I love my aunt

I love all my aunts, but this aunt is especially my favorite.  My mom is the second of four sisters.  My favorite aunt is the oldest.  I think she's my favorite aunt also because her husband is brothers with my dad!  So two sisters marry two brothers, so the offspring are closer than cousins genetically, I think.  I'm pretty sure.  Anyway, ever since I started returning to PA for holidays (it's been two years), I get these awesomely delicious egg rolls and dumplings every time I go back.  A lot egg rolls and dumplings.  So this past visit is not different.  I made sure to place my order before I even left.  I requested 2 boxes of egg rolls and one bag of dumplings.  I got an extra bag of dumplings.  My freezer is bursting.  It's a good thing that the hubster does not like these because of the veggies in them or else there would be some fighting in this household.  I've already given away a few egg rolls and dumplings to a co-worker, maybe I should offer them to more people.  It takes me awhile to finish them.  I'm having some for dinner tonight.  *drool*

Bleh then... Ahhhh

You ever have one of those meals where you just have this urge to just work it off because it puts you in a bad food coma?

I had one tonight.  It wasn't even that big of a meal.  Ribs and fries.  It just sat so heavy in my stomach that I had to go on a run.  4.5 miles.  It felt good afterwards.  Multiply that times three and there is my half marathon.  Too bad I'm just getting slower and slower.

Meatballs

I think I make some pretty dang good meatballs.  I had never made them before, but I found this recipe on the Pioneer Woman website.  The first time they were ok because I chopped my own garlic and parsley.  The hubster was not a fan, so I had to modify the recipe.

Here are the ingredients:

• 3/4 pounds Ground Beef
• 3/4 pounds Ground Pork
• 3 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 3/4 cups Fine Bread Crumbs
• 2 whole Eggs
• 3/4 cups Freshly Grated Parmesan
• 1/4 cup Flat-leaf Parsley, Minced
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• Freshly Ground Black Pepper
• Splash Of Milk
• 1/2 cup Olive Oil

Instead of mincing my own garlic, I use these:

Another substitution is that I use the dried parsley flakes instead of fresh for the hubster's sake.  I also don't follow the quantities listed in it either.  I usually have add more meat (because I buy in full lbs and not 3/4 lbs), cheese, and garlic.  They are so good, and the recipe makes about 50+ meatballs.  I freeze them and pull them out for quick dinners.  The hubster especially loves them in meatball subs.  We're about to finish the last batch tonight and I'm going to make another this weekend.

Here's the rest of the recipe:

Combine ground pork, ground beef, garlic, bread crumbs, eggs, cheese, parsley, salt, pepper, and milk in a large mixing bowl.  Mix well with hands and roll into small balls.  Place meatballs on cookie sheet and place in freezer for 10 minutes.  Heat up olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat.  Remove meatballs from freezer and brown meatballs and cook until internal temperature is 165 deg F.

And that's it!

Craving

I really want some fried chicken.  I have this craving so much, but it's probably because I never satisfy the craving.  On very few occasions, I'll get KFC, but in the end, I'm always disappointed.  I've yelped a few places for good fried chicken, but the places it comes up with charges like $17... for fried chicken.  No thanks!

Pizza!

I love the pizza stone the hubster got me a while ago.  I've made pizza three times with it and with the exception of the first one.  It's been pretty darn good.  Well, it's hard to screw up pizza when you buy the pizza dough and pizza sauce pre-made at Trader Joe's.  Last night, I made pizza.

My half was tomato, basil, mozzarella and the hubster's half was pepperoni.  We had some issues transferring the pizza from the baking pan to the oven, but it was still tasty if a little ugly and messy.  I used basil that I had grown on my porch and it was yummy.  The only thing was that after I had chiffonaded my basil, it started to turn brown on the edges.  Maybe I need a sharper knife to cut it.

Free Lunch

Free lunches at work are the bane of my diet.  We usually have lunch catered when we have visitors for work.  They usually order way too much and us low level employess can scavenge the leftovers.  This is usually after I have already eaten my lunch.  I simply cannot refuse the offer of free food.  So for lunch today, I had a Lean Cuisine, blueberry Greek yogurt, and a half baggie of baked Cheetos with water.  In addition to this, I grabbed half a steak sammy, a small turkey sandwich, a bag of Baked Lays (only ate like 3 chips), a Pepsi, and a chocolate chip cookie.  Ugh!  I have no will power.  All those extra calories only because it was free!

Hopefully, I will only eat half the cookie and drink half the Pepsi.  One can always hope right?

Grilling!

Finally a nice day and we finally get to use our grill. On the menu tonight is bacon cheeseburgers, turkey burgers, salad, chips, and veggie kabobs. Yum!

Danishes and more

My diet has gone to shit lately.  With all the lacrosse games I'm doing, I'm lucky to get home by 10 pm.  I leave straight from work and I have to eat snacks throughout the day to make sure I'm not hungry in the middle of the game.  And then once the game is over, I find myself stopping to get fast food and totally pigging out because I haven't had any real food since 11 am.
Anyway, this weekend was not good to my scale.  I ate way too much for the hubster's belated birthday dinner at Top and had too much to drink.  After that, I had margarita's and mexican food with my reffing buddies.  Same thing, was starving and overate.
To start things off this week, we had an all hands meeting this morning where they had some breakfast foods to snack on.  So I had half a blueberry muffin and a cheese danish in addition to the banana and the protein bar I ate for breakfast.  To make things worse, I now have this on my desk:


Yes, another cheese danish and an APPLE one too.  My games tonight were cancelled tonight too, so if I eat these, it'll be like double calories because I won't burn any tonight.  Hmmm, perhaps it's finally time to hit the gym that I haven't been to in a month.  Things have got to get better.

Body Confusion

I'm in Huntington Beach, CA this week for work.  It's a quick trip for one meeting.  The meeting started at 9:00 am today and was done by 12:30 pm.  After the meeting, we (myself and some coworkers) went out to lunch and then I was dropped at the hotel since they were traveling on to Utah (without me *cry*).  So after I let my lunch digest and a quick run to REI to pick up some black rain pants for reffing, I ventured out for a run along the Huntington Beach.  I was aiming for 6 miles for my pre-half-marathon training, but ended up running 7.5 miles!  A personal record!  Yay, too bad I'll need almost another 6 to finish the race.  Anyway, I was exhausted afterwards.  I stopped at the hotel gift shop with the intention of picking up some chocolate milk.  They had yoohoo (which is not even made from milk) and Muscle Milk (which I found out is also not made from milk).  I bought the Muscle Milk and it was gross.  Anyway after a shower, I was shaky and hungry, but I didn't crave anything.  I tried to eat a protein bar, but putting it in my mouth just made me want to hurl.

So I ventured back to the gift shop  because I was waiting for my friend to get off work so we could get dinner together.  I end up spending $10 on... wait for it... an orange, a naked juice, and a peach yogurt.  TEN FREAKING DOLLARS.  Good thing I'm getting reimbursed for all of this.  All of this goes down just fine.  I get a text from my friend, he's working later than he thought and to go ahead and eat without him.  *sad face*  I decide to go to In N Out.  I get there and get my usual order.  I'm starting to shake again.  And guess what happens?  The Unthinkable.  I almost throw up when I eat my cheeseburger animal style. I only finish half my burger and most of my fries.  It's like "hello, body?!?!  I know you're hungry, why do you resist this yummy food?"

So here I sit in my hotel room, not completely full, but not wanting to actually eat anything.  I think this is my body's way of telling to stop running so dang far.

Jeni's!

I had a hankering for dessert tonight, so I decided tonight was the night to head over to Jeni's. I had first heard of Jeni's from a coworker, but also saw it on Food Network's TV show, Best Thing I Ever Ate. They were featured on the spicy food episode for their Queen City Cayenne ice cream. I didn't get that nor did I try it. I did try Salty Caramel. It was quite tasty, so I got the Black and Tan sundae. It was good and soooo rich. The hubster got the Buckeye State sundae. His was even richer than mine.





Mine is top one and his is the bottom. They look very similar.

Belated Birthday Dinner

I redeemed another birthday perk last night.  We went to dinner at J. Gilbert's.  Weird to go on a Wednesday night, yeah?  Well, we had planned for this weekend, but we got word that we'll have the step son this weekend.  So that threw all our plans out the window.  I didn't want to wait for next month even though there really was no hurry because there was no expiration date on the offer.  Most places make you come in during your birthday month.

We first went to J. Gilberts maybe a year ago.  It was good food and great service, but we've noticed that the service has been incredible lacking in the last few visits.  After this last visit, I think we need to find another restaurant to go to for special occasions.  Anyway, on to the food.

The hubster had the Mixed Grill which is a 4 oz fillet mignon, grilled chicken breast with mango salsa, and BBQ shrimp with chipotle cheddar mash.  He seemed to really enjoy it as he only left all of his vegetables (typical) and one bite of chicken.  He usually gets the fillet and shrimp combo, but I pointed out this to him.  For two extra bucks, why not get some chicken too?  I started out with the Tortilla Chicken soup.  I usually go with the Crab Bisque, but I think I wanted something lighter.  This isn't like your normal Tortilla Soup.  This is a more brothy soup rather than cream based soup.  It's so flavorful and the scoop of guacamole is just the icing on the cake for this soup.  It really is good.  For my entree, I got the fillet mignon trio which is what I got the first time we went to J. Gilberts.  It was just as good as the first time.  It's three fillet medallions each topped with something different: mushrooms, blue cheese, and bearnaise.  I don't like blue cheese except to dip hot wings in, so I opted for two mushrooms.  The mushrooms were a little salty for my liking, but still palatable.  I only finished half of the bearnaise and three quarters of the one of the mushrooms.  WTF, 4 yeas ago I probably could have scarfed the whole thing down.  But alas, the life changes I made aka diet/eating habits have been solidified.  Oh well, that just means leftover for dinner tonight!

On a side note, I did get to wear my new dress from Banana Republic that I blogged about 2 weeks ago.  I bought new tights from Target ($5!) and wore my Christan Dior booties.  I have to say it's definitely a no eating dress.  I had to unzip the side for the car ride home.

Overall, not bad for a belated Wednesday night birthday dinner.

Mug

So I had a post card from Starbucks for a free drink for my birthday that expired today. So I took the extra time this morning to head to my local Starbucks to redeem it. I don't usually drink coffee while driving so my beverage usually cools down too much by the time I get to work.

To avoid this, I brought along mu Audi mug. I love this mug. During the summer when I was bringing in iced coffees in the morning, this thing kept my drink ice cold. It works so well that mu drink still had ice in it at the end of the day! It's amazing! So it's doing a great job keeping my coffee hot and I can enjoy my hot free drink all day.

You might be asking how I got this awesome mug. Well, I got it for free when i bought my car. That's how we bargain in Ohio. If I had known how awesome this mug was going to be i might have asked for two, but I know that if I ever lost it, I'd pay to get another one. Knowing Audi, it's probably like $50 or some insane price.

I love my Kitchen Aid mixer

Not only does it makes baking so much easier, it has the coolest attachments.  I got the meat grinder for a Christmas present from my brother and I whipped it out for the first time tonight.  I got the idea to get a meat grinder because I was tired of buying the 90/10 ground beef since the hubster hates fat and gristle.  I saw my parents had a meat grinder and that maybe I should get one too and lean cuts of meat when they are on sale and grind it myself.  I should have taken note what those lean cuts of meat were.

We went to Kroger on Monday night and saw some meat for sale.  It looked lean enough, so we bought it with the purpose of grinding it up.  I unwrapped the package and to my dismay one of the pieces was not so lean.  I spent some time trimming it up and into the grinder it went.  It works great!  I put it through twice per the instructions.  The second piece was much leaner and it went a lot quicker too.  I ended up putting it through the coarse grinder twice for the first piece and using the coarse and fine grinder for the second piece.  I think the latter method worked a little better.

Now the hubster can make some chili this weekend.  I hope he appreciates all this work I do for him.

Daily Blogging

I love reading blogs.  Any and all blogs.  I've noticed that I like reading blogs where the blogger posts prolifically.  At least once a day.  I think it's because they provide a nice distraction and break from work.  A few minutes to read a blog entry refreshes my mind and helps make the day move along that much faster.  A lot of these blogs that I like to read have some sort of gimmick: outfit of the day, documenting what they've been eating.  I've sort of adopted the dog picture of the day, but realized last night that the pictures I'm posting are being posted just to post a picture, not because the picture is of something funny or interesting or cute.  When I started blogging, I had just went on break from work and could see my dogs all day long and would be able to capture cute little things that they do.  Now I'm rushing home to snap a random picture of them.  Also the lighting sucks in my house when the sun goes down.

So I'm thinking of doing some other sort of "_______ of the day" kind of post.  I thought about food, but I eat the same thing every week.  There's not a lot of variety.  The only positive I could think of is that it could segue nicely into my goal to make a photobook of my favorite recipes.  It's still a contender.  I thought about doing outfits, but again, I wear the same things every week.  I think I have 7-8 work outfits that I just rotate around.  I wish I were more fashion forward and daring with my clothes.  I wish I varied my accessories to be more fashionable instead of wearing the same diamond studs, diamond hoops, jade pendant, Swiss Army watch, and gold bracelet all the time (which reminds me, I should put my jade bangle back on soon).  The only positive/negative I could think of is that it might challenge me to be more fashionable, but then I'd probably also spend more money to create cuter outfits.  This one is slowly falling off the list.  What else is there that I do every day that I could blog about?  Working out?  Work?  Maybe expand my picture subjects to more than dogs.  We'll see.

Food and Diet

I've made some changes to my diet over the last year.  I've reduced my soda intake from 2 cans a day to  2-3 cans a month.  I've drastically reduced the amount of fast food and eating out done, and I've tried to cook more at home.  I've noticed that my grocery shopping habits are very cyclical.  One month I might only buy the cheapest brand of certain items and only buy things on sale, and then some months I'll decide that I shouldn't stop buying healthy foods because of the price.  For example, bagged salads.  In this household, I'm the only veggie eater so buying a whole head of lettuce for salad is wasteful, so I opt to buy bags of salad.  This is a "I'll pay regular price for salad" month.  I think it's because I had a meat overload from my Christmas trip.  I'm hoping to keep this mentality throughout the year.  I'd rather cook extra meals at dinner than grab a cheap lean cuisine/healthy choice for lunches.  It's better for me, but maybe not so good for my wallet.  It's a trade I'm hoping I am willing to make throughout the year and hopefully become a life change.

*sigh* The drawbacks of losing weight

Before I decided to lose weight, I would just eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  That's probably how I ended having to decide to lose to weight.  Back in February, I signed up for the gym and gave up soda (I was at two a day).  I paid a lot of attention and consciously made choices to eat healthier and to cut back portions and slowly and surely, it just became second nature.


Now that the holidays are in full swing, potlucks and parties are around every corner.  It's getting harder and harder to make the right decisions.  Here at work, I just had a colleague give me a plate full of chex mex and a piece of real gingerbread (I had no idea gingerbread was actually a bread, I thought it was that hard gross stuff you make houses out of).  And I want to eat it and I am eating it, but my brain is yelling at me for every bite.  "Do you know how much you'll weigh tomorrow morning?"  "You'll gain back all that weight you lost from that one spoonful of whipped cream"  "Do you know how many miles you'll need to run to burn that off?"  And eventually, my chewing will drown it out.


I miss the old days, but not the extra 18 lbs I was carrying around.  *sigh*  Everything in moderation, I suppose.