Amazing Tomatoes!

Three days of rain coaxed our heirloom tomato blossoms into half a dozen new tomatoes! Such a simple little thing but I'm so happy about the possibility of fresh tomato sandwiches for another month. The actual vine is a beast! Not our prettiest tomato vine ever but when it comes to producing new branches and flowers it is prolific.



Topher was in the garden with me as I took these photos. Here you can see him sitting in one of our empty raised beds (and looking for the neighbor's cat). It's a mess now but all summer it was full of cucumber vines. We plan to replenish the soil before our fall/winter planting. Then we'll probably fill it with lettuce, kale and maybe broccoli.

Starting small: Cereal suggestions for a healthy heart

Start small and be reasonable. That's a good way to build a lifetime of heart health. Change one thing at a time (eating habit or exercise regimen) and do it until it becomes a habit. Then pick your next change. 

Sugary breakfast cereal was the first habit I broke. I was a Honey Bunches of Oats addict; I would happily eat it twice a day. But I did some research into heart health and began to understand the importance of fiber as well as the opportunity to get it everyday with breakfast. My goal was to find a cereal high in soluble fiber and relatively low in sugar. My final selection was Kashi Go Lean Crunch.

Why Kashi and not Cheerios? Because Kashi Crunch has THREE times the amount of soluble fiber as Cheerios. Also when I compared their second and third ingredients I decided Kashi was closer to "real food".

Side by side comparison:
 
The first three ingredients in regular Cheerios: whole grain oats, modified corn starch and sugar. If I were shopping today, not knowing what was implied by the second ingredient and seeing sugar as the third ingredient would have told me all I needed to know. The box would be back on the shelf and nowhere  near my basket. But as a beginner I looked up modified corn starch: 

Modified starch...are prepared by physically, enzymatically, or chemically treating native starch, thereby changing the properties of the starch. Modified starches are used in practically all starch applications, such as in food products as a thickening agent, stabilizer or emulsifier; inpharmaceuticals as a disintegrant; as binder in coated paper.

Whoa! Thickening agent/stabilizer/disintergrant/coated paper binder? Not with my breakfast thank you!
  
The first three ingredients in Kashi Go Lean Crunch: Seven whole grains & seasame (it takes four lines to list them), soy protein concentrate and evaporated cane juice (aka: less processed, less refined sugar). I wondered about 'soy protein concentrate' so I looked it up too. Kashi's website describes it as "protein directly from soybeans". Suspicious of something called "concentrate" I continued to look for information on other websites. I was surprised and happy and to discover most research agreed that soy bean concentrate retains most of the fiber of the original soybean... at least it's from real food.

For more information about fiber, both soluble and insoluble, I recommend the American Heart Association's website. I linked to it earlier in this post but I also suggest looking through it further on your own. www.heart.org/HEARTORG

One more thing! Some grocery stores make picking a heart healthy cereal more complicated then it needs to be because they separate the cereal into TWO aisles in very separate sections of the store. Keep that in mind if you go looking for Kashi. It tends to be kept in the health food section.









A Heart Healthy Lifestyle: How it happened to us

To the best of my memory, we arrived at our current heart healthy lifestyle in three steps: two major life events combined with a bit of self-education.


In March of 2009 I was getting by on a diet of cold cereal, Lean Cuisines and Kashi bars. This had been my go-to meal plan for a little over ten years. Even two years with a chef as boyfriend had been unable to break my addiction to highly processed and rarely real food. March of 2009 is when I met Oliver; six weeks later he moved in (and by May 2011 we were husband and wife). His passion for cooking and his horror of Lean Cuisines quickly began to chisel at my frozen food devotion. Within six months my taste buds had changed enough that I could no longer eat a Lean Cuisine without cringing at each bite's intense amount of salt.


We spent Christmas that year in New Orleans with Oliver's family. When New Year's rolled around we could feel the added pounds from too many parties and too many po' boys. It was time to take our work outs more seriously. I suggested we give the gym a try; Oliver resisted saying that we were fine working out at home and in the park. By February he relented and we signed up for a two week trial membership at our local 24 Hour Snap Fitness.


It was that week that we received an unexpected and devastating phone call. Oliver's Dad, with whom we'd just spent a week in New Orleans, had died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was only 57. It was his first heart attack. Just weeks earlier he'd been to the doctor for a stress test and seemed okay. How could this have happened?


When we returned to Atlanta after the funeral our food goals became more defined. It was no longer enough to set our standard at "real food" we needed to learn about "heart health". Defining "heart healthy food" lead to a maze of vague nutrition claims and mixed results from studies. In the end I decided to my trust in Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Jamie Oliver. Their books were the beginning of our self-education. We're still reading and learning about foods, their sources, their benefits and their detriments.


Today, our family standards for heart healthy eating are as follows: high fiber foods (most often in the form of black/ pinto beans and dark leafy greens), whole grains, never fast food, avoidance of CAFO meats, no highly processed foods (no Goldfish, no Lean Cuisines) and avoiding anything that has sugar (or corn syrup) in the first three ingredients. Weekday breakfast has been the biggest challenge; after two years of searching we have found only ONE breakfast cereal that does not have sugar in the first three ingredients. It's name will give an idea of how tasty it is; it's called "Twigs". Our biggest weakness remains bacon. We love bacon.


The trial gym membership turned into a full membership. We go three times a week, most often together, and stay for 30 to 45 minutes. We work out hard and focus on getting our heart rates up. On days that I don't want to be there I find myself repeating "use it or lose it". I'm proud that my devotion to the gym is not fueled by vanity; it's fueled by a real desire to be active and clever well into my 90s.


As our lifestyle has become more committed and refined I've found it hard to press the importance of heart health on those around me. When I do talk about these things in person I come across as preachy.  I hope that knowing the history of why we live the way we do will help others consider living the same way. It worries me that so many people live their lives as if a heart attack (or diabetes) can't happen to them. It is my hope that this blog will serve as inspiration for the little ways that we all can make our lives a little healthier.

Oliver's Grilled Jerk Chicken

This healthy and delicious meal is also easy on the pocketbook. We tallied it up at $1.33 per serving. That price includes the okra/eggplant/tomato medley and a side of rice! We ate variations of it for three meals last week.

We started with eight leg quarters from YDFM and a jar of jerk paste.  Mix the jerk paste with a small amount of olive oil and put to the side. Then take each leg quarter, pull back the skin (pull it back, not off) and use your preferred knife to cut off any obvious fatty spots. Between the meat and the skin generously coat the chicken with the jerk paste. Pull the skin back into place and let marinate in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Grill and enjoy!










What he did with the fresh picked eggplant

Another quick post tonight: For yesterday's dinner Oliver used our fresh picked eggplant in a side dish he first cooked for me just a few months into our relationship. Since then it's become a cozy, healthy and delicious, "down home" southern side that we eat every few months. On it's most basic level it's a medley of diced eggplant, chopped okra, grape tomatoes and onions - but once you put it all together in a lovely old fashioned cast iron skillet it seems to become so much more then what it is.





















Two more things I should mention about dinner:
1. It was paired with grilled jerk chicken. I'll post more about that this weekend.
2. Until I met Oliver I'd NEVER had an okra that was not fried. I vividly remember my elementary school serving them fried. They filled one of those little melamine squares on my tray. Even fried I DID NOT WANT them. I'm happy to say Oliver's method of browning and smothering has happily changed my mind.

Recipe available on request.

Art Night, Harvest Night

Quick post tonight so I can get on to drawing and painting for my soon-to-exist Etsy shop. Wanted to share today's "harvest": two eggplants and a handful of grape tomatoes. It makes me happy to say that even though it's the last day of August there seems to be no stopping our summer vegetable garden. In addition to the peppers and egglants there are also four large green heirloom tomatoes alongside a few hopeful, tiny budding tomatoes.

It's almost 8 - time to get to painting.


Tuesday night grocery shopping - YDFM

The majority of our food shopping is done at YDFM (Your DeKalb Farmer's Market). The expansiveness and variety of YDFM borders on indescribable. But amazingness aside, I do have two minor complaints: 1.They rarely stock leafy greens grown closer to home then California. 2.The chickens could be more genuinely free range. Fortunately those are both problems I can solve on my own. The first by growing my own greens (which we do) and the second by finding a local free range chicken vendor (something on our to-do list).

 I'll expand more on YDFM's greatness in the future. For this evening, I'd like to leave you with -

 THE RULES OF YDFM
The first rule of YDFM is - don't talk about YDFM!














No, no, no. That's not right. The first rule of YDFM is:
1. NO PHOTOGRAPHY!!!
2. The second rule of YDFM is, BRING A SWEATER!!! Even in the summer I need a hoodie. In the winter I need a winter's coat, hat and gloves. It's freezing in there.
3. The final rule of YDFM is, BE VERY WARY OF WHEN YOU GO. Tonight, a Tuesday after 7:30pm, it was great. A Saturday afternoon or Sunday after church - forget it. It's bananas. If you go when it's at maximum capacity your best bet is to bring a buddy, leave the cart in a stationary location, and tag team the shopping list.

Monday night BLT

The much anticipated BLT! Actually, Oliver made one a BLT and the other a "PPLT" (pulled pork, lettuce and tomato). Made from some of the pulled pork we'd frozen and saved from our wedding reception's pig roast in May.

























In the background you can see a pint of Oliver's Rye Saison homebrew (in a Redbrick Brewery glass) and, of course, Mr. Topher begging at the screen door.

Oh that Topher! (Seen here on Sunday running off to enjoy a grape tomato from our garden. He prefers to eat them on the carpet in the living room).




To Market, To Market

For us Sunday morning means a walk to our neighborhood Farmer's Market. I've been so impressed with how very-local many of the farms are. (There is one down Moreland, south of the drive-in, and another near West End.) Today my favorite vendor, Mountain Earth Farms, had unbelievable heirloom tomatoes. Huge and beautifully grotesque! We bought a giant tomato and two small ciabatta rolls and plan to make BLTs for dinner tomorrow. Until then, it's canning time! Oliver is currently in the kitchen canning some hot pickled okra. Bloody Mary anyone?!









New blog, new shop & new adventures!

Welcome to our venture at using a blog to share our enthusiasm about eating local foods, growing our own fruits and veggies, cooking, canning, brewing and being heart healthy. We're a little family in a little house with a little garden in a historic section of Atlanta. Our family is: Cullen (me), Oliver (my husband) and Topher (our not so little Maine Coon Cat). I include Topher in our passion for eating real foods because our cat is nuts about produce. Leave a bowl of tomatoes on the counter (or a sliced watermelon or pile of spinach) and you will return to find him happily snacking away. 

Our garden isn't always the prettiest but it does produce a satisfying amount of great food. Currently growing: an unwieldy six foot tall heirloom tomato plant, an eggplant (plant), an overgrown grape tomato plant, an Italian cherry pepper plant, and a green pepper plant. Last week I ripped out the cucumbers and there is still a straggly kale plant or two hanging on from our spring planting.

Looking east into our garden:

Looking west into our garden:

Our plants as of late August:


With time I'll update the design and background. But for now I didn't think they were the most important thing. Thanks for visiting and wish us luck!