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Keeping Busy

Written by — Saturday, May 19, 2012

I was going to rant, today. I was going to craft an entry about how diets are not religions, and how sanctimonious and unappealing I find proselytizing  on any subject. Losing 50 or 100 pounds is a huge accomplishment, and I understand how happy and enlightening it can feel. But being happy and enlightened doesn’t make it so you’ll endear yourself to others by running around telling them if they just did things your way, they could be happy and enlightened, too. Life just doesn’t work that way. Which is why a rant about how unappealing that behavior is would be unlikely to change a damn thing. So I’ll move on to a more pleasant topic.

Today, Michael and I went to the St. Louis Botanical Gardens for the first time since we moved here. As we stood in line to buy tickets, the woman in front of us asked the ticket agent what general admission ($4 for adults who are residents of St Louis City or County, $8 for adults otherwise) granted access to. “All 79 acres,” he replied.

If 79 acres sounds like a lot to you, you would be correct. The gardens are expansive. We managed to walk through a tiny portion of the gardens in about an hour this afternoon, before the sun and the 95 degree heat got to us. But wow, what an amazing walk. We came in from the heat and bought a membership right away.

I always thought memberships were kind of a rip-off, but we live close enough to the city now that memberships make sense. Being able to make a short trek into the city and park for free at the zoo (perk of membership there) or wander around the Botanical Gardens for free is a great way to get us active and moving out of the house in an interesting place. Who could be bored at a zoo or a botanical garden? I don’t know, but I can’t. I tried to be bored and moody at the zoo the other weekend and instead I got all excited and started running around and jumping up and down and squealing about red pandas and river otters and hippos.

The keto diet has not been hard so far, but it has been hard to keep thinking of things to do on the weekend that aren’t shopping and eating and getting plastered. Having a membership gives us those outings to fall back on – things that help keep us active, bring us out of the house among the living and entertain us. It’s good, it helps change our habits.

Of course, we also try to find things to entertain us while we’re at home. Cooking new and exciting food. Buying the entire Mr. Show catalog at Bed Bath and Beyond (don’t ask me why they had it…) to watch it anew. Dusting the octopus collection. Well, maybe not the last bit.

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Mother’s Day

Written by — Sunday, May 13, 2012

In honor of Mother’s Day, please enjoy this picture I took of a baby elephant and its mother at the St. Louis Zoo yesterday.

Elephants

I like elephants. We also FINALLY saw a red panda. The best part of the zoo was finishing off a long walk outdoors with a sno-cone topped with sugar-free cherry syrup.

But maybe the best part of yesterday was something else. May I present to you, the bacon-tini, in all its disgusting glory:

Bacon-tini

Bacon-tini

I’ve been having difficulties with drinking. I’ve tried diet coke and rum, diet coke and whiskey, diet dr. pepper and whiskey — they’ve all tasted unbearably sweet to me since the keto diet. I’ve actually been refusing to drink. I have been choosing not to drink. So I expressed a desire for a good, dry gin martini. I figured the sweetness level would be acceptable. So we ended up at Wal-Mart, grabbing Tanqueray and some other necessities (cheddar cheese, heavy cream, bacon). I made a joke about having bacon with our martinis and Michael convinced me that it had been done and probably would be good — he said the bacon would provide the same sort of notes an olive would (salty, oily).

and I guess it did, in its bacon-y way. So we drank these and watched Saturday Night live and I may have also snacked on this, which I found in the check-out line at Wal-Mart. I’m not ashamed…

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A Handful of Recipes

Written by — Tuesday, May 8, 2012

After a few false starts with the keto (if I end up in Kansas City, I’m eating BBQ brisket), Michael and I are plodding steadily along. Totally aside from clothes fitting more loosely and pounds slipping away — the best part is how not hungry I feel. I’m actually eating less calories daily than I was before and I feel way more satisfied. Is fat the key to satiation? Perhaps.

My carb cravings hit strong today, though. Michael and I had ordered carbquik last week and he made cheddar biscuits last Friday, which were great drunk food. And keto sticks showed no negative effect the next morning as a result. So I made the drop biscuit recipe carbquik has on the box, adding cinnamon and two packets of splenda and a tiny bit of heavy cream to the water I mixed with the carbquik. And then I made a cream cheese icing out of cream cheese and cinnamon and vanilla and more packets of splenda and another splash of heavy cream. I like my heavy cream.

Keto Scone Things

Keto Cinnamon "Scones"

They didn’t look pretty, but they worked. I’m no longer seething with lustful rage about the graham crackers and girl scout cookies and chocolate peanut butter cups making the rounds at work.

——

The second recipe will begin as rant. So here’s my rant: Why doesn’t anyone eat dark meat anymore? I went to the grocery store looking for chicken thighs. I love chicken thighs. They’re the only thing you can bake on a chicken that turns out reasonably. So here they don’t sell chicken thighs or other cheap and fatty meat cuts at the more fancier grocery stores I usually go to for nicer produce selection — Michael and I ran into this problem when attempting to find pork shoulder to throw in the crockpot in order to fashion pulled pork last year. So I went to the cheaper grocery store and I still found only one package of chicken thighs. One. There’s rows and rows of wings and drumsticks and freaking boneless skinless breasts for people who don’t really like the taste of meat (or anything, really). But there is one package of thighs.

I leapt on that package like a crazy lady and I am so glad I did. Because Michael made them a completely and totally awesome dinner last night. He coated each thigh in butter, and then rubbed a mixture of spices on them. The mixture included 2/3 cup of carbquik, pepper, salt, chives, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, thyme and sage.  He put the thighs skin-side up. And baked them at 375 for abour 40 minutes.

So simple. But so tender and flavorful. And the skin crisped up and got all airy and delicious. Oh man. I put broccoli on the side (with butter, duh). It was… a meal fit for a King. Or a fat chick.

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“Crab” Stuffed Mushrooms

Written by — Tuesday, April 24, 2012

There’s nothing special about this recipe. Except that it tastes awesome and is full of delicious fat.

Michael and I have thrust ourselves onto a keto diet. So far, it’s been pretty easy and I’ve been eating better than I usually do. Lots more veggies, for example. But I tend to eat way more protein than any lightly active fatso needs to eat. The keto diet tells me I should replace that protein with fat.

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

"Crab" Stuffed Mushrooms

And that’s where this recipe comes in. It is full of fat.

The base of the filling is 2 parts cream cheese to 1  part sour cream. I added some mayonnaise until the consistency was right. Then I threw in crab stick (not real crab, because I’m cheap), cheddar cheese, old bay and chives.  While I was de-stemming the mushrooms and wiping the horse manure off the outside of them, I threw a glass pan with probably 2 tablespoons of butter in it in the oven (375 degrees) to melt the butter. I took this pan out once the butter is mostly melted, filled the mushroom caps and put them in the pan.  I cooked the mushrooms in the butter for twenty minutes (at which point the butter was bubbling so loudly I heard it in another room), then I added a cup of h0t water to the pan and placed foil over it, so the mushroom caps would steam. I left them like that for fifteen minutes.

So this was my dinner tonight. Seriously. I’m stuffed… just like the mushrooms.

And just because… here’s a picture of Inari:

Inari being lazy

Inari the lazy bum

 

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Pretend

Written by — Wednesday, April 11, 2012

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I’m a boring person. You already know, you’re reading my blog right now. Michael and I went out on Saturday night. We had a late dinner at a crappy chain restaurant and spent the entire meal talking about Sierra On-line. Then we went to see Rocky Horror at midnight, a movie we’ve already seen live a handful of times, and we waited in line — standing amongst people dressed up in fantastic ways. And we talked about incandescent bulbs.

But you know what… I found it all interesting, compelling in its own way.

When it comes down to it — life is pretty boring. We eat, we sleep, we make love, we die. We make peace with that life, or more importantly, that death in countless ways.

Some people, a very small percentage of people, will do something so incredible they change the world beyond their lives. Some people are known for changing the world beyond their lives but really, they just have (or had) some fantastic marketing.

But every single one of us affects the people around us. We make waves into their lives. And that’s where pretending hurts the most. Maybe it hurts the people around you. But mostly, it hurts you.

You do become what you pretend to be.

When I was twenty, and I was in a bad relationship. A relationship that was sour mostly because I was pretend and manipulative. I had captured this person’s interest because of these good qualities I had put right on the surface. And I realized I was losing it because I wasn’t real. I had been faking with people for so long, I had forgotten it was faking. I took a breath and I told this person the truth. And I will always have to thank him for his reaction. He listened to me, he held my hand while I  cried, and then he asked me, “what are you going to do, now?”.

So I took myself to a counselor. And we spent three months sorting out why I had started to lie, what situations made me feel I had to lie.  But mostly, we started the long process of figuring out who I was, what I valued, who I wanted to be.

But what hurt most, what haunted me the whole time was this thought: maybe all my good qualities were pretend. Maybe the only truth to me was the bad — the manipulative, the depressed. It turns out that I played pretend to feel secure and all it did was make me insecure. It made me incapable of seeing myself in any true sense.

I spent a lot of time in high school by myself, in my room. I had elaborate day dreams — I was going to run off and become a famous musician. Or writer. Or anything. I was going to be important, make a mark. The truth is, I was never big enough to do anything more than daydream. I was never willing to put myself anywhere I could fail. And so I guaranteed that I would never succeed.

Success is relative. For me, maybe success is a nice night out with a husband. Even if we are just big boring geeks.

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Birthday Cupcakes

Written by — Sunday, March 25, 2012

So, my birthday is tomorrow. Convention would drive M and me to the grocery, where we would pick up a piece or two of store-made cake, laden with chemicals and vegetable grease and call it a day.

This year, I decided I was feeling ambitious enough to make some cake. But two people can not (or maybe, should not) eat an entire cake. So I made cupcakes to take to my coworkers tomorrow.

The recipes I chose were ridiculous, which M was happy to point out upon glancing at the recipes after the fact. The cake tastes great but didn’t rise appropriately (M says due to the ratio of liquid to dry ingredients). The buttercream icing was a huge disaster. The ratio of butter to sugar was disgusting. The icing tasted like butter, with a bit of vanilla flavor. I ended up taking half of the icing, doubling the sugar and adding a bit more milk to it, and finally I had a serviceable icing. I expected the vanilla bean I added to kick up the vanilla intensity, but it didn’t really. It does make the icing look pretty, though, speckled like an egg.

And really, how much can you complain about cake?

Cupcakes

Cupcakes!

For some reason, after I made cupcakes, Michael got it into his head to make a loaf of whole wheat bread in the bread machine. So now the house smells delicious. The bread machine has been a wonderful appliance to have – a few minutes measuring ingredients out and then the machine does all the work and we reap all the tasty profits.

In the meantime, we’re readying our kitchen for when our CSA/Farm Share starts up in May (it will go well into Fall). We invested in a full share, so I imagine we’ll be eating almost entirely vegan and doing some serious canning to utilize everything we get. I’m looking to catalog good recipe websites, clean out my pantry and make room for a pressure canner (and somehow figure out how to can stuff other than jam without giving us botulism). I’m looking forward to lots of pickles – pickled cucumbers, pickled radishes, pickled green beans, pickled okra, pickled beets. YUM! It’s exciting, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the weather cooperates this year and we have a good harvest!

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My FitBit

Written by — Saturday, March 17, 2012

A few weeks ago, Michael and I found ourselves in a Brookstone. In case you aren’t familiar with that brand, picture a store that sells the most useless gadgets in the world at a pretty penny. Projection clocks, baskets that warm your bath towels, electronic candy dispensers and fancy socks for taking naps all pepper their shelves. So we were wandering around, looking at and playing with all the useless gadgets and I stumbled on a FitBit.

I was using loseit! (the website and the phone app for my droid) most of last year to track my food intake. It was a really convenient and useful tool. There’s also a pretty large and supportive online community around it, if you need outside encouragement. I’m not a person who is generally big on outside encouragement. I’m mostly motivated by competition. And competition about who can eat the least leads you straight to anorexia. Given that I was on Medifast most of last year, I was regularly eating only 1,000 kcal a day, so competition felt pretty stupid.  And I always felt like loseit!’s numbers for calories burned in exercise were a bit… questionable.

Enter FitBit. I didn’t buy it from Br0okstone, but seeing it there, so tiny and pretty and expensive 0n the shelf intrigued me. I asked Michael about it, about what could possibly justify dropping a benjamin on a pedometer. He mentioned accuracy and the sleep-tracking feature. I did some research online, looking at customer reviews. Nearly everyone seemed pleased, although I was concerned that half the reviews ended with someone bragging about how much weight they had lost. So, I put it on my list of desired gadgets.

And Michael bought me the purple one, bought himself the blue one. They got here last Tuesday.

So far, I really love it. It’s cute. It stays charged a long time.  It’s very little, easy to clip on a pocket or belt loop (I don’t know what woman can clip it onto her bra in the way they advise). I keep the charger at my PC, and as I enter the room, the device wirelessly updates to the website.  The logging of steps and stairs is ridiculously accurate. It doesn’t measure when I jiggle my leg around sitting at my desk and rocking out to music. AND, it connects to Lose It!, so the food I track appears on FitBit’s website, too (and the calories I burn per the FitBit end up on Lose It!). I’m not sure how accurate the sleep function is, since I’m pretty motionless in bed, even when I’m awake. But, I’m pleased. I’m hoping it holds up well.

Even given all that, I wouldn’t have dropped the cash on a pedometer if I didn’t think it would make me more active. I know enough about my psychology to know that burning calories isn’t going to get me off my duff and into the gym. But measuring something more concrete, like the steps I take or the flights of stairs I climbed – that will get my away from my desk and walking on my breaks. Especially since Michael and I compete with each other.

I feel like going to the gym is cheating. You make up for a day of relative inactivity with an hour or two of heavy activity. It’s hard on your body. I’d rather try to be more active, more consistently through my day.

I spent a month in Cambridge, without a car. I lost fifteen pounds in that month, because I had to walk everywhere. I regularly walked 5 or 6 miles a day. And I realized how much I love walking. I’ve written here about walking before. I think walking makes it almost impossible to be depressed. Depression is really a self-centered view of the world, even if it doesn’t feel that way when it’s upon you. Going for a walk forces you to engage with the world around you, it forces you out of that mindset.

The only time I’ve ever gone to the gym consistently is when I had friends along with me, or I took a class with people. People running with headphones on aren’t engaging in the world anymore than I am, reading a book by myself at home. I don’t engage with people much at work. At home, I engage with Michael or the cat. The only way I engage in the world is to get out of the house and walk and I’m not motivated to be active unless I can engage in the world, with people.

But, the FitBit is helpful for that. Last night, Michael and I walked down to a local pub. We ate pretty reasonably and had a beer each. It was a good walk, a walk I haven’t done since we first moved here in September 2010. I was forty pounds heavier then, and the walk was a lot slower and a lot harder. I managed to get 10,000 steps in yesterday. Not quite up to five miles a day, but I’m sure I’ll find my way there.

It feels good to know I’m still on the right path, generally.

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Ladies- Buy More Stuff

Written by — Thursday, March 15, 2012

If I see another article or hear another special on how 90%  (or 70% or 85%) of women don’t wear bras that are correctly fitted, I will probably go on a murderous rampage. Probably.

Listen, if you’re not in any physical pain because of your bra or the unsupported, pendulous weight of your bosoms — your bras are fine.

These articles only support two things (neither of which happen to be your tits):

1. The idea that the right bra will magically make you appear thinner, correct your posture, give you the kind of gazongas your boyfriend masturbates to.  Your bra will not cause you to shed pounds (unless it’s a sports bra and you’re currently working out).  A bra that manipulates your boobies can make them appear more full and more upstanding, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your posture is better – try yoga or dance class instead. And your stomach will still be your stomach, there will just be mountains on top. As for your boyfriend, he loves you just the way you are. Really, he does. If he didn’t, why would he stand awkwardly at Victoria’s Secret* holding your purse and browsing his phone?

2. The idea that you need to buy bras. More bras. More expensive bras. Buy the latest bra. Buy the greatest bra. Push-ups, inflatables, strapless, convertibles. Make sure you have enough to wear a different one daily. Make sure you hand wash them in children’s tears. No one wants you in your Wal-Mart bra. You disgust me.

A nice bra is a nice bra. It’s wonderful and it can be more supportive and more attractive (the bra is more attractive. Baby, you couldn’t get more attractive). But please, please, please – stop treating me like some idiot who can’t dress myself or who is doing irreparable harm to my body, and my relationships with others because my bra doesn’t fit correctly.

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Vegan Grapefruit Cookies

Written by — Thursday, February 9, 2012

Vegan Iced Grapefruit Icebox Cookies

Since these cookies are from Vegan Cookies Take Over Your Cookie Jar, I wasn’t intending to post the recipe, but I found a source online from an interview with Isa, which presumably she approved, so I’ll link you there.

I love, love, love citrus cookies. Love. Especially in winter. Valentine’s Day seems to be all about chocolate and strawberries as hand-fruit. But strawberries are shite in Winter, and especially the enormous hand-fruit strawberries which tend to be entirely flavorless.

I try to bake for Valentine’s Day. I don’t bake often, but it’s a way to do something that Michael and I can indulge in and share. Our first Valentine’s Day together as a couple, he made me decidedly un-vegan fudge. The real kind of fudge, where you stand by the stove the entire time to make sure the sugar is doing what it’s supposed to do. Not those get-fudge-quick recipes using peanut butter or marshmallow fluff.

I spent less time that Valentine’s Day throwing together vegan lemon cut-out cookies, which I iced and put half cherries on (they’re kind of heart-shaped, right?). Anyway, I like to spend some time in the kitchen for valentine’s day.

I like vegan cookie recipes because in my experience they tend to be for smaller quantities (two people do not need to eat four cups of cookie dough) and because I can eat the dough without fear of salmonella from eggs. Making vegan cookies is less problematic than cakes for me, because I don’t generally have to worry about replacing eggs.

Cookies from a weird angle

The cookies are pretty good – not too greasy, nice bite. They’re just nice sugar cookies flavored pretty lightly with grapefruit. I have got to say, I liked the vegetable shortening being in there. It feels less greasy and also mixed a lot easier, since it’s so soft at room temperature. I have a lot of issues with hand mixers, since I didn’t grow up using them (my mom had a Kitchen Aid mixer, which pretty well spoiled me). The good news is, dough flying out of the bowl scared the cat out from underfoot.

I recommend pulling your cookies out the second they look golden on the edges. I think mine ended up a bit overcooked on the edges. You definitely want the icing thickthickTHICK, it’s easier to work with. I ended up adding slightly more than 4 tablespoons of grapefruit juice to the icing.

Half a grapefruit gave me all the juice I needed for the dough and the icing. Unfortunately, one grapefruit didn’t quite give up enough zest for both.

I didn’t have a citrus grater, so I used a cheese grater. The zest ended up really small, which was a bit problematic when using it as a garnish. I ended up throwing the zest into the icing midway through, which worked a LOT better for me, although it isn’t decorative then. But you need the tart oils from the zest to really round out the flavor, so you really want some zest in each bite.

I am, however, pretty pleased that I managed to roll a log of dough into a recognizable heart shape. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty cute. Great for Valentine’s Day! Now to find some way to get rid of these cookies without eating them all.

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Recipe: Quick Vegetable Stir-Fry with Peanut Sauce

Written by — Saturday, January 28, 2012

This is what I threw together for last night’s dinner and I think it turned out really well. Sort of a Thai curry for wusses. Recipes like this are proof that “vegan” and “healthy” don’t always have to overlap.

Stir-fry:
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 package cubed super firm tofu, drained, or 8 oz. extra firm tofu cut into 1/2″ cubes
8 oz. fresh mushrooms
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 cup sugar snap peas
2 medium carrots, sliced

Sauce:
1 5.6-oz. can regular coconut milk, about 1/3 cup
1/2 cup coarse ground or “chunky” natural peanut butter*
1/2 cup water
3 tbsp maple syrup or sugar
1 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
1 inch piece fresh ginger, minced or grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp sesame oil

To make the sauce, combine all the ingredients and refrigerate. You may want to add more maple syrup or tamari if you prefer a sweeter or saltier flavor. The sauce will keep for at least a week in the fridge, so this can be done in advance.

Put prepared vegetables in a casserole dish with 2 tbsp water. Cover and microwave on high power for 5 minutes, then on 50% power for 5 minutes more. While the vegetables are cooking, heat vegetable oil and sesame oil in a pan and add the tofu cubes, stirring occasionally to brown them on all sides. When the vegetables are done, drain off any excess water and add them to the pan. Cook over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes, then add the prepared sauce and heat through. You can thin the sauce out with water in the pan if it seems too thick. Serve over rice.

If you like more heat, add cayenne pepper powder, sriracha, or Thai chili flakes.

One quarter of this recipe served over 1 cup of cooked rice contains a whopping 650 Calories.

* – Natural peanut butter is actually important because it is almost always ground more coarsely than regular peanut butter. If you don’t have natural peanut butter, you can grind roasted peanuts in a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder.

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