Kitchen Tutorial #1

Since I spent all day writing this stuff out for a friend who needs a lifestyle change, I thought I’d publish for anyone else who might want to start doing low carb and/or cooking more at home. First up: basic kitchen essentials! Basic tools and getting your pantry started.

Basic kitchen utensils you’ll need:
meat thermometer
measuring spoons
measuring cups (dry)
2 cup measuring cup (liquid)
microplane or lemon zester
crock pot (small basic one is OK)
square baking dish
large heavy bottom frying pan nonstick is fine
small nonstick skillet for frittatas!
couple of soup pans, 2 qt
large wide bottom chili pot (or dutch oven if you want to spend $50+, it’s worth it!)
sheet pans for baking
nonstick safe cooking utensils
at least ONE really good, sharp knife

Basic pantry (NO canned veg other than what’s here!):
extra virgin olive oil EVOO (look for dark bottle, around $10 per ltr)
kosher salt (my recipes call for kosher, NOT table salt)
black pepper
sugar
cornstarch
dried basil
dried oregano
dried thyme
dried cilantro
sweet paprika
smoked paprika
red pepper flakes
L&P worcestershire sauce (it’s the best)
your favorite hot sauce
steak sauce
dijon mustard
mayonnaise
seasoned rice wine vinegar
apple cider vinegar
4 boxes chicken stock
4 cans diced toms (I like Hunts fire roasted w/ garlic)
Herdez Salsa Verde (NOT spicy) for green chicken, white chili and green chili
1 tube tomato paste (it keeps the longest, look in Italian section)
capers (for chicken piccata)
2 cans Bush’s chili starter (any flavor, but medium is perfect)
2 cans white beans (great northern)
2 cans seasoned black beans
1 jar sundried tomatoes (for a recipe)
1 jar large pimento stuffed green olives (for recipe)
1 bottle Korean BBQ sauce (BiBiGo is great)
Keep canned soups on hand at all times. Progresso low sodium soups are pretty good. Whatever you get, make sure it’s low sodium.

Fridge:
butter, salted
sliced cheese (real, NOT American!)
shredded parmesan
heavy cream (for sauces, keeps forever)**
deli meat, smoked turkey, ham, etc.
Eggs
**Stay away from low fat dairy. Get full fat cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream and yogurts. It’s been shown that full fat dairy is better for you in the long run than reduced fat stuff.

Veg always on hand:
garlic (the prepared garlic in a jar is OK if you’ll use that more)
white onions
lemons (for piccata and I use for lots of things)

Low carb fresh veg for meals:
cauliflower (toss with EVOO, S/P and roast at 425 for 15 mins)
any colour bell peppers (cut in half, remove ribs/seeds, toss with EVOO and roast skin side up under broiler)
green beans (cut off stems and sautee whole in EVOO with minced garlic and S/P)
greens (baby kale is surprisingly good) Sautee with EVOO, garlic and S/P.
asparagus same as green beans but add some lemon zest and finish with lemon juice

Salad: (eat one per day)
romain hearts
celery
scallions
radishes
carrot sticks
grape tomatoes

OIL & VINEGAR dressing.
Use 2 parts extra virgin olive oil to one part seasoned rice wine vinegar. Season with S/P. Add in some dried basil if you want or even a dollop of dijon if you feel frisky. Whisk thoroughly to emulsify. This can be held at room temp.

Frozen sides and veg are FAR superior to canned veg because of the sodium. Low sodium canned veg is disgusting. Frozen veg keeps all the nutrition and has far less sodium, even if you get it with flavouring.

Basic frozen veg to have on hand:
spinach (get it in the bag so you can use what you need)
stew veg (for easy crockpot stew)
frozen cauliflower is ok for adding to a recipe, not great alone
frozen greens are fine
frozen green peas are the only peas I use
DO not get frozen green beans or asparagus. That stuff gets GROSS when frozen.

You can also get frozen recipe ready veg such as diced onions and peppers, and they are OK, just not as flavourful as fresh. But if you want to sub in the frozen to save you time and effort, that’s just fine.

There are myriad frozen sides out there, but some outstanding ones I’ve found recently are:
Birdseye Protein Blends – usually a grain and veg, various flavours
Green Giant Fire Roasted veg
any veg mix as long as it’s not loaded with sodium

FYI, you can freeze 9 grain bread! It keeps forever and you can’t tell it’s been frozen. Restaurant trick!

Frozen Proteins:
frozen chicken tenders
frozen thin chicken breast if you can find it
frozen boneless skinless chix thighs

For beef I rarely buy it frozen. I buy it on sale and freeze. For quick chili, keep ~1# packs of 90/10 low fat ground beef or ground chicken on hand.

Other meats you’ll need for various recipes:
pork tenderloin
bone in, skin on chicken thighs (or breasts)
Stew meat or chuck steak
flank, skirt or flat iron steak (look for it on sale!)

FROZEN MEALS
If you can’t take leftovers to work (I hear this is a thing??), I suggest going to a boxed frozen solution. One particularly good frozen box meal I found is Stouffers Fit Kitchen. They are good sized portions with a TON of protein and reasonable sodium. They are not the cheapest frozen meals, but they are cheaper than buying lunch every day. Even if you go with the small frozen meals and just buy a small salad, you’ll be doing better nutritionally. Eating sandwiches is better than fast food, but you still get mostly carbs with all that bread. If you could cut down the sandwiches to twice a week and do frozen+salad the rest of the time, you’ll see a difference.

Taxes and Obamacare Penalty

So after the fiasco with our shitty accountant last tax season, this year we decided to go it alone with TurboTax. GOOD MOVE. We tried the free service through Credit Karma, but it sucked balls. TurboTax cost us about $200, but that is $150 less than the asshole accountant AND it is accurate. Y’all know you can write off the cost of filing your taxes every year, right? You can! There are LOTS of things you can write off. Get the IRS forms and READ UP. There are lots of medical things and TONS of fees and shit you can write off in addition to equipment and office space.

We did NOT get any Obamacare penalties this year. Why? Well, because WE made sure to input ALL our expenses, which the asshole accountant did NOT, apparently, even after we gave them to him. Jerk. So we figure that guy cost us several thousand over the years we’ve used him. He cost us at least $600 just last year because he did not put in our expenses properly. Expenses change your NET income, which in turn affects how Obamacare is calculated. He was clearly not happy that we refused to spend $800+/mo on Obamacare and I think he fucked up our taxes on purpose. I’ve got no proof other than his attitude and the marked difference of our return this year, but I strongly suspect.

We were very happy with TurboTax, actually. It asked us lots of questions and provided the correct forms for everything. It is set up for multiple income streams and was overall quite easy to use. We recommend it, even if you have crazy incomes like we do!

We got almost $1000 back this year, as opposed to a coupla hundred last year due to the useless accountant.

My next band name is SUCK IT MARK, in his honour. :P

Angela’s Avgolemono Soup

Looong ago I dated a Greek Cypriot and learned to make several Greek dishes: dolmathes, baklava, pastitsio, moussaka and avgolemono. I’d forgotten just how freaking TASTY lemon and egg soup is! Here’s my version, made with leftover chicken. Easy and really delicious!

Angela’s Avgolemono Soup

1/2 leftover roasted chicken, shredded (OR a small rotisserie, or 4 thighs, whatever you have)
Olive Oil
1 shallot, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
1/2 cup rice, any kind
1 Tbl dry dill (or fresh if you’ve got it)
5 C chicken stock
3 small or 2 large lemons, zested (and juiced into separate mixing bowl)
2 eggs
2 Tbl fresh chopped parsley for finishing and garnish

In a good sized soup pot, put in a couple of turns of olive oil over med low heat. Sweat the shallot and garlic until soft. Add in chicken, dill, lemon zest and rice, stir and cook for a couple of minutes. Turn up the heat to Hi and add the chicken stock. While that comes to a boil, add eggs to the lemon juice and whisk until eggs are completely mixed.

Reduce soup to a simmer to allow rice to cook – about 15 minutes depending on your type of rice. Basmati took 15 minutes. When rice is done, kill the heat. Move pot to counter with the lemon/egg mixture next to it. Add in one spoonful of hot soup liquid (try to avoid rice) at a time, whisking in between to temper the eggs. Add at least 3/4 cup of hot soup to eggs, then carefully pour the eggs back into the soup pot. Stir thoroughly. There should be enough residual heat to cook eggs through, if not, put on a LOW flame to warm through. Toss in the parsley, keeping some aside for garnish. Serve.

New Workout Progress

Or: how I made myself crippled AGAIN. Oy! [UPDATE: This workout cured the soreness! So for me, it appears that doing a lighter workout when sore is the key to getting through it! Yay!]

So I started doing the Kathy Smith weight training (Ageless with Kathy Smith: Staying Strong) on Tuesday and did both the 15 min arms and 15 min legs after a mile or so on the treadmill. OOF. I’ve been doing the arms one for a while, so that was not too horrible, but the leg one kicked my ass. Ha! Leg kicked ass! As with most of Kathy’s stuff, the actual exercises seem pretty simple when you do them, then the next day you are DEAD. OMG. It was not as bad as The Tabernacle Incident™, but OW OW OW.

I rested for a couple of days and just walked on Thursday, which was fine. Today I did 1.5 miles on the treadmill (jogged a little and didn’t die!!) then I did a modified version of both the arms and legs workouts. Hopefully I did not do too much, but I’m sure I’ll be sore again. ARGH.

I don’t know how bodybuilders put up with being sore all the time. ARE they sore all the time?? I just know that I MUST get my strength back. And I’ve still got at least 20# more to lose, dammit. I’m stalled at around 190 and it’s really pissing me off. I think that I’m going to have to work to lose any more weight. Since I started off relatively light compared to most people who get VSG, I think my overall loss is going to be less. Which means I’ll have to work for the last 20#. One of the youtubers I follow had the same problem. UGH. I still won’t diet per se, but I’m hoping that upping the calorie burn will do the trick.

So that’s what’s going on in my world. Lots of OW OW OW. :)

OW OW OW

International Women’s Day


In honour of this auspicious day, I offer you a judgmental rant. I am not sorry. Several things have set me off, so let’s start with the IWD stuff and then move to other issues that piss me off.

For this IWD, the Day Without a Woman movement is taking place. The idea is that women take the day off, don’t work, don’t buy anything, don’t cook, etc., and we all wear red. Now, while I agree that this is a lovely idea and I support it, I will still do the shit I need to do today. I’ve got obligations. I’ve got chores. And they will get done because I feel good today for the first time in a week, so I’ve got to carpe diem, yanno?

I’ve seen several women on FB (not MY friends, but comments on others’ posts) apologizing for not being able to take the day off, not shop, whatever. It is annoying that women feel obligated to APOLOGIZE for getting shit done just because it’s a “cause” day that asks you to not do anything. It’s just an idea! If you got shit to do, DO IT and stop apologizing. I think that the whole idea is to do what you can for the cause, but do NOT apologize for doing or NOT doing any damn thing on any damn day. RIGHT? ARGH.

Next, I’d like to slap the clueless bitches all over FB who are asking “What is all this wearing red about?”. Really? REALLY? You’re on FB every damn day and you’ve managed to miss International Women’s Day and the associated movement? You are an idiot and you need to have your woman card revoked. PAY ATTENTION for chrissakes!!

And finally, I’d like to air my feelings on women (partners of any gender) who fail at homemaking. You know the ones. The ones who “stay home with the children”, but do absolutely nothing. They claim to be busy with the children, but in reality, they sit on their asses all day playing games or riding around doing Ingress/Pokemon. They don’t clean the house, they don’t do laundry, they don’t cook, they literally do nothing. This makes me RAGEY. And YES, by the gods, I JUDGE THEM.

When I see a man complaining about all the stuff he has to do such as laundry, dry cleaning, getting shoes repaired, etc. and he’s got a woman at home, this makes me apoplectic with rage (you can change the gender on that to any configuration). WTF is wrong with someone who stays home every day and offers ZERO support for their spouse who works full time? How can you do that? How can you sit around in your own filth with laundry literally in mountains all over your house and do nothing? HOW?? It is the most selfish, mean, trifling bullshit I’ve ever heard.

I don’t care if you have 6 kids or NONE, if you are at home or work less than your partner, get OFF your lazy ass and KEEP HOUSE. My house ain’t spotless by any means, but by gods you don’t have to worry about ptomaine from my kitchen or be afraid to use the bathroom or see mountains of laundry coming out of the laundry room!! There is absolutely ZERO excuse for this! ZERO. Just because you’ve reproduced does not mean that you are no longer responsible for keeping your shit clean and straight. It’s a responsibility issue, not a time management issue.

I totally understand that some people are raised in filth and they honestly do NOT see it. Which is why it’s even sadder when they have kids, because they are raising another generation of filthy people. My grandmother and mother kept clean houses. I am naturally a clean person who likes ORDER and so does Nick. Keeping house for us is just a normal daily routine. ANYONE CAN LEARN TO DO THIS. Nick wasn’t raised in a neat clean house, but his sister in law (with whom he lived for a while) taught him to keep house. (Thanks Melinda!!) You can choose to be an adult. Try it, you might actually like it.

My brother, raised by the same clean mother that I was raised by, is a total PIG. He lives in filth with paths around all the shit in the floor. I don’t understand why it takes in some people but not in others, but I do think there is some choice involved. My brother chooses to live like a pig and takes zero responsibility for it. Part of this due to my father, who was raised in filth and does not believe in doing housework of any sort because that is the woman’s job – HELLO, 19fucking50 called and they want their bullshit back. My father never cleaned a dish, cooked a meal, washed a shirt, took out the trash or mowed the lawn. He is also a home builder and he never repaired SHIT around the house. He did absolutely nothing to keep the household running other than making money. Gee, I wonder why my mother burned out and finally said “FUCK IT!”? I saw this shit go down and I decided then that I’d NEVER put up with that kind of bullshit. You live here, you’ll do some chores, that’s IT. Same for brats: they should do household chores as soon as they are able. Teach them to clean up after themselves and it will be a lifetime habit. My mother did not do this because she has control issues. That likely contributes to my brother’s inability to adult.

A partnership is a partnership, be it marriage or whatever. This goes for all couples, no matter the gender. If you live with someone, you are obligated to help keep the place livable. YES working full time should mean that you have a far shorter list of things to do around the house, but it shouldn’t mean you do nothing. And vice versa, if you are the one staying home, then your list of household chores will be MUCH longer than the person working full time. Why is this so hard to understand? This is equitable. You don’t like it? Get a job and/or get a maid. Easy.

I absolutely do NOT take issue with doing most of the housework. I’m home, I should do it. And Nick has no issue if I ask him to clean the gnarly shower sometimes. Hell, he cleans it better than I do!! He also has no qualms about his short list of chores. It’s equitable.

So this is my Women’s Day rant. If your house is a filthy pigsty with laundry mountains, then how about you GROW A VAG and clean that shit UP? Woman up for chrissakes! This goes for DUDES who are stay at home, too. Do your part! It’s the nicest thing you can do for your partner. I know Nick appreciates the things I do. He tells me so. And don’t forget that, too: tell your partner how much you appreciate what they do. It matters.

Oh and Happy International Women’s Day. :P