Bah. The whole Portland metro area is stuck indoors. I’m supposed to be in Texas. Crazy week that ended with a sprained ankle, ER visit, broken car, snowstorm and no way to get to the airport (I called two cab companies for 15 minutes and all I got was busy signal). That’s all I have to say about that I now have a Continental flight scheduled for Christmas Day. Will I make it? Who knows.

View out the front door… there’s more today! Plus a nice hard layer of ice.

Huddling under blankets….

*yawn*

Has it melted yet?????

Hunkering down at the BFs with him and his cat and my knitting.  I need more wool sweaters!  Still can’t believe my sister got snow in Texas before we did!

I think I forgot to wrapup after the 30 day challenge! Summary: 6.5 pounds lost.  (I could have done better)  I got lazy at the end (shocker!).  I really enjoyed it and I think I’ll try it again in January, after the holidays!

I did get this done yesterday… very little processing done on it.  Wandered down to the Eastbank Esplande with Devin to attempt to get some sunset shots.  The sunset we pretty uneventful but we stayed a while later on a floating pier and kept shooting long exposures.  This was probably 45 min after sunset.  30 sec exposure at f/29.  I love the blues.  You can click and go to the flickr page and see bigger versions.  I’m so happy with it!!!!!!

And here’s a very short video.  No set up… i just heard the geese coming and hit the video button.

I’m really good at the rambling…

So Week 3 of the 30 day challenge I got totally wiped out by a cold.  No brainpower, no willpower, blah, blah, blah.  Finally feeling better and back on track to end this week.  My only goal is to lose a few more pounds by the end of the week!  Today’s food is another sauteed onion/spinach/feta frittata and a “pizza” made with whole wheat english muffing crust.  I found some turkey pepperoni and light salame.  I would have made those the whole day’s meal but the pepperoni and salame are really high in sodium.  I also fit in some Mexican Hot Chocolate from Moonstruck. Yum!  I need to make up a recipe to duplicate it (and lighten it up!)

For some eye candy… Thelonious by Cookie A. in Knit Picks Gloss Sock Yarn, color Cosmos.  These took me four months!  I did do some other socks in between becuase these were so hard.  I knit them on a smaller needle than it called for (I’m crazy) and did the medium size and it came out wonderfully.  They feel really good.  (I’m sure the silk in the yarn helps too).  If you’re a Cookie A. fan, she has a book coming out in April. Pre-Order on amazon… Sock Innovation: Knitting Techniques & Patterns for One-of-a-Kind Socks.  There’s a pdf preview here.  I’m drooling!!  Here’s some mediocre pictures of my Theloniouses

Thelonious

Thelonious with Shoes

Still getting over cold, worked half day yesterday. Very very tired! Turned in my ballot Sunday though and finished a pair of socks I’d been working on since July.  Sitting here amazed that this day and age people would have to wait hours to vote in this country.  Happy to have all voting by mail in Oregon!  I think I’ve only voted once in a booth, probably 1992 before vote-by-mail… and that’s all the energy I have to write today!!!

I realized this morning I forgot to eat dinner last night.  About 1/4 of my calories!  I am bizzare.  I went for a 40 min walk/jog after work then ended up food shopping at 3 stores (seriously, is there a spinach shortage or something???? Only one store had spinach!) then came home and crashed on the bed to chill to some tv… no hunger pains at all.  And then I didn’t eat today until 11am… I really need to add eating reminder popups to my calendar!

I don’t have much time to blog… too much work to do and then destressing from work!  I’m down 5.5 pounds since the start.  I was able to get outside yesterday and walk in the almost dark and even added some jogging in (yay!).  I’m either going to have to find my headlamp or take a really long lunch if I want to  workout outside after Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend  

The picture to the right is one of my Hello Kitty Easter Eggs, holding my daily supplements, medication and chocolate. I’m a sucker for Hello Kitty.

Brief medical update: Biopsies clear… No Celiac! And no weird stuff, just run-of-the-mill stomach ulcer!

Thanks for all the comments… I feel bad about not responding to them all, I feel like all I’ve been doing all week is cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping! (and blogging about it all…)

End of day 5 tonight (friday).  Down 3.5 pounds this week.  

Day 4 was Beef Stewy stuff.  The calorie/fat count was high but didn’t end up eating it all anyway.  I’d make it again, but redo with ground turkey or mix with the beef to get the fat down. (I’d also probably just do the meat separately then drain or wash off the fat). I’d also add the veggies later, they were mush when it was done.

The 1/4 cup red wine really gave a nice flavor.  Bascially I just sauteed the onions, added the beef and browned it, then threw in the bouillon, veggies, barley, some dried rosemary and 2 cups water.  Then I let it simmer for about an hour while checking that I didn’t burn it. Finished off with some cornstarch to thicken what juice was left.  It came out edible, which is about all I can ask for…  too much sodium in the bouillon though.  I may tweak it again in a few weeks and post a real recipe.

No exercise on day 4… even forgot the push ups!

Day 5 is my favorite dish so far. It’s a variation on a Chicken and Black Bean cassarole my mom makes.  I made it not a cassarole, and chopped up the chicken and browned it in a pan instead of raw in the cassarole dish (which makes it watery anyway).  I had a cheese craving, so this was great.  I just browned the cut-up chicken in a skillet, added a jar of salsa, a drained can of black beans, and some drained corn and stirred it up.  Then put it in plastic containers with ripped corn toritllas and cheese.  The sourcream was in a tiny separate container for topping after heating up at work.  So easy so yum! and could be easily modified for macros.  It would be good with peppers too, if you like them (I don’t!).

Skillet Chicken and Black Beans Day: (my attempt at recipe is here)

Day 5 exercise: treadmill fast walking.  Two sets of pushups (I keep forgetting, need to add to calendar reminders).

Day 6 (today): More beef stew.  Lots of walking. Down another pound. 

Saturday Wrap-Up

Weight loss (since Monday): 4.5 pounds. woo!

Exercise:

Need more! I have all this weekend’s food already made, so I have no excuese on the weekend. I spent so much time cooking and shopping and cleaning this week, I didn’t get a lot of exercise in.

Food:

Usually ended up eating like this: 9:30am 12pm 3:30pm 9pm.

Most of the days I found it really hard to eat all the food (which sounds so totally crazy to me). I just wasn’t hungry when I got home from work. I’d have the munchies all afternoon but not at night. Several nights I made myself finish while making the next days food (about 8-9pm). I may try setting less aside for the evening and add another part to the afternoon.

Next week I plan on making the Pumpkin Pancakes and some Turkey bacon. I’m also really wanting to try some version of these meatballs: Apple Cheddar and Turkey Meatballs. Bonus: made in a crockpot!

Stuff I need to work on:

• Spread out afternoon meals
• Leave less for dinner
• DOUBLE recipes, spend less time in kitchen
• Remember to do pushups
• Spend less time at grocery stores, plan more ahead of time!
• I hate to say it, spend less time blogging about this and reading blogs. Need more time on weeknights to do stuff like exercise!
• Less fake sugar.  I managed to cut it down to 4 splenda packets this week.

Interesting note: my refeed day falls on Super Tuesday! There may be some alcohol involved!

Parting shot from the Portland Japanese Garden this morning:

Chrysanthemums

Survived day 2! Didn’t eat all the food.  I’m guessing the combo of the garlic sauce and fish oil pills just left me with bad taste in my mouth all day.  I ended up tossing the last third and eating a handful of peanuts and a tiny square of chocolate!  There’s a few ideas on the forums on how to deal with the fish oil, I’ll have to find something that works.

Just finished day 3 tonight.  I ate it all, the last third at 9:10 pm.  I almost forgot about it, I wasn’t hungry!  I was fighting the afternoon munchies though.  May save smaller portions for dinner next time.

Treadmilled 30 min fast walk yesterday until my complained, walked 25 min today from work.  Need to get another pair of running shoes to leave at work so I have no excuses.

Today’s food (yum!)  The sugar was used in some black tea.

Just made 2 pots of a beef stew like thing with lots of veggies and barley.  After all the chicken and turkey I’ve had, I crave beef!  I figured if I made 2 dishes Wed. night and two Thur. Night I’d at least have Friday and Saturday nights off cooking.  Maybe a chicken/blackbean/salsa dish tomorrow.  I got some fat free sour cream and fat free mozzarella.  I’m making myself hungry now!

Day 1 of the 30 day challenge: Survived.  

Temptations Resisted: free french fries and cookies.

Misstep: 1 packet splend in vanilla black tea that tasted nasty without.  I have such a sweet tooth  

Sucesses: ate all the food, last bit at 8:45 while making today’s food.  Drank probably 138 oz of water and visited the bathroom a lot.

Exercise: 2 sets of max pushups on a chair in the ladies lounge, 4 each.  Walked down hill from work to streetcar: 25 min.  Still taking it slow because of my lower back, but I took no painkillers yesterday and only 1 muscle relaxer.  I’m taking nothing today and see if I am pain free too.

Down 1.5 pounds this morning!

Here’s Day 2’s food.  A little high on the protein, but I had a whole package of chicken in the freezer weighed before frozen and it was late and I was too lazy or thrifty to weigh it down.  I’ll probably use up my extra 72 calories on a little raw sugar in my tea.

I really like the Sun Luck Black Bean Garlic Sauce now that I’ve figured out how to use it.  It is really not a sauce but a concentrate.  About 1 Tbsp per serving is all I need, any more and the flavor is just too strong.  I dilute it in water then at the end of my stir fry, put in some water and corn starch (about 1 Tbsp per serving) to thicken it up so it sticks to everything.

There will be treadmilling tonight while doing laundry at the BFs.  I’m desparate to watch Sunday’s Mad Men…  It’s on my ipod, taunting me.  Must resist and only watch intersting stuff while working out