When All Else Fails, Add More Wine

I don’t have any cool recipes or neat kitchen tricks, and I should have posted this two weeks ago, but I wanted to pop in and say this: Please don’t punish yourself for how you ate in December.

I don’t know about you, but I have been bombarded with weight loss type ads the past two weeks, and it just makes me so angry. Life is hard as hell as it is without that nonsense.

If your December was like mine, it was cheesier, boozier, and more chocolately than the rest of the year. And it was GREAT! And the thing to remember is – you don’t eat like that the other 11 months out of the year. Hell, you probably didn’t even eat that way all 31 days of December.

You don’t have to do penance in January for what you enjoyed in December. You don’t have to slash your calories, or risk injury from over-exercise. Personally, I’m back to my “regular” eating patterns, with an extra salad here and there for good measure, and I’ve just stayed consistent with my yoga. I’m not going to starve myself or injure myself because I may have put on a couple pounds in December. You shouldn’t either.

Oh, and another quick thing – we’re having our first snowstorm of the year, and I realized that I don’t have my favorite snow day foods in the house. 😭

Around here it’s chipotle cheddar grits (the trick is chicken broth instead of water) and/or brownies. I’ll be making a point of fixing that before the next storm comes through on Friday. Winter has only just started – make sure you have your snow foods, too!

There will be holidays and snow days. There will be cookies and wine and brownies and cheese grits. It’s not every day. It’s not even most days. Block the weight loss advertisers and enjoy your food.

Spent the week tracking calories in/out and yeah, I hate that and I’m not doing that again unless it’s very, very necessary. I didn’t slip into disordered eating, but I just was way too self-conscious about everything.

But, I got a bit of insight. I am eating enough for the calories I’m burning. I probably need to be more active. (Hazards of a very sedentary job.) It’s cool that you burn calories while you sleep. (I knew that already, but it’s still cool to me.)

And in other news, I had cheesecake for breakfast today, LOL. Though… I didn’t finish it until after noon, so, technically lunch? Here’s the thing – I actually don’t feel at all bad about it, because it’s all just fuel and if you’re going to have dessert, it really doesn’t matter WHEN you have it. It’s just some made up rule that it comes after dinner. We have breakfast for dinner, why not dessert for breakfast once in a while?

I’m still having a huge struggle with cooking anything – I really enjoy cooking, I just don’t seem to have the time or energy for it these days, and that is super frustrating. But, I’ve got a kitchen full of low effort food, so it’s all good.

I don’t have a good answer to this – but we’ll see if I can manage it. Every time in the past that I’ve tried watching what I ate, things have gotten, well, weird – not to the point of disordered, but I got very self-conscious about it all.

A few weeks back we were down at the beach and the first two days I didn’t have lunch and I felt like trash. I am WAY more active down there than I am here and I realized I wasn’t eating enough and that was why I felt like garbage in the afternoon those two days.

But, it also made me wonder – even though I have a very sedentary job and I am not nearly as active during the week when I’m not on vacation – maybe I’m not really eating enough in general to give my body the fuel it needs?

I’m not looking to gain or lose weight – just make sure I’m really eating enough – cause some days, I do wonder if I would have more energy if I had more fuel.

Calories burned is very easy, thank you Fitbit. And with the internet, it’s way easier to find the nutrition information for pretty much anything.

The real trick is keeping it all in perspective. Last night, I picked up dinner from Panera and everything in the bag was 1,670 calories. And it would be easy to look at that and think “oh hell, I can’t do that anymore” – except that I never eat the entire sandwich and bowl of soup in one sitting. It’s literally dinner, lunch, and a snack all in one bag.

I’m also looking at it on a rolling weekly basis – too easy to get in the weeds trying to do it daily. Cause there are always going to be over/under days and I don’t want to get hung up on that. And reminding myself that this is observational – no “gotta work off those cheese and crackers” or “oh great, I’m allowed to eat” nonsense.

So, we’ll see if I can just make this a fun personal observational science experiment without it ruining eating – cause the minute it ruins eating, I’m done.

I’d say something along the lines of “depending where you are” – but the entire northern hemisphere is flipping HOT. Which means it’s time for low effort, no heat required food.

Here’s what I’ve been eating the past few days since it’s just too hot to function, and I don’t even want to use the microwave:

• Watermelon
• Pineapple
• Grapefruit
• Fruit popsicles
• Cherry tomatoes
• Snack/Sweet Peppers
• Cold sandwiches. Pastrami is the cold cut of the weekend.
• Chicken salad, courtesy of the grocery store deli department
• Triscuits, cheese, and the Columbus charcuterie assortment.
• Salads

All easy, and don’t heat up the kitchen. Plus I got some chili-lime seasoning and it’s good on the watermelon and it’s AMAZING on the pineapple!

Stay cool and drink your water.

And sorry not sorry for yelling about it, because I am very, very happy. I am so very lucky that the market closest to my house is one of the bigger ones in my county, and it has so many good vendors. Over the years, it’s just gotten better and better.

I’d say it’s about 50% produce vendors, then 5 or 6 bakeries, two meat vendors, a seafood vendor, a coffee stand, and the rest is awesome local freshly prepared foods! We have:

– 2 empanada stands
– 2 pickled food vendors – from dill to kimchi, it’s there!
– Fresh pasta
– Jamaican food (New this year! Jerk pork FTW!)
– New Zealand meat pies
– Salsa and Tamales
– Quiche & rice dishes (we have paella for dinner tonight!)
– Chinese food
– Lebanese food

And they already have cherry tomatoes. I did absolutely hesitate buying May tomatoes – these are poly tunnel grown right now and they are pretty darn good! Not quite a June/July tomato – but waaaaaay better than anything I’m gonna find in the grocery store. I find it a bit hilarious what a tomato snob I’ve become in my old age, especially considering that I hated them as a kid.

I may have already had a tomato salad for breakfast.

So – take a look at see if you have a local farmer’s market! It’s a little weekly food festival, and who doesn’t like that?

So, I got hit with a stomach bug earlier this week (so far Covid negative, so, yay for that?) and it was a good two days where I was feeling better but basically afraid of food.

Finally yesterday I was hungry enough to overcome any food fear. But I also hadn’t had anything substantial for two days, so I was kinda weak and shaky. Mashed potatoes seemed like a good choice, but honestly, even the idea of measuring everything out to pop it in the microwave just seemed kinda daunting.

Then I remembered that last week I’d picked up some frozen roasted potatoes. They cook in the bag, and were ready in 5 minutes and I had a nice substantial lunch that got some much needed calories in my body.

Sometimes the most important thing is getting food in your body and anything that makes that easier is A-OK, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Not what’s in your fridge (but yeah, you need to keep an eye on those, too) – but when you’re out shopping.

I don’t know if it’s just my local market, but it seems that supply chain issues and changes in buying/ordering have resulted in stock not getting rotated nearly as often as it did in the past.

Went to get eggs yesterday and came very close to accidentally buying a dozen with a Use By date of today… And there were a lot of cartons like that.

Today I had to pop back in and thought it might be nice to have some ready cooked sausage patties – all with a Use By within 4 days. (I think next time I’ll just go straight to the frozen section.)

Like I said, it might just be something weird with my market right now, but keep an eye out, because it’s no fun to get home and realize 3 days later you have expired stuff.

So, yesterday I got my hair done and I always grab dinner to-go afterwards, cause I can’t be messing up a new ‘do cooking dinner, LOL. (Also, Friday night, just did not want to cook.)

So, popped open the Wendy’s app and see they have a Grilled Chicken Ranch Wrap. I have zero idea if this is new, or been around a while and I never noticed it. But as someone who really liked McD’s Chicken Snack Wrap, I had to give it a whirl.

It’s tasty!! And freakin’ HUGE. Had half last night, put the rest in the fridge and finished it off today.

Now, we all know fast food isn’t necessarily healthy – but this is what I would call a healthier option.

Tortilla, grilled chicken, some shredded cheddar, and lettuce – all reasonably decent things to eat. I did get the bacon add on – and I would recommend it, just adds a little more…IDK, goodness to it.

So, if you’ve seen it and hesitated cause you weren’t sure it would be any good – I can tell you, it is good!

Popped into the market this morning and realized, I need some veggies to snack on. Yep, low effort all the way. (The “light” dill dip is only because they were out of the regular…but it’s surprisingly decent!)