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[Weightloss] Let’s call it a Mesa, I like that better than Plateau

Apr25

So, as some of you may recall, one of my goals for the year is to lose 33 lbs over the year.

I was doing pretty okay for January and the first half of February – except that, rather than plateauing the week of my period and then dropping 2 weeks’ worth afterwards, as I did the first time I did this, I just plateaued and then returned to normal (slightly under 1 lb/week) loss afterwards. Rather frustrating, but survivable.

Then Late February into Mid-April happened. Sick, moody, sick, moody, different sort of sick…

…and then I didn’t step on the scale for two or three weeks, during which there were three birthday celebrations and a LARP with Domino’s Pizza.

I am exactly where I was when I last weighed myself (or at least wrote it down) at the end of February.

Okay! So that’s the new starting point. 166.6 (With Oli: 179.2). It’s Thursday, I’ll average every Wednesday.

Go!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/518734.html. You can comment here or there.

An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer

Apr12

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

That is, approximately, the sound of fangirlish glee that could be heard from the Lyn this past weekend.

For my/our birthday, my Best Friend Evar bought tickets to this.

And thus T. and I drove up to Troy (near Albany) (where Best Friend Evar & Boyfriend live) for last weekend, where we engaged in tasty tasty Indian food, hung out at the workplace of said best frien & boyfriend – they’re in the middle of a deliverable, boo bad timing – and then rode with them to Bard College for an evening with Neil and Amanda.

Woah.

There is something absolutely awesome about hearing your favorite authors read out loud. It’s like you’re hearing the story exactly as it was meant to be. Also, Neil Gaiman has an awesome voice.

And awesome poetry.

And I bought a poster.

And it was awesome. Did I mention that?

If I have one quibble – and I do – it’s that the acoustic in Bard College’s theatre were better than their sound system allowed for. Amanda Palmer’s lovely singing was just a bit too loud – and we were in the very back row. Pity anyone with a migraine in a closer seat.

Still. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/509371.html. You can comment here or there.

Tasty (Wednesday): Babka for Easter

Apr3

For Easter Sunday, as a change from the Incredible Simple Cake we made for St. Patty’s Day, we made a “traditional bread” that involved milk, eggs, leavening, sugar, and rum (as well as fruit and the normal ingredients)

Spousal Unit comes from a Polish family, and since I have almost no ethnic tradition of my own (When asked to write a poem about my roots in high school, I wrote “I bury me feet deep/in mud-deep soil/I walk barefoot through the land/my ancestors farmed…” Ethnicity? Farmer), I tend to borrow his.

So when this recipe – Polish Babka – popped up in my inbox, we just had to try it.

Wow.

Warning: we ate the entire thing. In one sitting. Um. There’s two of us.

Wow.

Notes: The candied fruit really added nothing, which is sad, because Rion and I quested for it. We’d double or treble the raisins next time & skip the fruit. And it really does need a full day to soak, and a heavier rum sauce (I added a 1/4 cup of dark rum, what’s this tablespoon crap?).

But really, wow.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/504671.html. You can comment here or there.

…but we’re a cat family! Thorne Thursday

Mar28

This weekend, I encountered Newfoundland dogs for the first time in the flesh, and, oh, boy, is there a lot flesh!

A friend is considering adopting one of these giant dogs (as a merely-huge puppy), so I went with him to visit a breeder south of Ithaca.

I have never seen a dog this big! I have also never seen a friendly large-breed dog as mellow as these dogs. While kisses abounded, and petting was definitely a must, my friend, the breeder, and I were in a small room with four grown dogs and a puppy and it never got to the uncomfortable jumping-all-over-everyone stage.

This breeder’s male dogs range easily up to a hundred and fifty pounds; the females are a little bit smaller, staying around one-twenty. They can get even bigger than that, I’m told, up to around 170 pounds for the males and 150 for the females.

Newfies are originally bred as working dogs; the breeder casually told us that we could hook them up to a cart when they had reached eighteen months. Just what I need for my back yard: a bear-like pony to haul around yard waste!

Tempting. So very, very tempting. But my kitties look at me and remind me that we’re a kitty family.

And, besides, we’ve got to rip out 3/4 of the house this summer. We can wait for a puppy until after that.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/499923.html. You can comment here or there.

Irish Soda Bread

Mar19

T. and I like cooking for the holidays.

We really do. It’s a fun excuse to try something we don’t normally do. Or something we like doing that’s a lot of work.

We have never made soda bread before, so we decided we would try that this time. We went with this site. I think it’s a bit preachy, and did not attempt to verify the veracity (heehe) of its claims, but I wanted to try a simple bread first.

(Plus another recipe we found called for a stick of butter. I am trying to lose weight here, people!)

To quote the site: The basic soda bread is made with flour, baking soda, salt, and soured milk (or buttermilk). That’s it!

So that’s what we did. Our Dutch Oven is a bit big, so I nested a round Pyrex inside it, put the bread in that, and otherwise followed the recipe completely (we did the brown bread one, the 1st recipe).

Tasty! T. thinks it needs another flavor if we do it again, and it is an immensely dense and filling dough, but it worked really well with our corned beef brisket in french onions soup.

Experiment: Success.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/494326.html. You can comment here or there.

Tasty (Wednesday): Two-ingredient Cake

Feb27

Last week, we tried a 2-ingredient cake.

Super simple:
Box of Angel Food Cake Mix (one-packet sort, not two-packet sort)
20oz can of Crushed pineapple

Mix, including the juice in the can. Cook at 350 for 25-35 minutes. Enjoy (or frost, but we didn’t).

We then tried cooking it with strawberries instead, but the fluid level got weird and we ended up with sort of cake-mush. We shall try again!.

It’s tasty (even the strawberry mush version), and without a frosting, it’s pretty low on calories and pretty much fat-free.

<3<3<3

I’ll let you know when we figure out the strawberry version.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/483290.html. You can comment here or there.

The Foyer – a caelo usque ad centrum

Feb19

I mentioned in my current Giraffe Call (LJ) that we’re going to start working on our Foyer soon.

I’ll do my best to post “before” pics this evening, but in the meantime, I’d like to lay out a bit of what we’re looking at.

The foyer is a 8×4 space with doors on three sides: the front door, the doorway to the utility room, and the doorway to the kitchen. The fourth side has an open “closet” space with a fold-up bench.

It was covered in hideous wallpaper when we moved in (Much of the house was covered in hideous something.) We’ve stripped the wallpaper off, leaving bare walls, and done much of the mudding and sanding.

To finish the foyer, we will need to:

  • tape, mud, sand, and finish the upper edge of the room
  • paint the entire room, including ceiling
  • paint and install trim around all three doorways
  • install a door in the doorway to the utility room (possibly but less likely, also in the kitchen doorway)
  • replace the over head light
  • repair the floor
  • remove the extant, rotting-out, header for the closet (where there were once hooks)
  • replace the header with overhead storage
  • remove the lovely fold-up bench and replace it with one in better shape
  • re-install the closet rod, re-install the hooks or get new ones, or paint the old ones and re-install
  • stencil a phrase between the overhead header and the seat: a caelo usque ad centrum (see here
    …and I’m sure there’s more. But, when we’re done, we’ll have a welcoming, lovely entryway in which to invite people into our home.

    Once the snow melts, we can really get started!

    This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/479828.html. You can comment here or there.

Seeeeeeeeds!

Feb14

It’s the time of the year when we start planning our garden. This time of year, the snow and the slush demand some thinking about the warmth and the nice weather to come.

Also, seed catalogues have the best sales in February.

So, the T. and I were all set to put together an order last night – just needed to look through the box of freecycled seeds I’d picked up Tuesday – and then.

We opened the box.

O_O

Squash, at least three types
Four types of melons.
cumin, basil, more basil, parsley.
Peas, beans, GARBANZO beans, peas. Beans.
Posies. Loads and loads of posies.
Spinach. Lettuce. Two types of Kale.
five types of tomatoes
tomatillos
habeneros
bell peppers
Turnips, carrots, parsnips, rutabega, BEETS
Onions.

We’re gonna need a bigger garden.

They’re not new seeds; they’ll probably have a much lower germination rate than fresh seeds. But that’s okay. There’s enough overkill in there to allow for a rate as low as 10% on everything but the root veggies.

Guys, this is awesome.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/475814.html. You can comment here or there.

Clean-all-the-things-write-all-the-things weekend

Feb10

I’ve been alternating bouts of cleaning with bouts of writing all weekend! And the house – kitchen and bathroom, in particular – is a lot cleaner, and the writing is a lot more writier. I feel exhausted (Some of that is/was the shoveling) and very accomplished.

Have a couple excerpts:

“…Now, if Rin-nin was willing to throw her weight around…”

“But she doesn’t do that. I mean…” He thought of the few times that he’d seen her flash the signet ring. “Not a lot.”

“You two are allowed to keep on the way you do, providing that you do not cross the line, and you do not interfere with anyone else’s schooling. You’re coming close to both with Illian. What’s more, we need him.”

“She doesn’t spook.”

“True.” Agmund accepted the implicit truce. “So something spooked her. Close the doors, quickly. You.” He grabbed the nearest student. “Run, get Luke. Close all doors behind you.”

“If he keeps clawing that thing, he’s not going to have anything left to hold on to.’

“What’s Dad say?”
Mom paused with her back half to him. He thought she might not answer. When she turned around, her face was strange and her signs were tight and unhappy. “Dad understands.”
“I don’t.”

Back to the writing board!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/472819.html. You can comment here or there.

Tasty Tuesday: Baked Apple Steel-Cut Oats

Feb5

On weekends when we’re feeling like taking the time, we like to eat steel cut oats. They’re chewier and earthier tasting than rolled oats, but they can be very time-consuming (and really irritating to do in the microwave. Boil-overs everywhere!)

This is one of our go-to recipes, modified from The Kitchn‘s Baked Pumpkin Steel-Cut Oats.

The recipe claims to serve 4 to 6. This is a heavy breakfast for 3 to 4 for us.

1 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1 1/2 cups steel cut oats
1 cup unsweetened applesauce or apple butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon allspice
(we use fresh ground spices for all but the ginger)
4 cups warm water
(Sometimes I use apple cider for part of it, or I put in 1/4c powdered milk.)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Pre-heat oven to 375F

Use an oven-safe pot on the stovetop on medium to medium-high.

Melt half the butter.

Add the oats, and toast them, stirring frequently, until they change color and smell toasty.

Move the oats to one side of the pan. Melt the second half of the butter, then add the applesauce and cook until it starts to stick to the bottom.

Add spices and water/milk/cider, and stir until everything is combined. Lid your pan, and put it in the oven.

Cook for 35 minutes. Let sit on the stove for approx. 5 minutes to thicken and cool to edibility.

Garnish with chopped walnuts, if you wish, drizzle on a bit of milk, and sweeten to taste. It doesn’t take much!

And now you, too, can enjoy a Thorne Family Saturday morning!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/470108.html. You can comment here or there.