Chocolate & Walnut Sourdough Bread

Jeff made a loaf of Chocolate & Walnut Sourdough Bread using a recipe from the Pantry Mama website. 

I didn't remember to take a good photo of the loaf before we cut into it. 

Jeff followed the recipe, but he omitted the instant coffee. We don't like coffee.

The loaf was reasonably good, but a little strange. It just wasn't a flavor combo we're used to. We might make it again, but more likely we'd just make brownies because they would have enough chocolate to satisfy our need for chocolate.

Sourdough Honey Quinoa Bread

We decided to highlight Quinoa as an ingredient during the month. We have tons in our pantry and it would be nice to use some of it up.

The original recipe is available here at the King Arthur Baking Company website.

As for changes, Jeff omitted the dry milk and water and instead used almond milk. 

It was tasty. If we were to make it again, we would make it exactly the same way!

Zuppa Toscana

Today we decided to make the Better than Zuppa Toscana recipe from the allrecipes website. To be honest, we loosely followed the recipe. We had less than a pound of sausages in casings so we cut those into fairly small pieces. And we had half the amount of bacon that the recipe called for and we cut that up and threw it in.

We also cooked it in the Instant Pot. Basically, we Sauteed the garlic and onions and then tossed the rest of the ingredients into the pot and added enough broth that the potatoes were covered and set it on Slow Cook then let it cook for more than two hours. 

When the potatoes were soft, we added the kale. We always use yogurt instead of sour cream in recipes.

I thought it tasted great. This is another recipe we'd be happy to repeat.

For next time, Jeff would like to take a cup or so, plus the yogurt, and run it through the blender and then add it back to the pot to give the soup a bit more body.

Naan

Gave naan bread a try. Sharon found a recipe using sourdough. The one tweak I made was to use white whole wheat for all but one cup of the flour, which was bread flour. Cooked them up on two cast iron pans with the burners set to 6/10. Two minutes on first side, a smidge less on second. 

Had a couple with burrito fillings. Folded up like a soft taco. 

Next day made bbq chicken naan pizza. 

More double bagged in the freezer for later. 

They turned out well.

Next time: I might go with more white flour next time for a little softer bite. 

Instant Pot Broccoli Chowder

Today, we made Instant Pot Broccoli Chowder. I had originally planned to make the Instant Pot Corn Chowder recipe from Taste of Home but I discovered we didn't have any frozen corn. But we did have quite a lot of frozen broccoli, so Jeff suggested we substitute broccoli for the corn and that's what we did. 

We had to defrost the broccoli so we could cut the florets into smaller pieces and we also didn't have any fresh onions, so we substituted dried minced onions. Otherwise, we simply followed the recipe as it was written.

The light isn't good in the dining room so it looks rather unappealing in the picture, but it tasted delicious. I sprinkled a little salt on mine, but Jeff liked it as is.

If we make it again, we would run a portion of the chowder through the blender after the pressure cooking to eliminate some of the chunks and make the chowder a little more creamy. This recipe is another keeper.

Instant Pot Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup

Jeff has gotten a job at Intel so I (Sharon) need to start doing some of the cooking. It's been at least ten years since I've done any cooking and I'm not terribly good at it but I can usually manage to follow recipes, so I just need to find recipes I like. 

This post is the start of my effort to document my attempts at cooking recipes I find on the internet and how they turned out and what we would change next time, assuming we like the recipe enough to try it again. This information is mostly for me as the blog is a pretty easy way to keep track of past efforts.

Anyway, today I made my first pot of Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup. The original recipe was published on allrecipes, but I also archived a copy at Google docs, in case it gets pulled down. It calls for the soup to be made on the stove, but I wanted to cook it in the Instant Pot so we did our best to translate the recipe.

It doesn't feel right to plagiarize the original recipe; just click on one of the links above to see all the details. We had to make a few changes by necessity: 

• We didn't have orzo pasta so we used elbow macaroni. 
• We also didn't have any bay leaves, so we omitted them. 
• We used a blend of homemade chicken and homemade vegetable broth.
• And we had to use frozen spinach.

We heated the oil in the Instant Pot on the Sauté setting and then added the onion. After a couple of minutes, we added the carrots and celery and let it saute for a few minutes. Then we added the garlic and other spices and let it cook briefly before adding about three quarts of homemade chicken and vegetable broths. (We used a blend of them because that's what we had in our refrigerator.) 

We stirred in the dry pasta and then pressure cooked it for 5 minutes before adding the chicken and lemon and then we set it on Slow Cook until lunchtime. Shortly before lunch, we took off the lid and stirred in defrosted frozen spinach. It had a few minutes to come up to temperature before we actually served it up for the meal.

Overall, we really enjoyed the soup; the pasta seemed a little overcooked, but we can remedy that problem in the next pot. The recipe made 8 servings so we'll be having it a few more times in the next week. 

We served it with Asiago bread that Jeff made. Also amazing.

Next time, I'll try making these changes:

• Try skipping the pressure cooking entirely and go straight from sautéing to slow cooking.
• Substitute Herbes de Provence for the thyme and oregano.
• Add the dry pasta at the same time as the chicken. 

I expect I'll probably make it once a month from now on, whenever we have leftover chicken.

A Year of Maintenance

One year ago, I hit my goal of burning 60 pounds with Noom. Since then I have been on maintenance. The goal was to stay in a 5-pound range: 170-175. In practice it worked out to a 10-pound range 170-180, which with all that 2020 has thrown at me (and all of us) I am ok with. After the first few weeks of adjustment to maintenance I found a pretty good rhythm, I started working on my next round of fitness goals. I also found some new apps to support my post-Noom life:

• MapMyWalk 
• FitBod
• MoodPath
• Ten Percent Happier
• Lose It 
• Habitica 

Habitica helped us extend some of the habit formation skills we learned from Noom beyond issues related to food and fitness.

When I started tracking my walks with MapMyWalk I had a pace of 18'22" per mile. I have brought that down to 12'52". 

When I started working out with FitBod I could do two pull ups (which was an improvement already over none pre-Noom). Now I can do ten in a set. I have also hit my goal of being able to do handstand pushups (with balance support from a wall). 

MoodPath has helped me track how I am feeling day to day which has helped monitor bouts of depression.      
With the Ten Percent Happier app, I have logged almost 100 hour of mindfulness sessions over 400 days which has helped with my anxiety. 

We discovered Lose It which does a better job of logging food than Noom, especially since we can share meals logs between my wife and I over Air Drop. It also tracks macronutrients so I can keep an eye on my protein intake. It also lets us track water. For maintenance, the main thing we give up is the colors, but those are ingrained enough at this point that I just need to remember to keep up my veggies game. I would still recommend Noom for folks working on serious weight loss.