A New Woman!

We'll get back to that.  First... I got home just last night from my regularly scheduled trip to Woodinville.  I always have a blast when I'm there.  I get visit my children, granddaughter and friends.  I get to go shopping!  And I get to hang out with the cool people I work with.  We are constantly emailing about something or another but it's just not the same as being able to flop down in their office chair, invited or not :)

For some reason I was unable to connect to the internet at my sister in law's house.  I was never quite there at the same time as Cory, the resident computer guru was so I never got to ask him why and my limited knowledge of anything related to the computer just didn't cut it.  All that to say... no time to blog.  This morning upon weighing in I was delighted to see 152.8 on the fatometer and 95 for a glucose reading!  Yay!  And I have no idea how that is possible since I took the kids out to Mexican for Bobby's 20th birthday on Wednesday night.  Bobby is 20!  I can hardly believe my baby is 20.  No more teens!  Now just as they are all moving out of the teen decade and are all in their 20's, some (cough cough... Adam) will soon enter into the 30 decade!  How old do you think that makes me feel???  Ok... reel it back in.  On Thursday I met my friend Dee for lunch at the Maltby Cafe.  Home of the largest cinnamon rolls I have ever seen.  I did not have one!  The only good choice I made at each of those fine establishments was to split a meal.  Darn good thing too cause just look at the home made chips from Maltby Cafe...

This is the most horrible picture imaginable - but I deserve to have it posted for eating those!  What was I thinking???  I was thinking... MAN these are AWESOME!  :)  Very fortunately at the end of that day I got a haircut so I no longer look quite so horrible!

I guess perhaps the slight loss of weight is due to making "over all" better choices than - well the poster child for how to have a heart attack shown above.  On Monday night before I left home I grilled some tuna steaks and make some quinoa with caramelized veggies.  It's the first time I made or ate quinoa.  I've seen it quite a few times lately on my food shows.  Once on Ellie Krieger and one recently from Giada De Laurentis.  I may even have seen Rachel Ray cook some up.  I was intrigued!  It looked like something that I might like since I love all grains and pastas.  It is actually a seed.  Here... check it out on Wikipedia....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa  It's all the rage now.  And I liked it!  It's a little like couscous ( I just had a seriously senior moment!  I could not think of the name couscous so I had to Google "tiny pasta" to find it.  Wow!!!)  Anyway!...  all that to say, the left over tuna and quinoa were used the next day to make a killer tuna salad!  I had enough to pack in my lunch box and had it on the road for a snack and for lunch the next day.   Here the tuna salad was served along side some whole wheat spaghetti noodles tossed with freshly made (by me) pesto and sprinkled with ... yeah you guessed it... bacon :)  Better half a slice crumbled than three slices woofed in two bites right?  RIGHT????  :)















Definitely a better choice than... the chips!  Another positive choice is this delightful breakfast I had this morning of plain low fat yogurt with home canned peaches (very little sugar added) and sprinkled with a few soy nuts and pumpkin kernels. I sweeten it up with a little sugar free coconut syrup.

Now that I'm back home I can pack in earnest for our cruise which is coming up next Saturday!  Yay!!!!  And that brings me to the tiny story I intended to tell in the first place.  Sorry.  I know what a hardship it is to follow my thought processes.  Can you imagine actually being me?  :)  It's a wild ride for sure!  In preparation for the cruise I made an appointment for a little pampering and grooming.  I was accompanied by my best friend and partner in crime, Brenda for moral support.  Actually she just wanted a facial she wasn't really thinking about me :)  We have been clients of our local (formerly local for me) nail salon, T D Nails in Mill Creek for years!  Since I moved to Chewelah I don't get back very often.  I am always scolded when I come in for being gone so long.   They are super busy usually and when I asked for the "waxing" portion of the visit to be done first so I could relax later after being tortured they agreed but... sometimes things don't work out just right so I had a pedicure first, then was escorted into the dreaded "waxing room".  My sweet friend Brenda who is actually just a little bit wicked was in the next room receiving her facial.  I know she did not achieve the deepest state of relaxation because she was waiting with joy in her heart to hear me screeeeeam!  She was disappointed though.  I took it like a soldier.  Well... a female soldier anyway.  Next was my French manicure.  They were practicing a new process with something they call shellac and so it took much longer than normal.  They said it was because they always have to start all over on me :)  Finally after three hours I was finished and they were satisfied with the work they had done.  They told me, "Thank you for coming, you look like a NEW WOMAN!  Don't wait so long before coming back!  I felt like a new woman. After all I had a fabulous mani/pedi and ... perfectly arched brows.  It wasn't until I got back to Lorie's house and looked at my reflection in the mirror that I realized how absurd it was to spend that much money to be LIED  to!!!  :)  Oh well... Who doesn't love to hear... "you look fabulous"!  Even if you really never quite believe it.

Ciao baby!

It's a Melty Kind of Day

Close your eyes and imagine it's a balmy 34 degrees outside.  The sky and ground are becoming one, enveloped by a white fog slowly swirling.  The trees are barely visible.  Obscured by layers of mist, clearing now and then to reveal snow falling from the branches in tiny puff explosions, that never reach the ground.  Drip, drip, drip.  I'm almost hypnotized by the icicles that are ever melting and yet never seem to get smaller.  Turkeys are scratching through the slush and deer paw the ground and are happy to find winter grass to munch on.  :)  No... I'm not on some psychedelic drug... it's way too white for that.  It's just my world today.  And I'm melting away just a little bit too.  This morning the fatometer read 153.8.  Progress at least, glucose 100, sweeeet!  DWL hmmm what it the date today... 7.

Last night I made something quite tasty that is pretty rare for a beef cattle girl like me.  I made a vegetarian dinner.  It was awesome.  I began with a recipe that I found on the allrecipes.com web site.  I love that website but I'm frequently amazed to find some of the most lard butt recipes imaginable!  A serving of soup with 900 something calories???  Still... You can trim pretty much anything and still have it be scrumptious.  Someone needs to put a leash around my neck and yank me back periodically!  What I was going to talk about was the Spicy Thai Tofu dish that I made.  I should have taken a picture of it but we gobbled it up before I remembered the camera.  Anyway... as usual I was missing a couple of ingredients so that always gives me permission to just figure something else out.  I stir fried firm tofu cubes in a little olive oil and sprinkled some Thai coating sauce mix that I found at Cash and Carry a while back.  I added a little Tamari (rich soy sauce) in and removed it from the pan when it was nice and brown.  Then I stir fried an onion, some broccoli and... something else :) Oh!  a glob of peanut butter and stirred it until it melted away.  At the end of the stir fry time I threw in some shredded Napa cabbage, a little more Tamari, a drizzle of champagne vinegar and a little water to sauce it up just a bit.  I  added the tofu back in and sprinkled the whole thing with sesame seeds.  There you have it.   Highly experimental and not half bad.

Well, all that was from this morning.  I never got a chance to finish and post.  Gotta make the big bucks you know :)  Now it's the weekend.  My favorite days of the week!  While I was finishing up in my office just now Dave was getting creative in the kitchen and whipped up a cheesy tuna melt (yep Amberlyn you guessed it... Velveeta!) grilled on sour dough bread and served with half of a left over sweet potatoe.  What's not good grilled?  I ate every bite! 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Ciao!

Good News Bad News or Bad News Good News?

As I mentioned before... Dave is home for the winter.  It will take me a little while to get used to this.  I waiver from feeling very blessed to having him around to insanely jealous because he get's all winter off.  Yes, I realize the jealousy is petty and mean.  But... have you met me?  :)  I'm working on it!  Here's one example of the stuff that's been driving my crazy the last couple of days.  He RUINED my Starbucks travel mug by putting it in the dishwasher!  Every time I took a sip from the mug it dribbled coffee on me.  He said, well, it isn't a big dribble".  I replied that it wouldn't mess up a white shirt at all!  I almost felt bad because I jumped down his throat like he had committed the worst kind of sin.  Later in the day I pulled a funny o ring looking thing out of the dishwasher and wondered out loud of course what it was.  He got a sparkle in his eye and asked if I thought it might be the seal to my destroyed coffee mug.  (insert big eye roll and teeth grinding here)  As it turns out... my coffee mug is fixed.  He promised to NEVER put it in the dishwasher again.  This morning just when I was about as irritated as I can be he called me to breakfast and here's what he had made.  The good news is that he was so very sweet and made breakfast for me.  That bad news is that it contained fabulous fried potatoes with onions.

This could be a problem.  I was able to restrain myself to half a cup.  Oh how I wanted to eat the whole pan. The omelette was tender and tasty.  I can't make omelettes by the way.  I can never quite master them so he has to make them.  I can make a mean fritatta but sometimes you just want a real omelette.  Anyway... It had goat cheese and bacon crumbles.  I topped mine with a little plain Greek yogurt rather than sour cream.  Even though I showed amazing control moderating the potatoes... well let's just say it would be better for me to have no potatoes.  But I didn't want to hurt his feelings.  :)  Riiiight!   

I decided I better go light for lunch.  I rummaged around in the fridge freshly stocked with raw crunchy goodness and came up with this.  Let's see.  We'll call it...

Kicked Up Caprese Salad

It started out Caprese because I remembered the fresh mozzarella "pearls" in the fridge.  Then I added the tomatoes and cukes and got derailed because I have NO basil.  :(  Hmmpf!  I got angry all over again at Walmart because they had NO fresh basil last time I went.  Some crazy person took over and added red cabbage, bacon crumbles and these nice little garlic flavored pistachios I found at good ole Walmart the other day.  A little ground pepper and sprinkling of olive oil and balsamic vinegar (my favorite) and ta da!

 Now... back to my favorite subject... Dave.  :)  The real problem is that it feels like he is invading my territory.  I love love love him AND I do like my alone time.  If he's always here...   see where I'm going with this?  :)  I'm sure I'll settle down.  This is not the first time he has taken the winter off.  I'm always amazed that there is usually a knee or an elbow that needs repair and it tends to happen... from January through March.  :)  I need to quit making fun of him.  They are all valid and the rest of the year he works like a DOG!  Still... I wonder what I could come up with to get that much time off.  Hmm... my fingers would have to be smashed to smithereens (ha!  my spell checker just corrected my spelling on smithereens.  I didn't know it was actually a word) and my butt would have to... well... how can you not sit on your butt?  Alright.  I'm thankful that I'm healthy enough to make the completely exhausting climb to my second story office each day where I can gaze out the window and survey my Queendom.  Then I get take my frustrations out on those poor souls who have either been unfortunate enough or stupid enough to not pay their bill at Valley Supply Co.  :)  In the end I guess it's Good News Good News.  It will be very interesting... on Friday night we get to go hang out at Donna and Ed's house where we have a fun bible study about marriage.  Almost always I feel like I have the perfect marriage.  If not perfect then pretty darn awesome.  I am only rarely irritated by Dave.  :)  I'm sure he's frequently irritated by me!  We'll see if he "tells" on me.  ;) I just have to say though... the first morning he wakes up early and wants to get in the tub with me... I'm going to have to drown him.   Just Kidding... sort of... :)

Ciao!

Oh!  Fatometer.  Again... 154.8 Grrr!  Glucose coming down a skosh:  115.  Still high and DWL:  6.  Yay!

Feeling Better - still stupid! :)

Fatometer 154.8 Glucose 120 (Yikes!)  DWL:  5 (yay!).  It occurred to me that once I get beyond January I'm going to lose count of how many days wineless... if only all the months had 30 days.  Oh well.  I'll just have to estimate :)  I was on a good food roll yesterday and could tell that my face was thinning out a little as the bloat began to recede :)  Unfortunately - and this is where the STUPID comes in... I had a small bowl of peanuts in the shell as I sat watching the news... not so bad.  Then I had a small bowl of pistachios.  Hmm... Then Dave went to bed.  THEN I popped a bag of microwave pop corn!  THEN!!!!  I found the chocolate chips in the cupboard and ate maybe a 1/4 of the bag.  Geeze!  I hate myself!  


So...  I decided I better get back on the salad plan.  I've been balking at salads this winter because they are just so cold!  It's 20 degrees out.  The whole world is white - well... all of my world anyway and the counter tops feel like sheets of ice.   I was determined to have the quartz counter tops when we built the house and Dave warned me.  So now guess what?  As recently as today I got another great big I told you so from  Dave.  Fine!  He's right!  I really don't like super cold food.  Today I took my lettuce and veggies out of the fridge and let them warm up a little on the cutting board.  It was enough to make the salad so much more pleasurable to eat.  On this one I got about half way through and realized I forgot the bacon bits I had been saving for the top.  That added so much more flavor!  :)  Ummmm... bacon!  but just a few crumbles.  I also had a mug of nice warm turkey lentil soup.  It's been warming me up for two days now.  I really don't want to see it again.  I'll let Dave snack on it.

Clearly the fork is on the wrong side of the plate.  :)  I was just trying to get the soup mug in!


Well... It's snowing again and we've just come home from Colville where I took Dave to have his right foot put in a cast.  He has plantar fasciitis and will have one foot after the other cast until sometime in March.  Now before you go feeling too sorry for him you should know that they are letting him out of the cast and into a boot for the Caribean cruise in two weeks.  There is no way to keep him out of the water so...  He'll have to have it back on when we get home.   He's just not that sad to be out of work for the winter.  I can't imagine why!  I am happy to report though that I found an overshoe that will fit over his cast so that he can go out in the weather and feed the cows.  Hmm... maybe I'm not so stupid after all... :)  Yes... I really am.  While we were in Colville I ran by the grocery store and picked up some more "green" food.  Also got some eggs and thought it would be so tasty to have some tuna salad with hard boiled eggs in it.  I put some eggs on to simmer and then went up to my office.  About an hour later I realized that something smelled like it was burning... I ran all the way down into the basement where I found Dave and demanded to know what he was burning.  He said he thought I was burning something.  I informed him that I was working not cooking and stomped off.  :)  THEN I remembered!  I immediately began thinking about how I was going to get out of admitting...  nope.  No way out!  (Insert big sigh here!)  At least I have a winter maid to clean up the mess :)


Ciao!

New Beginnings - Again!

The thing I love about New Years more than anything is the opportunity to start all over again.  Of course we also get that opportunity each morning if we happen to wake up but since well... let's put it this way.  I read a little story on facebook this morning about a woman who drank too much wine on New Years Eve and fell down the stairs.  How embarrassing for that poor unfortunate woman!  How much more embarrassing to find out that the poor unfortunate woman is ME!  Most of you know how much I like my little glasses of wine.  I even had delusions at one time of becoming a very small time wine maker.  I've decided that is just a bad idea!  I better stick to just grapes for eating.  It may seem like I am just flippantly (I don't really think that's a word) throwing this out there but I've actually thought about it for the last two days A LOT... and before!  I've had long periods of being wineless and then decided that one glass would be ok.  Usually it is.  When one turns into three though it's time to start asking myself some serious questions.  While I don't necessarily think drinking wine is a "sin"... drinking enough to fall down the stairs and not even remember it is just plain stupid.  And what a horrible example I set for my daughter!  That's what is more painful than the bruise I have on my rear end.  Another major factor is that alcohol is a food trigger for me.  Either issue is serious on it's own but the combination seems pretty lethal - eventually anyway.  I'm sure the wine has been somewhat of a factor in my holiday weight gain.  I'm going to add one more set of numbers to my stats.  It will be the number of days I have been wineless.   This morning the fatometer read 156.4 also very embarrassing.  I forgot to take my glucose reading maybe due a depleted number of brain cells but yesterday was 123 :(  and DWL (number of days wineless) 3.  Why am I doing this publicly?  Well... my sins are going to be shouted from the rooftop anyway and I'm more likely at this point to stick to my "resolution" if I have to report on myself to my three blog readers.  

On a more positive note.  Look at this adorable little grand daughter of mine who is experiencing her first snow flakes.  Amazingly her first snow experience came to her in the desert in Edwards California.  

And check out little Aubrey modeling her daddy's t-shirt :)

I really want to be around to watch them grow up!

Dangerous Games...

When I was a kid there were toys on the playground that you could seriously hurt yourself on.  Swings so tall that you could launch yourself far enough to break an arm when you hit the ground.  See-saws where the board was so long that when you were up in the air your feet were dangling 4 feet above the ground.  And you could easily fit two or three kids on each side.  Someone always fell off.  Or worse... they rolled off when I was up in the air which made me drop like a rock!  Owww!  Maybe I was just little and everything seemed huge.  Well... I'm riding that see-saw right now and I feel the need to get off.  :)  My friend Dee asked me on facebook a couple of days ago where my blog was.  I told her I was too fat to write a post.  Still true!  But oh well.  January is right around the corner and with it the promise of better dietary behavior.  (insert big sigh here)  This morning the fatometer read 154.5 and glucose 113.  It's time for another visit to the doc for blood tests.  I've been stalling because I'm sure the results won't be quite as positive as the last round.  They won't be horrible but - meh!

I have made and consumed a few tasty salads lately.  That's a good start.  It's not as easy to eat fresh healthy veg and salads when you can't just go out to the garden and pick them.  Takes more planning.  The ideas are not coming to me as readily.  I'm more inclined to think about almond roca and cookies this time of year.  And pot roasts and potatoes.  I did have a tasty salad for lunch yesterday though...


This was an old stand by from summer... cukes, tomatoes, mozzarella, basil but winterized with a sprinkling of left over wild rice and red wheat berries.  With just a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  Very tasty.  I should go back through some of my old pics to remind myself of what I should be eating.  :)

One more exciting piece of news from yesterday... my last Christmas present arrived.  A Boos Block cherry wood cutting board.  Dave is so sweet to get that for me!  I love it!

It may not look that exciting - but it is!  It's big and beautiful!  Dave did not understand why I just had to have one until I told him that all the chefs on the Food Network channel have one :)  Yeah - you guessed it...  enormous eye roll :)
Go check it out on Metro Kitchen:  http://www.metrokitchen.com/product/JB-CHY-R02
One of my new fav websites.  I've enjoyed free shipping all Christmas season.  Which is awesome since my knives were a little heavy and this board was seriously heavy!  It's actually darker than it appears in the pic.  And it will get darker over time.  I need to go get some mineral oil to treat/seal it.  Now you just watch.  You will now notice a Boos cutting board all the time when you watch your favorite cooking shows.  :)  And you'll remember you saw it here first.  You'll also remember that a cutting board does not make a chef... unfortunately.  If it did I would be awesome!  :)

Well gotta roll.  Gotta get to work.  It's snowing and blowing so hard it feels like a power outage kind of day.  At the very least it will be a snow shoe walk to the mailbox kind of day.  Umm... if I don't see you again before... HAPPY NEW YEAR!  :)  Since there will be New Year feasting I will write my next post when I am BACK DOWN to 154.5 :)  I'm horrible!  I promise to redeem myself next year!  Here's to a healthier 2011.  Hey, I'm still way better than spring 2010!

Ciao!

Out With The Old, In With The Moo - Continued

Fortunately I've been able to resist the Harry and David tower of treats under my tree and my stats reflect this.  This morning 152.6 and glucose 98.  Yay!  It would be awesome if this were the last time I lose those pounds :)

I've been rummaging around in my freezer in order to make room for Panda as we discussed last post.  I found some cube steaks I had purchased over Thanksgiving to make Salisbury steak for Michele - but we never got around to eating that.  Too much other stuff to eat!  I marinated it over night with grilling rub and Worcestershire sauce and seared it in my grill pan then sliced it up and made a steak salad out of it.

That's not a good pic... I really have to check the settings on my camera.  But you get the idea.  Romain hearts, shredded carrots, sun-dried tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese and marinated cube steak -topped with pine nuts.  It's been awhile since I was inspired to make a salad.  Of course I have made some - I just have not been very excited about them.  Too darn cold over here in snow country!  I enjoyed this one.  The salad was simple and tasty.  The steak was nice and warm and had a nice kick from the seasonings.  I just drizzled it with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  It made a nice light dinner.  Dave enjoyed it too.  With the other half of the steak or rather.... barely hanging together ground beef :) I purged my fridge and made soup.  That will be for dinner tonight.  It's sort of a minestrone type soup.  It also used up some beef stock from the freezer.  Oh... I just remembered... I'll go down and drag some shredded zucchini out of the freezer and add it.  And maybe I'll throw in a little bit of frozen left over stuffing too.  :)  (DONE) I love to save left over stuffing.  It adds lots of flavor and texture to just about any soup.  This particular batch of soup is getting pretty busy though.

Ok... dinner is over and I have to admit I was a little unsure what the soup would turn out like.  It was actually good.  Whew!  Well.... Even if it wasn't it was just stuff I would eventually have had to throw away.  Nice save though!  I made some sourdough cheesy bread to go with it.  I only had half of the piece that is shown here...

Enough about soup!

I also excavated some nice shrimp and clams that Dave's friend Scotty brought us when he came to visit in November.  They will be great in my Christmas Eve Seafood Chowder.  I still need some cod or flounder though.  Too bad there's none of that in there.  There are some tuna steaks but - I just can't get my head around tuna in seafood chowder.  Nope!  Not gonna happen!  There were also round sourdough loaves in the freezer.  I think I'll hollow them out and serve the chowder in them.  Well... for Dave and Amberlyn anyway.  I can't be trusted with a sourdough bread bowl :)  There were also some nice chicken breasts from Costco and I pulled out some tomato puree that I had frozen from the very last of my tomatoes.  They will make some fabulous tomato soup.  I'll serve them with sourdough grilled cheese sandwich strips.  I think I'll plan to indulge in those.  Ummm!  There are still two fat rib steaks courtesy of Scotty.  I have not taken them out yet.  I was planning on grilling those tomorrow tonight but Amberlyn who WAS coming over tomorrow is delaying her trip to spend time with her very handsome boyfriend.  While I would rather hang out with him than me too... well... I guess no rib steaks.  Too bad because those freezers are not nearly empty.  I'm trying to get the really good stuff out before Dave starts tossing everything out to the cows, dogs and chickens.  Hey - the turkeys are back... I bet they will help eat some spare bread from the freezer that I might have to toss.  I'm not sure I want to encourage them though.  They almost hang out on the porch as it is these days.  And those darn dogs just cozy up to them.  They truly are good for absolutely nothing.  But so sweet!  They are my pals.

Ok... I apologize!  I'm done now :)

Ciao!