Easy, Tasty Pasta Salad

 

I'm one of those who doesn't like complicated, multi-pot/bowl recipes. In addition I can eat the same basic meals routinely...

...but I'm not the only one at the table... This past Shabbat a neighbor, who probably has eaten by us more than anyone else, was invited and I felt that the time had come to tweak my usual menu. It seemed that the easiest part of the meal to change would be the carbohydrate. 

After wracking my brain for easy ideas, suddenly... Pasta Salad came to mind. There was a problem. As far I know, it's made with mayonnaise, and I don't buy/use/eat mayonnaise.

It didn't take long to come to a solution... olive oil, though I had no idea how it would taste. Thank Gd it was a great success!

Ingredients

cooked pasta
diced onion
diced tomato or any other salad vegetable-- the more the merrier
dehydrated or fresh parsley, dill, or basil
a bit of olive oil

Directions

mix, cover and refrigerate

Give it a try, and I'd love to hear how yours turned out.

PS of course this is kosher and parve...

Could It Be The Cheese?

In recent months, I noticed a occasional increase in my "upper abdomen," but then it would go down. I kept blaming it on weight gain. A few unwanted kilos have been popping on and off. But this was still pretty strange for me, since that part of my body isn't the usual fat-storing spot.

I began to wonder if it was something I'd been eating. Recently, during those same months, I had made a couple of very small minor significant changes to my general diet, food choices.

• Since I'd begun craving carbohydrates, I added some periodically to my meals or snacks.
• For the first time in a decade I began buying and eating yellow cheese. At the time I lost weight, I was also unemployed and had stopped buying the cheese because of its expense. Recently I had started buyin it again and discovered that I felt much fuller/more satisfied after eating a slice or two.

Since I believe that our diet can affect all sorts of things, I decided to see if the carbohydrates, cheese or the combination were guilty in changing my body. Cow milk allergies are common in my family, and even though I love eating yellow cheese, I know that it's terribly processed and unhealthy. Just read the ingredients, if you don't believe me. So, I started with the cheese and eliminated it from my diet. 

The E-202 is a preservative,  Potassium Sorbate, which does cause stomach problems in some people.

And what do you think? Yes, my stomach went down once I had stopped eating yellow cheese. One thing we have to remember is that yellow cheese is highly processed. I've never heard of anyone making it at home, easily or not, while people do easily make yogurts and white cheeses. 

A decade ago, when I began making changes in my eating to facilitate weight loss, I also began cutting down/eliminating processed foods. In addition, I followed the basic principle of the Blood Type Diet, which for me Type O Blood meant eating more animal protein and less carbohydrates. 

As much as I like yellow cheese, I'm just going to have to try to avoid it. There are worse things...

Purim Gifts- Mishloach Manot

This is the clever a perfect sort of Mishloach Manot I can never come up with. I got it as a gift from a fellow teacher where I work. And not only was it cute, attractive and delicious, it was the perfect lunch last Wednesday when I didn't want to eat in the yeshiva's Dining Room.

• 2 low fat plain yogurts
• a small bag of perfect strawberries 
• a jar of irresistible granola
• packed in a lovely Purim gift bag

Yes, I know that it wasn't yet Purim on Wednesday. That's pretty obvious since I studied and taught then. It was a very long day for sure. But since it wasn't Purim, the Mishloach Manot was more symbolic than anything, and the strawberries wouldn't have lasted another few days...

Usually I do eat lunch in the yeshiva dining room on Wednesdays, but last week I was very upset with the menu. In the tradition of the Jewish Month of Adar, leading to Purim there was a "reversal." The meat meal this month is at night for dinner, not for lunch. And the week before I was very upset to discover that the menu was mostly carbohydrates, except for the salads. And there was no protein. For me that's not a meal. I don't eat carbs, and salads aren't very satisfying.

Since I generally sleep out on Tuesday nights, I can't bring lunch with me on Wednesday. I was overjoyed to have received this gorgeous gift. Yes, I know that granola is very fattening, but the yogurt is a nice protein. I was starving and ate it. For me it was a more balanced and satisfying meal than I would have gotten in the dining room.

Am I Becoming A Dieter?

You can call this a "public diet."

I was really happy and surprised to discover that I had lost over a kilo on Start Fresh. It's not an awful lot, but I hadn't been as strict as I could have been.

That's because I don't want the diet, or any diet, to take over my life to the point where there's a separation between living and losing weight. My goal, which I had almost convinced myself was impossible, so not worth even trying to achieve, was to find a way of being thinner without being in "diet mode." Does that make sense?

A "diet" is a temporary thing, and I need a permanent change, which I can live with and feel is "me" and not some "diet." Have a lost you?

Yesterday, day #8 of the Start Fresh kosher diet allowed me two portions of carbohydrates, the veggie variety--no bread or pasta. I planned them as brown rice and d'la'at, pumpkin. It's harder for me to resist "too much" rice if I make up a big batch and take a portion, so I figured that cooking up the rice with the tofu would be best. But I have no idea how much uncooked rice would swell into my allowance. As little as I cooked, it was probably too much, and it took much longer to cook than I had planned. So of course, I ate later and was more stressed when leaving the house in order to go babysit. Luckily, my neighbor, who had also been waiting for a ride to Ofra, reassured me that she had been waiting a half hour before I arrived. I didn't miss anything.

I didn't feel any "better" after having the rice. I get filled up and satisfied from cooked vegetables. On the other hand, the d'la'at was a great addition.

So, my head has begun to spin:
"Maybe I don't need the carbs. I felt fine week #1 without them."

I know that can get "dangerous," and it's not the mental place I want to be. I want to slowly, gradually and naturally change my eating habits, so weight will come off and stay off. My body has to change. Neither of my parents has my weight problem. I'll deal with that sort of phenomenae in another post.

blogger isn't spellchecking, so please let me know if there are typos, thanks