Hey everyone! It has been way too long...but I have been trying to
keep up with some comments! I think the key to my posting more
frequently is when I get on a roll (with the posting), I keep up with
it, and then when it's been a while, I start thinking I have WAY too
much to write and no way can I spend the time right now to say
everything all at once. And then I never end up posting because it
would be too much effort. That is a bad way to think though -- I'm
going to just have to accept that I won't be able to write every last
thing that's happened in my life since last post.
Anyway, I have been on two business trips since the last post, one
to Keystone, CO and one to the bay area. I get to go recruiting every
once in a while an that was the latter trip; the first trip was for a
conference. Both were fun trips, but I do think I have a little bit of
recovering to do from too much eating out and eating not-as-healthy
foods! I've also been baking quite a bit since I've been in town,
including a pumpkin pie squares treat (YUM!) and today I have some
gingerbread pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, complete with sprinkles, in the
oven. But more on why I'm making cookies in a bit.
I wanted to just say quickly that the bike race I did was awesome
(even though several weeks ago now). My official time was 1:40:26.0
(25 miles), which in my opinion was darn good. I even did well enough
to place in the top 15 women overall. Pretty good for no formal
training and for using a mountain bike when a lot of the fast people
had racing bikes. B and I decided to bike together for the whole race
which was also a lot of fun and we met up with our other 4 friends at
the end. I had forgotten how much I enjoy racing was and started thinking
I need to find another one to sign up for soon!
Yesterday, one of B's h.s. friends and his wife were in town and we
went to have dinner with his friend's in-laws (wife's family is from
Albuquerque). That was nice because it gave me a little more insight
into his life before I knew him. Yesterday afternoon I also went to
visit with one of my friends who just had a new baby boy! Very
exciting to see the little ones (he has a ~2yr old sister). I actually
made the pumpkin pie squares for them because I imagine it's hard with
two kids to try to cook a whole lot.
Now, about the gingerbread cookies. You're not going to believe
this, but B's mom sent a Halloween package and about half of it was for
me! Very very sweet. Among the items were some fake tattoo skins
(imagine printed dragon pantyhose for your arms ), a pumpkin
cookie cutter, festive fall sprinkles with leaves and jimmies, a magazine, a pink reusable grocery bag in honor of breast
cancer, and Halloween-themed cupcake liners... just to name a few.
She
also sent a photo for me to see of when B was 13 holding his
pumpkin -- too cute! Anyway, I really wanted to thank her and I
thought it would be appropriate to make her some cookies using the
cutter she sent and some of the sprinkles. They just came out of the
oven and I think it's time to start frosting. Talk to you guys soon!
no, not _my_ wedding, sillies... the wedding I went to in Germany. it was a few weeks ago now, but it took some time for everyone to get their pictures uploaded. anyway, what a good time we had! i will remember this trip for a long time to come.
me & B before the wedding ceremony [moved to before pic]
later in the evening - a german wedding custom [moved to after pic]
gingerbread blueberry muffin recipe and other tidings
Enough of you were curious about the blueberry gingerbread muffins that I decided to post the recipe, with my modifications, of course! The recipe is from bakingbites.com, one of my favorite baking websites (original link posted below).
GingerbreadBlueberryMuffins
(adapted from a Cooking Light recipe)
2 cups all purpose flour (next time I will try some whole wheat as well)
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp allspice
2 large egg whites (I substituted one whole egg here)
1/2 cup sugar (I did 1/4 c sugar and 1/4 c splenda for baking)
1/2 cup molasses
3/4 cup buttermilk (I happened to have buttermilk, so I did 1 c buttermilk and no skim)
1/4 cup milk (skim is fine)
4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
Preheat oven to 350F and line a muffin tin with paper liners (12 or 16, see times below).
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cloves and allspice.
In a medium bowl, whisk together sugar and egg whites until creamy.
Beat in molasses, buttermilk, milk, vegetable oil and vanilla. Pour wet
ingredients into dry ingredients and whisk until just smooth, with no
flour remaining. Stir in blueberries and divide into 12 or 16 muffin
cups (if using 16, fill only 3/4 full).
If making 12 large muffins, bake for 17-21 minutes.
If making 16 medium muffins, bake for 15-19 minutes.
In either case, make sure a tester comes out clean before removing them from the oven.
Cool completely on a wire rack and store in an airtight container if not eating on the first day.
Makes 12 or 16 muffins.
Next time, I think I might try chocolate chips instead of blueberries to make it more of a dessert rather than a breakfast, but I think both would be good! Also, I think I'd add whole wheat flour, maybe replacing 2/3c of the white flour with whole wheat.
Yum! I gave most of them to B though as a surprise one morning so I wouldn't be stuck with all 16. That would be disastrous! His car had been in the shop the past 4 days so he was bumming rides off me over the weekend and then borrowed my car yesterday and today. Luckily for both of us, I am close enough to work to be able to bike in and the weather has been cooperating as well!
Last night, I biked to his house instead of mine after work (about 5-6 miles farther) we settled in to watch the 2-hour premiere of Heroes and heated up some leftover semi-healthy-but-not-super-healthy pizza. I won't spill the beans for those of you who haven't seen it yet and plan to. Oh, and I'll try to cover my eyes tomorrow, but I haven't seen the full episode of TBL from tonight, so no spoilers, please, if possible! I don't think this is giving anything egregious away, so I will say that when the second person made a phone call home, I got quite emotional because that person's dad reminded me so much of my own. I immediately stopped watching and called my dad... and proceeded to book a flight home for Thanksgiving!! With my rapid rewards, I was able to get the round trip for only $78.50 -- what a steal!
How's everyone doing? I'm doing well and definitely glad the weekend is here. This past week has not been stellar for me on the eating front (too many cupcakes & muffins, last night ended up at a Buffalo Wild Wings...), but moving on from there and feeling good today. Why? Because I woke up this morning and started off the day by going to the farm market and it was totally awesome.
I think all the awesome open air markets in Germany and Italy really makes me want to shop locally if possible. This is the second weekend I've gone and I love it. Today I got a watermelon, juicy peaches, green chile for roasting (this is famous in New Mexico and pretty much a staple of most people's diet), and a huge 1 pound tomato. Last week I bought cucumbers, the most delicious corn, raspberries, and more peaches. Yum-tastic!
This past week I also made blueberry gingerbread muffins -- very low fat, but not extremely low-cal. I thought they came out really well though, but I want to experiment a little more before posting the recipe. Also, I made some very yummy low-fat but full-of-flavor chili in my crockpot this past week. Put in a few too many jalapeños, but still, very yummy! Next time I need to make corn bread to go with it!
Today I'm planning to go on a bike ride around town with my old roommate and maybe B and B (her bf). I forgot to mention it but I signed up for a bike race at the end of September. I've been biking every weekend to "train" without having had a set training schedule and have also been biking in to work. Feelingverygreen lately, I think as a result of reading a lot of books lately relating to the environment and our (humans) impact on it. The current one I'm reading is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Anyway, back to the bike race -- it's a 25-miler, so not too long (there was also the option of signing up for a 50- or 100-mile one the same day!), hence not having a fixed training agenda. It's more for fun.
you might need to retype in the url's for some of your friends. before, you used to be able to access someone's blog by going to:
http://username.extrapounds.com as well as http://www.extrapounds.com/blog/username.
Now you can only use the latter; the former link is broken.
Therefore... if you had entered the first link (e.g. http://tatumsmom.extrapounds.com) into google reader, you need to change it (e.g. change to http://www.extrapounds.com/blog/tatumsmom).
just in case anyone was wondering why their google reader wasn't updating!
hey everyone. it's nice being back in town and back in my own bed, although sometimes at work I wish I were still on vacation. that's why we work though -- to pay the bills and be able to take some time off and do fun stuff every once in a while. ain't that the truth. anyway, i was looking over my friend list today and I noticed that the greater half of the people on it no longer blog at all and many of you don't post as much. granted, i don't blog myself as often as before, but still, it's always nice to see posts and comments from my friends. maybe i need to go out and find a few more friends! only kidding. much to all my friends -- even those of you on EP sabbatical.
i was looking at my weight graph and noticed that seemingly out of nowhere, i have less than 10 pounds to goal. that is pretty sweet. for those of you who haven't been with me on my whole journey, i started out here almost 2 years ago after a breakup (I don't think I mentioned that part before), when I was feeling pretty low. i had gained a lot of weight from emotional/binge eating and was up to the highest weight of my life. i felt totally out of control [with eating] and felt that i couldn't lose the weight on my own. I joined jenny craig and managed to lose a lot of weight on the program. However, it did not last. I eventually started gaining the weight back and got back up to my previous high.
something in me changed though. i realized after doing jenny that it WAS possible for me to lose/maintain weight if I really wanted it and if I put my mind to it. sometimes i lose my motivation, but i get up again. i am in control this time.
this go round losing the weight has been very different from my first time 'round and it's better for me and my lifestyle. i'm not eating pre-planned meals, not losing a predictable amount each week, and not going to the gym as regularly. instead, i'm cooking lots more, indulging when i want to (but trying not to binge-eat), going up and down (and up and down again) on the scale (but heading down overall), and getting out there with friends -- going on hikes and bikes. it's more my style. what's your style?
it seems that i love food so much that i talk about it all the time. seriously, after returning from my trip to canada (banf national park! and vancouver!), my trip to Houston, and my lovely two week trip to europe, i must say, i just enjoy food. a lot.
in Italy, I was in love with the gelato. the pizza was great too, and the seafood pasta. did you know that in Italy, they mostly eat pizza without cheese? just dough, sauce, and toppings. and the ones that had cheese mostly had no sauce! i temporarily suspended my aversion to beer enough to enjoy it while i was in germany. the pastries in france were divine... yummy pain au chocolat et croissants... much smaller than the ones you get here, but definitely as rich. and the hazelnut butter (nutella and others) was so good too! plus, i love markets (and grocery stores), especially open air markets, so when we got to go to several of them in venice, including a fish market, i was pretty much in heaven (and wishing i had a stove and some pots and pans). the produce was superb as well -- and i did get a lot of fruit from those markets and thoroughly enjoyed all of it.
here's a picture of me at the fish market
however, apparently my non-stop food diatribe caused my travel companions some malaise. at the end of the trip, one of B's friends (who became my friend too after two weeks of living together) told me - in earnest - that if he were blind, he would think i weighed 400 pounds. encroyable!
anyway, i know i've been gone for a bit, but it was so much fun! we did a lot of walking, a lot of sight-seeing, and a lot of partying -- especially at the wedding in germany. it was a really small town of only 420 people! i'll try to post some more pictures of the actual wedding and talk about all the different wedding traditions they have in my next post, but for now here is a pic of us on the night before.
so much fun! i'll try to catch up with all of you soon & thanks for the comments while i was away!
Hallo everyone! I am writing an update mostly because I feel that if I don't it's going to get to be a really long time before another. I've mostly survived the week and weekends without B. The scale this morning was up a pound, which I am choosing to ignore because I had a great day yesterday.
I started off the day with working on a webpage for the book club that I'm in -- it's looking pretty good so far and I had thought to continue that today maybe a bit later... after that, I met up with a friend of mine whose husband is also out of town and we had lunch at McAllister's -- my first time there and I made a good choice in the corned beef sandwich with side of fruit. I checked out the nutritionals just now and found them to be to my satisfaction. Solid work! Then, I met up with another friend and we went on a bike ride down to the university and then back to my place. I'm not sure the distance this time, but I'd guess somewhere in the 15 mile range. Finally, I made some green beans from Trader Joe's and brought them to a work potluck.
I was exhausted by the time I got home. Oh yeah- I did indulge in a small slice of apple cake, a mini cupcake, and a small piece of brownie at the potluck. Reasonable, methinks. Anyway at that point, my [ex]roommate's bf came over with the U-Haul and together we loaded her big items (mattress, couch, coffee table, etc.) into the truck. He's being really sweet and moving her big items while she's out of town. After that I pretty much crashed.
I've been having a hard week though. Every day it's sorta felt like torture after I got home and knew I still had x number of days until B got back. This is definitely melodramatic, so thank you for indulging me. I know that a lot of you are in actual long-distance relationships and I wouldn't have any sympathy for myself in your positions either. However, it's really been testing me, I think, and I don't really mean on an eating level. Mentally, I've just been feeling like something is wrong, like I'm a little too dependent for my own comfort.
Example: yesterday (Saturday), I felt somewhat like I was waiting all day for B to call (in between all of my activities. More true on Friday than on Saturday). I hate waiting. At the same time, if I call him, he most of the time doesn't answer (bad reception apparently in middle of nowhere MI). He's been working the whole time including weekends, so he doesn't really get much time to call. On Friday night he called around 9:30 his time and basically said he couldn't talk long because he had to get up at 5:30 the next day for a 5K race (yeah, fun way to "work", right?). It's been like that almost everyday as they work until 6:30 and then go out for long group dinners. I always feel that I'm the one keeping him on the phone, which started really bothering me to the point that I didn't even want to talk to him.
Yesterday, he called around 7:30 when I was still at the potluck just to say they were about to go to dinner. Then he called back at 11:30 (again, his time) saying they were done eating and were going out to the bar for drinks. I think he was intending to talk to me then, but it was so loud and noisy in the background and people were talking to him (saying 'bye'?) so it was less than ideal and I asked him if he just wanted to call me back afterward, which he readily agreed to.
I was already pretty exhausted by that point and also just annoyed that I didn't get to talk with him. If I'm being honest, I also blame him for not making more time for me. An hour after that, I shut my ringer off and went to sleep. B finally called me back at 2:20AM his time. His message said they'd only had enough cars/designated drivers such that he had to wait until everyone was ready to leave before he could. I haven't talked to him yet today, surprise, surprise, so I have to keep telling myself it's not his fault he can't talk.
I guess I had more to get off my chest than I had initally thought. If you got this far, thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts, would really like to hear 'em. =)
It's been a while since I've had a whole lot of down time, but this weekend I think I've made up for it. Yesterday, I pretty much did nothing - ALL day. I watched a few movies (Legends of the Fall, Bella, 2 Days in Paris) and went to a party in the evening thrown by one of the senior guys at work. Oh, I did also make Ghiradelli brownies for the party -- not super healthy, but I did substitute apple sauce for 1/2 of the oil. It was a nice day, but by today I felt like I really needed to get out and do something. Plus, doing nothing all day means I eat too much all day too!
My roomie is getting her own place in August so she's started the move out process and is mostly living out of her bf's house at present. That's made it pretty quiet around the house because her dog is gone also. Since it's starting to look a little empty already, I decided to go ahead and clean a bit more, which for me today meant opening the huge stacks of junk mail and other mail that has been piling up forever. I shredded tons of paper today. Why do they send us so much junk!? I also did all of the dishes and put away old dishes that had been sitting out. Doesn't sound like much, but I felt accomplished.
I also went on a 17 miler bike ride with one of my friends whose significant other is out of town as well. We took a nice 2 hour ride up a trail in one of my favorite parts of town. By the time we got back, I was pretty hungry, so I had some cantaloupe and a lazy, easy lean cuisine entree.
B left town on Friday morning so all last week we tried to spend as much time with each other as we could. It's a little strange to me because the last relationship I was in was long distance, so at the beginning, when B & I started dating, I thought I was spoiled to get to spend so much time with him, but now I'm used to it and I don't much like his being gone. It's somewhat bad timing, because he is out of town for 11 days, then back 2 days together, then I leave town for the next 10 days on vacay with my parents, then I'm back for 2 days, then I leave for the next 4 days on work travel. Luckily after that we get to go on an awesome trip together. However, I am not looking forward to the whole next week. I miss you B!
My goals are to not eat because I'm bored or just feeling lonely. Think I can do it?
hey, everyone! things over here are going well other than me really feeling like not being at work and legs being extremely sore from this past weekend's camping trip. 9 of us climbed Wheeler Peak, the highest point in NM. the hardest part of the trip was carrying up the 35-lb packs up the hill, but in the end it was worth it. saw a few lakes and there was even some snow still up top. no pictures yet, but I'll post some later.
however.... the big news of this post is from the weekend before this past, when jenny*in*london and i had a rendez-vous in Santa Fe! she happened to be in town for a wedding, so we decided (or I did at least) that we just had to meet up. ...and it was a blast! my first ever meet-up with an EPer in real life! i was a little nervous and mucho excited because you never know how things like this will turn out. ...but it ended up being just super awesome and not at all awkward & I was really amazed at how much jenny & I had in common (besides the EP thread, of course). first I drove up to santa fe, we met up in the plaza, grabbed a bite at a local cafe, walked around, and just gabbed a bunch. later that evening, we met up on my turf, in Abq, to eat some new mexico famous green-chile & pepperoni pizza.
here's a pic that D took of us (btw, he was just as cute and nice and fun as jenny descibed =) ):
Pretty good for no formal
training and for using a mountain bike when a lot of the fast people
had racing bikes. B and I decided to bike together for the whole race
which was also a lot of fun and we met up with our other 4 friends at
the end. I had forgotten how much I enjoy racing was and started thinking
I need to find another one to sign up for soon!
), a pumpkin
cookie cutter, festive fall sprinkles with leaves and jimmies, a magazine, a pink reusable grocery bag in honor of breast
cancer, and Halloween-themed cupcake liners... just to name a few. 
only kidding. much 
to all my friends -- even those of you on EP sabbatical.
