I hadn't put much thought into how my new diet was going to work if we were to spontaneously decide to go on a short trip somewhere and today I got my chance to find out. It works out just fine! Having leftover grains in the refrigerator helped a lot, but I could've taken a little more time to cook up some millet if I had to (about a half hour). And if I had happened to have quinoa soaking in the refrigerator, I could've cooked that up even quicker. Oh yes, and I also have teff in the cupboard, which cooks up pretty fast too. Anyway, it took very little time to warm up the leftovers, cook some fresh broccoli, and put them steaming hot into a wide-mouth thermos jug.
We drove down the coast a little, visited the famous Corralitos Market and Sausage Company near Watsonville (Michael likes their sausages!), went for a walk in Moss Landing, and then drove on to San Juan Bautista. After a nice walk around town and the California Mission San Juan Bautista, we walked over to a nice picnic area and ate our lunch.
My thermos jug of leftover soup (wakame seaweed and Miso Master's Brown Rice Miso), leftover rice cooked with sunflower seeds, and freshly steamed broccoli really hit the spot! And the white picnic table, green grass, and tall trees provided a wonderful fresh backdrop. I found that by chewing everything well and breathing in the scenery around me, I was very satisfied and eager to continue on with our travels.
I found some plates and bowls in an antique store to start my new collection. I'll be showing them off tomorrow, I'm sure, in My Daily Diet Report!
Later on, we drove to Morgan Hill and stopped for a coffee/tea break at Peet's Coffee & Tea company. (I just learned on wikipedia that Peet's was founded in 1966 in Berkeley.) I bought their small serving of Tazo Calm Chamomile Tea and asked them to keep the tea bag separate from the very hot water, so I could save it for later and use two of my own bags of organic Kukicha tea instead.
It turned out to be a beautiful Sunday Drive and we were back home in time for me to cook up a pot of quinoa/wild rice and a pan of baby broccoli. I just learned that baby broccoli (also called broccolini) is not a young broccoli plant as I had assumed. It is actually a hybrid of regular broccoli and Chinese broccoli, and it is more tender than regular broccoli.
The baby broccoli turned out especially nice this time because of the way I cooked it. I cut the stems into one-inch pieces while the pan was heating up, then after the pan was hot, I added a couple of teaspoons of organic, unrefined sesame oil and, immediately after that, the broccoli stems. They sizzled and crackled for a few moments and then calmed down to simmer for a few minutes under a lid. Then I added the broccoli flower pieces, some pink, unrefined Utah sea salt (Redmond Trading Co.), and some water, and simmered it on a slow boil, uncovered, for another 7 minutes or so. Delicious!
Incidentally, I found an interesting web site about feeding the pink sea salt to animals, which includes a detailed breakdown of the minerals and nutrients for their livestock-grade pink sea salt. The web site is called Wolf Creek Ranch, Home of Whispering Winds Wholistic Animal Sanctuary.
Related Blog Articles:
MY DAILY DIET REPORT — Day #4
Eating On The Road
Adapting To The Road
