Homemade whole wheat tortillas

Homemade Whole Wheat Tortillas Recipe

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 T olive oil

1/2 cup warm tap water

Combine flour, Baking powder and salt. Add olive oil and stir until well combined. Put in warm tap water 1 T at a time until dough can be gathered into a ball. Add more water if needed 1 T at a time. Knead on floured surface 15-20 times. Let dough rest for 15 minutes. Divide dough into 10-12 equal portions and shape into balls. On floured surface roll out ball from center into a circle. Cook on ungreased skillet over medium-high heat on each side about 30 seconds or until puffy. You can cook them longer until they are crisp like a big chip. Wrap them in a towel to stay warm.

Original source.

Goals and priorities

Part of the reason I started this blog was to record my progress on my healthy living journey. In the past year I’ve had a lot of incremental milestones, such as going off dairy, consulting with a homeopathic chiropractor and then a holistic doctor, taking certain herbal supplements, ect. And if they don’t get written down somewhere, they get lost, blurred or forgotten.

For example, I had the vague idea that I’ve been dairy free for a year now, but I didn’t remember the date. I looked back on my facebook timeline (not the easiest thing to do) and found that my first dairy free day was Jan. 30. Of course, I had a couple of stumbles (I can eat pizza—wait, no, guess that was a bad idea. I’m sorry, clean laundry, my bad.) and it took a while for me to figure out label reading for dairy ingredients.

I also want to use my blog to work through my thoughts and form plans for the future. I want to keep moving forward toward even better health including honing my healthy cooking skills, overall general health and additional weight loss. I realized, to do that efficiently, I should pick a few goals to tackle before moving on to the next thing. That way I won’t get overwhelmed and not accomplish anything. To do this, I need to write down some of my goals and then prioritize them.

In no particular order, here’s a list of some of the things I’d like to do:

Clean a little bit every day.

* Add exercise. (I did use my Biggest Loser for the Wii for the first time on Jan. 24 and it was awesome. Sad that I bought it almost two years ago and never used it but moving on.)

Add raw food to every meal. (I think least once a day is a more reasonable place to start.)

* Make salad in a jar for the week. (Buy jars.) I tried this in one of my pyrex dishes with a lid and it worked fine with no jars. I just took my whole supply of salad fixing in on Monday and ate it most days for part of my lunch. Putting my salad dressing in the bottom didn’t work that great—need to experiment.

Make homemade whole wheat tortillas for the week. Healthier than store-bought tortillas.

Start making weekly menu plans? Plan to try one new thing a week.

Find a way to organize and keep new recipes.

Start shopping for groceries based on the week’s menu and what new recipes I want to try.

Start blogging lists of the food I eat every day. (I’ve been thinking since I first brainstormed my list and I think it’s a better idea if I do this old school—scribble it down in a paper food journal.)

Drink while I facebook. (I tried this and it lasted one day.)

* Increase water and tea intake.

Blog at healthy, happy Holly.

Take breaks at work to get up and walk around a bit. Walk up and down the stairs twice a day? (the building has three floors) Hmm, to be realistic, let’s say I do this specifically when I notice I’m sore from sitting still too long.

OK, I went back through and put a * next to the ones I want to focus on first. I still think most are important and goals I want to work on, but I have to start somewhere. All three are ones I have already been working on or started last week (exercise and the salad one) so I want to continue to reinforce and perfect those.

Refined list:

Continue to increase water and tea intake. I’m up to nearly three containers (thermoses) of tea per day at work. I need to measure, but I think that’s 16 ounces times three = 48 ounces. The next level is to get it up to 64 ounces by drinking two thermoses in the morning and two in the afternoon. I should also drink one glass of water right away every morning at home.

Add raw veggies to my daily diet by bringing salad fixings to work on Monday and eating it throughout the week.

Exercise. I’m going to start with 20 minutes three times a week and move up from there. My sister Katy and I are supporting each other by texting after we exercise. The non-exerciser can then A. congratulate and support the exerciser and B. feel appropriately guilty and motivated.

Recipe only has one "I"

Am I the only one that always thinks there should be an extra "I" in the word recipe? It seems I always misspell that one.

Moving on.

I've got to find a good way to keep track of new recipes I find. My normal system is to email it to myself and then either A. Save it into a folder I have on our computer and then forget it, never to actually cook it or B. forget it in my email, never to actually cook it. I have TONS of both and at this point, I need to just move on and start fresh.

I do have a bit better success with printing recipes from the internet. But even if I do cook them once or even more than once I eventually A. lose the paper. B. Tack it to my pegboard in the kitchen and forget is there, lost in all the other recipes I never actually got around to cooking. I also tend to get the paper dirty as I cook, which is annoying.

I feel pretty good about the meals I have been cooking lately. They are simple, healthy and tasty. Chad likes them too. But I know I am in danger of being in a rut. I don't want our meals to get boring because that's when we'll start going out to eat more again or eating less healthier options at home.

I think part of the problem is that I read these recipes but I don't remember to write down the ingredients I need and follow through with buying them at the grocery store. Also, the overwhelming amount of recipes out there. I need to find a few good ones to try, evaluate and then somehow keep track of so I can cook again. In addition, when it comes right down to time to cook, I often just make something up rather than actually following a recipe. Or read a recipe or two to get ideas and then take it from there. That's fine but it's too easy to stay in a rut that way and also, I can't remember what I did or how to recreate it.

Maybe this blog will be a way for me to organize my recipes, including whether I liked them?

Which brings me to a recipe I found that I would like to try. I have been pondering an idea for stuffing--one of my very favorite foods. Since I don't eat dairy and I am trying to avoid yeast and mushrooms, I have been trying to think up how to make a healthy for me stuffing that actually tastes good. I made homemade vegan stuffing for thanksgiving and it was very good, but it did contain yeast and mushrooms.

I've purchased yeast-free bread in the past and it's not that tasty. It's OK as toast (because, obviously, without yeast it's not that soft) but lately I've been just going without bread and eating wraps instead of sandwiches. Tortillas work great for everything from tuna salad wraps to even peanut or sunflower seed butter and honey wraps.

I do think that the yeast free bread would work in stuffing and/or homemade croutons, however. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Recently I stumbled across a blog, with a great recipe and photos, with a recipe for spring stuffing from Oh She Glows. I think this is it! I can combine my ideas with this and make the stuffing idea a reality. Plus, I really like the idea of adding more veggies to this recipe--something I hadn't thought of.

Say what?

I've been thinking about and saying the phrase food as medicine a lot lately. But it wasn't until recently that I found out this comes from something Hippocrates said.

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

In fact, it's alluded to in the classical version of the Hippocratic Oath.

"I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick."

Of course, the modern version doesn't say anything about diet. Read this article for details.

Food Matters documentary

I watched a documentary and I have to say I highly recommend that anybody interested in health watch it asap. It's on Netflix and you can learn more about it and see a trailer here.

It's a little overwhelming, especially at the start. A bit gloom and doom. The soil is depleted and chemicals are dumped on everything. Your food has no nutrients because it travels days to the grocery store (OK, I'll eat more frozen veggies) Which was followed by, everybody is nutrient depleted because we eat too much cooked food!! (Doh, now what? I live in an apartment and can't have a garden, even in the summer.)

Once I got past the despair, I'm really glad I watched it. My conclusion is that small but significant changes can make a big difference in health. So what are a couple of take-aways from this movie? Doable things that could have a positive impact?

1. I'm eating much more healthfully than I have have before, including vegtables. However, I can add more raw foods into my diet.
2. I've always said that if I got cancer (or any illness) I would want to consider natural remedies. My new thought is more nuanced and developed. A. I want to continue living my life more healthfully to hopefully avoid disease. B. I will DEFINITELY explore natural remedies should I ever get cancer or another disease. 
3. I'm willing to consider high doses of vitamins for illnesses, ranging from a simple cold to cancer or depression.

Healthy, happy bean "salsa"

I'm avoiding tomatoes and a few other things right now (some days more successfully than others) so I was pondering how I could make a tomato-free salsa with nothing but ingredients that I can, and especially should, eat. I actually think it worked out pretty good. I like the taste and it's pretty healthy. The * items are foods my holistic doc has encouraged me to eat as much of as possible.

I'm not putting measurements down because the recipe is flexible, which is pretty much any recipe I make, really.

Healthy, happy bean "salsa"
black beans
navy beans
olive oil
cumin
garlic powder
salt

hand chopped:
red onion*
green onion*
cilantro

food processor:
garlic cloves*
little bit fresh jalapeno

Other possible ingredients
really, you could use whatever type of bean you prefer
whatever onions you have on hand
lemon juice
sliced olives    

Recipe rating:
Holly: Definitely make again! Healthy and tasty.
Chad: He ate some, but, as he said, it's a Holly thing, not a Chad thing. 

I ate this on corn chips but I think there are other ways I could eat it. Brainstorming.

On bean burrito
A fresh bean burrito with whole wheat tortillas
On chicken breast
On rice
On crackers
On toast, but I am avoiding yeast right now.

This all started because I decided I was just going to have some tomato salsa (from the store) even though I know I feel healthier when I don't eat tomatoes. I took one bite and it just didn't feel right. So I pondered it for a while and this is what I came up with. I must say, it tastes much better to me and, best of all, it promotes my healthiness instead of making me feel less healthy. 

New Year, new me

I have started and abandoned so many blogs. It’s sad. I almost hate to start another one for fear I will do it again. As today is the first day of lucky twenty thirteen, it’s just too tempting, however.

In fact, I almost named my blog that: Lucky 2013. But since I’m aiming to make this a long term project, I decided I’d better pick something else. What will I do in 2014 when I’m still blogging and it’s no longer 2013?

Lucky 2013 first crossed my mind while I was listening to a financial advice show on NPR. They asked a caller what his New Year’s resolution was and he said it was the same as always, to try to save more money, an effort he typically started at the beginning of the year and then lost steam on as the year wore on. But you are going to do it this year, right, the host questioned. Oh, yes, the caller said. 2013 is a very lucky year.

I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe the number 13 is unlucky. Or black cats. Or broken mirrors. So I’m going to embrace 2013 as a potentially wonderful, luck-filled year.

Why wouldn’t it be? One year ago I was just starting a wellness journey prompted by three months of three upper respiratory infections in a row and four courses of antibiotics. I went off dairy. I consulted with a homeopathic doctor and then a holistic doctor. I radically changed my diet. I got healthier. I got happier. I started sleeping better. I haven’t taken a single prescription medicine in more than a year. (Food is my medicine.) I lost 30 pounds.

In lucky 2013 I plan to continue my efforts to be healthier. That’s going to mean more appointments with my holistic doctor. Continuing to eat better. Adding exercise to my routine, now that I finally have the energy to do so. And, hopefully losing more weight—although that’s not my main goal, it’s just a happy side effect of being healthier. I don’t want to put a number on it, but I really hope I will be a size or more smaller by the time my brother gets married (date not yet confirmed.)

This blog is for me. Which means if you come to visit, you are welcome, but I won’t be writing for anyone but myself. I want to use it as a journal, a record of the events of 2013—and maybe beyond. That means some of my entries won’t be anything but lists, like what I ate and what physical activities I’ve done. Recipes I have modified and notes on how they worked out.

I read a book a while ago (fiction) about an older lady that had many notebooks filled with lists: to do, grocery lists, the dates of medical procedures of her children.  She didn’t mean for them to be a journal but at the end of her life that’s what they were. A really important record of her life in lists. One list isn’t that interesting. But all the lists of one year or a lifetime would be very revealing. Of course, I’ll probably include more than just lists, but I’m not going to feel pressured to do more than what I feel like doing in any given day.