Purple Porridge

Frozen blueberries have a stunning affect on oatmeal.

I love oatmeal.  I stopped adding sweetener to it when we were living in Korea and it's given me the freedom to be super creative with it.  This batch had a banana, the aforementioned blueberries, a pinch of salt, and cinnamon in it.  After it cooks I stir cold soy milk into to make it creamy and cool it down.

I think it might be my current favorite food.

Toast and Coffee

But first, a note:  I've seen the well thought out rebuttal comments on the Viso post.  There was some serious care and thought there, so I'll address those (valid) concerns in a separate post.  I'm not sure when (I work a 12 hour shift tomorrow), but I won't forget you!

Toast:

This whole wheat bread recipe calls for cumin.  Which, for some reason, makes it excellent with blackberry jam.

Coffee:

My doppio (two shots, no water, milk or sugar) over ice and Ian's soy douple latte.

A very simple, but great way to start the day.  Mostly, I wanted to post this in contrast to the excess that was our breakfast at New Deal Cafe and probe that we are mostly reasonable folks.

A Walk and a Concession

The weather was beautiful today.  See that?  That's the sun washing out that picture of our neighborhood.

When Ian and I awoke to find that it was sunny for the second winter day in a row, we decided to celebrate with a walk.  Our destination was the New Deal Cafe over on Halsey Street.  It's not very far.  It was chilly, but it felt so nice to use our feet for transportation again that we didn't care (we walked almost everywhere in Korea).  Plus, it's a whole heck of a lot colder over there, so (for the sake of our buddies Ben and Amy) we'll keep the temperature complaining to a minimum.

The cafe is a simple place with a simple menu.  We ordered the vegetarian biscuits and gravy.  It comes with eggs, but I ordered fruit instead.

Housemade biscuits, mushroom gravy, breakfast-style russet potatoes and "seasonal" fruit in the background. Apples and oranges, sure, but bananas and kiwi?  In February?  Who are we kidding, there is no "banana season" in the US.

Ian's cage free eggs.  The yolk is a pretty good color, but nothing beats Mom and Bruce's chickens' orange-yolked eggs.  Those are so healthy it's just silly.

Overall, I was really impressed with this place.  I'm into simple foods.  One thing bothered me a lot, however.  In the mushroom gravy, there seemed to be a minuscule amount of soy sausage.  I don't eat processed soy products, especially this month.  They have weird things in them, like "soy protein isolate/concentrate."  I wished it had listed that ingredient on the menu.  It was too much gravy for me anyway, so I scraped it off and avoided the soy-sauge bits.

That brings me to our concession.  Eating out during this challenge needs to be extremely limited in order to reduce the chance of making a mistake and becoming entirely frustrated.  It's all too unpredictable.  It took me 15 minutes to buy soy milk at Trader Joe's today and I could see the ingredients.

So, if and when we're eating out, online menus will be perused before hand and we'll mostly be sticking to soups and salads.  Luckily, natural and handmade food is big here.  But, honestly, Ian and I need to limit our eating out on our weekends.  It's a vice of ours.  If we're firm on this it will be good for our bank account balance and our eating habits.

On a lighter note, my coffee mug had a coffee mug on it at the cafe.

Here we go!

It's February 1st.

It's the beginning of Black History Month (USA).

It's Hula in the Cool-a Day.

It's Clark Gable's birthday.

It's the first day of Spring in Ireland, Imbolic Day.

It's the day to celebrate San Cecilio, the patron of Granada, in Spain.

It's also a Feast Day for many other Catholic saints; but with over 10,000 of them, that actually happens everyday.

The weather is beautiful.

Most importantly (not really), it's the first day of Challenge 1: No Artificial Ingredients.  I'm actually really excited.  I figured I'd start by posting what I'm eating.  I grabbed a banana before the gym, but that's entirely uninteresting.

For an early lunch post gym and pre-errands I stole a recipe from Mipa.

Pumpkin oats.  I have left over pumpkin puree in my freezer (canned, but only one ingredient) and I've been craving good oatmeal.  I've never been  someone who likes fruit, nuts, or really anything but sugar, sugar and more sugar (okay, maybe a little salt) in their hot cereal.  That really started to change while we were in Korea.  Our selection had a lot to do with it, but I also started reading a lot of food blogs.  I got braver.  Significantly so.

This bowl of cold weather sustenance is super easy to accomplish:

1/2 cup dry oats (steel cut or rolled)

3/4 cup water

salt to taste

3-4 tbsp pumpkin puree

~1 tbsp natural brown sugar (or other natural sweetener)

cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, etc. to taste

1/4 cup organic soymilk

2 tbsp raisins

Cook the oats on the stovetop to your desired texture.  I like mine pretty dry. When they're almost there, add pumpkin puree and sugar.  Finish cooking and pour into a bowl.  Top with soymilk, raisins and spices.  Mix until frothy and consume readily.

If you have a microwave, I might recommend you warm the soymilk before adding it.  I don't have one, but I didn't want to cook the milk in, so it cooled down my oats a little too much.