Sunday, January 15, 2012

I'm cookin'

Cookin' in my kitchen, Jan 2009
Inspired by my friends, Evelyn and Chris, and by the fact that I actually had to increase my bra size this year (due to fat, not due to majikly increased voluptuousness), I've downloaded and signed up for MyFitnessPal.

I'm actually kind of embarassed about it because it's so quintessentially a New Year's Resolution kind of thing to do. When, in fact, it wasn't one of my resolutions (being more active was, I suppose, but this wasn't what I had in mind).

Perhaps I was also motivated by newly-diagnosed reflux condition which should limit my food volume. Honestly, in general, I've been feeling crap and I want to stop feeling like crap. This is just one among a few initiatives I'm undertaking.

Another initiative started with my 2010 list: Cook more.

The two dovetail nicely -- for the most part. However, you should know that, in my husbands books, cooking and being healthy have nothing to do with each other. Nor does cooking have anything to do with saving money -- it's all about tasting good. And possibly about being creative. I'll admit, I like those things too.

This weekend, I brought out one of my favourite kitchen gadgets, my slow cooker. I have really come to love this thing. Throw some stuff in a pot, turn it on and bam, you've got some food. Now, since my philosophy of cooking is about frugality (saving money and not wasting food), I typically get inspired by the stuff that's in my fridge that's about to go bad. This weekend, I eyed that half-empty bottle of red wine from our New Year's party. There's no drinking it, and I'd already made spagetti sauce last week, so I had to figure out something. And then there was that stewing beef I'd picked up on sale at No Frills last week. I looked up a few recipes on AllRecipes.com, cobbled a few together to meet the contents of my cupboards and suddenly there it was: like, five meals in one pot!

Not to be outdone today, I also made fresh bread to accompany the stew. And a smoothy out of a frozen banana (which I always buy cheap and freeze), some of the peaches I'd bought for a dollar in Chinatown and frozen, pureed, as well as that on-sale vanilla yogurt that's about to go bad. Delish!

And since I managed to walk a little bit both days this weekend, and did some light housework, I've kept my daily intake on-track, according to MyFitnessPal! That's even AFTER eating two chocolates and a mini cinnamon doughnut.

So far, on day two, I'm feeling pretty good about this health challenge. We'll see how the rest of the month/year go.

Now I'm off to do a little further work on my health by drawing myself a bath.

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