Boulder Floodie’s Post-Flood Whatever Bean Tomato Rice*

First let me open with this: when you are told by FEMA that you are in a 100-year floodplain, and your mortgage company requires you to buy flood insurance, the appropriate response is, ‘Oh, ok. Let me read up on that so that I 1) have some knowledge about what one should do if caught in a flood and 2) know exactly what is and what is not covered by flood insurance. The correct response is not ‘Yeah, yeah, 100-year floodplain, whatever.’ Last week was certainly an interesting one in Boulder and many surrounding communities. Boulder’s average annual precipitation is just over 20 inches. In six days we got over 17 inches of rain — over half of it in one day.

Last Wednesday night we had our first hint of what was to come from a badly leaking window and a running sump pump. An hour later, our basement was flooded with two inches of water. We brought several things up to the garage, and lifted other things up to higher perches in our crowded basement that admittedly looks like it might feature in an episode of Hoarders.  We knew that boxes being saved for future shipping needs, as well as just about anything paper was probably a goner already, so we didn’t bother with those, and left them on the floor in the water.

Basement – Flood I

We went to bed hoping the sump pump would empty out the water overnight. Which it did. But it kept raining on Thursday. Just before dinner time, the basement once again flooded with another two inches of water. My husband pulled the pump from our fountain in the backyard for extra pump power, and MacGuyvered that up to go out a basement window. But rain kept coming, and the water kept getting higher. We went down to try to lift things up even higher, but on several of the heaviest items (the 100+ lb ones), we said ‘well, it’s insured – what happens happens’. (This was mistake number…whatever number we’re up to — personal items are NOT covered by either the flood insurance with FEMA or homeowners insurance). And so it kept on raining. And the level in the basement kept on rising. At one point, the toilet started overflowing, filling the basement with even more water (and no doubt all the other things that come out with sewer water). So we abandoned the basement, and turned its power off, aside from the outlet near the ceiling where the sump pump was plugged in.

Shortly after that my husband let fly an expletive and said ‘Look at the street!’ Look at the street, indeed! But it could no longer technically be called a street. It was rather hard for any of us to get great pictures since it was dark and creepy out, but these do a fairly good job of illustrating why I was rather freaked out that night. Our former street was now a rapidly flowing river.

What used to be our street

And a picture that shows a little perspective on the depth of the river:

Another view of our street (Photo courtesy of Sondra (Wray) LeClaire)

What was even more disturbing was what was going on two houses further upstream.

Two houses upstream (Photo courtesy of Sondra (Wray) LeClaire)

We stood on the lawn in the rain and watched the river for a while with our next door neighbors, then came in and caught a little tv to try to take our mind off things. Around midnight we decided to go to bed, hopeful that the river would be gone in the morning. Luckily, we had our street back by the time we woke up on Friday morning.

There were a few things we didn’t have, however – since our basement flooded to over the doorknob on the door at the foot of the stairs, we had no furnace, no hot water heater, and no hope for successful flushing in the restrooms. So we headed out for breakfast and supplies (we discovered that during the night our makeshift plumbing for the 2nd pump had broken and was merely putting water back in the basement via a different window well). Once we returned with extra pipe, we were able to MacGuyver an improved drainage route with an assist from our neighbor and a couple of his tarps.

Mac Guyvered Pump and Drainage System

Our basement had flooded to about four feet. At this point we started calling around to see if we could find some professional help from people who actually had a clue how to clean up from a flood. It took five calls, but we got a slot at #4 on the list of a company coming out from Overland Park, Kansas. Fortunately with our increased pump power it started to drain quicker, and actually emptied out the basement by the next day. But with a basement full of soggy stuff, we were still totally up for help.

Basement Flood II

Then came the time where we found out what our flood insurance actually covered. It covers cleanup, and as the foreman of the crew helping us said, ‘basically what would be left if you picked up your house and shook everything out.’ Minus any finished basement features including carpet, tile, and quite a bit more. Alrighty then. Now we know. So, long story short (and still not over yet), the cleanup crew hauled out carpet, drywall, a multitude of trashbags, a parade of college-era furniture, electronics and stereo equipment. Antimicrobials were sprayed, dehumidifiers deployed, windows opened. Furnace and hot water heating companies, trash haulers, and insurance companies were called.

Our two main piles of stuff, and some of the damage in our neighborhood

We’re still working on cleanup, and will be for a while, but honestly – we still have our house, we can still get to our house, and we still have the vast majority of our possessions. We are so much better off than so many people in the surrounding areas. There were several deaths, many people still missing, and so many people have either had their homes destroyed, can’t get to them, or can’t get out of their mountain town. We are very fortunate.

So now a little food, since this is a food blog. I was not in a great mood for cooking over the weekend. So I was really looking for something easy to throw together that was still healthier than the snack food I’d been eating off and on between phone calls and cleaning. I cooked some heirloom beans one day, since that was pretty easy. We had nearly a whole carton of rice left over from our delivery from Tra Ling’s the previous night, and I had a pepper and some onions in the fridge. I picked up a can of fire roasted tomatoes, and decided I’d make something like dirty rice. But, unbeknownst to me, I had no clue what dirty rice was – dirty rice is dirty because of chicken liver or giblets. I prefer my rice to be dirty from curry or tomatoes. So I went with tomatoes.

Post-Flood Whatever Bean Tomato Rice
serves 4

2 cups pretty much any kind of cooked beans
2 cups cooked rice – white, brown, wild, whatever
1 can fire roasted chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper – red, orange, or yellow
1 cup chopped onion – white, yellow, or red
2 cloves minced garlic (or be lazy and use garlic powder)
1 tsp olive oil
chicken stock
chili powder
hot smoked paprika or just paprika
Aleppo pepper or other dried red pepper
salt
black pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium in a large skillet. Saute the bell pepper and onion until tender. (If using real garlic, add it a few minutes after the bell pepper and onion.) Add the tomatoes, and about 1/3 cup of chicken stock. Then add some chili powder and paprika, and a bit of the Aleppo or dried red pepper, salt, and black pepper. Taste and adjust as desired. Then turn the heat up and let it cook until the liquid reduces down.

Post-Flood Whatever Bean Tomato Rice

* I can’t take credit for ‘Boulder Floodie’ – that was my friend C’s suggestion – thank you, C!

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Spaghetti Squash with Grilled Tomato and Pesto Sauce

I finally got back in the kitchen to make something more interesting than my summer fat loss contest staples of salmon burgers and Fattousch Salad. This meal wasn’t really planned ahead of time, though. It basically came out of poor planning, a couple of things I bought independently, and a sample my mom sent home with me on Labor Day.

I’m a complete sucker for spaghetti squash. As much as I love pasta, I substitute spaghetti squash for it fairly often. So I bought a spaghetti squash at the store, but neglected to get any tomato products. Luckily, I had made a purchase of eight large paste tomatoes (I’m nearly certain they were San Marzanos) from Munson Farms over the weekend as well. Of course I would use some of my Chesnok Red garlic from Wee Bee Farms, because a good, bold hardneck garlic is always perfect for tomato sauce.

As I pondered my sauce, I started wondering what would happen if I threw in some of the pesto my mom made with basil from her neighbor’s garden. Hmmm…could be intriguing. Would certainly make it richer. So I had my ingredient plan. But the thought of standing in front of a hot stove on a 90 degree day while I cooked down fresh tomatoes didn’t really appeal to me. That’s what the grill is for, right? I read an article somewhere last year that said you could grill almost anything. I couldn’t remember exactly what they grilled for the article, but surely tomatoes would be fine. Plus they’d have a nice grilled flavor, which sounded great. I figured I’d peel the excess papery stuff off of a couple small heads of garlic and throw that on as well. And then I’d finish it off on the stove. (I’ve tried both roasting in the oven and microwaving, and given the HUGE amount of time it seems to take in the oven, I’m all about microwaving it these days).

Tomatoes and Garlic on the Grill

I grilled the tomatoes on a medium heat, turning them by about a quarter whenever they got charred. Total time, maybe around fifteen minutes. While they were grilling, I cut the spaghetti squash in half, scooped out the seeds, and poked the shell a bunch of times with a knife, so it would be ready to microwave.

Once sufficiently charred, I took the tomatoes and garlic off (the garlic didn’t char, but got nice and soft – perfect). Then I started microwaving the spaghetti squash (checking it after about 8 minutes, and then every couple of minutes by poking the shell with a fork), and heated about a teaspoon of olive oil in a skillet. I removed the tough core stuff around the end of the tomatoes (which were quite hot, so I pondered removing them before grilling in the future, but that might have made grilling a bit messier), and took the roasted garlic cloves out of their peels and minced them. Then I added all of it to the skillet. Since they were nice and soft, I just smashed the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.

Grilled Tomatoes and Garlic, with a Bit of Pesto

After everything was broken down fairly well, I added 4 teaspoons of pesto, and continued cooking the sauce down on medium heat until it reduced by about a third.

Grilled Tomato and Pesto Sauce Cooked Down

Once my spaghetti squash was nice and tender, I used a fork to turn it into squash pasta, then topped it with my sauce. The sauce turned out really well between the fresh tomatoes, grilled flavor, and the richness of the pesto. Not bad for non-planned!

Spaghetti Squash with Grilled Tomato and Pesto Sauce

Body Fat Loss Contest Results

After what seemed like an interminable amount of time towards the end, my body fat loss contest is over. I didn’t win (though it looked like I actually had a chance towards the end), but I was very happy with my results. The winner was calculated by who had the highest percentage loss divided by their starting percentage. Since my starting body fat percentage was 33.7, that’s a pretty big number to divide by. I did actually lose the highest percentage of body fat, but the calculation put me in third place.

Looking back, I had some pretty lofty goals as to what I wanted to achieve. I hit my target for overall weight loss and then some, and was very close to my non-stretch goal for percentage body fat. I did lose nearly a pound of lean body mass as well, as I found first hand what is true for most people – it is extremely difficult to both lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. But of my weight lost, less than 10% was lean body mass – and over 90% was fat. So not bad at all.

Here are my starting, goal, and actual stats:

Starting:
height: 5′ 3+3/4″
weight: 140 lbs
lean body mass: 92.9 lbs
fat body mass: 47.1 lbs
percentage body fat: 33.7%

Main Goal / Stretch Goal:
weight: 134 lbs / 132 lbs
lean body mass: 94.9 lbs / 97.4 lbs
fat body mass: 39.1 / 34.6 lbs
percentage body fat: 29.2% / 26.2 %

Actual:
weight: 130.4 lbs ==>  -9.6 lbs
lean body mass: 92 lbs ==>  -0.9 lbs
fat body mass: 38.4 lbs ==>  -8.7 lbs
percentage body fat: 29.4% ==>  -4.3%

When I started out, I think my daily calories were too low, and I was restricting myself from indulgences too much. I didn’t make wonderful progress to start. The changes that resulted in finally moving in the right direction consistently were 1) eating more calories, 2) adding some more indulgent foods back in, 3) more ‘natural movement’ workouts (walks and hikes instead of cardio machines), and 4) longer workouts. Once I made these tweaks, things started happening. I know that graphs aren’t typical fare on a food blog, but I am a physics major/career software test engineer, so I found these quite interesting. All of these graphs are a 7-day rolling average, with polynomial trendlines added. You can see very clearly how when my caloric intake increased, and I started to increase the duration of my exercise (also burning more calories), my weight started to go down. The exercise graphs look a little wonky, but I think the reason is that whenever I did long hikes, the calories and duration were way up there (most of the hikes I did have an average grade of 10-20%, so they burn quite a few calories). And on weeks that I did more weightlifting, the calories and duration were lower.

Note: My scale showed me 1.4 lbs heavier than the ‘official’ scale did. Hence the ending rolling average weight of about 132 in the graph below.

So, the bottom line conclusions that I’ve drawn from the experience: If you try something for several weeks, and it’s not working, shake things up a bit. No one thing works for everyone. You have to find what works for you. And often that means varying things fairly often! Find whatever exercise(s) you enjoy doing and will keep doing. If something doesn’t feel natural (like a lot of cardio machines), then you probably want to limit your time doing that, or better yet, find something else. And lastly, eat healthily, and don’t eat too much, but don’t deny yourself completely from having something fun once in a while. It will keep you going without feeling like you’re sacrificing everything. And remember – tomorrow is a new day, you can start over as often as you need to. Just don’t quit!

Body Fat Loss Contest – Weeks 9 & 10

I’m just about done with week ten of my summer body fat loss contest. And I’m kind of ready for it to be over. But there’s about three weeks and a couple of days left. I had started to get kind of discouraged after hitting a plateau for several weeks, so I decided to make a few changes, just to shake things up a little.

First I decided to be a little more lenient on what I eat during the week. I started letting myself have some good chocolate a couple or even a few times a week. I stopped focusing so much on how many grams of fat and protein I was eating, and just looked at the over-all calories. (Since it’s become ingrained over the past couple of decades for me to eat lower fat and mostly non-processed foods, I just depended on that to keep the fat down, and I knew I was still getting more protein from the yogurt, cottage cheese, and lean meats that I continue to eat regularly).

For exercise, I was getting tired of my lower back being sore after a good cardio workout at the gym, so I decided to try switching to more intense ‘actual’ activities like more hiking and longer walks. As a result, my back has definitely appreciated not being subjected to repetitive movements on equipment that doesn’t seem well suited for my body mechanics. (Of course in the winter when it gets dark right after work, I’ll be back in the gym doing this, but it’s summer right now!)

Cragmoor-Hardscrabble Trail

After making these changes for a couple of weeks, I’m finding it’s a little easier to keep motivated about the contest (but I’m still ready for it to be over), and I’m a bit more pleased with my current results to date. If I can trust what my scale told me this morning, I’ve lost six pounds, and about three and a half percent body fat. I took my measurements and compared them against ones I took sometime early this year or late last year, and I am down 4+3/4 inches when I add what I’ve lost for bust/waist/hips. So THAT definitely makes me happy.

Fern Canyon

So three more weeks, and then I can get back to doing more of a food blog than a diet and exercise reporting blog. But I am planning to keep many changes I’ve made overall. So 22 more days! Look for a final body fat loss report after August 20th.

Fern Canyon to Bear Peak

Body Fat Loss Contest Weeks 5-8 – the Great Plateau

I’m at about week 8 in my summer body fat loss contest, and to be honest, have pretty much been on a plateau for the past month. (Actually my weight has kind of gone up and down by two pounds for a couple weeks, so that’s been more of a roller coaster – today it’s down about 4 lbs from the start. But my body fat loss seems to be staying at around 2.5%.) Definitely not as good I was hoping for. At all. But I’ve had some issues with recurring lower back pain for multiple days at a time, and may actually have been over-training (as improbable as that seems for what I’ve been doing compared to a lot of my fellow Boulderites!).

So at this point, I’m going for a bit more weight and body fat loss over the next five weeks, but am mainly focusing on how my clothes do feel a bit looser, my resting heart rate has lowered, and I discovered that I CAN actually still do the hikes that I did back when I was in college.

I do feel better eating more fruits and vegetables, and more lean protein like fish, chicken breast, fat-free cottage cheese, and fat-free Greek yogurt. I have several things that have become new staples, such my go-to dessert of a peach, fat-free Greek yogurt, and either All-Bran or Kashi Go Lean.

Peach, Yogurt, and Cinnamon Crisp Kashi Go Lean

I also frequently eat a modified Fattousch salad (romaine, cucumber, tomatoes, olive oil, red vinegar, sumac, parsley, mint, and aleppo pepper).

Modified Fattousch Salad

And nothing makes you feel healthier than building a salad with nothing but vegetables and no-oil balsamic dressing at Whole Foods. They say that the more colors represented in your salad, the healthier. When I was a kid my salads were all iceberg green-white and then brown and orange with croutons and cheese. These days I really do enjoy the vibrancy of a truly healthy salad.

Salad form Whole Foods

I have become a bit more relaxed in my eating rules (in addition to my one meal splurge a week), so that once in a while I can have some sprouted flax-seed bread French Toast with blueberries.

Sprouted Flax Seed French Toast with Blueberries

And to finish the post, here are some pictures from those hikes I mentioned!

Hike on Mt. Sanitas

Hiking Shanahan Ridge

Hiking Fern Canyon Trail