Cheese Quesadillas Revisited

What seems like forever ago, when Grace was first starting to eat solid foods, she started eating cheese quesadillas (is saying "cheese quesadilla" redundant or is it making it clear that there isn't anything else in the quesadilla besides cheese?) like they were going out of style. Gobbled them down like she hadn't been fed in days. At some point, she got tired of them, but I kept making them, mostly due to the convenience of only having to sprinkle cheese on a tortilla and heat it on the stove for a few minutes. She'd eat them, but rather than take bites, she'd pull off one side of tortilla and eat the cheese off of the other side. I moved on to other foods for her, but sometimes I would make a quesadilla for myself that had leftover chicken or pork in it. If she took some of my quesadilla, she'd take out the meat and eat the cheese, as usual.

A few weeks ago, I made chicken quesadillas for dinner, not thinking that Grace would eat any since she'd had dinner earlier. She proceeded to eat over half of a chicken quesadilla, taking bites of the whole thing, chicken, cheese and tortilla all in one bite. Since then, I've offered to make quesadillas for her for lunch. Some days she wants one and will eat it rather than dissect out the cheese. I feel like this says something about something, but I'm not quite sure what. I'm pretty sure it doesn't say anything about my parenting or anything that I'm doing, but perhaps something about her taste in food or something.

Relaxed lunch time with milk, fruit and cheese quesadilla.

My Hopes and Dreams Regarding Weight Watchers, Weight Loss, and My Future Eating Habits

I've been going to Weight Watchers every week for over a year (since March 2010, to be slightly more precise). I say "going to" as opposed to "kicking ass" or even "following", because for the past month or three, I've been, well, not. Haven't been counting points or even writing down what I'm eating. How can you say if a plan is working if you're not following it?

This Week in the CSA Box: Week 1

Way back in January or so, we signed up for a CSA with Landisdale Farm, sharing a full share with Andrew's parents. It seemed like fresh, local produce would be forever away, but here we are with our first week's box of yummy-looking veggies (and cherries, yay!). Week 1's box included fennel, parsley, scallions, garlic scapes, lettuce and cherries. Monday, I made roasted chicken with fennel, carrots and celery from Bittman's "How to Cook Everything". Pretty boring, but we'll probably just use the lettuce in a salad. I'm thinking of grilling the garlic scapes (we only have 3, so we can't do anything too exciting). I'll probably end up shoving the cherries into my cherry-loving mouth.

Week 1 of CSA blogging is kind of sad, but I'll try to remember to take pictures of the veggies and foods I make with them in the coming weeks. I'm looking forward to being forced to use more veggies in our meals, as I know that we need to include them but I'm too good at avoiding them. Yay CSA!

Baking with Baby

Our new neighbors brought us some cupcakes last week, so I figured we should bake them something. (Can't return an empty tupperware, right?) I have this bad habit of browsing foodgawker and opening a million tabs of recipes that look yummy, then getting mad that having so many tabs open makes Safari get cranky, then save the tabs in a folder of bookmarks for later never to think of them again. I figured I might as well use one of those recipes to make something potentially yummy for our neighbors. I ended up making this recipe for sunflower butter cookies with chocolate covered sunflower seeds. They're kind of like peanut butter cookies in texture, kind of crumbly rather than cake-like (but that might be due to the ingredient snafu where I had to coax the brown sugar into moistness).
Grace didn't really do much except get impatient when it took forever to get anything done (especially during the aforementioned ingredient snafu). Then I put her up on my shoulders, she played with my hair and everything was fine. Probably if things had gone more smoothly, I would have thought to have her stir the dry ingredients or dump things into the mixer, but that's what next time is for.

Dry Goods Challenge

I have a weird habit of buying random food that I don't necessarily know what I'm going to use it for and I also have a habit of buying way more food than I really need. Think of how people buy stuff at Costco but I do that kind of thing in normal grocery stores as well. We have a cupboard full of random food that I thought would be a good idea to have mixed with extra items of things that I thought would be a good idea to buy multiples of even though I only needed one. There was that trip to the store where I thought it would be a good idea to have a supply of beans on hand and, hey, beans are cheap so why not buy 8 bags of them? It's kind of how I roll.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to go through the cupboard and utilize all of the dry goods we have already with minimal purchase of new dry goods. I'll buy produce, dairy, and protein. Hopefully I'll learn new some yummy new recipes.

Sugar Free New Year?

In 2009, for Lent (even though I'm not religious or Christian, but because it was a set, limited amount of time), I decided to not eat anything that had sugar added. Foods that I decided I would not eat include desserts, soda or other sweetened drinks (such as flavored syrups in drinks at Starbucks, since I was working there then), candy, and even sweetened foods or drinks that used artificial sweeteners (thinking that reducing intake of artificial sweeteners would help reduce my craving of sweet foods). I did not limit my intake of naturally sweet foods such as fruit.

I was surprised at how well it went, how little I actually craved sweets. I did have a few weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday where my drink of choice was an extra caramel sauce Caramel Macchiatto, and I did indulge whatever sweet craving I had. On the other hand, if I remember correctly, it only took a few days before I somewhat stopped having such frequent cravings for sweets. I'm not saying that I never wanted desserts or soda, but I am saying that those cravings were few, far between, and easily handled.

I'm thinking of doing this again, starting January 2nd. (I would start January 1st, but we'll be at a family Christmas get together, and there might be cookies that I'll want to eat. I know it's a lame excuse, but it's an excuse I can live with.) I've been eating a lot of cookies and such lately, unrelated to holidays, and I feel like it's hindering my attempts at eating healthier, which is hindering my attempts at weight loss. I don't mean to say that I want to stop eating sugar so I'll lose weight. I mean to say that I want to stop eating sugar for a time so that I can make it easier for myself to eat healthier which will hopefully make it easier to lose weight.

I don't know how long I'll want to keep it up, but I'm aiming for at least a month. I suppose I'll reevaluate as needed. I know I'll at least have to make an exception for Pi(e) Day, if I make it that long. I'm looking forward to drinking more water, eating fruit and not worrying about whether or not I should feel guilty about things I've eaten.

I Eat Food Too.

I've been thinking about foods that I would like to learn how to make, baked goods made with whole wheat flour, for example. I've also been thinking about how I'd like to learn how to make a dish or two that has many components that could take many tries to perfect. The food that got me thinking this way was banh mi, which has many components that I could learn how to make (baguette, pickled vegetables, pork products of many types, etc.) but would also be possible to make at home with purchased components so I could focus on one at a time. Another food that I've been thinking of working on perfecting is soup, especially soup made with my own stock. I'm not launching a cooking extravaganza today, but I am thinking about it in the back of my mind for when I have more time or for the next time I go grocery shopping and feel adventurous.

PS: If anyone's interested in reading stupid things I write in 140 character increments, I'm foodbabymama over there as well.
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