I love food

This was in the drafts from 2014.  One of us started it and the other is going to try to fill in the blanks.

Here’s the original:

also: diets are stupid (and against science) and deprivation makes me unhappy

weight, pounds…

what about health?  well-being?

health at every size movement

food is delicious

also loving food and enjoying your body is part of radical self-love

I mean, you can’t argue with diets not working.  Yo-yoing weight seems to be bad for health.  Diets that cause deprivation seem to make it harder to keep a steady weight in the future.  They just don’t seem to work.

Deprivation sucks!

I’m guessing “weight, pounds” is maybe saying that’s a dumb thing to fixate on.  People who are super healthy and have a lot of muscle weigh more than people who don’t have muscle but might be less healthy.  You can drop to an “ideal” weight by doing incredibly unhealthy things that will make your health worse.  And make you miserable!

The health at every size movement has good RCT evidence behind it, as well as just being sensible.  If you don’t believe me, here’s National Geographic discussing the idea and the research.

And yeah, food really is delicious.  We love it so much!  It’s one of the primary joys in life.  Yum!

We at grumpy rumblings encourage radical self love.  Fight the patriarchy– love yourself.

Do you love food?  Tell us something delicious in the comments!

 

 

RBOFood

• Went through the pantry and took out everything that had expired in 2023 and put it on the kitchen island.  The kitchen island is pretty crowded, including graham crackers that I swear we bought a few months ago.  No wonder they were on sale.
• I overbuy because of money insecurity problems growing up and I like having a full pantry.
• Last night I dreamed that a huge number of people came over and I had to feed them from what we had on hand, and I was able to!  And thinking on it, it was with food we actually have on hand IRL.
• I think we have a couple of weeks where we’re just going to eat expired pantry food (plus whatever it takes to turn said food into meals– ex. NOT-expired pasta/rice/chicken/mixed veggies).
• I often forget we have pantry sauces and tend to go to the freezer first when we need a quick weeknight meal that we didn’t buy the ingredients for that week.
• I don’t have a problem with expired pantry food– it’s always been still good and everything online says that it’s the “best buy” date, not the “dangerous to eat” date.  Generally it’s still fine, though the store-brand fizzy water in the large containers does go flat if we don’t drink it soon enough.  (Other fizzy water– still fizzy!)  I’m much more cautious about refrigerator food.  But I try to rotate it out– there’s no point in it taking up space for years at a time.
• Sometimes we get stuff we don’t want or can’t eat (red dye, yeast extract, etc.) and I try to donate those before they go bad.  But I don’t always succeed.  That makes me feel guilty.  I really should just leave stuff for students to take (and did that with a flat of premium cat food that our cat didn’t like), but I don’t want to do that after said food has expired.
• DH is still calorie counting, DC1 is off to college, and DC2 is between growth spurts.  So we’re just not eating much.  It is really hard to adjust to DC1 being gone, especially when nobody else is taking up the slack.  I need to get used to either planning fewer meals or making less at each meal.  Or going back to using the freezer, but lately the freezer has been stuffed so we would need to eat it down first.
• At the same time, we’re trying to eat more fruits and vegetables.  This is difficult because fruits and vegetables go bad or take up freezer space!  #richpeopleproblems

How do you deal with expired food?  Do you stockpile?  What kinds of things do you do during the new year?

Ask the grumpies: Favorite way to eat vegetables

Debbie M asks:

What is your favorite healthy way to eat vegetables?

Roasted!  It’s also the best way period, ignoring healthiness.*  Little olive oil, little salt and pepper, maybe a bit of balsamic vinegar or za’atar or something spicy and you’re golden.  Er, golden brown, well, more dark brown.  In any case, extremely good.

Grumpy Nation:  How do you like your veggies?

*I assume raw is healthiest for some veggies and maybe stewed or something (where you also drink the liquid) for others, but I’m not a dietician, so what do I know?

RBO Food minus a kid plus me working full-time again plus DH dieting

• We eat a lot less bread with DC1 gone.
• Oddly, DC2 seems to have upped hir fizzy water consumption to make up for DC1 being gone, which I didn’t think possible since DC2 is in school most of the day!
• We knew DC1 drank about half a gallon of milk a week.  We didn’t realize zie ate a full pack of sliced cheese.
• DH is currently counting calories and watching his weight.  He’s not doing anything unhealthy, just not eating to excess.  When he doesn’t pay attention, he eats a lot more calories.  There’s always some adjustment when DH decides to pay attention again, but this time it’s combined with the loss of a full 16 year old.
• Menu planning has been difficult under the new regime.
• Previously I had 4 books and one Cook’s Country magazine subscription that I was getting a recipe for each day from and we had something from my list of easy things (ex. scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, chili, spaghetti, etc.) and something from either the freezer or the pantry for other meals.  We’d cook fresh veggies and difficult things on the weekend and quicker stuff and things that wouldn’t go bad throughout the week.
• Our meals have a lot more leftovers now.  After DC1 left, I just didn’t do any menu planning for 3 weeks before we ran out of things to make.  (I plan a week ahead, so we had what used to be a week and a half to get through.)
• DC2 has activities on Monday and Tuesday so we either have leftovers or something from the freezer (generally frozen pizza or frozen lasagna).
• My first solution was to temporarily table the Italian Cooking for Dummies book.  It’s great, but the recipes tend to take longer and make a lot.  We can bring it back when DC1 returns.
• That still wasn’t enough.  We haven’t completely solved the problem, but I’m being more careful about making sure we don’t get too many fresh ingredients that could go bad.
• A small part of me is like maybe we should just cook one meal and eat out once a week and eat leftovers the rest of the week.  But I think DC1 didn’t really eat *that* much, it just seems like it because we haven’t hit equilibrium yet.
• Knowing that we’re going to be making fewer new things each week means that I’ve also become a lot more picky about what we do make– I no longer just pick the next thing in the book.  For example, we’d made shrimp toasts from the Chinese book about a month ago, and the next recipe (that didn’t require a ton of crab legs) in that section was the same shrimp paste deep fried, but as balls wrapped in wonton noodles instead of on toast.  It was good, but also kind of a hassle and we knew what it would taste like, so I just skipped to the next one (bbq ribs… though we’d already tried that bbq sauce before and liked it, but it was different enough and not as hard to make).  Previously I wouldn’t have done that.  Being picky also requires a bit more thinking than my mostly automated process did.
• We haven’t had a new nuts.com order for ourselves in a while.  Our pantry is starting to get overloaded with crackers and cereal (I’ve started removing them from our regular order).
• We are apparently eating the same amount of fruit as before.  DC2 loves fruit and veggies, but apparently DC1 did not snack on them.
• We have been eating a lot of asparagus at DC2’s request.
• DC1 says the college cafeteria is really spotty.  Sometimes the potatoes will be great, but sometimes they won’t be cooked all the way through.  Instead of undocumented immigrants like many colleges (I’ve been to several campuses where cafeteria worker rights became a big political issue), they use a lot of work study students as cafeteria workers.  It’s the worst work study job available and freshmen are assigned to it.  After a couple of weeks they all quit.
• Our grocery bill is about $100 less per week than it had been, which is pretty insane.

Ask the grumpies: Quick, easy, healthy, breakfast recipes

Scientist on the Roof asks:

I am looking for easy, quick, healthy breakfast recipes. Make-ahead type stuff is good, too. No food allergies here, but really want to start with simple natural ingredients – and minimal processed food.  One of my kids is underweight, so lots of calories/butter/carbs is good.  The family is not very picky, but we all like variety. And everyone is pretty tired of fried eggs and scrambled eggs.

This is going to be a good question for grumpy nation, as we tend to be pretty repetitive about breakfasts, even though we generally crave food variety for other meals.

I will say that our doctor has said throughout DC1’s underweight life that zie seems generally healthy and is growing.  Some kids are skinny and healthy and so long as healthy food is always available and there’s no psychological problems, that’s fine.  But I get that what you’re saying is there’s no limits on calories.

Let’s see, this morning I had a slice of chocolate cardamom walnut banana bread that DH made this past weekend.  There are a lot of marginally healthy quickbreads out there, generally of the kind that is vegetable or fruit heavy.  Your zucchini and other squash/pumpkin breads, apple breads, etc.  Be careful not to use so much sugar that you’re actually serving cake for breakfast, and consider using 50-100% whole grain.  You can also go fat/protein with various kinds of cheese breads or by putting bits of ham in– these additions work well with yeast breads.

Muffins are also make-aheadable.  See above for quickbreads, but put them in muffin tins.

We’re big into muesli, and our grocery store currently has several versions (though they no longer carry my favorite imported from Germany). Related to that is Bircher, which is basically muesli and shredded apple soaked in nut-milk overnight, which we found out about from reading Boyfriend Material and turns out to be really good and quite filling.  (Overnight oats are similar but not as good, IMHO.)

Breakfast burritos/tacos/quesadillas are pretty quick.  Yes, there’s eggs, but there’s also melted cheese and salsa.  (And if you’re super fancy, meat and potato!)

I do a lot of eating leftovers for breakfast.  Cold pizza is always fantastic.

Sometimes I’ll get a loaf of sprouted bread from the grocery store and eat it as toast for the week, either with butter or cream cheese.

Toast with peanut butter, with or without honey and banana.

Avocado toast.

Ricotta toast.

One of my cookbooks recommends beans for breakfast.  Apparently it’s the least gassy way to eat them.  I think Wheezy Waiter has some kind of bean/salsa thing for breakfast every morning with some fruit on the side, but I may be misremembering.

I like watching youtube videos of breakfasts around the world (much of the world is savory), but a lot of places seem to have breakfasts that take longer than I have to make in the morning.

Before leaving for college, DC1 was on an oatmeal kick.  Rolled oats, made in the microwave according to the direction on the Quaker Oats box (for some reason the store-brand is currently more expensive than the name brand) with various dried fruits and nuts and spices added.  DC2 is currently eating a lot of raisin bran.

Can’t go wrong with a banana, though that’s often not enough.  But a banana and a grilled cheese sandwich can keep one going until lunch.  Larabars are also nice in a time crunch.

When we’re being fancy, we sometimes make Strata, which comes in both meat and spinach varieties.  It’s basically a savory bread casserole.

I like meat in buns/pastry.  Like kolaches or toad in the hole or scotch eggs or empanadas or …  Every culture has a couple of versions of these and you can make them in advance and freeze them.  Sometimes we’ll make bbq pork buns using our lovefeast bun recipe as the bread.

Waffles freeze well.  Pancakes aren’t that more more time to make than eggs.  You can healthify these various ways, like by putting banana, pumpkin puree, or berries in and suggesting kids use nut butter instead of (or in addition to) syrup.

Yogurt!  Parfait or without.  A little jam and some granola really do wonders for unsweetened full fat organic yogurt.  I like cottage cheese just plain without jam.

Smoothies/acai bowls, though I almost never want these for breakfast unless it’s really hot and the a/c isn’t helping.  Still, they’re not so difficult to make if you have an immersion blender and access to a supermarket that sells the frozen fruit stuff.

Biscuits and gravy are yummy and probably only a little harder to make than scrambled eggs.

If your grocery or TJ’s has pre-made shakshuka it’s easy to heat it up and crack some eggs to poach in it.  Making it from scratch is pretty time-consuming though (but also delicious!)

Grumpy Nation:  What do you like for breakfasts?

 

Ask the grumpies: Food recs for San Diego?

Omdg asks:

[I] want [food] recs for San Diego

We have no food recs for San Diego!  We’ve always enjoyed going through the gaslight district, but so many of our favorite places are gone now.

Grumpy Nation:  Where do you recommend getting food in San Diego?

Do you use a spoon or a knife for jam?

I grew up using a butter knife.  I think probably because you get less jam on that way and it’s spread out evenly.  (#DepressionDad)

DH, otoh, uses a teaspoon and he’s converted the kids to that.  They go through a LOT of jam very quickly.  (I feel like when they were younger they used the butter knife and it’s only since lockdown that they started leaving spoons in jam jars instead of knives.  If only we could convert them to putting things away after they’re done using them.)  I suspect he uses a spoon because he grew up with very liquidy homemade strawberry jam from one of his late grandmothers.  (Extremely good, but also more like a syrup with strawberry chunks than a jam.)

Since they leave the jam jars out with the spoons, I tend to use the spoons now too.  At some point I will likely start reaching for a spoon instead of a knife when I’m the person opening the jar.

How do you get jam out of a jar?

Ask the grumpies: Favorite vegetarian meal?

Debbie M asks:

What is your favorite vegetarian meal?

#1:  Bean Chili!

#2:  Anything pasta!

#1:  Ooh, can I say pesto instead?  Pesto is amazing.

Salads are good too, but… really nothing beats pasta.

Grumpy Nation:  What is your favorite vegetarian meal?

Subscription services and care packages for DC1?

None of the links are affiliate.  We just like stuff.

In addition to sending necessary items like bedding, towels, and school supplies via Target.com (DC1 did much of this hirself, though I paid for it), I’ve been looking forward to sending care packages to DC1 in college.

DC1 checked with the roommate and while there is a food allergy, it’s not life-threatening so we’re just not going to send things with that ingredient.  But we can send nuts.com stuff without said ingredient, so we did!  I sent a variety of healthy-ish snacks up to the free-shipping amount and delayed shipment until a week after DC1 gets there, figuring it will be a nice start to classes.

I want to send jetpens stuff, but DC1 probably wouldn’t appreciate them.  So it would really be for me.  Instead, DC1 bought hirself less cool supplies from Target.  Though the Easter bunny did provide this adorable stationary kit which DC1 will be taking.

Maybe I should do theme baskets– the Midwest isn’t the east coast, so there’s probably decent Mexican food even in a small town, so maybe no need to send a tex mex basket with our favorite salsa.  At some point DC1 will run out of gochujang and need more, though I’m not sure what would go with that since the best kimchee needs refrigeration and you can’t really ship bibimbop.  Maybe a better theme would be dips and sauces which could combine the two (along with maybe some Keith’s chicken sauce as well as plantain chips and tortilla chips).

We’ve been talking a lot about subscription services, but haven’t really settled on anything.  I suspect what will happen is that we won’t do any this trimester, but I’ll suggest 3-6 month subscriptions as potential Christmas/birthday presents for Winter/Spring when there won’t be a month long break in between trimesters.

We recently let our tearunners subscription lapse because we’re just not drinking as much tea, but it really is a great subscription for people who like tea.

DH has a coffee subscription from Yes PLZ that he really likes, but DC1 doesn’t drink coffee yet.  (We haven’t tried the Awesome Coffee Club, but it supports reducing maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone via the Green Brothers.)

DC1 did the Awesome Socks club for a year and loved it, but doesn’t really need any more socks.  (DC2 is currently doing it, but we will stop at Christmas, because you only need so many pairs of socks.)

DC1 has indicated some interest in Sakuraco subscription boxes, though zie isn’t completely set on it (plus this month’s box has the allergen in it).

I think probably the best kind of subscription set would be something consumable– no need for a squishmallow or pusheen subscription service, for example.  But if we’re going to do that, doesn’t it make sense just to send care packages directly?  It’s hard to say.  Once the school year starts for me I will have so much less free time, and so much less time to think about things.  A subscription box would remove any need for thinking or remembering.  But sometimes thinking and remembering is the point?  Or maybe the food is.  Hard to say.

What would you want in a care package?  Do you have any subscription services you think highly of?

Ask the Grumpies: Places to eat in River North Chicago

Chelsea asks:

I’m running the Chicago Marathon in early October and would love to get some dining recommendations from readers. Saturday I’d like to be able to get something tasty but plain – say pasta marinara with bonus points for good garlic bread. Sunday I’d like to have something celebratory (deep dish pizza?) but very early in the evening – like 5pm. I’m staying in the River North area and won’t want to walk too much. An easy bus destination would be an option. Thanks!

For the pizza option, Lou Malnatis.  My sister swears it is the best of all the deep dish/stuffed pizza* places.  Personally I like all the major chains from Connie’s to Gino’s East etc etc, but my sister says Lou Malnatis is the clear winner.  I like to get spinach and sausage, or if I’m with a vegetarian spinach and onion or garlic.  Sometimes we break it up with black olive.  You can’t really go wrong but I do like some veg in there to make it less greasy.  You can get other veg, but spinach is less wet than a lot of other options and I dunno, the first time spinach ever tasted good to me was in a stuffed pizza**.  It just goes really well with cheese.

If you get stuffed pizza be sure to order ahead at least 45 min before you show up, especially if you’re in a hurry.  Call if you have to.  Lou malnatis looks like it stays open after lunch so you should be ok there.

Looking at the menu, I would get the Lou Chicago style deep dish .  It is probably perfectly balanced.

You could actually get your pasta there on Saturday but you will be dying watching all the pizzas walk past you since you won’t be getting your pizza until Sunday. Also I always find the non-pizza dishes at the Chicago pizza places over-salted, though the garlic bread is good.  Not my favorite pasta– stick with pizza at the deep dish places.

Travel Agent Google has several recommendations for Italian restaurants in River North, though some of them look pretty fancy.  (I think they all have some form of simple pasta marinara and garlic bread.)

Torchio Pasta is highly rated and looks fancy.

Ditto Cocopazzo.

Club Lago looks a little more traditional Italian American.

Grumpy Nation:  What are your favorite Chicago eateries?  Where do you go for pizza and pasta?

* Deep dish is kind of a general name that includes several types of pizza that generally have a thin buttery crust and are made in a deep dish pan.  The “stuffed” version is what most of the deep dish chains serve when they serve deep dish, even if they don’t specify (I’m not counting Uno’s as a deep dish chain!  Their deep dish is definitely not stuffed.).  The stuffed version has another thin layer of dough over the cheese and fillings, and then that is topped with tomato sauce.  So the tomato sauce is on top rather than between the dough and toppings.  Jon Stewart called it a casserole, and it kind of is, though perhaps a cheese pie would be more accurate.  You probably only need one piece, though I usually can’t prevent myself from eating two.

**I was 15 and I had stuffed pizza for the first time from Connie’s– it made a huge impression.  A truly formative memory.  Up there with my first thai food (17), Indian food (19), and condensed milk-style shaved ice (20).  Man our kids are so lucky growing up with this stuff.