Recipes for Day 6, eating on $30/week

I was going to use Day 6’s post to share the contents of my pantry with you, in the hopes that you’d get something out of it, or at least find it interesting.

But seeing as I have an exam tomorrow, I feel like I need to put the effort into studying instead.

However I will share two recipes from today to attempt to make up for my poor time-management.

Today was mostly a day of leftovers, supplemented in part by ingenuity. I had my dad over for a Thanksgiving lunch and an hour beforehand I decided that I’d like to make some dressing, seeing as it’s completely delicious.

Day 4, eating on $30/week

It's damn cold in Calgary right now. Here is a list of things I am interested in doing tomorrow:

1. making pie
2. roasting sweet potatoes
   
3. eating bread
4. drinking tea
5. eating stuffing
6. drinking wine

Perhaps in that order, but any other order would do as well. Here is a list of things I ought to do tomorrow:

1. the dishes
2. the "take-home" portion of my "theory" "midterm" (note the sarcasm-laden quotation marks)
   
3. study for another theory midterm
4. my laundry
5. sweep the kitchen (I'll probably actually do that one)

We shall see how it all goes. I would probably be less concerned with the weather if I were wearing my slippers

Day 3, eating on $30/week

Today was an early rise [insert bread joke here] due to an early class. The temptations were staring me in the face, but luckily, I’ve already been staring them down for two days, so what’s one more, really?

After a coffee at home, I knew I’d be in need of a bit more caffeine in our 3-hour long news meeting so I brought a really quite big mug (actually it’s a stein…) and a few bags of jasmine green tea to school with me to stash in the locker. While not as satisfying as a freshly whipped up mocha, it was still nice.

Lunch wasn’t too special, but I was glad to have the leftovers, which were easy to grab in the morning.

The real difference between today and previous days was that I did groceries for the first time of the challenge! I thought I would probably spend almost all of my budget at Safeway, but miraculously, I didn’t!

Badlands and Bean Dip

[scroll down if you're just interested in the bean dip!]

Bri & I spent yesterday driving around our lovely province. Our intent was to visit Drumheller and maybe hit the Royal Tyrrell Museum. After driving through green and yellow prairie landscapes for an hour and a half, we finally began to descend into the dusty and pale Badlands. The temperature was hovering around 30 C, with zero humidity, so I would liken it to being inside an oven. After trying and failing to find somewhere to eat in Drumheller, we decided to see if there was a cafe at the museum. As it turned out, a couple thousand other people (and their hyper, screaming broods) had a similar idea to us; the museum was crawling with sweaty families out for Heritage Day.

Defeated, we tromped off to find somewhere else to eat. We tried a giant pub (kinda like Kilkenny, but with a family restaurant attached) called O'Shea's, where we sat in a booth for 10 minutes without a waitress talking to us (or cleaning the remains of the previous occupants). We decided they did not deserve our money and walked across the parking lot to Boston Pizza, where we had a very underwhelming and overpriced meal of bad cheesey pizza bread and sad little yam fries. It was not good.

But things looked up once we headed to the little ghost town of Dorothy. We had a fab afternoon exploring and taking photos. My photo collection from the day is pretty limited, as I was feeling a bit ill all day from this cold and I was happy to be Brian's model instead.

After Dorothy we hit East Coulee/Rosedale, where we crossed their famous suspension bridge and took a little hike up some hills (not sure if they have a fancy name or something like the hoodoos).

It was a really nice way to spend Brian's almost-birthday. Definitely worth renting a car for the day!

On to snacks!

Vegedible's New Favourite Black Bean Dip

• 1 can black beans, rinsed
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 tsp Frank's Red Hot Sauce Original
  
• 2 tsp Rice Vinegar
• 2 tsp lime juice
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 3 dashes smoke flavour
• 1-1/2 tsp ground cumin
  

1. Combine all ingredients in your food processor and whizz until all are combined and consistency is fairly smooth and thick. Eati right away with fresh veggies and pita chips or store in the fridge a couple hours to let flavours mature.

We had our dip right away with broccoli, carrots and ryvita crackers, as well as some pickles and Queen olives. Deeelightful!

Tonight's menu is homemade birthday pizza!

Friends of Cleanse

I had one more photo for that last post but it's on a different topic so I'll slide it in separately.

Here are some of the tools of this cleanse:Back row: Clockwise, from bottom left corner: delish steel-cut oats, my happily coloured melamine measuring spoons, baking soda, Brita water jug, Pyrex measuring cup, loaf of spelt bread and three expensive cobs of white corn, PC sea salt, Lakewood Organic Carrot Juice (real good, not too sweet), Fairwinds Farms Goat Milk yogurt (very tasty), steel steamer, LifeSource strawberry preserves.

Front row: my beloved tetsubin, bosc pear, grapefruit and lemon

Not pictured: Mr. Olive Oil, Mr. Balsamic Vinegar, Ms. Goat's Milk Gouda, Ms. Colander, Mrs. Sweet Potato-Yam and Mr. Red Tater.

Story with pictures

Ugh, I am going to skip out on zucchini til I am off this cleanse, I think. It's meant to be eaten the Italian way (breaded and fried or baked) or maybe the French way (deep-fried, stuffed zucchini flowers). Not steamed. Yuck.
Edit: Also, zucchini are "an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower."


I was supposed to have Swiss Chard with lunch but I bought Kale on accident. The Kale was pretty decent, but not especially delicious so I decided to learn what was good about it, from wikipedia:

Kale is considered to be a highly nutritious vegetable with powerful antioxidant properties and is anti-inflammatory.

Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein, zeaxanthin, and reasonably rich in calcium.

Kale, as with Broccoli and other brassicas, contains sulforaphane, a chemical believed to have potent anti-cancer properties, particularly when chopped.

I can deal with that! Also, Chard is actually beet greens! I much prefer chard to the beets, beets are tooo sweet, and can only be my friend if they are in borscht.

The Swiss Potato Salad was quite nice. I added a bit of chopped celery for texture. Lentils were flavourless and blah.

Dessert though! Ohhh, dessert! Quite smashing, maybe a little sweeter than I needed. I had a sliced Bosc pear dressed with organic dark maple syrup and chopped cashew. It was a treat!

I hope to get in the habit of includng photos with posts, at least on these days where I have all my meals at home. It's the least I can do to properly log my experience during my first cleanse. And now that I am not complaining and dreaming about food all the time, hopefully my posts will be increasingly interesting to look back on.

For the record, current emotions include:

• glee
• energy
• excitement
• optimism!

This is in comparison with about a week ago, when I was:

• weepy
• uninterested
• whiny
• disheartened

Ahh, how the times have changed! Also, I ordered a few vegan cookbooks off amazon that should get here during week 3. I am excited to cook more (again).