Staying on track despite the hurdles

Today was a strange, strange day full of hurdles and reminders. Every other Tuesday I represent my office at another office's staff meeting. I should be used to the fact that this meeting NEVER runs less than an hour and a half. What does this have to do with a food blog?? Well, the meeting starts at 10am and my morning snack time is 11am. Just a little off schedule...I like schedules and plans and rules. Normally, I would eat my morning snack off schedule but I had a second meeting immediately after the first. So it was straight on past morning and no food 'til lunch!

But here's where the reminders came in...a friend was posting on the FB about grass-fed vs. corn-fed beef. Forget the politics and why we should or should not eat meat. Cows taste good. End of my politics. HOWEVER, we are what we eat...that means that we are also whatever that cow (or chicken, or pig, or fish, or...) eats. I don't have to tell you that most processed food isn't good for you...but did you know that most processed food consists mainly of corn and soy in some form?? Today, corn is the evil little bastard that I'll talk about. We'll save soy for another day. In America today, most of our food is raised on corn...hopefully, I don't have to tell you that corn is not the natural diet of a cow, chicken or salmon. Yes, salmon. (PS, there's your argument for wild-caught...)

Most of us know and accept that our food, even real food, is genetically engineered to some degree...corn more than most. OK, ok, the thing is that kinda like you can carbon date crap to see how old it is...you can corn-date (my own made-up phrase, you won't find in the 'the literature') people to see what their diets were. AND, it turns out that modern humans in America eat more corn, where it is NOT a major part of our traditional western diet, than other modern humans whose traditional diets are largely based on corn! So, I was talking about all this on her post. Later, I was wasting some time between getting yelled at on phone calls and answering e-mails and found this blog. Between the text and the comments, they made my argument...Don't stop eating corn, but do know when you're eating it and make sure you actually intend to do so!

So not what I thought I was going to talk about today, but that's ok....

Pretty standard breakfast, no surprises. I was looking for some blueberries this morning, but clearly did not find any. Did I mention that my cereal is full of flax seeds...good for poop! Don't worry, that's for another day.

I tried to make my salad look a little better today. Doesn't that purple cabbage look pretty? Today, I went with 2 chicken tenders instead of an egg...today, the egg came before the chicken. :-D Get it?

Here's a great example of an easy meal portioning method I learned, the Plate Method. 1/2 of the plate should be vegetables, here, I have steamed broccoli. 1/4 should be protein and 1/4 should be a starch, but not a white one! I went with 4 oz. of pork tonight. I thought I already had enough chicken and chicken products...and 1/2 of a baked sweet potato with a little butter. Normally, I'd say no to the butter, but I looked back on my day and realized that I didn't have enough fat today. It's generally a good idea to avoid dairy fats, but this was less than 1 TBS.

And how do I know it was 4 oz. of meat? Well....

Now, I'm going to wash dishes and then pop some popcorn. Have a great night and thanks for reading!!