Awww Shucks

Truth.

Why I hate corn:

1. it gets stuck in my teeth
2. it doesn't taste that great
3. sometimes when you shuck fresh ears there are caterpillars
• I hate caterpillars

Why the rest of the world hates corn:

1. the food industry
2. it's not Paleo
3. it's corny

But despite all these reasons, my boyfriend loves it. When he cooked a few ears for our BBQ the other night, however, it went largely untouched. I felt a little vindictively happy. Ha! Our friends don't like it either! Corn lovin freak!

But since I have a phobia of wasting food, it must be consumed; I suppose it's a sunk cost anyway. So that's why I made a teensy batch of

Chunky Corn Salsa

90 calories, 21g carbs, 3g protein, 1g fat, 2g fiber, 159mg sodium

Makes a bit over 1 cup - double/triple/quadruple as needed, depending on how much leftover corn you have

• 1/2 ear of corn (cooked), sliced off the cob
• 1 plum tomato, diced
• 1/4 cup diced red onion
• 1 small jalapeno, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp cilantro (1 Tbsp if fresh)
• juice of 1/2 a lime
• cumin, chili powder, salt & pepper to taste

Chop, mix & let sit for a few hours (or ideally overnight) for all the flavors to come together. Not that it won't be good off the bat, but it certainly improves with time! Serve with some tortilla chips (oh look, more corn). Currently crushin Xochitl brand.

Yes I know I just said I didn't like corn, but tortilla chips are a very large exception. I still dislike taco shells, grits, polenta, corn pudding, etc. Corn pudding might even make me wanna vomit. This corn salsa is acceptable to my maize-hatin ways because it's salsa, and it's fresh, and it uses my homegrown jalapenos, which just makes me all warm 'n fuzzy inside.

In an unmixed state: that green blob is cilantro, a la tube.

P.S. I also used to hate cilantro. It tasted like soap to me, yet now I am obsessed with it. I think it's one of those things about getting older, like suddenly not minding cleaning or flossing quite so much anymore...

Trash in My Face

This morning I was supposed to be at work at 7am... but I woke up at 7:07. My only consolation was that 7 is my favorite number - maybe it is going to be a good day anyway! Unlikely, at this point, because this is what I managed to pack for lunch in my 30-second grab-n-go panic:

   

I don't have an actual picture, because it looks like someone pooped on my mac & cheese. My friends, who hung out with my boyfriend all night while I slaved away at work until 11pm, apparently consumed (most) of this creation. The little bit that was left became my lunch, along with a side of frozen peas and carrots. I felt like I was in an elementary school cafeteria. I give it a C, its saving grace being its sodium. Delicious sodium.

I know people say that you are in 100% control of what you put in your mouth, and any "bad" things you eat are your own damn fault... but you know what? I could have either grabbed this or some celery, and a few stalks of celery are not going to hold me over on an 8 hour workday.

Along that same vein, someone might argue that if I had at least grabbed some celery to go with the meal it would be more nutritious. But really? It's just an additional 10 calories and a miniscule amount of nutrition. It's not like my body is starved of vitamins and I'm dying of cholera - the celery does not cancel out the badness of the main dish. I eat well most of the time. I don't "need" celery RIGHT NOW.

Lesson learned: if you have to eat garbledegook in order to not pass out from hypoglycemia while on shift, just do it. Whatever. Stay sane, eat healthy when you can. Do the best you can under the circumstances. And my circumstances were that I had negative 15 minutes to get to work and my friends eat like 7 year olds :)

Punching! Kicking! Shrimping!

A few weeks ago I took a couple of group TurboKick classes... I was great with right-sided coordination, but when we switched to left I'd just sort of stand there and jerk around. Sexy! I liked it, but I liked it like I like tetris: it's entertaining, but it's something that keeps you interested in improving your skills only until there's something more interesting in the room. Like a television.

So it's apparently not my thing. But I have been convinced that punching/kicking/looking B.A. is indeed a good workout (just maybe not to club music). And thus, my shameless plug for my step-cousin's (is that a thing?) new app! He's some kind of double black belt, martial artist pro - if I knew the lingo I could be more accurate - and has launched this app so you can have your own virtual personal boxing & martial arts trainer. I will be giving a review once I've got the time to really get a go at it. But here, you go first.

Anyhow- this morning I couldn't find anything inspirational for breakfast, but I did have a huge bunch of radishes that needed to be used. I could literally only think "salad," but that's too boring. And so, the only other option was to concoct

Mexican Shrimp Ceviche

1/2 recipe = 90 calories, 11g carb, 12g protein, 1g fat, 2g fiber, 239mg sodium

It should probably be side dish rather than an entree, simply by virtue of its punch in the face of flavor!

Well, I should say "ceviche," since a real ceviche would have cooked the shrimp with, in my step-brother's words, "nothing but the power of citrus!" If you want to mod to make it a real ceviche, look here for citrus-power-cooking. But I was a hobo and used the frozen, precooked kind. I didn't even know you could do such a thing with citrus until about a week ago on vacation, where there was a ceviche on the fancy-pants salad bar.

a matchstick cut

Things gathered:

• 1 small tomato, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 of a medium cucumber, sliced into 1" matchsticks
• 5 radishes, sliced into matchsticks
• 4 very small jalapenos, sliced into thin rings
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp cilantro (I used a tube of chopped cilantro- keeps fantastically so you can keep it around. If I had real fresh cilantro at my disposal it would probably have been about 1 Tbsp, chopped)
• 3 oz frozen shrimp (about 15 of medium-sized)
• 1 tsp cumin
• salt & pepper to taste

Combine all these ingredients into a bowl and toss.
Now enjoy. Yes, really, that's it. Nothing to cook, just chop, mix, eat. The dish is kind of like eating less-salty salsa... and I put salsa on pretty much everything, so that was a-okay with me. I bet it tastes even better if it's left in the fridge overnight (or over like 30 seconds, which is when I commenced feeding).

My only regret was not doubling up on the shrimp, since I felt there were way more veggies than protein. The shrimp is really the only element to absorb the spice and acid, so a wee bit more may of made it less intense.

The jalapenos (which I grew myself, thankya!) burned my face off a little, but some people like that kinda thing. I gave a bite to the boyfriend, whose response was "that's good... jalapenos... holy f@#%." Scrape out some of the seeds if you want it milder, or if you're really a wuss you could replace the jalapenos with just plain old bell peppers.

Jalapenos from my own garden! So satisfying.