End of July update

July flew by in a flash and I find myself at the end of month two on the 100 meter diet. As I reflect on the past two months I realize that I am definitely on to something here. This diet is not only reshaping my physical appearance but it's also reshaping how I look at food.

Have you ever really considered what food is? It seems like a crazy question, I know, but I'm serious. What is food to you? I did a little research on the web and I came across this article entitled The Zen of Real Food: Keeping Eating Simple .... Click here to read the article. It's a bit long but it's worth the read.

Maybe it hits me harder because I'm on this diet but, dang it, if he didn't hit the nail on the head. That's what food is to me now. And if that's true then this is the first time I've ever consistently eaten real food in my life. Eating this way in North America isn't common so I feel very thankful that I can do this. Think about what real food is to you when you're at the grocery store next time. Real food is out there and it's not hard to find.

Now, I can't end the update without letting you know that my current weight is 170 pounds. In total I've lost 26 pounds in two months. A pretty good result for simply eating real food.

Belt tightening time

Since I started my diet I've been having to tighten my belt every couple of weeks or so as my waist line gets smaller. Yesterday I realized that I had run out of belt holes to use. That's a good problem to have of course. It's also an easy problem to fix. So this morning I went to my workshop and drilled a new hole in my belt. Problem solved. I suspect I'll have to do that again before I'm done.

I never thought that dieting would be this exciting but it is. It's not just about the number on the scale .... it's about how I feel and I continue to feel great. Before my diet I found that all of my clothes were getting a bit snug. That's certainly not the case anymore.

The truly exciting part is that I've been saving a few of my favourite T-shirts over the years ... ones that didn't quite fit anymore. Well those beloved T-shirts are now back in circulation! Now that's an accomplishment.

I'm back in the groove

I picked a few pink tomatoes the other day and put them in a paper bag to ripen. I only had 2 small ones ready so I could only make this small gazpacho soup. This will be a family favourite someday. Barb and I love it already ... We're working on the kids.

The recipe is simple and it's best to make it up and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours before you serve it. You can also add 2 cloves of garlic and some celery if you wish. I added crumbled feta over mine and you couldn't have bought the bowl from me ... it was that good.

2 large tomatoes
1 large cucumber
1 medium onion
1 medium green or red pepper
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp tobasco
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper


Besides the gazpacho soup I've also been busy in the kitchen making feta, mozzarella, pickled zucchini, cucumber pickles, zucchini
pancakes as well as baking some bread. I don't normally get this much made during a weekend but Daniel and I are on our own and he likes helping in the kitchen so it worked out well.

I'm happy to report that I dug up my first 3 potatoes yesterday. It looks like I'll have a decent yield from the potato patch - that's encouraging.

Tonight I'm simply going to boil these potatoes and serve them with fresh butter and chives. Mmmmm .....

Ouch

This week got off to a rough start. Delilah broke her horn and that got us worrying about how we could help her recover. She didn't like all the attention and she went to great lengths to avoid us. She appears to be doing ok now and she's slowly returning to her normal personality. She doesn't have a role to play in my diet but we are hoping to milk her when she gets older so we'd hate to lose her.

I also had a bit of a melt down earlier in the week because I was having a difficult time getting motivated to prepare foods in the evening. Last week was very productive ... this week less so. Delilah's broken horn was certainly weighing heavily on my mind and I simply hit the 'food prep wall'. Going forward I will need to have more meals frozen and ready to heat up so I don't have to spend time in the kitchen if I need a break.

I also have to admit that I could use some more variety beyond yellow zucchinis. I have been freezing bags and bags of sliced zucchini for the past few days ... I will enjoy them in the winter but for now I wouldn't mind a few tomatoes. A couple tomatoes are starting to turn a wee bit pink so we're getting close!

Zucchini weekend

The garden has erupted with zucchini so I spent most of the weekend trying out zucchini recipes. I started with a recipe for zucchini feta pancakes ... they were quite good. I will definitely make these again because they taste great and they freeze well. They took 4 cups of zucchini and 1 cup of feta cheese along with some green onion, parsley, eggs, spices and some flour.


I made some mozzarella on Sunday morning so we could make some zucchini quiches in the afternoon. We used about 4 cups of mozzarella to make the two quiches. It was worth all of the effort but I am going to go through a lot of cheese at this rate.

We also barbecued a feta cheese stuffed zucchini for a meal. All in all a great tasting weekend.

The garden is kicking in

The garden is producing a good supply of cucumbers, onions and zucchini which we're enjoying daily. Last night we had barbecued zucchini with a simple cucumber salad made with yogurt, salt and vinegar. Simple meals are so very delicious. You can focus on the tastes and appreciate what you are eating easily - it's wonderful.

We have dozens of green tomatoes on the vine but so far none of them want to be the first to turn red. While we wait for the tomatoes I've been making some pickles for winter and as soon as my green peppers are ready I'm going to make a couple of jars of a simple cucumber relish with peppers. That will go well with my Lilly burgers :)

Annual pig roast weekend

We hosted our annual pig roast this past weekend. Approximately 85 of our friends, family and neighbours came over on Saturday to enjoy a pot luck dinner. We look forward to this weekend every year and we are so thankful to everyone for making the trip out to our home.

On Friday night we had a small party so we could start off the weekend with some fun and laughter. Everyone there knew about this blog and they wanted to create a unique picture for this update. The picture you see is of one of our recently hatched chicks that was brought in to the house for a late night photo shoot.

I enjoyed talking to a lot of different people about my diet. They had a lot of questions like .... Why I was doing it .... How was I feeling ....
How do I find the time? It was wonderful to have everyone express such true interest in what I am doing. I was humbled and inspired. My answers were the same for everyone .... I'm doing this because I can .... I feel great and this doesn't take as much time as you think ... I often eat very simply without much preparation. A number of couples want to schedule a visit that includes a goat milking session followed by cheese making lesson and then a dinner. We haven't set a date yet but I'm looking forward to it.

Of course I had to create a new rule for the diet so I could eat the pig roast. The new rule is that I can now eat anything that I spend six hours barbecuing ;)

Everyone brought such lovely dishes to the pot luck. I was planning on trying many of them but in the end I stuck with my diet except for a small side of sauerkraut .... mmmm sauerkraut.

Thanks again to everyone that came to the pig roast and to those that we missed ..... we hope to see you next year.

The story behind the name Peskychicken

Some of you may be wondering why I chose the name Peskychicken. Well, I'll tell you. When we got our first 3 laying hens back in 2005 they had the run of our entire property which included around the house. Those hens got into everything. They would dig up our flower gardens, roost in our garage, hang out on our back deck and run to pester any car that pulled in the driveway. They were truly pesky chickens.

I would carry Daniel, our youngest son, out to the barn to gather eggs. On the way I would say "Let's go see those pesky chickens." Well Daniel loved it when I said pesky chickens - it absolutely cracked him up! You know that full belly laugh that really little kids do - that's how he laughed. So it became part of our routine where every day I would ask him if he wanted to go see the pesky chickens.

As I fell further and further in to my chicken obsession I discovered the website www.backyardchickens.com and if I wanted to post online I needed a name. That's when the name Peskychicken was hatched. As a side note ... there is also a site called www.backyardherds.com where I go to research and ask my goat related questions. On that site I'm known as Peskygoat :)

Even now when I think back and remember how Daniel would laugh at "pesky chickens" it makes me smile. To me Peskychicken is all about smiles and laughter ... I hope some of that spirit comes through in this blog.

Morning commute pondering ...

One thing I have noticed since starting my diet is that I am no longer tired when I first wake up. In the past I liked my morning coffee (or two) to help get me moving. Now, when I wake up, I feel fully rested and ready to go. Do I want to start drinking coffee again when my 100 meter diet ends? Which leads to the even bigger question of what aspects of the diet do I wish to continue and what aspects of my prior diet do I want to reintroduce?

I have a long time to think about these questions considering that I have 11 more months to go. But on my commute this morning I'm leaning towards staying away from coffee for good. I really like coffee and I still miss it very much but I have to admit that I feel so much better not having it in my diet. We all have things in our diet that we really like and that we consider a necessity but when you give up all of those things and start living from a new baseline you realize that you might be happier without them. That's how I feel about coffee.

It's something worth pondering .....

Cheese and chicks ...

Move over feta because I have a new favourite cheese .... mozzarella. Mozzarella turned out to be extremely easy to make. You simply need some whole milk, citric acid, rennet and some time. I made two bars of cheese that were about 4 inches long and 1 inch thick. We ate one bar with toasted pitas ... the cheese was a little soft but it still tasted like mozzarella. I wish I had some ripe tomatoes because I would love to make some pizza.

Our egg production has dropped off significantly in the last few weeks. That's because most of our Americana's have gone broody and are hatching out chicks. Yesterday we had 5 chicks hatch and our hen, Luke, has claimed them as her own. She was such a good mom to Anakin in the spring that I'm sure she'll do a great job this time as well. We should see another 7 or 8 chicks hatch over the next week or so.

You may find this amusing ... the hen that hatched the 5 new chicks is a pure black hen named Darth Vader. We think that Luke took the chicks under her wing to keep them safe from the dark side. A couple of the chicks will likely be named after Sith's anyways ... like Darth Maul and Darth Sidious come to mind. We have to keep the Star Wars theme going ... plus visiting kids seem to get a kick out of chickens named after Star Wars.