Potato Chips and Quesadillas
In recent weeks, I've been waking up with leg cramps. I know for a fact that this is caused by insufficient potassium and so I've been drinking orange juice to help address that, but it's just NOT been enough.
The past few days, weather and what not has impacted my routine. So it just so happens that I bought some Lay's brand Stax potato chips yesterday and also did not have a coffee yesterday or today.
I bought the potato chips for the potassium. Eating potato chips is the most convenient means I have found to stop leg cramps, but I stopped eating potato chips a few weeks back and I've tried various other snacks made with potatoes and not found anything that works for me.
I like Lays brand snacks. If you read the label, it says things like "Contains: Potatoes, oil, salt." Other potato chips will have a lengthy paragraph, half of which is not English, it's Latin, and I don't know what those words mean.
A lot of snack foods are what get politely called food products and I pretty much dismiss that as not actual real food in most cases. You can usually tell real food from food products by two things:
Even though I have a lot of dietary restrictions, it is, so far, not causing me issues AND the shape of the chips, the easy-open container, etc is facilitating me eating them as much as I want, in spite of my life being a study in ridiculous restrictions on what I can do.
I'm super pleased and have eaten more than an entire container of them in about 24 hours and started on another bought today. I've done a lot of napping and a quick search readily turns up articles that potassium deficiency interferes with sleep quality.
So probably a combo of addressing my potassium deficiency and skipping my coffee the last two days is causing me to sleep more and sleep more deeply.
The other thing I did is I bought pepperjack cheese and soft taco shells so I could make mini quesadillas on my George Foreman Grill. It's currently cold outside and hot cheese is the best thing I know to get warm and stay warm.
The first attempt didn't exactly go as envisioned. I put too much cheese on each and it melted and ran off the grill, making a mess. The second attempt also didn't go as envisioned. They got left there too long and were, uh, let's call it crunchier than I intended.
It's still shocking at times how challenging it can be to do something "new" -- like make quesadillas on the grill -- even though I've eaten quesadillas for years, it's a simple dish, etc. It's one of the reasons I blog: To help other people skip a few of my mistakes.
Tips: If you have the kind of George Foreman Grill that gives you the option to have it tilted or flat, flat is better when using it like a panini sandwich press, especially if cheese is involved. Also, face the folded edge towards the downhill slope to help contain the cheese.
The past few days, weather and what not has impacted my routine. So it just so happens that I bought some Lay's brand Stax potato chips yesterday and also did not have a coffee yesterday or today.
I bought the potato chips for the potassium. Eating potato chips is the most convenient means I have found to stop leg cramps, but I stopped eating potato chips a few weeks back and I've tried various other snacks made with potatoes and not found anything that works for me.
I like Lays brand snacks. If you read the label, it says things like "Contains: Potatoes, oil, salt." Other potato chips will have a lengthy paragraph, half of which is not English, it's Latin, and I don't know what those words mean.
A lot of snack foods are what get politely called food products and I pretty much dismiss that as not actual real food in most cases. You can usually tell real food from food products by two things:
- The length of the ingredient list on the package.
- How many of those listed items are readily recognizable words we normally use for "food", such as potatoes, versus how many are words most folks would need to look up in a dictionary.
Even though I have a lot of dietary restrictions, it is, so far, not causing me issues AND the shape of the chips, the easy-open container, etc is facilitating me eating them as much as I want, in spite of my life being a study in ridiculous restrictions on what I can do.
I'm super pleased and have eaten more than an entire container of them in about 24 hours and started on another bought today. I've done a lot of napping and a quick search readily turns up articles that potassium deficiency interferes with sleep quality.
So probably a combo of addressing my potassium deficiency and skipping my coffee the last two days is causing me to sleep more and sleep more deeply.
The other thing I did is I bought pepperjack cheese and soft taco shells so I could make mini quesadillas on my George Foreman Grill. It's currently cold outside and hot cheese is the best thing I know to get warm and stay warm.
The first attempt didn't exactly go as envisioned. I put too much cheese on each and it melted and ran off the grill, making a mess. The second attempt also didn't go as envisioned. They got left there too long and were, uh, let's call it crunchier than I intended.
It's still shocking at times how challenging it can be to do something "new" -- like make quesadillas on the grill -- even though I've eaten quesadillas for years, it's a simple dish, etc. It's one of the reasons I blog: To help other people skip a few of my mistakes.
Tips: If you have the kind of George Foreman Grill that gives you the option to have it tilted or flat, flat is better when using it like a panini sandwich press, especially if cheese is involved. Also, face the folded edge towards the downhill slope to help contain the cheese.