Magic Elixir foot soak

Hot, hot water
Epsom salt
Tea tree oil
Hydrogen Peroxide

Zucchini Fries! (Gluten free! Paleo! Vegan! Also possible nut free!) (no calorie count)

I got bored today and made zucchini fries, and they came out pretty satisfying! The recipe below includes the tweaks I think should be made to what I did today. As I make them more I'll tweak this accordingly.

1 large zucchini
Salt
Pepper
Chipotle pepper or smoked Paprika
Garlic salt or powder
Almond meal (you can skip or use a different kind of meal to make it allergy friendly)
Nutritional yeast (optional, though I really think it brings the whole recipe together)

Pre-heat oven to 400. Cut zucchini into fry-size. I cut mine into three sections, then sliced those three sections in half long-ways. Then I sliced each of those halves into eighths. That makes them about Burger Kind size. You can cut them even smaller if you want.

Toss the zucchini in a bowl with regular salt and let sit for a couple minutes. Once you see moisture begin to leak out, pat with paper towels until they're as dry as possible. That took like, four paper towels for me.

Then toss again with regular salt or garlic salt, pepper, and just a couple shakes of Chipotle pepper. Add a liberal amount of nutritional yeast, and then add as much almond meal as you can get to stick to the fries (I did not add that much to the batch shown here. I added about a tablespoon or two of meal).

Grease a baking sheet, and line the zucchini up so they're not touching each other. Bake for about 25 minutes, flipping halfway through. If you want them more cooked, bake an extra five minutes at a time. Eat while hot.

Back on 'dat diet

You know how you'll hear someone say they love this food, or that food, or that they just love food in general? Well, I'm not one of those people. I don't love food.
I love food. It's a special kind of love. Food is my life. It's my joy. Cooking is my favorite hobby. Eating is my favorite activity.
I.
Love.
Food.

So for me, dieting is the fucking worst. All the best foods, and combinations of foods, are not at all diet friendly. Life gets a little duller when you can't eat all those wonderful things that exist in the world. That's probably the worst part: the dullness of life that comes with dieting.  But that's only where the bad parts start.

After the dullness comes The Coping Mechanism. Food is my #1 feel better activity when shit hits the fan.
And then there's the fact that I am hungry all the time.
And I'm pretty sure I have a slower than normal metabolism.
And after that, I'm also pretty sure there are a couple foods that do weird things to my body. I don't know if it's an allergy, or a sensitivity or what. But regardless, I notice a distinct difference in physical health and weight loss when I don't eat certain foods.

So when you're facing all of that, how the fuck do you diet? Specifically, how do you cut down to a "diet" caloric intake (for me, 1200 calories), not stress eat, not eat the foods that are bad for you, not be hungry all the time, not be stressed out from having to watch every little single thing you eat, and not be ridiculously depressed and despondent that you've had to cut out some of the best things in life? (Cheese?? Beer?!?)
Shit, I kinda get depressed just thinking about it.

So here's the long and short of it: Dieting will never be fun, it will never be easy, but it can be bearable. And once you've started making those baby steps you will actually start feeling good and proud of yourself (even if you're a pessimist!).

The best way I've found to cope with dieting is coming up with my own recipes. That way I've been able to keep my hobby without completely ruining my diet. I've written down all the recipes I put together to account for ingredients and calories, but now I figure, what good's having them without sharing them? So I've decided to put together a compendium of all my recipes. They will be tagged and organized by ingredients, type of meal, and calorie count. Once those are all logged I'll start to put together posts on meal plans. In between all of that I'll provide whatever tips and tricks I've figured out for getting through a diet without being completely miserable.

Yikes.

Salads. All of the salads.

My family has recently started an Easter tradition that I just love. Easter lunch/dinner used to be a big meal that we did that required almost as much cooking as Thanksgiving, but let's face it, Easter weather is way too beautiful to spend the whole day in the kitchen. Even if you love being in the kitchen. So lately we've been doing a salad sandwich bar, plus one or two must-have side dishes. The salads are best served on large fluffy croissants or hawaiian rolls, and our favorite side dishes are deviled eggs and mac n cheese. Here's a list of the regulars. Most of these are done to taste, so I'll add and update the recipes as they get perfected.

Curry Chicken Salad
All chopped:
2-3 chicken breasts
Celery
Grapes
Nuts, preferably almond or cashew
Mayonaise
Splash of soy sauce
Salt and Pepper
Yellow curry powder

Ham Salad
2+ cups of chopped ham, run through a food processor (be careful not to turn it to mush)
Mayonaise
Pickle Relish (be generous)

Tuna Salad
2 cans chunk white tuna
Cucumber, chopped small
<1/2 an onion, chopped small
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
Mayonaise
Salt and Pepper

For the side dishes: Pasta salad, potato salad, mac n cheese, and/or deviled eggs.

Hashbrown breakfast cups

3 hash brown patties (rectangle)
6 eggs
shredded cheese
salt and pepper

Cut hash browns in half and line in a cupcake tin. Bake at 450F for seven minutes. Flip the hash browns and press into the bottom of the cups. Bake for another 7 minutes. Pull out and sprinkle each with a little bit of shredded cheese. Break an egg into each cup and salt and pepper. Bake at 350 until the eggs stop jiggling.

145 calories each.

Creamy Chicken Salsa Soup (Holy Mary this tastes amazing)

A couple years ago a friend of mine made something like this soup for me. I loved it, and a year or so after that I made something like that soup for my family. My family loved it, but stupid me didn't write down what I did. So basically this soup is like Yellow Ledbetter; it changes every time. Last year I tried making this soup again and it was a complete disaster. This year I think it came out really, really well and I *think* it's as close as I'm going to get to what I made my for my family. Either way, it's pretty tasty and pretty easy so I'm keeping it.

1 crockpot, any size

2 large chicken breasts

1 can of salsa

1 can of beans, any kind

1 can of diced tomatoes and chillies (Rotel is good)

1 small onion, diced

Chicken broth (I used the box kind)

1 package (8 oz) of cream cheese

Sour cream

At least 1 clove of garlic, minced

Garlic salt

White pepper

Smoked paprika

Optional: Literally any vegetable you want to add. The one I made for my family had bell pepper, onion, carrots, and yellow and green squash, and it was amazing. Tonight's batch has squash and corn.

Also optional: Rice. Or quinoa, if you swing that way.

Throw the chicken, salsa, beans, tomatoes, and onion into the crockpot. If you're adding other veggies, add them now. Sprinkle GENEROUSLY with garlic salt, white pepper, and paprika. Pour in just enough chicken broth to cover, and set on low for 8 hours.

Once the 8 hours are up, pull out the chicken breasts and shred. Then add the chicken, garlic, and cream cheese to the pot. Cook and stir until the cream cheese has blended into the soup (don't overcook! It will curdle! No queso fresco!).

I then like to cook a bag of that instant rice and throw it in. Deeeeeeeelicious!