Saturday, January 4, 2014

Cooking In A Snow Storm

In my previous blog post I told y'all that I am trying 
Door To Door Organics

a local company
 that delivers all organic products to my door.


(Hence that catchy name.)

I got home Wednesday and there were my two perfect boxes
all insulated with ice packs.

I found everything I'd ordered, clean, cold, wrapped meticulously and perfectly packed.  


Eight Meals
This afternoon I began by browning organic beef and putting it into my slow cooker
with carrots and potatoes to simmer into a hearty beef stew with organic beef broth.
It appears I will have enough for 8 servings, so I'll refrigerate several portions and freeze some in lunch/supper sizes.
I usually end up making vegetable soup with several of these by adding whatever fresh veggies I have on hand which stretches even further.

Two Meals
I preheated my oven, breaded my organic pork chops and washed my yams.
Into the oven it all went.

Eggs went into a pot to hard boil for some lunches.

Steamed some organic broccoli.

Washed and cored my apples and prepped them to go into the oven
 when the chops and yams came out.

I now have two pork chop suppers with yams, broccoli and baked apples.

I sampled the yams while I waited for the apples, and I can truly say I haven't tasted any as sweet and delicious as these since I was a child in the south, and we grew our own.


Eight More Meals
Tomorrow, I'm making a white bean, kale and sausage soup . . . . and will top it with freshly grated Parmesan.  (Organic - don't you know?)
  Great with croutons made from my organic whole grain bread and butter and garlic. 

Apparently,
I,
 who am cooking only for one most of the time,
 and who loves to eat out with friends several times a week,
now have 18 meals on hand.

Not to mention, salads with avocados and the most delicious tomatoes I've eaten in years.
Not to mention the organic pears I'm adding to salads with crumbled bleu cheese and walnuts.
Not to mention the eggs and toast and half and half and breakfast items.
Do you know that there is such a thing as 
organic bacon?
Yes, Virginia 
there
 IS
 fresh, Colorado, grain fed, humanely grown, free range, organic, happy bacon.



Next week's offerings just popped into my email inbox.

I'm ordering salmon and chicken 
and 
I'll let you know how that works out.

P.S.
My juicy, tender, thick, crisp,
pork chop supper is
 AWESOME!

Now, being the sort of borderline skeptic that I am about new things . . .
I'm still waiting to figure out how this is all going to fall apart and somehow disappoint me.

Stay tuned.





Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Confessions Of A Non Organic Type Girl Who's Trying To Repent



Subtitle:

Joy's Most Simple List Of How Life Will Begin Improving In 2014
(Because it wouldn't let me make the title above any longer.)



Okay . . . 
Confession #1

so I've
  never been a
 real successful,  long-term, granola eating, organic type,
 health food kinda girl.

I've had my moments - notoriously profound and always relatively short lived,
 of getting my act together and eating 'right', 
doing lots of home cooking and taking plenty of vitamins.

Truth is, 
I'm totally busy loving my two wonderful antiques shops, styling homes, travelling around to buy antiques, being a voracious reader, teaching a class and loving social media, 
not to mention family, church and friends.
I keep occupied.

There are things I let slide.
Filing, bookkeeping, dusting, cooking.

Junking,
(I mean antiquing), 
is much more interesting than a lot of other things!



Confession #2

I prefer to keep up with the things I like doing, and
find justification for not doing other things.

Besides, healthy cooking and eating just sound soooooo boring and time consuming
 and as if 
potato chips and bacon could be prohibited!!!!!
Can you relate so far?
Can I hear an 'AMEN'?

However,
2014
is slated to be my year to do some things I promised myself I'd accomplish in 2013.
(And 2012 . . .  and 2011 . . .  and . . .  you get the picture . . . )

I'm NOT going to go crazy gangbusters and flash in the pan right off the bat.
(Is that wayyyy to many colloquialisms in one sentence?)

I AM beginning in a moderate way,
to improve.

I'm a simple 
'one step at a time' 
kinda girl.
I have to prove to myself that this will be worth the 
time, money and effort it will involve.
and that bacon will not become a thing of the past - just saying . . . 


Confession #3

I truly
 don't care to hear one peep
 out of those who already have found nirvana in eating everything organic.
Or those of you who cook everything from scratch and bake your own bread 
and make your own butter.

Love you girls . . . but I don't need ANY pressure here.
(Read "encouragement" or "suggestions" or "recipes".)

This blog is by a successful, professional, leadership type,
(stubborn, hard headed, firstborn,
gotta do it my way)
 sort of girl
who has just taken the first simple step and will proceed at her own pace.


Confession #4

That said, 
if you want to read along and hear the pitfalls and progress of what I'm trying,
then
 welcome to my world.

I'm going to share some 
V E R Y
 simple ways to make life better in 2014.
Simple.   
Repeat: Simple.


Confession #5

I hate a hard sell.  
I detest salesman trying to push products. 
 I abhor friends and family members conning me into something they're sold on.  
I hang up on telephone solicitors.
-I'm a nice person - really I am

I was helping my daughter in the kitchen on Christmas day
 and reached into the fridge for milk for my coffee,
 and found 
a GLASS milk bottle. 
 Like from the 1950's.
It read organic. 
 I rolled my eyes.
 She's healthy . . . they eat real food . . . she writes a blog . . . 
okay -she's perfect.

I only have cream in my fridge.  For coffee. 
 I don't tolerate milk.
I mean, my digestive tract doesn't tolerate milk.
I spent too many years being force fed milk as a kid, and was ALWAYS suffering.
Who knew in the 1950's that people couldn't digest cow's milk as well as calves can?
Anyway, I took note while rolling my eyes.
'Door to Door Organics'.
She tells me they really deliver to her door.
"Not just milk mom - all the groceries you need."
"We go to Costco occasionally for some things, but basically, these guys do the bulk of our work for us now."
I ask, "doesn't the milk spoil while the food sits outside your door all day when you're away from home?"
(Can you hear my doubtful tone and sarcasm?)
"Nope - they pack it in ice and you can leave a cooler in a special place and they follow your instructions!"

I think to myself, 
it sure would be nice to not have to go grocery shopping.
End of thought process for that topic.

Later on I thought,
I get into trouble choosing groceries, NOT because I'm stupid or uneducated about what's good for me - but because I am tired and hungry and want immediate gratification and don't want to stand around cooking after Ive been on my feet for 10 hours.

**Please note - this is NOT an advertisement - just the facts of what I'm learning this week - about a bunch of things, including myself.**


Confession #6

Several days later, after a terrible bout of my lifelong diverticulitis and feeling generally miserable, 
I thought to myself,
"you need to get healthy and stop eating all the junk food and processed garbage that you exist on".

Boring!
Time consuming!
Expensive!
The end of the foods I love!
I'm too old to change!
I don't want to!
were my responses to self.
Can you just
 see
 the two little shoulder sitting creatures - angel and devil - sending messages to my brain?

Back to work, 
and my daughter and I are in the shop together
 and she's online during a quiet moment,
 ordering her weekly delivery of Door to Door Organics.
I try to peek over her shoulder in a nonchalant way to see what it looks like, 
but she's done in a flash 
and 
I get nothing.

Hey - I'm not so proud.
I ask what that's all about and she brings their page up and shows me the simplicity of the weekly package,
in which I can swap around
 and substitute items I like for those I wouldn't eat,
and order anything I want from their list of about 1,000 groceries.
(and they have sales - like in your regular grocery store.)

I sit down to check it out. 
 I try a mock order - (you know) - just to see how
 complicated and tasteless and expensive and annoying it will all turn out to be . . . 
and she gives me an "invitation" code that gets me 50% off my first order on the basic box.
What can I say . . . 
I'm progressive and experimental and open minded . . . 
It arrives tomorrow.
I am thankful that my dear daughter is so smart.  I don't know where she gets it from!


Confession #7

Meanwhile,
don't preach at me
to do a clean sweep of my pantry and freezer.  
I will eat my bacon and my chips and my Paul Newman pepperoni pizza and all the other non organic goodies I have in the house. 
 I may even buy more if I feel like it!

In my delivery tomorrow I'm getting:

3 sweet potatoes
3 Roma tomatoes
green kale
1 avocado
garbanzo beans
almonds in dark chocolate and sea salt
ah haaaa!
broccoli
1 large orange
1 anjou pear
2 granny smith apples
2 bananas
2 pork chops
stew beef
half & half
raw sugar
butter
whole wheat bread
asiago and parmesan cheeses
olive oil
sea salt
all organic, mostly local or Colorado,
some Kosher

tada!

It's a small beginning . . . taking a step toward the good life.



There are wonderful recipes and meal suggestions for simple cooks like me.
I have a link to 100 ultra healthy crock pot meals from some health food nut online, so I can be inspired to have supper ready when I get home.
Not just soups and stews and mushy things either. 
I never knew I could bake and brown a whole chicken in the crock pot! 

I'm gonna blog through this and be frightfully honest with you.

So that's my beginning and so far . . . 
it couldn't be easier!







*January is "white sale" month - linens are on sale at the best prices of the year.
Take a quick look at yours and see if this is the time to replace any!

* Stamp prices go up on January 26th - so you may wish to purchase more "Forever" stamps at the old prices before the cost goes up!

* Did you know that laughing out loud burns lots of calories?
























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