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.