Making a List (and checking it twice!)

One of the main focuses of today was getting my grocery list in order. I spent quite a bit of time online researching different ingredients. I think I'm quite a creative cook so I wasn't really looking for recipes. I was mainly looking up nutritional values of things so that I could try and make the healthiest choices for my big shop on Sunday.

I also took some time to look up egg white substitutes. Now, before I traveled, my friend Raine was looking through some of my recipes and she asked me what exactly was in egg white substitutes - an ingredient in my Spinach Ricotta Quiche - and I couldn't tell her. I didn't know what the egg whites were being substituted with! My research today helped me clarify two things. First of all, there's an error in my recipe - I actually did not use egg white substitute, but instead used all liquid egg whites. Second of all, egg white substitute can actually be composed

of different ingredients, but they are all natural (whew! I was nervous about what I would find!). I looked up the info on several websites, but found this article to be the most helpful.

There was also some useful info about egg whites and their substitutes here. In any case, I wouldn't hesitate to use either the 100% liquid egg whites or the egg white substitutes - I've found it to be very helpful when trying to come up with a high protein quick snack in the middle of the day (recipes to follow soon!)

I'm a bit short for time at the moment, but I'm hoping to be able to move away from pre-packaged nutrition bars and other foods and start making things more from scratch. This is particularly because there are a lot of foods that aren't easily available here. For example, Larabars (which are supposed to be excellent) or Kashi products. Also, I like the idea of being able to control the ingredients in my food. Anyway.

Another thing I looked up was the nutritional value of fresh versus frozen vegetables. I try to eat fresh vegetables whenever possible, but lately the produce in Kuwait seems to be in a rather sorry state. Produce that is imported (rather than the local products) is often much better quality, but sometimes I wonder at how fresh the broccoli from Australia really is ... Someone once told me that frozen vegetables were just as good if not better than fresh vegetables - today I took the time to try and find out. There are several articles on the Internet that do say there is no problem eating frozen vegetables (and yes, they do say that in some cases frozen is better). Two of the main things the articles talk about are 1) the flash freezing of the vegetables actually locks in most of the nutritional value and 2) the vegetables are picked and frozen when they are at their peak and this contrasts to what may be available to you at the supermarket (could have spent days in transit). Having a good stock of frozen vegetables in my freezer will be a huge time saver when it comes to cooking, especially with how busy things are going to be over the next few weeks.

I'm looking forward to getting back to cooking! What are favorites on your grocery list?