Blah...

School is out and I'm just full of the blahs!
When I was in school, working two jobs and just generally running around from place to place I seemed to be able to get a million things done. Now that I only work from 7 am - 1 pm, Monday - Friday (at home, in my pajamas) I just can't seem to find the motivation to do anything.
I used to cook every night. If I had class, I would pre-cook the food so that it would be easy to get together when I got home. For the past two weeks we must have eaten out 19 times...at least.

So with that, I'm sure you can imagine that no weight has been lost and the closest I gotten to my goal of India is watching a few Bollywood movies from Netflix. (And not even very good ones at that!)

However, a very lovely woman sent me a message here saying that she missed reading my posts (thanks, btw!) and so I am now re-inspired to starting writing again, and get back on the weightloss wagon.

Tonight I am going to yoga class (which is really humiliating, but I promised friends I would do it with them) so hopefully that will push me to get going. (I'll let you know how it goes soon.)

But it's fruit, so it must be good for you!

Last night in baking class we made fruit tarts.

I've gone to bakeries before and have bought fruit tarts because they were so pretty, but like many things in life, they weren't as good as they looked. Because of these prior experiences, sadly, India became a little bit further away.

You see, since I didn't care about these little desserts, I had no plan and I was blindsided.

I got them home and convinced DJ (who had also been previously disappointed by them) to eat the little football shaped one. She did, then immediately asked for the other football shaped one. Now there is a whole lot that DJ doesn't like, and even though she tries to play it off, I can always tell when she doesn't like something I've given here. If she was happily eating two, I had to get in on the action.

I bit into the medium sized one (my favorite looking one) and realized I was in trouble. Let's just cut to the chase...I ate both of the round ones all by myself, and they were good!

For a minute I tried to rationalize it by telling myself that it wasn't that bad because it was mostly fruit, but who am I kidding?  So today I have to get back on the horse, or the wagon, or whatever, and make sure I steer clear of the fruit tarts for a while.

I'm still coming India...it just may take a little longer than I had hoped.

Cinnamony Experiment

A few years ago DJ, her parents and I spent 16 days in Australia and New Zealand. As you may know...or imagine...their food isn't wildly different from food you will find in the US. Even so, we ate 12 meals at McDonalds. DJ and her parents actually ate there more often than I did, but on some days I decided to starve rather than eat one more french fry.

While I actually like going to McDonalds in foreign countries because they always have at least one "local" thing on the menu (Australia had a "McOz" which was a regular burger with beet slices between the lettuce and tomato), once is usually enough for me.

Anyway, since I am getting closer and closer to my goal, I decided it might be time to start slowly getting DJ used to the food and flavors we may be encountering outside of the Indian McDonalds.
I've decided to incorporate one Indian style dish into our weekly menu, and to try and keep it healthy.

Here's what we had on Saturday:

The Better Butter Chicken

from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry

written by Janet and Greta Podeleski

Recipe makes 5 servings. There are 293 calories, 11.4 g fat, 2.9 g fiber per serving.

2 tbsp butter

1 cup chopped onion

2 tsp minced garlic

1 tbsp gingerroot

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp ground tumeric

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1 can diced tomatoes, undrained

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 whole cooked rotisserie chicken, skin removed and meat cut up

1/3 cup light cream

1/4 cup fat free sour cream (or plain yogurt)

1 tbsp minced fresh cilantro

• Melt butter in a deep, 10 inch skillet over medium heat. Add onions and garlic. Cook slowly, stirring often, until onions are tender, about 5 minutes. Add gingerroot, chili powder, tumeric and cinnamon. Cook 1 more minute. Add undrained tomatoes, tomato paste, brown sugar, salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Add cut-up chicken, cream and sour cream. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro.  

When I first tasted the sauce, before adding the cream or chicken, I wasn't sure how the dish was going to go. It was really cinammony and I just couldn't imagine DJ being willing to eat it. I decided to go for it, finished the recipe and served it over some basmati rice.

I really liked it. It was flavorful (not too cinammony) and filling. The biggest shock was that DJ actually ate it! While she admitted that it wasn't the best thing she ever ate, she did kind of like it, which is good enough for me.

Pietastrophe - Cream Pie Update

As luck would have it, I got assigned coconut cream pie in class the other night. This is a problem for two reasons:

1) I love coconut! I'm from Hawaii and it always reminds me of my mom and of home.

2) DJ is allergic to coconut, which means that if I brought the pie home I would be the only person eating it.

I decided that after all of the work I put into this pie, and for as many times as I got yelled at in class that night, I owed it to myself to at least be able to taste it and see if it was all worth it.

Let me tell you...it was!

So in the end there was only one thing to do. I took a delicious spoonful of coconut goodness and I "accidentally" dropped the rest of the pie in the garbage.

DJ freaked out asking what happened as we both stood stunned over the trash can. After a few silent tears I told her that the pie gave it's life for India, and for that I would always be grateful.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I am currently in culinary school. I have no desire to become a chef, work in or own my own restaurant, and despite the fact that all my classmates think I'm "wasting my time", I really enjoy it.
I love to cook and want to be better at it for my own personal enjoyment. (And I also really love the uniform, which would have seemed weird if I bought it to just cook at home.)

(I know that this isn't the best picture, but we aren't allowed to have phones or cameras in the kitchen, and I was so pleased with my platter [The flower is made from vegetables stuck in gelatin. The rest of the stuff is sushi, palmiers with prosciutto and sunomono.] that I had to sneak this picture in.)

Anyway, tonight is cream pie night and I'm a little worried. Last time we made fruit pies. I got stuck with apple pie, which I'm not crazy about, so it was pretty easy to leave the finished pie alone.

The only reason I even bothered to taste it was because I thought it was cute and I always get duped by cute things.

The problem is, I like cream pie. Well, let's just put all my cards on the table and say I love cream pie. I need to be strong tonight. Maybe I'll accidently drop salt in the mix or something.

We don't need no stinking men...

In preparation for the garage sale, DJ and I had to go through a bunch of our old stuff.

Going through one of DJ's storage units (she has tons of stuff!) I found my way in to exercise:

Upon seeing this I had visions of this going upstairs into my "craft room" (even though I have yet to find time to do any crafts in it) fitting perfectly in the corner. I was going to listen to music or read magazines while riding the bike, and life was going to be perfect.

The problem is that this bike weighs a ton and DJ and I cannot get it up our super steep, super narrow steps:

So now the bike is just sitting in the living room...the first thing you see as you walk in the front door. I don't know if that's a good thing, because it's a constant reminder, or if it's a bad thing because it just depresses me to see it there disrupting all my stuff.

I'll keep you posted!

Tell me a story, I'm all chins

So here's a little story from the garage sale DJ and I had yesterday.

First off, let me start by saying that I do not like garage sales. I don't like spending all my time nicely organizing things only to have people come and throw them around a few minutes later. It makes me sad to look at my clothes with the tages still on them, because I was being optimistic, but never did lose that last 10 pounds to get into them.

Anyway, so this woman, probably in her 50's (I'm don't know why that's imporatant, but...I'm giving you a mental picture), comes with her husband and is looking at my jeans. There's one pair that she's interested in but can't seem to find the tag with the size so she brings it to me to locate it.
 Being the good saleswoman that I am, I find and it happily tell her that they are a size 10. The woman turns to me and asks if they were mine, which I say they had been, at which point she looks me up and down and yells "Wow, what happened?!"
Mortified, I tell the woman the pants are a dollar and ask if she wants them. In the end the woman ends up paying 50 cents for a pair of pants that I spent $80 on and only wore twice. I mean really, if your going to insult me in my own home, the least you could do is pay full price!

Here's the thing...I have decided something. I'm taking back the power that I give other people to make me feel bad about myself. I'm a smart, often funny, responsible and talented woman. If someone doesn't like me...SCREW 'EM!!!

Have a great rest of the weekend everyone. I'm going to go think about how fabulous I am!