Sunday So Far

This morning I woke up with a craving for granola-topped yogurt. This was not an out-of-the-blue craving, but a craving precipitating directly from the preparation of these two foods last night. After our trip to the epic Kroger, I set some plain non-fat Dannon to strain in the fridge, and baked a batch of almond-prune granola. Sweetie helped with the mixing and finger-licking. The yogurt was suitably whey-free by morning, so I helped myself to a half cup of each.


Then I played with my hair. I tried a hairstyle celebrated on one of Glamour's blogs:


It's just two braids framing the face...nothing really innovative. However, it did manage to keep my front wisps of hair from falling into my eyes during the morning, so it may come in handy on days I don't feel like wearing a headband.

Around eleven, I caught some stray rebel bands beginning to organize in my brain: "I'm bored. Those Jelly Bellies sound good...." I figured it was time to mobilize the troops before those thoughts gained popular opinion. I put on my walking gear and covered 1.5 miles. Then I took my shoes off and dedicated myself to learning a certain dance to surprise Sweetie when he woke up. I can now perform it more or less seamlessly--though I won't attempt to again until my muscles regain the ability to move when my neurons tell them to.

A little before one, I popped a one-pan lunch into the oven: curried roasted root veggies with tofu!

-1 potato, cubed
-1/2 a large carrot, sliced
-1/4 block of firm tofu, cubed
-fist-sized broccoli head, chopped

I tossed the first three ingredients with salt, pepper, and curry powder and spread them on a sheet of aluminum foil coated with Pam. After 15 minutes at 350°, I turned the veggies/tofu, added the broccoli, sprayed some more Pam for security, and baked for another 15.



I'll say this clearly, to get my point across: yum yum yum yum yum! The curry wasn't very strong, but that was alright with me because it allowed the flavor of the potatoes and carrots to stand out. I thought this would be only half of lunch, because it's mostly plant material and only about 300 calories, but it was filling. I did get hungry again around three, so I blended up a standard Green Monster to hold me until dinner time.

Now said dinner time is rapidly approaching, and I have to figure out what to feed us. But I really don't feel like cooking. Cooking requires lifting my arms. Who would have thought a silly one-minute dance (repeated some twenty times) would be this taxing?

Kroger Kicked My ...

Given my overflow of udon, ramen, and niku-everything this week, you may be surprised to see that I was All-American today! I started the morning off with oatmeal:


With peanut butter and huge banana slices. The bananas I picked up last week have finally ripened on the outside, but because they were ridiculously big they're still firm and "green" tasting on the inside. Very strange.

After my treadmill session, I baked a pizza.


The final pie also had mushrooms and pineapple tidbits, but I took this photo to demonstrate the drastically different appearances of turkey (on my half) and regular pepperoni (on the side with the cheese). I accidentally grabbed turkey at the store, and thought I could sneak it by Sweetie, but he definitely noticed. Actually, he tried one and said it wasn't that bad. But after looking at the nutrition facts between the two types, I squirreled the turkey away for me and bought another regular bag for him >.>

In the afternoon we bundled up and drove to the mall to pick up a few things: pajama pants, eye masks (because sometimes Sweetie needs to work on the bedroom computer while I sleep, or I need to get dressed before he wakes up in the morning). And of course, a Shiny Pichu.


Afterwards, I surprised Sweetie with a trip to Arby's. We had coupons for free sandwiches with the purchase of fries and drinks, so we paid about half of what we normally would for two meals. I didn't take pictures, but I had a roast chicken club with no sauce or cheese (I added the Arby's BBQ sauce myself instead), a diet Dr. Pepper, and half a small order of curly fries. Sweetie had one of the new roastburgers without tomatoes or onions, plus "extra" bacon (off of my sandwich). He reports that it tastes pretty much like your average fast food burger. There was only one line cook working furiously in back, and I watched him while I waited for our tray. The good news: the meat is actual meat, carved on the premesis. The bad news: the curly fries look exactly the same before and after going into the oil. Hm....

Then we went to the grocery store with a short list of essentials: salad, carrots, that sort of thing. Usually, we go to the Kroger two miles south of us, far away from the city center. But for convenience sake, today we went to the enormous one on College Mall Road...and had our miserly natures thoroughly pummeled! We weren't exactly taken in by their dastardly marketing practices, but we were blind-sided by the crazy wide selections. We spent a good bit of time scampering around looking at bamboo rice bowls, a million kinds of hummus and cheeses, furniture, kitchen appliances, and the outrageously expanded "organics" section. Sweetie had fun teasing me with Amy's pizzas and Kashi cereal bars I can't afford -.- I did make a few impulse buys:



Soy-milk-based ice cream bars! I was initially torn between these and Tofutti fudgesicles, but the big problem with fudgesicles is that they're too virtuous. They're tiny and have "Only 30 Calories!" splashed all over the box, so you when you eat them you feel like you haven't eaten much at all. And then you feel at liberty to eat more later because you were "good." I'd much rather go for slightly bigger desserts and feel satisfied than lick at a fudgesicle only to raid the cookie jar later. Also:



Bulk Jelly Bellies! I don't buy the big assorted bags anymore because I can't stand half the flavors in them (margarita, banana, buttered popcorn...yuck yuck yuck). I stuck to my favorites with the quantity proportional to desirability, in this order: licorice, cinnamon, coconut, very cherry, toasted marshmallow, and root beer. Unfortunately, they didn't have Dr. Pepper or caramel apple, or my bag would have been perfect.

Verdict for the day: we had fun, my checking account is depleted, and I'll need to brush my teeth thoroughly tonight.

The Rule Breaker...and Michael Pollan

First, the food talk of the day: The Rule Breaker. I actually made this on Monday, but didn't think it was worth posting about because its a mishmash of things I've made before. But it got high marks on the Sweetie Scale, so he's been bugging me to post it for the record. Here it is:


I call it The Rule Breaker because something about it just felt wrong. See, I came in the door intending to make your everday nikudofu for dinner. But when I opened the cupboard to get the mirin, I saw the miso and suddenly had an overwhelming urge to have udon in miso soup. I expressed my dilemma to Sweetie and he said, "Do both! Do both!" I tried to explain why that wouldn't be a good idea, but was eventually swayed.

I sauteed a quarter of a large sweet onion and browned a quarter pound of beef. I added tofu to the pan to heat while I boiled the udon and mixed the miso. Miso + noodles + meat mixture (all the tofu in my half) = Rule Breaker.


I have really mixed feelings about this. Ground beef in miso is just odd. Tofu...onions...sure. But ground beef? I usually bastardize my exotic dishes to high heaven, but this is crossing an invisible line. I feel like I put Spam in a Summer Roll, or melted Velveeta into bouillabaisse. Okay, it's not that bad, since at least all the ingredients are present in the country I'm mimicking (and I didn't add anything suspiciously processed). It tasted okay, but I really think ground beef should be limited to chili and stews for everyday consumption.

And now for the news: A few minutes ago, Sweetie made me check his email while he levels his Black Mage. This was waiting in his inbox:


Michael Pollan will be in town a month from now. I think I'm supposed to have an exclamation point at the end of that sentence. I get the impression that everyone loves Michael Pollan--but to be honest, I'd never heard of him until this morning, when Lara raved about seeing him in person. Maybe this is one of the hazards of being too poor for choosing to forego cable. I'd be perfectly happy to attend, if I was assured that I won't be stampeded at the door. One should never presume to escape a visit from a famous person at IU with all of one's limbs intact. However, the talk will be on a Friday, so most of the campus population will be too drunk to find the auditorium. I consider.

However, I wouldn't feel right about taking up a seat unless I had at least read one of his books first. I'm not too keen on The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (sounds too much like my old biology textbooks), though The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto sound like interesting reads. I may drag Sweetie to the library while we're out and about tomorrow to snag copies.

Have you read Michael Pollan's books? Watched him on Oprah? Is the hype deserved?

Spicy Miso Ramen

I may be overdoing it with the ramen, but I tried a new combination today with stellar results! I've always had my ramen in straight chicken broth, and the variety came from the mix-ins, but the other day I heard there was such a thing as miso ramen (I learned this from an anime, but please don't hold that against me. I'm not a weeaboo. Hontou desu >.>;). And Sweetie complained yesterday when I was chowing down on my oh-so-green-and-delicious bowl that I never make that for him. So today I did.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up some mushrooms and an onion. Good grief, the place is a madhouse at 5:30pm. It's twice as packed as it is on Saturday morning, which you would think would be its busiest time. Anywho, I tackled the latter foodstuff first: 1/4 of it went into the pan for a quick saute. It was joined by about 6 ounces of chicken breast and a tablespoon of chili garlic sauce, because my taste buds are not easily impressed.


When the chicken had cooked through, I stirred in a handful of sliced mushrooms and let the mixture sit while I turned my attention to the noodles. I brought about two cups of water to a boil, then added a package of ramen and broccoli florets. After a few minutes, I deemed the noodles tender, and poured out the (slightly green-tinged) water into a measuring cup to use for the miso soup. A tablespoon of white miso paste went into each bowl, then the water, noodles, and chicken. Sliced green onion added a pretty finish.


I have a biased fondness for my bowl, which contained all of the broccoli. Sweetie's had more of the chicken:


The chicken, veggies, noodles and soup were absolutely delicious. However, there was something very wrong with those green onions! A few bites of the bitter, acidic leaf almost ruined the entire dish for me. I was forced to wash the taste out with dark chocolate afterwards [more shifty-eyed emoticons]. I would certainly make it again, but I'll test the dang onion first.

Hick Blogger

Sometimes I feel like a hick blogger. A pauper among princes. An alley cat among Siameses, if you will. While the rest of the virtual world nibbles at artichoke-heart and spinach wraps and sips exotic wine, I eat soup from a can. Or PB&J. Or, as was the case last night, I boil up some ramen.

I have never, ever seen another healthy-food blogger talk about their nightly ramen. Why is it so uniformly ignored? I mean, I've never heard someone say they dislike ramen. One would assume something universally not-disliked would appear on a post or two each week, at least. But it doesn't. It must be that "not disliking" is not enough to spur people to take advantage of 50¢ meals. One potential barrier between ramen's lowly status and oatmeal-scale fame: people don't know how to prepare it properly.

This is how it's done: boil half a can of chicken broth plus a can of water. Add the packet of noodles. Add a ton of broccoli. Add two tons of green beans. And a handful of mushrooms, just because. Crack in a lovely, colorful egg.


The egg and noodles will cook into tender, fluffy masses. Common ramen mistake #1: pouring boiling water over the stuff and expecting the magic to take place. So wrong....


Remove the soup from heat and stir in a fraction of the flavor packet (common ramen mistake #2: using the whole packet. Chicken stock is far superior). Top with green onions. Try to stay away from the bowl until your tongue will escape unscathed.


Look at this. Look at this. How on Zeus's green earth (well, white/gray/brown right now) could this dish be so unpopular? It has twice the tastiness, nutrition, and fullness factor of the marinara pasta dishes litering the blogosphere. Yet it goes uneaten. Simply unfathomable.

On a lesser note, I wish to bring attention to another commonly abused essential: peanut butter. "What?" You say, "Everyone eats peanut butter. It's a mandatory obsession for anyone with a camera, an appetite a keyboard." But the stuff that pops up everywhere is not peanut butter: it's maple peanut butter, chocolate almond butter, or some dirty mix of nuts and seeds indigenous to different continents. I beseech you, bring back the original spread!


I usually get crunchy, but it occured to me that smooth melts better in my oats. Num num num.

I Take That Back

I've said now and again on this blog that I'm not a "runner." Women who cover 5 miles in 40 minutes are "runners." Women who sorta kinda jog for five minutes before giving up to walk (that would be me) are not.

However, it looks like, as of this morning, I'll have to take that back. I'll start at the beginning:

This morning I woke up with the benevolent intention to visit the grocery store, since Sweetie had run out of milk and other essentials. I cooked up my oats while washing the dishes...


And savored them while periodically throwing Luna off the good chair (which she has recently favored as a $150 scratching post). Then I put on my coat and opened the door to this:


My car, Ellie, is the white one closest to the foreground. The weirdly clean section of white should have been the sidwalk. Fun.

20 minutes later, I had managed to dig Ellie out and scrape the ice off the windshield. However, my door was frozen shut. I could barely jam the key into the lock, and it wanted to turn as much as Luna wants to be petted when the vacuum's running. After banging, kicking, pulling, and eliciting suspicious looks from the neighbors, I gave up and tore open the passenger door instead. Fortunately, I'm petite enough to crawl into my proper place behind the wheel without banging into too many important instruments.

The shopping went well, though it took considerable muscle control to get the bags down a still-uncleared and quickly hardening sidewalk into the apartment. It was already 10:40 by the time I turned on the treadmill, and I had to be finished by 11 to bathe, eat and get to work on time.

With all the energy I had expended on the car, I figured I could afford to take it easy today. I cranked the speed up to 6mph intially to loosen my legs, but didn't feel like keeping it up. Beep beep beep beep beep: 5.5. Much better.

And after a half mile, it was still 5.5. After 1 mile, still 5.5. For the whole 1.5 mile workout I only stopped twice to get a drink of water and change the radio station. I think if I hadn't run out of time I could have comfortably reached 2 miles or beyond at that pace.

So it seems I'm not incapable of being a runner; I just set my standards too high. 6mph was pushing too hard for my little legs; 5.5 is just right. There may be a day when I can handle faster speeds, but for now if I want to 'run' steadily I should keep it low-key. That's lesson #1 of the day.

Lesson #2: when searching for our next apartment, shielded parking spaces will be high priority. You know what's really strange? Growing up in California, everybody had a garage but didn't really need it. Here in Indiana nobody has a garage and they do. Silly people.

I Fell Pretty, Oh So Pretty

Do you ever have those mornings when you wake up and feel inexplicably pretty? Today I did!

I think it had a lot to do with the weather outside the window at 7am: the skies were actually clear! (Of course, by nine the bluster had swept in the moody clouds and now, at 2pm, the snow flurries are relentless. So much for the end of winter ;-;) I felt chipper and laid back enough that, when I found I had used a 1/3 cup of oats/water/milk for breakfast instead of 1/2, I just said "meh" and scooped in a little extra peanut butter. Usually that kind of mistake would push me from early-morning-grump to rampaging-she-devil. I had a few extra minutes to spruce up, so I took out something I only use for public celebrations and job interviews: mascara.


Well, you can't see that I did thanks to the rim of my glasses, but don't I positively glow?

I mean that literally. My hair looks really strange under the flourescent light of the library--like there's a sunset on my head. I have natural highlights which have plagued me since elementary school, because every time I switched from down- to up-do or vice versa people would ask me if I had dyed my hair. No, I just have a freaky growth pattern of near-black near the base of my head and brassy red streaks up top. The genes from my Irish father and Chinese mother did not blend as they were supposed to.

Back to the topic at hand: I was really surprised at my own good mood. My perpetual stomach sickness made a comeback over the weekend, so I was not a model Amateur Nutritionist yesterday (note: freezing the white-chocolate chip oatmeal cookies does not deter you from eating them. It only increases the loverly crunch factor). But there is a definite upside to doing/eating whatever I want for a day or two: my stamina shoots way up! I usually crawl along at baseline energy, spending the hours from 3 to 5 trying to distract myself from ever-slowing nerve impulses and ever-lower blood sugar. Today I ate lunch at noon like a normal person, and didn't need my Maalox until afternoon snacktime. Glucose stores pack a big punch.

Now, if I can only get YouTube to let me access the finale of Hai Pai Tian Xin, I will be complete ("too many requests right now" my Aunt Sally. They probably just want me to pay for some Premium access nonsense).

Schedule Changes

Today I'm going to repeat some news I already shared on my other blog, because it is directly pertinent to the subject of my health.

On Thursday my supervisor called me to her office "to talk.". Now, I was a little nervous, but not terribly, because I knew S. is the type to make things sound infinitely worse than they are with her preambles. When she called during my job search last May, her speech went something like this: "Good morning, Tamara. How are you? I'm just calling about the interview C. and I conducted with you last week. Well, considering [qualifications, other candidates, this that and the other coffin-sealing thing]...well, um, we'd like to hire you."

Likewise, on Thursday she started with, "Have a seat. You're not in trouble, but there is trouble. The center director came in yesterday, and he told us that we'll have to make severe cuts next year. And unfortunately, we had to choose between the book budget and staff...." Who on earth would think anything but the worst at this point? But this is S.'s unparalleled talent for instilling needless fear: she said all this to tell me that my coworker had been let go.

My hours will be reduced a little, but I'll still make about the same I did during summer when I had a lower-paying second job in interlibrary loans. And my position will be terminated in April, when I had intended to skip out and find a job on campus anyway because I won't be able to drive out there anymore (graduate students can't get the same parking pass).

I actually feel a little bad for not feeling bad about the changes. There's more silver lining than cloud, in my eyes: I'll start at the same time every day, so none of this waking up early one day to collapse and sleep in the next. For another, I won't have to exercise after work as I had feared--since I start at 11am from February onward I can walk every day!

Still, I should at least pretend to sympathize with K. Not being a saint, however, I just can't bring myself to. For one thing, she was only working a couple hours a week, and she'll graduate with her masters in a few months anyway. For another, the girl made my work twice as difficult as it should have been. I had to clean up after her mistakes every day--she did things like tell faculty they needed to set up new library accounts. She would read emails from patrons, decide she didn't want to deal with them and just leave them there. She screwed up the official blog posts daily by repeating reviews of titles I had already covered. She wasted the institute's money by marking parcels that should have been sent through the free Campus Mail system with the USPS account number. And once I came in to find her playing tag in the hallway with her new husband!

Okay, that's enough K-bashing. I should be focusing on the exercising every day aspect. It's a much better plan than the 4 days/week program I've been neglecting for the past couple weeks. By exercising a half hour every day instead of an hour every other, I'll avoid overexerting myself, which causes me to slack later. I know a lot of people like the feeling of knowing they pushed themselves, but I hate muscle stiffness with a passion. For the past few weeks, I would diligently pound the miles away, but be too drained on Saturday to as much as put on my shoes. The new schedule should insure more consistency, and I may finally experience the phenomenon described by other bloggers of gaining energy from exercise instead of draining it.

I Have Gone To The Dark Side

And the Dark Side comes in a can.


Even with all of the excellent ideas in the commments when I pleaded for guidance last week, there are two limiting factors to my lunch. (1) Indiana, and (2) Me. When you add Midwestern produce in the dead of winter, sore muscles and a cat meowing half an hour before the alarm was supposed to go off, the sum is soup in a can. Plus a frozen whole wheat roll and Magic Hummus.


The combination doesn't look very impressive, but it did its job. The corn chowder was saltier than I had anticipated, since they put big chunks of cured ham in with the good stuff (hey, at least it's not bits of Campbell's alleged "chicken"). The hummus really is magic; I picked it up at the store yesterday to have for my afternoon snack, and for once I didn't feel like eating the aforementioned cat as soon as I walked through the door after work.

I'll probably weigh a pound more tomorrow morning than I did today, thanks to the piles of salt that will absorb and retain moisture for days after this lunch. But there's no time to think about that now. Must work work work (why on EARTH did I volunteer to inventory all of these castaway books? Why? Why?)

Canola Oil Cookies

On Tuesday night I had a serious hankering for cookies. The warm, chewy, fruit-filled kind. But what to do--the last stick of butter had gone into Sweetie's "I told you so" cookies over the weekend! Not to worry; I had a secret weapon. A saturated fat-free and nutty-tasting one. Canola oil.

Until a few months ago, when I was forced by necessity to find a butter-free cookie recipe, it never occured to me that oil would make an acceptable substitute. It seemed too dense, too liquid to yield an acceptably soft treat. The texture of canola oil cookies is certainly different from your standard Toll House, but the dough spreads nicely and the resulting product comes with the benefit of remaining un-crumbled when submerged in milk. After my power walk (yes, I actually stuck to my guns and turned on the treadmill after dinner--I'm not all talk) I took a quick bath and preheated the oven to 325°. First up:

White Chocolate and Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
-1/3 cup canola oil
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1 medium egg
-3/4 cup whole wheat flour
-1 teaspoon salt
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1/4 teaspoon baking powder
-1 cup old fashioned oats
-1/2 cup Craisins (I had orange-flavored in the cupboard)
-1/2 cup white chocolate chips

I creamed the oil and sugar, then beat in the vanilla and egg. I mixed in the flour, salt and leavenings until uniform, then folded in the oats. Finally, the Craisins and white chocolate chips went in. I dropped 16 spoonfuls of dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheets, then baked for 11-12 minutes.



Two of these mysteriously disappeared along with a glass of light soy milk :o

Sweetie saw me take out the mixing bowls and assumed the sort of expression normally worn by cheerful puppies and children whose parents have accidentally uttered the word "Disneyland." So of course I had to make a standard batch for him:

Sweetie's Chocolate Chip Cookies
-1/3 cup canola oil (this is normally a single stick of butter)
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1 medium egg
-1 cup all-purpose flour
-1 teaspoon salt
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Same procedure as before, only I made 18 cookies instead of 16.



Such a similar recipe to the first, but they look so drastically different. The beauty of cookies is their versatility; there's only so much you can add/subtract from a muffin or cake before you ruin it, but cookies will withstand practically anything as long as you can get it to stick together. Well, not everything--there have been a few memorable incidents of too much bitter baking soda and an expired bag of Heath bits....

Nikudofu Udon Bowl

Last night I had yet another of my creativity attacks. During these episodes, I will insist upon making a certain recipe and no other, despite never having read, heard of, or made this dish before. The recipe firmly ingrained in my head as I drove home from work yesterday went like this:

-half an onion, sliced
-1/4 pound lean ground beef
-1/2 a block extra firm tofu
-fat free chicken broth
-1/4 cup mirin
-1 teaspoon rice vinegar
-soy sauce to taste
-sprinkling of powdered ginger
-handful of mushrooms, sliced
-1 2-serving bundle of udon noodles

I sauteed the onion, then browned the ground beef. I added the tofu to the pan and poured in chicken broth about halfway up the cubes. Then I added the mirin, ginger and soy sauce and let the mixture simmer down...approx. 20 minutes.


When the liquid was mostly absorbed, I added the vinegar for kick and stirred in the mushrooms.


While the meat mixture cooked, I prepared the udon.


Topped the noodles with the savory stew...


...and invented the scrumptious Nikudofu Udon bowl. The ingredients are very similar to Taiwan Mushi, but can't be called that because it isn't bound together with egg. The sauce and method is almost identical to that of nikujaga, but of course there are no potatoes. Nikudofu is as close as we're going to get, though I have seen nikudofu and nikudofu it is not. I'm sure this dish exists somewhere in the world with a proper name, because it's not terribly original despite its resistance to fitting into a predefined category. In any case, it was very tasty and filling and has definitely landed a spot on The List.

Blue Monday

My Get-Fit-For-Japan Plan needs a serious overhaul.

Since we spent the weekend in Greensburg, I didn't get any exercise on Friday, Saturday (unless you count wandering around Walmart waiting for the men folk to finish looking at hats and fishing supplies), or even Sunday after we returned home. I was too tired and cigarette-infused to do much other than sulk in a long, hot bath. And who wants to get all sweaty after you've taken a bath?

Yesterday, since I had the day off, I fully intended to get my little legs moving at some point in the day. But the Cloud of Sulk was still hovering around me and I didn't want to expend more energy than it took to scuttle between the kitchen and the bedroom, snacking my way through fluffy anime shows aimed at 12-year-old girls.


I didn't overdue things calorie-wise, but a single Green Monster in a sea of variously topped kaiser rolls does not a healthy day make.

Lucky for me, I can say my sloth wasn't my fault! Did you know that yesterday was Blue Monday? I didn't until an article on MSN enlightened me, but the concept is fairly accurate. Yesterday was the gloomiest day of the year, according to Welsh researchers at Cardiff University. The holiday sheen finally wore off, leaving us with depleted bank accounts and empty living rooms. The formerly celebrated "White Christmas" aged into dirty, eye-stinging slush. New Years resolutions fell by the way-side and the Western world collectively faces another 12 months of nose-grinding misery. And the W2's will be pouring into inboxes any minute now....

I cut myself a break yesterday, because I thought that today I could revv up the old routines. I failed to consider the ever-increasing flakiness of my coworker, K. After waking and chowing down on bran flakes, I turned on my phone to hear a recording of my supervisor pleading me to take over this morning. Boo. No walk...no nutritious leisurely lunch...the good news is that I had half of Friday's tuna salad left in the library fridge, so all I had to do was grab a kaiser roll and fruits and get out the door.

I'm certainly not one to obsess over the occasional period of inactivity (well, not anymore), but if this keeps up, the 0.2 pounds I lost last week will be back with friends. Clearly, my system isn't working. It may be time to buck up and do things like everybody else: exercise after work. Ick.

Doing so will take will power, of which I have a scanty amount. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people who exercise in the morning are more consistent in their routines, even though the evening is more ideal performance-wise (and there's no way in heck I'm getting up in the dark to shiver my way through three miles). I know from personal experience that if I don't push myself within the first half of the day, I won't feel like moving later. Perhaps there are some aspects of the treadmill environment I can alter to motivate myself: get the dang Christmas tree into the attic, open the blinds, and get some ear buds so I don't fear the neighbors' wrath when I crank up the Good Charlotte.

What tactics do you use to get yourself off the couch?

By the way...

The construction crew is hammering on the roof. On MLKJ day. At 10 in the morning. Boo.

Methinks I'll have to come up with something new and exciting to do outside of the apartment, but everything on my To Do list is here. I need to finish the laundry, take down the Christmas tree and tidy the living room, exercise, and maybe think about scrubbing that mold off the bathroom walls. (You're probably thinking, "Ewww, you let it grow there?" but it's honestly not that bad. The mold is just some tiny black spots in hard-to-reach places above the shower. And there are so many blemishes on these old badly treated walls that it took a long time for me to notice them).

By the way, I didn't mention everything that happened over the weekend at Who's. We actually came home with some tokens for our troubles.


A deep fryer and a space heater. Obviously, the former could use some elbow grease. It's the old appliance salvaged from the burned rubble of Who's former trailer (he has a shinier, non-ash-covered one now). I didn't actually want it because (a) there's not enough space to fit the thing in our kitchen and (b) I don't want to encourage Sweetie to request fried foods very often. Yet it was forced upon me. Sweetie fears for my life when, on rare occasion, I drop water-containing potatoes and/or meats into 400° peanut oil in an open saucepan. The space heater, on the other hand, was very welcome in our home; I used it last night at bath time and was happy to remain unfrozen after emerging from the tub.

By the way, when I slipped my memory card into my laptop to upload the photo of these appliances, I found about 20 pictures that I did not take. Sweetie and I had a tiff last night. He wanted cookies, and I was too exhausted to bake them (and also indignant that I had just spent three hours in the driver's seat and sacrificed my weekend for his family, so I did not feel like breaking out the vanilla extract). I huffed off to bed and Sweetie went to town, judging from the piles of flour in and around the kitchen sink. He's still asleep, but these photos are presumably of the "See? I can do it by myself! So there!" variety.





By the way, he's much more daring with the close-ups than I am. I'll need to get a camera that's better at short-range focusing before the Japan trip, or you'll be looking at a lot of blurry cherry blossoms.

Home Sweet Home

We arrived back in Bloomington about two hours ago, after what was effectively 45 hours of waiting to come home.

I know I'm a bad prospective daughter-in-law, but weekends on Who's trailer are pure torture. I like Who, but I have nothing to do there except play Minesweeper on my laptop and watch infomercials that try to make me feel bad about myself. I've gotten rather good at Minesweeper, but I'm not entirely convinced that I need to buy the machine-thingy that would transform me from a horrifically normal (and miserable-looking) woman to a muscular (and blissful-looking) one. And I need several washings to get the stench of tobacco smoke out of my hair.

However, he is getting better at feeding me, even though we have conversations like this around dinner time:

Who: I can make Hamburger Helper for you guys.
Sweetie: I like Hamburger Helper, but it would make Tamara sick.
Who: Why?
Me: You use milk to make it. And even if you don't, there's milk solids in the cheese sauce.
Who: Oh. Yeah.
[Sweetie exits van to buy a hat, Who considers]
Who (brightly): I can bake the lasagna in the freezer!

But, when asked, he did buy old fashioned oats for me. Without expressing a concern that it's not flavored. And he stocked up on generally safe soups:


Chunky split pea and ham; I had this for lunch yesterday and today. With a toasted cheddar sandwich (repeat: aged cheese are okay) and diet Dr. Pepper (hey, I need a little somethin'-somethin' to get through these weekends).

On Saturday night I dodged the lasagna bullet by agreeing to Subway sandwiches. I don't usually go to Subway of my own free will, not because they're not tasty, but because they don't fill me up very well.


I chose turkey on 9-grain wheat with spinach, tomatoes, olives and pickles. If I had known they were going to be so stingy with the spinach I would have asked for lettuce, too. Yummy, but sure enough, not two minutes after I had finished these I was rooting around the cupboards. I found this:


It's a good thing Who had already finished 3/4 of the bag, because I can assure you every remaining toffee-covered-peanuts quickly disappeared from existence. And I was still hungry. After Who left to run some errands, I snuck into his kitchen and had, in this order: a Pringle chip, two club crackers, three cashews, and a chocolate truffle. I don't know why I felt so ravenous--maybe I ate too little on Friday.

By the way, I wrote before about the reason we went to Who's in the first place: to help get his stuff out of the ex-wife's barn. Well, ex-wife decided that Saturday was inconvenient, so we had to lounge around until today, after church of course, and grab things hurriedly to try to get home at a decent hour. She also passed on our Christmas presents:


It must be noted that before I unwrapped this, I said (and I quote myself), "I hope she didn't give me candles. I hate candles. Everyone gave me candles this year." These candles actually made the tacky peppermint one in a heart-shaped holder look good. And no, I didn't put those cheap tea candles in an even cheaper plastic baggie--she did. I know you're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I would infinitely prefer something that wasn't a blatant "I don't know you but I'll kind of pretend to care" type present.

Anyway, we are now in the comfort of our own apartment, with a strong internet connection and the neighbors blasting ghetto music through the walls. Home, sweet home.

Kaiser Rolls

First order of business: happy birthday Mom! Today I'm in the black hole of cyberspace known as Greensburg, IN, where there are no internet connections and lousy cellular phone signals. So best wishes from the past!

Second order of business: kaiser rolls.


These gorgeous pillows of dough have long evaded me. I attempted to make them for the first time in high school for the benefit of the German Club. My attempt at folding the distinctive flower pattern was cleanly eradicated by the action of the oven, and I considered myself a failure. I tried a second time in college when I was considering opening a bakery/cafe as a means of escape from my dreary fate in scientific research (fortunately, I found a more stable avenue in librarianship). I was testing my prowess as a pastry chef and sadly determined that, if I couldn't even shape a decent roll, my tea house dreams were doomed.


But now I have revived hope thanks to Nicole of Pinch My Salt! I learned from her Thursday post that there is an alternative method to shaping kaiser rolls. Instead of weakly folding over flaps that will just rise back up with baking, you can tie a knot with a rope of dough to achieve the same look.

Since I'm sick of the fail-bread, I happily mixed up a batch of dough for these on Thursday night. Because I was short on time, I just used my standard recipe for wheat dough (1 cup water plus extra while mixing, 1 egg, 1 tbsp oil, 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup whole wheat, 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp yeast) instead of Nicole's fancy aging method. When the machine beeped, I took out the dough and divided it into eight pieces.


I did such a neat job I was tempted to leave half of them alone and just bake regular buns. To that end I only made ropes out of four of the balls.


Tying the rolls was incredibly easy! It's just your regular knot, with one end looped over and the other looped under. The resulting rolls were much prettier than the plain round ones, so I had a change of heart and finished them all.



I let them rest and puff while the oven was preheating to 375°. I slipped them in for 15 minutes...


...and pulled out these monsters! Holy cow, did they rise. I had to carefully pull a couple of them apart.


There was one mishap--that one in the corner had the gall to let one of its tucked-in ends attempt escape. That was quickly ratified by tearing off said end for a "taste test" :D

I froze seven of the rolls and left one in the fridge for lunch on Friday. When I pleaded for lunch ideas on Wednesday, Lu suggested assembling lunches on the premesis to avoid "leftover syndrome" (as I call the tendency for previously fresh foods to wither and soak by the time noon rolls around). To that end, I brought the roll as is along with a refrigerated filling of light chunk tuna, miracle whip and chopped celery. I warmed the roll and assembled the sandwich directly before eating--it was the first non-soggy tuna sandwich I've had in a long time! I also liked Lele's idea of bringing spreads to dip. It would be fun to tear pieces of the roll off to nibble with hummus. It would make lunch last longer, too--I have a terrible tendency to eat too fast.