Sunday, November 22, 2009

My Favorite Things

What a beautiful weekend it was!  It included my favorite things- food, fitness, great company, and wedding stuff! 

First the food!  
On Saturday morning we watched Food Inc., a movie that I have been waiting to see since it came out, but forgot about until now!  I know that a lot of bloggers have already reviewed this movie, but I think it raises a lot of important issue that we should be aware of as consumers.  I loved that two of my favorite authors, Eric Schlosser and Michal Pollan played important roles in the movie.  I'm kind of a groupie of these two authors and highly recommend you read any of their books!
Food Inc. has a comprehensive website that eloquently explains this, much more so than my goofy ramblings, but here are my takeaways from the movie:
  • We all have the right to know where our food comes from.  If the information is not available, then ask.
  • We have the right to food safety.  Measures need to be taken to make sure that the government is protecting us, not just the interests of the lobbyists and organizations stuffing green in their Gucci wallets.
  • Poor nutrition is causing obesity and many other health conditions like diabetes. The correlation between poor nutrition and socioeconomic status is staggering and it should not cost more to buy a vegetable than a burger!
  • Read labels, ask questions, and vote with your dollars!
OK, enough preaching from me!
I discovered some new food finds this weekend, one of which includes nut butter:

Sunland Inc. sent me this sample of Organic Vanilla Cranberry Peanut Butter.  The color of this peanut butter is more yellow than other kinds and this is my first flavored peanut butter ever!  It was a bit sweet, but I tasted the subtle taste of vanilla and some kind of berry too!  I think that kids would love this and it's a wholesome product with only 4 all natural, organic ingredients.  I will definitely keep this for a special occasion (OK, who in the world keeps nut butter for a special occasion??) and will try to not finish this jar off in a few days!  Thanks again for letting me sample this!  Also, check out the Recipe section of the site.  I have my eyes on the peanut sauces- and apparently you can make doggie treats too.

I also finally got to try and attack my Foodbuzz Festival samples from Frog Hollow Farms!

The dried peaches are delicious and the granola is dangerous!  So, so good and I will definitely be dipping my fingers into these when I need something sweet.  I have been dreaming of the Frog Hollow pears ever since I tried them at the farmer's market and I can't wait to walk down to the market to get one!
After dreaming about the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, I forgot that we had a perfectly good one right in our city!  I met a man who kicks my Marketing degree's butt with his convincing "5 pounds for 5 dollars" sales pitch (in English, Spanish, and Spanglish)!  I went right to him and grabbed my persimmons:

This is not even all of them and we are now in fruit heaven and this is mine, all mine!  The nice man also threw in a couple of tangerines and this ginormous Asian Pear:

It is seriously the size of a small cantelope!  While shopping I also saw some other freakishly large vegetables, that I tried to justify buying, but finally didn't. 
Also in food news, I got 2 B-nut squashes and roasted one up with dill, red pepper, and some sea salt:

And I roasted some chicpeas with more dill and stuff.  These taste like soynuts to me!  Abby is right!

Hubby wanted me to show you what he was excited over- OLIVES!  This may be his favorite food, ever.

My dinner had chicpeas, spinach, tomato, and egg.  It isn't the most intuitive combination, I know, but it tasted so good, especially with all the hot sauce I doused it in.  I'll be having this again soon!

Fitness!
In fitness news, I got in 2 fun workouts this weekend.  Yes, I'm the freak who takes a picture of her workout stats:


This was 30 minutes of walking hills and a few sprints in between.  It has hot and I wasn't feeling it, so I decided it was a perfect time to throw in some weights.  Since I haven't lifted in a while, I did 2 exercises each of chest, tris, and shoulders and stretched really well afterwards.  I did have an incident in which my balance ball rolled right under me, but nobody seemed to notice!

Today I attacked the old  Torture Chamber ('mill) to get my distance up.  I set the time for 45 minutes and busted out 3.8 miles.  If you do the math, it wasn't fast, but at 5'4", I practically sprint at 5.3 MPH!  I am also having some minor hip pain, which proves my hypothesis of being roughly 79 years old.  I cooled down with some stretching and sun salutations and called it a day!

Great Company and Wedding!

We spent Saturday afternoon celebrating Hubby's mom's birthday!  I of course forgot my camera, but it didn't stop anyone from having a great time.  We went to a Persian restaurant and my spinach salad was awesome!  We also came home to have cake:

(Picture taken this morning, as hubby was eating breakfast dessert)
I also discovered the first chocolate item in the world that I didn't like because it was a whipped cream cake.  You may not understand how shocking this is- it may be like foregoing oxygen for a day, or something like that.  I don't think anyone really would have wanted me to eat that cake if they knew the consequences!  We also had a great time watching the video that our new Step-dad, Stan put together for us (STAN- if you are reading, I have now said your name twice, so keep going!) including photos and a video of our wedding!  It was so nice to actually see how things went down since I was in my bridal stupor and could not really remember most of the wedding.  Look how cute the CD covers are:

I'm going to go shower (for my own well-being and that of those around me) and to watch Amazing Race!  Tomorrow is another day at my favorite place, but it's only a 3-day week, so Hump Day, here I come!

Oh- and in other news- hubby got the surround sound working!  I have spent half of the evening wondering why people are yelling at me and also had a living room dance party (just me) testing out the woofer.  We can throw a mad party now!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that pb sounds really damn cool! I love that....it'll probably work well in a lot of creative recipes, too!

Haha, my foodbuzz samples are ALL gone already!

Devan said...

I love roasted chickpeas :)

what interesting PB!!

I want to see Food Inc. too.. It really does point out some really important notes and details about the food industry.

Anonymous said...

i really want to see that movie! & vanilla cranberry peanut butter sound sinteresting, but really good! i'm always up for anew kind of peanut butter.

i'm glad u had great workouts :)

xoox
shelley

Anonymous said...

ive had the sunland banana nut PB but never that kind! that sounds so good!

Naomi(Onefitfoodie) said...

yay for surround sound! it makes such a diff when watching TV or a movie

those CD's are such a great idea!!!

I havent seen food inc yet!!

Abby's Vegan Eats said...

wooo hoo roasted chickpeas.. you rock! Arent they great??!?! Cheap and easy too!

Uh that pb sound amazing! AND im loving your massive overflow of fruit (yummy persimmons)

Gina; The Candid RD said...

How nice of your step dad to do that! I love video CDs, especially from weddings, I hop someone does that for me!

I am going to watch Food Inc. this week too, with Nick. I saw it on Demand and we are excited to FINALLY see it!

I have to try persimmons again, as everyone keeps blogging them. My first experience was bad, apparently it was unripe. IT was so gross.

Mari said...

I am dying to see that movie...I will pick your brain later when you sign on AIM lol...

Anonymous said...

I love the cd covers-they are so cute!

Beth @ DiningAndDishing said...

ohhh, free peanut butter samples - how delightful :O). that might be the best kind of thing to sample ever!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks! I LOVE the holidays and our 1st year married! I want to see Food Inc. too....interesting...love reading your blog too :)

Anonymous said...

Those foodbuzz samples that you all got look AMAZING! I think I'm going to have to try and go next year, especially if it's in San Francisco! I went there a little over a month ago and out of all of the places that we saw sightseeing my favorite was the Ferry Building with all of the amazing food! Oh yum!

Oh, and my husband totally has a thing for relishes, olives, and sauces too!

Danielle

Jolene - EverydayFoodie said...

I have never even heard of flavoured peanut butter!!!! Sounds fantastic!!

Anonymous said...

A chocolate item you don't like??!!! Say it isn't so!! ;)...haha wish I could find that! It looks good though. Wish I had surround sound...don't think my neighbors would like it though ;)...although they're dog doesn't mind scaring the crap out of me with its random barking in the middle of the night...hmmm...

Anonymous said...

I read Food Inc and loved the book...still need to watch the movie!

I have a suggestion for that hip pain. If you are still achy, you should try floating. It's great for relieving aches and pain or stress. It's like floating in the Dead Sea! I definitely recommend it. www.foatspasandiego.com