Que Sara Sera

Disney prep

2012-01-25T21:39:00.000-05:00

Ugh. I just wrote half a blog post and it was basically just me whining, so instead let me summarize what it said:

-I am freaking out about getting ready for the trip and flying with the girls
-I am PMS-ing
-I am irritated that I had to be called out of Bodypump twice tonight, the second time permanently since my 4.5 year old peed on the floor in daycare.

That was much better than what I wrote. And since I wrote the first version I've been able to take a shower with not one but TWO locked doors separating me from my children, so the world looks a little brighter now.

So! Food!

Will thoughtfully prepared Saturday morning breakfast today since we won't be around Saturday morning to eat it then.

Great Harvest Rye bread (interesting choice, but it needed to be used up), 3/4 oz cabot 50% light cheddar, 1 slice beef bacon, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, sliced baked apples, egg

Snack was a KeVita and 1 oz cabot 50% light.

Lunch was a repeat of yesterday, minus the tomatoes.

Greens, red bell pepper, roasted chickpeas, snap peas, 1 oz feta, balsamic, 1 tsp olive oil, 12 small black olives

Plus this:

1 rolled-up slice Applegate Organics herbed turkey breast lunchmeat

And these:

When snack time came I was really craving a peanut butter milkshake. Chocolate Covered Katie posted one awhile back and ever since I saw it I've wanted it. I used to make one with sugar free cheesecake jell-o pudding powder that was amazing, but I don't use things like that anymore so I had to get more creative. I think the result was super-tasty.

1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1/2 cup skim milk, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 2 Tbsp peanut flour, 1 large frozen banana, ice, 6 drops NuNaturals liquid stevia

It was just what I was craving, but healthy! I am quite pleased about that because I have been battling the panicky hormonal cravings a lot the past 2 days and I am proud that I made a smoothie instead of just attacking a bag of chocolate chips.

Dinner was leftover paella eaten in the car on the way to Bodypump.

Possibly even yummier the second day

I was looking forward to finally getting to do all of release 80 (since I always have to leave early to get Emily at preschool) but alas, today was not my day (see above summary of my original post).

When I got home I was very irritated and angry, and I wanted more peanut butter milkshake so that's what I had.

Same smoothie, but now it's dark

I was so angry I put pretzel legs in it this time.

Yum

I think we're about finished packing(!) so now I plan to relax a bit and then head to bed. Emily has come out of her room 4 times in the past hour for the following reasons:

-Her 'gina felt crooked (?!?)
-She couldn't find the baby dragon that turned out to be in her hand
-She thought she might have to poop
-She needed to read a book for awhile

Looks like I'm not the only one who might have trouble sleeping tonight.

And yes, I know that I am lucky to be able to take my kids to Disney World. I know we'll have fun. I know that other people fly with kids all the time on much longer flights than I will be taking tomorrow. But "other people do it all the time, and for much longer than I'll have to do it" is what I told myself before I gave birth the first time, and that didn't mean it wasn't the toughest and most painful thing I've ever done!

I don't know what to call my blog post, but it's done

2012-01-24T21:13:00.001-05:00

The title of this post is what I just said to Will, and he suggested I use that as the title so I took his advice.

First and most importantly, I lost 1.8 pounds this week for a total of 6.8(ish)! Yay for that. I'm within half a pound of my summer weight and I felt decent then so let's hope I can keep it up this time.

The hours remaining before the trip are starting to go by very quickly. I will post as best I can, and I've downloaded the Blogger app for iPhone so I may even be able to keep up with posting my food while I'm on the trip (WITHOUT having to pay for internet access at my hotel!). Hopefully that can help keep me on track. I feel like I've been eating well for a couple weeks now but I'm right back at the weight where I usually fall off the wagon and a trip at this point is a bit dangerous. We're doing everything possible to keep our eating close to normal; getting a room with a full kitchen, having groceries delivered to our room and bringing A LOT of food with us, only planning to have 3 meals out etc.

Anyway, on to my food.

My breakfast, which I regretted later (in spin class) because it did not have very much protein.

2 biscuits Barbara's Bakery shredded wheat, blueberries, erythritol, almond milk

Then I went to the aforementioned spin class. It's true that the seat hurts less as time goes on...this is my 3rd week and it was much more standable. Why is that? I really hope I'm not developing callouses...

After spin I snacked while running errands, and although I intended to avoid coffee today (its creeping back into my life as a daily thing) I had a spare 10 minutes before preschool pick-up which is just the perfect amount of time to go through the Starbucks drive-through.

Grande plain skim latte (half-drunk) and my fully drunk KeVita. Not pictured: Babybel light cheese wheel

Then it was time to throw together my salad and run out the door to dance class. Today I only allowed tasty things into my salad. I need to recover from yesterday. The wine worked though, I don't seem to have food poisoning :-)

Greens, red bell pepper, sugar snap peas, kalmata olives, 1/4 cup roasted chickpeas, 1 oz feta, cherry tomatoes, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic vinegar

I am always extra-hungry when I get home from Emily's dance class so I made myself a thick smoothie and topped it with some Trader Joes High Fiber Cereal (which Emily sometimes calls pretzel legs).

1 frozen peach, 1 frozen banana, 1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1/2 cup skim milk, ice, 12 almonds, cinnamon, pretzel legs

I was still hungry, so I had a couple more snacks.

1/2 cup roasted chickpeas

some withered strawberries that needed to be finished up

I was excited about dinner. I bought a frozen mix of scallops, shrimp and calamari from Trader Joes and I was going to make a seafood soup but then Mama Pea posted a recipe for paella this morning and suddenly I knew what had to be done with my seafood. I followed her recipe, but then befouled it with all kinds of seafood and sausage and brown rice. Sorry Mama Pea.

Few sights are yummier than a whole big pot of paella

My serving

Oh, and I had to use turmeric instead of saffron because Giant didn't carry saffron. Can you imagine? I don't know how we live like this.

Once Daddy got home I ran out the door to pick up a couple things we still needed for the trip. When I returned I was hungry again, and Will had opened a pale ale made by my dad so we shared that...

Photographed by William Randall

...and I had a second small helping of the paella.

Like my bowl? Remy does.

After putting Emily to bed, I had a dessert snack. I have been extremely snack-y today, which I blame on the time of the month and the stress of getting everyone ready for the trip.

2 Tbsp Sunspire grain-sweetened chocolate chips and 2 Tbsp raisins

I have a friend who just took her FOUR kids to Disney World. I have no idea how she even did that. As far as I can tell they're all back and in one piece too so I think she deserves a medal.

And I think I need to go to bed before I eat anything else.

Epic salad fail

2012-01-23T22:02:00.002-05:00

The last thing I ate before bed last night was banana peanut flour ice cream, so I decided to make it a whole recurring theme and have banana peanut flour oatmeal for breakfast this morning.

1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 banana, 2 Tbsp peanut flour

It tasted a bit like those no-bake cookies and I had to keep myself from sprinkling chocolate chips over the top of my oatmeal. Peanut and chocolate should be together, and once I am in a more maintenance-y phase of weight loss I think I will reunite them in this breakfast.

I was getting the girls all ready to head to school and then the gym this morning (and by "getting ready" I mean arguing that no, you cannot leave the house naked) when Emily's preschool called and said classes were cancelled. I hung up and called the gym to find that all morning classes were cancelled there too and there was no childcare. Dang it. I don't know how much working out I'm going to be able to do while we're gone, I want to stick as close as possible to my routine for as long as possible beforehand!

Since we were stuck at home, I bumped my smoothie up to become my morning snack.

1 cup applesauce, 1 cup plain nonfat yogurt, 12 almonds, ice

And then the salad happened.

As I've said, I'm trying to use my salads to finish up random things in the fridge, but I think I took this one a little too far. I blanched some wilted kale and tossed that in there. I dumped Emily's leftover salad from yesterday in the mix. I added some recently defrosted lemon lentil salad I made God knows how long ago and stuck in the freezer to promptly forget.

Greens, kale, 6 olives, grated carrot, 1 oz humbolt fog cheese, 1.2 cup lemon lentil salad, smoked salmon, balsamic vinegar

Here were some of the problems with my salad:

-The lemon from the lentil salad was too strong when paired with the vinegar I sprinkled over everything. Acid overload!
-The salmon in Emily's leftover salad from yesterday tasted fishier than normal which is understandable since it sat in a salad in the fridge all night but it still freaked me out so I picked it out and tossed it.
-Something else in the salad tasted like soap. I suspect the kale, but not EVERY piece of kale tasted gross. It was like playing Russian roulette every time I took a bite except with salad.

It was so very unpleasant that I made it about this far...

Still too far

...and then threw away the rest. Blech.

Now usually I have a pretty strong stomach, but the stakes are higher now since I REALLY don't want to be barfing from food poisoning while we're traveling to Florida. I had started to over-analyze how I was feeling and freak myself out when I opened the fridge and saw a pitcher of our super-strong sangria from the other day. I poured myself a glass and downed it.

Mama needs her medicine

It was medicinal, I swear.

Then I got a headache.

With my stomach properly disinfected, I finished up my awesome lunch with 2 pears.

Yes, this is the same pear twice but I didn't feel like taking another picture and they looked enough alike.

If you can believe it, my stomach felt weird this afternoon! So I made it almost all the way to dinner without a snack. I did give in around 4:30 though.

1 oz Cabot 50% light cheddar

1/3 cup Mama Pea's roasted chickpeas

I made the chickpeas for our trip, but they will totally be gone by the time we leave.

Dinner was the girls' favorite.

Garlic soy chicken drumsticks (skinless for me) and roasted delicata squash on a floating plate

Steamed broccoli, cauliflower and green beans

The girls did not buy it when I told them the squash tasted like cake.

After dinner I suffered a little heartburn. I blame that on the salad too.

Once I recovered somewhat, we had dessert which was a repeat of last night.

Vitamix banana ice cream with peanut flour and juice-sweetened chocolate sauce

Now I should probably stop reading about trips to Disney World on the internet and actually go pack for mine. I enjoy the research phase of vacations much more than the actual work of getting ready. Perhaps I should've been a travel agent.

A house divided

2012-01-22T21:16:00.000-05:00

We got up this morning to the wonderful smell of cinnamon applesauce. I am a big fan of chunky applesauce, but the Vitamix makes it so smooth even with the peels that we've been having it that way more and more lately. While I made breakfast, Will blended it up.

Smooth applesauce

Last week I served penguin-shaped sandwiches at Charlotte's birthday party, but that left us with quite a few pieces of bread with a penguin-shaped hole in the middle. So this morning we used them to make french toast.

Penguin french toast filled with greek yogurt/applesauce mixture, a bit of smoked salmon on the side and coffee

The only thing that wasn't delicious about breakfast was the coffee. It tasted like soap, and I said as much when I had some. Will shrugged and said he didn't really notice anything unusual. I kept sipping it because I really wanted to have coffee with breakfast this morning, but it was just yucky.

I was about to decide that I did NOT in fact love everything we've ever gotten from Baltimore Tea and Coffee when I poured Charlotte the cup of tea she had requested. When all sorts of little bits started swirling around in the cup immediately I figured I had gotten a ripped teabag or something, but as I investigated I realized that it was actually the water itself coming out of our hot water tap! Ever since Will changed the whole house filter yesterday we've had air in the pipes and strange colors in the water but we thought we'd worked it all out. I guess we forgot that the hot water tap has a reservoir and had to be flushed separately. This is what the water coming out of the tap looked like:

Super-nasty

Even worse was the realization that THIS was why my coffee tasted horrible. It was made with water that looked like this, we just couldn't tell because the coffee itself was already dark and chunky.

This, among other reasons, is why we have a house filter. We originally got it to take the chlorine out because we are on city water. City water is supposed to be "clean" and is tested yearly but we still end up with all this nastiness in our filter that is jarred loose when it gets changed. Without a filter we'd be slowly drinking everything that is caught here, which does NOT look clean to me.

Anyway.

I seem to have forgotten to eat a morning snack since I was out running errands. I did eventually acquire a decent cup of coffee at M.O.M. though.

Coffee and an orange slice

Lunch was another "finish up leftovers" salad. I will probably be having a lot of these so I can finish up as much random food as possible before we leave.

Greens, cilantro, grated carrots, 3 jalapeño-stuffed olives, 3 black kalmata olives, 1 oz humbolt fog cheese, broccoli, 1.5 oz salmon, hummus + balsamic dressing.

Later in the afternoon (and after a failed nap attempt for Charlotte) we headed over to Lauren and Greg's house to watch the Ravens/Pats game. It was especially fun because Greg is a Pats fan and Lauren is a Ravens fan so that added to the tension! They each made a soup representative of their team.

Lauren's delicious MD crab soup (and on the side 2 whole wheat crackers with homemade hummus, some balsamic roasted veggies, and sweet potato beet latkes with applesauce)

I also had to try Greg's delicious New England clam chowder. Wish calories would've allowed me to have a whole bowl of this too!

Lauren was kind enough to share some of her kumquats with us too, the best I've ever had! These guys were so sweet, nothing like the tart things you buy at grocery stores around here.

A kumquat picked fresh off the tree in Greg's mom's backyard in FL

The girls, wrapped in the correct blanket :-)

3/4 of our family

Wells banana bread beer

Greg, surrounded by his friends in purple

My second beer, Heavy Seas Märzen

My second bowl of crab soup

3 more kumquats, applesauce and a Leffe blonde beer for dessert

Of course I would've preferred if the game ended differently (SO couldn't believe it!) but we had a great time this evening nonetheless.

Lauren ALSO sent us home with some peanut flour to try, so we had to make some Vitamix banana ice cream with peanut flour for second dessert once the girls were in bed and we were settled in to watch our show for the night :-)

Yummy alone

Even better with chocolate sauce

I will definitely have to order some of this stuff! It meets Will's crazy requirements for grams of protein per calorie so it could help give me more options for meatless dinners.

I take back what I said about Star Trek episodes about Data's feelings. The episodes where Captain Picard pretends to be a detective on the holodeck are much worse.

Saturday, snowy Saturday

2012-01-21T23:00:00.001-05:00

This morning I was awakened by a snow plow going by at 6ish so I knew before even looking outside that we had indeed gotten the snow they were forecasting. And as they predicted, it was snow followed by ice which is the worst kind because then it's jagged and treacherous and you can't really play in it :-(

But luckily it was Saturday, so we had a nice warm Saturday breakfast, albeit with a few substitutions because sometimes I forget to have all the ingredients on hand when Saturday rolls around.

Whole wheat bread, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, baked apple slices, rosemary ham, 3/4 oz cabot 50% light cheddar, fried egg and decaf green

Close-up

Snowy backyard

We had planned to meet Kim at the gym today, but due to the snow and ice there was no daycare offered at the gym. However there WAS (expensive!) daycare offered at FISC, so we set out for there instead. My car was encased in a cocoon of ice though, which Will was nice enough to chip through for me as I got the girls ready.

Once we got to FISC and took the girls to the bathroom about 3 times each (they don't offer bathroom service at the FISC daycare apparently) we settled in for our workout. At the end, we both tried out Ken's new torture device/toy:

Yes, it's a foam roller. It hurts so good!

It really did hurt but it was super-effective at loosening up sore muscles.

After the gym I sped home (and almost slid into a curb on the ice at one point, eek!) and still arrived a couple minutes after my guests...

My mom and sisters came over so we could all help stamp and stuff Krista's wedding invitations. I fixed myself a random leftovers salad for lunch:

Greens, artichoke hearts, black rice, salmon, 1 oz feta, 6 jalapeño olives, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic vinegar

Once the envelopes were stuffed and everyone headed home I tried to give my coffee smoothie from yesterday another shot. Will pointed out that almond milk is not as sweet as cow's milk so maybe I needed a bit more stevia. I also added some xanthan gum to thicken it a bit.

1 cup coffee, 1 cup almond milk, 1 banana, 4 drops stevia, handful ice cubes, a pinch of xanthan gum, 1 Tbsp cocoa powder

It was better. Not fabulous, but better. I think chocolate protein powder would be a good addition next time. I don't usually use protein powder because I read somewhere (probably Women's Health) that "protein powder has no place in a weight-loss diet plan", but eh, maybe I'll give it a shot.

Post-smoothie Daddy played hide and seek with the girls, then I oversaw some painting with the new supplies Aunt Kathleen gave Charlotte for her birthday. It was the cleanest painting session I've ever cleaned up!

I also tossed a bunch of spongy old apples into the crock pot to become applesauce.

About halfway there!

Then I realized it was already 5 and I hadn't started dinner. 45 minutes (and a smoke alarm going off) later, it was ready!

Plain-looking but yummy. Cuban sandwich: Pork, beef bacon (whoever heard of such a thing?), spicy dill pickles, mustard, sauteéd onions and cabot 50% light cheddar.

So was the "wastebasket sangria" that Will made to go along with it. He finished up 7 bottles (only some of it was wine/liquor) making this stuff, and it was incredibly sneaky. After downing two small glasses that tasted just like juice it hit me like a ton of bricks!

My sangria, Will's hand

Glass #2

All through dinner our crazy dog just walked around whining and carrying a piece of leftover sandwich in his mouth. He likes to stash food, be it in the couch cushions or in holes he digs outside, so whenever Will gives him leftovers he walks around for awhile just worrying about what to do with them. Weirdo.

Whine whine whine...

I'm so worried

So very, very worried

Help

Oh God

After dinner Emily asked if we could all tap dance, so we put on our shoes and went to town. All except for Will, who went to the basement to get away from the noise. I can't say that I blame him.

Dancing with the girls tonight made me realize how much I miss tap. My ankles have gotten weak! I might go looking for an adult tap class again...I keep threatening to get back into it and then I never do because it's hard to find a time and a level that agree with me. Plus I don't necessarily have the urge to don a unitard and perform in a recital or anything like that again so that kinda rules out most dance studios.

To finish out the night I had an orange...

...and we watched No Strings Attached. Meh. It was too long and frustrating, I found the humor to be strange and Ashton Kutcher's hair was awful. I didn't hate it, but it was not remarkable at all. A good movie to get you ready for bed though, so that is where I'm headed.

Un-hammed ham

2012-01-20T22:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we finished up the last of the peanut butter, and as I was looking at the jar thinking about what a pain it would be to scrub it all out I realized what I SHOULD be doing with it. If you read many food blogs you probably already know what I'm talking about. Overnight oats in a jar, of course!

Mostly empty peanut butter jar + 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup yogurt, 1/2 cup milk, 1 Tbsp chia seeds, 1/2 banana chopped all soaked overnight in the fridge

It's the most bang for your buck peanut butter-wise (except maybe for using peanut flour) because every bite has some peanut butter flavor without actually having very much of the stuff in the jar.

A lovely fried egg made by my lovely husband and salsa

Blech. I bought this salsa for a party because it was on sale but it turns out it's got some icky-tasting preservatives in it and I couldn't finish it all...I had to chuck the last bit from my plate, then I threw away the rest of the container. I suppose the only way to avoid having preservative-laden or overly-vinegared salsa is to make my own!

Emily didn't have preschool today because of parent teacher conferences, so I went straight to Zumba and then to her conference afterward. On the way I snacked on a Babybel light and half a mango kombucha. Charlotte picked it out herself at the store, and she liked it but I wasn't a big fan. I prefer my kombucha very fizzy and without much sweetness at all and once they start putting fruit purees in them it dilutes the actual kombucha and makes it taste more like spoiled juice.

The conference went well, and aside from the fact that Emily apparently doesn't hold her scissors correctly (she turns them sideways like a gangsta) she's doing just fine. I can't believe in a couple months she'll be in elementary school!

For lunch I decided to forego the salad in favor of a big old sandwich.

Great Harvest honey whole wheat bread, sabra artichoke hummus, thinly sliced cucumbers and carrots, TJ's rosemary ham, some leftover pepperjack cheese I found and some greens

Plus a bowl of antioxidants

I had a chill afternoon around the house taking care of some pre-trip "errands" (if doing things on the internet can be called errands) and playing a game with Emily that used to be called "balloon catchers" but is now called "never let the balloon touch the ground and keep it up in the sky but never never let the balloon touch the ground but it's ok if it lands on the couch or Remy's dog bed". After that I needed some energy, and I had already had a ton of fruit so I made a coffe-based smoothie with Will's leftover coffee from this morning. I even put it in a pretty glass because I'm tired of my regular smoothie glasses plus these margarita glasses don't get much use.

1/2 cup coffee, 1/2 cup almond milk, banana, handful of ice, cocoa powder, cinnamon and nutmeg

I just could not make this smoothie taste good :-( First I made it without the cocoa and thought it tasted bland so I dumped it back into the blender and put in the cocoa and the spices. I blended it gently to stir it all up and tried it again, but apparently I had blended it TOO gently because it still had chunks of cocoa powder and spices so back in the blender it went a third time. After that it still wasn't super-tasty but I decided to just go with it because I was sick of pouring it back and forth. Oh well.

When Will got home he was excited to start his barley wine experiment so we did our first annual barley wine tasting.

Serious stuff

Look at that lacing

Once we were done, dinner was ready. I found this slab of pork at Common Market a couple days ago, and it was labeled as a "fresh ham shank half". I have wondered before what cut of meat a "ham" is and what it tastes like before it's smoked (and sometimes injected with chemicals) beyond recognition. Tonight I was excited to find out!

Pork shank marinated in red wine/mustard/buckwheat honey, blanched snap peas and roasted leftover root vegetables from the recesses of our veggie drawer (beets, carrots, turnips and kohlrabi).

The verdict? It was quite tasty. The meat was kind of similar to pork loin consistency-wise but with a slightly darker meat flavor. The "grain" of the meat was also coarser than a traditional ham, I guess because the smoking process breaks down some of the connective tissue? It was quite fatty though, it took a lot of fancy knifework to separate all the meat from the little fat pockets that were everywhere. Now that I've satisfied my culinary curiosity I probably won't choose this cut of meat again unless someone else is preparing it for me :-)

I was hungry a couple hours later and craving chocolate, so I made up a nighttime snack.

1/2 whole wheat tortilla, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 1/2 banana, 2 Tbsp sunspire grain-sweetened chocolate chips zapped in the microwave for 30 seconds

I haven't had this in a long time and it was perfectly gooey and delicious :-) It's steep calorie-wise though so I shared half with a deserving husband.

Now we're watching Star Trek (Next Generation) before bed. It's an episode about Data trying to understand feelings...I swear there are about 5 of these every season and I find them pretty irritating!

Comcastic

2012-01-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

I had a somewhat rushed morning today, so I decided to go with my quick and easy breakfast from yesterday again. I even ate it the same way, in stages :-)

Great Harvest Honey Whole Wheat with 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 1/2 banana, nutmeg sprinkle and blueberries

Scrambled egg

After dropping Emily off I headed to Comcast :-( I figured our TV would weather the change to digital since we bought it in the last 10 years, but apparently not. Thus we needed an adapter to watch cable which we only have because they ran a deal last year where it was cheaper to have cable + internet than it was to just have internet. My mom was able to get 4 adapters shipped to her free last week, apparently I waited too long because they said I could only have 2 and they'd ship them to me for $10. Boo. So I had to pick them up in person, but once I got into Comcast they wouldn't let me pick up the adapters because the account is in Will's name, so I had to call him and have him try in his last 8 minutes before a conference call to get Comcast to add me to the account. Of course he was on hold with them longer than 8 minutes and had to hang up, but in the meantime the lady called me back over because it turns out they actually COULD give me the adapters, they must've just wanted to inconvenience me a little bit first. Out of spite I took the 2 I was allowed even though I only needed one. I hate that there's a monopoly on cable service here! Comcast is a MISERABLE company and there's no way they'd be able to treat people like they do if there were some competition.

Afterward I got to do the new Bodypump release 80 which put me in a better mood. Well, I got to do everything up through biceps since I always have to leave early to make preschool pick-up. I had heard it was tough and it definitely was (especially the biceps!) but overall I don't think it's worse than release 79. That's a very good thing, since 79 is an hour of pure agony!

After Bodypump I had a Babybel Light cheese wheel and a Zevia soda. I am kinda sick of taking pictures of those things since they're just packaged and boring looking so I may not anymore.

Next was a drive down to Germantown to eat lunch at my sister's house. I packed a salad:

Greens, tomatoes, cucumber, 1 oz feta, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a chickpea burger from last night

Then it was off to Trader Joes! I didn't think I would need to buy that much because we still have a good supply of dried fruits and nuts from Christmas leftover.

Yeah.

I love going shopping with help! Mom checked out early and sat with the girls while I paid 5¢ per bag at checkout :-( Despite noticing the sign last time AND reading about it on Lauren's blog I still forgot to bring reusable bags! Kathleen saved me about 15¢ by kindly sharing some of her bags with me.

Trader Joes greeters

I was quite hungry once we got home, so I made up a yummy smoothie, pictured here in front of my HYACINTHS I bought at TJ's. I can't help myself...I love these flowers and the first time I see them each year I always grab some to come perfume my home and remind me that spring will be back eventually.

Vanilla almond milk, frozen mango chunks, 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt, 1 banana, lots of ice and a large kale leaf

I also had to break into these:

Trader Joe's jalapeño-stuffed olives

Dinner was heavy with Trader Joe's ingredients as well (and no, this post is not sponsored by Trader Joes!):

Lemon maple salmon and asparagus, black rice mixed with 3 Tbsp Trader Joes black bean and roasted corn salsa

An interesting flavor combo to be sure, but I wanted something easy to sexy up the rice a little. Unfortunately, this salsa suffers from the same issue as TJ's fat free spicy black bean dip...too much vinegar! Yeesh. It makes my face pucker and my eyes get squinty. Mixing it in with rice was perfect though because it diluted the vinegar somewhat.

And now it's off to bed early because crazy Will was up pacing around the house at 2AM this morning so a bit of extra sleep is needed (and despite the fact that I slept just fine last night I'm never one to turn down extra sleep!).

Busy day and a recipe

2012-01-18T22:36:00.002-05:00

I woke up ravenous this morning, and did not feel like waiting for my whole breakfast to be done at once so I ate in stages. My sister-in-law who visited yesterday is lucky enough to live right near a Great Harvest, and is thoughtful enough that she brought us some bread when she came up! So of course that had to be the focus of my breakfast.

Great Harvest (!) honey whole wheat bread with 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 1/2 banana and a sprinkle of cinnamon

Once the edge was taken off I had second breakfast:

An orange and an ugly fried egg with Tabasco.

We had some seriously weird weather this morning! As we walked out of the house the sky was blue, the sun was shining and while it was definitely chilly there was a hint of warmth in the air. I thought to myself that the winter coats the girls and I were bundled into probably wouldn't be necessary by the time afternoon rolled around. But then I pulled out onto the highway and saw the blackest, most ominous clouds dumping snow as they advanced over the mountains and I changed my mind. For most of the drive to preschool if I looked out my right window it was lovely...

Cue the pastorale music

...and if I looked out my left window it was run for cover weather.

Batten down the hatches!

The girls heard me talking about the stormy-looking clouds coming for us and decided they wanted to use their umbrellas on the way in to preschool, lack of rain be damned.

But by the time I got my latte (thanks Kathleen!) it was decidedly winter.

Snow coming from the north?

A grande just plain skim latte spilling on my hand

My friend Carolyn invited us to Flips Gymnastics for open gym this morning, and it worked out so that it perfectly filled the time between dropping Emily off at preschool and picking her back up.

I had a great time! I think Charlotte did too, once I convinced her that Mommy didn't have to hold her the entire time.

I have been feeling guilty that I did so many activities with Emily when she was a toddler (Little Gym, Sing & Sign, Abrakadoodles, you name it) and I haven't done as many things with Charlotte because preschool drop-off and pick-up limit my morning time so much plus I like to go to the gym when I only have to pay for daycare for 1 kid instead of both. We used to do Little Gym, but it was kind of tough to manage time-wise plus Charlotte pretty much just spent her time clinging to me or playing with the adjustment knobs on the equipment so I had a hard time paying by the semester $20+ per 45-minute session on top of a steep yearly membership. This gym is perfect because it's $5 per 90-minute session with no commitment and no membership fee and there is no circle time or songs or specific activities the kids need to do. All the structure at Little Gym is supposed to help the kids get used to transitions and sitting to listen to directions before preschool and it worked well for Emily but not so much for Charlotte.

Afterward we got Emily and went to M.O.M. where the girls were lovely this time. I can never tell what kind of mood they'll be in once we get in there.

Then we went home and it was time for lunch! Chef Christine has been talking about massaged kale salad on her blog Frederick Foodie and it has been awhile since I've made one of those myself so I decided today was the day. This salad is best if you make it in the middle of summer when all the ingredients are in season (except avocados of course. Boy am I jealous of the west coast for being able to grow avocados. Also artichokes.), but it was pretty darn good today too.

If you are the type who likes to fiddle with recipes (like me), I urge you to try it this way first...it's so simple but the ingredients balance so well.

Smashed Kale Salad
Makes 1 salad

Ingredients

4-5 large fresh kale leaves, washed and torn into small pieces with middle rib/stem removed
1/2 avocado
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup corn kernels
1/4 oz crushed walnuts (toasted are even better)
1 oz crumbled soft cheese (like goat or blue)
1 Tbsp lemon juice, or more if you like things tart
salt and pepper to taste

Place kale into a bowl and pour lemon juice salt and pepper over the top.
Using your hand, smash the kale up (I think the word "massage" is too gentle for what I do to my kale). The kale will reduce significantly in volume as you smash.
Add the avocado, and then smash again to incorporate avocado, leaving some larger pieces if you wish.
Add tomatoes, corn, walnuts and cheese.
Stir to combine, then enjoy!

Yumness.

I know 1/2 avocado is a large calorie commitment, but 1/4 avocado just doesn't do it for me. When you use just 1/4 you don't even realize it's in there...you really need 1/2 to give it the delicious creaminess that makes me love it so. I will also admit that despite what I said yesterday I did not put cheese in my salad today and it was just fine because the avocado provided the creamy texture I usually achieve with cheese.

Since I have access to tasty oranges again, I went back to my orange smoothie today.

1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1 whole peeled orange, a dash of milk, a handful of ice, 1 banana and a pinch each of nutmeg, wheat germ and flax seeds

My dinner pictures are kind of miserable. I packed my dinner to take with me since I was headed to the gym for the 5:30 Zumba class. I figured I'd use my cute little bento box, but it turns out it was a bit TOO little and too slippery as well.

I ended up repeatedly dumping my dinner all over the car as I went around turns. So if you want to see NICE pictures of what I ate, go to The Edible Perspective, which is where I got the recipe.

Layer 1 - cottage cheese eggs

Layer 2 - chickpea burgers topped with cheese which stuck to the bottom of Layer 1

After a CROWDED Zumba class and 2 fruitless efforts to get the last couple things I need for our upcoming trip to Disney, I returned home for some dessert fruit.

Defrosted frozen strawberries and mangoes

I missed having a veggie at dinner, so I finished up the girls' snap peas.

Then Will and I watched the first 2 episodes of Breaking Bad. Why didn't anyone tell me it was about a chemistry geek?!?! Love it.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Trader Joes with my mom and sister to stock up on snacks! Exciting stuff!

Second chances

2012-01-17T21:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I weighed myself this morning, and I'm down another 2.8 pounds! That makes about 5 pounds in the past 2 weeks, which makes me happy :-) I am back to the weight I was around Thanksgiving after my fall weight-loss efforts. I have a bunch of little mini-milestones in my head along the way and this was the first one! The way I mark my weight gain in my head is like this:

Starting weight...

~~-0lbs = weight I was at 9 months pregnant with Emily~~

~~-5lbs = weight I was before the holidays~~

-7.2 lbs = weight I got down to this summer/lowest weight I've been since I had Charlotte

-10.2 lbs = weight I was when I got pregnant with Charlotte

-20.2 lbs = lowest weight I was able to get to after having Emily and before getting pregnant with Charlotte

-30.2 lbs = weight I was when I got pregnant with Emily

-40.2 lbs = lowest weight I got to during my first go-round with WW when I was 24

So I think of the extra weight I carry baby by baby (since my body pretty much did the EXACT same thing with both of them weight-wise). First I'm getting rid of the Charlotte weight, then the Emily weight, then the weight I put on all by myself :-)

Anyway, on to my food!

Breakfast was easy because I had made extra servings of the Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal yesterday so I just pulled out a bowl, added some milk to moisten it a bit and sprinkled some yummies on top.

Bob's Red Mill 10 Grain Hot Cereal cooked with water and banana, a dash of skim milk, 2 tsp sunflower seeds, 2 Tbsp dried cherries and a sprinkle of cinnamon

Still no eggs :-( I fail.

My mom and I returned to the spinning class we were scolded in last week, and there were 3x as many people there this week! Most of the people there were newbies so there was a much more tolerant atmosphere. Also nasty glaring girl wasn't there, which helped. I did manage to hop off my bike and dramatically rip the handlebars off in the middle of class though, which was probably a bit distracting. Oh well, I'll learn the correct way to set my bike one of these days.

I'll bet you can't guess what my morning snack was!

Yep.

I am now out of that delicious blue cheese that has been on my salads for the past week, so I had to decide what new kind of cheese I wanted to get to grace this week's salads. I LOVE good cheeses, I can (and sometimes do) eat them to great excess but they're so high in fat and calories that I've decided the best way to enjoy them is to sprinkle them an ounce at a time on my salads. That spreads the flavor out a bit and makes me feel like I'm getting enough. As a result, I really expect cheese on my salads now and if I try to cut it out I feel deprived! Anyway, I ended up deciding on this pretty little slab of local feta, and thus the idea for a Mediterranean salad was born. It wasn't quite spot-on since I had to throw it together in about 5 minutes while we were home between preschool and dance class, but it was tasty. Someone else in the house was a bit jealous of it.

Greens, leftover steamed broccoli and cauliflower from last night, broccoli sprouts, cucumbers, yellow bell peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, 1 oz crumbled feta cheese, 2 Tbsp unhulled pumpkin seeds, 12 small olives, tahini dressing (2 Tbsp tahini shaken with lemon juice)

I had forgotten how tahini kind of gets thicker instead of thinner when you shake it up with lemon juice so I ended up smearing this paste-like stuff on my salad instead of drizzling it with a light refreshing dressing so I'll have to work on that. I also forgot that tahini, being a seed butter, is about the same amount of calories as peanut butter. Yikes. I calculated that my salad was around 9 points, which is high for me but not horrible.

Later, once we were home and settled from the Tuesday whirlwind, I made another "apple pie" smoothie. When I make applesauce I add vanilla extract and a ton of cinnamon, which is what makes this smoothie taste so yummy.

1 cup plain nonfat greek yogurt, 1 cup applesauce, 12 almonds, handful of ice

My sister-in-law Margaret came up to hang out with us and I was very grateful for her help! Charlotte only napped for 40 minutes, which made for a loooooong afternoon.

Even though I was home the whole time, I decided to attempt the crock pot lamb and barley risotto again since I went to Common Market today and wanted to use the lamb I had bought before it went bad on me! It smelled heavenly while it was cooking, and tasted amazing! SOOOOO rich and filling, despite only having about 1 1/2oz of meat per serving (it WAS 11 points though, so for that it had better be filling!). It was great for dinner but eating all of it felt a bit too heavy...I think if I make it again I might cook a leg of lamb in the oven and serve this lamb-less as a side dish in a smaller portion.

Clean Eating Magazine's Lamb Barley Mushroom risotto

I shouldn't complain though, because it stuck with me all evening, and the only other thing I felt like eating was a bit of the mango Emily requested and a partially de-zested grapefruit. Dinner called for lemon zest, which I did not have, so I figured grapefruit zest would do in a pinch!

Goodnight!

Dinner with friends

2012-01-16T22:13:00.002-05:00

I don't know about you, but I'm getting kind of sick of looking at bowls of oatmeal here on my blog. So inspired partially by that and partially by my husband who has been clearing out the clutter in our house and organizing closets (isn't he amazing?) I decided to attempt to clear out the pantry. We have SO many bags that have about 1/4 cup of some random flour or grain laying around (I've even had to call Common Market before and ask what a particular code means because I have no idea what is in the bulk bag I'm holding) so I'm trying to branch out for breakfast, at least until I get rid of all the random things I never eat from the pantry.

First up was a mostly finished bag of Bob's Red Mill 10 grain cereal.

10 grain cereal cooked in water with bananas, sprinkled with walnuts and cinnamon plus decaf green

We were unfortunately out of eggs this morning, but that's ok because we ended up having an egg with dinner. I try to keep it to 1 egg a day so it worked out well.

Today the girls actually slept in by an extra hour (!) so laziness won out and we just stayed at home until lunchtime. I really wanted some fizz but we were out of everything fizzy so I tried to make some with my soda stream carbonator. It was almost empty so I was only able to make half-carbonated water.

cheese and lame bubbles

At lunchtime we headed over to my mom's house for a planning meeting for Krista's upcoming wedding. I brought along my regular boring old salad.

Greens, yellow bell pepper, broccoli sprouts, leftover lentil soup, pumpkin seeds, blue cheese, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic

I ended up being very hungry while I was there (I guess it's habit...I did quite a lot of over-eating while I lived there!)

Nom

The famous "Dibby almonds", tamari almonds my dad makes and my daughters eat by the pound

Apple pie smoothie I brought along...apple sauce, greek yogurt, ice and 6 almonds

The girls were too busy having fun to eat much, as usual.

Apparently the "Burger King" fries were no longer acceptable as leftovers

We got home just as Will's parents were arriving to watch the girls for us while we went to dinner at Brad and Kim's house.

Kim!

Brad!

Heather and Eddie

I enjoyed some Little Penguin chardonnay before dinner

Do the countertops look familiar?

Will enjoyed the Songify app

The entertainment for the evening...watching Kim crack eggs into the soup.

steamed broccoli and cauliflower with cheast sauce, North African vegetable stew with poached egg

a glass of Little Penguin Shiraz with dinner

The soup was quite yummy, I'm a fan of anything with a poached egg on top! And everyone seemed to enjoy the cheast sauce, which surprised me. I've been meaning to make it for a long time and I was a bit nervous since a dinner party is not really the time to try out a strange new recipe but it was eaten by all. I will definitely make it again, it's one of the best ways I've come across to ingest nutritional yeast (which is über healthy but kinda funky-tasting).

Dessert was these yummy morning glory muffins Kim made:

Very carrot cake-y

My muffin

After a pleasant evening, we returned home to find our children put to bed and this on the refrigerator:

Either Emily has increased her vocabulary and learned to spell or my in-laws are goofballs

And just when I was starting to feel sad that I had forgotten to order oranges, my Mother-in-law brought us a case! I enjoyed one as an evening snack:

Orange blossom

Now it's time for bed and I can't think of a clever way to end my post, so I'll just say SEX MUNKY FUDGE HOBINR< and goodnight!

Making fast food slowly

2012-01-15T22:27:00.000-05:00

Happy Sunday! This morning I got up with the girls and tried to let Daddy sleep in a little bit as I usually try to do on the weekends. And the girls were louder than banshees, as they usually are on weekend mornings and he wasn't really able to get any additional rest :-( At least there was breakfast waiting for him when he came downstairs! I decided to repeat my favorite oatmeal combo from last week.

1/2 cup oats, handful of strawberries, 1/2 banana cooked in 1/2 cup skim milk and 1/2 cup water

"fried" egg topped with salsa

Decaf green

Once we had eaten we got ready to head to the gym, and Will packed me a snack AND snapped a picture of it for me! I like his creative use of yesterday's penguin iceberg to make a more interesting presentation.

no explanation necessary, I'll let you read the labels

We worked out with Brad and Kim and weaseled an invite to their house for dinner tomorrow :-) We still need to figure out what we're bringing though. What goes well with North African chickpea soup?

Lunch! I dumped some lentil soup on top and it was actually really tasty with the blue cheese!

Greens, orange bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, broccoli sprouts, 1/2 cup leftover lentil soup, blue cheese, 1 tsp olive oil and the last of my truffle balsamic glaze :-(

Will also cut up some mango for me.

Mango slices

I just now realized that I didn't snap a picture of my afternoon snack! You'll have to picture it for yourself. 1/2 cup low fat cottage cheese sprinkled with garlic powder, parsley and oregano to make it taste like a dip, plus celery sticks for dipping. I was GOING to put grapes in it but we're out so I went savory instead.

Also this:

1/2 Raspberry Chia Kombucha

I like the chia kombuchas a lot, but they're more caloric than regular old kombucha or KeVita so I usually just get these for Charlotte (who LOVES them).

I was super-hungry this afternoon, and my chicken would.not.defrost. I had also promised Emily special fries so the prep took awhile, but I made to dinnertime without additional snacks.

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you know that last week Emily's friend from across the street came over to play and brought a big, greasy bag of Burger King french fries with her :-O I caught her slipping fries to Remy and told her to stop because Remy's stomach does not do well with grease. The next thing I knew, she was sharing them with Emily. A nice gesture, but I was horrified. This was the first fast food Emily has ever had...I work so hard to keep as much of her food as possible as healthy as possible, and then someone brings one of the unhealthiest foods in the world INTO MY HOUSE AND GIVES IT TO MY KID. I suppose I could've forbade Emily to eat them, but I don't want to make them even more desirable by not allowing it. I told Emily they were made out of potatoes (neither of my children will eat potatoes in any form right now) but she ate them anyway. So I sat by and gritted my teeth while the girls exclaimed over how delicious they were. I suppose the one good thing about the whole ordeal was that Emily then asked me if I could make her some fries sometime (vs. asking me to take her to Burger King) so tonight was the night I took on the challenge.

I scoured the internet for hints on how to make oven fries crispy. I spent what felt like an extra hour cutting the fries into tiny even strips. I added about six extra steps to my regular oven fry-making process. I nervously plated Emily's dinner and stepped back to wait for her opinion.

It worked! She ate her whole serving and a second one after that. She said they were delicious and that I was the best cooker ever. She said they tasted just like Burger King fries. I however, having infinitely more experience sampling fast food french fries knew that they did not, in fact, taste just like Burger King fries. How could they, without the use of partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, modified potato and corn starch, rice flour, dextrin, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn syrup solids, xanthan gum and dextrose? But they WERE the closest-tasting thing to fast food fries that has ever come out of my oven. Even Charlotte asked for seconds!

My process (gleaned from about 10 different recipes online):

Thinly slice 4 russet potatoes.
Rinse with hot tap water twice (presumably to get rid of some of the starch?).
Cover with hot tap water and let sit while oven (with intended baking pans inside) preheats to 425ºF.
Drain water from potatoes and dry well with paper towels.
Pour about 1/8 cup refrigerated egg whites over potatoes and sprinkle liberally with salt. Toss to coat.
Remove hot pans from oven, and spray with cooking spray. Sprinkle with salt too to help prevent sticking.
Lay fries on prepared pans in a single layer.
Put pans in oven on highest rack for 15 minutes.
Remove pans from oven and flip fries (I did this very sloppily with a flat spatula).
Sprinkle fries with salt again.
Place pans back into oven for 15 minutes longer, or until fries just start to brown a bit.
Remove from oven and serve fries hot!

I enjoyed them as well, but I think I prefer thicker oven fries with more interesting seasonings on them than just plain salt.

My dinner:

4 oz Hillside Turkey Farm chicken breast, 3 oz "Burger King" fries, steamed collards and red kale seasoned with garlic powder and salt, a hefty dose of juice-sweetened ketchup and a Dogfish Head Pearl Jam Twenty Faithful Ale.

After drinking my beer I had an odd urge to go put on a flannel shirt and some baggy jeans. But the urge passed, and then I just felt old.

When dinner didn't "stick", I fixed myself some bananas and peanut butter. My diet has been seriously lacking in peanut butter recently. I cut half a banana up and topped all the pieces with 1 Tbsp total of PB. I do this for Emily sometimes and I was hoping it would take me longer to eat and feel like more than if I just took my usual approach of smearing the peanut butter on the banana and wolfing it down in two bites.

And with that, I'm off to bed! Emily has off school tomorrow and when I asked her what she wants to do with her day she said "Stay around the house". I don't know if I'll grant the little homebody's request or not, I was hoping to take them to the outlets but we'll see how everyone's mood is in the morning.

The rest of the day

2012-01-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

It's Saturday! You know what that means.

Saturday breakfast: 1/2 Ezekiel english muffin, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, baked sliced apples, 1 oz ham and 3/4 oz Cabot 50% light cheese, scrambled (and "jerked") egg + egg white on the side.

I had a mug of green tea this morning (with caffeine!) that took me hours to drink and I STILL never remembered to snap a picture of it. Oh well. You all know what a mug of green tea looks like, I'm sure.

My party eats:

About 1/2 cup fruit salad, a couple veggies and an impaled penguin

Also this...which is NOT a urine sample, but a cup of white wine.

about 4oz of The Little Penguin Chardonnay

Aaaaaand that was it. I don't know where all this super-human willpower is coming from (perhaps I've finally figured out a way to subconsciously tap into Will's?) but I didn't eat a BITE of cake, cupcakes, icing, cream cheese, PB&J or anything naughty while I was making it OR at the party. I had been kind of dreading this whole thing because once I start baking I start tasting and then by the evening I have ingested the equivalent of 3 pieces of cake and I feel awful. So I had Will do all my tasting for me and I just never took that first bite that I knew would lead down the road to overeating. The toughest part was serving food to my guests that I hadn't tried myself! Everyone seemed happy enough though.

Writing it all out it looks like I'm being overly restrictive, but I honestly don't mind missing out on the cake right now because I seem to have gotten to a good place in my head. I plan to take advantage of it because I know it can't last forever! Soon enough I will end up filled with self-pity over all the things I "can't" have and munching all day on anything that doesn't move so I intend to stave that off for as long as possible by eating clean.

After the party, I wanted my usual salad, so I threw one together and ate most of it before remembering to snap a picture.

Greens, broccoli, broccoli sprouts, orange bell pepper, 1 oz blue cheese, 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic

Then I also had rooibos tea in a coffee mug.

This hand is actually Emily's, not Charlotte's, and she sprinkled fake snow into my drink while I was turning off my camera.

We spent the rest of the day pretty much lying around and relaxing.

Mug shot of my KeVita

Dinner was leftovers...

1 cup lentil soup

...and then a couple hours later I was hungry again so I had a second serving with some wine for good measure.

1 cup lentil soup, 4 oz The Little Penguin Shiraz in front of Charlotte's pile 'o penguins

Then Will and I watched The Hangover II, and now it's time for bed! Let's hope we can sleep in a bit tomorrow.

Charlotte's 2nd birthday party in pictures

2012-01-14T15:55:00.000-05:00

Today was party day!

I'll put up my food pictures in a separate post because this one has more than enough pics as it is!

Mistakes

2012-01-13T22:41:00.002-05:00

Today I was foolish. I tried to do more than I should have. My mistake was taking Zumba on a day I already had other exercise planned and LOTS to do around the house, but I'll get to that.

First there was breakfast, which was not a mistake, although I did forget my tea.

Shredded wheat, skim milk, erythritol and blackberries, plus egg + egg white and salsa

Then I decided I wanted to go to Zumba because I missed it earlier this week and I'm getting tired of just running through the routines at home. I was going back to the gym later that day, but I figured I could do it! So I filled my water bottle and headed out the door to preschool.

Zumba was indeed fun, especially since I got a spot right up front. However after taking a sip from my water bottle I realized that I had accidentally used the bottle Will took his smoothie to work in yesterday that I THOUGHT was my just plain water bottle sitting on the counter. N-A-S-T-Y. But I'm super anal when it comes to water, and I figured it was still better for me than drinking chlorinated water from the water fountain so I powered through. Not so refreshing.

Afterward Charlotte and I raced over to the Common Market to pick up a quick lunch, and on the way I had this:

Guava Kombucha and a Babybel light

At Common Market I got my usual salad (I was too lazy to pack one to bring with me last night) but I beefed it up a little with some extra protein.

Greens, cucumber, green pepper, carrots, purple cabbage, 1/4 cup chick peas, 1/8 cup blue cheese, about 1 egg, about 1 tsp olive oil, balsamic vinegar

And for even more protein (and to avoid muscle cramps) I added EVEN MORE food.

Banana (potassium!) and 1/2 packet Justin's peanut butter

Once I got Emily I headed back to the gym to be in the class for Lauren's Bodypump filming, the last step in her certification process. We did release #79 and WOW. I had forgotten how tough that particular release was! There's not a single track that I wouldn't call extremely difficult! And my dreams were crushed when Cheryl (in the middle below) told us that release #80 is even tougher. I guess that's a good thing, but yeesh. I think Les Mills is trying to kill me.

Lauren did a great job teaching though!

The Bodypump class, minus 1 lady (who was also wearing a shade of pink!)

After getting the girls out of daycare (Charlotte for the second time) we hit AC Moore for the last couple party supplies I needed, then we were FINALLY home and I was extremely pleased to note that the maids had already come and gone. It was time for me to get down to work on party prep. I wanted a smoothie, but I needed some pep so I made myself a coffee smoothie and killed 2 birds with one stone.

1 cup coffee, 1 cup skim milk, 1 banana, 1 handful of ice, 1 dash of cinnamon

The dinner I had planned (and was really looking forward to!) was crock pot lamb mushroom barley risotto from Clean Eating Magazine. However, when I opened the second package of lamb it was stinky. Once I threw away the packaging the lamb itself didn't smell bad, and I had almost convinced myself that it was ok when I opened the trash can again to toss something and caught another whiff. Even if the lamb itself didn't stink, it was touching something that did so I decided not to risk it, and tossed the meat :-( That's one of the bad things about buying less popular types of meat at Common Market...you really have to watch the expiration date because things tend to go bad exactly on or even a couple days before the date on the package. But with a bit of scrounging I came up with Plan B, lentil soup.

When Will got home he poured me half a New Belgian Black Ale...

He even took a picture of it for me <3

...and served me some soup...

Lentils, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, parsley, thyme, sage, salt and some ham cooked in water (I had no broth either)

...and also did an awesome job of entertaining the girls and helping me so I could get some stuff done. He's quite useful, that one :-)

After dinner I felt exhausted and shaky, so I went upstairs to rest for a bit. I guess it was just the caffeine wearing off, or maybe the caffeine in combination with the beer? Whatever the cause, I felt much better after a bit of rest and attacked party prep again.

So far it's looking like we'll get everything done...hopefully that plus my extreme exhaustion means I won't be up planning and worrying all night!

Hungry day

2012-01-12T22:02:00.000-05:00

This morning I had to hit the ground running in order to get everyone fed and dressed and out the door AND have the house picked up so the maids could clean when they got here. I decided to just repeat my breakfast from yesterday because we still have quinoa and applesauce to finish.

1 cup quinoa, 1/2 cup applesauce, 2 Tbsp light coconut milk, 1/4 oz toasted pecans, chopped banana, egg + egg white with WAY too much Tabasco, and decaf green

As I was shaking the Tabasco on I guess I wasn't paying attention and I really doused it. Spicy food is supposed to be good for your sinuses and metabolism though so I ate it and practically burned my mouth off.

My morning was spent running errands...I am the least organized person in the world so the days leading up to an event (in this case Charlotte's birthday party on Saturday) are always filled with me charging around wildly trying to get the last couple things I need. At some point I had this snack, and was disappointed to note that THIS kind of KeVita has sugar in it, almost tripling the number of calories per serving :-( I drank it anyway because I was hungry and needed something to fill my belly until lunch but it was too sweet for me and I'll be paying closer attention next time I want to try a different flavor.

KeVita, babybel light and the rest of my decaf green tea

I came home hoping my house would be nice and clean, and it definitely wasn't. The maids almost always arrive at 9AM, but if they do another house before mine they arrive more towards noon so I pulled together lunch for everyone quickly while trying to keep the kitchen as picked-up as possible in the process. I made my typical salad that I'm sure everyone's bored of looking at.

Greens, broccoli, broccoli sprouts, radishes, cucumbers, 1 oz blue cheese, 1 tsp olive oil and truffle balsamic

My salad left me a bit peckish, so I fixed myself some tea.

Big mug of rooibos with a glug of unsweetened vanilla almond milk...

...and essence of toddler finger

I had various people coming and going all afternoon, but no maids :-(

I finally called and they claimed that it was taking longer than usual to clean people's houses because everyone had just taken down their Christmas decorations? Not sure how that's an issue when I'm usually the first house they clean for the day, but whatever. They're coming tomorrow instead which is better for me anyway because I'll be gone all morning and it's closer to party time anyway. First world problems, I know.

Once Charlotte woke up from her nap and I could use the blender without fear of disturbing her, I made a purple smoothie.

Almond milk, low fat ricotta cheese, 1 banana, frozen strawberries and frozen blueberries

For dinner I made Mama Pea's Noodle Salad with Peanut Mmmm Sauce, but I used black bean noodles for added protein and threw in a couple more veggies (mushrooms, bean sprouts).

I also had to substitute chopped cashews for the chopped peanuts sprinkled on top since I wanted the crunch but I had used up all of our peanuts making peanut butter yesterday. Actually that's not true, we DO have a couple peanuts left, but they are either #1 in a shell or #2 cooked in lard (given to us as a gift at Christmas) so cashews it was.

2 hours after dinner I got super-hungry and just wanted to munch :-( Emily wasn't helping things because after asking for ice cream she pushed aside not 1 but 2 bowls of it! I served her some vanilla coconut ice cream I had first and she didn't like it, so I gave her plain old vanilla and she then claimed she was too full because I had forced her to eat her WHOLE cupcake (not just the frosting) before allowing her to have a bit of ice cream. Poor, poor child. Melty ice cream is one of my major weaknesses, as is finishing up the girls' leftovers and here I was faced with 2 bowls of melted goodness just sitting there begging me to dive in. I took 1 taste though just to see what the coconut milk ice cream was like...

Baby spoon

...and stuck the bowls in the freezer. Since I WAS genuinely hungry though I had one of these too.

Banana chocolate chip muffin (since there's no frosting, yesterday's cupcakes have morphed back into the muffins that they actually are)

When Will got home he made some banana soft serve, so I couldn't turn that down.

Yum.

Now I have to motivate myself to get some stuff done tonight while chugging water to keep my hungry tummy from ruining my eating plan. I'm in the weird in-between time when I can't really decorate the house or make food yet because it's still 2 days 'till the party but I really want to do SOMETHING because tomorrow I'll have way too much to do. I might choose option 3...messing around on Will's iPad from my nest on the couch until bedtime.

Walkin' around

2012-01-11T21:29:00.000-05:00

Today I decided to attempt a quinoa bowl for breakfast again. Since I am incapable of making quinoa in any amount other than "way too much", I had a bunch leftover from last night. I don't usually enjoy quinoa for breakfast but that may be because I usually use yogurt in it so today I took Will's advice and used some of the applesauce I had made and it turned out really yummy!

1 cup cooked quinoa, 2 Tbsp coconut milk, 1/2 cup applesauce, 1/4 oz toasted walnuts, 1/2 banana

I topped my eggs with Tabasco because upon examining my beloved bottle of Valentinas hot sauce I discovered that it contains sodium benzoate (actually it lists sodium benzodate which as far as I know does not exist). This inspired me to examine my bottle of Sriracha as well. Potassium sorbate and sodium bisulfite. Boo.

plus decaf green and scrambled egg + egg white topped with some nice clean Tabasco

Poor Charlotte. On Emily's 2nd birthday I took her to the zoo, but I couldn't really do that today because my mornings are very limited by preschool pick-up and drop-off and my afternoons are very limited because of naptime. I asked Charlotte what she wanted to do though, and she said "Shopping! Walkin' around!". So that's what we did. We hit Common Market for some ingredients to make her cupcakes tonight and her cake on Saturday and I had some of this coffee:

I like free coffee, but I don't like these weird little cardboard cups

As a special bonus we ran into our old realtor from when we bought our house, and she had a little white dog with her who Charlotte had a great time playing with in the Common Market's parking lot gardens while we chatted.

Then we went home to walk around, as requested.

Pleased to be allowed to walk Remy

The Remy

Stomping through the neighbors grass

Charlotte didn't want to wear gloves despite the fact that it was in the mid-30's outside, but I brought some with me just in case. At least I thought I did. We hadn't made it to the end of the block before she told me her hands were cold, so I congratulated myself on my preparedness and dug into my pocket...to find 1 glove :-( The other had fallen out at home. I was also carrying a bag of dog poop and 2 pointy sticks by then since I read that if you want to toast s'mores at the campfire at our resort at Disney you have to buy their pointy sticks. Eff that, I'm stealing some from my neighbor's tree so I can bring my own. SO I showed Charlotte how to put her hand in her pocket and we headed home for a pit stop.

That's better

Now properly be-gloved, we set out again.

My daffodils that survived the squirrels are starting to grow...does this mean they won't bloom in the spring?

Only 4 more months until the pool opens again

Charlotte continues to amaze me with how talkative and coordinated she is for a (new) 2 year old. For the last month or so she's been fully daytime potty trained, which I never really believed kids could be before 2 until I saw it happen! She's still quite clingy though and still loves bottles and her "fuvies" (pacifiers) but we're going to start working on that starting tomorrow. I didn't want to make her birthday stressful! She's amazing at swimming, she can walk for miles (really!) and as her motor skills develop she's copying her sister more and more on everything including jumping to skip steps going down the stairs, which worries Mommy. She's my buddy though, and I'm really enjoying getting to know her better as her personality develops.

After our walk, we were both hungry for a snack.

Babybel light, KeVita

Full disclosure...I did not eat THAT particular cheese wheel. I had to get a different but identical one from the fridge because this happened:

Yoink

After Emmy retrieval it was lunch time. I wanted to use up the last bit of brie we had, so I popped it in the salad. It worked!

Greens, 1 oz brie, 1/2 oz dried cherries, 1/2 oz pumpkin seeds, truffle balsamic and 1 tsp olive oil

I actually did not end up having an afternoon snack because I didn't get hungry for while, then I did 1 hour of Zumba at home, then I got busy making dinner so a snack never happened despite my light lunch. I'm telling you, if I can force myself to behave for long enough it really does get MUCH easier! Until I hit a tiny bump in the road and freak out, that is. Hoping to keep that from happening this time.

Charlotte was antsy while I was making dinner, so I took a quick break for presents!

Heavy!

Being hovered over by a jealous sister

I did NOT realize the keyboard came with a microphone

Sharing with the jealous sister

Dinner was Charlotte's favorite, noodles and sauce with meatballs and cheese. I added additional balls to mine, of the green variety.

1 cup whole wheat rotini, 1/2 cup homemade sauce, 3/4 oz cabot 50% light cheddar, 4 turkey meatballs, 5 brussels sprouts

I also took a sip of this because Will told me to, and I actually enjoyed it! I'm only moderately surprised, since it's Dogfish.

Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA

The girls ate a bit of dinner, but were too excited to finish much because they knew what was coming

Trying to blow out the candles

A little help from big sister

Charlotte kept putting the candles back in, singing to herself, pretending to blow them out and clapping over and over afterward.

But eventually she ate it.

The frosting at least...and part of a candle.

Time to go face-first

I was glad I hadn't had an afternoon snack, because I didn't feel bad about having one of these:

Whole wheat erythritol-sweetened banana bread with about 2 Tbsp neufchatel/erythritol frosting

We topped the evening off with some playtime with the girls but I guess Emily got TOO tired because she's freaking out at hyperventilating now as Will is trying to put her to bed :-( If anyone has any suggestions about how to get children to #1 be less bossy and #2 willingly clean up their toys, I'm all ears!

Spin class outcasts

2012-01-10T21:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I weighed myself this morning and the result was....I don't really know because I forgot what I weighed last week :-( I lost either 2 or 2.2 (or maybe 2.4?) pounds though, so I at least know it's a decent amount in the right direction. January is my weight loss month...years ago Will and I used to take a trip to the Caribbean every February so January was always time to buckle down and lose as much as possible because I'd be sporting a bathing suit soon. I have managed to lose 10 pounds over the course of January several times and it would be nice if I could do it again this year, but my body just doesn't like to drop weight as much as it used to so I'm happy with 2ish pounds so far. Plus I used to do Weight Watchers Fast Track for the 4 weeks of January which was 20 points a day and no extra weekly points so I was miserable and starving (which doesn't really work when I'm in charge of 2 kids all day and REALLY need my patience!) so I would rather be eating healthy stuff and enjoying myself with slower weight loss.

I didn't feel like making oatmeal this morning so I had some shredded wheat instead. As a kid I used to love shredded wheat as long as I could douse it with sugar, and to this day I really like the crunchiness and sweetness of sugar on my shredded wheat. I don't like the calories though, so I use powdered erythritol now instead.

2 Barbara's Bakery shredded wheat biscuits with blueberries and erythritol (milk not pictured), egg + egg white and Valentina's hot sauce, decaf green tea

After preschool drop-off I headed to the gym to take a spin class with my mom. She's been trying out some new classes (she still won't try Zumba though!) and I've been accompanying her. We did kickboxing last week and both had pretty sore backs for way too long afterward so this week it was spin. I used to take my friend Ken's spin class on Friday evenings and it was awesome. Several other couples I knew (plus Will) would take it too, we'd all chat and joke and have fun during class while we worked our butts off and then we'd all shower and go out drinking for the evening. Well APPARENTLY the spin class I took today was not that kind of spin class because when I leaned over to (quietly!) encourage my mom to pedal faster because "There's a guy right in front of you! You can pass him!" the teacher called me out and told me that if I could talk I wasn't working hard enough and that talking bothered the other bikers. Well hmph! I'm debating whether to #1 not go back or #2 go back every week religiously and talk more. Possibly on my cell phone.

But no matter, after that I had my snack in the car...

Babybel light, Kevita (or perhaps KeVita is more correct?)

...and took my baby to Toys R Us to get her special birthday balloon and crown.

Excuse the mouth full of crunched-up lollipop

Charlotte's turning 2 tomorrow! I definitely am the mommy of 2 little girls now, no more babies around here!

I also wanted to get her some presents because I haven't bought any yet :-( Now before you go thinking I'm a horrible mother, YOU try to think up enough presents for a small person who doesn't really have many interests yet for Christmas and then 3 weeks later for a birthday, then we'll talk. My plan was to push her around and note the things she was interested in since everyone keeps asking me what to get her and I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO GET HER MYSELF!

One of my dirty little tricks though is to get dual-purpose gifts, especially when the kids are so little that they don't even know any better. Last year I got Charlotte some Very Hungry Caterpillar toys for Christmas so that I could use them as decorations at her birthday party. This year I got her some penguins for Christmas so I can do the same thing. And today I steered her towards the Disney stuff so that we can take some of her birthday presents with us when we go to Disney World in a couple weeks and maybe we can get away with buying minimal souvenirs while we're there (I can hope). I only do this with things she actually likes, of course, but it still makes me feel slightly guilty to push presents that have an agenda.

Justin Beiber is staring at my child

Charlotte picked out a Mickey and after some consideration, a Pluto as well. As soon as we picked Emily up at Preschool, Charlotte handed Pluto to Emily and said "Pluto for Emmy!" I'm not sure now who it actually belongs to, and I'm a bit worried that there may be custody battles to break up in my future, but it was darn cute at the time.

We raced home to have lunch and get Emmy changed for dance class, and I ate a bit of salad at home, some in the car, and some at dance class.

Greens, cucumbers, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot slaw, blue cheese, 1 tsp olive oil and truffle balsamic glaze

My salads never seem to stick on Tuesdays (must be all the kid wrangling I have to do at the dance studio) so I made a smoothie almost as soon as I got home.

Same old...1 peeled orange, 1 banana, 1 cup fat free plain greek yogurt, lotsa ice, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg

I was worried since I had my smoothie so early that I'd be starving for dinner, but my picture-taking kept me from snacking until dinner was fully made and plated. I really like this!

I was expecting my dinner to be voluminous (as you can tell by the large bowl I used) but it turned out to be kinda small.

1/2 cup quinoa, 1 cup black bean salad (recipe from Clean Eating Magazine) topped with 1 oz leftover pork and lots of cilantro

I decided to use quinoa as a base instead of the rice I had originally planned because I was trying to use just a bit of meat and quinoa has more protein than rice, and I thought it might be too similar to our dinner last night if I had used rice. It wouldn't have been...because the beans were pretty bland. I had to add extra salt and hot sauce to make it taste all that interesting. Charlotte liked it though.

Still sporting her jammies from naptime

I was worried this small amount of food wouldn't hold me all night and I was right. So I had another cup of the bean mixture with 1 tsp oil drizzled over it since I hadn't gotten in my second oil serving for the day yet.

More beans

Now both the girlies are in bed, and here is the OFFICIAL last picture ever of Charlotte as a 1 year old!

The almost birthday girl

By the time she wakes up tomorrow she'll be 2. I was thinking of sneaking some balloons into her room so that she sees them when she wakes up, but we don't seem to have any balloons left. I guess that means I should go wrap her presents so she has SOMETHING special and birthday-ish to do tomorrow!

Chipotle and Beer!

2012-01-09T21:59:00.000-05:00

After posting my Sunday food, I ended up talking to another person (my cousin) who has become a vegan after watching Forks Over Knives. Craziness!

I ended up having a dairy-free breakfast myself, but it was mostly because we ran out of milk and not because I was consciously trying to cut animal products out of my diet :-) I guess the presence of my morning egg kind of confirms that.

Banana mango oatmeal cooked in 1/2 light coconut milk 1/2 water, 1 fried egg with Valentina's hot sauce, cup 'o decaf green

For some reason I got kinda full halfway through my oatmeal so I brought it along with me in the car and it served as my morning snack too. It was MUCH better cold, like a rice pudding!

I was dumb today and took Bodypump even though I was INCREDIBLY sore from lifting yesterday. I am really suffering now, my rotator cuffs especially are in pretty bad shape. I hit M.O.M. on the way home (and the girls behaved like absolute animals), then fixed myself some lunch.

1/2 of this

Greens, orange bell pepper, broccoli, broccoli sprouts, radishes, 1 oz blue cheese, a couple scoops of carrot slaw, 1 tsp olive oil and truffle balsamic glaze

I wanted to keep things light because we were going out for dinner, so my snack was:

1/2 cup cottage cheese sprinkled with random herbs that were still alive in my garden, cucumber and zevia

I made mac and cheese with ham and peas for the girls for dinner and didn't taste a single bite because mac and cheese is SUCH a trigger food for me. I can eat a whole pot if I get started, so I just didn't get started. Unfortunately, because I didn't test them I didn't realize the noodles were undercooked until Will came home and sampled them. In the meantime I had fed them to the girls and to my sister-in-law who had come over to help watch the girls. Oops. Sorry Tina.

Then Will and I headed out to...CHIPOTLE!

Extra lettuce, chicken, fajita veggies, tomato salsa, corn salsa and a bit of brown rice

We used to eat at Chipotle several times a week in college (I think pretty much everyone in College Park did) but it has been off our menu until I realized a couple weeks ago that they have brown rice! This salad was about 1/3 of the points of a burrito but it took me just about as long to eat and was still super-yummy.

We met Lauren and Greg for dinner, then headed over to Frederick Wine House. Will and Greg are members of their beer club, and for the first meeting they were allowed to bring guests.

Grown-up version of a candy store

Guy pouring beers

My cracker and my "second class citizen" cup

The members were given nice glasses to take home, and guests were given tiny orange jell-o shot cups. I didn't really mind except for the fact that we were supposed to be sniffing, swirling and observing our beers. Due to my cup I couldn't swirl, and all of my beers looked orange. The cracker Lauren handed back to me was yummy though...kind of a combination between a whole wheat graham cracker and a regular cracker. They were tasting Belgian-style beers, which made me very happy because that's one of my favorite styles. A good meeting to be invited to, in my opinion! In Will's, not so much since he likes super hoppy (bitter!) beers.

We tasted 8 beers, and near the beginning my samples were probably around 1 oz but the pours got tinier (and the alcohol content got higher) as the night went on so I have no idea how much beer I had. 6-7oz maybe? Weight Watchers SUCKS for figuring out the points for real beer (i.e. not miller lite or budweiser) so who even knows how many points it was.

I'll tell you what I WANTED to spend points on though (but didn't)...

Oh my

The blue ones looked like paintballs, which always look tasty to me anyway.

So pretty!

Want to eat...

I don't know why they have a chocolate case in the beer and wine store (except maybe to torture me?) but I only looked with my eyes.

And that was it! I felt like I didn't eat much today, but between dinner and the beer I had no trouble meeting my daily point allotment.

Tomorrow is my (at home) weigh-in since I started really paying attention to what I was eating last Tuesday, we'll see if it is all paying off!

Oatmeal doesn't photograph well

2012-01-09T15:06:00.000-05:00

Greetings! I really did stick with this taking pictures of my food thing for another day, and once again it really kept me eating well so here, whether you like it or not, are my eats for today.

Breakfast:

Strawberry banana oatmeal cooked with 1/2 milk 1/2 water, scrambled egg augmented with egg white and topped with sriracha, plus decaf green tea

Appetizing

This oatmeal looks gross, but it was some of the best oatmeal I've had in quite awhile. I'm really glad fruit is free on Weight Watchers because I loaded this sucker up with strawberries and it was delicious. I also busted out the little tea pot/cup set my sister gave me for Christmas and I really love it! I have wanted a set like this for awhile just to look pretty, but it turns out I really enjoy "taking my tea" this way too.

I wised up today and took my pictures up on a high surface the kids couldn't reach. They still wanted to help me though.

My bead-headed butler

Helpers

We headed to the gym and I worked out with Kim, Brad and Will. Well, I worked out with Kim anyway. The guys kinda kept leaving us behind. Hmph.

After the gym I had a snack, but I had forgotten the card for my camera so here is a re-enactment:

Kevita and a laughing cow babybel light cheese wheel. Pretend the bottle is full.

Next up was lunch, my typical salad

Greens, radishes, orange bell pepper, broccoli sprouts, 1 oz pumpkin goat cheese, 1/2 oz walnuts, pear balsamic and 1 tsp olive oil

And after realizing and being disappointed that the Ravens aren't playing this week, I made myself my favorite smoothie, which is especially good because the girls will drink some too.

3/4 cup plain fat free greek yogurt, 1 whole peeled orange, 1/2 banana, a ton of ice, 1/2 cup skim milk and a dash of nutmeg

Smoothies are the only way I can stand plain yogurt. It's healthy so I make sure I get some into my diet but I am definitely not a huge fan! Eating plain yogurt, even with fruit and crunchy things sprinkled on top literally makes me gag, and not many foods do that to me (unless I'm pregnant, then lots of things do).

My fizz

Afternoon rooibos

It was a really lazy day, and since we had leftover pizza from the party I didn't even have to make dinner!

Goat cheese etc. on the left, turkey sausage on the right

I did make a "slaw" though, since Will has been asking for one.

Carrots, raisins, vinegar, erythritol, cumin and sunflower seeds, served over greens

We had a tiny bit of wine leftover from last night too, so I killed that.

Just a sip

I ended up taking forever to put Emily to bed tonight just because it seems she's FINALLY old enough to listen to a longer book. I stayed extra-long and read her the first 3 chapters of Charlotte's Web last night, and she seems excited to hear more. I am so happy that we can start moving beyond the inane little kid books and into things that I can actually enjoy reading too. If only she were old enough for Harry Potter!

Once the girls were asleep Will and I started watching Forks Over Knives at the urging of our friend Brad. We didn't get all the way through it before our own bedtime, so I guess we'll have to finish it tonight. It was kind of like Food, Inc. in that I've heard many people say that it totally changed the way they ate and thought about food, but aside from a couple interesting points I didn't find anything completely life-changing. Maybe because I already read a bunch of food and vegan blogs? I would LOVE to see a documentary that also addresses people who eat reasonable amounts of local organic grass-fed free-range meats. Most of the time they're comparing the "typical American diet" to vegetarianism or veganism and of course in that case people feel better when they make the dietary change. I would be interested in making more meat-free meals, but I'm not a huge fan of all the meat substitutes out there because most of them are so processed I don't consider them healthy either. Plus Will requires such a large amount of protein that I have only been able to come up with 1 or 2 meals that are meatless and unprocessed AND address Will's dietary needs.

Nevertheless, when I got hungry I had a "plant-based whole food" snack :-)

This probably doesn't need a description

Then I got hungry again, so I went to bed. The best hunger-killer is sleep!

I'm still hanging in there and I'm actually enjoying eating healthy these days so I'm excited about that. It is definitely easier to eat well when I am happy and enjoying myself vs. having to FORCE myself to get out of the kitchen before I snack myself to death. If only I could figure out what specifically makes the difference in my attitude.

Fooding

2012-01-08T18:34:00.001-05:00

My friend Lauren has decided to take a picture of everything she eats and post it to her blog each day. She asked me what I eat in a normal day, and after thinking about it for awhile I decided to do an experiment and take pictures of everything I ate in a day too. So here it is, my day as a food blogger!

I made a very circular breakfast for myself and the girls, then excused myself to the front room because that's the only room that has natural light in the morning. I was followed, though.

"What dooin' mommy?"

"Me picture too!"

Still lurking

At this point I also had Emily hanging on my back. I tilted my camera to cut Charlotte's head out of the shot...

That's better

In the front, a fried egg with salsa

In the back, 1/2 Ezekiel english muffin, 1 Tbsp peanut butter, 1 slice Applegate Organics ham, a couple slices of baked apple and 3/4 oz Cabot 50% light cheddar cheese

This is our "Saturday Breakfast". Will and I have had this every Saturday since back before the girls were born. Will saw the idea in an issue of Men's Health and although it sounded weird to me we tried it and now it is one of my favorite breakfasts!

I was scolded by my oldest daughter for taking my food in the front room, because we are not allowed to take our food in the front room Mommy.

For my snack, I went into the front hall instead, but I was soon discovered.

Here she comes

"Me have some"

"Uh Oh"

Then Charlotte re-arranged everything for me.

1/2 cup lowfat cottage cheese, a handful of grapes, 1 tsp wheat germ, the girls' leftover egg whites from breakfast and a Kevita coconut drink

Then Will gave me the last 3 raspberries leftover after he made fruit salad

Yum.

My snack held me for awhile, then I whipped up a salad for lunch (in the greens container since I was using up the last of them) and followed the sun out onto the back porch.

Greens, radishes, broccoli, broccoli sprouts, bell pepper, 1 oz pumpkin goat cheese, 1/4 oz pecans, smoked salt, peach balsamic vinegar and 1 tsp olive oil

We were having people over for dinner and I was making pizza which is a decidedly un-simply filling meal (simply filling is the version of Weight Watchers I am currently doing) so when I got hungry again I just had a soda to fill me up

See?

I thought that picture was a little boring though, so I recruited Will for help.

Much more interesting

At some point I also had some rooibos tea in my favorite mug.

I love that mug because it reminds me that before I became a toddler jungle gym I used to be a real person with a real science job!

Our friends Adam and Julie had a little girl in August and we haven't seen them since their daughter was a newborn, so we invited them over for dinner to catch up. Since Brad and Matt knew Adam and Julie from college and they also hadn't seen them for a long time we invited them over too and we had a nice little get-together. My girls were very excited to see the baby.

Look at that adorable red hair!

Playing pass the baby

The guys, not as interested in passing the baby

Emily and Brad's block tower

Then Will handed me a glass of Flying Dog Imperial Hefeweizen and things got blurry

Dinner time!

Whole wheat veggie pizza on the left, whole wheat caramelized onion/turkey bacon/sun-dried tomato/thyme/goat cheese pizza on the right, and a glass of Radio Boca Tempranillo courtesy of Matt

There was a lot of empty space on my plate, so I filled it with salad (courtesy of Brad and Kim) and forgot to take another picture. Boo.

Likewise, I forgot to take a picture of my dessert after I added 1/2 Tsp of Wax Orchards fruit-sweetened fudge sauce, but here's the base layer anyway:

Chocolate Covered Katie's Deep Dish Cookie Pie and Vitamix banana soft serve

Accompanied by a tasting-sized pour of dessert in a glass

Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout

Then I measured out 2 Tbsp of Cava Mezze Eggplant Roasted Red Pepper Dip, which I found at Common Market and ate with baby carrots and broccoli (not pictured :-( )

Only 15 tasty calories!

Also unpictured are 2 additional cups of tea I sipped while chatting.

So that was my day in food! As you can see, I quickly got bored of trying to get naturally lit artsy shots and just started snapping. I don't know how people do it day in and day out! BUT, I also kind of loved it, because it really made me think about my food before I ate it. Instead of just munching my egg while I finished preparing everyone's breakfast I waited and plated it and topped it with salsa and then I got the satisfaction of sitting down with a real plate of food and some tea and eating breakfast. It was impossible to snack on hors d'oeuvres the way I normally do (I would've had to've snapped a picture of each veggie I dipped which would've definitely been distracting to the people trying to talk to me) so I really didn't mindlessly munch like I probably would have otherwise, I actually had to think about it and decide what I really wanted then measure it onto a plate. I also ended up making most of my meals ahead of time and photographing them before I got hungry, so then it was really nice to just be able to grab my fully prepared salad or whatever when I needed it.

It was kind of a pain, but it also really helped me address some of my eating issues AND it got me through a get-together feeling proud of how I ate instead of like I'd blown it. I am going to photograph my food today too (since yesterday was kind of an abnormal day for me due to Saturday Breakfast and entertaining in the evening) and see how it goes. If I keep it up maybe I'll end up becoming the worlds worst food blogger.

2012

2012-01-02T15:21:00.001-05:00

Happy 2012!

I thought about making some resolutions, but since my husband's realization that his resolutions always backfire pretty badly, I am a bit nervous to even make one myself! And I don't really have any complaints about 2011, it was one of the best years for us in recent memory so I'll just hope 2012 is as good and try to focus more on self-improvement but not actually call it a resolution.

Despite the fact that we are old and married with kids, we actually ended up going out and staying up 'till midnight. I wasn't feeling the greatest, and my voice sounded HORRIBLE after a week of coughing, but we had a babysitter so damnit, we were going out! We met up with our friends Lauren and Greg (happy birthday Greg!) and headed down to Market Table Bistro in Lovettsville. I'm glad Lauren suggested it, because even though we're pretty close to Virginia we almost never go down there except to get to the airport so it was fun to explore a completely new place. It was a cute little restaurant and with the exception of my pork and Will's rockfish being a bit overcooked for our tastes it was very yummy!

Lauren was kind enough to share her paté with me as well, and oh my goodness was it good! I learned a couple years ago when we went to St. Martin that I love foie gras and patés (much to my surprise!) but I almost never get to have it because Will does not share the love and it's definitely something you want to split.

After dinner, we headed over to our friend Erin's house where a party was in full swing.

Beer Pong...didn't play it in college, still can't play it now

Discussing Erin's "Muppet" wreath

Absinthe....now with wormwood!

I got a chance to catch up with our buddy Matt who we've known since middle school but I haven't seen in almost a year!

Just like the old days

We made it to midnight and beyond...I think we ended up heading home at about 1:15, and thanks to my parents taking the girls overnight for us we were able to sleep in until the glorious hour of 10:30. Despite being hungover I was beginning to recover from my week-long sickness so I actually felt better upon waking than I had for the past couple days.

Our plan was to go over to my parents' house for the traditional dinner of black eyed peas and greens around 3:30, so Will and I were able to continue living the life of a young childless couple. We walked with Remy to My Organic Market to get some kale and free coffee, made nice healthy breakfasts and lunches, and I got to spend some time catching up on my magazines and marveling at how quiet things are without the kids around. I also got to finish watching Avatar, which I liked but fell asleep towards the end of the last time I tried to watch it.

After a lazy morning and afternoon we headed over to Gemmy and Dibby's (my parents') house.

The people who made our relaxing New Year possible

We toasted the New Year...

...and the clouds cleared just in time for a pretty sunset over South Mountain.

It was a nice way to start the new year. And hopefully this year will stay nice.

Our Christmas, in pictures

2011-12-30T10:27:00.000-05:00

Wow. I feel like the last 2 weeks hit me like a truck! We've been going nonstop, and I don't want another Christmas to slip by undocumented, so here, in blurry cell phone pictures (spoiler alert, the pictures get better at the end!) is our Christmas.

Things started to get Christmas-y at Emily's preschool show on the 18th.

In the middle, playing the angel just like her mama used to. Blonde girls are always cast as the angel.

Glad she's short so she gets to stand in the front!

My girls <3

Next was a visit to Santa!

2011

Charlotte was pretty unsure, but seemed ok once we sat her on the couch vs. in Santa's lap. We are 0-5 for Santa-induced meltdowns! And here, because I like to compare (and because these are really the only professional pics we have taken of the girls on a regular basis) are the pictures from previous years:

2010

2009

2008

2007

The next day was filled with parties.

Birthday party #1 - Sam's 5th birthday at Pump it Up

Birthday party #2 - Nora's 2nd birthday at FISC

Party #3 for the day - The Dray family Christmas party at my mom and dad's house

Phew. That was exhausting.

The Christmas festivities resumed on Wednesday with Emily's preschool Christmas party. The moms didn't even know we were putting on this party until a couple days before, so we didn't have time to have meetings and offer ideas. As a result, almost every activity involved candy :-(

Pin the nose on Rudolph

Decorating gingerbread houses...there was NOTHING I could do to healthify this :-(

Making reindeer candy canes (and getting sneezed on by classmates)

I think that picture is about the exact moment when Emily contracted the nasty cold that started on Christmas Eve and STILL continues to make her miserable (and has sent its friends to live in my lungs as well). The boy next to her (not the one in the picture, the one sitting to the other side of her) kept sneezing and sneezing and since his mom wasn't there it somehow became MY job to keep fetching him tissues. As if I don't have to wipe enough noses between my own two kids, blech.

After the party, we went to my sister Krista's house to pick up Charlotte. The kitties are getting big, but they still nurse on her throw blanket. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen! All cats knead, but hers actually suck on parts of the blanket while they purr and knead. Goofballs.

Emily imitating the cats

They really are awesome, patient little kitties

Then, out of nowhere, it was Christmas Eve!

Making sprinkle cookies for Santa

Snack-dinner was served (and consumed with gusto) in the family room

There was much goofiness

Remy hoped we'd look away so he could grab a bite

The elves sneaked into the girls rooms and brought new pajamas!

Cookies and milk (plus, at Charlotte's request, beer and soft pretzels) were left out for Santa, with a carrot and some half-eaten apples for the reindeer.

Stockings were hung

There was more goofiness

And the girls didn't fall asleep until after 10 :-(

Christmas Eve is one of the most exhausting days of the year for us as we make all the preparations and food for that evening and the next day, especially because we know we still have all of Christmas to get through tomorrow! Neither Will nor I slept well on Christmas Eve night...we were awoken by Emily freaking out that she couldn't breathe through her cold-clogged nose at 1:30, a cup falling off the counter in the kitchen at 5:30, and my phone (which I had forgotten to silence) announcing that I had mail at 6. But then it was Christmas!

Excited little girls were good sports about waiting for pictures to be taken

Yessssss....finally!

Being a parent has given me a new appreciation for all that MY parents went through to make Christmas happen for my sisters and I when we were kids. Putting on a Christmas is hard work! In my family, Santa always brought 1 present, whatever you wanted most (and whatever you told the Santa at the mall that you wanted) and then the rest of the presents were from my parents. It's easier that way, plus I don't think I really even noticed as a kid amidst all the excitement. This year, Santa brought just what each girl asked for...

"A book" for Charlotte

"2 blue unicorns, a mommy and a baby that look just like the unicorns I already have" for Emily

Emily's oddly specific request required a desperate Ebay bid, a can of blue spraypaint and some glitter nailpolish, but Santa came through in the end.

After the first wave of presents, my family arrived with a fresh supply...

...then Will's family with even more.

Will ended up juicing ALL of these oranges, plus some grapefruits!

After this, thank goodness, my pictures got a lot better because I GOT MY NEW CAMERA! It's a Canon Rebel T1i and I'm in love. I am still a long way from knowing how to take advantage of everything it can do, but in the meantime it is certainly improving my snapshots.

The first picture I took, yay!

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have a camera that takes pictures QUICKLY. I have been able to actually capture some of my girls' faces before they realize I'm pointing a camera at them and look away/start pouting.

After 3 rounds of Christmas at our house, we went to Will's Aunt Dee Dee's house for the evening, praying that the girls would be able to hold out through dinner and presents before melting down for the day.

Charlotte with Papa and Pingu in front of the GIANT chocolate Christmas tree!

Emily, still excited about Christmas

Even my Father-in-Law was excited to try out my camera

After holding out on her all day, Emily finally decided to give Aunt Dee Dee her hug, and ended up knocking her to the ground. And yes, I took this picture before offering to help her up. Priorities.

I turn my back for a minute to pack up some presents, and my children have been helpfully supplied with ice cream and fudge sauce

So that pretty much covers Christmas. Ever since then we've just been crouching in our house passing colds back and forth and enjoying not having to get up for school every day. Oh, and fighting like cats and dogs over the new toys. You would think being surrounded by an almost sickening number of toy choices would mean that the girls would play happily for hours, but in actuality they just spend all their time engaged in vicious combat because both of them HAVE to play with the exact same toy at the exact same time.

Now I have to go try to get some rest so I can kick this junk out of my lungs before attempting to stay up until midnight tomorrow. Will doesn't think I can make it, so I have to prove him wrong.

How many people can say they built a trebuchet and won a wine review contest in the same day?

2011-12-20T21:09:00.000-05:00

Probably one. At least today.

And in case you hadn't guessed, that person is ME!

Let me explain.

My Dad has a dark sense of humor, which is no doubt where I got my dark sense of humor. He has told us many times that when he dies instead of a traditional funeral and burial or cremation he would like us to trebuchet his dead body over South Mountain (the mountain his front porch overlooks). He is the reason why I know the difference between a catapult and a trebuchet because he is very adamant that it must be a true trebuchet. He is undeterred by our pleas that he consider what might happen to some poor hiker on the Appalachian Trail if he is suddenly smashed by a dead body falling from the sky. And strangely enough, The Oatmeal's plans for his own funeral are almost identical, but my Dad came up with this idea YEARS ago.

This background is all to explain why I am building my dad a trebuchet for Christmas. Because he already has everything else, and I enjoy the idea of him using it to fling little wooden balls down the hallways of NIST. Plus I am a big fan of giving people homemade things for Christmas, and since I made this he is required to like it since he is my parent.

The kit arrived a couple days ago, and I eyeballed it dubiously. I do not really enjoy building things but I decided to look at it as more of a craft and I dove in. I managed to get about 3 minutes into it when I realized I didn't have any wood glue, and also that you're supposed to fill the counterweight with 78 pennies. Since I had just dumped all my pennies into a Coinstar machine, the trebuchet would have to wait.

So last night and today I put it together, and it was surprisingly kind of fun! Plus I now know how to tie a hangman's knot and a double figure-of-eight knot, skills that I'm sure will serve me well in the future. It actually works, and it actually looks just like it's supposed to:

Check out all those knots

And even better, while I was building the trebuchet, I got a call from The Wine Kitchen in Frederick, informing me that Will and I won their contest to write a review for Alysian Chardonnay when we were on a date there a couple weeks ago. We get a $30 gift card, and our review will appear on the cards they hand out when you order it in the restaurant! I am extremely excited because #1 we LOVED the restaurant, but it's a bit pricey. The gift card will help with that next time! And #2 we were a bit (actually a lot) buzzed when we wrote the review and we felt the need to use the term "f*ck-ton" in the last sentence, then we left the card on the table and hurried out before anyone read it. They seemed to enjoy it though, because the manager who called me said "Everyone who voted was unanimous that your review should win" and "We all appreciated your liberal-ness". I am assuming they will be taking the last sentence off before they print it on the cards though.

So I am feeling pretty good about my varied talents right about now. Possibly even good enough to consider keeping these shoes that arrived today that I ordered to wear in my sister's wedding:

Yowza

I guess "4" heels" didn't register until I actually saw them in person. At least I'll look super-cute for the 10 minutes I'll be able to wear them before my feet fall off.

Stalker Santa

2011-12-11T07:44:00.001-05:00

One of the things I really enjoy about our neighborhood (and especially our little corner of the neighborhood) is that almost everyone puts out Christmas lights at this time of year. I love driving around in December looking at all the light displays, from the tacky to the tasteful. I am trying very hard to make it a family Christmas tradition that we all pile into the car one night in our PJs with hot chocolate and drive around on a light tour. We attempted this last night, and since our girls were involved it was fun but also highly stressful. There was spilled hot chocolate (which luckily I had made sure was more like warm chocolate in case of spillage, but it still caused shrieking), stops to go pee pee, complaining when Emily realized we'd be driving by Dancing Bear downtown but not actually going in, girls screaming at each other and Charlotte's constant car jabber (including incessant requests for fireworks, please?) that is adorable but gives me a headache. Will wondered why we even try to do anything like this, but it's something that I think we'll all enjoy having memories of.

One decoration I do NOT approve of is something my neighbors put out every year that I can see from my dining room window. As I walk around my house at night, I am often alarmed by this sight:

Ominous

Looking closer (and blurrier, thanks to my phone camera's limited abilities) you see this:

Creepy

In the light of day, it looks like this:

Not so bad

I don't understand why they need to spotlight it with red at night. Will thinks I'm crazy, but I say catching a glimpse of a glowing red humanoid face hovering in your neighbor's bushes at night every time you walk by the window is quite startling. And I don't know about you, but for me feeling startled and vaguely unnerved does not inspire Christmas spirit.

Christmas magic

2011-12-06T20:15:00.001-05:00

Over the past week or so I have been making a concerted effort to do a fun Christmas-y activity with Emily as often as possible. I won't be so ambitious as to say I will do something every day of December, but I am giving it a shot. My first idea was to decorate a green styrofoam cone with gems and mini-garland to make a little Christmas tree but it was much tougher than I had anticipated, and even though I didn't let Emily USE the glue gun she still managed to burn herself on the end of it and spent pretty much the rest of the day screaming :-( The My Little Ponies have a nice Christmas tree now though.

Undeterred, I moved on to my next idea which was to make a gingerbread house. Emily has been begging me for at least 2 years to let her make a gingerbread house, so I set out to altering gingerbread recipes to make them whole-wheat and naturally sweetened and collecting artificial dye-free and (when possible) naturally sweetened candy for our house. The frosting was pure sugar though. I still haven't found a way to make frosting healthy. And let me tell you, gingerbread houses are tougher than they seem. We eventually managed though, and Emily has been enjoying snacking on the house a little bit each day. I tried to explain to her that gingerbread houses are not for eating, but she just looks at me like I'm crazy and to be honest, I see her point. It IS kind of crazy to go to extremes making a large structure completely out of edible items and then not eat it.

We also made a snow globe out of a baby food jar. The santa inside stuck to the bottom for about 5 minutes before the glue let go. Now when you shake it poor Santa is just tossed around in a sea of glittery water (which is leaking out bit by bit).

Today, as I picked Emily up from preschool, she announced that she'd like to make peanut butter cups. I was delighted to be able to tell her that yes, we could totally make peanut butter cups, because I had been planning on making buckeyes with her today anyway and the procedure for peanut butter cups is much the same. Our conversation went as follows:

Emily: Mommy, can we make peanut butter cups today?
Sara: Why yes we can! Why do you want to make peanut butter cups? Did you have peanut butter cups at preschool today?
Emily: No, I just want to make peanut butter cups.

Later that day, as I am making said peanut butter cups....

Emily: Pinkie Pie is coming down and eating them every time you make one, but they are reappearing.
Sara: Uh oh, she'd better not eat all of them!
Emily: I'll talk to her. Pinkie Pie, I know that these peanut butter cups taste good, just like the peanut butter log I found in the gym today, but you can't eat them all, Daddy and Charlotte need to have some!
Sara: Wait, what? What peanut butter log?
Emily: I found it in the gym at preschool.
Sara: So you found a peanut butter cup on the floor of the gym at preschool?
Emily: No, it was a log.
Sara: Did you tell your teachers?
Emily: No, I ate it.
Sara: Emily, you can't just eat things you find on the floor. What if it had been poop and you had put it in your mouth to taste it? Then you would've had poop in your mouth.
Emily: I knew it wasn't poop, because poop is straight.
Sara: Is that why you wanted to make peanut butter cups today?
Emily: Yeah.

So there you have it. Our magical Christmas mother-daughter togetherness activity for the day was initiated because of a piece of discarded food my daughter found and ingested off the floor of the gym at preschool.

At least they turned out pretty well

I am realizing I should've cut one in half so you could see the peanut butter on the inside, and maybe not have put a crooked cup on top, but hey, as I have said before, I am definitely not a food blogger!

Once Charlotte woke up I was very glad we had made them because they shortened her post-nap screaming period significantly.

Please forgive my crappier-than-normal pictures. I have lost my camera charger, so once again I am facing a Christmas season armed with only a cell phone for my picture-taking needs. Hopefully you will see a marked improvement in my photo quality after the Christmas holiday!

Falling down

2011-11-16T14:19:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone. I've been hiding for a bit. It's what I do when I get overwhelmed and feel like I can't do anything well. I just don't do anything, that way I don't have to feel bad that I'm not writing interesting blog posts/keeping my house clean/planning ahead for all the things I need to do/counting points etc.

I have done well on the artificial sweetner/caffiene front. The artificial sweetner part has been easy, except for Saturday when there was Turkey Hill sugar-free ice cream at my Father-in-law's party. We used to go through GALLONS of that stuff. It's the only sugar-free ice cream (that was also only 1 old WW point per half cup) that was worth eating. But I resisted. The caffiene thing went faster than I thought it would...I cut back to a half cup of coffee in the morning for 2 days, then since I hadn't had any side effects I cut back to 1/4 cup for the next 2 days. That didn't bother me at all (aside from the chest tightness from drinking caffiene in the first place) so I cut back to 100% decaf and have been doing that for the past 3 days. I get a touch of a headache still at some point each day, but nothing a few ibuprofen won't fix. How strange that even 1/4 cup of caffiene makes all the difference.

When it comes to eating though, I have not been doing all that well. Everything I have eaten is healthy, but for the past 3 days or so I have been eating way too much. I have my WW weigh-in tonight so I'll see what the damage is. It makes me so mad, because after the first 2 days of not counting points I am still pretty sure I wasn't over my weekly allowance for the week yet, but I got convinced in my head that I had "blown it", so I've kept going. Every morning I have started out with the best of intentions, but then I eat something I shouldn't and say "I'll recommit tomorrow so that I can eat all the things I've been missing today and I won't have to track them". I've got to just stop!

I discovered the blog Runs For Cookies written by a girl named Katie who has lost 125 pounds in 16 months, and I have been reading that for inspiration. What got to me the most was looking at her weigh-ins over the course of her weight loss. She didn't lose every single week, and some weeks she even gained quite a bit! But she still lost 125 pounds because she kept going even after she gained. I know that I am allowed to mess up. I know that the single most important thing I can do is to forgive myself and get back on track as soon as possible. But I still find it incredibly difficult to put that into practice! I would rather sit around and beat myself up and end up gaining back the weight I have lost over and over and over, apparently.

It's also amazing how different it is in my head when I'm doing well vs. when I've slipped. When I'm doing well, I am convinced I will succeed. I picture myself at my sister's wedding rocking my bridesmaid dress (which will have to be taken WAY in, of course), I look forward to my next weight loss milestone, and I notice and appreciate the areas of my body that are changing. As soon as I have a day when I snack a bit too much though, I immediately start wallowing in self-pity. My younger sister (who only weighed about 118 to begin with) accidentally lost 13 pounds in the last 2 months because of a newly diagnosed thyroid condition and is afraid her wedding dress will be way too big. I sure didn't have any weight loss when *I* was dealing with my hyperthyroidism. My pants from this summer that were starting to get big are now a bit tight, a nice reminder that even though I've had an impressive 2 weeks of weight loss I'm still above where I got to a couple months ago. I don't feel like working out because I feel gross from eating too much and it won't negate all the calories I just snacked on anyway. I wish I could figure out how to kick my psyche in the face.

I am toying with the idea of only counting points every other week. I did very well a couple weeks ago when I was just focusing on eating mindfully, so maybe I can just alternate my approach and that will keep me from getting tired and resentful of tracking everything? I'll track this week and see how I feel after my next weigh-in. I am so sick of losing the same 10 pounds over and over! I want to start losing "new" weight!

Why you won't be seeing me on Survivor any time soon

2011-11-10T10:44:00.002-05:00

Yesterday as I waited to pick up Emily at Preschool I was excited to see the lead mom posting the sign-up sheet for Emily's Thanksgiving party. "Hooray!", I thought. "I will get first crack at it so I will be able to sign up for exactly what I want to bring!". Except that my children, instead of engaging in a 5 minute long wrestling match that completely blocks the hall like they usually do, decided to bolt for the door and actually made it outside, necessitating a chasing-down dragging-back and scolding from me. By the time I got to the list there was a large crowd of moms around it, and once it finally got to be my turn the things I was hoping to sign up for were taken :-( I am now bringing turkey lunchmeat and bubble wrap. The strange thing is though that the list was oddly specific. "Pretzels, square or circle-shaped", it read, and "Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing", so I would've been very limited anyway. I probably would have been obstinate and ignored the pretzel shape and dressing brand requests had I been fortunate enough to snag those two (aparently coveted) items, especially because I don't recall discussing such details at the meeting.

Despite my extreme irritation at my children who were miserable both at preschool pickup and in the car afterward (requests were answered with "No!", juice boxes were thrown at me) I decided to stop by and drag them into My Organic Market on the way home because I hadn't spent money on groceries in 3 days!!!! I was going through withdrawl!!! And I was sick of drinking powdered milk!!! I also had to break in my new credit card. Luckily My Organic Market always has free juice and snacks sitting out, which kept my kids calm and well-behaved in the store. I celebrated by going in to pick up 4 necessities and leaving with $124 worth of groceries.

In the afternoon, I decided to try and kill myself. I headed to the gym intent on taking Bodypump followed by Zumba, then going to my Weight Watchers meeting afterward. Only once I had scooped everybody into the car and driven away did I realize that I had only eaten 15 points so far that day, and none of that food had passed my lips in the last 3 hours. The only snack I had brought with me was a tiny Siggis 3.7 oz plain yogurt drink. "No matter!" I thought. "I used to take step classes followed by 2 karate classes and then go home for a 9PM dinner! People wander the desert for days with no food or water and live! I will be fine!" And through Bodypump I was. Once Zumba started though, my body started to get mad at me. Everything felt MUCH more difficult (surprise!) and my muscles got all crampy. I had to power through though, because I was making a point.

Back when I took salsa classes from the legendary Kevan, people got pretty nasty. There was shoving and fighting to get a spot, and it got to the point where it almost wasn't even worth it to take the class because you had to deal with so much cattiness and crap to do so. Zumba is starting to be the same way, with people showing up almost half an hour before class starts to get a spot in line to get into the studio so that they can be first to select a spot once it's time for class. I try to set a good example and get a spot in the front when I can, but also purposely stand in the back sometimes to allow others a chance to stand in the front. I hate all the "this is my spot" business. Taking Bodypump before Zumba allows you the unique opportunity to be the absolute first person in the room when it's spot selection time though, so I took advantage and stood wherever I wanted to regardless of who traditionally claims that particular square of floor. Thus, despite my rapidly deteriorating physical endurance and bouts of dizziness I felt like I had to dance especially well to "prove" that I deserved to stand in the front line (which was very crowded, because the other fine lady whose spot I took refused to stand anywhere else and so just smashed in next to me. I made sure to "accidentally" whack her a couple times).

After Zumba I had to sit through a 45-minute long Weight Watchers meeting about ways to make TV-watching time less detrimental to one's diet, which is SO not my problem. I only get about 1 hour of TV time a day, I get my exercise in, and I don't snack mindlessly on chips while zoning in front of the TV so I am not interested in hearing about healthier food substitutions or suggestions to do crunches during commercials. With such boring subject matter I had nothing to distract myself from the fact that I was still dizzy and shaking. I finally made it home and chugged a bowl of chili that was way too hot and upset my empty stomach.

Lesson learned. Remember to fuel body before asking it to perform strenuous exercise for 2 hours straight. Also, I am not 23 anymore so don't assume I can do things right now that I used to be able to do at my all-time-fittest age and shape.

I will get back in great shape again though. I will need to, if I want to be able to fight off the other moms to bring pretzels to Emily's next class party.

Breaking my addictions

2011-11-09T14:43:00.001-05:00

I have a confession to make.

As you know, I am not a fan of aspartame. I was raised by a biologist father who was deeply mistrustful of the stuff after seeing the results of a research study conducted on Nutrasweet in the 80's both before and after the FDA got their hands on it and changed it into what was actually released to the public. I was taught by an Organic Chemistry TA in college who described going to work with his forensic chemist friend and seeing white junk (which turned out to be aspartame) just deposited in the muscles of corpses. I have suffered exactly 1 migrane in my life so far (thank God) and I strongly suspect that aspartame was to blame.

I have no documents to support any of this, and speaking strictly as a scientist I have never seen any undeniable proof that it is actually poisonous or deadly. But speaking as a person who is in posession of a human body that I would like to continue living in for as long as possible, I say why take chances with something that DOES break down into poisons in your body but probably not in amounts big enough to cause a problem? Aren't I exposed against my will to enough environmental pollutants and poisons on a daily basis that it makes sense to keep out even the tiniest bits of poison when I DO have a say?

Except that occasionally I willingly consume aspartame.

I am a total diet soda addict. It's fizzy, it's sweet, it fills up my stomach and there are no calories! What more could a habitual dieter ask for? Luckily there is now Zevia soda out there (and in my fridge) that is still calorie-free but gets its sweetness from stevia and erythritol. I can't say that this is 100% natural and fine for you either, but I feel personally that it is a better choice than the more mainstream sodas. When I am craving a soda and I don't have a Zevia around though, I will sometimes, maybe 2-3 times a month, grab a real diet soda. I try to go for sucralose-sweetened sodas if I can, even though I don't like sucralose either, but that's not always an option. Neither sucralose nor aspartame have any place in a clean eating plan though.

I grabbed a diet Dr. Pepper at the dance studio yesterday as a "treat" because I was irritated and worn out. And BOY did I have a headache later that afternoon, right as I was trying to make dinner (which is incidentally right when Charlotte gets extra-screamy). It hearkened me back to the day, a couple weeks ago, when I "treated" myself to a Coke Zero and suffered the same consequence. So I've decided to actually walk the clean eating walk and cut this junk out completely. I will probably stick to my Zevia sodas for a bit, but my goal is to get myself down to just soda water or kombucha if I want something fizzy to drink.

And speaking of breaking bad habits, why not tackle my caffiene addiction while I'm at it? It feels silly to even say I have a caffiene addiction because I only drink 1-2 cups of coffee a day and maybe sometimes a cup of regular green tea. But if my body doesn't get that caffiene in the morning I end up with a splitting headache in the afternoon, and drinking caffiene at that point won't fix things, it has to be consumed in the morning. I call that a symptom of addiction.

On top of that, both my dad and my paternal grandmother (who used to be a nurse and therefore is a big fan of the coffee) have spent some time in the hospital in the last couple months over suspected heart issues. Neither of them turned out to actually have anything wrong with their hearts, but my dad's "spells" have always occured right after the consumption of a caffienated beverage and have improved almost 100% since he gave up caffiene. And drinking caffiene too fast (as I usually have to do to get my morning cup in while getting everyone fed and ready and out the door) makes my chest painfully tight.

So no more artificial sweetners, which I definte as aspartame, saccharin or sucralose. Also, I plan to break myself of caffiene gradually but completely over the next couple weeks. After that I will probably allow myself an occasional cup of caffienated coffee or tea on a special occasion but I really don't want to get back into a situation where I NEED caffiene to stave off a negative physical reaction.

Do you think wearing my caffiene necklace and/or shirt will help with the withdrawl symptoms? Or would that just make me a poser now that I have decided to swear off the stuff?

Monument to my failures

2011-11-08T21:04:00.000-05:00

BOY do I hate interactive phone voice menus. Whoever thought of those was definitely not a stay-at-home-parent. Every single time I have to call, it goes something like this:

Robotic voice: Please enter or say your credit card number, followed by your bank account number, followed by your social security number, followed by your birth date, followed by your zip code, followed by your favorite 6-digit number, then press pound.
Sara: Beep beep boop beep boop (etc. until within 2 digits of finishing)
Charlotte: BOT PLEASE MAMA!!!!
Robotic voice: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that. Please enter or say your credit card number, followed by your bank account number....
Sara: (closing self in bathroom) beep beep boop beep boop
Emily: (banging on door) I NEED TO GO PEE PEE!!!!!
Robotic voice: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that...
Repeat times 1000 until I have retreated to the porch and the automated system finally gives up and transfers me to a real live person
Real Live Person: Hello Mrs. Randall. May I please have your credit card number...
Charlotte: (busting outside) MORE BOT IN!!!!
Real Live Person: I'm sorry, I'm hearing a lot of background noise, what was that?

Thankfully though I have yet to misplace my phone, I have a checkbook, and I have a credit/ATM card in my posession. And as if that weren't enough, I even found my license that I lost back in March, which I have of course had replaced already, but I guess it's just a getting things back under control kinda week. Which is awesome. I don't have too many of those.

Since today is a Tuesday, which means I am shot from getting girls to dance and fed and peed and changed and entertaining the petulant younger of the two for 45 minutes while the other one dances, I've decided to just show you what is sitting on my kitchen windowsill. I have to stare at it for what feels like hours every day as I do dishes, so I'm sure y'all'll be enthralled by it as well.

First we have some shells:

I am not sure why I have shells on my kitchen windowsill. Having shells on one's kitchen windowsill implies that a person either enjoys collecting or looking at shells, and I'm honestly not either. But people have given my daughters and me large, impressive shells over the years and I don't want to throw them away. If I let the girls play with them though they get broken, so I think what happened is that I needed to clean up quickly at some point so I grabbed a nearby jar and threw some vagrant shells into it. And voila, now I have a place to store shells. Except that I should probably find somewhere else to store them so I can use this space to display something that is more useful, or at least more "me".

Next up is a cactus:

More specifically, 10 fluid ounces of cactus, as you can see on the label. Mmmm, cactus fluid. This cactus was purchased months ago along with another succulent, and is supposed to go into a homemade terrarium that I decided the girls and I would make for Will for Father's Day. I was high on creativity and Pinterest at the time. Except that we WERE going to celebrate a Father's Day Observed sometime in July, but then the day beforehand Will bumped it up to ACTUAL Father's Day and the terrarium wasn't made yet so I decided I'd make it later. This guy is the last survivor. I still do intend to make it someday, if only to get the supplies off my kitchen counter.

Speaking of killing plants, next comes these guys:

On the left is dead-ish rosemary. On the right is super-dead lavender. In the middle is not-yet-dead sage. I periodically decide I am going to have a windowsill herb garden because it makes good financial sense! Why buy a single cutting of rosemary every time I need it for $4 when I can just buy a whole plant for $2 that will allow me to cut rosemary whenever and in any amount I want? Except that this always happens before I can even use the plant much. I guess I'm leaving the lavender there because I refuse to believe that even I can kill a plant in a mere 3 days and it might just be sleeping? And the dead rosemary is there because, well, there's dead lavender right over there, so why not some dead rosemary too? I admire the sage's bravery, still growing strong even with the bodies of its brethren heaped around it on all sides.

But! Lest you think I am hopeless at growing anything, behold my fungus!

Yes, my first box of mushrooms failed to grow, but the second box I ordered (at the same time to get free shipping) is thriving! Just look at all of those delicious mushrooms just waiting to become a stir-fry! I hope they mature soon, because they kind of freak me out. Clusters of things other than flowers always kind give me the heebie-jeebies.

And speaking of other things I am able to easily grow on my windowsill:

My version of an ant farm

These guys have slowed down a bit, but basically from spring through fall we have billions of ants in our kitchen. Here you can see them happily dining on Terro ant poison, which they gobble by the dropfull, carry off to feed their queen, and then return fat and happy to slurp down some more. They are thriving on Terro. They LOVE the Terro. The only reason I feed it to them is because it keeps them pretty localized so I find fewer ants floating in my tea.

No wonder I hate doing the dishes. Every time I step up to my sink I am confronted by a monument to my failures. I think a bit of redecoration is in order.

News and new kitties

2011-11-08T17:01:00.002-05:00

*This was to be published on Saturday, but I delayed it to double-check that some news I share later was ok to share. Again, please just imagine you are reading this on Saturday night because I don't feel like going through and changing all the "this morning" instances to "the morning of 3 days ago".

Today started the same as any other Saturday (Emily coming into our room and telling me to get out of bed, Saturday morning breakfast sandwich, gym etc.) and THEN...pretty much just continued the same way as every other Saturday. The girls and I headed over to my sister's apartment around lunchtime to meet her new kitties, Palmer (as in Arnold Palmer) and Nicholas (as in Jack...Nicklaus. Hmmm.) My husband was notably absent, due to his untouched-by-almost-a-year-of-shots cat allergy.

Why hello there

Rawr

Gratuitous shot of Emily screaming at me not to take a picture of her

The girls were really good with the kitties, and even more surprising, the kitties were really good with the girls! They are really gentle, affectionate little guys. It'll be nice to have another place I can go for my kitty fix. Then again, it's one more place Will CAN'T go now.

After running home to nap Charlotte, we were back out to Lyle and Wendy's house for a Mary Kay consultation and sushi!

Charlotte quickly confiscated my applicators and joined in on the fun

Abigail eventually joined us for her first makeup lesson too

Sushi time!

Sushi time was quickly followed by marshmallow time

Charlotte shopping for Abigails

Turnaround is fair play

The most fun part of the night was the double big reveal...Wendy and Carolyn are both pregnant and due within a couple weeks of each other! I was SO hoping they would both "come out" tonight, because I knew Carolyn was pregnant, and I knew Wendy was pregnant, but neither of them knew the other one was pregnant. I have a horrible time keeping my big mouth shut and trying to keep a double secret with all parties present was a tall order. Luckily for me though, I was not the one who blew it, Will took that duty upon himself.

Once these babies are born, between the three couples we'll have Sam and Emily (who are 4 months apart), Charlotte and Abigail (who are 4 months apart) and new babies #1 and 2 who will be only a month or so apart. We will have 3 neat little sets of best friends to play together :-) Since my sisters and sisters-in-law refuse to produce any cousins, I love that we are able to have "friend cousins" close in age for the kiddoes.

Will and I realized this neat little factoid, and he was about to explain it to Lyle and Wendy last week when I hushed him. Phew! We avoided giving away Carolyn and Christian's secret! Tonight however, when talk turned to babies and Carolyn and Christian "came out", Will said "I almost let the secret slip last week, I was about to tell Lyle and Wendy how cool it will be to have 2 MORE kids in our group who are so close in age!" Um, yeah, Lyle and Wendy hadn't made their announcement yet. Oops.

I am so excited for both of my friends, and also excited to be sitting this round (and all future rounds) of pregnancy out! It means I'll get to hold and play with my friends' babies without having a baby of my own to attend to at the same time. And it means Charlotte will get a tiny bit of experience being in a big sister role without any effort on my part :-) Maybe at least one of them will even have a boy this time, we've kind of been stuck in a girl loop so far!

Will and I just put some still-very-wound-up girls to bed, and are looking forward to getting an extra hour of sleep tomorrow morning! Hopefully all the playing and staying up late wore them out enough that we'll actually be able to get more sleep out of this time change for the first time in many years!*

*Yeah, that didn't happen.

Choosing the worst of 6 evils

2011-11-07T14:58:00.001-05:00

Today, what time I have not spent disputing charges for exhorbitant amounts of coffee purchased online by persons unknown using my credit card and trying to get access...ANY access...to our money was spent at a planning meeting for Emily's preschool class's Thanksgiving party. I decided to take a different tack this time. You'll recall that I have attempted before to provide fruit for the parties, in which case the other moms bring in junky stuff. I have also left it to others to bring the fruit and veggies and made the junky stuff myself but in such a way that it was no longer junk, only to have most of the kids sample but then politely push away their cookies, although the adults always gobble them up. This time I decided to just let the pieces fall where they may and try to clean things up a bit afterward. The lead moms are the same as last year, and they already know my thoughts on the food provided to our kids at the preschool. There are kids with allergies to coconut, shellfish and cashews this year, so my idea for cashew-coconut encrusted shrimp was out the window from the get-go anyway. Damn.

As I silently watched, the menu was drawn up as follows:

-rolled up turkey lunchmeat slices
-cheese in the shape of mickey mouse (?)
-craisins
-carrot sticks with ranch dip
-pretzels
-sugar cookies in the shape of turkeys

I can't decide what to do. On the one hand, this isn't TOO bad. I am proud of them for trying. There's not a bunch of candy or sweets or dyes. On the other hand, because I am insane of course I can find at least one issue with each of the proposed items (The nitrates! The sugar! The processed carbs! The high fructose corn syrup!) All of my past attempts at party healthification have either resulted in the kids eating junk anyway, or else NOT eating the goodies I provide (even when they are frosted!) which has probably caused the other moms to nickname me "That crazy health-nut mom who ruins all the school parties with her whole wheat baked goods" behind my back. How stringent (annoying) do I want to be? This year they have combined 2 classes for the party so whoever provides food will have to provide for 23 kids instead of the usual 11-12. I don't feel like providing 23 kids with nitrate-free organic and juice-sweetened versions of EVERYTHING on the list, so I have to pick the worst offenders. The cookies, it seems, are non-negotiable. I have already stolen the honor of providing the dessert from another mother who enjoys baking twice before, I am willing to give up this particular battle. I think I will offer to bring the ranch dip (subbing Marie's or similar yogurt-based ranch dressing for the HFCS and chemical-based dressing that would otherwise be provided) and the pretzels (subbing a kind that is at least partially whole grain). I am not going to argue over every single thing on the menu though. It's not that I don't feel quite as strongly about it as I did a year ago, but the Sara of 2011 has spent another year as the mother of 2 young children who are increasingly out in the world, and she's had to accept the fact that the ability to control everything they eat has slipped a year further away from her. I will never give up completely on trying to get the best food possible into my children's mouths in any given situation. But now that there are battles to be fought every.single.day over the quality of food offered to my girls I have to pick which ones I fight or risk alienating people and making the junk food my kids are inundated with "off-limits" and therefore even more desirable.

I AM loosening up a bit, I promise. I just wish I didn't have to.

Making food, making friends

2011-11-07T12:31:00.002-05:00

*I thought I posted this last night, please forgive all the "todays" and "this mornings" that no longer apply. I don't feel like going through and re-writing it.

Today started out fairly poorly. The girls slept in until 6:20 new time (usually we get up at 7) so that wasn't too bad, but when I went off to the grocery store to grab a couple last-minute things I needed for some food I was preparing things got hairy. As I went to check out, I was informed that my credit card was declined. I tried again, same deal. To save face I walked over to the ATM to try and get some cash out to pay for my purchase, but my ATM card is the same card I use for my normal purchases and unsurprisingly, it was declined again. Luckily I had $28 cash in my wallet, so the cashier and I had to go through and un-buy a bunch of things until my total got back down to $28. I shuffled out of the store in shame, and was quickly on the phone to my bank.

It turns out that someone has stolen our credit card number and made 2 $90-ish purchases at Tim Horton online last night, which luckily set off a red flag and they locked our card. I was not even aware that Tim Horton HAD an online store, I thought they were just a chain of coffee stores in Canada, but hey, you learn something new every day. After that, a $400 purchase was attempted from the UK at the website for Manchester United. Luckily that didn't go through, since our card was already locked. I am grateful that our bank was quick to lock our cards, but now we won't have our only credit card, which is also our only ATM card, until Tuesday. On top of that, we ran out of checks 2 weeks ago and requested that they send new ones, but our representative didn't feel like ordering them until a full week after our request, so we can't write checks either. We are essentially without access to our money for the next day and a half. This does not help my whole "I don't like to be cut off in an emergency" issue I was dealing with earlier in the week.

Our day got better though, because after a nice afternoon spent happily ~~wrecking~~ cooking in my kitchen, we went to my lovely new friend Lauren and her husband Greg's house for a potluck dinner.

First thing's first, we caged up the kids so the adults could have a nice quiet dinner.

Just kidding. The kids were all extremely present throughout the evening, as is evidenced by my current state of deafness from all the screaming and squealing.

This was the best, most veggie-filled potluck I have ever had the pleasure of attending, not just because I ate myself silly and still have some WW points leftover for the day, but also because it was so much fun to be able to discuss crazy foods and share recipes just by saying which food blog I got them from and have someone else there know what I was talking about!

Juice-sweetened chocolate was enjoyed by one and all

After dinner there was wrestling and foam-rolling

As you can see, I barely got any pictures because I was busy chatting, stuffing my face and chasing down my kids in an effort to keep my wild little things from breaking Lauren and Greg's house. Luckily, although they definitely bumped up the decibel level, the kids did none of the breaking that happened tonight. The adults took care of that themselves. Will is sorry about your glass, Lauren :-)

I'm sure she'll have much better pictures and descriptions on her blog, so if you desire more detail I'll send you over there. I have blogged all that I am able to this evening, now it is time for me to return to my vegetable coma. I totally understand now why it is called being in a "vegetative state".

Everything Zen

2011-11-04T20:21:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling very "zen" today. On the way to preschool I was just enjoying looking at the colors on the trees and marveling that there are still quite a few leaves hanging in there! This is hands-down the longest fall we've had in recent memory; usually the leaves start to change, then we immediately we get a big storm and they're gone. As I pulled into the preschool parking lot there was a row of trees showering bright orange leaves as I drove underneath, Let it Be started playing (I was listening to my music on random), the girls were actually getting along and giggling in the back seat and I just felt happy.

Zumba was great this morning too. I hadn't taken a class with Jessie in over a week, although I felt bad for her because she had some kind of chest cold type thing going on ON TOP of being pregnant (which is the WORST because you can't take any medicince!) What a trooper. It helped me to get through the tough class because I knew I wasn't suffering as much as she was. It was especially tiring for me today because I actually felt like going for a run once the kids were in bed last night and I surprised myself by doing 2.1 miles. I like to run every now and then just to make sure I can. I have to check that my current cardio routine is doing its job! But I always feel especially sore and tired the next day!

When I picked up our CSA, we once again got some bonus produce in the form of a big bag of extra apples, and when I went to buy some pears (since there weren't any in our box this week) she just gave them to me. She said she was going to put pears in everyone's boxes this week but people had been complaining that they were getting too many pears and they didn't know what to do with all of them. THEY'RE PEARS PEOPLE! WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYONE? STOP COMPLAINING WHEN A HARD-WORKING FARMER WANTS TO GIVE YOU FRESH PRODUCE!

My bubble of well-being seemed to extend outward to cover others today too. I was driving along on the highway on the way to pick up Emily when traffic SLAMMED to a halt out of nowhere. I seemed to be near the front of the issue, so I craned my head to see what was going on up ahead. I noticed that about 4 carlengths in front of me there was an SUV facing me. Extremely odd. As I watched, it backed up a little, executed a U-turn as everyone waited, and then continued on its way. I expected to come across debris and a couple other dented cars as I drove by, but all that was in the road was a skid mark that spanned all 3 lanes of traffic. I am pretty sure I witnessed a miracle! For whatever reason, an SUV did a skidding 180 across 3 lanes of traffic going 60 mph and no one was hurt in the slightest. I call that amazing.

I made sure to embrace my happy mood today and spent plenty of time cuddling my girls and appreciating the little things. There's really no excuse for a person as lucky as me to not be happy all the time, but being human I can always find things to complain about. I'm sure I'll be back to my old shenanigans tomorrow but for today I'll thank my lucky stars for what I have (and that I did not go 4 carlengths faster on the highway today).

Phones, fears, and friends

2011-11-02T20:24:00.000-04:00

Hey look what I just got!

It's just an iPhone 4, not a 4S because #1 Verizon doesn't have any 4S's in stock and I needed a replacement phone right away, #2 I was considering the 4 anyway because any of the new phones out there would be an improvement over my buggy old phone and I don't REALLY need artificial intelligence to talk to me and #3 It costs less! Now why would I buy a new phone just days after finding and re-bonding with my old phone you ask? Well I'll tell you why.

Last night, as I was putting Charlotte to bed, I heard a helicopter outside. At first I didn't pay any attention to it, but I gradually realized that the helicopter wasn't passing over, it was just hanging out nearby. VERY nearby, from the sound of it. I tucked Charlotte in and went downstairs to find a helicopter DIRECTLY over my front yard. Seriously, the unraked leaves were flying everwhere and if anyone had jumped out of it they would've landed on my doorstep. To help illustrate my point, please refer to this totally awesome picture I took out my window:

Even more disconcerting was the fact that the helicopter had a spotlight trained on the electric line tower directly behind my neighbor's yard. I checked that all the doors and windows were locked, and then glued my nose to the dining room window to try and figure out what the heck was going on. Was someone climbing the tower? Was there a violent convict on the loose? I was too afraid to go outside and see first-hand, so I just stayed pressed against my window. Then it occured to me that I could probably listen to the police scanner somewhere online, so I raced to my computer. After a few failed attempts (did you know there are 3 registered sex offenders living within blocks of my house?) I found what I was looking for, but all I heard were requests for ambulances, nothing that would solve my helicopter mystery. Then I thought to myself "The police have a non-emergency phone number! I can just call them and maybe they'll tell me what's up!" That was when I raced to my phone, picked it up, and in my highly alarmed state it slipped out of my hand and crashed to the ground. After that, everything seemed to be in working order except the screen. I could hear notifications and people calling, but without the screen I had no way of interacting with my phone. Oh, and once Will came downstairs from putting Emily to bed and I snatched his phone to make my call the irritated lady on the other end of the line simply said the helicopter was there because of a "missing person". I guess they didn't want to be found?

The helicopter incident had put me on edge, so I wasn't very comfortable not having a way to contact people in case of emergency (we don't have a house phone) and THAT is the main reason why I had to go get a new one. Plus we've been talking about getting new phones anyway. But that's not as exciting.

The helicopter incident also got me thinking about being a mom. If I didn't have kids, I'm sure I probably would've just sauntered outside with Will to see what all the fuss was about, possibly while enjoying a beer. But now that I'm a mom, all that goes through my head in an even mildly frightening situation is "Oh my God! What if someone comes busting through the front door, they'll be between me and the kids! How would I get up to the girls and get them out of the house??? Are we going to be on the news crouching in our front yard wrapped in police blankets like those families at the end of horror movies??? My children are 100% dependant on me but how can I protect them in a world where bad things I can't control can happen???(??)" Then I start thinking about the poor mothers who have been through war or natural disasters with their children and have felt that fear 1000 times worse, and before I know it I am having a beer not for the enjoyment of it, but to relax my tightly-wound nerves. Who would've imagined that being a mom was such a big responsibility? Oh yeah, probably pretty much everyone.

On a lighter note, I got to meet Lauren from Oatmeal After Spinning this evening! We both live in the same town, go to the same gym, read the same blogs, know a lot of the same people and believe in the same eating philosophy but somehow had never really met before. We rectified that this evening by planning to take a Bodypump class together (although we had to stand across the room from each other because I was late...I was busy with some of those aforementioned mommy responsibilities) It was exciting to get to talk to someone else who shares so many of my views on food, weight loss, exercise etc. and I can't wait to go to her clean eating potluck this weekend!

And not to belabor the point, but I have even MORE mommy responsibilities to attend to now, namely, bedtime. Which will hopefully be helicopter-free this evening.

2-day cook fest

2011-11-01T17:48:00.000-04:00

Phew! I've pretty much spent 2 straight days in the kitchen! Sunday was meant to be a kitchen day anyway, as I had lots of projects planned. First I wanted to try out a "green soup" recipe that was in October's issue of Eating Well magazine. I don't usually read Eating Well, I prefer Clean Eating magazine because they don't use white flour or sugar and they watch the calories in their recipes too. But we got the issue of Eating Well in our CSA box this week, and seeing as how I had tot soi, collards, leafy celery and turnip and dandelion greens in my fridge that needed some attention this recipe was well-timed. You can use any kind of greens you have on hand. It turned out really yummy, I couldn't think of a better way to turn a huge pile of bitter greens into something I would actually enjoy eating!

I also noticed while cooking that all of our freezers are full of trash. We have a very complex waste disposal system. Vegetable scraps get stuffed into a ziploc and thrown into the freezer, and whenever I make a whole chicken I stick the carcass in my crock pot with some of the veggie scraps to make broth. Fruit and vegetable scraps that would NOT make good broth (like banana peels, eew) get shoved into separate bags and put in the freezer to be saved for my mom's goats. OTHER food trash that is not good for broth OR goats (like coffee grounds and eggshells) gets composted. The rest of our stuff gets recycled, and if it doesn't fall into ANY of those categories then it is thrown away. It's kind of a pain to not just be able to sweep everything into the trash while I'm cleaning up, but our family of 4 usually only produces 1 bag of trash per week, so I think it's worth it.

Anyway, I hadn't realized how many bags of veggie junk we had in our freezers (5!) so I decided I needed to make some broth, stat. Once I had that going, I realized we didn't have any pumpkins to carve since Emily's trip to the pumpkin patch the day before had been cancelled. I set out to find some, going first to Costco (nope), then to Giant (nope), then calling My Organic Market (nope). Instead of just running around town all day I decided to go to the closest pumpkin patch. However all they had left in the way of carving pumpkins were pretty big. They also had the greyish pumpkins that are really good for baking and I wanted to make some pumpkin puree to freeze since it's SO much better than canned, so when all was said and done I ended up with 100 pounds of pumpkin in my wheelbarrow.

Yikes!

But we carved 4 of them and cooked the seeds, and I already have 1 of the grey kind cooked and pureed and stuffed in my freezer so we're putting them all to good use. I finished the day out by cooking up some lima beans from our CSA box and a whole chicken (I needed to make lots of broth!)

Monday I went about my normal weekday schedule, but soon returned to the kitchen because I was hosting my family for an early dinner before trick or treating. I ground up some flour and got some dough started rising for bread. And aparently I have a lot to say about bread, because I just went off on a tangent and typed for about half an hour on the subject. I will save all of that amazingness for another blog post.

I finished the day by toasting pumpkin seeds, cooking down one of the pumpkins, making 4 pork tenderloins and baking my bread. We had a lovely dinner, prominently featuring my dad's delicious pumpkin soup and homemade hard apple cider, which was also awesome! I will definitely be trying to make some of my own in the near future. And I am proud to say that I haven't touched a single piece of Halloween candy! It may sound overly dramatic, but if I have even one then all is lost so my goal was not to get started in the first place. I have been snacking a bit more than usual (a big banana with peanut butter yesterday, lots of pumpkin seeds and random bowls of leftover soup) but I'm allowing myself to have a bit more healthy food as a kind of "reward" for avoiding the candy. We'll see how that turns out at my weigh-in tomorrow.

I am also happy that we successfully sneaked all of Charlotte's regular candy out of her pupmkin and replaced it with the dye-free organic lollipops I let them have in the car on occasion. She is perfectly happy with that! Emily is old enough now to know better, but she is being agreeable about letting me ration her candy out so Halloween hasn't been TOO hard on anyone's blood sugar so far.

After all that I'm kinda sick of being in the kitchen, but today is going to have to be a kitchen day too...except instead of cooking fun things I'll be cleaning up :-( That is the unfortunate result of using a kitchen, eventually it'll have to be cleaned!

Halloween pictures

2011-10-31T21:27:00.001-04:00

Here are the pictures from our pumpkin carving last night and our Halloween festivities this evening. I am too tired to comment much, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

Happy Halloween!