January 12, 2012: The Joys of Fresh Popcorn-On-The-Cob and Green Sludge

Breakfast:

• Organic berry yogurt smoothie drink
• Umcka 
• Cold + Flu Fast Actives, berry flavor
• Tastes like a pixie stick

Lunch:

• Pacific Natural Foods organic chicken and wild rice soup
• Comes in a box container, like a can...but a box.....why? It's not even recyclable! I was thinking that maybe it's for packaging purposes so that they fit in shipping boxes better, but I'm really not sure. 
• Light thickness to the broth, chunky, warm, very flavorful and not too salty
• The wild rice added a savory, smokey flavor
• The vegetables had the texture of a roasted vegetable but the sweet flavor of a steamed vegetable
• 2 small slices of 9 grain sourdough bread
• I broke up the bread into pieces and mixed them into the soup so that they soaked up the broth. The mix of the sourdough flavor with this chicken broth was exquisite. The bread was a thirst-quenching mouthful of flavor every time I put a scrap into my mouth. One of my favorite things to do while eating soup, as I've previously expressed in other posts!

Snack:

• Umcka
• 1 mango mochi
• Frozen rock solid from the freezer, so I let it thaw for 20 minutes
• Chewy, sweet, cold, refreshing

• 1/2 cup pasta shells
• My friend/housemate Alex had made pasta and there was some left sitting out on the stove. I munched on the pasta as I did my cooking experiments. They were medium-sized shells cooked wonderfully al dante and hard to resist
• 1 cup broccoli
• I had this broccoli for the vegetable cooking experiment, which I will further describe in another post
• 1 Honeycrisp apple
• I once read that a crisp apple is better than coffee in the morning when it comes to waking you up. Now, I'm not that much of a coffee drinker anyways, but I do get tired. Halfway through this day I started getting sleepy so I headed straight for the Honeycrisp apple. Guess what? It worked!
• 1 small bowl of fresh popcorn-on-the-cob tossed with a quick drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt
• I LOVE POPCORN ON THE COB. Can't say it enough. When I was younger I was obsessed with popcorn. I loved it so much that my bat-mitzvah party when I was 13 was 1/2 rainforest themed and 1/2 popcorn themed. I ate popcorn almost every day after school for a while. I took it to school with me in little bags for snack. I ate it at every movie I saw. I wrote a paper on the science of popcorn and the history of microwave popcorn during my freshman year of high school. Yeah, you get the gist. I love popcorn! In my recounting of making this specific popcorn experience I hope you will see why I love popcorn so much.
• My mom had mailed me 2 beautiful cobs of dried popcorn in a plastic bag that came from our local farm share in Chicago, "Farmer John". I slowly poured enough olive oil over heat to coat the bottom of a pan and used my fingers to clumsily take the kernels off of the cobs. The little sun-toned kernels rolled off my fingertips and began sizzling in the bottom of the saucepan, slightly skidding in the bubbling oil. I adjusted the heat and put the top back on. Every time I put the top on a pot when I'm making popcorn on the stove I think of the first time I didn't. I was making popcorn on the stove with my babysitter. Neither one of us had ever done it before and, to make a long story short, there was a lot of screaming, a lot of laughing, and a lot of popcorn on the floor! I shook around the kernels in the pan to evenly distribute the heat. I loved that sound-- like marbles on ice. When the corn was about to pop over the brim of the pan I took the pan off the stove and poured it into a deep  blue plastic bowl. Each kernel was more perfectly popped than the next. The white, yellow-tinted, round, dome-shaped puff. The cloud like shape that extended from the bottom. The wild carelessness in it's structure. The half-popped treasures at the bottom of the bowl that you know holds a more satisfying crunch in between your grinding molars. Each kernel was a work of art. Next time you eat popcorn, take time to appreciate how carefree and beautiful it really is. I love the way the popcorn hits the grooves of your teeth as you chew it. There's super satisfaction in every bite, every crunch, and every swallow. The bite sends the vibrations of the crunch through your face and the puffs melt away in your mouth so it's easy to swallow. 

Dinner:

• 1/2 a piece of 9 grain sourdough bread with eggplant masala spread on top
• Flavorful, slightly spicy, mixed well with the texture of the grain in the bread as the sauce from the masala soaked in.
• Bolthouse Farms Antioxidant Rich "Greed Goodness" Fruit Smoothie

• Pineapple Juice
• Apple Juice
• Mango Puree
• Banana Puree
• Kiwi Juice
• Spirulina
• Chlorella
• Green Tea
• Broccoli
• Barley Grass
• Spinach
• Wheatgrass
• Blue Green Algae
• Echinacea
• Garlic
• Jerusalem Artichoke
• Lemon Bioflavonoids
• Nova Scotia Dulce
• Zinc
• Manganese
• Iron
• Folic Acid
• Vitamin A
• Vitamin B6
• Vitamin B12
• Vitamin C
• PLUS...
• 1 Umcka packet
• 1 echinacea powder tablet
• 1 scoop of MacroLife Naturals "Macro Greens Nutrient Rich Super Food Supplement" 

 

• Vitamin E
• Vitamin B12
• Vitamin C Complex
• Calcium Citrate
• Magnesium Glycinate
• Iron
• Barley Grass
• Spirulina
• Chlorella
• Spinach
• Non-Dairy, Probiotic Cultures
• Grape Seed
• Ginkgo Biloba
• Acerola Berry
• Citrus Bioflavonoids
• Milk Thistle Extract
• Green Tea
• Rutin
• Red Raspberry
• Parsley Juice
• Ginger Powder
• Horsetail Stem Powder
• Licorice Root Extract
• Eleuthero
• Suma
• Astragulus
• Damiana
• Echinacea
• Lecithin
• Apple Pectin
• Apple Fiber
• Organic Flax Seed Meal
• Yucca Juice
• Watercress Juice
• Carrot Juice
• Organic Beet Juice 
• Nova Scotia Dulce
• Cartus
• Freeze-Dried Aloe Vera
• Protease
• Lipase
• Amylase
• Cellulase

If that doesn't cure my sickness, nothing will!!!!!!!!

Believe it or not, it actually tasted surprisingly delicious. I was scared of the color, but once I started I didn't want to stop till it was all gone.