April's CR Diary

A diary of a 30 year old woman following CRON, or Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition, for health and life extension.

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Lunch -- Tuesday, June 29 -- toasted walnut recipe

Wow, this is a great way to talk about my CR without having to bore my friends to tears.

Lunch: outside on the cafeteria terrace with co-workers. We have a great office cafeteria where they don't mind if you bring food from home, so the bringers can eat with the buyers. My office eats together most every day. I have a wonderful system figured out. I bring veggies to top my salad, then I buy just lettuce from the cafeteria salad bar, so that I spend less than $1 on the overpriced salad bar but I still get fresh, crisp lettuce. Today I just ate my lettuce (not much, about 10 calories) with some fat free Italian dressing (20 cals), then I ate my cottage cheese package (110 cals) with salt and pepper, and a fruit salad with a slice of honey dew, some purple grapes, and a slice of watermelon. I would guess that the fruit salad was about 150 cals since it was very small and mostly water. I drank water with lunch. I often drink my TAB at lunch, but since I had one this morning, I wasn't craving the Totally Artificial Beverage. Since I didn't eat my marinated veggie mix, I have that for later.

My co-workers are all used to my eating habits and are generally supportive. It helps that I'm mostly working with men right now. Oddly enough, I find men much more accepting of CR than women. Women tend to act like eating less means you're sick. I think they also get mad when they see someone else exercising more self-discipline. My one female co-worker has great eating habits and is beautiful and thin so she is not freaked out at all by my healthy eating. Today, the printer we use to print our literature stopped by and brought a giant box of sugary muffins... Boston Creme and such. My female colleague said to me, "I imagine that to someone on CR, those look like tree bark would look to an average person. Not part of your food universe."

I'm lucky that I'm not tempted by sweets. My mother was into Weight Watchers as I was growing up, so we never had junk in the house. I've never seen her eat cake... she says "It just doesn't speak to me." I have seen her chat with key lime pie, but always in moderation! For her birthday this year, I made her a "cake" of my fresh basil and toasted walnut pesto. It is one of my favorite recipes. If you have a food processor, try it yourself:
a bunch of two of fresh basil, washed
two or three cloves of garlic
the fresh juice of one lemon
extra virgin olive oil
walnuts, toasted (you can do this in the oven but I toast them in the wok)
salt to taste

blend these in the food processor until you like the texture... I like mine creamy. Vary the proportions of the ingredients as you like. I never measure these things. It's amazing served on bread, crackers, pasta... these days, I love it on cut up veggies. If you want to be fancy for a party, toast some thinly sliced French bread rounds, smear on the pesto, and top with a pitted kalamata olive or a grape tomato. Serve on a pretty tray for a fancy looking snack!
You can also use a can of artichoke hearts, packed in water, for a totally different but amazing spread. I discovered this one time when I could not find basil anywhere in Greensboro, NC.

Okay, enough for now. Back to work. Calories so far today:

egg - 100
cottage cheese -- 110
fruit salad -- 150
lettuce with fat free dressing -- 30

total so far: 390

See, CR is easy! I'm saving up for tonight, when I'm meeting a friend for dinner. I will definitely be having a glass of wine, and probably a substantial salad of some kind.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home