Diet – Day 75-116

Since Summer School is over, I have some time to do for myself. Well, I finally decided to update my blog: Diet – Day 75-Day 116. I have lost 22 lb. so far though I cheated a lot. It has been so slow to accomplish my goal and frustrating every single day, but I keep doing what I need to do. My guess is that I will reach my goal around holiday this year. (all depends on how I go through holiday season). 

This update doesn’t sound fun to read through because less pictures and limited topic, but it still tells me the story of my diet, and it’s very, very important for me to look at myself. It’s so hard for me to realize who I am. But, this is me. I need to accept it.

Diet

Since school began, it’s been busy and cannot do much for my hobbies lately. Only thing I have been able to continue is probably my diet. My diet has been showing progress little by little. I cheat my diet menu quite often, so I guess I have been losing my weight so slow. I need to fix this! A few days ago, we bought chips somehow when we went grocery shopping. I didn’t notice A.A. grabbed chips until we got to a cashier. Well, eventually we bought them and we, especially I, have been snacking those. It’s not good!!! I love Sun Chips, but I wish I didn’t crave. Even those are baked chips, they have calories. I know I wouldn’t eat any if we didn’t have chips in my sight, so I don’t want to buy them, but A.A. wants to snack.. pretty big problem..

I started eating asian salad, which helps my diet. It has lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sliced ham, and sometimes fried eggs. Originally it was “harusame salad.” But, I have been eating without harusame since it’s out (I tried chinese harusame, but I didn’t like it). The dressing with this salad is made of 2 Tbl. soy sauce, 2 Tbl. rice vinegar, 1 Tbl. sesame oil, and 1 Tbl. sugar. And then I add mustard for finishing. When I think it’s kind of heavy taste, I reduce the amount of soy sauce and sugar. I believe my skin, especially my face, feels and looks much better because of the rice vinegar.  

I want to update my blog and take photos of Sophie and Misha more often. They have been doing great and I think Misha now weights around 90 lb. or more. She is thick and feels like heavier than Sophie.. She needs new collar, probably size 20”.

Memorial Day Weekend

Today is Memorial Day and A.A. is hangover again. That means that he wants to have some big breakfast. He wanted to eat Biscuits and Gravy and of course, I didn’t have anything to make this dish. Automatically we had to go to café to get something to go. Then, I decided to have something instead of cereal: waffles and eggs for breakfast. It sounds O.K., but I don’t know. I only had a half of waffle though I could have finished whole waffle. It was delicious. I would love to buy waffle maker..

Here are some roses that bloomed for the first time of this year.

All-American Hamburgers & Fresh Lemon Bars

On Tuesday, A.A. and I took Sophie and Misha to off-leash park. It was the second time for them: first time was the day before Misha got spayed. There were 6 dogs included male brindle Dane! He was not big as a male Dane, but of course, bigger than Sophie, so she was running away from him. Sophie was a runner as always; Misha was like a observer. Misha didn’t run so much, but occasionally she did. Two ladies came to us saying they used to have Mastiff and one lady who had a male Dane joked that she would trade her Dane to Misha.. We stayed there about one hour and a half, and Sophie and Misha both enjoyed a lot! Only thing I regretted was that I forgot to take my camera with me again.

On Wednesday, I was preparing hamburgers for lunch in the morning, but I changed my mind so that it was windy and I didn’t feel like doing barbecue. So, we did barbecue on Thursday evening. Well, I wish I could have a hamburger and asparagus for lunch, because I was not hungry much at the time, but I ate them anyway. Hamburgers were very good, it might be a little too soft, but otherwise, I was satisfied. I also baked fresh lemon bars, and it was almost perfect: the crust was too thick. It’s understandable so that the recipe called for 13” by 9″ baking pan, but I used 9″ by 9″ Emile Henry square baking pan. I just didn’t want to make it big. The funny thing was that the crust was too thick while lemon filling was perfect portion. I need to arrange the original recipe for the next time.

Today, which is Thursday, was very hot: I couldn’t take Sophie for a walk before our bedtime. Both Sophie and Misha were laying inside of the house almost all afternoon. Especially, Misha has double coat, so she ate lots of ice cubes. A.A. finally turned on an air conditioning after the dinner, and then it became very cold inside. Our body temperature is very different, so the inside of our house during summer is colder than winter time to me.

Mexican Feast!

On Friday, I made Mexican dishes: Chile Chicken Enchiladas; Guacamole; Salsa; Pico de Gallo; Mexican Rice.

It was quite work, but fun. Everything looked good, but salsa. I made salsa by Cuisinart recipe a little while ago. It looked bad, so as the taste. So, this time, I got a recipe from A.A.’s mom and tried. It didn’t taste good right after I made, so I was very, very disappointed and decided not to make salsa any more. I wanted to throw away, but at the same time, I wanted A.A. to taste it at least, so I left it in the fridge. I thought it’s funny that I took photos of all meals except for salsa. It shows my irritation.

Party is finally over!

When I saw Misha came back from backyard last night (Monday night), I was speechless: her party hat was almost taken off and hanging around her neck like some big and ugly accessory. A.A. was excited and said, “I’ll let Misha free.” O.K. go for it. I was kind of worried if she licked her stomach where it’s still stapled. Well, I guess she is fine and doesn’t seem like she cares her stapled stomach. She seems happier without dirty “party hat.” We’ll take her to the vet tomorrow to remove staples. I can’t wait to take Misha outside besides backyard.

Apple Pie & Turkey & Mushroom Pie

I baked apple pie and turkey & mushroom pie on Sunday. One of the reasons I made pies is “butter” : I had 2 packages of butter and almost expired. The another reason is that I found some simple apple pie recipes and wanted to arrange those. One recipe is by Aya-san and another one is by マテスク里佐-san. Their recipes were very helpful and I could bake simplest & most delicious apple pie! The closest grocery store from our house, Albertsons lately carries pink lady apples, so I used them. The skin color remained and I loved the taste of apple itself. I hope Albertsons will keep pink lady brand permanently.

After baking two different dishes, I found out that the all-butter crust tasted much better than butter and shortening combination crust. Also, the use of cake flour helps the texture softer.

Tortilla Soup & Corn Bread

This is one of my favorite soup. I got an original recipe from A.A.’s mom. She told me that she learned this recipe from her host family in Mexico. It’s easy, simple, and very delicious! I arranged some: added chicken broth; black olive; original seasoning instead of instant chicken taco mix; onion puree (since I hate the texture of onion).

Also, I tried something different for corn bread. I usually use Emile Henry Square Pan, instead, I used 10-inch cast iron skillet by Lodge. It was a good decision: bread became very soft and fluffy; I love the texture! Sometime, I want to buy Lodge’s corn bread pan.

Frog’s Eye Salad & Buffalo Chips

This is “Frog’s Eye Salad” I made the other day. As I mentioned in my “Kitchen Notes,” the recipe is adapted from Ronzoni Recipe. When I first saw this salad at A.A.’s house, it was pretty shocking: the acini pepe looked like frog’s spawn; lots of canned fruits; jell-o and whipped cream. I couldn’t understand why this was called “salad,” and I thought it was rather “dessert.” I needed time to accept this sweet salad and it took a couple of years to taste and make this dish. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled out, I made this without acini pepe as my meals for a few days after the surgery. It worked pretty well.

“Buffalo Chips” is one of the breakfast menu at Buffalo Cafe in Twin Falls. This is very simple, but delicious breakfast and I just tried to make similar one at home. I added some vegetables and avocado.

How Much and How Many…

I love music: I listen to various music and play piano. So does A.A. Though he doesn’t play any instruments, he loves music so much. Every weekend, he stays in his room and does something related to music: searching music; downloading music (of course he pays); listening to music, etc. Last year he purchased an USB turntable and has been collecting vinyl LPs.

We went to Record Exchange after watching a movie, “88 Minutes,” (which was O.K.) We (especially me) were not planning to spend any money on vinyl today, but somehow we headed to downtown Boise. Well, he bought a few of them and seemed to be satisfied. When we got in a car, first thing he said was, “I wish I could buy more. I have at least 2,000 LPs that are on my wish list.” I was like, “… it’ll take for a  while to collect them, huh?” Then, I remembered I was thinking about what I should get for his birthday. Vinyl LPs! That will be a great birthday gift for him..but, wait a minute, I guess I don’t know what he wants, so I will probably get a Record Exchange gift card. 

In the SPIN magazine issued May 2008, there is an article about vinyl LPs. Musicians are still making vinyl, and of course, people still love the noise from it. It’s cool to collect and listen to LPs lately. In this article, a sales and marketing VP Andy Kotowicz points out that “CD sales have dropped by 35 percent since 2000, while vinyl sales appeared to be upswing.” At one moment, people preferred clean cut, but I guess we still want to hear “noise.” I think this is like photos: lots of photos can be edited, but these photos are still expected to have “noise.” For example, photoshop has a tool to add noise on the clean and pretty photos.

Well, in this situation, I wonder how much time and money A.A. wants to spend and how many LPs is too many for him.