taking Jason as soon possible.  I mean they have fresh herbs right outside! What more could you ask for?!

Wow! I must say, I really love salsa!  Lucky for me, Jason enjoys making it.  Lately, he has been using red onion, which just so happened one night when that was all we had.  Now, I think I might like it better with red onion.

Yesterday, the weather was very mild.  I went for a bike ride earlier in the day and I don’t even think it got up to 70.  
I packed my bike to the Spring Water Corridor trail.  The weather was really nice for the ride.  I am very lucky to live near such a nice bike path.

These wild sweet peas are one of my favorites.  They really get your attention.

Leave it to me to spy a sweet kitty off in the grass.  I stopped to take a closer look and it immediately came to say hi.  It was a very friendly kitty.  Silly thing tried to follow after me when I started to pedal away.

Of course I was crazy hungry for lunch when I got home.  I quickly made some miso and lime tempeh and topped it over a salad with quinoa.  For a salad dressing, I used Jason’s salsa.

Our garden this year seems to be a little behind as far as the “season” might go.  We had a very cool and wet Spring here.  The tomatoes and peppers are looking pretty sad.  So, imagine my excitement when I saw this yesterday!

Yahoo!

We were going to make fish tacos for dinner last night and so I made a black bean and couscous salad to go with it.  Jason worked later than I realized so we will make the tacos tonight.  So, I had some of the salad with corn tortillas for dinner. The salad was: Israeli couscous, black beans, raw corn, green bell pepper, green onion, tomato, cilantro, jalapeno and avocado.  The dressing was lime juice, avocado oil and honey.

kjjjjjjjjjjjj ( kitty on keyboard) “GALL!!”

Have a great Sunday night.  I shall be back with fish taco details and a guest post from Jason about rhubarb soon.

I haven’t met a hummus I didn’t love. Last weekend I made avocado-hummus.

Those were baby avocados that I got at the local produce store near my house.  They were 4/$1, how cute is that!

I let the hummus blend in the food processor for longer than usual.  It resulted in creamier hummus.  Or maybe that was due to the avocados. Either way, I recommend blending for about 3-5 minutes.

I am a huge fan of making random salads  with all different kinds of combinations and making enough to last a few meals.  I think I started this when I read Tosca Reno’s, Eat-Clean Diet Cook Book.  Which by the way, it is my favorite cook book!  I have picked up a lot of my ideas from this book.  I have made many of the recipes as they are written and changed them as well.  Mostly, I go by the guidelines but then use what I have at the time.  For example, I made her tofu salad Monday night.  Only it was completely different than the one shown.

This salad had brown rice, grilled tofu, kidney beans, corn, red onion, red bell pepper, and steamed brussel sprouts.  For the dressing, I mixed lime juice, dijon mustard, honey, olive oil and non-fat yogurt.  It was tasty! Plus it made enough for dinner and lunch twice.  The second day having it for lunch, I had it in a whole wheat tortilla with the last of the avocado hummus.  Left overs are wonderful, I tell you!

I have a confession to make.  I have been reading the Twilight series.  Normally, I would not be interested.  In fact, I have thought it all seemed silly and could not grasp why so many of you bloggers wouldn’t stop talking about it!  Well, my best friend told me I was crazy for not giving the books a try and that they were amazing stories.  So, I finally gave in.  I am half way through New Moon and ………………………….I LOVE IT!  I think I will sit out back and read for a bit. It is June and still rainy, cloudy and dark in Portland!! only up side to that, is it makes for the perfect surrounding to read the books, if ya know what I mean.

My posts have become a little irregular.  When I first started reading blogs, there were a few I would check on a few times a week.  That then turned in to a few I would read daily. Then I started my blog and I will admit I have spent A LOT of time reading and blogging!! I enjoy it very, very much! However, BALANCE IS BEST. I certainly have things that HAVE to get done and some things that I WANT to get done.  Both of these things were not receiving enough time because of my lack of time management.  So, I have stepped away a bit, only to get some other things done.  Reading is one.  Aside from reading blogs, I have a stack of books that I have been wanting to read for a long time now. One of those is The 4-Week Ultimate Body Detox Plan. I read this book last summer when I was trying to figure out why I was consistently breaking out in “hives” on my face.  I have wanted to do the detox since that time but have obviously put it off. Partly, because of planning and partly because of the expense in gathering the needed supplies and teas.  I want to do this plan very soon.  What that translates to in “Paula-time” means a few weeks or a month or so.  I need to reread the book and outline the days and weeks of the detox, not to mentions purchase the items.  It is a great book, if anyone has an interest in body cleansing.  I will say though, that it lacks in a true black and white outline or plan to follow step by step.  Also, the supplies needed are many.  It would be nice if there was a definite list provided.  So, that is a little of what I will be doing lately; BALANCE.

Friday was a bum day!  Jason and I were off together and had plans of going for a nice bike ride.  It was gloomy and rainy.  Yes, we could have still gone in the rain, but that is not my bag baby! I had a $10 gift card for New Seasons that was burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to spend it on a few items that are new to me.

That was pretty much the sum of my gift card! Oh well, those three little items were worth it! I have been wanting to try hemp powder and seeds for a while now.  I just haven’t justified it yet because I still have protein powder in the cupboard.

So, a few of you might get the picture that I eat really healthy.  Well, that is relatively true.  I do however have bad days too.  Friday was one of them! Unpictured: was a big, frozen bean and cheese burrito! Dinner:

We made jalapeno, bacon wrapped poppers! They were inspired by our great friend, Jeff.

So, what do I say? BALANCE IS BEST!

I woke up Saturday morning and started with a green smoothie.  I was so excited to try my new coconut milk and hemp powder!

spinach, 1/2 packet of hemp powder, flax oil, coconut milk, frozen blueberries and banana

Yep! I loved it!

It seemed like it was going to be sunny for a bit, so I quickly dressed for a walk, packed a some dried fruit and nuts and drove to a nearby golf course that has an amazing walk path around it.  I listed to my Deuter station on Pandora and had a great walk! I then went to the gym for a great 2 hour workout! Let’s just say, my Polar heart rate monitor definitely told my I had burned enough calories to make up for that crazy dinner, the night before.

Post-workout salad rocked!!

romaine, red pepper, edemame, marsala veggie burger, dill pickles, sprouted micro greens, hemp seeds and Greek feta dressing

This morning; another repeat smoothie.

Not sure if I want to go for a walk again (it’s not sunny ) or do Jillian’s yoga.  I know some might not like Jillian Michaels doing yoga.  I’ll tell you this though, my butt was sore for 5 good days after.  That may mostly be due to how long it had been since I worked out before I did it.  Either way, that works for me Maybe I will walk and do the yoga. Yeah, both sounds good.

Enjoy the day! Even if we lost an hour it will feel like nice long days, so it’s all good!