Happy Eaters food fun fitness

Is the egg in this pudding...cooked? (skwigg asks dumbly and fearfully LOL)

I recently became addicted to sweet potato fries with spicy chipotle seasoning. Yum!

Today I had Cheerios and almond milk for breakfast, sun dried tomato & feta dip on Kashi crackers for lunch with a chocolate chip cookie for dessert. Probably something exciting like a turkey sandwich and Sun Chips for dinner with a bonus chocolate chip cookie. That's been my boring totally happy pattern the last few days. I still have an annoying inner dialogue about what I "should" eat. It goes something like "There are only 5 grams of protein in your breakfast. You need more protein than that. Where are the green vegetables? No fruit at all today? How can you eat that feta stuff when it doesn't have a nutrition label? It could be a bazillion calories per tablespoon and you wouldn't even know it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, BLAH..."

I'm becoming fairly skilled at ignoring my inner jibbering and eating what I'm actually hungry for instead of following external rules. I know that I have several BIG protein meals per week, green drinks, berry smoothies, veggie omelets, healthy fats. It all works out over time but that nutrition cult programing is hard to turn off.

I baked myself cookies because I was jealous of the dog's homemade treats. I kept seeing what looked like peanut butter cookies on the counter but they were dog biscuits. Bleh! So, I made some real cookies. I also adore the sun dried tomato & feta stuff from the grocery store deli. It is SPICY and it absolutely reeks of garlic and stinky cheese. My husband is repelled by it. LOL But it's something I crave. It's like a Greek pizza in a tub, really good on the Kashi Bruschetta crackers.

No, the egg is not cooked.  Which, I know, squicks some people, but I'm 47 years old and I have been eating raw eggs since I was tiny tot and I have never, no, not even once, fallen ill from eating a raw egg.  And, in fact, I have never, EVER, actually met anyone who did.  I have had several conversations with people about this over the years and, when they stop to thinkg about it, no one I know has EVER known anyone who become sick from raw eggs either! 

But, of course, everyone knows that raw eggs are evil and you will immediately become deathly ill after eating one.  Even, I, for many years, believed it.  After all, the media drummed it into my head incessantly from the 80s on. 

But... funny enough, no one really believed that before.  My mum, who grew up in Latvia, ate raw eggs.  Her dad used to sit her and her sister on his lap and tell them a story while beating a raw egg yolk with sugar until it turned white and fluffy.  My mum did the same with me and my brother and sister - it was called Guggle-Muggle. ;)  My dad used to toss a raw egg into an inch of brandy and then down it on a snowy morning before going out to shovel the snow.  'Energy and warmth' was the rationale behind that.  We would go out to dinner in the 70s as a family and the waiter would come to the table and make the caesar salad with, yes, you guessed it,  a raw egg. 

In the 80s though, a campaign started against raw eggs.  I'm not sure why (I don't recall masses of people suddenly falling ill from eggs - does anyone?) except that maybe that's when they began producing those cartons of (very expensive) liquid pasteurized eggs and egg whites and egg replacers?  I was out to lunch with a bunch of girlfriends about a month ago and we were talking about breakfast smoothies and they all gasped at the idea of me using a raw egg in mine - which I do every morning with my spinach balls.  But one of them, a former competitive swimmer and now a swim coach herself, suddenly got very thoguhtful.  She remembered that her swim coach in the 70s had the entire team drinking shakes with raw eggs - there were no real protein powders then.  No one ever got sick.  She said she might go back to it now because she remembers those shakes tasting a lot better.  And they do!  The egg yolk - where most of the good stuff is anyhow - adds a hell of a lot of taste!

All you need to do is be sensible.  Look at the egg before you crack it.  If It isn't whole and perfect (no matter if white or brown) don't use it.  If you crack it and it smells off in any way, don't use it.  Er, that's it.  It's really not hard to tell if an egg is 'off'.  There's a reason people use the phrase 'rotten eggs' to describe a bad smell.

Your sun dried tomato & feta from the grocery store sounds great!  I have recently fallen in love with a new (to Canada or to my grocery store, not sure which) Greek Yogurt Probiotic line of dips.  The Jalapeno one is fabulous and spicy.  I love everything about it, from the fact that every ingredient is a real ingredient and not a chemical name, to the fact that has all sorts of live cultures, and I adore that it has zero sugar.  But I am struggling with one ingredient.  It has canola oil in it.  WHY?  Why does YOGURT need canola oil?  Grrr.  It would be like the perfect food without the canola oil.  I am trying to eat zero PUFAs and I am so bummed that this lovely protein-packed, fabulous tasting dip for veggies has it.    So, um, my own nutrition cult programming doesn't always turn off either! 

I knew you were going to say that. :-D It is slightly squicky but you're right, people have been eating raw eggs for ages and I've never personally known anyone who got sick from a bad egg. I think it's the modern factory farm filth factor that boosted eggs into salmonella bomb territory. Before that, you never heard much about it. Not long ago, there was a recall of half a billion eggs from some poo pit in Iowa. It made me feel better about my snobby organic eggs from California. :-P You may have just given me the courage to taste raw cookie dough and cake batter again. Licking the mixer beaters never killed me as a child.

Urg.  I just did a post with facts and figures about salmonella deaths from various sources and then lost it by going to look for another statistic and forgetting to open another tab.  But anyhow, yes, there are salmonella outbreaks now and then, and about 30 deaths per year in the U.S. from eggs, but to put things in perspective:

So you are more likely to die of a killer salad than a raw egg. ;)  Funny how we aren't constantly admonished to be the lookout for toxic leafy greens, eh?

I went back to raw eggs after, or maybe towards the tail end of my BFL days.  The cost of pasteurized egg whites was prohibitive.  One day when I ran out I daringly threw in a whole egg.  My boring old shake tasted better.  I did it again for a few days, then brought home another carton of egg whites, and when I had a shake with the liquid egg white I nearly spat it out.  Thin, boring, tasteless.  I think that carton then just quietly expired in the fridge and I never looked back. ;)

I also eat raw eggs (and raw cheese and drink raw milk and raw cream)...never gotten sick. 

B: Toast with butter

L: veggie stew with bread and butter

D: I made Pasta Fagioli, which my family loves.  Bread and butter. Glass of white wine.  Chocolate covered strawberry.

Ooh, I'm envious, Jen!  I am looking to find a supplier nearby for raw milk & cream.  I don't like the fact that my cream from the store has things in it other than cream.  And I am not convinced that pasteurization doesn't degrade nutritional value.  Clean, healthy cows produce clean, healthy milk. 
 

What state do you live in?  Have you visited the website Real Milk: http://realmilk.com/.  Feel free to email me at jennyjuliana72@yahoo.com

I'm in Canada, Jen, but thanks for the offer anyway.  We have different rules regarding the sale of raw milk and its products here, I believe. 
 

Ah, ok.  It varies from state to state in the U.S., too.

Hmm, this might be fun.  Here's goes:

Brekkie:  1 egg, 2 bacon, 1 gluten free pice of toast w/butter on half, Scandinavian blueberry jam on the other.  A green tea, later a cappuccino made with half and half.

Lunch:  tiny bowl of leftover beef and veggie stew (actually, more like a soup).  Small bowl of heated sugar free applesauce w/cinnamon.

Dinner:  Tuna mixed with celery, onion, mayo, cheese and then heated till cheese melts, serve on lettuce.  Water.  About 2 spoons of cherry garcia ice cream.

And guess what?  I have NO idea of how many calories I ate, what the fat/protein/carb levels were.  I don't care today!

I was feeling guilty that my veggie levels have been pathetic lately, so I went to the store and bought lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, also apples, oranges and grapes.

I also had a weak moment and bought a little 3-pack of Svenhard's bear claws (one of my biggest weaknesses, and a gluten no-no).  However, the stars were telling me something because when I got home and unloaded all the groceries, there wasn't a sign of the bear claws.  I get the message!