More Fresh Bread

I am definitely not a no-carb kind of person. I believe in a complete and balanced diet - carbs INCLUDED! As long as you count it in your daily calories, there is nothing wrong with a little carbs in your life.

If you like crispy Artisan bread, you are going to L-O-V-E this recipe! I tried it because I had an excess of avocados in the house but what came out the oven what a very pleasant surprise! Yum!

What is so perfect about this recipe is that you prepare the dough and store it for up to 5 days! Just rip some off and bake it!

Fresh and Simple Bread

If you haven't read or heard of Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food, I suggest you run to your local library or book store and grab a copy. It changed my life by completely re-vamping the way I eat. One of Pollan's eating suggestions that really changed me was:

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Imagine your great grandmother at your side as you shop. You are at the dairy case and she picks up Go-Gurt Yogurt tube - and has no idea what this could possibly be. Is it food or toothpaste? If she wouldn't think it was edible, don't put it in your cart! Let's consider bread now... your grandmother would tell you that bread is made using a remarkably small number of ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and a pinch of salt will do. But industrial breads have become much more complicated. Here's is a complete list of ingredients in Sara Lee's Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread.

Pizza, pizza!

Mmmm I love pizza night at the Olson/Iwaskow household!

I found this recipe about 3 years ago and have never gone back. It is from the lovely cookbook Eat, Shrink & Be Merry. This is by far, the best whole-wheat dough you will ever encounter and it really is so easy!

Calorie Counting

The Bodybugg

Weight: 155.6 lbs. (same as Monday... not up!! But not down...)

Wondering what else I am doing besides cooking all this yummy stuff and eating it? I am a calorie counter! I believe in calories in - calories out. I try to have a 1000 calorie deficit at the end of everyday, which means I have BURNED 1000 calories more than I have eaten.

This is the website I calorie count with.

This whole process used to be a little bit of a guessing game... how do you know how many calories you have burned? Well, I invested in a little gadget called a

Bodybugg. You wear it around your arm and there is a digital display you can wear (either as a watch or a clip that goes on your clothes, bag, etc.) that tells you minute by minute how many calories, steps and minutes of activity you are logging. The power of the bodybugg is that you can look down and see that you are only at 1900 calories and it's 8 o'clock at night (as I did last night) and you might choose to work out, go for a walk, something to get that calorie burn higher! I chose to play some EA Active last night on my wii. The Bodybugg is 97% accurate at calculating your calorie output. No more guessing for this girl!

A little plug for AE Active... if anyone out there has a wii and it contemplating using it for working out, consider AE Active! I purchased AE when I was trained for the Death Race (probably the most fit I've ever been) and the first time I tried it, it worked me over! It is definitely a great workout! In addition to EA Active, I have a heavy bag in my basement. A 20 minute sesh of boxing + some EA Sports Active on my wii logs about -500 calories. Not too bad for just an hour of work!

Since I read Michael Pollan's book

In Defense of Food I have been crazy about eating local, eating organic and eating clean. He mentioned that food companies are so embedded in our lives that we don't even realize it.

Example: Yesterday I was teaching in a grade 9 classroom. Do you remember the hand clapping game where you stood in a circle and sang:

Stella, ella, olla, clap, clap, clap
Singing es stigga, stigga,
Stigga, stigga, clap, clap.
Es stigga, stigga,
flow, flow, flow, flow, flow, flow
1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Well these grade 9's were singing that only it went something like this:

Stella, ella, olla, snap, crackle, pop
Singing es stigga, stigga
Stigga, stigga, snap, snap.
Es stigga, stigga,
Bologna, Bologna, Cheese and Macaroni
1, 2, 3, 4, 5

I don't know why this bugged me so much! Maybe because such unhealthy foods are being embedded into something as innocent as a children's school yard game? Not only the names of food but the advertising slogan "Snap, Crackle, Pop". Maybe it was just because it was not how I used to sing it.

I am going to my sister's house for dinner tonight which is slightly scary... I can't control what is in the food. But I have compensated by eating lightly all day long.
I don't work tomorrow so I am baking bread! Mmmm... stay tuned!

Here we go...

As I was driving to work today, listening to CBC radio (I know... I'm old...) I heard a couple U of A student talking about blogging while losing weight. What better way to make you more accountable then telling the whole interweb about every victorious pound gone (or every annoying pound up...)

If you think you can only eat chicken breast and broccoli while losing weight... THINK AGAIN! I love, LOVE to cook (and eat...) I strive to make clean (meaning not from a box) & healthy meals daily. Why not tell you all about the yummy things I cook up while loosing the pounds that I gained over Christmas.

Oh, that part I said about gaining weight over Christmas... not entirely true. I did gain weight over Christmas but I kinda stopped working out and generally caring about my weight in August. You see, when you train for the Death Race (24km mountain run!) harder than you have trained for anything and some bitch from Edmonton was placed on your team and took pictures of the race instead of RUNNING the race and you don't make the time cut off so you do not even get to run the flipping race... in your defeated stupor you might be inclined to quit working out completely... yea, that was in August.