Normal?

I'm uncertain whether yesterday was a day of normalcy. "Normal" is very difficult for me to define, because while the list may appear every-day to you folks, to me my cravings were distinctly abnormal. Witness: for breakfast I craved scrambled eggs and wheat-bran toast with cream cheese and a glass of soy milk. Normal by other-people standards, perhaps, but the only foods I ever want for breakfast are oatmeal, bran flakes, or something equally sweet and carb-heavy. I only eat other things if I think I should or don't have any other option. And I don't drink soy milk straight-up. That was just weird. Tasty, but abnormal.

Snack: normal. I made a batch of Mama Pea's KIND Bars on Sunday with some tweaks: only half a cup of almonds and coconut, and an added half cup of Rice Krispies for crunch and bulk. They turned out a little wet, so I think I should add in some oats if I make them again.



Abnormal: not being hungry for said KIND bar until it occurred to me that it was snack time. That may be because I was preoccupied in the half hour leading up to the break by the giant thermos of tea I chugged to wake myself up, and had more pressing matters to attend to before I unzipped my purse for my morning treat >.>

Another abnormality: lunch. Where the heck did this come from?


I'm sure you've seen me gripe about salads before. I don't "do" salads. I especially don't do Hugh Jass salads with roasted broccoli and sweet potatoes. But this was the only dish in my head when I came home, and I dutifully obliged. It wasn't very filling, though, because it was just a bunch of plant material. To round things out: more plant material plus sugar.


I took a page out of the health nuts' book and made a raw vegan avocado mousse, though I subscribe to neither group normally. In the blender:

-1 avocado
-2 tablespoons cocoa powder
-1/3 cup wildflower honey


Warning: this stuff is rich. It is literally like eating chocolate frosting out of the jar. Since I'm basically eating spoonfulls of honey dressed up with cocoa and fats, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I ate about a third of the mixture before petering out and stashing the rest in the fridge.

After lunch I went to the post office to send off Ashley's prize for my Father's Day Giveaway, then hung out at the School of Optometry eye center to pick Sweetie up from his annual exam. I savored the air conditioning and read a Reader's Digest in large print. It was the "humor" issue, so it was filled with stories on cancer screening that were interesting and jokes that were not. My afternoon snack was a bran muffin-- totally normal. Abnormal: thinking I should maybe do some miles on the treadmill before dinner, and not feeling a single hunger pang or weakness until the cool-down quarter.

Dinner: sort-of-normal.


Guess which half is mine? :D

Dessert: 100% normal.


Apple butter coffee cake + lactose-free ice cream = Yum with a capital Y.

Late night Study-Snacks: normal frozen grapes, abnormal ounce of cheddar cheese. The cheese itself wasn't abnormal, thank goodness, I'm just more likely to dive head-first into a jar of almond butter instead.

Looking over the pictures, I can say that at least my abnormality meant I got more than the necessary servings of fruits and vegetables into my system. Do you guys ever have cravings that are bizarre to you but normal to other people?

Apple Butter Coffee Cake

I've had a tough weekend nutrition-wise. Let's just say that the inevitable restriction-recovery moment arrived: the moment when I realized I could finally eat all those things I wouldn't let myself before. But I'm happy to report that despite at least three consecutive days of nachos, white bread, and absolutely no structure, my body has adjusted admirably. Everyone tells me they feel gross and sluggish after a weekend of abandon, but I'm just the opposite. My dress may be a little tight, but I have plenty of energy and finally know the joy of going more than three hours without even thinking about food or feeling that most insidious of detractors, the hunger pang.

For all the talk of liberation, though, I really should try to keep myself at least marginally well-nourished. Today I tried to get the bulk of my munchies through fruits and vegetables (for one snack I had corn on the cob, for another a batch of oven fries--bizarre by normal-people standards, but it was what I was craving). And when I baked this delectable Sunday morning treat, I healthified it just enough to turn it from a dessert into a solid breakfast option:

Apple Butter Coffee Cake
Modified from a recipe in the Dallas News
-1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
-1/2 cup sugar
-1/3 cup canola oil
-1/4 cup old fashioned oats
-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
-1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-2 eggs
-1/2 cup apple butter (I used my loot from Stoll's)
-1/2 cup light soy or skim milk
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine 3/4 cup of the flour with the sugar and oil. Remove half of this mixture and work in the oats and cinnamon for the crumb topping. To the other half, add the rest of the flour and leavenings. Beat in the eggs, apple butter, milk and vanilla. Pour the thin batter into a sprayed square pan (9x9 is preferable; 8x8 is what I had) and spread the crumb topping on top. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes until it passes the toothpick test.



A warm slice with a glass of soy milk was perfect for a lazy morning. And come afternoon, a small square with a scoop of peanut butter covered my whole grain and protein bases satisfactorily. I can't wait to try this recipe with different types of preserves in place of the apple butter.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends!

Stoll's Lakeview Restaurant

The 4th of July is next weekend, which to Sweetie's family is all about one thing: fireworks! Every year they obtain some $300 worth of fountains, cakes, sparklers and shells, then run around with lighters in the backyard for a half hour blowing that $300 to smithereens. This seemed very bizarre to me at first, because I grew up in state where fireworks on personal property were illegal, and I couldn't imagine living out in the country with neighbors who don't care whether you explode things at 10pm. But over the years I've grown used to it; last year I even partook in the lighting in the pouring rain. And I never say no to tagging along to pull those $300 worth off the shelves at Jenny Mae's. Especially because they feed me first.

Last night we drove to Loogootee, IN, a nondescript stretch of grass, corn, and highway that Google maps claims is a "city." Our destination: Stoll's Lakeview Restaurant. The aforementioned Jennie Mae recommended this place to us last year, and we were blown away by the cooking, so we were excited to come again. Note, for your entertainment, that while Jenny Mae does not have a website, this Amish restaurant does. Stoll's is in a farmhouse-type building perched on the edge of a decently sized lake, staffed by bonneted Mennonites with demure clothes but big personalities.



Their prices for entrees are pretty steep, and the buffet is too, but I don't mind for a once a year splurge (paid for by someone else :o). The four of us, me, Sweetie, AMIL and her husband, went with the buffet for variety. I made a beeline for the veggies first.


Best vegetable soup in the state!

Next came my "sustenance" course.


I didn't get much sustenance out of it because that fish was the last in the tray, which means it had been sitting out for a while and was kind of dry. I only ate a few bites. But those potatoes and that fresh baked bread with apple butter? Pure heaven.

Finally came the desserts. I wanted one of the pies in the dessert room, particularly the rhubarb, but all the good ones looked suspiciously like they contained cream :( I settled with some fruit salad from the salad bar and black cherry cobbler from the ice cream bar (but, sadly, no ice cream).


I shouldn't use the word "settled," because that fruit salad was a perfectly hefty, but super-fresh and delightful dessert on itself. The cobbler, meh. The filling was great, the pie crust a little soggy...so I didn't eat that part. I'm not a crust fan anyway.

Sweetie was more adventurous than I. He plucked up the courage to try the famous fried frog legs.


Both he and AMIL agree they taste like chicken thighs.

Unfortunately, we either came at an inopportune time or Stoll's is having a general bad time of it, because the food wasn't as good as it was last year. At least that's what the others say, because they ate more things of substance while I cooed over my bread and apple butter, which was in no way inferior. Later at the fireworks shop, Jenny Mae told us the restaurant was going out of business, because as Mennonites they wouldn't open on Sunday. They accept credit cards, film promotional videos, wear Crocs and snap chewing gum, but they just can't justify away that fourth commandment. So it seems like our little tradition will have to be amended in a year of two.

After we ate, I kept everyone waiting with some parting snapshots of the scenery.





La sigh. I'm going to miss Stoll's when it goes under. Fortunately, I had the foresight to snatch a piece of it before we left


Apple butter: a traditional Amish recipe utilizing applesauce, pineapple, and Red Hots. Hmm....

Cheeseless "Nachos"

Ever since the weather warmed up, I've had on and off cravings for nachos. The nachos I grew up with were not the ballpark kind with liquid "cheese," nor were they they Super Bowl kind piled high with chili and guacamole. They were simply tortilla chips with melted cheddar cheese, which my brothers and I fixed in the microwave and warred over to secure the bites with the most salty, melty goodness.

But even with the flavoring of fond memories, plain chips with cheese is kind of boring now. Especially for dinner. So last night I fixed a plate all for myself, without cheese and with plenty of veggies so no one in this household would fight me for it :D

Cheeseless Nachos
-1 serving baked tortilla chips (I bought the scoop-shaped kind to make little cups for my toppings)
-1/2 an avocado
-1 roma tomato
-1/2 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
-your favorite spicy salsa
-fresh cilantro

First I spread my tortilla chips--the bag said 14 was one serving--on a plate. Then I cut the avocado into cubes and dropped them into the cups, followed by slices of tomato. I scattered the black beans, drizzled the salsa, and prettied everything up with the chopped cilantro. Since my veggies had come straight from the fridge, I microwaved the plate for 10 seconds just to bring everything to room temperature. It didn't need to be hot because the chili peppers in the salsa took care of that for me!



Deeelicious! Of course, it wasn't very substantial as a stand-alone dinner, and I ended up paying for that later with a massive snack attack, but if I had time to round out the meal before shooting off to class, it would have been the best meal of the week so far. I don't like salsa on its own, especially since I buy Sweetie's favorite super-hot variety, but with the avocado to mellow things out and the fresh tomatoes to lessen the concentration of spice, I really enjoyed this. Something to note, though: do not serve this to any group which contains your boss, your crush, or that prim and proper neighbor with the immaculate house and perfectly maintained eyebrows. Eating them is fun, but embarrassingly messy. Witness the deluge of lost cilantro leaves and tomato juice on the plate in my close-up up top, and this was after I had scooped up the rogue beans and scarfed them oh-so-daintily with my fingers.

Sweetie was spared the "healthified" version, but not entirely. Before I left for school, I put a pan of chips and cheese in a pre-heated, then shut-off oven. I left a sauce of lean ground beef, chopped red onion, and salsa on the stove. When he came home from work, he piled the sauce onto the chips and had at it.


I'm not sure if mine technically count as "nachos" without the cheese. Most modern nachos don't fit the original profile anyway; you can check out an interesting history of the snack/meal on Wikipedia for a conversation fluffer.

Giveaway Winner

I conked out at 11 last night, so at midnight Sweetie took the liberty of running the random number generator to pick the winner of the Bob's Red Mill GF Pizza Crust Mix. According to the static noise of the universe, the winner is....

Ashley from The Hungry Scholar. Yay Ashley!

Coming to Terms

This morning I did something that Sweetie will bop me on the head for when he finds out: I stepped on the scale.

I have officially gained two pounds since last week.

I now have two options. I can freak out and say, "this intuitive eating is destroying my figure!" or I can be rational and say that I'm just back to my pre-Japan weight, and since I haven't been eating mountains of food or salt, those are probably pounds my body didn't want to lose in the first place. If my metabolism is so slow that eating normally (and healthily!) caused my BMI to rise, well, I'm obviously not meant to be a size 4.

I do have some improvements to make in my eating, though. I'm not going to impose rules on myself, but in general I have been reaching for sweets instead of produce or protein sources when the munchies hit. I felt pretty sick on Tuesday night from brownie and bran muffin overload. It's not that these foods are "bad" or I eat an unreasonable amount of them, but I could be getting my nutrients instead. So. Yesterday I made an effort to stick to options pulled straight from the ground (or branch) at snack time. I started my day with a childhood favorite: buttered toast with eggs over easy.


One of the eggs didn't go over very easy =/

During the class break I had a Trail Mix Granola Bar. When I came home, I whipped up some carrot ginger soup and piled the lettuce and hummus onto my sandwich.


After a few hours of reading and writing (about cognitive science, of all things--librarian training is more intense than I thought it would be), I pulled out the baby carrots.


Plus a BIG hunk of watermelon.


Mmm antioxidants. I've read several times that carrots should be eaten with a source of fat for vitamin absorption. I was happy to comply :D

Dinner was an extreme disappointment. I marinated some mahi-mahi in lime juice, soy sauce, ginger powder and chicken stock. I steamed some brown rice and mixed them with peas, then baked the fish on top so the marinade flavors could seep into the grains. Then I topped everything with fresh chopped cilantro. Doesn't it sound delicious? Doesn't it look gorgeous?



But the fish ruined it all! The mahi-mahi's flavor was too strong and masked the ginger and lime. Plus, there were tiny, sharp little bones left in the fillets. I had to douse Sweetie's plate in more soy sauce to make it tolerable, and suffered through my own in a quiet rage. Those fillets cost me $6 for a bag of three. Despite my limit on sweets, a brownie was sorely needed to cleanse my palate after dinner. I do not intend to buy Kroger brand fish again.

Later I chowed down on cherries and an ounce of aged Wisconsin sharp cheddar cheese. I haven't eaten cheese on its own for a long time; I'd forgotten how divine it is!

This morning I woke up at 4am and, thanks to cognitive science, could not fall back asleep until 6. The ex-psychology major in me reared its ugly tendrils of hyperrationalization and I kept coming up with more and more edits I should make to my paper for that class. Then when I woke up again, it was 9:30! I was famished, but the pot I use for oatmeal was coated with rice residue from the night before. I was in the throes of despair until I remembered that most wonderful of modern inventions: the microwave.

The container of oats said they would be ready after 2.5 minutes on high. Hah. It took six before the grains even began to resemble the consistency I want, and then another five of patience as it congealed on the counter, before I could finally add in my cinnamon maple almond butter and dig in.


Since I ate so late, I didn't have time to exercise before I was hungry again for lunch! Now I'm working on an Amy's cheeseless pizza (one day, I swear, I will figure out the secret to that heavenly sweet onion sauce) and more watermelon. I have some more papers to read, but I hope to get in some running this afternoon. One definite plus to eating as much as I want is that even after two miles of jogging on Tuesday, I was still bouncing around for the rest of the day. Here's hoping that means I can actually get into some reasonable training now.

And a final reminder: I'm picking a winner for the Bob's Red Mill GF Pizza Crust Mix Giveaway this evening!

Trail Mix Granola Bars

So I figure by now all of you are bored stiff of my self-important self-improvement projects. I certainly am. So today will be simple and sweet: a snack-time recipe!

I mentioned a while back that I was playing around with an adaptation of Danielle's No-Bake "Clif Bars". Because I couldn't find brown rice syrup or flour, and probably couldn't afford it even if I did, I had to make significant modifications. What resulted, after several dismal failures, is kind of like a no-bake Super-Charge Me Cookie :D I shall call them:

Trail Mix Granola Bars
-1/2 cup Rice Krispies (double kudos of you can find a brown rice version)
-1 cup rolled oats
-3 tablespoons milled flax seed
-1/4 cup Craisins (or raisins, dried blueberries, etc.)
-1/4 cup chocolate/carob chips
-1/4 cup flaked coconut
-1/4 cup (heaping!) maple syrup
-1/3 cup chunky peanut butter (or almond butter, if you're richer than me)

Pour all of the dry ingredients (cereal through coconut) indiscriminately into a decent-sized mixing bowl.


In a separate bowl, mix the maple syrup and peanut butter. I specify "heaping" fourth cup of the former because 1/4 cup is actually too little and the bars end up crumbly, but 1/3 is too much and the bars end up wet. The balance is somewhere in between. Pour over the dry ingredients.


Stir together and dump the lot into an 8x8 pan covered with parchment paper. Lightly oil your fingers and press the mixture into a compact, more or less uniform sheet. Really pack it down, or you'll have a big mess on your hands when you cut them!


When you've packed it down to your satisfaction, lift the parchment paper out of the pan and place on a counter or cutting board. Slice into 8 bars.


If your bars fall apart, put the paper back in the pan and in the refrigerator for a few hours to set up. Individually wrap each bar in plastic.


I've been so happy to have these to put in my purse and sneak during breaks at school. I've made other bars in the past, like Ellie Krieger's Energy Bars, but they required baking. Turning on the oven is the last thing I want to do these days. Besides, they didn't have chocolate ;)

If you haven't already, don't forget to enter my Pizza Crust Giveaway!

An Impromptu Third Anniversary

Before I get to the meat of today's post, a reminder: I'm giving away a package of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pizza Crust Mix on Thursday night. Leave a comment on Sunday night's post to enter!

I'm really starting to rock the not-calorie-counting. Last week, a day like yesterday would have been a rollercoaster of emotions, but I stayed more or less sane. Witness:


I didn't have much time before I had to get to my first class, so I had a bowl of bran flakes for breakfast. Poor, oft-maligned cold cereal; I would usually worry that it wouldn't hold me long enough and I wasted those calories only to eat more soon after, but yesterday I forged ahead. And ate a homemade granola bar and a small apple during a mid-class break without thinking about it.

Despite my snack, I was starving when I came back home at 11:30. That may have something to do with the half mile walk to and from the campus bookstore because I didn't want to give up my parking space, and also something to do with the $85 I spent there for a single paperback copy of The Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. And the fact that when I called the Decatur County Clerk to obtain the cause number for my ticket, I was told the officer hadn't submitted it yet and I should call back on Wednesday or Thursday. So I get to have it hanging in the back of my mind until then. Fun.

Genuine fun:


I only used half a package of ramen, not because I was trying to cut down my meal, but because I had the carrot chopped and the broth boiling and opened the cupboard to find that was all I had! I'd used the other half the day before we left for Japan, pared down because I had too many perishables to throw in the pot. No matter. I made up the difference with cherries (not in the soup, of course :D)

Mid-afternoon I had a slice of colby jack cheese and a bran muffin. Don't ask me why I chose this particular combination. I just really wanted cheese. And then a bran muffin.

Okay. Now we get to the good part. Yesterday was Sweetie and my anniversary, a fact that took us both by surprise when I caught sight of the date in the lower right hand corner of my laptop. We debated considerably over where we should celebrate, because it had to fit the following stringent criteria: (1) I had to either have a coupon or be able to use our discount card. (2) We both had to be able to eat something there. This is harder to accomplish than it sounds. And (3) it had to be somewhere sorta classy, because this was supposed to be an anniversary dinner. We met downtown after he got off work, and because the heat dissuaded me from walking around to find the perfect place, we settled on the Village Deli. At least it met criteria (1) and (2).

We've eaten at this joint a dozen times, and it's not so much "classy" as "collegy," and staffed by athletic high school girls, but you can't argue with the quality of the food. Or the $15 total including tip for a celebratory dinner, thanks to AMIL and WFIU. I ordered something I hadn't tried before:



It's a Milano sub roll stuffed with swiss, sprouts, mustard, tomato, and house-made guacamole. I ordered the fruit salad for the side, but the blueberries in it were rancid (eww). I ate half of the sandwich whole, then picked through the second half after discarding the cheese and tearing the top bun off in chunks as I went along. The bread wasn't great and I couldn't fit the whole thing in my mouth--and I was just after the sprouts and lovely avocado concoction anyway.

Sweetie tried to be adventurous by ordering the Cajun chicken with Cajun fries.


He, contrary to character, only ate half the sandwich because it was way too spicy. It looks like the cook spilled the spice shaker over the fries too, but he didn't have any objections to that.


Neither did I :o I generously "helped" him with those after I'd eaten most of my meal. I would have helped more, except I'm very picky about my fries and only wanted the crispy ones, and they had cooled and sogged up by then. Boo.

I was stuffed with real food after that, but for mysterious reasons could not get the image of chocolate cake out of my head. I ate a small ice cream cone to tame my sweet tooth, and then dove into reading for class, but I just could not shake the intense craving for fudge and frosting. I considered driving out to Kroger to buy one of their single slices, but it was hot and muggy. Then I remembered that Marie put up a recipe for Light Brownies for Sunday's English Kitchen post.


My chocolate was neither semi-sweet nor high quality, so I made some corner-cutting modifications. The "cake" looked and felt dry when I took it out, so I spiffed it up with a powdered sugar/cocoa/soy milk icing.



I ate one fresh out of the oven. I wasn't hungry anymore, but I still wanted to eat, so I had a second. Can you see where this is going?

Trick question. It didn't go anywhere. This was the perfect set-up for a binge, and I was all ready to devour the whole batch. But I was standing over the brownies with a knife in my hand, smelling the sugar and cocoa and butter...and I didn't want to eat anymore. I wanted to taste, of course, but I didn't want to eat. I was full.

A lot of women probably wish they could break the binging cycle. They want to be free of the guilt, the hunger, the weight. What they probably don't know, because I didn't until last night, is that having binging taken away is frustrating as hell. Because I wasn't counting calories, a binge would have been meaningless. I couldn't, as The Hungry Scholar put it yesterday, label my previous or present food choices "bad" or say I'd make up for it the next day. I had no idea how much I'd eaten earlier, so I couldn't justify it by tallying up the numbers and saying I still had "room." Binging wasn't freeing me of my usual mental oppression, so I felt no compulsion to continue. And you know where that left me? With problems and anxieties to face all by my lonesome, without a crumb of brownie for company.

This is probably a significant sign that the strict non-regimen regimen is working. Great. Now the problem is figuring out how to deal with my problems and do something with all this extra RAM in my brain that used to be taken up by pseudo-dieting. Today I'm going on to the next level of difficulty: I will attempt to exercise. I haven't done any of it since last week, because I will inevitably eat more afterwards and my positive energy will have to increase accordingly. When I'm able to mentally separate exercise from food, food from weight, AND weight from health, I will consider myself truly free.

Exhaustion and a Father's Day Giveaway!

I've finally stopped moving! I've been on my toes (at least mentally) since Friday night, worrying about driving and weather and calories. Worrying about not worrying takes the most energy, you know, so studiously avoiding analysis of anything I ate over there was quite taxing.

I don't have many photos to share of the trailer eats, because Sweetie spent each night with his dad going over our snapshots from Japan on the big-screen. In order to do this, he commandeered the SD card from my camera to transfer photos from the laptop to the television via a nifty slot on the Wii. I could have simply used internal memory or taken the card back when they weren't using it during the day, but that seemed like too much work. Anything felt like too much work over this weekend; if you live anywhere near Indiana I'm sure you sympathize =/

Regardless of the weather and my energy levels, there was a second compounding factor to documenting my meals at Who's. Both Who and Sweetie have "naturally thin people appetites." That is to say, they almost never feel true hunger and only eat because they "feel like it" or "should." Therefore, I was regularly fed two hours after the dire need for sustenance had arrived, and I wasn't about to go digging around my bags to take some hurried shots of my steak. I love you all, but not that much :p

For both Saturday and Sunday mornings I chowed down on oatmeal. With the 90°+ weather, I would naturally have preferred cold cereal or something, but beggars be choosers. On Saturday I topped my water-cooked-oats (meh) with bananas; on Sunday I mixed it up with half a Granny Smith apple and maple syrup (yay!)


Though I usually take pride in my natural-type nut butters, there is something to be said for the processed Skippy. That something: meltymeltymelty


I did my best to keep my hands out of the cookie granola bar jar until the men-folk roused themselves at noon and sat in front of the tube for an hour before starting to maybe think about firing up the grill. I can describe the hours between 11am and 2pm in one word: agony. Though I'm not counting my calories, and I did my best to beat the hunger monster over the head with a banana, I really wanted to enjoy the following without compunction:


Hunger is a terrific spice, but full-fat French dressing and a sweet egg roll tie at a close second :D

On the way back to Bloomington we sprung a speed trap. Either the cops were ticked off about working on Father's Day or it's quota time; as I was being cited for going 65 on the 55mph highway (he said 69, but let's not quibble), the reflection in the rear view mirror showed two other policemen pulling over the cars behind me. Fun times for all.

When we arrived back, I scarfed down the last of the roasted sweet potato corn chowder and a roll with hummus before getting to work. I channeled my stress about the tobacco smoke in my hair, the $129.50 ticket, and my first day of classes tomorrow into giving the apartment the ultimate scrub-down. I went to Kroger. I vacuumed under the sofa cushions (you know, for 3-years' worth of crumbs it wasn't that bad). I burned my throat out with oven cleaner. And I baked bread in the newly cleaned oven.


Here's hoping that lovely loaf tastes like bran, and not sodium hydroxide.

Check out my "new" working desk.


It's the same desk that's been in our kitchen since we moved here, sans junk mail and tubs of flour and who knows what all else. I couldn't find a new home for the Vitamix, so it will just have to keep me company as I do my scholarly activities. But what's that by my dilapidated Dell?


It's the prize for my second giveaway! I called it a Father's Day Giveaway in the post title, but the product itself doesn't have much to do with dear old dad, unless your dad happens to have Celiacs. But no matter. This is a package of Bob's Red Mill gluten-free, dairy-free pizza crust mix. I bought it a while ago when I was suspicious that my stomach pains might indicate gluten intolerance. They turned out to be caused by severe acid reflux instead, so I went back to my own homemade wheat dough and never got around to trying the mix.

Instead of wasting it on myself, I'm going to give the mix to one of you adventurous health nuts out there :D The package costs $15.08 if you order from bobsredmill.com. It contains enough mix for two 12" pizza crusts. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment detailing either:

1) Why you love your dad (because, you know, it's supposedly a FD-Giveaway)
OR
2) Your first run-in with the law. Were you driving a completely reasonable 65 down an open highway? Downing some cups of something you shouldn't at your first college tailgate? (Note: only answer if you're comfortable letting future employers be privy to these indiscretions--they will find it through Google!)

You can also "follow" The Amateur Nutritionist and leave a note to that effect, but answering one of the questions would be more interesting. One entry per person, please--just because I know there won't be that many entries total. I'll pick a winner on Thursday at 9pm, after my last class of the week. Viel Glück!