At last a decent meal:
Full o’ Beans Chili from Epicurious.com , as recommended by my former co-worker food writer Lesley Porcelli . It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s tasty, it’s healthy. I topped mine with cilantro, scallions, shredded cheese, and a dollop of fat-free sour cream. (I’ll be honest: I double-dolloped.) This is a photo of the whole pot — I took a lovely photo of a fully dressed bowl, then realized I’d left my memory card at work. This is what happens when you haven’t eaten enough during the day.
A few notes on the recipe: I use high-heat canola because you aren’t really supposed to heat olive oil [ Clarification , Jan. 5: As a couple of commenters have pointed out, you can heat olive oil and cook with it. The site I linked to explains it pretty thoroughly] ; and I use frozen corn instead of lima beans, though I probably shouldn’t, since corn is such an overused commodity in our food system, and I actually like lima beans.
A few lessons from today:
- I hate myself when I’m not prepared. It makes my day so much harder. I’m going to have to start planning ahead more.
- The editor wanted me to photo-blog everything I eat. “Everything?” I asked. “Yup!” he said. Oy. I was hungry for much of today, but I didn’t feel like laying out the food, taking a picture, and posting it every time I wanted to eat. Normally I reach into a bag of nuts or grapes or whatever and put them in my mouth while working. I felt the urge to do that a lot, but the photo-blog requirement stopped me. If you take it out of the bag and put it on a plate, you are saying, “This is how much I am going to eat.” You are making a decision. The way I eat, I don’t have to admit how much I eat. I don’t even have to see it. This isn’t news to me. I remember this sort of “Put it on a plate” advice from the three times I was on Weight Watchers.
- Normally when I make a large pot of food like this, I put it in the fridge, thinking my husband and I will eat leftovers a few times. Sometimes we do once or twice, then the rest sits and rots. This time I’m going to divide it, Gladware it, and freeze it. I’ve got a nuke-ro-wave. If I want huevos rancheros for breakfast or chili for lunch, I can just nuke-ify it. Duh. Maybe I should have called this blog “The Food Ninny.”
Also: My husband went out with a friend after work tonight, and I still cooked and ate a real meal.
P.S.: I should eat some blueberries for dessert. It’s so hard to get in the purple fruits and vegetables. But it’s late and I’m too tired to do another food photo shoot!
Update: I didn’t leave my memory card at work after all. So here’s my dressed bowl of chili:
