Eat all the junk food you want…..

……as long as you cook it yourself and clean up the dishes.

This one makes perfect sense to me.

I’m talking again about one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan. His books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food have brought the idea of clean eating, whole foods, and farm-to-table to the forefront of nutrition discussions. I have read both along with his latest book, which is basically the cliff notes of his first two books. It’s called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. Each page is a rule to consider. I like the one I just posted.

If I take the time to make my own French fries, I wouldn’t eat them everyday. I do make my own nachos. I eat them maybe once a month during football season. I make my own pita chips and it’s been weeks since I’ve had any. I make my own dip. I eat so much of it that I found ways to make it healthier for me—mostly by switching to hummus with dill and lemon. If you compare that to full fat cream ranch dip, it’s not in the same hemisphere. But by gradually tweaking it, I enjoy the better version and it’s no longer a “junk” food.  Now if only I could re-create healthy Cheetoes.

Tonight, I made my own Apricot granola bars. I used a fraction of the suggested brown sugar, wheat pastry flour, and added in extra protein in the form of nuts and almond butter.

Flour, oats, brown sugar, melted butter                       I love this stuff!

Apricot, walnuts, dried fruit of choice                          Crumbly oat mixture on top and bottom

Dinner tonight was a simple one. I worked out hard this morning—lots of pull-ups, push ups, squats, and running. Then I cranked out 3 miles tonight before watching half of Biggest Loser. I know how some of those people feel. I struggled so hard with assisted pull-ups this morning. My arms and shoulders just could not do more than 6 or 7 at a time no matter how much my mind WANTED to do it.

Anyway, I needed protein. Lots of it.

Did you know that you can cook dry beans or peas in the crock pot all day and save the trouble of all that boiling and soaking business? I never fooled with dry beans because of all the soaking, boiling, then cooking. Now, I just throw the beans in the crock pot with water and seasonings and let it go all day.

I wanted spicy pinto beans with rice. I added in some very good for me andouille turkey sausage. (pronounced AHN-du-ee). I added some white corn to the rice just because that’s what I was feeling tonight.  The beans were perfect. They cooked on low in the crock pot for about 7 hours.

Time to call an end to this day. I’m sleepy.