The recipe box

My grandmother was a wonderful cook. Over thirty years she made some of the most amazing food. A. Maze. Ing. She would cut out recipes, like the one below, from her local newspaper, magazines; she and her friends would exchange carefully written out recipes on specially printed recipe index cards. Most of them I don't think she ever made. I now own the box and I've tried to go through to organize them. It's hard, there are several hundred recipes. One thought I had about what might make blogging easier for me was to pull out one recipe a week and make it (or show the original and make it lighter, or tell stories about when grandma made it in the past). Except that this was the first one I pulled out and I have no interest in making it. Or, rather, I hate coconut. So can we instead sit back and mock a piece of Southern American tradition from 1985 - a really bad for you gooey pie. Also, a sidenote: The recipe that Grandma cut out also listed a recipe for an Oreo Pie - crushed oreos smushed into a pie pan, topped with ice cream and whipped cream. This was before you could buy that kind of thing in the frozen food section of your nearest grocery store :)


Recipe: Heavenly Coconut Concoction

1c self-rising flour
1c heavy cream, whipped
1.5c chopped pecans
1/4c granulated sugar
1/2c butter, melted
1 pkg vanilla instant pudding

1 8oz pkg cream cheese
1c powdered sugar
2c sweet milk (?!)
1 6oz pkg frozen coconut
1c sour cream

Step 1: In a small mixing bowl mix flour, melted butter, and 1c of chopped pecans. Press into a 2-qt utility baking dish or 10-in pie pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes. Cool thoroughly. Place 1/2c pecans in a shallow pan and bake in oven with above pastry until lightly brown. Save toasted nuts for top garnishing.

Step 2: In a cold bowl, whip the heavy cream until it begins to thicken, then add the granulated sugar gradually and whip until cream stands in peaks and sugar is dissolved.

Step 3: Mix softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, and 1c whipped cream. Mix and spread over crust. Sprinkle 1/2 pkg frozen coconut over this.

Step 4: Mix vanilla pudding made with 2c milk and 1 c sour cream. Pour over above mixture.

Step 5: Mix rest of whipped cream with rest of coconut and pour on top. Sprinkle with toasted pecans. Refrigerate. Serves 10-12 people.

My love hate relationship with blogging

There is something very hard for me about coming here every day to this space and writing. I don't know what it is, exactly. My head will create all sorts of ideas but I never put fingers to the keyboard and hit publish.

Isn't that part of the problem with my journey*? I'm all talk and no action. Or 65% talk and 25% action. 10% processed animal parts reformulated into cookie shape. I think it's because it's just so hard. People make blogging look so damn easy. What's wrong with them? I know they have more activities going on than I do. THEY probably don't have "Better off Ted" marathon Saturdays. Or maybe they do and they realize how boring that is to talk about, a lesson I have clearly not yet learned.

There is something very painfully personal to me about blogging. I know I could try to separate some. Not let it be so personal. But it's hard! I get wrapped up in other people's lives whose blogs I read, the ones that are written like good novels. I read all sorts of people's stories, but the ones I come back to over and over are the ones that struggle and I think that's because their struggle speaks to me as someone who also knows better than to eat half a pack of family-size sandwich cookies in one sitting but does it anyway. The title for the blog "Did I Just Eat That Out Loud?" has always struck a cord with me because it is so strange to talk about food like weight loss bloggers do. "Normal" people don't discuss the benefit of fiber bars and roasted soybeans .... do they?


*can we find a different word for it? Like ... plot? seance? hike-a-billy? luau? calling it a journey just makes me want to find my iPod and start singing along

Score: 3 days of tracking, 1500 of not

That over there, ladies and gent is me trying to log my food for the day. So far I'm happily munching away on carbohydrates and coffee and ignoring the protein needs of my crazy body.

So far the calorie total is 665 somehow and it's 4:35pm. I've been eating like none of it matters for the past couple of days so I wasn't terribly hungry today. Tomorrow I'll be starving.

Dinner tonight will be homemade beef in a barbacoa style (Thanks Gina!!!) with sides of lime rice and mixed veggies.

Lunch was Jen's buffalo chicken spread with triscuits and a side salad.

Breakfast was muesli (oatmeal, skim milk, yogurt, apple, raisins, time).

I haven't really moved today. I think I've let myself get too comfortable in the "moving will re-injure me" mindset. When I get home, first thing will be throwing on my running shoes (note to self: still need to buy non bad for me running shoes ...) and walking around for 30 or so, now that the PT says it should be okay. As long as it doesn't hurt. And I keep doing my exercises - some I do while brushing my teeth just to make sure I do them :) Also on the list: 6 sets of 15 seconds each of plank, 6 sets of 1 pushup each.

In other news, I told Loverboy that I was happy to stand by him and help. Whether that means paying for all of rent, moving back in with his folks, or cutting so far back on expenses I'm dumpster diving (okay, maybe that's a little far). But I wanted something in return.

I wanted him to promise to marry me.

His response: Okay. When?



That works for me. Burden lifted off of shoulders, angels singing in the trees, honest woman in the works. What a roller coaster drama-rama life I lead right now.

Phew. I could really use to go for a jog right now ;)

Ok, so this is what's up with my knee

Before I go on with the body of my post, I'd like to encourage anyone who needs an uplifting story right now watch the story of Kurt, the man who hiked the Kokoda trail in Australia on his arms. http://www.youtube.com/v/RudUerfFSeM?fs=1&hl=en_US

So I'll start my complaining about describing what happened to my knee kinda sorta in the middle.

Back in February I bought new shoes and went out for a walk. I'd planned for what was back then an easy three miler. The week before I'd been sick as a dog and needed to get the eff out of the house. After a half a mile I began having this horrible sharp pain in my right knee. It was bad.Every step hurt. Horribly. I had to turn around.

After a week or so I tried it again and it seemed fine. A little achy maybe but okay. I went back to my regularly scheduled exercise.

Fast forward to May. I was doing step classes twice a week and started training to transition into being a runner. I had dreams (have dreams) about running and liking it. I trained pretty well (started the C25K program) and then long about week four, the day after a really tough step class, it happened.

I couldn't walk without pain.
I was hobbling everywhere.
I wanted to cry it hurt so bad.
Overnight I'd turned into an 80 year old woman hobbling and needing to sit.

I called a sports medicine doctor and got an appointment for the next day. They took x-rays. Nothing was broken, worn away, no signs of arthritis. He told me to lay off the running, the step, and start PT. Try biking, he said. Swimming.

I hate biking. And swimming just leads to flips in the pool and hanging out, not cardio, the fat girl's go to for weight loss.

So ... sigh ... I went back to an all walking cardio diet. I was walking 1-3 miles a day every day. But the pain ... it was still there, lingering, in the background. I was now avoiding getting out of the driver's side of my car (the torsion hurt), going up stairs, gritting my teeth as I marched out 50 miles in July.

Finally, during my vacation the first week of August I had to admit it. I needed to rest. Surely a week of reruns and the couch potato life would help? It didn't. I called the PT and scheduled a visit for the second week of August. When the PT saw me, he told me to stop walking. Stop exercising (elliptical was fine in small doses). Stop running, or trying to run :) Buy new running shoes. Come twice a week.

Over time, the pain has gone away. Slowly. It took a lot of commitment on my part. Strengthening exercises twice a day for five, going on six weeks. Physical therapy twice a week. Admitting that my core muscles were weaker than my 86 year old Granny and my balance was hilariously non-existant even when sober. I'm finally allowed to walk, as long as there's no pain.

More than anything the thing that gets me is that I wasn't training correctly. I was setting myself up to get hurt. Pushing myself too hard too fast, not stretching, not doing strength training exercises. I spent so much time yelling at myself to get off the couch that I didn't make sure that what I was doing was worth it.

Here's the kicker:
When I was doing cardio five days a week, before the injured knee and all, I weighed the same day in and out. I couldn't get the scale to move.

After, even with this walking moratorium, I've lost 10 lbs. I've eaten better in general (except for the past four...five... days).

Maybe one of these days it'll all come together ....
But, until then, I just gottta wing it.

Totally not weight loss related

Ever have that feeling that you might possibly have to actually admit that you are grown up? Like, possibly older than 16?


I've been having that feeling a lot in the past year.

Last fall, my father up and quit his job. His boss retired for health reasons and the new boss had a very very different style from my hippie, laid back, "let's do work and not have meetings" father. Within a month of the changeover, my dad had walked out the door, never planning on returning. Nor finding any other job. At 56, he and my mother had scrimped and saved for nearly 30 years and he was ready to live off his savings. My mother was thrilled (my father had always hated working) and kept her PT nursing position.

Until she was fired this past June. I really really don't want to get into the specifics but she hasn't worked since June. Things are tight for them but they do have savings, and a working daughter (me), and aren't chronically ill or have chronically ill parents themselves.  It gave me pause when mom told me she lost her job. She's been a workaholic as long as I've known her. More than worrying about money, at first I worried about her and her sense of self; who she is has been tied up with her job, which she loved, for so long, it was ... is ... difficult to imagine her standing still and not working. To help me cope, I've been inviting her over every couple of weekends to knit and talk, and enjoy her company. This past weekend she came back for several hours and Loverboy talked her ear off about everything. It was really nice, calm, and I felt like everything was going to be okay.

That was Saturday. Yesterday, Loverboy, with whom I have lived for two and a half years, and who I adore, came home after a terrible day at work and said:


I think I have to quit my job.

He's working, currently, as an admin for a small program which has lost funding in the recession. Slowly he has watched his coworkers leave and not be replaced, seen his hours be cut from 40 to 30 hrs a week, and the work continue to pile up. He went back to school part-time this August to finish his Bachelor's. He told his boss. She said ok. Now she is telling him that he should work overtime (for free) and be there for the all day out-of-town meetings that happen, usually, once every three to four months. At least one is scheduled for later this semester on a day when he has class. He has finally hit his limit with what he will accept from his job, a job which two years ago seemed a godsend.

He is choosing school over work. Good.
He is willing to go into debt to finish school before it's too late. Okay.

He is considering moving back into his parents' house to cut expenses during his time back in school. And wants me to come with him.

I have an overwhelming feeling that I am drowning right now.
Please, G*d, don't take my job right now.
Please, give me a way to not have to move in with his family.
Please ... keep all baked goods in a ten mile radius away from me.

Awesome frozen pizza, is that possible?

So my goals have gone okay for the past two days.

YAY! - I've tracked my food.
YAY! - I've been booze free.
BOO! - I haven't done my PT exercises because ... I .... uhhh ... have been told that .... ummmmmm.....
... - Currently working that OT ... it technically counts as OT even if I'm blogging and joking around on twitter, right?

Last night's dinner was good. Two slices of pizza and a side salad with low calorie balsamic vinegar. The pizza was Palermo's margarita pizza that I added grilled naked chicken and mushrooms to. While cooking it I thought one of the things I could do to make sure I actually keep blogging daily (why is this so hard?!) is to start a regular feature: This ain't cooking. Where once a week I don't really cook but still technically put food on the table at a fraction of the calories of what it would be traditionally. This dinner packed a punch. At  616 calories it was a larger dinner than I like, but it really satisfied me. And was a ton of food. It's nice being able to eat pizza on occasion! At $12 for the four pack of frozen pizzas, $1 for the 8 oz of chicken, and $1.25 for the half pack of mushrooms it wasn't so bad on the wallet either. Loverboy and I ate the  whole pizza, half the bag of romaine (on sale for $2/bag), for approximately $6.50 for the two of us. It'd be cheaper without the mushrooms but LB loves his mushroom pizzas for some reason.

Goal Setting

Current weight: 186.6 lbs
Change: -2.2lbs (over two weeks)

This week has been good overall. I succeeded in going seven full days without alcohol. I drank five beers Sunday evening with Loverboy and his best friend. I set myself a limit and when I hit it I cut myself off. Now, granted, I set the limit pretty high but my excuse is that I overcame the craving three times during the week and that should be rewarded. Hopefully next time I will reward myself with something other than what I am trying to restrict!!!

I will have to keep this brief for today but the goals for the week are as follows:

* Go a minimum of eight days without alcohol
* Track my food most days of the week
* Do my PT exercises at least once a day
* Work two hours of overtime this week