We went out for dinner last night at the local pub, which partly catered our wedding ‘reception’ aka party…and the head bartender, total surprise, bought us the most expensive dessert on the menu, a giant carrot cake slice which is super good…
We trashed our diet. Back on the horse today: we’re doing a kind of low-carb in which carbs stay around 25 and we get all the carbs from ‘watery’ veggies, like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumbers, summer squash. Meat, eggs, dairy ok; but most of our intake is veggies. And its slow but healthy. No starchy veggies. We both agree this is more a lifestyle than a diet, and we like the recipes.
It doesn’t mean we can’t go out and have a piece of cake. 😉
Calories don’t count when it’s a special occasion! 😉
CommentGlad you had a happy anniversary.
Felicitations!
Happy Anniversary, m’dears. Wishing you many, many more to come. HUGS to you both.
Good on you! DH is not thrilled with the cruciferous vegetables unless I bury them under cheese, which isn’t exactly conducive to weight loss. Definitely a meat ‘n’ potatoes diet.
Many felicitations directed your way.
Got a suggestion at least on cabbage: slice it thin, FRY it with salt and pepper in a little oil, and along with it (and a strong flavor like smoked sausage) add one thin-sliced potato. Amazing how it tames the cabbage-ness.
We just made a Costco run, and despite our ironclad agreement to avoid new plants, we picked up a very nice Clematis 3-vine pot and an orange lupine. Lupines are a plant that does extravagantly well here in the pnw, have good foliage, and their foot-high bloom spike is both elegant and alien-looking. They also spread like mad. We know a bed where this would be a good thing.
You can never have too many plants.
Happy Anniversary! ReadyGuy and I are preparing for our 37th anniversary. We hope you have as many as us….
Many happy returns of the day!
Carrot cake sounds like a great way to celebrate! Have a very happy anniversary!
Spice cake, also good. — Hmm, that cabbage recipe sounds easy and tasty. You could also try a little corn and carrots and corned beef, possibly brisket. Though I like cabbage (and boy choi).
Another use for the cabbage: Buy several other veggies (carrots, yellow squash, red bell peppers, etc.) (I would add green onions, you could add a bit of browned garlic) and spring roll / egg roll wrappers. Brown chicken, beef, pork, or broil shrimp or fish, finely dice/chop everything. Make spring rolls / egg rolls. Bake or fry. It’s not a whole lot of prep or stuffing and wrapping, and you know what’s going in rather than the frozen ready-made packages. If/when I make these, I tend to make them without a meat / seafood in the filling, and serve that with the spring rolls. …. Hmm, I may get industrious when I go to the store next. That sounds good!
Not a bad idea. If you make them in bulk, spring rolls also freeze well.
One change I’d like to see made is the inclusion of a bit of text from each reply in the “Recent Comments”. For those of us who are reguar visitors, just the responder and (sometimes long) thread title doesn’t allow us to distinguish new posts from ones we’ve already seen. If possible…
Yes: Chuck is still working on the program, and I absolutely agree with you. The current incarnation is good, but there are tweaks that could make it better. I’d rather see the comments quoted than the thread title.
oh congratulations, and a great celebration 🙂
One of the hazards of a desk job working from home is, you often get a cat lounging on your arm as you’re trying to type or mouse or use a graphics tablet. Or they lie down on said graphics tablet and/or keyboard, with hijinks ensuing. I’m just saying.
Goober is currently snoozing / getting time with the hew-mon this way. Smokey prefers to lie down on the graphics tablet work surface. — Such is the life.
Spring roll ingredients will happen if the grocery store trip happens this afternoon late. Currently still trying to work out getting a cab reliably to my apartment or at least the gate on this side of the street, and to get the office to ring said cabs / deliveries / friends on through. I’m thinking the office entered the wrong phone number or access code for me. And friends have missed / forgotten / spaced out on picking me up a few times the past couple of weeks. This happens whether I call the day before or several days before. So…aarrgh. This also means I have a couple of packages left at the apartment complex office to pick up. Cat food, flea spray, miscellaneous goodies. That was one thing I never had to worry about with a house, unless I missed the door when a signature was needed. I have no idea how often other people have this issue. I suspect seldom, because most people can drive, so getting deliveries is probably rarely a thing?
Re the short string to show comment / reply text — Yes, I prefer that over only showing the person’s username and which thread they replied in.
My calico Penny will try getting between me and the keyboard, and when that doesn’t work, she pointedly meows directly in my ear. Her highness must be acknowledged.
Congratulations on your anniversary, and definitely cake is appropriate for celebrations. DH and I are coming up on our 20th anniversary and I’ll be looking at the dessert menu that night myself. And also felicitations to Ready4more & Readyguy on their upcoming milestone.
ReadyGuy and I are headed for a week in Ventura County, California with readySon. We’re also going to try to get to the last week of Michael Whelen’s exhibit in Riverside at the Art Museum. Everyone stay safe; don’t let the internet explode while we are incommunicado.
The best laid plans…. I did get the veggies I wanted (well, most of them) but alas, the store’s (currently/permanently smaller) Asian foods section did not have spring roll wrappers. Lots of pre-packed meal starters, a fair amount of sauces, a curiously large selection of Pocky! (laughs) but sadly the wrappers were nowhere to be found. Unless they’ve moved them to some obscure other location in the store. Kroger’s has been doing odd things like that since the remodel a couple of years ago. Phooey. — I did not give into temptation and get any Pocky this time. (Aw!) So there may be a second grocery trip next week to hunt for what I didn’t get this time. (A few other items I need to get through to mid-June or so.) Or I may order the wrappers online for delivery, and do the local trip for the others. — But somehow, spring rolls will happen! Hmm, I should put udon noodles on the list too. Good stuff.
@CJ, are y’all OK for rice on the current diet? I don’t have a special recipe, just wondering.
I found the wrappers in the Organic Foods dairy case at my local Kroger.
Mine (it’s a Ralph’s) keeps them in the fridge with the tofu and the surimi and Nova salmon. It’s at one end of the packaged cheese section, near the lunch meats.
I found arecipe for home-made noodles of an udon type at Ken Albala’s Food Rant.
One cup whole wheat bread flour (I got Bob’s Red Mill whole wheat), one cup rice flour (Bob’s Red Mill brown rice flour), work in one egg, add just enough water to make a smooth dough, coat lightly with oil, and knead two minutes. Cut and boil.
It’s actually tasty, though they’re a PITA to cut. I’m thinking a ricer might work for that.
Maybe the way they make spaetzle noodles?
Spaetzle is gooier, closer to drop dumpling dough than it sounds like the noodle recipe would make. The noodle dough would just get stuck in the spaetzle maker (yep, they have a specific piece of kitchen equipment for that; talk about a one trick implement!)
If you don’t have a pasta machine use a pizza cutter. I rarely use mine for pizza but use it for cutting bread dough, pie cust strips etc.
I also have one in the studio for cutting clay slabs, but that is a different kettle of fish!
This recipe makes noodles that are too fragile for pasta machines – and two minutes is hand-kneading time. (I used a knife to cut them. problem is that they’re soft and want to stick together a bit more than I wanted.) It’s for two one-cup servings, so a small batch.
One of the benefits in living in an area with a large Asian population is no lack of Asian cooking ingredients. We have wrappers for all types of eggroll like treats: lumpia, spring rolls, mandoo, dim sum, plus all the accouterments: hoisin, teriyaki, wasabi, katsu, kim chee. Now I’m all hungry again.
I’m lucky enough to live across the road from a huge international grocery store. (Lucky because they put it in 3 years after we bought the house,) and it is amazing. I have a coworker who makes lumpia and I trade her for home made bread. I need to hit her up again for a trade soon, haha.
Supermarket trip this morning, and saw: potsticker wrappers, wonton wrappers, spring-roll wrappers. And at least three kinds of tofu (silken, firm, extra-firm).
Omnomnomnom!! Banana lumpia FTW!
Note to self: Do not read this site when hungry. 😀
Rice is high carb. Only the things I listed.
Aha! I never would’ve thought to look in the organic dairy frozen case. Or around the cheese. Thanks, Joe and PJ, I’ll look there next time I go.
I’m mystified (and irritated) why the Asian section at my local Kroger’s has gotten smaller. I may have to hunt up another store for Asian products.
I ordered spring rolls, somewhat cheap for 2 packs, from Amazon, which claims I’ll get them Monday. Also ordered sushi mats to help roll the spring rolls, possibly.
Why did I not make my life simpler and get Cole slaw with broccoli, which is something I’ve done to help make spring roll filling quicker and cheaper, in the past. Ah, well, I’ll have fun chopping veggies. Vent some aggression. But carefully. Dang eyesight, I get more nervous lately using a butcher knife, but hey, you have to be careful and, ah, sincere and authoritative. Notice “careful” goes first in that. I like keeping all my digits (and any other parts) intact. Heh.
So a large batch of spring rolls is in the offing. (A batch is, spring rolls are…man, you could get mixed up on noun-phrase versus modifier clause easily there.)
My dad liked to make fruit pies with latticed top crusts — Instead of a solid sheet of dough for a top crust, he used thin strips of pie dough woven together in a lattice across the top of the pie. (His mincemeat lattice crust pies were to die for!) We had this big egg beater (like a manual mixer — instead of a motor making the beaters go round, you hand cranked them.) The fly wheel that made the beaters go round had a crimped edge to propel the beater gears. He used to use the edge of that fly wheel to cut out dough strips with a ziggedy edge.
If you had a beater like that, you could make some fancy edged pasta . . .
A friend who made dumplings and hush puppies used a set of teaspoons which were greased, then she clamshelled bits of dough between the two spoon bowls to form them. She used finely minced red bell peppers and a dash of minced jalapeñ peppers mixed in with the cornbread dough for the hush puppies — puppies with a bite!
We had a little pastry wheel with a crimped edge. I have a crimped-edge cutter, for waffle-cutting veggies, that would work for cuts up to about 5 inches long.
I’m sure I commented earlier today to thank folks for suggesting where to find the spring roll wrappers. But the comment got eaten by WordPress (or by a backup of the site?) (or by the spam filter?)
Anyway, thanks, y’all! — I will look in the frozen foods with the organic dairy stuff or the cheese. My local store used to put the wrappers on the dry goods shelf with sauces, kits, etc., as the wrappers come in plastic-wrapped flat packages and can be stored dry on the pantry shelf or in the fridge/freezer. The order’s supposed to get here Monday or Tuesday, so I’ll be able to do the spring rolls before the veggies get too tired. 😉
Dunno why I didn’t get Cole slaw mix with broccoli, which is a cheap, quick assist to the spring roll veggies. (Cabbage, carrots, broccoli) then you can add other veggies (bell pepper, yellow squash, bean sprouts, anything you’d like that’d make sense in spring rolls).
I tend to make them without meat filling and serve the meat with the spring rolls on the side instead. But either way works fine. Quick and tasty way to get a good mix of veggies.
Meanwhile, I ordered on Amazon and got udon noodles and a sushi mat for rolling the spring rolls, before I saw the suggestions.
Heh, hush puppies, I’d probably roll the corn bread dough in balls, but that method works. (A little bit of jalapeño wouldn’t be too much, but other people would use more. I ordinarily wouldn’t, but I’m trying to get used to more “caliente” (hot spicy). Pimiento or red bell pepper, though, good idea.
Hmm, didn’t get the hang of the new electric can opener. Weird place where you put the lip of the can doesn’t want to catch. I may end up donating the new one and getting another. Lucky I got a manual one too. — Still don’t have all my kitchen stuff rescued from deep in the storage space. :-/ But so far, I’ve bought very little new kitchen stuff. Trying to hold off until I get it out of storage. The move went so weird….