Tonight's Gonna Be A....

Quiet Night.

Seriously. I've decided that I am going to stay home by myself and treat myself to a homecooked meal. Maybe make some cupcakes for tomorrow's party I have to go to. I went to the store last night and got some sparkling wine, some regular wine (it's called Project Happiness, I could start the year with some happiness), and my grapes.

The last time I did this was the NYE 2007. That night I was getting over a mega cold, could barely talk, had to miss going to a friend's NYE party. Instead I stayed home and cleaned. I also called this guy Chris for the first time who I had been talking to on eharmony for a while. We had decided to meet new years day and I was calling to confirm. I remember that he seemed uncomfortable talking on the phone - and I kinda had it in my mind that this probably wasn't going to go anywhere. I then called my friend Kelly and told her that I was going to be in her neighborhood in the afternoon and that I would come by after my date.

I cleaned until about 11:45, then I turned on the tv to watch the ball dropped. As soon as it dropped - I went to bed.

Next day I was feeling loads better. I could talk - with the assistance of hot tea.

Headed out for my date.

In the words of Chandler Bing, "I'm telling you, years from now, school children will study it and call it the best first date of ALL Time." At least for me it was.

We talked for 8 hours. Closed down Panera. It wasn't until I was driving home that I realized that I had forgotten to call Kelly. She was all, "Yo Holmes, where are you? I'm about the send the police out looking for you." but as soon as she heard that I just finished my date - she wanted the deets.

That's the best new years I've ever had.

So tonights going to be a quiet night. I'll cook and clean. I'll eat my 12 grapes at midnight. Then I'll sleep, hopefully ushering a new year in with dreams of peace.

Discussions with myself

It's December 30. Just one more day left of 2009 as well as this first decade of the 21st century.

Back 10 years ago - I was on my final winter vacation during college. My family had moved back to Texas after a two year stint in Fairfax, VA. My mom tried to make a love connection between me and one of her colleagues sons, but it had only resulted in an eerily silent staring match. And I spent New Years Eve with my sister and her friends playing board games and freaking out over the backed up toilet in my parents bathroom (not a pretty site). At that time I had a dog, a pool, and a bedroom I could call my own at my parents house. I also had married parents. If you had asked me where I thought I might be in 10 years - I probably would have said I would be in Texas, probably a stay at home mom trying to raise young kids - preferibly girls so that I could enroll them in the Girl Scouts as soon as they came of age. My life would make sense. I so did not see this decade coming.

My younger self would scoff if today me came to her and said, "In 10 years, you will wake up in Northern Virginia to the sound of NPR. Your dad will be remarried and living in Mexico and your mom will be living on her own in North Carolina. You will have fallen in love one and a half times. A half because the first time may have just been you trying to find a center while your parents marriage dissolved. You won't be married, but you will feel like a widow after the one who were just beginning to dream you were going to marry drops dead of a stroke. You will discover that you are the one in your family who will have a lifelong struggle with depression."

Wow - dark stuff. But then - older me would have to list the good stuff.

"You will discover that you have a tremendous ability for making friends - some of them really good friends. You will have known your best friend for over 18 years. You will discover you rock at your job, but also that you do a good job of balancing your job with your life. You will become an awesome cook - and incredible cupcake baker. You will find out that your mom is your ideal travel partner - and that you love windjammers and summers in Maine. You will begin to figure out your sister and be friends with her because she is awesome and not just because she is the only person you know when you move. You will actually be glad that you don't have kids because you still have a lot of learning to do before you are ready to settle down - but that you still have the ability to influence little ones with all your friends kids. You are incredibly creative and you use that creativity in as many ways as possible. You will become comfortable with the fact that you need to cry sometimes because if you didn't you would explode. You will have been loved by someone who really loved the person you are - and you loved him and all his faults. And although it was cut short, it was real and beautiful - and that's not something everybody gets to experience. But most importantly, you will discover that you are a survivor."

That's a lot.

It makes me wonder where I will be in another 10 years. At this point - I have no vision of where I want to be. Will I have found love again? Will I finally be organized? Will I be able to actually buy clothes in 75% of the stores at the malls instead of just 2? It's tempting to dream about, but I've learned that its kinda best to leave things to fate.

while its not great

Last night I was stressed because I had to pick up my car from the shop which meant taking a bus that I don't usually take. I mean - it's not a huge deal, but there is an added bit of stress from not knowing the exact location of where the closest stop was. When I asked the bus driver what the closest stop was to a certain intersection, he looked at me kinda nuts before replying that intersection. great customer service. The service center that I left my car at though had great customer service though, and the total cost actually ended up being less than their estimate (by only a couple of dollars, but that still is lower).

Anyways - car is running much smoother now, but by the time I was out of there, I was really hungry and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to eat. I literally ended up driving all around Annandale trying to decide where to go. I try to justify saying that I just wanted to test out the new and improved Seniorita Cha Cha (that's my car). Finally I bit the bullet and just decided to go to Mickey D's. Really not the greatest choice in the world, but its my go to place when I don't know what the heck I want to eat. It also doesn't help that right now my fridge is like Chernobyl inside and I refuse to put anything new in there until I clean that gross thing out this weekend. It's that gross. (I probably shouldn't be confessing that here).

Anyways - I had 15.5 points left for the day so I took a gamble. Ordered the number 3 medium, went home, and ate it. Now on the bad side - it's McD's and its full of gross fat and sodium and not really nutrionally sound. On the good side - 1) I did not add anything to the meal like I would have a couple of weeks ago (no ice cream cone, no nuggets) 2) it only put me 1.5 points over my point limit for the day. It's not great being over, but at the same time, I made up the points since I did walk about 10 minutes between the bus stop and the garage and did a 20 minute pilates session on my Wii (I don't know if I am strong enough for pilates yet - but it did stretch out my sore muscles really well).

Now I just have to break myself of the habit of going to McDonalds when I don't know what else I want to eat

Good Water Retention

This post isn't going where you think its going.

So last week I ordered the game EA Active for the Wii. My friend Susan had been using it and has lost a good deal of weight (she probably has also been better about tracking her food, etc.) It also appeared to be a good mix of cardio to strength workout activities. So it arrived in the mail over the weekend - and on Tuesday I opened it up and started playing.

I don't know if playing is the right word. Maybe I should say training instead. I immediately set out on its 30 day challenge. Chose a trainer and did my first work out. And boy was it a work out. I love Wii Fit - I find it fun and it can be challenging. But it usually takes about an hour or so of playing to work up a sweat (unless you are boxing). I worked up a sweat in about 5 minutes doing EA Active. They do a good job of mixing up the activities so you don't tire out any particular part of your body at any one time - although I will tell you that by the end of your activities you are pretty tired. Each session is broken into about 18 sections and altogether they last for a total of 22-25 minutes. And because it keeps tracks of how you have done in the past, it automatically calculates new goals in terms of calories burned. It can also sense if your form isn't right and will keep that exercise in the future rotation so that you can get better. At the end of the work out it tells you what to expect next time you play.

Thankfully today is a rest day - although I may try out my new Daisy Fuente's pilates game. I have to say I REALLY love all the work out games that Wii has put out.

So what does this have to do with water retention. Well, I think my body is retaining water so it can repair my muscles - which feel SUPER sore today. My feet look a little swollen today and when I put on the new shoes I bought on Saturday, the shoes seemed almost two tight (at least they feel ALOT tighter than when I bought the shoes...I think). But on the other hand, the scale did say I had lost two pounds at Weight Watchers yesterday. This was awesome because it was the first significant weight loss in a long time. And in long time I mean in months!

Writing it Down

I have not been a good weight watcher this last year. For numerous reasons. Now I in no means saying that I am striving for perfection. While admirable, I think I am one of those people who set out for perfection and then realize that I've goofed up and can't acheived it - I give up. So I have to retrain my brain and say that I will do what I can and to celebrate that those things have gotten done.

Anyways - back to me not following Weight Watchers. One of the hardest things I find is trying to record everything. Each week at weigh in they give you these small little paper trackers that don't really have a lot of room in them to record anything if you have hand writing bigger than a chipmunk (which most of us have). I've tried doing it online too - and that can be frustrating because they may not have what I want to necessarily want to write down. So I was at the grocery store the other day - going past the school supplies when I spotted the composition books. Now I never really liked studying per se, but I looooooove composition books. I love their solid covers with the crazy black and white designs that you can then color and make your own. I love the black binding tape. And I love the fact that there are no holes in the margin so you can use the whole page, if you want. And best of all - I feel free to write as much or as little as I want in them.

So I bought one - In this case, the cover was already red and black. And I am now chronicling all my eating in there. And what makes it doubly fantastic is that because I have as much room as I want to write in it - I can write down why I think I am eating - what I am feeling when I'm eating. It's like blogging in many ways. And since I can put whatever I want, today I started activity in it too. I think the other great thing about it is that since it doesn't have specific food guidelines in it - I don't feel ashamed when I write down something I ate that isn't particularly good for me.

So yay for the new food journal.

um - another pound added

Yeah...So not good. I really need to step up my game. But this month is the food for pounds month at WW - where for every pound of weight loss, the CEO of WW will donate a pound of food to a food charity.

I think I've been falling into the trap of complacency. Not good. I keep on telling myself - well I'll start back next week. But I really need to stop doing that.

Maybe I need to be like Bridget Jones on my blog and start posting daily stats on this blog.

Game on!

So for the last 6 months - I've managed to put back on all the weight I lost last year + a few more pounds. It's been very discouraging. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. I'm not happy being this big. Makes it hard to do stuff and I hate the way my knees creak. Plus I get heartburn. It's awful. Then I have to ask myself why am I doing this to me. Why did I abruptly stop traveling the great path I was on and come back to such an awful lonely place. Here are my conclusions:
1) I started all this right after Chris died, when my whole world was upside down. My home life was obviously different, I was struggling to hold onto my emotions at work which made things difficult there. I was not in a good place and I needed something to control. So I started my get fit effort figuring it would make things better and help me avoid having to take anti-depressants that I dreaded. As my grief morphed into something more maneagable - I began to let go of that need to control this one aspect of my life and started getting sloppy regarding it.
2) This is really dark and I don't want to alarm anyone. I think subconsciously I want to fail at getting healthy. If I stay this way - the liklihood that I end up like Chris gets higher and in a very macabre way I think this is the only way we can be back together. It's a very passive agressive way of hurting yourself - with sugar. And it also SCARES THE CRAP out of me to think that I've been doing this. But the thought has crossed my mind.
3) I've had a lot of pressure lately from both myself and others around me about dating again. It sucks being lonely and I think everybody knows that. At the same time, I am not ready to start that whole process of putting myself and my emotions out there and hoping not to get hurt again. The fatter I get, the less likely anyone will want to date me. It's like a modern day chastity belt. The extra weight I have on me probably weighs as much as those metal torture devices fathers used to put on their daughters during the middle ages.
4) I have to word this one really carefully because I don't want to put the blame on other people. I started out doing this with a couple of friends who came with me to Weight Watchers and who I worked out with. As time wore on - their lives moved on to other things and suddenly I found myself alone doing this. And I don't know if I was ready to be accountable to myself.
5) To top things off, my Weight Watcher's decided to get rid of my meeting time with my leader and I suddenly found myself abandoned by one of the few things that had been my constant since Chris died. It devastated me and so I began emotionally eating EVERYTHING that wasn't nailed down. It was bad.

Anyways - I am finally finding myself at a place where I am ready to start doing something about this. For example, this last week I joined a gym. It's a gym that a couple of my friends go to - this means that we can socialize by taking classes together, or meet on a Saturday morning to work out together. I also decided that I am not giving up on Weight Watchers. In order to stay with my leader who I adore, I have to use my flexible schedule and overwork everyday so that on Wednesdays I can leave early to make it to the earlier meeting time.

The final thing I am doing, I need help with. And that's where all my friends and other people come in. I found this thing online that turns the whole getting fit process into a game. It's actually literally called the Game On diet. It's not really a diet though, it's more like a healthy habits challenge. And the best part is that its a team game. So I am looking for people who are interested in playing. If you are interested in how the game is played - go to the Game On! Diet. I think it'll be fun. I'll write more about it in another post.

Nothing like a cold lemonade cupcake on a hot day

For the last month now, I've totally been craving the flavor of lemons. To satisfy my craving I've done everything from eating Chicken Picatta, I made Rhubarb-Ginger-Lemon jam, and this weekend I plan on making a lemon baked pasta.

Now the jam I made was inspired by a jam I had on vacation that was like heaven. I did my best to replicate that jam but mine wasn't quite right because 1) my rhubarb turned the jam pink (the one on vacation was yellowish - yellow orche to be exact) and 2) mine was too sweet. By too sweet I mean that mine was much sweeter than the jam it was inspired by, but it wasn't too sweet to eat. In fact, biting into my bagel, I realized that somehow I had managed to turn pink lemonade into a jam. This was of course happening as I'm reading one of my favorite cupcake blogs, No One Puts Cupcake Into the Corner, so I immediately realized that I wanted a pink lemonade cupcake.

So I googled around to find a a recipie that looked good and I found one at Confections of a Foodie Bride. This recipie appealed to me becuase it looked simple because it was based off of a cake mix. So I went to the store, got my cake mix, got some lemons and lemonade, and a frozen pizza (cause there is no way this chicky is cooking dinner if she's making cupcakes after work). When I got home and opened my fridge to put my lemons away I realized that I had a quart of strawberries ready to be eaten. The rest is history - or as I like to call it Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes.

At first bite - you get the sweetness of the frosting - but then all of a sudden the tartness of the lemonade hits you. They are just so tangy and delicious. So without further ado - here is the recipie for Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes

For the cupcake:
Ingredients - 1 box white cake mix (or if you want even a depper strawberry flavor you could use strawberry)
3/4 can your frozen lemonade concentrate - thawed (I used a generic brand)
8-10 strawberries, pureed
3 egg whites
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut off the tops of your strawberries and then puree them. I did this by dumping those babies into my blender/food processer and hitting the on button but you could also just mash them with fork (I imagine they might be a bit chunkier done that way, but that's ok). In a large bowl, pour in your cake mix, lemonade concentrate (will be in liquid form), oil, and strawberries. Mix these all together until thoroughly blended. The mix should be a pretty shade of pink. Now line a muffin pan with cupcake liners and start filling the liners 3/4's of the way full with the cupcake mix. I was able to fill about 16 cupcakes. I recommend that you you do this in two batches, with each tin holding about 8 cupcakes. I saw this because my pan that held only 4 cupcakes (12+4=16) cooked at a way different rate than the other in (completely filled with 12) and those 4 little cupcakes ended up a little browner than the others. Bake for 15 minutes. Check to see if they are mostly solid. If they seem to be a little liquidy in the middle, keep baking in increments of 3 minutes until they feel solid enough. Once done - take out of oven and cool in pan for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, if you have a cooling rack, remove cupcakes from pan and set on cooling rack. If you don't have a cooling rack, still take them out of the pan, and set them on your counter or a table. Let cupcakes completely cool before frosting them with strawberry lemonade buttercream.

For strawberry lemonade buttercream:

Ingredients - 3 plus more cups confectioner sugar
1 stick butter (salted fine) at room temperature
8 strawberries, pureed
1 Tablespoon strawberry jam (sugar free works)
1 Lemon
Dash vanilla

Directions
Start by zesting all the peel off the lemon, put zest aside. Then you want to squeeze all the juice from the lemon into a bowl. You also want to make sure you have pureed your strawberries. Next, in a medium to large bowl - put in your stick of butter and 3 cups of confectioner sugar. With a mixer, mix this sugar/butter mixture on high until they are creamed together. Once creamed, add in the vanilla, strawberries puree, strawberry jam, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Mix until fluffy. Taste the frosting - if it seems too runny or not sweet enough (cause that lemon will make it tart) start adding more sugar, about 1/4 cup at a time. Mix together until its at a consistency and sweetness level you like. Place bowel in fridge and let sit for 30-60 minutes. Take out and stir a couple of times with spoon. Frost cupcakes by any method you like. I personally like spooning all my frosting into a sandwhich bag and that I seal up and then clip one of the bottom corners off of. Then I squeeze the frosting out in a giant circle onto my cupcake. You will probably have extra frosting - so put it in a sealable container and refrigerate, and then use it on more cupcakes later on. It should be good for a couple of weeks.

I also decorated my frostings by dying white sprinkle balls with yellow food coloring. This really emplasized that these are strawberry lemonade.


*I apologize for the poor quality of photo. I broke my camera on vacation - and all I have is my camera phone which isn't great.

Travels with my mom

Starting tomorrow, my mom and I will be on a weeklong trip to Maine. I'm very excited over it. Last time we went on a trip together just for fun was in '03. My mom spontaneously suggested that we take a car trip down to Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA during her spring break. At the time I had just been layed off from my first job, my ex-boyfriend had announced he was dating one of my friends, and my dog and grandmother had died. It had been a tough year and I needed the distraction. So that's what we did. And I have to say that it was the best vacation I have ever been on. We ended up loving Charleston so much that we never made it down to Savannah. And surprisingly we got along fantasticly, despite our different tastes in radio sounds.

This trip will be a little different. Once again it was my mom's suggestion that we go, but this time we had more planning time. When we get to Maine we are going to take a boat trip on a schooner called the Isaac H. Evans. We will be sailing the islands off the coast of Maine and I am going to be optimistic and hope that I can bring the VA sun with me into Maine. Apparently they have had a ton o' rain so far this summer due to stalled weather patterns in the northern hemisphere.

And the part that I am really geeking out about. On the boat, they cook with a wood burning stove. How awesome is that. I'm so volunteering to help with food.

So I'm really looking forward to this trip. When I get back, I hopefully will have lots of fantastic pictures and stories to go along with them.

Drunken Chicken

The trees have been in heat overdrive here. Last weekend we actually reached a pollen count of 4,000. The usual pollen count during the spring...1,500. Needless to say my poor allergies couldn't handle it and I got a sinus infection. I actually made myself go to the doctor on Wednesday because I was in so much pain. Anyways - after spending a bunch on meds I am feeling a lot better. So much better that I actually cooked last night.

I haven't cooked in a long time, and part of me was really craving comfort food. And for me, comfort food returns to the food that my mom made for me when I was a girl. So for dinner last night I made myself Pollo Borracho aka Drunken Chicken.

The recipie my mom gave me feeds an army, and I'm just serving little ol' me. So over the years I've just kind of figured out how to do it for little ol' me so that there are three or four servings. Traditionally we served it with white rice, but seeing as I am trying to eat better, I now serve it over brown rice - which frankly is yummier.

So here is the recipie for Em's Drunken Chicken
1 package skinned Chicken Thighs
1 onion
2-3 Tbsp. fresh parsley
2-3 Tbsp sesame seeds
2-3 Tbsp canola oil (really you want enough to coat the bottom of your pan)
Dash salt and pepper
1/2 tsp. whole cloves (I usually throw in about 10)
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1 cup of any white wine you have hanging around, the drier the better
2 tsp. vinegar (white or apple can work)
1 cup green olives with the juice (approx. 30)

Cut up the onions and parsley. Heat up the oil in a large suace pan/dutch oven/or stock pot over medium heat. When its warm, toss in the onions, parsley, and sesame seeds. Stir a couple of times so nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. Cook until onions are yellow and soft (yummmm!) Meanwhile, you want to wash, pat dry the chicken. The season chicken pieces with salt and pepper. Once onions are softened, add in chicken. You want to cook the chicken about 4-5 minutes on each side so that the brown but the chicken doesn't need to be cooked through yet. Once brown, throw in the cloves, cinnamon stick, and bay leaf. Let those cook with chicken for about 1-2 minutes. Then add in the wine (you can sip some for yourself), the vinegar, and the olives (with juice). Put a cover on your pan/dutch oven/stock pot and continue cooking at a simmer for 35-40 minutes.

I find that when serving it with brown rice, if I start the rice just before I start cooking the onions, that the rice and the chicken is done at the same time. Steamed green beans go great it it too.

Ok - so that is my Drunken Chicken recipie. Hope you enjoy.

I'm finishing it this time

So I've been working on the same craft project since I don't even remember when. I got it from my Grandmas' spare craft kit because I forgot to bring a project. I was still alive and pretty healthy, and she died in 2003 from cancer. Anyways - its this really lovely counted cross-stich afghan with daisies and tulips and little pink budsy things.

I know I was working on it in 2000 because my friend Danielle came to visit me and surprised me with the news that she had gotten married to her boyfriend (we don't talk about him). Being a recent graduate and pretty poor - I decided that I would finish it for her as a wedding present.

So here is what happens. I work on it, lose the instructions, find the instructions, work on it, move and lose the thread, months later find the thread but working on something else, pull it out, work on it, lose the instructions again, Etc. Etc. Etc. At this point - the instructions for this poor thing are FALLING apart and folded in a bazillion weird pieces.

And since I declared that I would give it to Danielle, I have had to change it from being a wedding gift to a divorce gift (Yay! and that's not a sarcastic yay) to a 30th birthday gift to a Finishing Business School gift. It was at the boyfriend's house when he died and his parents ended up giving it back to me and I dumped it in the pile with all the other things they returned back to me that I couldn't bare to look at.

Well, I discovered it a couple of weeks ago. And somehow there is now a stain from the bag it was stored in (hopefully it will wash out). And I have a lot of outlining to do, but I am forcing myself to finish it this year. Currently I have stuck it in my work bag and basically I work on it on my morning and afternoon bus rides (because its way more productive than playing stupid games on my cell). And Danielle will still get it when I'm done- stains and all (if the stupid dye stays in). But this time it will be a "See I told you I would finish it" gift.

The Thrill of slugging

This morning I missed my regular bus by about a block. I stepped out of my house, and the bus was passing my stop which was a block up. Never mind that I was leaving the house at the regular time and the bus usually comes by about 10-15 minutes later. But we never have a regular driver so there is some irrgularity to the schedule.

Anyways - so instead of waiting for the next bus to come by (which was in another hour and would make me WAY late for work - something you don't want to do after your boss tells you that she would like to promote you soon) - I hiked a mile to the bus stop on the nearest major road. I have to add that this morning I decided to forgo the regular tennies and put on my slightly painful pumps. While it was painful to walk that mile, at least my feet looked cute doing it.

Of course I missed a bus there by like 2 minutes and had to wait another 15 minutes for the next one. There were two other ladies waiting with me. So here comes the main point of this entry. We had been waiting for about 5 minutes when a woman pulled over and asked if anybody needed a ride to the pentagon. This is known as slugging here. Or you could also think of it as reverse hitchhiking. The driver needs two additional people so they can take the HOV lane. The riders - well, we would get to where we want once the bus came so its not really the rider who is holding out the thumb. Anyways - 1 lady climbed in, the other deferred, so I took the back seat.

I've slugged a couple of times in the past couple of years and the truth is you never know who you are going to be riding with. One time I got in a car with some ladies who wouldn't speak in English once I got in the car but were listening to Uber Christian sermons on tape. Another time I rode with a guy who teaches ESL to university level students who are attending universities in the area. This time the woman was really nice, and had a tendency to flip between the local news radio and NPR.

Slugging is nice because you don't have to wait for anymore bus stops, nor do you have to pay. But I have to admit that there is always that tiny bit of apprehension as you are getting into the car. For a split second I always ask myself, "Am I getting into a car with a total loony?" And then you have to shove that thought back because you've made the decision and have to stick with it so that you aren't late to work. When a rider picks up multiple people it does ease the worry because you know that you aren't the only one stupid enough to get in a strangers car*.

Anyways, today's ride was pretty pleasant. The driver was even kind enough to drop us off in the city instead of the regular drop off (mostly because the police had ropped that area off due to a "Strange Vehicle"). But I will tell you that tomorrow I am going to make sure that I get out for the bus early.

* I have made it a rule not to get into vans of any kind. There's just something really sketch about that.

Why being a gidow sucks

When Chris died one of my friends said to me, "You are actually pretty lucky. Since you guys were only dating and not living with each other, it's not like you have to find a new place to live or find a new job or something."

And yes, I did not have to deal with trying to find a new apartment, or with settling out his accounts, or like a bazillion other technical things. His parents got left with that.

What I did lose was my sense of a future. I had begun in my mind building the future that we were going to have. It was a very quiet thing that I didn't really share with anybody, not even him. But when he died - that all went away. It can never happen. And it makes it hard to just look in the future in general because you know how easy it is that it can be taken away and so you just stop dreaming.

Like when I have to put my long term goals down at work. It's pretty much - don't get fired. Other than that - it really doesn't matter.

At least with kids - I would have to hold on to the fact that they would have a future.

So this is why being a gidow sucks.

A change

I used to have a blog. Just me rambling on about whatever. It was on myspace and it was good. Then I got out of the habit because I started dating someone who was private and I didn't want to post anything he wouldn't feel comfortable with. And when he died, I thought I could go back, but I couldn't - because all of a sudden myspace had turned into a meat market and you couldn't turn left or right without some guy contributing a lame pick up line. And the truth is grieving really doesn't make one receptive to pick up lines.

Anyways - so I created this blog to write about losing weight - which was really great until I started gaining the weight back with depression.

And one of the things I realized is that I really miss having that one forum where I can write whatever I want. Whether it is about what I'm eating or exercising, or how I'm feeling, or even how scared I am that Chuck may not be on next season. So from now on - the Sassy Strutter is no holds bar.

Red Velvet Update

I know that I promised to give y'all an update on the Red Velvet cupcakes - so here it is.

I tried out a red velvet recipie from Paula Deen - and I have to say that I was not impressed with the cake. It tasted too much like oil - although it wasn't oily.

The frosting on the other hand...was FANTASTIC. And relatively low fat (compared to normal cream cheese frosting). Now most cream cheese frosting recipies call for 16 oz. of Cream Cheese (2 8oz. packages). Just 1 8oz. package of regular cream cheese is 22.5 points. So 2 packages put you at 45 points. Add in the powder sugar, butter, and vanilla and you are at something close to 90 points (this is the whole frosting - not the frosting divided into servings. What I learned making my pumpkin cheesecake earlier this year is that while fat free cream cheese may be much better for you, it tastes bitter compared to regular cream cheese and doesn't necessarily have the same consistency in the end. So I used a combination of fat free cream cheese and neufchatel cheese. Neufchatel is a soft cheese that is very cream cheese like (you even find it in that section of the grocery store) but it is lower in fat than regular cream cheese and is creamier than fat free cream cheese. It's a happy medium. So here is my recipie.

Emily's totally AWESOME cream cheese frosting
1 8oz. package of fat free cream cheese (room temp)
1 8oz. package of Neufchatel cheese (room temp)
1/2 cup of butter (softened, but not melty)
2 cups powder sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Using and electric mixer, cream together the FF Cream Cheese, Neufchatel Cheese, and butter. Once mixed together, mix in powder sugar in about about 1/2 cups increments. Mix until frosting smooth but not bubbly. Add in vanilla and mix for another 30 seconds. If you want a different flavor of frosting - you can add in a different extract in substitute for vanilla. If you want chocolate frosting - you can add in 1/2 cup cocoa (I reccommend Hershey's special dark cocoa - it's totally sinful).

When I made this recipie, I was liberally able to frost 23 regular sized cupcakes and still had over a cup of frosting left. The total points for the icing is about 64 points, meaning that point for a serving (based on 24 cupcakes) is about 3.

Enjoy.

They're EVERYWHERE

So last week I went to go visit my father in Mexico. Mexico City to be exact. And it was really nice to hear my dad say when he first saw me, you are looking pretty good - keep up the good work. Usually I cry at least once with my dad because he has to say something about my weight and how I need to loose it, but this time it was a simple recognition of what I had done. No harping on the issue (which always makes me want to stress eat).

Now for the past couple of weeks I was on a losing (weight) streak, but I thought that this trip combined with the fact that I badly hurt the ligaments in my foot the week before would have done me in, but no. I lost 5 pounds since my last WW weigh in and 1.2 pounds since my work weight club weigh in. Woo Hoo! I guess it didn't really hurt that Mexico has Crazy Good fruits and vegetables that I couldn't get enough of. Everymorning we had like fresh Papaya and mango and oranges for breakfast - and you can guarantee that you will have lots of fresh salsas and vegetables during rest of the day. I tried Nopal (aka cactus) at one meal and found that it was delicious - kinda like a tangy green bean. I also had an authentic mole (a chocolate based barbecue sauce) which is so delicious but so filling that you are filled for like the whole day.


Plus on top of everything else - we walked a lot. I'm guessing that we walked at least 2 miles everyday doing sight seeing. Plus we walked in my dad's neighborhood a lot if we needed to go run a small errand.

But one of the things that really made me laugh was when I found a Weight Watcher's in Mexico. We were driving to my dad's zen center when I saw it. I actually made my dad stop and let me take a picture of it. As soon as I saw it my leader's story about how she found a WW on the vegas strip came to mind and I became convinced that you can go anywhere and find a WW. Anyways, I didn't go in (I left my card at home - and they only spoke Spanish) but whenever we passed it - it helped me to remember all that I have worked for this year and helped me stay strong when temptation hit me.

Trying to Reduce my Fat Footprint

Earlier this week I was reading this article about how Tropicana has figured out that its plain ol' orange juice has a carbon footprint of 3 plus pounds of carbon produced for every 1/2 gallon of orange juice. It has something to do with fertilizer. It went on to say that in the near future, companies may start to actually print a product's carbon foot print on its label.

So this Sunday is Book Club and for every meeting we have to bring in something seriously yummy to share with the group. Since I now have a crazy obsession with cupcakes - which I should seriously not be having, I have to find ways to reduce what I am now calling my Fat Footprint. I guess its kinda making sure that I track the point from eating the cupcakes and then using my activity points to offset them. But it's a little more than that. For example, this afternoon I rode my bike to the bookstore just so I could buy red food coloring and some cream cheese for the icing. I'm also going to try to reduce the fat by using lower fat products. Like I am going to try to make butter milk using soy milk and vinegar. I probably should have bought a red velvet cake mix just in case this cupcakes suck, but I am going to trust that they won't and that everybody will love them. So I figure the fat footprint for the cupcake will be the points for the recipie minus the points I spent biking and then divided by how many cupcakes I make. I guess I could also try to figure out how many points I save by mixing it all by hand too.

So that is my plan for reducing the fat footprint for my cupcakes. I just hope they work out.

Say it Ain't So

My name is Emily and I have a problem. I love Cheese. See, I even capitalize the word "Cheese" because I love it so much.

I've had this love affair with Cheese for a long time. But I've realized that if I am ever going to lose this weight - I am going to have to break it off with Cheese, or at least say, "let's just be friends" and then not see it for a long time. And this is a hard thing to do. Somehow in my head, I've basically started using Cheese as a freakin' condiment. You know how like some people put ketchup on everything - I try to put Cheese on everything. Well, maybe not everything, but on a whole lot of stuff. There are days that I realize I have had Cheese at every meal. But no more. I can't live like that anymore.

So I'm starting an experiment - I am going to limit myself to one meal with Cheese per day. And I planned out my menu for the week, and I made sure that it wasn't a cheese love fest. And when I go grocery shopping tonight - I am not buying cheese of any form. So who's with me?!

It's a new year

I just viewed my last entry and I have to say that it's been a while since I posted.

November and December were really tough. The closer I got to Christmas, the edgier I got - mostly because Christmas is no longer just Christmas. Christmas is now also the time when Chris died. All I knew is that I wanted to power through those months and just get my work done, get through the one-year mark, and get to my vacation. My energy was being stretched and so I told myself that I would concentrate on really keeping care of my mental health during that time and not worry so much about the physical. I didn't track what I was eating, I didn't pay attention to my water usage, I ate whatever I want and whenever I wanted, and I didn't really sleep well. My goal for the holidays - to start the year still under the 300 mark.

And I'm happy to say that I made it. JUST BARELY. The last time I weighed in December I was at 298.6. Yesterday I was at 298.4. So I maintained and below the 300 mark. I achieved my goal.

Of course this is about 12 pounds more than I was at my lowest. And I notice the differences. I don't breathe as easily, my newest clothes feel tighter, and I just feel kinda dumpy. But I am still 12 pounds less than I was at the beginning of last year. Of course then I can look at my friends like Susan who has kicked ass and managed to lose a lot more than 12 and I realize that I can totally do better than what I did.

So I am starting off again this year. I am dedicating myself to tracking what I eat and how I feel before eating. And to move more. (Yeah yeah - I know I'm basically reciting the WW program - what can I say - I'm totally drunk on their low-fat kool-ade)

Oh and I will blog more.