Delish.

Now I have a giant bag that cost me over $6 that is maybe 1/4 eaten, sitting on my kitchen counter and stinking up my place. At least I’ll have something to munch on tomorrow when I get home from work and want instant tastebud gratification.

We watched some tv – ok, I have to digress. I haven’t watched cable tv in months (too busy reading 80 books so far this year, or watching dvds of “6 Feet Under” – addicted!!) so I have not seen commercials in that time. M doesn’t have cable at his house, so I gave him the remote to play with and he was happily flipping channels. I couldn’t believe the commercials. They are seriously awful. I did not see one clever or funny one – instead, they were tacky or cheap or treated the viewer like an idiot. And there was no segue between one and the next! Just bam! Bam! Bam! in your face!

Terrible. I won’t be doing that for a while.

So where was I going originally? Hmm … we were watching tv … oh yeah! So I bought a ton of veggies yesterday to make a huge salad – do all the work at once and then have salad for a couple of days. But yesterday I slept for a hundred years so I thought I would do it tonight while I had someone to talk to. Have you ever noticed that everyone has their own special way of cutting peppers? M was so appalled at the way I cut my peppers that he came over to show me the proper, chef-school way of doing it. Only, my knives are so dull that he couldn’t quite break the skin of the pepper. How embarrassing. I have these lovely expensive knives that I spent way too many Euros on a few years ago in Germany and now I have let them get dull and useless.

Tomorrow the giant plan for my day off is to figure out where I can get them all sharpened so that the next time M cooks me dinner, I have tools that work properly. After all, if someone is going to volunteer to make food and hand it to me on a plate, necessitating that all I have to do is lift it into my mouth, I will make sure my knives are sharp.

I’ve been trying to cut down on the amount of meat that I eat, and only buying meat to cook at home from that butcher I blogged about a few weeks ago. But, and I do not know if this is true as I was told by someone else, apparently the same butcher also sells fois gras. If this is true, I will no longer be purchasing from them. I will also be informing the manager/owner of the reason why. I’m going to start investigating other butchers to see if I can find a replacement.

My mum said to me recently that I would probably be much happier living in Great Britain or Europe as they have much stronger laws around animal cruelty, in particular the ways that food animals must be treated. The Wiki article says that Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom have banned fois gras. The link that this information is cited from also says, “The European Union, which has already imposed a ban on other inhumane farming practices such as veal crates and gestation crates, is considering a ban on foie gras as well.”

My mum is right. There may come a day where my conscience pushes me to emigrate due to this issue. It’s a good thing I have citizenship so that I could just pick up and move.

In other news, I do not have gas. Surprising, really …

There is a huge sense of relief that I have found a solution to my problem of liking meat but not wanting to support factory farming. Eventually I want to get to the point of only eating free range meat but I’m taking baby steps to get there.

• piece of cod rolled in a summer herb mixture
• caesar salad
• garlicy rice

Dessert:

• raspberries
• blackberries
• mandarin slices

Equals:

• yum

Mum and I went today, and she as usual was paying. She decided to get a medium and a bun as she’s not really all that keen on the grilled cheese. A few months ago, I would have got the small soup and the entire grilled cheese to myself, and enjoyed every bite. A few weeks ago, I would have got the small soup and entire grilled cheese to myself and then realized that I was full way before I was done, and then felt guilty because Mum had paid for it, and probably forced myself to eat more than I wanted.

Today, I ordered a small soup and a bun. I still had difficulty eating it all but it was just the last bite and I admit that I ate it for flavour because damn, that soup is just so good. I haven’t been eating as much since I got sick with that stomach bug, two or three weeks ago. I’ve noticed because I am trying to consciously listen to my body and only eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full.

But you know what also happened two weeks ago? I hurt my knee. I haven’t been exercising. My need for more calories has decreased as I’ve been forced to be sedentary. And because I have been practising intuitive eating, I have been eating significantly less because my body just doesn’t need any more food. This explanation honestly just occurred to me five minutes ago. Before that, I was thinking that maybe my stomach shrunk when I didn’t eat for a couple days when I was ill and I just haven’t got back to normal yet. Nope. I am at normal. I’m just listening to my body and letting it dictate, rather than letting my brain and it’s “But that’s the amount that we always eat” be my guide.

Duh.

At lunch with my dad yesterday at Earls, I looked at the menu and decided what to have. The thought of a burger and fries sounded delicious on my tastebuds, but when I thought about it for awhile, I realized that the thought of grease was very unappetizing. I got a caesar salad (which I had mentioned in the car I wanted but almost got sidetracked by the thought of fries) and the chicken quesadilla. I almost didn’t get the quesadilla because I thought it would be too small and I’d still be hungry, but then I told myself that if that was the case, I could eat later. That is okay. That is allowed.

It turned out to be the right amount of food. I was satisfied when I finished eating it – full but not stuffed. And I felt good because I hadn’t eaten something I didn’t want. It had nothing to do with calories or fat (after all, cheese, sour cream, and caesar dressing are all on diet no-no lists) but rather about what would make me satisfied.

This is an interesting concept for me – to listen to what I want. For a year I was restricting myself to only foods that were “good” for me (as in, low in points but also usually low in taste, fat, and enjoyment). Then, once I stopped WW, I tried to eat the world. I have been eating a lot of bread and a lot of chips to make up for the year that I didn’t eat them but wanted to oh so badly. Now I am at a stage where I want to stop and think and feel before choosing food. I want to enjoy what I’m eating and enjoy how I feel. I don’t know if I’m so-called ‘normal’ or just lucky that a lot of the time, what I want are veggies in various forms.

Tonight I had stirfry for dinner. I was going to put some meat in it but I had left it in the fridge for too long and it looked dodgy, so I threw it out and made my stirfry vegetarian. It was delicious. I haven’t had a large helping of vegetables like that in a long time. I stopped eating stirfries when I was doing WW because I like to use the quick-cook noodles (you know the kind – you drop ‘em in boiling water for one minute and they’re done) and a 3/4  cup serving was about 3 points. When you only get 22 points a day, 3 points is a lot. So I stopped eating stirfries and stopped eating veggies as often. That is the kind of fucked up reasoning that I was absorbing from WW. Like the noodles were so bad that they could magically counteract the goodness of the veggies and lean meat that were also on my plate? Yeah. Tonight I had a stirfry (with noodles) and I revelled in every bite. It was exactly what I wanted.

And, without meaning to, I completed an ongoing goal for my 101 list: #80 eat four vegetarian dinners per month. I almost had a full vegetarian day but I realized that the two pieces of pepperoni on my pizza kept me from that. Still, it was easier than expected, and I’m looking forward to trying some new veggie recipes in the next couple of years.