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.