I had surgery on my right ankle this week. A Brostrom Procedure. Basically what this means is that I'm off of my feet for a while (read 8-10 weeks). Now this really sucks for someone who is used to being active. The first couple of days were fine, as I was taking percocet every 4 hours. This pretty much meant that I had an attention span long enough to watch Sesame Street. I tried watching real TV shows, but by the time I was watching an episode of the office for the third time and still not finding any of the jokes very funny, I thought it was time to move onto something less "brain intensive". So I spent a lot of time napping. On about day 5 I started weaning myself off of the percocet. I wanted to see how well I could manage without such a heavy duty drug, and also save what I had left for nighttime and sleeping. This mean that I was awake and coherent for many more hours of the day! Which is good, because I'm taking an Anatomy and Physiology course by correspondence at the moment and being awake is pretty key to studying.
As for the food part of this blog. I'm going crazy! I can't stand for any longer than about 5 to 10 minutes at a time or I am in extreme pain an my foot turns blue (I'm not even exaggerating). What this means is that nourishing myself has become rather difficult. I never realized how long food prep actually takes (even something "easy" like Kraft Dinner, takes a couple minutes; stirring, checking the pot to see if its boiling, checking the noodles, walking from one side of the kitchen to the other with a pot of boiling water to strain into the sink, adding the milk & delicious cheese, more stirring...you get the point). So my options became very very limited. The other part of this, is that because I am limited in the exercise I can do while in recovery, I am trying to be very committed about healthy eating to make sure the 12 pounds I lost since Christmas don't jump right back onto my waistline; so microwave dinners are out. What my husband I decided was to prep a ton of healthy snacks so that I could easily grab something, and I wouldn't be tempted to say eat a whole box of crackers because that was easy to grab.
My husband ever so kindly moved our mini fridge into the living room for me, so now all I have to do is roll off the couch and all of my delicious snacks are at my fingertips!
The first thing I did was whip up a batch of No Bake Energy Bars. I doubled the recipe, used all natural peanut butter, and slightly less honey (I found them too sweet otherwise) used wheat germ, added slivered almonds and added freshly grated ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. I also used dark chocolate chunks from a Santa I got in my stocking.
I also did a few of the "normal" snack type things. Made a veggie tray, complete with broccoli, cauliflower, celery, carrot, red peppers and mushrooms. I've been dipping them into 95% fat-free herb & garlic cream cheese. Which is delicious and WAY healthier than ranch dips. I made up a meat & cheese tray with pita bread. I used a few different types of low fat cheese as well as Eating Right sausage meat. Though a bit high in salt, they are really low in fat and rather delicious. To prevent myself from overeating the meat & cheese, I put them in Ziploc containers in layers separated by wax paper. Each layer contains about 75g of meat (~ 100 cal & 3g of fat) and 1-2 ounces of low fat cheese (~ 100 cal & 2g of fat). Add to that some freshly made pita from the local market, and voila a 300 calorie high protein fairly healthy snack.
I've also made up some amazing fruit trays. Lots of berries (thank goodness I had surgery in the spring when they are all in season), as berries contain a lot of antioxidants, and many are high in potassium (which is excellent when your body needs this due to the side effects of narcotic pain killers), tons of pineapple (again rich in antioxidants, high in Vit C - great for healing, prevents arthritis - excellent for someone who just had joint surgery and promoted a healthy digestive system - again a great counter for narcotics), grapes and the occasional banana. I quickly got bored of just eating massive amounts of fruit, and decided that perhaps if I could spice things up a little bit... so I invented a healthy fruit dip!
Other than that, I made some vegetarian chili in my crock pot (recipe to follow shortly), so I have bean eating an insane amount of beans and tomatoes this week. And hopefully as time permits I'll be able to slowly progress back to the kitchen and try out some new recipes!
As for the food part of this blog. I'm going crazy! I can't stand for any longer than about 5 to 10 minutes at a time or I am in extreme pain an my foot turns blue (I'm not even exaggerating). What this means is that nourishing myself has become rather difficult. I never realized how long food prep actually takes (even something "easy" like Kraft Dinner, takes a couple minutes; stirring, checking the pot to see if its boiling, checking the noodles, walking from one side of the kitchen to the other with a pot of boiling water to strain into the sink, adding the milk & delicious cheese, more stirring...you get the point). So my options became very very limited. The other part of this, is that because I am limited in the exercise I can do while in recovery, I am trying to be very committed about healthy eating to make sure the 12 pounds I lost since Christmas don't jump right back onto my waistline; so microwave dinners are out. What my husband I decided was to prep a ton of healthy snacks so that I could easily grab something, and I wouldn't be tempted to say eat a whole box of crackers because that was easy to grab.
My husband ever so kindly moved our mini fridge into the living room for me, so now all I have to do is roll off the couch and all of my delicious snacks are at my fingertips!
The first thing I did was whip up a batch of No Bake Energy Bars. I doubled the recipe, used all natural peanut butter, and slightly less honey (I found them too sweet otherwise) used wheat germ, added slivered almonds and added freshly grated ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. I also used dark chocolate chunks from a Santa I got in my stocking.
I also did a few of the "normal" snack type things. Made a veggie tray, complete with broccoli, cauliflower, celery, carrot, red peppers and mushrooms. I've been dipping them into 95% fat-free herb & garlic cream cheese. Which is delicious and WAY healthier than ranch dips. I made up a meat & cheese tray with pita bread. I used a few different types of low fat cheese as well as Eating Right sausage meat. Though a bit high in salt, they are really low in fat and rather delicious. To prevent myself from overeating the meat & cheese, I put them in Ziploc containers in layers separated by wax paper. Each layer contains about 75g of meat (~ 100 cal & 3g of fat) and 1-2 ounces of low fat cheese (~ 100 cal & 2g of fat). Add to that some freshly made pita from the local market, and voila a 300 calorie high protein fairly healthy snack.
I've also made up some amazing fruit trays. Lots of berries (thank goodness I had surgery in the spring when they are all in season), as berries contain a lot of antioxidants, and many are high in potassium (which is excellent when your body needs this due to the side effects of narcotic pain killers), tons of pineapple (again rich in antioxidants, high in Vit C - great for healing, prevents arthritis - excellent for someone who just had joint surgery and promoted a healthy digestive system - again a great counter for narcotics), grapes and the occasional banana. I quickly got bored of just eating massive amounts of fruit, and decided that perhaps if I could spice things up a little bit... so I invented a healthy fruit dip!
Other than that, I made some vegetarian chili in my crock pot (recipe to follow shortly), so I have bean eating an insane amount of beans and tomatoes this week. And hopefully as time permits I'll be able to slowly progress back to the kitchen and try out some new recipes!
http://michaelpollan.com/
ReplyDeletehttp://markbittman.com/
Check out the above. Two of my favourite food writers.
MoxKa