Back on the wagon with adventures in soy
What’s that they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? I’ve been pretty bad lately. Not watching what I’m eating, sleeping in instead of going to the gym, not drinking enough water, and picking up the soda habit again. One thing I’ll say in my defense is that it is pretty hard to do your laundry next door to Pambiche and not be tempted to pick up torta le banana borracha and cafe con leche to enjoy while your clothes are in the dryer. Anyway…
Made a real grocery shopping trip tonight to make sure I had plenty of healthy, easy to prepare food around the house so I won’t be tempted to order out for dinner. Still not sure about the best way to schedule my gym visits, because I’m getting to work much earlier than I used to, which makes it tough to do morning workouts, and by the time I get home I’m either ready to curl up with my knitting and a movie or I’ve got other stuff to do.
I’ve been consulting with an acupuncturist, and one of her suggestions has been to cut spicy foods, dairy products, and beer out of my diet. Beer is not too difficult because I can drink wine or cocktails instead, but the spicy foods and dairy are pretty tough for me to do. I’m a sucker for Indian and Mexican food, and a salsa junkie to boot. Dairy-wise, I have no problem substituting soy milk for regular milk, but the other soy products start to get interesting.
I’ve developed a liking for Smart Ground, especially their taco/burrito mix, but anything I’ve tried from Quorn tastes really manufactured. Same thing with anything from Veggie. I have yet to find a soy substitute for cottage cheese, and I’m not sure if I’d like it if I did find it. Yogurt is tough, too. Silk cultured soy is an acquired taste, but it’s pretty good. I like it much better than the WholeSoy line. Then there’s the cheese… I picked up some of the Soy-Sation Mozzarella cheese alternative, and I think someone mislabeled something or hosed the recipe because it tastes a lot more like Swiss than Mozzarella.
At this point I’m weighing the potential health benefits of removing this usually healthy stuff from my diet vs. the stress of missing it, the stress of looking for alternatives, and my disinclination to ingest some of these protein alternatives. Stay tuned.
I’m suprised she suggested to cut out spicy foods. I’ve heard that spicy foods tend to speed up the metabolism and reduce the long term appetite cravings….which I would think is a good thing. But with some spicy foods there is also salt and fat, so maybe that’s a factor.
You might look for Amy’s Kitchen frozen foods (amys.com)….I particularly like all of their different lasagnas…they use a lot of tofu in their products(but you sometimes have to work to find them!) With the lasagna I ususally wait until it’s about 10 to 15 minutes from being done, then I add some crushed or sliced garlic and then sprinkle it with a small handful of reduced fat mozzarella. It’s pretty good as far as frozen entrees go!
Removing all the foods you like from your diet just sounds like a way to make yourself miserable. But then I’m the master of the non-diet. I figure I might as well enjoy what I can while I still can.
Pambiche easily has the best desserts in all of Portland.
I talked with my acupuncturist today. She thought it was good that I explored the alternatives, but that moving forward it will probably be best if I just limit the amount of dairy in my diet instead of getting rid of it altogether, because there is no substitute for a lot of the dairy stuff I want.