It's like fireworks and butterflies and champagne exploding inside you

That post title? It's a quote from a woman on High Stakes Sweepers, a show on TV about people that enter sweepstakes obsessively. Which I'm watching. For entertainment. Can you tell I'm bored?

Frank is at a preseason Steelers game with his friends which leaves me allllll alone. I actually don't mind, it gives me a chance to catch on paranormal tv shows and do some needless baking. And blog, apparently.

So I want to tell you about my favorite food. Something I crave all the time. It's not something I could eat every day because every time I eat it, it makes me violently ill for like a week. In the gut. I think of it as a 5 day cleanse. But I keep coming back because it hurts so good. I'm hoping that by continuing to eat it, my body will build up a resistance to it. 

Penang Coconut Curry Chicken. Yes, it is sweet delicious heaven. Typically I get it to go from this fancy gourmet grocery store up the street from me (it has a cafe) but you can get some version from most Thai joints. And it's always under a different name so you need to read the description to find it. It's chicken thighs (or shrimp, tofu, etc) in a sweet and spicy yellow curry and coconut sauce. There's always potatoes in it, either regular or sweet potatoes. One place I go to throws in pineapple chunks. Load it up with rice and a ton of cilantro (at my request) and its a magical unicorn explosion of flavor. The place I got this from is like a Thai India fusion and the naan on the side is warm, chewy, and carby heaven. Remember how I'm trying to lose weight again? Uh. 

So that's what I have ahead of me for the evening. I might do some baking, I might clean a little bit, I might do some work. But chances are I'm going to lay here digesting and watching Ghost Hunters International on DVR. 

Evil Tomatoes

Seriously, we have a lot of tomatoes. I was trying to think what to do with all of these tomatoes that are taking over my back yard. Frank was also having a bad day so I thought I'd be a nice wifey and make a comfort food dinner. We're trying to get back on the wagon diet-wise, and even though a large supreme pizza from pizza hut would be comforting, it's not part of the diet (and anyway, that's what we had for dinner last night . . . seriously). 

I decided on homemade tomato soup with grown up grilled cheese sandwiches. Okay, so maybe two slices of buttered carbs with cheese in the middle isn't exactly going to help my pooch, but baby steps. 

I found this recipe from Ina Garten for the soup but really changed it up, so I'll just explain it here. 

Ingredients:

Around 4 lbs of tomatoes

3 cups of chicken stock

1 large onion

4 cloves of garlic

3 tbs olive oil

1 cup of plain greek yogurt

fresh basil

salt and pepper

1 tbs sugar

1. First, prep the tomatoes. Here's the easy way to peel: remove the stems, score the bottom of the tomato with an X, drop the tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds and then transfer them to a bowl of ice water. This makes them super easy to peel. Get out as much as the "goop" and seeds as possible and chop them up finely. Dice the onion and mince the garlic.

2. Heat olive oil in a big pot. Add onions and garlic and let them cook and get soft for ten minutes.

3. Add chicken stock, sugar, and tomatoes. Bring everything to a boil.

4. Once it has boiled, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for 40 minutes.

5. Remove soup pot from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes (I didn't actually do this because I have no patience). 

6. This part is annoying but essential. Ladle the soup into a blender and blend the crap out of it until it's nice and smooth. Only fill the blender halfway or there will be a boiling hot red soup explosion. It took me 2 blender-fulls to do all the soup. Transfer the soup back into a pot. (I used a new pot, to help the soup cool faster.

7. Once the soup has cooled off a bit (mine was good to go from the combination of blending and putting it in a new pot) stir in a cup of plain greek yogurt. Also stir in as much finely chopped basil as you want. Taste it and add salt and pepper accordingly. Heat it again when you're ready to eat. 

When I cook, I generally try to replace bad things with good things. The original recipe called for heavy cream but that wasn't happening, so I added the yogurt instead. You could probably also try 2% milk or something. Just make sure your soup is a little cooled off, so that your creamy whatever doesn't curdle. I'm sure it would have tasted extra delicious with the cream, but these are the sacrifices we have to make, people. 

I also didn't use the carrots because this is tomato soup. Get your own soup, carrots.

The grilled cheese is pretty self explanatory: good fontina cheese, bakery sourdough bread, margarine instead of butter (point!). If you can't make a good grilled cheese sandwich, you should probably reassess your life.

What I ate today

Riveting title for a blog post, right?

Sometimes I get weird cravings for things and I have to have them like yesterday. This explains why I drove to the grocery store during evening rush hour today for a can of beans.

But first, let's talk about lunch. When I was 16, I went to the beach with four of my best friends and one mother. That makes five teenage girls and one mom living in a trailer on the beach for a week. Did I mention that the week before the trip, my best friend (who was there) confided in me that she was a lesbian? Oy, awkwardness. Yes, we almost killed each other and nearly drove the mother crazy. Luckily (she thought) she was a cool mom, not a regular mom (bonus points if you know what that's from). Anyway, we drove to this little restaurant/stand on the beach each morning for breakfast and got what were called Sunrise Bagels. Big chewy bagels with a thick layer of cream cheese, a big slice of tomato and some dill. So good! For some reason, eleven years later, I got a craving for one today.


I slimmed mine down a bit with a whole grain "Bagel Thin" (like a bagel with the middle sliced out, only 100 calories). I think maybe Thomas's makes them? I also used reduced fat cream cheese and used fresh basil and cilantro in place of the dill. I may or may not have also put some bacon bits on it . . . It took all of my willpower to take this picture with my phone before inhaling it.

And then, my weird dinner craving. Last weekend we went to a cookout hosted by one of Frank's employees. The guy and his wife are Turkish, and her mother lives with them. So the mother cooked all this awesome food for the cookout, which included tabouli and some kind of bean salad. I couldn't get this stuff out of my head, it was that good. Seriously, if I could eat one kind of food ethnicity for the rest of my life, it would probably be Middle Eastern. I will eat anything that is loaded with garlic, lemon and olive oil. I decided that I needed to eat this tonight, so like I said, I drove to the grocery store during rush hour.

I don't have a recipe so I kind of just guessed on flavors and it turned out awesome, though i'd like to get the real recipe sometime. I just bought the instant boxed tabouli (if you're not familiar, it's a salad made of wheat bulgur and other things) and added chopped tomatoes, olive oil, lots of lemon juice and onion.

For the bean salad, I combined a can of cannellini beans and a can of navy beans, drained. I mixed in olive oil, lemon juice, fresh minced garlic, chopped vidalia onion, parsley, and a bit of salt. Oh, and some celery for some crunch. I went absolutely crazy with the lemon juice and garlic. I'm going to smell like a garbage truck. But it was worth it.

Weekly Weight Goal = OWNED

Yay! It's only Wednesday and I've met my weight goal for this week! (My goal is to lose one pound per week for 10 weeks, and then maintain). I was 129.8 on Sunday and now I'm 128.8. If I could lose another pound by the end of this week, that would be awesome sauce. Of course, I know that right now it's probably just water weight that I'm losing from a week of crappy/salty eating, but I'll take it.

Wanna know how I'm doing it? Here are some things that are helping me:

• Writing down everything I eat (so I can't disregard that cookie, etc)
• Taking pictures of meals - I only do this occasionally, but it helps
• Measuring. It's really easy to misjudge measurements and food portions. For example, a serving size of my cereal is 3/4 a cup, but its easy to put 1 cup or more in the bowl without realizing
• Smaller plates and bowls - a half cup of cottage cheese in a big bowl looks like nothing, but it feels like a perfectly satisfying amount if you eat it from a cute ramekin. Same goes with plate size, I'm trying to eat off of 8" salad plates
• Weigh myself EVERY day. I'm better with short term goals because I'm so impatient. Its much easier for me to take things one day at a time. If I weigh myself every day, I also can't trick myself into believing that I can take the day off, because I see the results. 
• Eating IN. This is a huge one. We got rid of all the junk food in our house and stocked it up with healthy options. Its better that I don't have the choice between french fries and an apple (like at Wendy's) because I have no will power. I'm also not being bombarded with delicious crave-inducing french fry aromas.
• Taking note of what's on Oprah. Because I cannot survive for 45 minutes on the treadmill without something good on tv. If Oprah sucks that day, Keeping Up with the Kardashians (shh, don't tell anyone) will suffice.  My gym has an individual television on EVERY piece of cardio equipment, which is AMAZING.
• Keeping stress in check. I'm an emotional eater and a stress eater, and everything stresses me out (just ask my husband). That's a bad combination. I'm doing my best to do the things that I know will ease stress, like getting my work done on time, keeping the house clean, going to bed at a decent time and waking up early before 9:00. 
• Inspiration. This means staring at pictures of hot healthy women, visualizing the beach, reading your blog posts about healthy eating, etc. 
• Keeping it reasonable. My husband, Frank, does things to the extreme, like 24 hour cleanses, super-intense workouts, super-strict dieting. This works for some people, but not for me. If I starve myself, go too hard at the gym, I just burn out, get overwhelmed, cry it out and then eat a pizza. Instead, I'm trying to stay under a certain daily calorie count, get in at least four good workouts per week and generally eat healthy foods. 

Here's lunch: 

Tuna salad, hummus and celery, blueberries, creepy dark weird cell phone pic

Sorry, I don't want this blog to become all about food, dieting, etc. Craft post coming soon!

My Food Journal

I'm using Sparkpeople.com to record my daily food and exercise. Anyone else on here? Anyway, today was pretty decent, eating-wise. The thing is, according to this, I only ate around 800 calories, which is ridiculous. I should be getting like 1400, maybe 1200 at the least. But I don't feel like I restricted my food very much, and I was never hungry throughout the day. So is this okay? I also worked out on the treadmill for 40 minutes (walk for 5, run for 5, repeat). I need to stop being lazy and start adding weight training. 

BREAKFAST:

Hard Boiled Egg, 2 large 155 1 11 13 Regular Coffee, 1 cup (8 fl oz) 2 0 0 0 Coffeemate Creamer French Vanilla, 1 tbsp 35 5 2 0

BREAKFAST TOTALS: 192 6 12 13

LUNCH:

Kraft Mayo Light Mayonnaise (Mayo), 1.5 tbsp 75 2 7 0 Tuna, Canned in Water, 3 oz 99 0 1 22 Egg white, 1 serving 17 0 0 5

LUNCH TOTALS: 191 2 8 27

DINNER:

Sour Cream, reduced fat, 2 tbsp 41 1 4 1 Salsa, 2 tbsp 9 2 0 0 Romaine Lettuce (salad), 2 cup, shredded 16 3 0 2 Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, year round average, 0.5 cup cherry tomatoes 16 3 0 1 Perdue, Lean Ground Turkey, 5 oz 200 0 10 30

DINNER TOTALS: 281 9 14 34

SNACK:

Musselman's Home Style Natural Unsweetened Apple Sauce, 0.5 cup 50 13 0 0 Snack Factory Pretzel Chip, 5 serving 50 0 0 0 Blueberries, fresh, 0.5 cup 41 10 0 1

SNACK TOTALS: 141 23 0 1

CLICK TO ADD/EDIT EXTRA MEALS

			CALORIES	CARBS	FAT	PROTEIN
			805	41	34	74
			1,340 - 1,690	179 - 258	35 - 62	60 - 139
			535 - 885	138 - 217	1 - 28	0 - 65

That Time I Tried to Not be Fat

Let's talk about being fat, and how I'm attempting to avoid it.

I have to admit, I've been seriously slacking in the diet and exercise department since California. But I'm happy to report that I have gotten back on the horse. I'm in a really good groove right now with working out and eating healthy.

Let's get one thing straight, I HATE exercising. It takes me more mental perseverance than it takes Fergie to not pee her pants. I think about it for a couple of days. Then I might put on a pair of tennis shoes and a sports bra and take a nap in them, just to feel them out. On a few occasions, I may have driven to the gym and ended up in the grocery store instead.

But lately? Lately I have actually been semi-looking forward to working out. I have kind of gotten into a groove with my lifting routine and my cardio. I get SO FREAKING BORED when I'm doing cardio, even though I have an ipod loaded with podcasts, and each piece of cardio equipment has its own tv screen. I can attribute my new devotion to fitness to the fact that they recently added channels to the gym cable and . . .

I can watch Real Housewives and Keeping Up with the Kardashians while I work out. Whatever works.

I find that eating healthy and working out all seem to fall into place once you have one of them down. So since I have been working on my fitness, I have been having less cravings for junk and have been more motivated to fuel my body with healthy foods, particularly vegetables. Once you start turning down junk food, it becomes addicting, like some sort of game. Last night, while out at dinner with my friends, I turned down dessert. Do you know how hard that is for me? I felt so bad ass afterward.

I have found that blogging has been a huge motivation for me when it comes to getting healthy. Of course I am held accountable by my own blog, but more so, I like reading other people's blogs about their attempts to get healthy.  I'm more likely to be motivated by a real person making an attempt to be healthy than someone like Jillian Michaels. Jillian, you are a demon robot sent to Earth to make me feel ashamed and weak. You have no relevance in my life.

So I'm asking you, do you have any kick ass fitness, health or eating blogs that you read that help you stay motivated?  I would definitely like to add a few to my reader. Thanks!

(photos from Flickr: timtak, www.chicagofabulousblog.com, jesse757)