Life in the Cheese Drawer

i’m trying to eat healthier, which includes me trying to eat more fish. Tonight i tried to fry fish and failed. fish fry fail.
anyway, i bought frozen cod from walmart, which may have been my first mistake. the second mistake may have been using cast iron instead of my non-stick pan (which does wonders with chicken tenders!). thirdly, fail may have been  exacerbated by the flakiness of panko bread crumbs versus real bread crumbs.
the fish may have been saved if i’d seasoned it enough, but even a liberal shaking of old bay seasoning in the panko didn’t do anything for the fish.
so basically i plopped on my plate tonight some gross, slimy cod surrounded by greasy fried panko crumbs. i dipped it in cocktail sauce (aka: ketchup mixed with dijon mustard), which sort of covered up the blahness of the whole ordeal.
thankfully i had a huge sweet potato on the side, which helped things immensely (i eat them sans brown sugar [but yes to the butter], so healthy, right?).
ultimately what really helped was me going to the store aftewards and buying a pint of half baked. that stuff will right any food wrongs. (i just checked again, and whew, no corn syrup.) so much for healthy.

i’ve been on a smoothie kick lately. and not the green kale and spinach kind, either.
these are smoothies i make after i run forever on the treadmill and need something to pick me up afterward. in the past i’ve added cocoa, peanut butter, or yogurt (GREEK GODS not that crap chobani), but recently i’ve been focusing on fruit.
1. get out your blender. if you can’t find your blender, it’s probably because it’s stuffed away somewhere in the back of a cupboard because you use it so infrequently. good luck.
2. get out your fruit. for me, this means inspecting the bananas i bought 5 days ago to figure out which one is the worst looking because that one needs to be used first. i also buy frozen fruit for other fruit (strawberries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries, etc.) since fresh fruit will grow mold in my fridge before i use it all.
3. get out your frozen orange juice concentrate. this stuff is key – it’s what adds some sweetness to the smoothie. don’t use too much – that stuff is potent. i scoop out a healthy teaspoon. i just keep the tube in the freezer with the metal cap on and hope it doesn’t get freezer burnt.
4. throw some ice cubes in there if you want to dilute it. otherwise you can always add more frozen fruit. if you’re worried about calorie count, ice cubes are a good filler.
5. add some milk. i normally start off with about 1/2 cup, but after the blender doesn’t want to blend, i add some more to loosen it up.
6. if you really want to get fancy, throw some flaxseed in there. i don’t know if it’s necessarily still beneficial if it’s a year past expiration, but it sounds fancy, right?
7. blend that crap together. if you want to get ultra fancy, add some cocoa or peanut butter. or both. pour it into a glass. enjoy your somewhat healthy shake-like drink.

 
sushi night! nom nom nom.