Off White Living

Hey hey bloggies,

I recently heard about a local (Nor Cal) farm that was devastated by a recent fire and really in need of support….so I decided to donate a coaching package to their online fundraising auction.

Thanks to the farm’s friend and community liaison, Bonnie, I’m now part of an online auction where folks like you can bid on really cool stuff and experiences to help this sustainable farm get back on its feet.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to help out and I feel that it is the beginning of what I hope is more collaborations between the food side of nutrition and the education side (me!).  Besides me, there are other fabulous items to choose from, some of which you can even experience if you live outside of the Interstate-80 corridor in Nor Cal.

Check out the link below and pass it along to anybody you think might want to know:

Soul Farm Auction

When I first attended UC Davis oh, about 15 years ago (YIKES!), I was NOT an off white eater at all.  My diet consisted of Captain Crunch w/non-fat milk in the morning, bagels/yogurt/carrots for breakfast and a sort of sensible dinner (salad and meat usually), WITH dessert if at all possible.  A snack would be taking my loose change and buying all the $.05 Laffy Taffy and York Peppermint Patties that my quarters and nickels would allow.  Sugar and white carbs are cheap and plentiful on college campuses, even a health conscious campus like Davis.  I was in sugar heaven!

Ironically, I was about 10 pounds lighter, but that is a story for another day 🙂

Now I’m back in the same environment with a different mentality.  Because I am A) Poor and B) more conscious about my diet, it means I’m schlepping my meals to campus every day instead of relying on the homemade and not-so-homemade offerings here on campus.  Though I will say, that several times I’ve scored a bran muffin for $.40 that had sugar listed as the 4th ingredient AND that was not the size of my head…so there are pseudo off-white bargins to  be found.

What’s hard is that keeping up with my energy needs is a lot more work now that I carry my life on my back and ride a bike around all day.  Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I’m hungry A LOT.  Hungry and Picky is not always a good combo.  Here’s what I’ve learned about myself so far:

1. Because I workout in the AM, and then ride my bike for 15 minutes to/from gym to class I am downright ravenous @ 8am.  So my 8-9am class is also breakfast.  Hardly mindful, but it’s a reality.  I MUST have protein and fat or else I’m starving again at 9am.  What seems to work is a hard boiled egg + oatmeal or homemade energy bar.

2.  If I don’t plan for lunch @ noon I’m pretty much wanting to eat my arm off.  So it’s either add one more container to the backpack or plan to go home for lunch.  Honestly, I’ve had to scarf down my lunch several times because I just don’t have time to be leisurely.  Hopefully I’ll figure out a better system.  Seems like a big fat salad and some lean meat works well, and if I just do ‘grain’ based meals (like tabouleh, salad and hummus/veg), I’m again starving by 3pm.

3.  I’ve never had a problem forgetting to eat, but I can’t tell you how fast the hours go by between meals and I’ll realize ‘oh, it’s 7pm and I need to eat dinner”.  What????!!!  That has NEVER happened to me before.  I simply have too many other things to think about or places to be (like yoga, for instance @ 5:30-7pm).  To avoid the binge effect of being super hungry I have to plan ahead and have something ready.  Again hard boiled eggs or veg/hummus have served as my appetizer on several occasions.  In some ways its a lot more work for us becasue we don’t just keep crackers, bread or microwave food around.  It’s a good problem to have, but I forsee LOTS of batch cooking in my future to ensure proper fueling.

4. Waste not, want not.  I used to have a real bad habit of letting food go bad.  Not so much now.  Food costs money.  Food in the house also means less time spent trying to find food.  We eat EVERYTHING we buy.  Peach slightly bruised…no problem, just cut off the bruised part and stick the rest in that smoothie.  I have a whole new appreciation for my wonderful food!  Its amazing what I can conjuor up, such as: oatmeal with coconut flakes, flaxmeal, cinnamon, and applesauce…..or a mid-day egg scramble with left over cooked collards/onions, red onions and zucchini that was going to turn if I didn’t use it that day. 

5. I have a strategy for getting healthy food for cheap: I’m now a “super worker” at the local Food Co-op.  For 4 hrs/week I’ll be bagging groceries and being the food demo girl in exchange for an approx 21% discount on all groceries…plus it gets me ‘in’ for teaching cooking classes @ the co-op teaching kitchen in the winter.  Thank god for this little oasis because it allows me to NOT have to be so cerebral all the time.    School is great but it’s 100% “hard” science.  Staying connected to the whole food movmement is HUGE for me, and the Co-op is the pinnacle of connected in Davis.  They support the Saturday Market, feed the homeless, do fund raisers for the Slow Food movement, and do health education!  I was practically jumping out of my chair at orientation.  Yes, Yes, YES, was all I could think as I learned more about this organization (which by the way started in the 1970’s as a cheese cooperative out of somebody’s garage.  Now its an $18 million/yr food co-op and one of the fastest grown co-ops in the country). 

6. I take advantage of the free hot chocolate at the Friday’ Grad Student lounge free food event.  Apparently its widely known that Grad Students are strung out by Friday and maybe broke and hungry….so they feed us.  While it’s mostly crap food, they do at least offer whole grain bagels w/PB and cream cheese, and a wide variety of beverages….including good ol’ Swiss Miss hot chocolate.  I love my Friday Swiss Miss……  with only 12g/sugar per serving I’m okay with it and it doesn’t seem  to send me into sugar craze……..in fact I’ve not been craving sugar nearly as much as I just want food…nourishing, healthy, sustaining food….my brain is on overdrive and it knows that too much sweet stuff is just going to short circuit the system.

Well, better run to class…and then it’s my weekly reward: eating out for 1 lunch per week.  Today’s its Raja’s indian cuisine with a friend…..not only do they serve the BEST Paneer ever, but they buy all their produce fresh daily from local growers, and the owner is the sweetest man in the world . I’m greeted with a warm half-hug (cultural thing, I think) and a “hello, dear, it is so nice to see you…..yes you are so very nice….glad you are here…….”.  What a great way to end a whirlwind week!

Just felt like giving a video tour of my kitchen!

Anybody else want to share theirs?

Check out THIS ARTICLE to learn more about trends in Gluten-Free products, especially baking products.

At first it gets me excited to think about more gluten-free products on the market.  Gluten-free certainly falls within the Off-White umbrella, assuming the products  are also white sugar free and use some unrefined sweeteners in moderation.

But then I thought again.  Much like the way that Wal-Mart is into Organics, could the mainstream gluten-free trend take away from the “spirit” of gluten-free and “whole food” eating?  I think yes.  The article mentioned the possibility of pop and bake cinnamon rolls from Pilsbury.   On one hand, it’s a victory for those who can’t have gluten and currenty can’t enjoy the simple pleasure of baking cinnamon rolls for their loved ones right out of the can.

BUT, and this is a BIG BUT….. do we really need more ways for any of us to access refined carbs at the pop of a can?  I think not.  Not to mention the concern I have as to the quality of ingredients a big label like Pilsbury would use.  Are they going to sweeten their bake mixes with Beet sugar, like The Cravings Place does?  (Try the brownies by Craving’s Place: only 12g of sugar, no dairy, gluten- free and FAB).

Gluten-free by no means always means nutritiously superior.  For those of use who eat mostly gluten-free for health reasons, we are not going to serve ourselves by buying gluten-free cookie mix and gobbling up high-sugar gluten-free cookies the same way we did ‘regular’ cookies.

Instead I think the movement, gluten-free or otherwise, ought to be in giving people tools to cook wholesome treats – treats that SATISFY, that have QUALITY as part of the brand promise, and that remind us of putting treat foods in balance.

I have to really be careful not to be duped by the promise of health I project onto “organic”, “gluten-free” or ‘unrefined’. Excess is excess and I can O.D. on agave-sweetened spelt muffins as much as Costco super ginormous muffins if I’m not being mindful adn really looking at WHAT I put into my body and (more importantly for me): WHY AM I EATING??!!

So, my opinion is that more GF products could be a victory for those with Celiacs or other gluten-intolerances but also could be a gateway into more refined carb eating that was once exclusionary (thank goodness?!!) to those w/Gluten sensitivity.  Let’s all just do our personal work to be mindful and grateful when we eat and maybe it won’t be an issue……

This morning I woke up half dreaming and half fantasizing about a wonderful comfort food.  My vision was of a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich on toasted french bread (isn’t that something like a “fluff and utter” on the East coast.  To add to the fantasy element, I was sitting on  a porch swing overlooking the ocean just enjoying my larger than life sandwich and watching the waves.

These larger than life fantisies are usually a sign of some kind of unrest within me.  I think it all boils down to this:

WOW.

WOW, or “Week of Welcome” at UC Davis denotes the beginning of the graduate degree process.  There’s no turning back now, it’s official – this train is leaving the station and I’m buclked in.

Not that I feel trapped.  More like excited and nervous.  Where is this adveture taking me?  Can I manage my nutrition while juggling classes, teach assistantships adn studying?  Hahaha, only a sugar addict would list managing her nutrition as a real life concern during times of change.  I see what happens with many grad students: slumped shoulders, pot bellies, and a dusty gym pass that hasn’t been used since their first week.  I think this process simply makes me feel exposed and vulnerable.  This is all so new to me.  Historically sugar has been my personal companion in times of need, and now that I’m living a new way, the feelings become more exposed.  More real.  And they sometimes want to make me retreat back into a place where larger than life comfort food accompanies me for leisurely afternoons. ……..

Hey off-white bloggies,
Now that I’ve  got access to the UC Davis research database I can delve into all kinds of topics that I’ve been just waiting to explore.

One of these topics is coconut: namely its health benefits.  Most of us on the holistic side of the fence buy into the thousands of years of evidence that it has benefit, but what does modern research say?

Well, turns out that in a study in Africa men with cardiovascular disease had a better response with coconut consumption with regard to cholesterol profile (Coconut raised HDL and lowered LDL) and blood pressure, as well as triglycerides than those who consumed soybean oil.

Hmm…….

I’ll keep digging for more.  Thank goodness for the science geek crusaders who do these studies so we can speak the same langauge as the ‘evidence based’ community when it comes to advocating for the use of certain healthy foods.

BTW: with reference to coconut, I’m talking about the ‘real’ stuff: unrefined coconut butter/oil versus the stuff used to make girl scout cookies, etc.

Toodles……. 🙂