I Will Not Eat My Greens

In many movies and comedy sketches I have often heard the line “eat your greens.” I had to look up what greens were. My source labeled greens as collard greens. They are in the same source of greens as kale and broccoli. I found them disgusting. I suspect the vegans in the world think they are delicious, not me. A week ago I wrote about my virgin experience with kale. I love kale, especially when it is drizzled with salad dressing. The collard greens supplied in my Green Chef dinner package turned me off. Maybe they will grow on me if I eat enough of them, fat chance of that happening.

Collard
Kale
Close up of a bowl of Italian boiled spinach

Each time I cruise through the vegetable aisle at my local grocery store I am amazed at the quantity of green leafy lettuces and other strange looking eatables from around the world. On a good day I will pick something I have never tried before just for the sake of experimentation. I can tolerate the lettuces, but when it comes to the heavier leaved darker green things like collard I pass by. As a kid I hated spinach. That is because my mother had only one way to prepare it, by boiling. Boiled spinach leaves are the world’s worst resembling some very old and wet sea weed. On the other hand fresh spinach leaves are excellent in a salad. The best is baby spinach drizzled with poppyseed dressing and with sliced strawberries on top. The chef who invented that combination should be in the Chef Hall of Fame.

Baby spinach with strawberries and poppy seed dressing

I find that the Green Chef meal plan is making me a better cook, and making me develop a more refined pallete. I hate waste and will never throw anything away, I’d much rather make it the way they instruct me to and try it. So far I am batting 5/6, only the collard greens have been a loser. In major league baseball a batting average of 5/6, (0.8333) would command a hundred million dollar contract. I’ll stick to keeping score with my selections from Green Chef.

KETO-Green Chef vs Factor 75

This week I began a new adventure, actually two adventures. My pre-prepared KETO meal plan is expensive and I was looking for ways to cut the costs. Of course, I searched the internet and found a business called Green Chef. It is different than the Factor 75 that I have been using. Green Chef sends fresh ingredients and a how to cook recipe card with step by step instructions on what to do with each item. Factor 75 sends me pre-cooked ready to heat and eat meals. Both of them are expensive. So far, I like the Green Chef meals because it forces me to cook. I am learning a lot of new things. The meals are also very tasty and colorful. It takes me anywhere from 30-45 minutes to make the meals. Each Green Chef meal serves two, or in my case it is two meals, one is reheated the next day. The price per serving is lower than my Factor 75 meals. Todate, I have cooked three meals all very fresh and very tasteful, and there is plenty to eat. I have one more to go before I decide whether to reorder another round of meals.

Staying KETO is difficult these days. Maybe it is the change in weather and the shorter daylight, but I am craving comfort food, and too often I cheat like heck to fit a piece of cake into the diet. Cooking gives me a degree of comfort even though the food is not classified as comfort food. One thing I like more about the Factor 75 meals is that I can be eating within five minutes of initiating a meal. Unless I opt to go for a wrap. Wraps take a while to put together. Nothing is easier than poking a hole into a plastic wrapper and setting the micro-wave for two and a half minutes. The next step is to peel back the entire covering to stir the contents and to place it back into the MW for another minute or two. I can be eating in five minutes after taking the package out of my refrigerator. While with the Green Chef meal I am dicing, chopping spicing, sautéing, searing, and mixing. a couple of different entrees, one meat and a vegetable mix, with a sauce.

I suppose it all depends on how hungry I am, and how lazy I feel. If I had my way I’d be very happy with sub-sandwiches but they involve bread and we all know bread is not KETO.

In my very first sentence above I mentioned I had two adventures. The second involved building a fire ring in my back yard and setting it up for an evening fire. The kindling came from the trees in my yard, and the fuel came from my wood shop. I finally cut up the boards that were once a special table I built for my mother to keep her house plants on. It served her well for many years, and after she and dad died, and we were finally emptying the house I inherited the table. For many years it acted as a catchall surface for house plants, and the usual junk that accumulates around the house. Two years ago I cleared it and disassembled it for future wood projects. It lay on my shop floor during that time, and this week, I cut it up into smaller burnable pieces for evening fires.

Sitting in the cool night air warming myself by the dancing flames brought back a lot of old memories from my Scout Master days and also when we were on family camping trips. Each time we had a fire one of the family became the self designated pyro-maniac whose job it was to keep the flames roaring. When I first moved into this house I drew a plan of what I wanted in my garden: a pond, waterfall, stream, mini-forest, vegetable garden, flower garden, and fire-pit. I accomplished all except the fire-pit, it is time to close out the plan as complete.