Plain and Simple

This week was kind of a whirlwind. With more people learning about my diagnosis, I have had a lot more people asking me how much weight I’ve lost. I haven’t really kept track of my weight for a few years now. I did when I was younger, especially in my early twenties. I usually stay between a 10 lb margin when getting weighed at the doctor’s office. The number of times I have gotten that question over the past week threw me. I kept thinking to myself, “Is that all people think about when I say I’m gluten free?” I come from a sturdily built family gene pool. I inherited my curves naturally. Weight had been an issue that used to hold me down, but I made the conscientious decision to not keep a scale in my house. I chose to let my body be, and accept that I’m a curvy girl. I do still have my days where I don’t like how I look, but who doesn’t? I have noticed over the past week that the roundness of my stomach has gone down quite a bit. That leads me to believe that I may have been bloated for while and just got used to how I looked. For the first time in a while, when I looked in the mirror, I noticed a difference in my body and I wasn’t mad at it.

Now to discuss my meals, or rather meal. As I said in my last post, Whole Foods was a little more cost-wise than what I was expecting. I decided to go to Aldi’s because I know prices are more forgiving and I can get a big chunk of meat that would last me till my next paycheck. I decided to make a pot roast in the crockpot. Always a good way to go if you work long days and need to stretch your meals. If y’all want an itemized grocery list with prices in the future, let me know. For the roast, I got a 3.5 lb pork butt (pork is delicious and less expensive), a bag of mixed miniature potatoes, and baby carrots. Little fact about me: I used to HATE raw carrots. They would have to be drenched in Ranch dressing for me to even look at them. So, I made myself get 2 bags of baby carrots. 1 for the roast and 1 for snacking with a dip. I decided to try the Red Pepper Feta dip. I made sure to read through the ingredients, and it was a safe and delicious option. One thing that Aldi’s doesn’t carry is Worcestershire sauce, and I was not driving to another store to buy some. I know, I know, not having Worcestershire sauce stocked for Red Bean Mondays is unacceptable. Instead, I switched it with the gluten free Tamari soy sauce I got from Whole foods last week.

I never do anything too fancy with my roast. I don’t even sear it before putting it in the crockpot. I tried it once, but didn’t really notice a difference in taste. I pat it dry, season both side with salt, pepper, and onion powder. Set it in the crockpot and heat up some tomato paste with low sodium beef broth (you can always add more salt later). Make sure to cook the tomato paste a bit before adding the broth. It caramelizes and deepens the flavor. Pour the liquid onto the roast, then add rosemary, thyme, and minced garlic. Then add your veggies, put the top on, set the crockpot to low, and head to work! It is so simple and delicious. For lunch, I kept it simple with chopped romaine, Classic French salad dressing (I was so happy that my favorite dressing was safe!), cubed avocado, and sunflower seeds. You read that right. I did NOT make a dressing this week. Mostly, because I was being lazy and didn’t want to add more to the grocery list. The roast turned out so perfect that I didn’t even make rice to go with it. When I got home, I shredded the pork with forks and mixed the veggies and let it cook for about an hour more. So, about 10 hours in total cooking time.

For dessert, I decided to try my first gluten free cookie recipe. I went for lace cookies. I’ve always liked their taste and they look so fancy. I found a recipe online that was easy enough to follow. All it called for was ½ lb of butter, almond flour, brown sugar, light corn syrup, salt, and vanilla extract. As my hopes got high, reality got a little lower. The cookies did not turn out exactly how I thought they would. After mixing the dough, it turned into a kind of paste. The recipe said to let it sit for 5-10 mins to thicken up. As I have said earlier, I follow recipes to the T until I’m comfortable enough to make tweaks of my own. The oven is set to 350 degrees F. Line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper (always stocked in my kitchen) and drop small teaspoonfuls, 3 inches apart, onto the baking sheets. Bake them in the oven for 6-8 minutes. I ended up with about 4 pans worth of cookies. The first batch, I baked with 2 sheets in the oven. They turned out a little dark and crispy around the edges. Fact is, I burned the edges. When they came out of the oven, I remembered something that my mom and I used to talk about. We watched our fair share of cooking shows, and we hated that the ones we watched didn’t show any mistakes or imperfections. They inevitably happen in kitchens, and it’s ok when they do. We learn from them. I set them to cool, and put the next pan in the oven. Only one pan at a time this go around. I also turned the pan half way through the cooking time. This definitely helped with more even baking with the cookies. The last 2 batches came out prettier, but still didn’t look how I remembered. I looked at the recipe again to see if I missed something. I saw there was a video, and watched it. In the video, it looked like the baker used 2 sticks of butter (1 lb) instead of the 1 stick that the recipe called for. The flavor of the cookies are delicious and I will still be eating all of them, though I will be breaking off the burnt parts.

I tried them again since the recipe is so simple. The second time around came out so much better. I ended up also lowering the temperature of the oven, baked for less time, baked with only 1 pan in the oven, and rotating the pan halfway through baking for a more even bake.