The Kitchen Scale

Predictable Rut

Confession time... 6 weeks in to any diet or weight loss attempt I hit a rut where weight loss slows and will power dwindles. I like to fool myself that if I have one splurge day I will get the cravings and the boredom and the food oppression out of my system. Lies. I am an all or nothing kind of girl and its a slippery slope of little cheats that snowball into bigger cheats with a side of guilt, and momentum only builds from there. I am also emotionally exhausted lately, but I must persevere! Must. Persevere. 

I'm hoping this blog will help me. Even if it may be like pulling teeth for me I need to keep going. 

*sigh*

Good night. 

Warning: A really dull looking picture

Whenever I attempt to "get healthy" (my euphemism for losing weight) I tend to get into habits and ruts, sometimes obsessively so. Like right now I start my day with a packet of instant peaches and cream oatmeal. So far I'm still liking it. 

I think that this is what anyone who is trying to "get healthy" does. If something works once then keep doing it until you make yourself ill from the lack of variety, get mind numbingly bored with it, or it stops working. I know that this isn't necessarily healthy with food. Some people end up on diets limiting themselves to only a hand full of foods or on one of those disgusting cleanses (like the maple syrup, water, cayenne, lemon juice whatever) because they drop weight fast... and then can't maintain it so they go back on the cleanse again. And if I hear someone say it's healthy one more time I'm going to squeeze a tube of honey up their nose. And before I get to far into this, yes there are some people who have had doctors recommend cleanses and I am not talking about them. I'm talking about the people who cleanse frequently and obsessively... like an older lady I worked with who was always on a cleanse because she was in denial that she was getting close to 50 and that gravity exists. To her I would like to say, "Subsiding on water with stuff floating around that you found in the back of your cupboard for weeks can not be good for you-electrolytes must get out of whack, all of the stuff in your digestive track gets freaked out, and you aren't consuming enough calories to be able to function. You are in essence starving yourself, yet you claim to feel so good afterward. Well why don't you ask people who are starving due to poverty if they feel all clean and energized or if they would rather have a club sandwich and see which one they pick." (Hint: It will be the one with bacon.) 

Anyway, to get away from that particular rant I'll try to get to the point. Severely limiting what you eat will not help you get healthy (both with and without quotation marks) for the long term. Once you stop your cabbage diet you will gain weight back, and if you only eat a few things then you will most likely be lacking nutrients. I find that what works best for me is to stick with an arsenal of basics for the day to day diet. I have my staples that I can easily turn to without having to put a lot of thought into it- grilled shrimp tacos, vegetable stew and dumplings, rice and stir fry, my lovely instant oatmeal, etc. Well I found a new one, and by God the picture of it looks so boring! (And judging by the picture alone you might think I'm a dirty water cleanse type of person who thinks grazing can pass for a meal, which I think I've made clear I'm not.)

It's actually lettuce wraps. And they are a revelation and a model of simplicity. You in no way need a recipe for the the lettuce wraps, but with the risk of being condescending I'll just tell you what I use: 5-8 big leaves of lettuce, 1 T hummus, 2 T babaganoush (you can even see a little dab of it peeking out from one of the lettuce wraps), and 2.5 oz of boar's head turkey breast. But the options are endless- chicken or tuna salad, ham and cheese with a spicy mustard, roast beef with thousand island dressing or cocktail sauce, sauteed mushrooms, peppers and onions, grilled shrimp... really whatever you want. And the ability and option to change it up is why it is something I know I will be turning to time and time again. It's a basic concept that I can manipulate to be what I want, so hopefully I won't get bored. 

Seven hundred and thirty eighth time is the charm?

Yet again I've decided to make a healthy change in my life. For the past month I have been back on the old weight loss wagon. *sigh*

This blog has been such a fickle thing. I am torn between wanting a blog where I can share my love for food (and hopefully be witty and interesting along the way) and complete anonymity. I like my privacy and if you are hoping that there will be some sort of revelation or group therapy time on here then you will be disappointed. Whatever the reasons are (beyond my obvious love for food) that got me to the weight I'm at are mine. More than anything else this blog is about food. I would say 80% food, 20% weight loss. Which is also where I am mentally about this whole thing. Besides attempting to lose weight is hard enough that any additional pressure will only be added stress (which fuels stress eating... not that I stress eat...).

So I say this as a disclaimer and as a reminder to myself because the original purpose of this whole experiment was to blog about food and my seemingly endless weight loss endeavors. Now my goals and intent have changed and with it the blog will be redefined. I need to remind myself that I wanted to do this because I like talking about food. And if I lose weight along the way then yay, and believe me you will know. If not then I beg of you to keep your pie holes closed. 

MIA

It seems that every couple of weeks or so there will be a random surge in traffic to the site, despite the fact that I haven't posted in forever. Who are these people and what are they doing... are they friends trying to procrastinate? Are they randoms who got lost? Was it a google search? A typo? Someone who wanted the name of the blog and decided to check it out?

Anyway. I will not lie, I miss my dear bloggie. But I have no motivation. For this, for class, for most things. One day there will be a windfall of pictures, stories, recipes, things that will make you cringe, cry, laugh, and tinkle in your pants (perhaps simultaneously, if we're lucky).

This is just to let you know that I'm alive and keeping tabs on nothing. Its sorta like I started painting a room and every couple of months in some act driven by some sort of desperateness I come in dab a little paint on the wall and leave. Except since I'm not even contributing anything interesting its like I come into the room a dab at the wall with a paint-less brush. Completely pointless.

I really don't understand this

If a friend of yours offered you cake would you accept it?

This is not a trick question. No one will judge you, would you accept it?

Heres the thing dear readers (which I'm pretty sure consist solely of my family and a handful of friends at most, and don't worry mom, I'm not procrastinating... just taking a little homework break...yeah, thats it, a break) I am making my oldest brother's wedding cake. Now this is truly an honor and has the potential to be very stressful. So I do what I tend to do when a potentially stressful event looms on the horizon (with the exception of finals, I'm odd like that), I prepare myself. I'm not 100% sure what it is going to be yet, I'm pretty sure lemon and vanilla are going to be involved. Possibly coconut. But there will be a large tiered cake and then a bunch of regular sized cakes.

Since I don't know what I'm doing I need to make practice cakes (this is the preparation bit). And obviously having a cake laying around is not conducive to weight loss. (By the way I am back on the wagon and lost over 5 of the 15 pounds I had put on since I took a weight watchers hiatus at the beginning of the summer.) So I am gifting cake away. But none of my friends really seem to want it.

Its free cake. Would my brother ask me to make his wedding cake if I couldn't bake a cake? Doesn't this say something about my cake creating skills? One would think. But since none of my friends want to take cake off my hands, I feel like that says otherwise. What is going on?

Now, a rational being would say that they are probably looking after their waist lines too. But come on, 20 year old boys have the metabolism of... some animal with a really high metabolism (horse?). Plus I honestly don't care what they do with the cake. They can pass it off as their own and impress someone special (although it would seem that they don't think my cakes are that great...). They can give it to a homeless person. Share with their room mates. Share it with a class. Have a cake fight. Throw it out. Whatever.

Why don't they want my cake. I'm having cake esteem issues.

Which is disheartening not only because my cake is being snubbed, but all I want to do is bake (which is probably because I am buried under an avalanche of reading). And who am I supposed to give baked goods away to? Should I really even pursue baking if I literally can not give it away?

And as a little administrative note, i still have to get a cable for my camera. So someday there will be pictures. Until then you will have to deal with my emotional cake roller coaster. Sorry.

A Word of Explanation

For the holidays I received a brand new computer. Its fantastic and shiny and new. And it doesn't have the proper USB port for my digital camera. So... there are no pictures. And I find excessive text without pictures annoying and boring. One day (hopefully soon) I will go on a mission to get a new cord. So you will have to excuse my absence. I will return with pictures and hopefully posts about cookies, reviews of some cooking light recipes, and some other exciting things too!

How to Salvage a Bad Day

Everyone has bad days. It's an unfortunate reality, but you are bound to have a bad day. I'm sorry.

Now there are varying degrees of bad days, and I, like many of you, have had many a bad day. But today was one of the most frustratingly bad days I've had in a long time. And most of it seems to have taken place in the first few hours of my day.

When I woke up this morning I was feeling less than stellar and very much under the weather. And I was running late for a last minute, pre-final study session. The only good thing about this is it was my last final. But it was one of my least favorite classes ever and the tests are just unpredictable and challenging for the most part- luckily today's test wasn't too bad.

Anyway, I was running late and decided to try to see if I could catch a bus to campus. As I was crossing the street I apparently forgot how to walk or something (perhaps ice, perhaps a small sprite tripped me?). And down I went, to greet my old friend The Pavement. Now I am hopelessly clumsy, especially lately (I fell last week too and hurt my shoulder).  Luckily only one person saw me crash down and he was very nice and stopped to make sure I was ok. (Last time I fell only one person acknowledged me, and she looked angry, like I was disturbing her intentionally with my accidental fall.) Now here is the gross part, if you don't want to read the gross part then skip down to the next paragraph. When I fell I felt three distinct things in my ankle move apart and then sorta come back together.

I totally thought I was fine, and I really wasn't. So I hobbled back home after sitting on some steps for a while and some how made it up the stairs. I tracked down an ankle brace (I told you, I'm clumsy, plus I have bad ankles), called my school's health center to make an appointment,  and called a cab. I got to campus and studied for a while before giving up. I took my test and soon it was over. Now I had to hang around on campus to have a very gross lunch with one of my friends and for my appointment. The doctor that saw me was very nice, and after asking some questions and poking at my ankle and causing further pain she told me that I had a badly sprained ankle. Now, I have sprained my ankle several times and this is the worst sprain I have ever had.

Overall my day was stressful and ruined. I can't do stairs easily so I could haul my laundry up or down the stairs to the basement to do laundry. I can barely shuffle around, so no errands for me. And little cleaning too. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but I am leaving tomorrow for a couple weeks to go home and I can't stand coming back to a dirty apartment. I guess I'm going to have to cope.

So after taking a nap and having a calming, ranting conversation with my best friend I was able to address a rather pressing issue. I had no food in the house. Or so I thought. I found that I had puff pastry in the freezer, cheese, blueberries, sour cream, a quarter of an onion, and some eggs. So I had dinner.

I adapted a Suzanne Goin's recipe for a spring onion tart that is deliciously rich with a ricotta/creme fraiche base loaded with onions and bacon and topped with chantal cheese, and served with an herb salad dressed lightly with lemon juice and olive oil. What I did was spread a thing layer of low fat sour cream (which hardly seems important since this is puff pastry). Seasoned that with salt, pepper, and a very restrained amount of chili flakes (mostly because I ran out). And added some moderately sliced onions and topped with shredded monterey jack cheese. I baked that in an oven around 375ish for 15-20 minutes and it was delicious. I do wish I had the herb salad to cut through the richness though. (Also, even though it seems logically that there is enough oil in the puff pastry that you don't need to grease the foil you still should, as I lost some of it to the wrathful gods of stuck on  food.  but as it cooled it wasn't as problematic.) That was good, but dessert was so much better!

I cut the remaining sheet into 9 squares and stretched them out a little. In a bowl I combined some of the remaining low fat sour cream, brown sugar, a cup of blue berries, salt, cinnamon, and eventually some granulated sugar. I placed a good sized dollop on each of the pieces of puff pastry (which is why some of the turnovers exploded). Using some egg I sealed them and crimped them closed with a fork. Stabbed each one so that steam could be released and brushed the top of each turnover with egg and a generous sprinkling of sugar. It was perfect.

Granted this meal is one of the farthest things from a weight conscious meal as you can get it was worth it and o so necessary. Take that MacGyver!

The evil of Finals

Not only are finals evil because by the time you get to this massive challenge of memory and you are so burned out on whatever topic it is that you are focusing on that when you take a break to watch a movie or your car gets towed you can only think of it as a puzzle- to figure out whose rights were being infringed upon, or what theory of war could best describe the situation. And on top of the inherent sleep deprivation that is completely unavoidable (as well as the impending doom of the end of the quarter body melt down/ failure/ cold flu plague hybrid), there is the challenge of nourishment.

I would love to make a curry with fresh vegetables and tofu, or a fruit salad studded with pomegranates that I saw at the store. Or maybe some butternut squash soup with apple and curry powder. Or some lemon sole with a green salad. But no, I can't. There is no time. I was happy when I was able to throw together some scrambled eggs with jalapenos and some questionable potatoes that I don't remember ever purchasing...

It's not even the time necessary to make the food. It's the time to go to the store, make the food, do the dishes (ok fine, I have not done dishes in a couple days and its driving me crazy to the point that i completely ignore the sink area). So what have I been eating? Bread, the bread of college students the nation over (pizza,  i don't even like delivery pizza that much), some spinach curry from my Indian Place, eggs, questionable potatoes, spinach (yes mom, be proud, a vegetable), the odd tangerine, lentils and rice, sandwiches, and cake. Now, it happened that I had everything in the house to make cake (or so I thought). I have a well supplied pantry (yet no pasta sauce!) and for once I had butter and light sour cream in my fridge. (It's really the butter thats the surprise, I admit I use some gross spray that makes me cough and sometimes olive oil.)

So I made a chocolate cake.

Now, if you'll recall I said I had almost all of the ingredients... well I didn't have milk to make frosting with. So instead, I took chocolate, butter, powdered sugar and port and made a little paste that I dabbed on the top of the warm cake and put in the warm oven so I could spread it out. It turned out really well and made studying a lot easier.

Note: I did not eat all the cake! I gave 3/4 of the total cake (a half recipe might I add) away as a holiday gift and this is whats left from Friday.

Back to studying about war now. Once I'm done with finals though and back home in my parents' beautiful kitchen hopefully I'll be able to post more.

Aahhhh I'm so lame AND late

So, I totally forgot to blog about the last day of my marathon Thanksgiving! And now I am in the special hell reserved for finals and a repressed cold, so just pictures this time!

Chile and Citrus roasted Sweet Potatoes, so amazing!

Tamales waiting to get steamed, don't they look happy and cute?

These were filled with a mixture of onion, chiles, tomatoes, and mushrooms. And they were so good that the next day we made more (some were roasted poblanos, queso, onions; cilantro, onions, queso; mushrooms with roasted garlic and queso). In fact, I doubled the recipe so my brother could stash them in his freezer. A couple days later when I talked to him he admitted that they were gone...

Just a little note...

The internet is a fantastic tool where there is a constant flow of information and ideas. It happens in the blink of an eye and it has become so common for so many of us. As a result new friends are made, debates of all sorts occur, access to educational tools increases, etc. There is also a greater chance for misunderstandings- tones can not always be easily distinguished, sarcasam isn't always evident, etc. And it often becomes easy to be petty or take things personally. That being said, I appreciate and welcome feed back, but please use the comment section of the blog for that. In addition to that, I would love to hear from any of you that happen to stumble across my little blog. Thanks.