Holy fat content Batman!

Well the pasta salad was a huge hit. My parents enjoyed it, I loved it, and even Boyfriend liked it! He'd never had it before, not that it's some special dish, but since I rarely cook, it was definitely a nice surprise for him (I think). :)

And so starts my first week of being more conscious about what I'm eating (and when, and how much, etc. etc. etc.) and finding more time to work out (much easier this month, at least until school starts again). I've noticed that I have a tendency to "graze" a lot of the time: some veggies while making the pasta salad, some pasta salad here and there and here and there, some gelato (purchased from the farmers market), some croutons (because they're tasty), the list goes on and on. I'm a fan of small things that are simple to eat and don't have to be doctored, hence the croutons and gelato.

So, Monday I started tracking what I eat every day at Spark People. And holy crap I need to change my eating habits! Currently for lunches at work I'm having a mix of whole wheat pasta, frozen mixed vegetables (obviously cooked prior), extra virgin olive oil and feta cheese. Whoa ... major fat content (and calories!) in the olive oil and feta! Not that I didn't already know that, I just didn't realize it until I saw the numbers. And when I have a salad for dinner (with, amongst other salad-y items, olive oil and feta), I'm consuming almost 500 calories and 50 grams of fat just from olive oil! Gross! Time to cut out the olive oil and feta cheese I think. Bummer. I do love them both. But I can mix my vegetables and my salad with salad dressing and that will cut back significantly on the calories and fat, and sprinkle grated Parmesan on my veggies instead of the feta for more reduction in calories and fat. I'll finish out the container of feta I have at home, but after this I think my feta cheese purchases will have to go on hiatus. *sigh*

Suck it up, Liz.

I'm looking forward to the Anderson Farmers' Market this Saturday ... as well as some much needed (by my definition) sun bathing. :)

Farmers Markets and Pasta Salad

So today my lovely mother and I ventured to the Anderson Township Farmers' Market (http://www.andersonfarmersmarket.org/). I purchased a bunch of tomatoes, a white-ish and purple bell pepper, a marconi pepper, two cucumbers, some gelato (from Dolce Vita Cafe in Dayton, KY), and a mix for creating Vino Slush, a frozen wine slush mix from Cherry Orchard Foods (www.vinoslush.com and www.cherryorchardfoods.com). The gelato is yummy (I got the passion fruit) and the vino slush has been mixed and is sitting in the freezer, so I'm looking forward to trying that out tonight with wonderful Boyfriend. :) At the Lunken farmers' market I purchased a cantaloupe and some peaches. Those also look yummy :)


I also decided to make a pasta salad with all the wonderful veggies I just bought. So I made two boxes of whole wheat pasta, added some Italian salad dressing, and dumped in some tomatoes, cucumbers, the white-ish and purple bell pepper, the marconi pepper, and some olives and voila! Yummy dinner (and probably lunch tomorrow)! I'm excited for dinner but first I must drag myself to the gym since they close in two hours.

Giant bowl of pasta with Italian dressing

Lots of veggies all chopped up and ready to go ...

Veggies thrown on top of pasta ....

The final yummy product! Throw some grated cheese on top and voila! I cooked!

I'm excited for dinner to eat it all up (with some grilled chicken breasts, courtesy of Boyfriend) and drink that Vino Slush! Yum! For a list of the farmers' markets in Cincinnati, check out www.cincinnatifarmersmarkets.com !

How to Make a Greener Liz

So ... welcome to my newest blog! My current obsession is how to make myself healthier, better, greener ... obviously. It's right up there in the heading. So what does that mean? Well ... hopefully this is a place where I can hold myself accountable to eating healthy, working out, making smarter choices at the store, etc. It all rolls up into one general (overly vague) goal: be a better person. So including my volunteer work, my healthier choices, and trying to lessen the impact I will make on my environment in the oh-let's-say-85-years I'm on this planet.

I don't particularly like to cook. After cramming in so much stuff in each 24 hour period, that is not how I want to spend an hour each day (or however long). Enter things like pasta, frozen vegetables, and Lean Cuisines (and their cousins from other brands). I've been a vegetarian since I was 13 or 14, and I've always been a very picky eater (i.e.: onions will be picked out of any dish, regardless of how small they are; I cannot drink milk if I'm eating potatoes (weird, I know, but it makes me nauseous); and I do not care for anything spicy). I don't eat red meat and didn't eat chicken, turkey, or fish until I was 21. I just don't particularly care for a lot of chicken or turkey in my diet, however I love fish, but like I said, I don't like cooking, so I don't really eat it unless my parents make it (spoiled much?) or I get it at a restaurant. And I will almost never order chicken at a restaurant; I am ridiculously picky about the chicken I will eat, so that's just yet another obstacle.

So, enter this new obsession with farmers markets and healthy food and knowing where it comes from (and perhaps what it ate before it made it to the store). I've purchased a couple of books I'm dying to read (Food, Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer, and What You Can Do About It by Karl Weber - no I have not seen the movie yet! - and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan) and there are several more waiting for me on Amazon when I'm finished with these. :) So we'll see where this goes!

And ... go!