Healthier choices for healthier Claires

I like food, but sometimes food doesn't like me. When one is an adventurous eater and follows a lifelong mantra of "Live to eat, not eat to live", there are times when logic must supercede one's food id gone rogue. I've always been the type of person who depletes my spice drawer more quickly than anyone else I know. I am generous with the hot sauce. I am a "second helping of raw oysters on the half shell, please" kinda lady.

In fact, I am a second-helping of everything girl. Recently, this particular eating habit has caused some issues. Pants issues, specifically. The issue being, I am having trouble fitting into mine. And sometimes, my tum hurts - a lot. Hm.

I thought that getting the CSA again this year would help my waistline by virture of just having vegetables around the house. However, I've also kept things like ice cream, beer, and sausages around the house, which seems to have offset the weight-loss properties of all the salad I've been eating.

The only way I know how to purposefully lose weight - and I have about 10 lbs to lose - is through Weight Watchers. So I'm putting myself back on as of today. Hopefully, over the summer, I'll manage to shed some extra weight, and get my not so happy tum back in shape.

One cookbook that I'd like to recommend to anyone looking to eat healthier without sacrificing flavor is the Canyon Ranch Cookbook. My husbands cousins gave it to us for our wedding, and I cook from it several times a month. Two of my favorite recipes from the book are for zucchini bread and Israeli cabbage rolls. I'll post the recipes for each of those when I get home from work and can have my trusty cookbook by my side.

Oh Lucy....You have some 'splainin' to do!

When I'm making roast poultry, I always have to remind myself to brush on the fat after trussing. The reason is fairly logical: tying up a bird is infinitely easier when it's not coated in olive oil or melted butter. Yet, if I'm not mindful of this step, I get ahead of myself, and inevitably wind up with chicken sliding out of my hands and on to my floor.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, sometimes, life can be a little slippery too, especially if I'm not mindful of it. For instance, 6 months of time has just slipped through my grasp. I'm not necessarily beating myself up over it. However, this situation is about as frustrating to me as an oily chicken on the floor - not irreparable, just unpleasant and annoying.

It's not that I don't have anything to show for the past 6 months. I have written pages and pages of original research. I've created numerous presentations, budgets, and grant applications. I've read at least 15 books, and I've lost count of the number of peer-reviewed journal articles I've scoured. Oh, and I've cooked. A lot. And thought about my few gentle readers who might like to hear about it.

But I've not posted a thing. And that will be remedied. Starting in early June, I will have more time to actually do what I love to do - write about food, eating, restaurants, travel, and gastronomy. I'm working on an urban organic garden this year with my husband and some of our friends, and I'm so excited to share our challenges and (hopefully) successes. I will be making pies. Glorious, glorious pies. And grilling yummy meats and veggies from our CSA. And I will be forced to go out to fabulous Chicago restaurants to use up the plethora of Groupons that I've purchased. Dan has put me on a Groupon hiatus until I've used the ones we have. I know....my life is sooooo difficult.

I'm going to try to post at least once a week from June - September. That's my goal. And I'm very excited to have something new to look forward to.