I haven't been very accountable to you lately with regard to WW progress. So, let's catch up today.
Charting 12 (4/12) +1. I was ok with that. lots of losses since January. Looking good, feeling good.
Charting 13 (4/17) FLAT. Ok, clearly my body is rebelling, but let's look at the goals I'd set 12 weeks ago ...
Lose 15 pounds. Actually lost 16.4 pounds YAY!
48 workouts. I need to check my calendar, but definitely exceeded this one. More like 60 workouts.
120 minutes running straight. I haven't quite hit this one. So close. In 2 hours of running, I usually walk 5-8 minutes. I can live with this.
48 home cooked dinners. Done. The last few weeks I haven't been as good, but getting back on track with cooking from home.
36 lunches brought from home. All the dinner cooking for the last 12 weeks translated into about 40 lunches brought from home.
We set new goals a few weeks ago to stay on track with seasons, I'll need to share my spring goals with you a little later.
All in all, I'm happy with where I am today. Ready to tackle the OKC Memorial Half Marathon on Sunday. Should be a beautiful day for a run. This is about finishing, not time. And, cheering on the Hub as he completes his first marathon - I'm SO impressed!!!
Nothing new & magic this week. In fact, the night before weighing in, I had a couple of glasses of wine, a couple of ounces of cheese & a bunch of grapes. Grapes can be danger food for me. I have to ration them out. While no one certainly ever got fat from grapes, they are not the lowest point snack in the world. Good for you, but I have to watch that I don't eat the whole bag/container. Good thing the Hub loves them so I can't snarf them all.
Have fallen a bit off the cooking wagon. Need to get back on that wagon. Running is going well ~ and the last long run was Saturday morning on a perfect day. Mid-40s, no wind. Wow. What a difference. Hopefully, we'll have that kind of weather for the OKC Memorial Marathon.
I was quite surprised by this number. First off, since I'd lost a good bit last week & on a different scale than my normal meeting, I'd prepped myself for minimal loss or even a small gain. Even though I've exercised & stayed within my WW points this week. Even though my week started mid-girls trip to the beach. And, I drank wine & ate snacks. I just tracked and planned for it. The surprise was on me! Yay!
A little celebration of me this week at my WW meeting. Heather, our illustrious leader, asked what works for me. And, while I mentioned that last year had been difficult, the meetings & objective weekly weigh-in work for me. I break the WW rule of weighing at home. I do it almost every day. But, those don't count. The official weigh-in that comes with the sticker at my WW meeting is the real one. And, then, if I've taken the time to go weigh-in, I might as well stay for the meeting. I've already done the hard part: getting up & driving to the scale. When the weather is nicer, I should probably bike or run to the scale. But not today.
Yoga twice this week - would have gone today except the celebratory First Day o' Spring blizzard has arrived - has helped me get focus some more. Running is going well, even if the sleeping isn't. Lack of sleep is another prohibiter to weight loss - scientifically proven. This time change has really thrown me for a loop and thrown my sleep cycle off. So, my longest run during the week was in the evening. I'm not a good evening exerciser - too full from lunch, less energy in general. But, I pushed through to 6 miles so I can run 11 in the snow tomorrow.
So, the Hub & I had some grand plans for the day. Errand running, checking stuff out. Looks like we're homebound. I'll have to get creative with the menu since I haven't been to the grocery in a couple of weeks for real shopping. Maybe Mexican pizza for lunch & pasta for supper.
If the snow stays like this, I'll be riding with the Hub to tomorrow's long run. I have 11 to do & he has 20. I'll just wait for him in the car because I don't drive in this mess. Happy Spring.
Last week First Lady Michelle Obama announced her Let's Move plan - an effort to end childhood obesity in this country. This is my stream of consciousness discussion/rant on that topic.
Let me begin with noting that I was not a fat kid - I began my seesaw weight in college, really. Up & down, Up & down. Until, and even then, I was fairly active. Dance for 10+ years, 2 years of awful basketball (decent D, decent free throw and no fear at taking a charge, but shooting? HORRENDOUS.), cheerleading, with aerobics, jazzercise & whatnot mixed in. I grew to be fat as an adult - a completely different topic that we occasionally visit here. Back to the today's kids ...
This is a serious issue, people - today's kids will not live as long as I do, their healthcare costs will be astronomical. And, now folks are getting all up in arms that we're calling kids fat and that will lower their already low self-esteem. No one needs to call an individual child fat, or call them out by putting them on a Diet. What we need to rethink is our attitude toward food & movement.
Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver received a TED prize this year. His acceptance speech will make you stop in your tracks right now and wonder about what's being served in lunchrooms across the country and how we make food prep, cooking and real food the center of our diet (little "d" as in what we eat, not weight loss). Here's his acceptance speech (if you have problems w/ the video, click HERE to be taken directly to the speech) :
This speech made me cry. I was lucky. My parents & grandparents taught me about food - fresh food, cooking and food prep that didn't require cooking. Fast food is not the enemy. There is real food in fast food and some of the brands in this industry do well by kids. It's not public assistance programs that are the enemy. Most of what I buy at the store these days is WIC approved. In fact, looking for that sticker at the grocery store can help you make better choices when shopping.
I get it, we're time pressed. But does it take any longer to slice a banana on top of a smear of peanut butter on bread than it does to microwave a pizza? No. We need to rethink convenience. This is NOT an indictment of women - busy moms, whether they work or stay at home, all have time pressures. While Mom makes most of the food-related decisions & purchases in a household, Dad has a real role here. And both parents (or caregivers, or whatever responsible adults are in the lives of children) have a responsibility to set an example. Lord knows, we've got plenty of fat adults out there ... and, believe me, I know it's hard to get weight under control as an adult.
What about the food kids eat at school - sometimes both breakfast and lunch? Institutionalized food is typically higher in fat, sodium & lots of other stuff we need to moderate. Ann Cooper is on a mission to change the food kids eat in school. She's a true renegade and her book Lunch Lessonsis a valuable read for parents, non-parents and anyone interested in food in this country. You can follow her on Twitter as @chefannc.
The Association of Junior Leagues International (AJLI) launched a program called Kids in the Kitchen a few years ago for local Junior Leagues to implement in their communities focusing on the issue of childhood obesity and teaching kids about food. Different Junior Leagues implement the program in different ways, but you can find local programs in your community (hopefully) to find resources to make YOUR kitchen healthier for your kids & get them involved in food. In Oklahoma City, we've had different partners over the years to make the program relevant to local kids in our community projects.
So, food is one piece of the puzzle with activity as the other main piece. I love our neighborhood & I love our street. I love that the parents on our street kick their kids outdoors and I see games like Hide & Seek, War, pretend and so much more when I drive home. There's fun & value in having kids active with technology & gaming, but that can't replace the social negotiations learned from group play.
While it may be surprising to you to know there's scientific research behind the benefits of play, I was a Leisure Services (read: Recreation) major in college. While that garners a good laugh here & there, the reality is I've spent most of my adult working life with people who volunteer in their LEISURE TIME. Play is a leisure time activity - we use our brains differently which can translate, for kids into academic & career success. I get it. Lots of schools no longer do - PE is elective, or doesn't exist at all. Elementary schools cancel recess to gain more instructional time. Most teachers will tell you that kids need recess - not just for the break, but to learn group dynamics, negotiation, competition and life skills (p.s. I am a BIG fan of Cartoon Network's Rescue Recess program and the NFL's Play 60 program, check them out)
I'm a Michelle Obama fan anyway, but really? Who actually thinks her plan is a bad idea? Ending childhood obesity is NOT a political issue. It's a future of our country issue.
So, for the last 8 or 9 years (OKC, Little Rock & OKC again) I've hosted a Christmas Cookie Exchange. While the Hub & I entertain small groups of folks frequently, this little shindig has grown over the years and I truly look forward to having friends over primarily for the drinking ... cookies are just an excuse for Sunday afternoon cocktails.
The last few years, the Cookie Party has been on the last Sunday before Christmas. The day & date seem to work well for lots of folks, although we always miss a few folks who have hit the road to visit family. We're leaving the next day for Orlando to spend Christmas with my family. Fun posts & pics to follow on that.
So, Christi's Cookie Exchange 2009 ...
Invitations? Check. Whitney English, of course. Actually, subsidiary, Hicks Paper Goods - Tangle. (Visit Sara Hicks Malone's blog, Party Perfect for great ideas)The printer didn't like these, so I had to order extra. I hate it when the printer does that.
Drinks? A slight change for 2009 ... signature cocktail to this point has been a poinsetta, however, this year I'm making Ingrid Hoffman's Wicked Chica Punch ... can't wait to start macerating the strawberries.
Music? I have 12 straight hours of Christmas music on my iPod. No repeat songs by artist. Lots of repeat songs total, so even shuffling the play list can mean 3 versions of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen(fyi - Barenaked Ladies w/ Sarah McLachlan is my fave version), so I have to stay on top of it. Newest edition? Sugarland's Green & Gold ... haven't seen this year's Starbucks mix, but it's usually very good.
Cookies? That's the one I haven't decided yet. I'll get on that in the next week or so. Mom brought my grandmother's cookies recipes ... cut straight out of a 1956 Woman's Day magazine, so I may go old school. When I was a little girl, my Mom, Aunt Lynn, Grandma O & I would make, oh I don't know, dozens & dozens ... or hundreds & hundreds of cookies on a Saturday. It was so much fun. I can't imagine making all of those cookies now, which I why I love a cookie exchange.
In addition to enjoying some girl time (the Hub banishes himself to BWW, or the Sports Palace, if he arrives home before the cocktails stop flowing), it's such a treat to bring so many kinds of cookies home without all the fuss.
The rules for this exchange are simple. Bring 4 dozen homemade cookies (and, if you cheat & bring store-brought, they better look homemade). No chocolate chip cookies ... they're too easy. (Now, cookies can have chocolate chips in them, they just can't be traditional Nestle Toll House.) And, the last is really not a rule, but a recommendation based on experience ... Designated drivers are encouraged. (Seriously.)
If you have thoughts on a cookie recipe you think I should try or a recommendation on Christmas music I should add to the playlist, just post a comment and send the recipe or a link.
p.s. - this may be the most hyperlinks I've included in a post. too many?
I love fall for a number of reasons ... it cools off (although I'm not a cold weather gal), college football & tailgating, my BIRTHDAY and the season of cooking commences.
I like to cook, although the average week at the homestead doesn't necessarily reflect that. It's either feast or famine at the house. Right now, we're in feasting mode since i went to the market yesterday. Cooking for me this weekend will entail:
Pear Brioche Bread Pudding for Dinner Club tonight,
Stuffing for tailgating (thanks, Celena, for the stuffing ball idea) since it's Thanksgiving for OSU football tomorrow,
Chili for next Thursday night's game in Stillwater (will freeze so the Hub can warm in crockpot for tailgating before I get there), and
I'm aiming for dinner @ home 3 nights next week
I have a wee bit of a cookbook addiction, read them like novels & whatnot. But, my greatest source for recipes right now are my lovely friends on Twitter & Facebook. Yesterday, I posted a question for a stuffing recipe, since my Mom is out of the country & I'm not usually responsible for that dish at holidays. I agreed to make it for tailgating because that's what we needed and I definitely have confidence in my ability to pull off a good stuffing/dressing. But, I thought, "Why not ask my friends? Surely they'll have a recommendation." And, boy did they.
I eventually went with Sara's epicurious.comrecommendation since it had cornbread (hello - I fell in LOVE with cornbread dressing when I moved to OK), sausage & cranberries (although Sara leaves those out, maybe I'll make some w/ and w/out.) But, seriously, my question led to 12 comments and at least 6 different recipes & suggestions. I am, however, going to modify Sara's recipe based on Celena's recipe to shape dressing into balls & cook. That will be SO much easier for tailgating! Will try to post pics post-game.
If you're looking for additional recipe recommendations, join the Supper Club group on Facebook. It's a good one!
If you're in Stillwater on Saturday, swing by ... we are west of the stadium due south of Cordell. (this is apparently meaningful to people who went to OSU. I once described us as north of the architecture bldg, however there are TWO buildings with "architecture" in the name. Does that make sense??)
Maybe it's because I'm a woman and not a man, that I pay careful attention to the roles women play in society.
In a recent article in the NY Times Magazine article Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, Michael Pollan reviews the new movie Julie & Julia and discusses society in the time of Julia Child's PBS cooking show and his family's reaction to it. He continues:
"Curiously, the year Julia Child went on the air — 1963 — was the same year BettyFriedanpublished “The Feminine Mystique,” the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression. You may think of these two figures as antagonists, but that wouldn’t be quite right. They actually had a great deal in common, as Child’s biographer, Laura Shapiro, points out, and addressed the aspirations of many of the same women. Julia never referred to her viewers as “housewives” — a word she detested — and never condescended to them. She tried to show the sort of women who read “The Feminine Mystique” that, far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman’s attention. (A man’s too.) Second-wave feminists were often ambivalent on the gender politics of cooking. Simone de Beauvoir wrote in “The Second Sex” that though cooking could be oppressive, it could also be a form of “revelation and creation; and a woman can find special satisfaction in a successful cake or a flaky pastry, for not everyone can do it: one must have the gift.” This can be read either as a special Frenchie exemption for the culinary arts (féminisme, c’est bon, but we must not jeopardize those flaky pastries!) or as a bit of wisdom that some American feminists thoughtlessly trampled in their rush to get women out of the kitchen."
With a women's studies minor, I am well acquainted with Betty Friedan & Simone de Beauvoir. And, perhaps because home cooking was the provence of women, it was "trampled" upon by some feminists. Isn't it interesting, still, though the hold men have on the commercial kitchen and chefdom? We still seem amazed by women chefs and sometimes appalled that there aren't more them. But, let's face it .. most of us don't eat food prepared by a chef on a daily basis. By a cook? Yes - home or out, but not usually a chef.
Michael Pollan is a defender of whole food - the stats that support home cooking are astonishing. Cooking is important. Poor women who cook often have a better diet than more wealthy women who eat prepared foods (Journal of American Dietetic Association, 1992 study) And, today we only spend an average of 27 minutes in food preparation ... which may mean just pairing pre-fab foods together, not really cooking from scratch.
I love to cook, but don't take the time all that often. I know when the food I prepare actually comes from the ground, meaning the purest form of the meat, vegetables, grain possible, we eat better and feel better. Yet, the time crunch gets us. It gets me. I spend more time reading my cookbooks than cooking from them at times.
I'm off to see Julie & Juliatonight with a friend who also enjoys cooking. May it inspire me to cook most nights of the week .... and perhaps a few mornings & noons as well. You can get Michael Pollan's books from your local library.
Sorry, folks, for the limited posts this week ... work travel, plus a crazy schedule led to poor planning on my part. This point has been in my brain for three days, and, finally, I get to put fingers to keyboard ... whew.
I was in Las Vegas this week for work planning for Sonic's upcoming national Convention. I went with some folks on our team to visit a restaurant onsite for a possible special event, RM Seafood. Yes, Rick Moonen's restaurant at Mandalay Place. Chef Moonen was a contestant on Top Chef Masters and in a heartbreaking quickfire, ran out of time to plate anything ... anything at all. He stormed back in the elimination round to win that round, but because he scored zero stars for quickfire, was eliminated.
Our Convention will be at Mandalay Bay, so that ab fab restaurants onsite offer unique opportunities for ancillary events. So, off we went to visit ... I'm not responsible for this event, so I completely tagged along to visit Chef Moonen's restaurant.
RM Seafood is lovely .. clean lines, warm tones and a wonderful menu. What's also very clear is RM's commitment to sustainable seafood. In addition to clearly presenting his commitment to sustainability, Chef Moonen also prominently posts his restaurants's mission statement:
At Rm Seafood, we are committed to use organically grown, sustainable produce and sustainably caught seafood. We have made a public commitment to solely purchase sustainable wines by June 2008 and 95 percent of the menu proteins come from sustainably raised or caught seafood. It is our goal at RM Seafood to help our guest connect their individual buying decisions to the health of the oceans and the soil.
In addition to providing customers with sustainable products and telling what that means, RM Seafood also has pocket take-home guides from Seafood Watchavailable. Seafood Watch is a program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium to help educate consumers about choices they can make to preserve and protect the seafood supply. Their pocket guides are very useful and can be taken to the store or a restaurant. There are guides for fish, shellfish and sushi.
So, I'll now order arctic char instead of chilean sea bass (which I knew was on the no-no list) ... and, make sure my tilapia is US farmed, not Asian farmed. And, I need to give up monkfish completely (tangent - have you every SEEN a monkfish? UGLY.) & limit my favorite Florida grouper for now.
Oh, and the best part about the visit to RM Seafood? MEETING RICK MOONEN. Yes, he was in the restaurant that afternoon & our contact from the hotel brought him over to meet our group. Three of us are Top Chef/Top Chef Masters fans and we were simply starstruck. Instead of saying something like, "Thanks, Chef Moonen for your commitment to sustainability, it's such a pleasure to meet you," I managed croak out, "Hi, Chef, I'm Christi, it's nice to meet you." I. Am. A. Dork. He, on the other hand, was quite kind and welcomed us to his restaurant and let us know that he & his team would take good care of our group.
Now, about scoring an invitation to that Sonic convention event...
I'm in a cooking rut, although last night I managed to pull out a pretty quick & delish dinner of BBQ chix thighs (leftover from antoher grilling night, at least I made extra and could freeze), homemade potato salad with the prettiest red & yellow potatoes, bean salad and fresh fruit.
But now, I'm faced with what to cook tonight, and tomorrow and the next night. I'm not sure where to get inspired - my usual cookbooks, shows & online options aren't inspiring.
Any helpful hints? It's just so bloody hot, I can't stand the heat, so I'm getting out of the kitchen (as much as possible!)
It's the beautiful summer season and, for me, that means more time cooking my favorite foods. I just love fresh summer fruits and vegetables. I must not be the only person because I'm seeing list after list of cookbooks ... so, here I am, sharing the wealth.
From NPR - the 10 Best Summer Cookbooks of 2009 list. Since I've actually wanted to learn about preserving for some time, there's a book on this list I find interesting, along with the to-be-expected grill book, Memorable Recipes from the Sur la Table president looks fantastic as well as the books Tacos (man, I love almost anything wrapped in a tortilla) and the Modern Vegetarian.
From Real Simple - the Best Summer Cookbooks looks like a great list, too. From Bobby Flay's Burgers, Shakes & Fries (like his recipes, not so much his style) to Ina Garten's classic The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, not all of these are new, but they are really, really good.
I love to read the summer season recipes in magazines and my old standby cookbooks. But, since I'm on a book buying diet, does the Library stock these fantastic cookbooks? I've never looked, but I will now!
