Busy Week and Good News

Congratulations to Danny and Jenni who have seven months to go until a new little Currit joins their family. We are very excited. Jenni has been feeling a bit sick, but by the time the Beautiful Seattle Spring hits, she should be feeling better.

We miss you all! Thanksgiving and Christmas were great! Are we all tired of the cold weather yet?

Travis' blog was so interesting. We had Tommy and Alex's roommates (plus Reilly) for dinner yesterday. Feeding oneself in college seems to be a crisis. School is so expensive and the students work so hard, but they only take the time (or have the time) to eat pretty bad junk. There's got to be a better way. I think the secret might be taking some more time to prepare food, and having a plan. I suggested that posting four easy dinner ideas on the fridge then having the ingredients on hand would take some of the stupor out of the process. I also think its important to have a couple of dinners out of a can. I like canned ravioli. Is there anything else out of a can worth eating?? Any suggestions? I like tuna a lot, too. I watched Steve Currit put chunk albacore tuna in his salad when he was doing South Beach and thought, that looks good to me. I read an article on canned food, and very little nutrition is lost in the canning process. So you have to look for flavor and also realize that it is probably already salted to taste (or beyond). We should experiment with beef stews. I wonder if there's a good brand out there.

Jenni's cookbook is very helpful (I want a copy of a new one). Could we earmark some recipes that are super easy and good?

I think to survive you have to have high quality nutrition. For me that begins with real whole wheat bread. Great Harvest is a wonderful bread and freezes very well. I freeze the loaves in half, but you could wrap two slices in a sandwich bag, then in a bigger bag (double bagging prevents freezer burn). Not all ww bread in the stores is quality enough to satisfy real nutrition needs. Jenni's recipe for bread is good. I love it.

Anyway, I would start by centering my eating on real whole grains and surrounding myself with high quality fruit and vegetables, lean meats and eggs. Maybe taking a mulitiple vitamin supplement would be a good idea. I would eliminate caffeine and sugar, and all of those things that don't build solid health, but just stress it out.

Okay. Good luck. Any suggestions for surviving college starvation?

Love, Mom