A day of doing not much somehow equals a long post

Real food is important at any time. I haven't read much on the subject--but it seems like a mindset I was raised with. I do how Michael Pollan sums it up in his manifesto:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

...And you’re better off eating whole fresh foods rather than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to “eat food,” which is not quite as simple as it sounds. For while it used to be that food was all you could eat, today there are thousands of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages elaborately festooned with health claims, which brings me to another, somewhat counterintuitive, piece of advice: If you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

You can see how quickly things can get complicated.

Being sick I want real food, but don't have much energy to prepare it. A couple of recipes that seemed easy enough to prepare, despite not seeming to be out of bed for more than 2 hours at a time all day.


First, chicken. Mom's recipe for the crock pot. It turned out simply enough, despite my not having cooked a chicken any time recently. And now I'm prepared to make chicken soup in the crock pot tomorrow.

Roast Chicken

Thoroughly wash one 3-4 lb. roasting hen and pat dry.
(Patting dry ensures good browning.)

Sprinkle cavity generously with salt, pepper, and parsley.

Place in Crock Pot. Dot chicken breast with margarine.

Sprinkle with parsley, basil, tarragon, or rosemary.

Cover and cook on HI 1 hour, 15 min.; then LO 8–10 hours.
(Or to cook it faster leave it on high. I'm not sure how long it takes then. Maybe 3-5 hours?)

Second recipe is adapted from Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Basically chop up the ingredients and throw them in the oven. The pan I used was a bit big for the amount I cooked, so a little bit of burning happened, but it was still good enough to make again.

Tsimmes

1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped into inch-size pieces (or so)
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 apple, chopped (see what I mean about the chopping?)
Handful of dried apricots, chopped
Squirt of lemon juice
Pour in some orange juice
Add a little apple juice (the original recipe, about double what I made, called for 1 and 2/3 cups of juice)
1/2 tsp. salt
Sprinkle of cinnamon
Dash of ginger

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix ingredients together in bowl. Put in baking dish (apparently want it deeper rather than thinner layer). Cover (aluminum foil worked for me) and bake for a while. 1.5 to 2 hours? I went a bit over. Then again, I burned.

And it is now most definitely time for bed again.