I think my mom might need a moment.
Anyway, I'm sure it would be more enticing and rewarding if I made my own green juice like this superstar, but I do not have:
- the time
- the desire
- the juicer
So instead, every once in a while, when I feel like I need an extra kick of Healthy, I'll buy some. I've found that I quite enjoy Naked's Green Machine - enough that I can ignore the algae as long as I shake it before every sip.Tonight, I stopped into Whole Foods to grab a couple of items I had intended to get at Trader Joe's before remembering I wouldn't be able to get there until Sunday and I didn't have the ingredients for enough complete meals without those things to get to Sunday, so it was all a moot point. Anyway, I had picked up everything I went in for (except cauliflower, which was either hiding or absent, but I didn't see it) and I'm not even sure how I was in a position for this to catch my eye, but I did see Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness and decided to give myself a little punch since my chest is still tight and I keep hacking up a lung if I breathe too many times in a row and I make too much noise at night trying to breathe for poor mister to sleep and it's probably bad form to cough on customers.... enough reasons?
Good, because truth be told, once I got it home, my courage and drive somewhat evaporated. I mean, really - you cannot look at this and tell me it screams, "Ooooh ooh, ME! I'm tasty!"
Not exactly irresistible. Nevertheless, I hate being sick and I like taking care of my body and if "8 delicious juices" delivering "14 powerful nutrients" including iron, vitamins B6, B12, A, and C has to be green....well....I guess it has to be green. I have nothing against green, by the way, but that "juice" is what we call in my world murky.
Fortunately, it is quite delicious. I think it might be slightly less sweet than Naked's Green Machine and I'm okay with that, though I think Naked will still be my favored green smoothie. I almost bought R.W. Knudsen's Mega-Green juice when I was there yesterday, but I just cannot do it. There's something about the way it's marketed that makes it look as though there's no way it will be anything but straight-up nasty. Maybe someday I'll be adventurous enough to find out, but this week was not that Someday.
In other news, Mister and I have an astonishing talent for being at our most OughtToSeeADoctorness during the three months out of the last 5 years that we haven't had health insurance but I still don't regret not devoting an entire paycheck to COBRA coverage between now and when my coverage at work kicks in.
Dinner was chock full of veggie goodness, though (by the way, is everyone else aware of how awful Chock Full O' Nuts coffee is? Well, now you are). With the snow peas I picked up at Whole Foods, I was able to make the Hoisin-Braised Tempeh Tofu with Chinese Vegetables from Vegetarian Times Fast & Easy that I was daydreaming about all day. Everyone at work was female today, so instead of music, we had the Food Network on and watched way too much Rachael Ray, who I have deemed The Anti-Vegan. I swear, I've never seen anyone include that many animal products in their recipes.
Back to dinner.
It was good and the tofu worked so well I can't really imagine tempeh being better, but I'll probably never know since Mister dies if I even say the cursed word out loud. Dinner is always fun when it involves snow peas and hoisin sauce amuses me because it kind of looks like Chinese BBQ sauce.
It was good, but not outstanding. There were two weak points - one the fault of the book and one was my poor choice of accompaniment. I served it over brown rice, expecting the braising sauce to be more potent. It wasn't dreadful, but I can almost taste how much better it would have been with rice noodles instead of rice, so I may try that in the future.
In the book, it doesn't actually tell you when to add the hoisin sauce, so I added it just before the 15 minute simmering time. I figured this was probably right since it was meant to braise the "tempeh" and wouldn't do a very good job of that if I didn't add it before the braising time. I tasted the sauce when I added the snow peas for the last few minutes of cooking and it barely had any flavor since it was diluted with nearly the same amount of water, so I added more. The recipe calls for 1/3 cup, but next time I make this, I will probably go with a half cup from the start and possibly less water, since the bok choy seemed to still have some clinging to its leaves, which added to what I had poured in.
Despite the slightly frightful tightness in my chest, I am still looking forward to the first truly cool day of autumn this Saturday. Since I'm teaching, I can even dress appropriately for the cold, thereby decreasing my chances of catching tuberculosis!
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