Mastering the Art of Microwave Cooking

The number-one most important rule of cohabitation should be, “do not cook a tuna casserole from your dorm’s microwave." Yes, I speak from experience: I tried making some this week (slightly adapted from this recipe). Needless to say, the results were not the crispy, cheesy goodness that can be seen in the picture; my casserole had hot and cold patches, a soggy texture, and a watery "sauce".
My attempt at the casserole was so bad, I didn't even try to photograph it.

And I'm the sort of person who photographs almost everything they eat.

With that said, I did have some excellent microwave recipes (healthy or relatively healthy) that I could make from the comfort of my dorm room:

Banana, Oats and Peanut Butter Mugcake 
- 3 tbsp. peanut butter
- 1 overripe banana
- 1/2 c. oats
- 1 egg
- Sweetener to taste

Mix all the ingredients in a mug, microwave on high for a minute. Let cool.

Convenience: 7/10. You still have to find eggs, and there isn't a place on or near campus where they sell fewer than a dozen.
Taste: 10/10. I'm a fan of the PB+banana combination.
Texture: 6/10. Nothing on a microwave will get more than this. With that said, it was relatively good. For a microwave.
Health points: 7/10. At around 300 calories per mugcake, I found them to be much more filling than dining commons dessert.


Quesadilla
- 1 tortilla flat (I've used the ProteinUp flats too)
- Cheese

Convenience: 8/10. Have to find cheese, but cheese goes by faster than eggs do.
Taste: 5/10 - 8/10. Depends on the cheese you use, the tortilla, and if you season it well. M
Texture: 6/10. A little limp.
Health points: 10/10. Again, depending on the cheese and tortilla used, but mine were around 200 calories a serving (2 quesadillas per serving), which is very low, and I found them to be very filling.

Expectation versus reality:  





Scrambled Eggs
- 1 egg
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Milk (optional)
- Cheese (optional)
- Any add-ins

Place on a mug, whip to combine (not until peaks have formed, but definitely homogenized). Microwave on high for thirty seconds, move around, then put back for another thirty.

Convenience: 7/10. Again, the pesky issue of the eggs. If you consume more than one egg a day, however, it's very convenient.
Taste: 6/10. Not comparable to skillet eggs at all, but it does the trick on a pinch.
Texture: 4/10. Subjectively, too airy for my taste. My roommate liked them, however.
Health points: 10/10. Due to the manner of cooking, you're able to control exactly what goes in. This makes it rank very high on the health scale-- much better than the dining commons eggs.

Looks suspicious, tastes okay. Like the best things in life, but with a worse texture. 

That's all for this week, folks! I do hope you try out these recipes, and send pictures if you can! I developed the recipes on my own during the course of this semester, and with a little creativity in the dorm kitchen, I'm pretty sure you can out-recipe me!

Blessed Be The Fat

I really think I'm starting to get the hang of this HFLC diet by now: I don't get hunger pangs randomly throughout the day, I can go for more than a couple hours without snacking, and the sole mention of dessert doesn't get me salivating like Pavlov's dogs. In a nutshell, I've managed to completely change my way of eating (a literal 180 turn), without a hitch.

Ah, the young metabolism.

I've truly learnt to appreciate the massive diet changes my body can adapt to, given that I basically spent a month in a carb-heavy diet, and now I completely switched over to a fat-heavy one. That is, my carbohydrate intake in the HCLF (high carb, low fat) diet was around 200-250 grams of carbs a day, and no more than 50 grams of fat, and now I consume no more than 50 grams a day of carbs and around 100 grams of fat. Protein intake went from around 75 grams for HCLF, to around 125 grams for HFLC, but that is also taking into account that protein is usually mixed with fat (as with cheese, meat, etc.).

A regular lunch meal for me would be something like (thank you menu.hfs.psu.edu):

A grilled chicken breast (or two)



Cucumber sauce



Grilled onions and pepper strips



Provolone cheese cubes



And greek yogurt for dessert.

That's roughly 20.3 grams of fat, 7.7 grams of carbs, and 31.9 grams of protein for my lunch, which keeps me satiated for around four hours.

A huge difference that I noticed from HCLF to HFLC was the amount of food I consumed decreased in volume. This is a very strange feeling, as I'm eating less food (in terms of volume), and therefore I feel less "full", but more satisfied with what I'm having. (Does this even make sense?)

It was definitely a tricky thing to manage at first, and I found myself overeating the first week, just to feel as full as I did when I was eating a greater amount of food. I did gain a pound in the first two weeks. However, I've since lost it, and stayed at a stable weight. I do feel that for this diet I've had to snack a bit more between meals, but since the amount of pre-packed cheese and nut snacks available in the market is staggering, I've had no problem with snacking at all.

So far, even with the slight hunger problem in the beginning, this diet has been extremely manageable and convenient in terms of college student life. A quick check of the dining hall website, and I'm on my way to a happy dining experience.

That's all for this time, folks! Thank you for navigating this experience with me, and staying tuned to my travels through the dining halls.

See you next week!

High Fat High Spirits + A Disclaimer

I must admit that before starting this blog, I cheated a little: I’d already tried some of the diets I was going to try. Therefore, I decided to arrange them in order from the hardest to the ones I felt more comfortable doing.  When doing this, I also grouped them by similarity—HCLF isn’t very different to being vegan, and HFLC isn’t very different to Paleo.

I felt the need to clarify this because my teacher approached me after last post, concerned about the ecological validity of my results: she was worried they weren’t an accurate portrayal of what was truly going on in my body, given that any metabolic change happens over a longer period of time than the one I was currently giving each diet.

I decided to take her words into consideration, and instead of changing diet every two weeks, I’ll change it every month instead. While I understand that this is still very little time to see great results, I think it’s enough time to see if a diet fits in with my lifestyle. Thus, please take all my “hard data” findings with a grain of salt, for they most likely don’t reflect a causation, but are merely signposts to help me gauge my body’s reception to the particular diet I’m following.

With that being said, I want to welcome you again for the second week of HFLC (high fat, low carb)! This is one of those diets I’d tried before, and I knew I was going to like it. I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, to be honest, and I’d much rather have a slice of pizza than dessert. This is the main reason why I didn’t like HCLF: the lack of savory, greasy, cheesy options that fit it.

This was quickly solved in these couple of weeks I tried HFLC.

I found many more options in the dining commons for HFLC, given that virtually everything in the commons has a lot of fat. The only catch then was finding only those items that were low in carbohydrates. Thankfully, this was relatively easy with the online tool (that I’ve waxed poetic about in earlier posts, so I won’t do that. But seriously, go check it out).

I also went out to Target once, to go hunting for good products to complement my diet. I must add that this was completely unnecessary, because the dining commons were pretty well stocked for this diet, but I still wanted to see what interesting products the local stores had. I found this one product that completely surpassed my expectations, and I wanted to share with you:

FlatOut Bread

ProteinUP FlatOut bread 

These flats were delicious in their Original variety (not pictured, sadly), and pretty bad in the Red Pepper Hummus version (pictured above). While the original flats were only ever-so-slightly chalky, the Red Pepper Hummus flavor was too overpowering and didn’t pair well with cheese.

Rating:

Red Pepper Hummus: 5/10

Original: 9/10

In terms of convenience, these flats were excellent—it was exceedingly easy to pick one, put cheese in it, and microwave it for a nice on-the-go breakfast before class. And at only 17g of carbs (of which 8g were fiber), it neatly fits into the diet’s goals.

P3 Portable Protein Pack

Oscar Mayer's Portable Protein Pack, $2.59, Target

I found these both in Target and The Mix, at the Pollock Dining Commons. They're 190-calorie snack packets, and they've got almonds, cheese and ham. 

Overall, these have 14g of fat and only 3g of carbs (an excellent ratio for this diet) and were incredibly filling. One pack lasted me through an entire night of cramming for exams! They were a little pricey though, compared to other snack options I'd had before. 

Rating: 

Convenience: 10/10 

Price: 6/10 

Flavor: 10/10 

 Finally, for the “hard” data:

I’ve maintained my weight since last week, within a 0.5-pound margin, which is really good. I used to have huge discrepancies every time I weighed myself before, and it looks as if my weight’s finally started to level, meaning I’m eating approximately the same amount of calories a day.

Yay for self-regulation!

Next week I’ll be exploring this diet further, talking a little more about the science behind it, as well as some “soft” factors too—how it makes me feel, my tiredness levels, hours of sleep and satiety levels. Thank you for reading!

Grace

HCLF Two

Man, I'm really starting to miss lactose.

I mean the full-fat, melt-in-your-mouth cheesy ooey-gooeyness that only comes from full-fat beauties such as this one:

Me, before I came to my senses and started watching my health. D.P Dough's, you're the best.

Given that this is both high-carb and high-fat, and also has cheese and bacon, I haven't been able to eat anything as beautiful as this calzone in around a month. However, I have been able to find beauty somewhere else: the mirror.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. I have actually seen some sort of results now.

A couple of months ago, I realized that I had little crops of pimples crowding around my nose, cheeks and forehead. I freaked out, and didn't know what to do about it... and now they're gone. It's probably the combination of a number of different factors: sleeping a little more, cutting my caffeine intake, the cooler weather, etc. Nonetheless, I really think that my diet has had a big impact on this.

Some hard facts:

1. My weight has remained stable throughout the two weeks in which I've done HCLF, which is approximately 0.5kg heavier than my initial vegan endeavors. However, Ive also gone to the bathroom less in these two weeks, because my fiber intake has been reduced
2. My perceived hunger levels are lower (I'm less hungry) than before, even if my weight has increased by 0.5 kg
3. I'm drinking less water now than I was during the last diet, and I don't really know why. I don't get as thirsty as I did before. 

My staples at the dining commons have been the soups, salad bar and the tortilla chips with salsa. Sometimes the deli section in Pollock Commons is stocked with good options-- hummus and veggies, with the occasional fancy aubergine conserve. Sadly, a problem I've encountered with the dining commons is that it's really hard to find high-carb, low-fat options; all the good high-carb items (potatoes, yams) are usually served fried, not steamed, which loads them with fat. 

In this sense, this diet has been harder to fulfill than being vegan: the rules are looser, but it's harder to achieve properly, just because of the limits that the dining commons poses on me: it's exceedingly harder to eat significantly more carbs than fat, just because there is so much fat on everything. 

That said, some of the products and places I tried and really liked were:

Wegman's hummus. The best flavor to be found, for the best price. From Wegmans, $4.99

I bought this from Pita Cabana, for around $10. It was enormous, so I had half for lunch and half for dinner. It's basically a plate full of rice, with spinach, and falafel. Excellent. 10/10.























As for my favorite thing:

Did you know that Twizzlers are low-fat and high-carb? The best thing I learned during these weeks.

Overall, in terms of convenience, I would rank this diet to be about a four, on a scale of one to ten. This is mostly due to the aforementioned fact that the commons have virtually no high-carb, low-fat options, and I had to look elsewhere for diversity.

Any comments, or questions? I'll be really happy to answer them! Next week I'll be starting with the opposite of this diet, HFLC (high-fat, low-carb), which should be easier because:

1. The food at the commons is already fat-heavy
2. I've already done a similar diet before, and it worked

With that said, thank you for reading this week's post! I'm really looking forward to see what you think about this!