Food of the Week (Week 1): Edamame

I know most of you are sushi-eating urbanites who have been eating edamame from the womb (though I have yet to hear of a pregnant woman who craves edamame specifically, but it could happen). If you are in this group, feel free to skip this post and 

I interrupt this post about healthy food to tell you that I just looked down at my left arm to find it covered in brown goo (don't panic--it's not that kind of brown goo). Also covered in brown goo? The left side of my favorite ragged sleeping t-shirt (the one that just says "Dude" on the front). Wha? My confusion lasted only a moment and I was able to use my excellent deductive reasoning skills to deductively reason that several of the chocolate chips I was eating (hey, I'm human) must have fallen between my arm and my shirt and melted there. You'll be relieved to know that Clifford the Big Red Couch was unscathed. 

Back to talking about soybeans. Edamame=green soybeans. Edamame (pronounced ed-eh-MAH-may...I think) is a much funner word than soybean. Soybean makes me think of tofu. And tofu, while it may be reasonably tasty when prepared with skill, is almost never fun. (Prove me wrong, folks. Prove me wrong.) 

Here's what you do. You go to the store. You buy some frozen in-the-shell edamame (you'll find it frozen in the freezer section) and you heat it up. You can even do it in your microwave--no fancy edamame steamer or boiler needed. Then you sprinkle it with a generous amount of course salt such as kosher salt. Then you take one of those ugly, hairy pods that looks like something your 6-year-old has in his/her "nature collection" and you use your teeth to remove the delicious little soys inside. Yummy! It really is. (Don't forget the salt.)

Here's what you get*:

1. 6 grams of fiber (woo! fiber!)

2. 11 grams of protein

3. oodles of vitamins and minerals

4. a mere 120 calories

5. a pile of discarded hairy pods for your little one's "nature collection"

Try it. You'll like it! (If you don't, try some chocolate chips instead.)

*in a 1 1/8th cup serving (in shell--1/2 cup shelled)

Oh!

Here's the situation that inspired me to write about green pods:

Earlier this week I was getting Joel's food ready for him to take to work (Egg Beater sandwich? Check. 2 cups grapes? check, frozen diet meal for lunch? check.). He requested a bowl of edamame to snack on. I got it for him, and as he was putting it and the other food in his backpack, Laura (age 4) ran up to him and said, 

"Mommy's going to give me a treat!"

Joel said, "What is it? Edamame?

Laura, laughing (and without missing a beat), replied:

"Adaboblo?"

Silly Daddy and his made up words!

Couch Slug

Couch potato would be a little too healthy of a title for this entry. Potatoes do contain all that vitamin C, you know, along with other healthy stuff, perhaps minerals...or whatever substance it is that transforms them so magically into French fries with the help of a mere smattering of oil. Anyway, it probably isn't very self-affirming or loving to call myself a couch slug, but there really isn't a better way to describe how I feel each and every morning. My long-term and chronic feelings about mornings are a subject for an entire post of their own some other day, but today suffice it to say that whatever the opposite of a morning person is, I'm that. I don't know how I managed, once upon a time, to hold down a job that sometimes required that I arrive at work by 5:30am. My job now (mom: homestyle) doesn't require that I do more than shuttle one daughter out the door by 9am, make an Eggbeater sandwich for Skinnyman, and keep other daughter from running out of educational programming and cheese. Easy? Yes! Little, loud daughter (still trying to think of pseudonyms for the children) wakes up around 7, cheerful and ready to strew things about the house and talk without pausing for air intake for the next 13 hours. I, of course, jump up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (I'm not fat, I'm just bushy!) and complete the necessary household chores before working on my novel for a few hours. Or, I dreamt that, and what really happens is I drag my pillow and down blanket to the couch, stumble into the kitchen to find cereal for the little one, then collapse into half-slumber on the couch while she eats and watches creative and intelligence-building television. I get up to help school-going daughter find breakfast and clothes, then collapse again for about 20 minutes, get up once more to create a semi-tidy hairdo for her, hug her and shove her gently out the door. THEN I start the chores. Well, no. Back to the couch I go for at least a little while. Do I want to be like this? Kind of. No. But I literally can't fathom anything but those few small tasks and sleep before 10am. I haven't always been quite this bad, but I'm currently taking a very helpful anti-depressant that has the unfortunate side effect of zombifying me a lot of the time. I'm tired. Really tired. I even tried going to bed at a decent time once and that didn't help! This is a case of side-effects-are-an improvement-over-the-soul-numbing-depression. I've tried other drugs, but the sad truth is the ones that work well make me tired.
I have many ideas for overcoming my couch addiction, but an idea that seems really goodandeffective at 9pm doesn't even register in my consciousness at 7am.
It doesn't help that we have a very comfortable sleeping couch. He, Clifford the Big Red Couch, was purchased 3 years ago to replace our teal (who has a teal couch?) hand-me-down. I love Clifford, pudding stains and all, but I wish his siren song (bark?) wasn't so strong every morning.
I hope you enjoy the accompanying photos, expertly doctored by yours truly. Though I have no formal Photoshop training whatsoever (can you believe it?), I have raw, raw talent and am available for hire for your projects at what I believe is the going rate for amateur Photoshoppers these days: $300/hour. I just can't guarantee the speed of my work--I have a lot of sleeping to do.