Accomplishments

- Walking 30-min a day relatively regularly.
- Eating at the kitchen table instead of in the living room (often in front of the TV).
- Eating less sweets (over the last few days anyways).

Things to work on:
- Drinking less wine :-)
- Eating less last-minute food (especially when I have good, healthy food at home ready to be re-heated)...usually comfort food I opt for instead of healthful food.

Eating at the table...when I grew up, in my family, and for much of my married life so far (often due to not having a dining room table :-)) I have acquired the habit of eating in front of the TV/in the living room. One of those few things all weight loss/healthy eating/general good living guidelines have in common is "do not do other things while you eat" i.e. do not eat while watching TV, reading etc...D. and I keep saying we will move to eating at the table, but for some reason it seemed such a hard transition. So...what did we do?

1) Initially, I simply set up a "mail" area to hold the bits and pieces that ended up on the table...and put place mats on the table as a reminder that we were NOT supposed to pile bags, books, mail, etc on the table.
2) That worked well, but then we also actually changed to a smaller table so that it really fit in our kitchen, and also bought a shoe-rack to hold the shoes in a better way so they didn't interfere with the dining area. SO much of a difference. The table change has made a huge difference. It is square vs round and smaller than the other one, but actually fits our space, so we can use it without feeling cramped. And...every night since we've made the switch, we have eaten at the table.

AND...now, I really really look forward to dinners with D. at the table. It encourages me to plan dinners more, and that leads to healthier dinners. I look forward to the time to talk, to tell each other about our days, and spend one-on-one time together before (often) returning to work or studying.

BUT..still there are nights like tonight, when, despite having good, tasty, healthy food in the fridge...I stopped and bought bread and dips and wine. Hmmm...need to work on that. But, we DID still eat at the table :-).

Mmmmm.....

Homemade granola and organic yogurt for breakfast. Yum. Except, I ate it an hour ago, and I'm kind of hungry again already. That always happens when I eat breakfast before 7am.

The granola is from a recipe I got from the people who ran the bed and breakfast we stayed in on our honeymoon. It was so good, I asked for the recipe, and they gave it to me! It's been a treat to make periodically since then.

An excellent discovery...

So, my brother made me a CD of a band I used to LOVE, but had completely forgotten about - Moxy Fruvous. I listened to it the other day, re-fell-in-love with them (there was dancing, and karaoke quality singing), and hunted around on YouTube for a video of them to post. I found some HYSTERICAL videos that people had made set to their songs. I have to post at least three of them...

The first one is set to one of my favorite songs of theirs, King of Spain....


The second one is a hysterical stick-man music video of their song Spiderman. Anything stick figure-based is hysterical to me for some reason.



And last but not least...My baby loves a bunch of authors...Warcraft style?? This song is another one of my favorites of theirs.



Love it. All of it!

Fennel and Orange Salad

I made this last night for dinner, along with pasta and pesto. It's one of the recipes from my new Moosewood cookbook. I've heard so much about fennel in the last while, and have wanted to try a recipe with it. I had a bunch of oranges, and realized fennel was relatively inexpensive at the store, so picked some up and tried out the recipe. This recipe is so incredibly simple and inexpensive but so wonderfully refreshing and tasty!! It goes very well with a heavier pasta dish or stew (so says the Moosewood) and I think would go well with a fish dish as well? Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 fennel bulbs
4 navel oranges
2 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Directions:
Slice the fronds end and the very bottom off the fennel bulbs and cut them in very thin slices. Section the oranges and cut the sections in half. Put all this into a bowl. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper to taste, and mix it all together. Let sit in the fridge for 20 minutes before serving.

That's it! Super simple. Very tasty.

Ah need some woh motivation

Does anyone else know the song reference I just made in the title? ("I want somethin' else...to get me through this...semitone kind of life...).

I'm finding it very difficult to get motivated after being sick. So much work has piled up it's hard to get moving. My classes started on the 16th, and I haven't even cracked a book yet. Ug!

I'm going to try to get back on track today and get caught up on my client work and at least crack a book or two for school.

Had a great but exhausting weekend. I was on the mainland teaching a workshop with M. Well, okay, let's be honest; researching, developing, writing and teaching a workshop with M. My favorite moments of the weekend were:
- Being woken up by M. at 8am with her saying "Sooooo....you up for a little Ikea this morning?" (only at her house would I get that wake up call - of course, it got me out of bed immediately).
- The 2.00 breakfast at Ikea...mmm..
- As always....wandering the showroom.
- M. and I making Vindaloo, homemade Naan, raita, and a giant mess for dinner. At 8pm, when we'd barely started the work, we had managed to create a giant disaster to clean up!!
- M. handing me licorice at 3 am saying "Do you want some stale licorice" and me and the stale licorice being just what I wanted! For some reason it tasted so good!
- Realizing that Staples didn't open till 10am the next day, when our workshop started at 10am, that the photocopier at Shoppers was broken, and in the process of running back and forth to find somewhere to photocopy handouts, spilling the lovely americano M. had made me all over the car (it now has a lovely spilt coffee scent).

All in all, it was a good weekend. I love teaching, and especially teaching with M. I only wish I had more time to research and teach! Maybe one day :-).

OH NO!

Being at home sick for the last couple of days has meant that for the first time, I have been completely sucked into American Idol. I'm addicted. I can't get enough. Oh no.

Can't wait to cook!

I recieved a gift card to Bolen Books, and waited till well after Chrsitmas to cash it in. I bought this cookbook with it about a 2 weeks ago, and it is EXCELLENT!

I've been eyeing this cookbook up for a while - I'm fairly sure I've been directed to it for more than one dish I've tried and asked for the recipe for.

It's put out by the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York. It's primarily vegetarian, egg and fish dishes (no red meat or poultry). The recipes look amazing, and they all can be made in under 30 minutes.



The first ones I want to try are:
Pad Thai (the simplest looking recipe for this I've seen I think).
Cornmeal Pancakes
Fruit Ricotta Mousse

I love getting a new cook book! Now to get healthy, and find the time to actually cook some new things. That's the challenge, especially when my classes start today, and I'm now going to be ridiculously behind in work due to being sick right after the holidays.

What!?

So, I've been sick for almost 2 weeks now...started with a high fever, then the fever went away, but I've had this crazy chest congestion and cough that still hasn't gone away. D. kept telling me to go to the Dr., but I didn't, until today. So, as it turns out, I have pneumonia. Pneumonia!?! What? Apparently they call it "walking pneumonia" when people are walking around with it (rather than being bedbound). So, being that it's relatively contagious still for the nextg 48 hour (until the antibiotics kick in) I've had to cancel work for the next two days...and I guess I will stay on the couch??

So maybe I'll blog more the next couple of days :-).

Pizza

Here is the recipe for whole wheat pizza dough:

Ingredients:
3/4 C + 1tsp water
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/4 C whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2tsp active dry yeast (or 1 1/2 tsp fast rise yeast)
toppings

Directions (as remembered by me :-):
Put the water and oil into the bread pan. Put the flour sugar and salt into the bread pan, and tap the pan down so that the flour mixture covers the water. Push the flour to the edges in the corners and sprinkle the yeast over top. Put the bread pan in the bread machine and set on the dough cycle.

When the dough cycle is finished (1.5 hours on my machine) knead the dough for 1 minute, then let it rest for 15 minutes. Roll it out to 12-14 inches and put into a pizza pan that is oiled and sprinkled with cormeal. Let the dough rise for 20-25 minutes. Top with your favorite toppings and bake at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

The toppings I made last night were:
Pizza one:
- dough brushed with olive oil
- sprinkled with a tiny bit of mozzarella
- topped with apples, caramalized onions, blue capri blue goat cheese
- sprinkled with a tiny bit more mozza

Pizza two:
- pesto on the dough
- topped with cappocoli, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and mozzarella

MMMMmmmmmmm.....I love the home made pizza :-)

Tragedy averted

I have been craving home-made pizza made with an amazing whole wheat pizza dough recipe for about a week now. I had everything needed to make the pizza but wanted to wait till I was feeling better and could really enjoy it...but I got tired of waiting and decided to make it last night.

When I went to put the ingredients in the bread machine, I couldn't find the recipe!! I wanted to cry! This recipe was given to me by a dear friend after she made us pizza with it once. I can't explain how good this dough is - it MAKES the pizza, and usually means you can only eat one or two pieces because it's so filling! (Of course, 1-2 pieces is what one SHOULD normally eat).

So, after looking for it for an hour, I realized we could just phone our dear friends, and then we'd get to talk to them too! So, we did, we got the recipe and I made the pizza AND we had a great catch-up conversation with our friends. I will post the recipe and my pizza concoctions in another post :-).

Dinner tonight.

I just made this for dinner:

Fig and blue cheese stuffed pork tenderloin. It. was. so. good. I made garlic sauteed green beans and wild rice cooked in a mushroom broth to go with it. We had the Therapy Vineyards Chardonnay. The pairing was good, and the meal was fantastic. And get this: the recipe for the pork tenderloin is from Cooking Light! You can find it here.

The great thing about this recipe also is that it's relatively inexpensive. Pork tenderloin is very reasonable, and the small amount of blue cheese is inexpensive though it adds so much.

I'm on a new kick to eat at the table. Okay, maybe you all eat at the table every night. But, we live in a smallish apartment and have gotten into the habits of a)using the kitchen table as a dumping ground or "hot spot" as fly lady would say and b) eating nearly all meals in front of the TV.

We're trying to live more healthfully and every single health guideline, weight loss plan etc. says "DO NOT" do other things while you're eating. Do not watch TV, read, drive etc while eating. Okay, so here's what I did to combat our TV eating: 1) Created a "mail centre" to drop all the mail and pens and bits and pieces that were collecting on the table. 2) Put 2 place mats on the table. This doesn't sound like much, but so far it has helped. Especially the place mats- I walk in with my bag, purse, mail, groceries, but when I reach to put them on the table and see the place mats, I redirect them to where they should be stored (bag- in office, purse- on hook, mail- mail centre, groceries - put away immediately). So, with the table clear, it is easy to eat there. We had a candlelit dinner tonight :-).

So...here's to hoping we can keep up the trend. I really really want to defrost the other pork tenderloin in the freezer and make this meal again!

Dead Like me.

A great new show: Dead Like Me. It's a showtime series I think that we caught a couple of time on TV and then bought the first two seasons on DVD with a gift card. It's VERY good. Excellent fliming (to my undiscerning and unknowledgable eye...so maybe I should say "cool" filming), dry humor and just...good. Like it. Lots. Watched it. Lots. while I was sick.

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas...

I finally blog to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We had a whirlwind holiday with two trips to the mainland, visitors in between the trips, and me coming down with the flu when we got back.

Highlights:
1) The bag of goodies from Trader Joes a wonderful friend brought me.
2) Seeing so many friends we don't get to see often.
3) Spending time with family, and especially getting to hang out with my parents, brother and his girlfriend and my nephew, who I haven't seen for way too long.
4) An addition to #3...seeing extended family that I haven't seen for a really long time.
5) An excellent wedding reception at the Memphis Blues restaurant in N. Van on New Years Eve! (This is where I saw the extended family).
6) Our new coffee maker. Mmmm...
7) Surprise additions to our SPUD organic grocery delivery - dear friends added in some "treats" (amazing cheeses and yummy bread!) to our order unbeknownst to us!

Overall a good, though busy holiday time. After we got home, a couple of days ago I came down with the flu everyone has had this season with a fever the whole thing...but the fever is pretty well gone now..just the cold-related stuff now...oi. Hopefully I can get better soon so I won't have quite so much work to catch up on next week. Ug.