Clip art preview

A bit of clip art that I am working on. This week's theme is people. I'm trying a retro tiki sixties style. Pen and prismacolor pencils.

Lunch: April 27

Lunch today was an attempt at a variation of red beans and rice. Black beans and brown rice. Included some endamame, spinach, onion, bell pepper, and celery. Opted to go meatless. Had some chili powder in the mix but most of it boiled away.

Need to add spices later in the process because this was a bit bland.

Estimated nutritional content: 300 calories, 53 g carbohydrates, 3 g fat, 16 g protein, 13 g fiber, 205 mg sodium, 685 mg potassium 

Someday I will do some real cooking rather than simply boiling, stir frying or combining a random set of ingredients.

Lunch April 25

Today's lunch was whole wheat linguine with chicken, spinach, onion, mushroom, bell pepper, and Butoni marinara sauce. The chicken and pasta were the dominant flavors; the sauce was secondary. Only used a half cup. Tasted good with no side effects so far. The marinara was in the back of the fridge for a while and looked a bit questionable.

Estimated nutrition information: 457 calories, 56 g Carbs, 10 g fat, 40 g protein, 622 mg sodium, 1106 mg potassium.

Food Preparation Adventures

Today's homemade lunch was a salad. Salads are hard to mess up.

This is a spinach salad with tuna (Starkist tuna pack), grapes, pineapple, walnuts, celery, bell pepper, mandarin oranges, a dash of red pepper flakes and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar.

Didn't use salad dressing because each ingredient has enough flavoring on its own and the vinegar and flakes took the edge off the spinach. The dominant flavor was whatever was in that particular bite. I'm not a fan of salad dressings for salads with flavorful ingredients. Especially, ranch dressing. After all the stuff I put on this salad, topping it off with ranch dressing would have been like taking a giant shit on it. If I want ranch dressing, I'll drink it straight from the bottle.

I'm not a foodie but ranch dressing is wrong for most occasions. It drowns out all other flavors. It is salad dressing version of glitter. Glitter is the herpes of crafts.

Ranch dressing is appropriate for salads consisting of nothing but iceberg lettuce, a bit of red cabbage and some carrot shavings. This is not a salad but a dressing delivery system. It provides a good excuse for consuming a lot of ranch dressing without drinking straight from the bottle because either the bottle is unavailable or you're with people.

I also prepared my own yogurt - Dannon plain yogurt with frozen blackberries (thawed by lunch time). I wanted to cut down on my sugar intake and save some money.

Yes, there is two cups of spinach under all that.

The numbers for this lunch: 548 calories, 84 g carbs, 16 g fat, 40 g protein, 530 mg sodium, 1,576 mg potassium

Adventures in food preparation

This week I'm experimenting with making my lunches rather than using prepackaged food.

The first experiment is replicating the Simply Asia noodle bowls. The experiment is pictured below.

Did use one pre-made ingredient, pre-cooked chicken breast. Ingredients: 2 oz. of whole wheat linguine, 1 tbsp of low sodium soy sauce, one stalk of celery (chopped), 2 tbsp of chopped onion, 1/4 cup of chopped bell pepper, 1/4 cup of edamane (soy beans), 1 tsp of Tabasco, a pinch of red pepper flakes, 1 pre-cooked chicken breast (diced), 1 tbsp of almond butter. Stir-fried the vegetables in soy sauce & Tabasco while linguine was boiling. Heated up chicken. Drained noodles, stirred in almond butter, added vegetables and chicken. Stirred some more. Added a dash of red pepper flakes. Estimated nutrition content: Calories: 437, 36 g Protein, 13 g Fat, 51 g Carbohydrates, 727 mg Sodium, 489 mg Potassium

I didn't work off a written recipe, just threw together the ingredients.

Tabasco and soy sauce were the dominant flavors with a hint of celery. The noodles had an interesting texture. I thought it tasted as good as any of the pre-packaged meals with the added benefit of less sodium.

Cutting down on sodium was the main motivator for this experiment. I trade some time for expense. I enjoyed doing this.

Over two hours since eating this and have not suffered any ill effects.

Maybe I should get a parsley plant for the office to garnish these photos.

Lunch: April 15

Today's lunch: Zatarain's Jambalaya flavored with sausage.

Package versus reality.

Lunch: March 29

Simply Asia Sesame Teriyaki Noodle Bowl.
Package versus reality
Beginning to realize that this just upgraded ramen.

Today's lunch

Today lunch is a middle finger directed at the earth. A delicious, convenient 520 calorie middle finger.

Hopeless gardener

This is designed for children. If I cannot grow some food with this then I'm hopeless.

Belated lunch post

Zatarain's Red Beans & Rice with Sausage package:

Reality:

Trying Blogger for Android

Test post from phone.

Two Lunch Posts: Package vs. Reality

Lean Cuisine Mushroom Tortelloni. I think I ate this February 3.

From Drop Box

Reality has more peas.

From Drop Box

A lot more peas.

From Drop Box

Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers: Whiskey Steak. I ate this February 8th.

From Drop Box

I wonder if potatoes get as much subsidy as corn?

From Drop Box

If I wasn't so lazy I could probably prepare something better from scratch.

Today's Lunch: Package vs. Reality

Lean Cuisine Sweet & Spicy Ginger Chicken. It was quite good. I didn't taste any water chestnuts.

The package:

From Drop Box

Reality from roughly the same angle as the package:

From Drop Box

The reality from above:

From Drop Box

I like how these photos turned out. Used natural light.

Today's Lunch: Package vs. Reality

Today's Lunch: Central Market Pad Thai. Central Market is the HEB store brand of organic foods.

The package:

From Drop Box

Need to work on the glare on the package photos.

The reality:

From Drop Box

It's not you, the reality photo is a bit out of focus.

Bonus photo:

From Drop Box

This particular type Amy's Burrito is only available at HEB. Wal-Mart doesn't carry the yellow ones, just the red and green. Makes me wonder about grocery distribution agreements.

Today's Lunch: Package vs. Reality

Lunch for 1/12/2011: Healthy Choice Portabella Marsala Pasta

The package:

The reality photographed from the approximate angle of the package. I don't keep a bottle of olive oil on my desk.

The reality photographed from above.

The general layout is similar but the noodles are different. Not bad for a microwave meal.

Today's Lunch: Package vs. Reality

Today's Lunch: Healthy Choice Lobster Cheese Ravioli.

The product on the package:

The product in reality after cooking:

To be fair, I should have photographed from the same angle but then the picture would be mostly black plastic container.

It tasted pretty much how it looks, not nasty but bland. It was a source of carbohydrates, protein and fat. I kind of feel sorry for the lobsters that were killed for this.

I also ate some yogurt and a pineapple product from Dole.

Atlas Shrugged

I could not finish Atlas Shrugged.

To rabid fans of Ayn Rand: I'm willing to admit that I'm too stupid to understand her brilliant ideas. Fine, an obnoxious Objectivist or two might think I'm ignorant. I can live with that. I think of it as an intellectual equivalent of an obese person criticizing my relatively slow running pace.

This cartoon sums up some of my feelings quite nicely.

I loved this comment about the above mentioned cartoon:

"Rand never gets credit for her single greatest accomplishment... giving assholes an intellectual framework for being assholes."

Now, what to do with my copy of Atlas Shrugged, which I bought at a garage sale for 50 cents? I've thought about this a lot. I don't want to destroy the book because I don't believe ideas should be destroyed regardless of how bad. So burning, dunking, shooting, drawing and quartering are out.

A list of uses for Atlas Shrugged (that retains the readability of the copy)

1. Obvious: door stop and paper weight

2. Violent: blunt object that inflicts pain but no real damage

3. Liberal repellent

4. Yoga prop

5. Exercise equipment

6. When all you need is an extra 3 inches to reach something

7. Bug killer

8. Flower press

9. Furniture leveler

10. Lumbar support (paperback version)

11. Pot holder

12. Action figure scenery

13. Hot Wheels track support

14. Animation

Feel free to add others in the comments. I might get around to re-enacting some of these in photos and drawings.

Herb and Jamaal

Herb and Jamaal free online comic strip library at comics.com

There is nothing else going on here.

There is nothing else going on here.

There is nothing else going on here.

Just two grown men being friends. Nothing to see here. Move along.

The hopeless gardner

To read stories of successful efforts as self-sufficiency and sustainability visit http://bigmyrtle.blogspot.com/. I admire what Mark and Shelley have done.

My efforts on the other hand have yielded a single onion. It provided some nice flavor to my morning egg. There is still hope for a cantaloupe. Three of the plants grew real well until a rain followed by heat killed them. The dog killed two when he thought my little garden would make a great place to dig and wallow. The lone onion survived this assault. Walter placed some sticks in the bed to deter the dog. It worked and I had onion to show for it. One melon plant is still growing and blooming. I cheer it on every time I take Loki out for a walk.

Harvested a pound of Muscatine grapes but those weren't grown through my own efforts. We have a wild grape vine that partially encircles our backyard. When we moved in the previous owner said that the vine wouldn't produce because it was missing a component. Apparently the vine found the needed part. I snacked on the grapes for about a week after a good washing. Some of the grapes were located within Loki's firing range. I liked the tart flavor of the grapes. Looked up some recipes but these called for more grapes than I had.

Found that gardening is not something to do casually. Takes more time than I'm willing to commit at this point. I like the idea more than the actual project. That last statement sums up most of my life.

When pros fail

Glad to see that even a professional can screw something up. Give Joe Giella points for trying. Where does Mary hide all that hair? I thought she had an Ann Richards style hairdo.