Losing a friend is like losing a part of yourself

Rest in peace Ketil.

You were one of the most beautiful people I knew. Inside and out.

You always made me feel like a million bucks. You were smart and funny and creative and inspired people in so many ways.

I will miss you more than words can express.

Woman vs. Chicken

I hate making roast chicken. It just really grosses me out. But I started making my own chicken stock about a year ago and once you have made and used your own chicken stock you can never go back to using bouillon cubes.

So about every three month, I buckle down and make a roast chicken, use the meat for tasty risottos and stews and curries and use the carcass to make stock which I then freeze in one cup portions.

Sure, there are other ways to make chicken stock, some people say better ways. There is Ina Gartens famous chicken stock recipe which is supposed to be fantastic. Or The Amateur Gourmets chicken stock recipe. But wasting that much chicken and not even getting to eat it, I morally just cannot get myself to do.

On top of that I found a new recipe - Jamie Olivers "Chicken in milk" which I have been wanting to make since I first laid eyes on it and since we also just got ourselves a brand new Lodge Dutch Oven (the poor man's Le Creuset) that I had been dying to try - I knew it was time to face the chicken.

Since starting to follow Michael Pollans food principles I found that when it comes to meat - it is relatively easy to find grass fed beef in most grocery stores (I guess it has become somewhat of a foodie staple) but it is nearly impossible to get pastured chicken in Chicago, in the winter. In the summer, a lot of local farmers can be found at the farmers markets but there are only one or two weekly farmers markets which brave the winter. Through the Eat Wild website I found out that there is Farmers Market which sells pastured chicken but that's not happening for another 10 days.

So I made my way down to Chicagos biggest Wholefoods which apparently is the 3rd biggest Wholefoods in the world. There were three different kinds of whole chicken: Amish, "natural" (Wholefoods own brand) and Kosher. I checked all the labels and none of them said "pastured". A Wholefoods employee asked me if I needed help, so I asked him if Wholefoods sold any pastured chicken. His answer:

"Erm, we have the Amish, which are Amish raised and the natural and then we have the Kosher. And erm, yeah, all our chickens are, you know, organic and all pastured and all that stuff."

Clearly he didn't understand what pastured meant because I am pretty sure that if the chicken were pastured it would say so. A lot of people who buy their food at Wholefoods would spend extra to get a pastured chicken, I am sure.

His response reminded me of the response I got from a Trader Joes employee after asking him if any of the beef they were selling was grass-fed. He had to go ask. When he came back he said:

"Yeah, all of our beef is organic which means it is grass-fed." - Again - if the cows were grass-fed, I am pretty sure it would say. In fact, I had seen beef at a bigger Trader Joes that said in big letters "Grass-fed only beef".

Anyway, I ended up grabbing one of the Amish chicken, hoping that this would be the best choice of the three.

When I got home and I checked the recipe, I noticed that it asked for a 3 1/2 pound, organic chicken. I noticed that the chicken I had bought was 4 1/2 pounds. According to Michael Pollan pastured chicken are usually smaller, since they are outside and have to find bugs and grass to eat.

Had I, after all my extensive research, chosen an obese chicken?

After doing some research now, I found out that Amish chicken are

NOT free-range, they are antibiotic free though, at least.

The thing I hate most about preparing a whole chicken is sticking my hand up its behind to get out the insides. In most cases the insides are in a bag but I have had cases where they were just thrown in there loosely.

In the case of this Amish chicken - this is what was inside:

I am not sure if it is visible from the picture but this bag is chicken-head shaped. Now, a headless chicken is disturbing enough for me to look at but the head? I know - it's most likely just the neck which people like to throw in the pot when they are making chicken stock but let's just say I was not brave enough to open the bag. It is in my freezer right now. I don't think I could have eaten the chicken if I would have seen its face.

The headless chicken itself looked like a headless baby. For me - roasting chickens always kind of look like headless babies but this chubby chicken even more so:

I actually ended up apologizing to the chicken and thanking it for giving us its meat. I realize that probably sound somewhat nuts but I mean - look at it:

And this ladies and gentlemen is why I eat mostly vegetarian these days.

(The "Chicken in Milk" was very tasty though and I can highly recommend it - especially if you like lemon - but make sure to read the comments under the recipe, since they give some good tips)

Life changing

I'll be honest. I sometimes wonder if I wasted a year of my life in 2009. Part of me believes I needed it to recover, to get strength and so on but then, I really didn't get anywhere last year. I spent a year mourning losses - the loss of my friends in the Netherlands, the loss of my career (even though I didn't like my career but at least it was something to be proud of), the loss of my independence (since I am not making enough money to be self-sufficient which is something that I am not entirely comfortable with, despite fully trusting my husband), the loss of my social life, ...

I don't know how but with the end of 2009 I could finally stop mourning and start living my new life. I made a few "new years resolutions" but they are really much more than new years resolutions - they are what I need to do to get back on track and to get a life started that I feel is worth living.

I already talked about one of the resolutions - to respect myself. And to give you guys an update on this - it's going great and it has probably been one of the best changes I have ever made in my life.

Respecting myself means a lot more than to stop telling myself I am worthless (even though - just doing that already was a huge improvement to my life). It means respecting my body as much as respecting my mind.

Deciding to eat organically, to only eat animals and animal products like eggs and diary from animals who I know were treated with dignity and got to eat grass, like they were supposed to made a HUGE impact on my life. Seriously guys - if you have never had eggs from a farm where the pastured chickens are allowed to run around freely, eat grass and bugs instead of kernels, you are missing out!

My breakfast most days of the week:

A green smoothie

How to make it:

1 cup of almond milk (or soy or rice or hemp or regular milk but my favorite is unsweetened, vanilla almond milk)

1 banana

frozen fruit of your choice: I either make a "berry" one with frozen cherries, strawberries and blueberries or a "tropical" one with frozen mango, guava and pineapple. Sometimes I add peaches to either

one or two cups of dark green, leafy vegetables like spinach or kale

protein powder of your choice

- put everything in a blender. Blend. Ready. The taste of the greens takes a little bit of getting used to and you can leave it out if you really don't like it but it's so packed full of nutrients that for me it's really worth to add it. I found that chocolate protein powder masks the bitter taste of the greens better than vanilla.

One of the best things I read was "Cheap food might be cheap right now but it is too expensive in the long run" - meaning the effects that cheap, mass-produced food have on the planet and on your body in the long run are just not worth it.

And even though I spend a lot of money on food now, I waste a lot less. Our fridge is only half as full as it was before and I really try to use every morsel of food I buy. This involves a lot more planning but I don't mind. I also freeze a lot of food.

And completely unrelated - we booked our flights to Europe and we'll be in the Netherlands and Austria in less than 10 weeks. I can't wait! But more about that another time!

Tales of Mere Existence

I couldn't have said it better myself:

In Defense of Food

One of my New Year's resolution is to cook more and especially - cook better. My goal is to use vegetables and spices which I have never used before and make dishes I have never made - or even tried. I also wanted to start cooking with better ingredients and start using local and "in-season" vegetables and fruits.

I have always liked to cook but somehow I lost my cooking-groove since I have moved to the US. Stuff tastes different than it tastes in Europe. I didn't quite understand how all the recipes that I used to make in Europe with great success all the time didn't come out here. I just finished Michael Pollan's book "In Defense of Food" and things are a lot more clear to me now. For example - the butter in America is white - that was one of the first things I noticed in terms of food. In Europe - especially in Austria and Ireland - the butter is yellow, not white. I now know that American butter is white because the cows are corn fed. If cows get to graze on grass the butter will be yellow. There are a lot of reasons why it's better for cows to eat grass than corn but I am not going to go into it all now - if you want to know I recommend you read Pollan's book.

So I realized instead of trying to make my old stand-bys taste like they used to be I should just try new stuff. I decided that nutritionally and taste-wise it would be best to start eating food that is in season where I live. Right now a lot of different greens like Kale and Chard and squashes are in season. To be honest I have never really tried those foods. In Holland you can get whichever food you want whenever you want since most foods are either raised in green houses or imported from warmer places so I never thought about eating seasonally.

Well, let me tell you guys - this New Years resolution was probably the best New Years resolution I have ever made. In the past two weeks I have been in culinary heaven. For the first time since I have moved here I feel like I can cook. I have tried new recipes every night except once - when we went to a restaurant - a restaurant which follows the same food principles which I have been following (thus the food was incredible). I have cooked butternut squash, spaghetti squash (a squash of which the flesh looks like pasta and surprisingly tastes pretty similar too), kale (in many different ways), winter soups and my favorite - oven roasted grape tomatoes with rosemary, garlic and olive oil. I also try to cook mostly vegetarian and if I use meat, I try to use really good quality meat.

But not only have I really enjoyed every bite I have eaten in the last couple of weeks, I have also felt great. I am starting to think that those winter vegetables contain exactly the vitamins and minerals one needs to get through the winter without getting depressed and sick. One of the first dishes we made was a "green" soup with kale and spinach. The next day E and I felt energized and alive like we just got back from a long stay at a spa.

In short - I have been feeling fantastic.

If you are interested - here are Michael Pollan's 7 rules for eating - but please keep in mind that these make a lot more sense if you have read his book which I can very much recommend:

1. Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Don’t eat anything that wouldn’t eventually rot.
4. Avoid food products that carry health claims.
5. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
6. Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmer’s market or CSA.
7. Pay more, eat less.
8. Eat a wide diversity of species.
9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10. Cook and, if you can, grow some of your own food.
11. Eat meals and eat them only at tables.
12. Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me. That was what I wrote on my desk in high school. And kind of a life-long motto for me.

I was always a bit obsessed with feeling like people don't respect me enough. I have had heated discussion with superiors at work who I suspected didn't respect my work, I have dropped friends who didn't respect me enough to show up on dates, I have not gone back to stores where I felt I wasn't treated with respect. Treating people with respect and being treated with respect is important to me.

But in the last few weeks I had a light bulb moment when I realized even though I expect to be respected - I do not treat myself with any respect. In fact, if any of my friends would treat me the way I treat myself, I would have dumped them a long time ago.

The 3 year old girl I am watching - L - has a book called "I'm gonna like me - Letting off a little self-esteem". She has asked me to read that book to her a lot recently. And one day I asked her "Do you like yourself L?". I had asked her the same question about 3 month ago and back then her answer was "Yes! I am great!". Well, now the answer was "No ... I mean ... I don't know.".

Of course I started listing all the reasons why she should love herself - she is witty and smart and funny and cute and lovable.

But it's sad that a 3 year old is not sure if she really loves herself.

If it is so shocking to me that a 3 year old doesn't love herself, why do I think it is ok that I do not love MYSELF? And how do I expect my future children to love themselves when their mother doesn't manage to even LIKE herself?

And that is when I decided I would start to work on that. Loving and respecting yourself if you haven't loved and respected yourself for at least the last 20 years doesn't just come naturally. You don't wake up one morning and are like "Yeah, I am great". And loving and respecting yourself doesn't mean that you can stop working on yourself.

But self-hatred is destructive. And thinking back - nothing good ever came of self-hatred. I guess part of myself thought that if you hate yourself, it won't hurt as much if other people don't love you. But that's not even true.

So really, there is absolutely no reason to not love yourself.

As I said in my last blog post - I have big plans for 2010. Learning to respect myself is the most important endeavor though. I am writing about this because I think a lot of people don't respect themselves and maybe this will inspire them to make this their big endeavor for 2010 too.

And I'm feeling good

You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me..
And I'm feeling good

I hadn't been feeling so good lately. I actually felt really, freakin' bad for a long time. I didn't know, I still don't know what was going on with me. But sometimes it just happens. Sometimes you just find yourself in a deep hole and you don't know how to get out of it. And most of the time this just lasts for a day or two. Maybe you've had too much to drink. Or something bad happened. But you get over it. But for me this has been taking a long time. Weeks. Maybe months. I don't remember. I had a few good, happy days (or should I say nights) in between but the next day everything just went back to normal. And in my case, normal was the deep hole that I couldn't pull myself out of.

But then, out of nowhere, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. And everything gets better. Despite things not really being better. Despite the things that you thought made you so depressed in the first place still being very much present. You feel better. And better. And all of a sudden - you feel GOOD. And you can't believe you are feeling good because you thought you didn't remember how it was like to feel good. Not an alcohol or fun evening triggered good but a genuine good. A good that you expect to still be there the next day.
And maybe even the day after.

I have big plans for 2010. 2009 was a year to get me sorted out. To find myself. To get some sort of sense to my life. I am not saying I have it all figured out but I have a plan. I have goals and I know what I want to do.