Journal of a New Frugivore

Obie Fernandez
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The one and only Obie Fernandez, author of The Rails Way and other fine publications and CEO/Founder of Hashrocket, the best web consultancy on the planet.

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"You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly." - Paul Graham
 

Vegan challenge salad On The Border

After some trial and error was able to get the following veggie/4HB-friendly salad for lunch today at On The Border (by gate T4 at ATL airport)

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I'm learning that the key is to be specific in what you're asking for. In this case, just because you ordered the Fajita Salad with vegetables instead of chicken does not mean you're going to get sautéed peppers and onions. Also, don't forget to tell the server to leave off the cheese an sour cream. They're both a pain to get off your plate later. A side of black beans on top makes for a good protein kick on an otherwise nutrient-light meal.

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Pink Spinach and Tabouli Salad

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This is good!

Baby Spinach
1 cup Tabouli Salad
1/2 cup shredded beets
Roasted garlic cloves
Sliced almonds
Chopped bell peppers
Chopped celery

Toss with non-oil Tahini dressing from Whole Foods

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4HB Breakfast Experiments: Spinach Chocolate Protein Monster #4HB

Normally (at least when I'm in one of my home settings) I start the day off with a blended greens+fruit smoothie. But I've been reading The 4 Hour Body by Tim Ferris and willing to do some experimentation with my routine.

The first experiment today was to try drinking a big glass of ice water as soon as I woke up. If I understood it correctly, the idea is to kick your body's temperature regulation system into high-gear, since it burns more calories. It was very difficult to drink ice water at any sort of fast rate. I ended up drinking about half of my portion (maybe 3 cups at most) over the course of 30 minutes, well into my breakfast time.

Breakfast consisted of a blenderful of spinach (~20g protein), 6 oz of Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Chai Tea (10g protein) on top of it plus two scoops of Whole Foods Soy Protein powder, for an additional 28g of protein! Oh, and a banana, cause I had a couple that were gonna go bad if I don't eat them today.

So the total was over 50g of protein and the result was THICK! Like, too thick to drink. This concoction is a monster and I'm not sure I'll do something quite like this again. I kind of had to chew it a bit in my mouth before swallowing and it was impossible to pour it out of the blender. I ended up just slurping it out of the blender and once that didn't work anymore, I mixed the bottom of it with some almond milk in order to be able to finish it all before rinsing the blender. Downed all of it in about 25 minutes, and this was all within an hour of getting out of bed.

Incidentally the Chai Tea has caffeine in it, which I'm not accustomed to drinking at all nowadays, having cut out even decaf coffee a couple weeks ago. (Stopped all caffeinated drinks almost 2 years ago now.) I don't know if the caffeine was to blame, but within minutes of starting to drink the smoothie I had to go poo, like in a real hurry. I wasn't sick, just had to go right away. Something about the shake shook things up inside me for sure. Was it the protein or the caffeine? I don't know...

Exercise: After breakfast I did 50 air squats and didn't have time for my normal routine, which is 10 minutes of yoga (sun salutation stretches or something like that), CrunchFoo workout (currently about 190 reps broken into 5 sets) and as many pushups as I can do in 1-3 sets, normally during the break CrunchFoo gives me between crunch sets. The squats have been a welcome change of routine (I did them yesterday too) and I'm impressed at how much burn I got out of them.

I will probably do the yoga and crunches in a little while, after the smoothie feels like it's out of my gut. (It's over two hours later and I still feel full. Not disgusting bloated or anything like that, just full and not even thinking of eating anything else. That's a huge difference from my normal inclination to snack or have a full-blown lunch by 11:30a most days.)

So much soy protein is probably not good for me -- definitely an area of investigation for the near future.

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"DHH" Kale Salad

(download)

Named in honor of one of my personal heroes. Let's just say that the net worth and brilliance of this salad relative to ordinary salads are comparable to the those of DHH relative to the rest of us. Or something like that.

1 head of California Red Kale
1/2 Heirloom Tomato, chopped into small chunks
1/2 cup WholeFoods Trinity Mix (finely chopped onions, celery, bell peppers)
1 cup Beets, chopped**
1/2 cup Chickpeas**
1/2 cup Curried Wheatberries**
1/2 cup Quinoa**
handful of raw Cashew nuts 

**Available from Whole Foods salad bar. Steal a few clear plastic containers from the Olive Bar and pack individually for convenience.

Remove the most egregious parts of the Kale stems and tear up the leaves into small pieces. Add the rest of the ingredients and toss with a generous portion of Whole Foods Thai Mango Peanut Dressing, as per your tolerance for dressing. I suspect having some sort of acidic dressing is essential for Kale salads since it wilts the greens a little bit and makes them a lot more enjoyable to eat.

Garnish with cashews and serve.

 

 

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Why Jason's Deli is one of my fave lunch places lately

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Non-boring 99% vegan salad. Texture ftw!

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Super Green

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I've been experimenting with different variations based on Odwalla's Superfood juice as base. This morning I used heavy amounts of spinach and broccoli to add substance. I used to think Superfood was thick, now I regard it more like green apple juice!

3-4 oz fresh broccoli
2.5 oz baby spinach
1 banana
1 tbsp ground flax seed
1 cup Odwalla Superfood

The trick with a thick blended salad like this is to start with relatively less base juice and then add more as needed to keep the blender working properly.

That reminds me: My mom has a $500 Vitamix blender and I got to use it this past weekend. I'm in love. That thing is awesome, especially the continuous variable speed!

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My fave "on the road" breakfast

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Thank goodness for Whole Foods!

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What happens when you use too much frozen stuff

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1/2 banana
frozen blueberries and strawberries
almond milk

Couldn't find the big smoothie cups. Then got my ratio all wrong in the smaller cup. Now I have a frozen treat instead. Oh well, it's still a good snack.

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Tangy Mango Smoothie

1 banana
5 oz carrots (shredded)
5 oz mango chunks (frozen)
5 oz watercress!! [edited: not arugula]
1-2 cups orange juice

Been experimenting without almond milk and liking the results. Also bought some hemp milk but no recipes yet.

The arugula watercress gives this smoothie some serious spicy kick!

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Pears are in Season!

Here's a good thick smoothie recipe. I'm enjoying it for breakfast right now:

1 Ripe Red Delicious Pear
1 Banana
1/2 cup frozen mango chunks
1/4 cup Sunflower Seed granola
about 1 cup almond milk

Blend until smooth. Mine came out really thick and I love, love, love blending it just enough to get a smooth consistency but with chunks of mango left whole. They thaw out enough to be perfectly delicious.

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