Mourning the Death of Postum

I've been trying to cut down on my caffeine intake for the Discretionary Eating Challenge, and I thought I'd stock up on Postum to ease the pain of separation. It's a delicious, coffee-like beverage that tastes great with cream and sugar. It's enough to fool my taste buds, and I couldn't wait to get some.


I checked all the usual stores, and I couldn't find it anywhere! I asked store clerks, and they thought they still had it, but couldn't find it either.

Imagine my distress when I looked it up to buy it online, only to find that it's been discontinued! I found an article about Kraft Foods discontinuing it here, and then went on eBay to see if anyone was selling leftovers. They are. For $35 a bottle. Too steep for me, even though I do so love it.



Some people are actually petitioning Kraft to bring Postum back, like in this message board, and many people are writing articles about reviving this old favorite. I'm hoping that Kraft will reconsider and bring back this delicious treat.

But what do I do in the meantime?

There are other drinks similar to Postum, like Roma and Pero. I will probably try those in time, but they are pretty expensive. So for now, I ordered an old standby, Celestial Seasonings Roastaroma.




While I usually find tea too weak and watery for my liking, Roastaroma tends to be more robust and does have a bit of a coffee flavor. I put cream and sugar in it and I can then fool myself into thinking I have some kind of coffee-like beverage.

It definitely doesn't replace Postum, but at least it's something to keep me warm while I'm holding my torch.

Fried Green Tomatillos

I just finished reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. It's one of my favorite movies and I can't believe I had never read the book. There are recipes at the back of the book, and I decided to try my hand at the main dish.

The book itself says just to use green tomatoes and corn meal, with enough bacon drippings to fry them with. I also found another recipe online that says to use milk, flour, and eggs as well. I tried them both ways, and I think I like the plain corn meal best, as it lets the flavor of the tomatoes come through better.

I got tomatillos, since those are the only kind of "green" tomatoes I could find. I'm not sure if those are what people in the South use or if they use unripe tomatoes (as I saw mentioned on one site).


Tomatillos come in little pods, which is why I couldn't find them at first, since they don't look at all like tomatoes. Mine above look pretty filthy because they had been sitting in the fridge for awhile, and the papery outside got a little soggy. Here's what they looked like "unwrapped":




They look a bit different than regular tomatoes on the inside:


They are nice and tangy, and even a bit tart.

Here's my station where I dipped them in milk, then flour, then egg, then corn meal. (Again, just dipping them in corn meal is the best, I think.) Then it was into the frying pan with some good ol' bacon grease. Hey, I wanted to be authentic, y'all.



While they're not much to look at when they are done, they are quite delicious!


If you want to be healthier, you can cook them in olive oil, and I'm sure they will taste just as good. And while the bacon grease didn't exactly make for the healthiest meal, this was good for my Discretionary Eating Challenge, since they weren't made with processed or refined foods and they didn't have any sugar or caffeine :) (I was also happy that the tomatillos were grown locally.) I did cheat, however, on the Seconds Only When Hungry, since I pretty much stuffed myself.

Super Simple Shortbread

(Mine didn't come out nearly this pretty)

I am the first to admit that I don't cook. At all. When I was living by myself, canned soup and a basket of cherry tomatoes were often the dinner fare, and I never cooked with anything that required more than say, two ingredients. I'm still lucky in that most of the time, I'm not called upon to cook for the family, as Ralph takes that on himself (thank God). But now with this Discretionary Eating Challenge underway, I've had to rethink a lot of my eating habits and do some cooking for myself instead of relying on processed foods to get me by.

The funny thing is, I'm actually enjoying it. Not that I'm doing all that much; mostly just cooking brown rice and edamame and finding more interesting veggies to eat (radish, anyone?). But I do like to bake and found a recipe for shortbread on this site, along with a cool bread recipe, too.

All it requires is flour, sugar, and butter. With ingredients like that, how could it not be good?


I converted the recipe from ounces to cups:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter

Doesn't sound all that healthy, but considering what I usually eat, this is pretty good. Plus, I used unrefined, raw sugar, which is at least a bit better than the refined stuff.

Just mix the ingredients together and roll it out as flat as you'd like. I don't have a rolling pin so I just used a leftover salsa bottle:


Cut it into squares and put on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with sugar.


It was WAY too hot to heat up the oven, so I just used the toaster oven. Had to divide the recipe into 3 shifts, but it was much better than heating up the house above its already 90 or so degrees. (Yeah, summer in the desert with no A.C. is so much fun.)


I left 'em in there for about 15 minutes or so.

They came out pretty durned good if I do say so myself.


Next time I'll probably roll them thinner, as I like them nice and crunchy. But the boys liked the soft, chewy ones, so it all turned out alright. Super easy and yummy to boot. Maybe I'll just make these instead of Christmas cookies this year...

Grilled Plantains

After the day before's lovely discussion about chores, I was happy to see the boys take an interest in cooking with Dad. (I think they probably felt guilty about being such pains in the *** the other day, and then sicking Mom onto Dad.) Regardless of what prompted them, they were outside grilling carne asada and broccoli, onions, zucchini, and green peppers. (Finally I figured out how to get them to eat their veggies!)

When I had been shopping for the veggies, I came across some plantains and remembered how much I loved with an unholy passion the fried plantains in Colombia. Called tostones, they are usually mashed, deep fried, and served with a cream sauce. [Must...wipe...up...drool.]



Seeing as how I'm trying to eat a little more healthy now, especially for the Discretionary Eating Challenge this month, I thought I might try grilling them instead.

Success!

All I did was slice them on a bias and put a tiny bit of oil on them before having Ralph and the boys (who thought I was crazy for doing it) throw them on the fire.

They look pretty ugly in this picture, seeing as how the skins are pretty black. (You can also grill them without the skins.)


I was too impatient to wait for them to cool, so I burned my digits while removing the skins.


I had looked up some recipes for grilled plantains online, and whipped up a sauce of brown sugar, butter, and a bit of rum and microwaved it for a minute. I then poured it over the little bits of heaven and it became a kind of glaze.


I'm afraid I'm the only one who appreciated my masterpiece, as the rest of the clan hates bananas. Only Peez eats them, and even he took one bite and decided against dessert. Oh well, more for me. And I even have some left over for lunch today. Yum!

You can also do this with regular bananas. Here's a recipe for a bananas foster-type dessert.

So the next time you want a super-quick dessert but don't want to cook, and especially if the grill is already going, just throw those on.

And then invite me over.

Earthquakes and Coffee Withdrawals

Thought this picture was apropos since yesterday we had a 5.4 earthquake about 20 minutes from our house. (I got under my desk like I was taught in elementary school, only to hear from someone else that nowadays you're supposed to crouch next to something big, not under it. Sheesh.)

I knew it was the earthquake and not my coffee jitters because I've been trying to wean myself off my caffeine addiction, especially now with the Discretionary Eating Challenge starting on Friday. Yesterday, I originally said I'd go 100% BUZZ and stay away from all caffeine, but my eyelids are not cooperating and my head is aching.

I think for now, instead of simply calling myself a failure and going back whole hog, (which is what I usually do), I'll adjust my expectations of myself. I've been guzzling about 3 cups of liquid heaven per day, and this week I've been functioning okay on one. Plus, I stopped putting non-dairy creamer in, so that helps on reducing my refined foods intake. So I'm adjusting my percentage to 75% BUZZ, and hoping I'm able to move closer to cutting it out completely as the challenge continues.

I'm off to the coffee pot.

Discretionary Eating Challenge

No, it's not a diet. It's a challenge put on by Chile Chews to be more conscious of how our eating habits have ramifications that extend much farther than just our own bodies.

This article had a good point about the typical American diet: "The problem is that American diets are larded in animals and in junk food. Both use more energy to produce than healthful staples like potatoes, rice, fruits, and veggies."

Plus, we eat more of that kind of stuff than pretty much any other country.

VegSource.com shows in this section of their website that per year, an average American eats:

• 586 pounds of milk and dairy products
• 394 pounds of vegetables
• 199 pounds of meat, and
• 193 pounds of products containing flour and cereal
• 121 pounds of fresh fruit.

I have a sneaking suspicion that's more than we need.

As Chile describes it:

Discretionary eating is the amount of an individual's food consumption that is eaten after basic caloric and nutritional needs have been met.

That pretty much describes 90% of what I eat. Yikes! (I'd love to think that ice cream meets my basic caloric and nutritional needs, but I think I'd be stretching it.)

So when she issued the Discretionary Eating Challenge for August, I thought this would be a good time to start thinking more about what I eat.

I have to admit, I'm a little embarrassed to do this challenge alongside the others who signed up. Most of them grow and cook most of their own food, and rarely go out to eat. Plus, a lot are vegan, or at least vegetarian. My family probably eats more meat in a week than these guys do in a year.

Sigh... I just have to remember: Everyone has to start somewhere, at their own pace. I need to concentrate on my own successes, however little they may be.

Chile has a few categories from which to pick, which include cutting down on eating out at restaurants, and cutting down on refined foods, sugar and sweets, and stimulants. She also recommends eating seconds only when hungry, and going vegan.

Of those categories, I don't really have to worry about restaurants, as it's too expensive for us to go out very often. And going vegan in my household would mean I'd be eating a very lonely dinner-for-one every night. They might even ban me from the kitchen completely. (Hmmm... at least I'd get out of cooking...)

I can and should definitely cut down on my refined foods, as well as my sugars and sweets.

Funny story: A while ago, my family dentist told me I should cut down on my sugar intake by maybe putting a little less sugar in my coffee. I laughed and told him that wasn't even the tip of the ice berg. (Seriously, you could actually sink the Titanic from the sheer weight of all the sugar I consume.) He actually punched me in the arm he was so mad at me. Not very hard, don't worry.

And I completely failed the sugar-addict test.

Okay, so cut back 50% (it's either 50% or 100% for the challenge; let's not get crazy here) on refined foods and sugars, and I might as well cut back on the stimulants as well. So less coffee and chocolate. I might as well try to go 100% on that since I have such bad insomnia.

And while I'm at it, I'll cut down on seconds, too.

So let's see:

50% REFINED FOODS (code word: LITE)
50% SUGAR/SWEETS (SUGAR)
100% STIMULANTS (BUZZ)
100% SECONDS ONLY WHEN HUNGRY (SOW)

We'll see how long I last; I'm not known for my will power. But having others in the challenge gives me a sense of needing to be accountable. Anyone else want to join? Head on over to Chile's blog and sign up!