Swiss Chard Chips | Searching for Happy

Happiness Experiment 39: Eat the Rainbow Conclusions

Feb 172013

It’s been a busy week of eating remarkably healthy. This week I was trying to eat the rainbow. As I found in the past, eating healthy is unfortunately time consuming. Fresh fruits and vegetables ultimately take more time to prepare than frozen foods and such, but they do taste so much better, so it’s not a terrible compromise.

Conclusions on Eating the Rainbow

Originally, I decided to measure the success of this experiment by tracking energy levels, my cravings, and any decrease in weight. Over the course of this week, my energy was definitely up. My cravings didn’t change much, they were decreased a bit, but not seriously so. As to weight loss, I am down slightly, but not in any meaningful sort of way. As an interesting side note, my wife got sick and I didn’t, perhaps indicating some other way in which eating the rainbow benefited me.

So, the experiment, while far from conclusive, leaned towards a mild success. Will I continue it? Yes, I do think I’ll try to work elements of this into my day-to-day life. While I do eat more fruits and vegetable after my earlier experiments, this really highlighted how variety is both the spice of life and the source of better health.

So, get outside your food comfort zone and challenge yourself with something new!

Happiness Experiment 39: Eat the Rainbow Day 5

Experiments No Responses »

Feb 142013

If you are just joining in, read about how this week’s experiment involves me trying to eat the rainbow. Click here to see yesterday’s results.

Today, my odd energy continued. I don’t know what’s triggering this energy, but I’m enjoying it while I have it. I’d love to attribute it to the dietary changes, but it seems a bit too random for that so far. We’ll see if it continues before I draw any conclusions.

Today I ate:

Green: Spinach, swiss chard chips
Red: Rasberries
Blue/Purple: Blueberries
White: Banana
Yellow/Orange: Orange juice

Happiness Experiment 39: Eat the Rainbow Day 4

Experiments No Responses »

Feb 132013

If you are just joining me now, read about how I’m trying to eat the rainbow for this week’s experiment. Click here to see how yesterday went for me.

Eat the Rainbow Day 4

Well, last night I appear to have kicked the ass of whatever was keeping me down, be it lack of sleep, illness or anything else. I was drowsy and lacking energy for half the night, and then…

BAM

Suddently I caught a second wind (well, really my first wind of the day), and I was cooking up a storm. This led to me making swiss chard chips. I start with this:

And I make it into something a lot less pretty, but much more tasty. I didn’t follow my own instructions at first, and I almost burnt part of the batch before I remembered to flip them halfway through.

The only problem with my burst of energy is that it led to me just not getting to sleep at a reasonable time. So, cue the prediction of being exhausted this morning….

And you’d be wrong!

Somehow, on less sleep than normal, I felt far better than normal. I don’t think I would suggest it as a regular strategy, but wow! I had a pretty productive day! So, I don’t know what I did right, but I’m hoping it works again! But, onward to the good stuff.

Today I ate:

Red: Apple and strawberries
Yellow/Orange: Pineapple
Green: Chard chips and spinach
Blue/Purple: Blueberries
White: Cauliflower

Another good day, let’s see what tomorrow brings!

Happiness Experiment 39: Eat the Rainbow Day 3

Experiments No Responses »

Feb 122013

If you haven’t seen the background for this week’s experiment, read about how I’m trying to eat the rainbow. Here’s how yesterday went.

I didn’t sleep well last night, so today isn’t a fantastic measure of energy levels. As to cravings, I was craving caffeine and sugar, but I suspect that’s more due to my lack of sleep than anything else. On the bright side, the cravings were just mild ones, more like “I would like a donut” than “I would kill a man in cold blood for a donut”. I think that’s a good thing.

So, today I ate:

Green: Green onions and spinach
White: Cauliflower
Yellow/Orange: Carrots and pineapple
Blue/Purple: Grapes
Red: Strawberries

I’m also getting excited, because tonight I’m making swiss chard chips to eat tomorrow. I’ll be sure to post pictures if it turns out!

Confessions, catching up, and cooking (with an Oxford Comma)

Ponderings No Responses »

Jul 022012

Firstly, I’ll confess my pure love for the Oxford Comma. It makes me an outcast amongst grammar snobs, but I do love how it logically organizes the flow of a sentence.

However, as this is a blog about happiness and not about grammar, I will reign in my love and get to the other points.

You might have noticed lately that my posts are playing catch up. I’ve been feeling under the weather and trying to figure out a few things to be honest. So, I’m taking a week to catch up and think. There will be no experiment this week, but I’m hoping that there will be a LOT of ponderings. I do need to do some thinking, and this is a great place to share those thoughts.

Now, on to the cooking.

I’ve noticed that my cooking themes lean a lot towards leafy green chips. I have written about spinach chips, baked kale chips, and swiss chard chips.

I do love leafy greens, but there is so much more to the world of cooking than just chips. So, let me show you another thing I do with spinach: pizzas.

Spinach is an incredibly versatile food, which is why I can have so many spinach recipes. Pizza is one of my favourites because it comes in a cheese flavour, just like a blank canvas.

In this case, I have a cheese pizza, chicken bacon, and spinach. Here’s how it looks before it goes into the oven:

And here’s how it looks after the oven. It’s a bit browned, because to deal with the extra ingredients, I tossed it under the broiler for 5 minutes at the end of the cooking period in the pizza instructions.

Red Chard Chips Recipe

Ponderings 2 Responses »

Jun 092012

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might have seen my recipe a while back for baked swiss chard chips.

When I was buying the Swiss Chard for that cooking experiment, I discovered that my local grocery store also had red chard, which was similar, but had red branches in it as opposed to white ones. This intrigued me, but I never bought the red chard that day.

However, this morning I made my way to the farmers market in my local area and found a bundle of red chard for three dollars, so I decided to give it a try.

I was in my family’s kitchen, so I also got the opportunity to play around with some options such as a different baking tray and using wax paper (which I rarely have at home since I never use it).

Here’s the setup:

Similar to my baked swiss chard chips

I tore the leaves from their central red stems, spread them on a wax paper covered baking tray, and lightly sprayed them with oil. Today I also used a selection of spices, such as garlic, instead of my normal light salt.

I preheated the oven to 325 degrees, and set the timer for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, I took the tray out and flipped the leaves. If you forget to flip the leaves, you’ll be peeling your final product off the wax paper.

After flipping, I put the chips in for another 5 minutes, and then watch them and take them out when they are nice and crispy.

The final result is:

The spice added a definite zing to the chips that a light salt seasoning would have lacked. They were very similar in taste to the swiss chard chips, but distinct enough that a mixed bowl of both kinds would be delicious!

Spinach Chips

Ponderings 15 Responses »

Jun 022012

If you’ve been following along with my blog, you know that I love my leafy greens. Or, more specifically, I love the fact that I’ve finally found a way to eat them that I can appreciate.

In the past, I’ve come up with a great baked kale chips recipe.

More recently, I’ve succeeded in making swiss chard chips. If you haven’t tried them yet, they taste incredible!

However, despite a couple of attempts in the past, I have had no success in coming up with a spinach chips recipe…. until now!

My Spinach Chips Recipe

Previously, I had serious issues with spinach chips sticking to the pyrex baking dish I was using. However, as part of my work with the swiss chard chips I found a workable solution.

The starting point for all three recipes is the same. Fill a baking tray or pyrex dish with leaves that are lightly coated in oil. At this stage, you can add in whatever spices you want to add. I typically season my chips lightly with salt.

Preheat your oven for 300 degrees and put in the baking tray. Set the timer for 10 minutes. However, as with any of these recipes, the specifics vary a bit from oven-to-oven, so peek into the oven occasionally after about 7 minutes just to make sure nothing is burning.

After 10 minutes, take out the baking tray and carefully flip the spinach leaves. They get thinner as they bake, so if you don’t add in the flipping stage, you might end up peeling them off the bottom of the baking tray.

After flipping, put the dish back into the oven for another 5 minutes. Once again, monitor it at this stage. If you’ve put on too much oil, you may need to leave the spinach chips in the oven for a bit longer to become properly crisped. Or, if you have an especially energetic oven (or used less oil) they might crisp up in 3-4 minutes.

Your end result will look something like this:

They might not look all that pretty, but they’re healthy, and they can be snacked on like potato chips (but without the guilt)!

Enjoy!