Today will be the first warm, sunny day in what has indeed been a long, cold lonely winter. By warm, I mean above 40. But we will take what we get around here.
There will be grilling tonight. Oh yeah, that’s right.
Grilling adds SO MUCH fantastic flavor without adding calories. Don’t know if it will be chicken, salmon or shrimp, but something is hitting the barbie tonight. Photos to follow.
You know what honks me off? Nutrition information labels.
Not all of them, mostly the ones that are on snack foods. The ones that hope you don’t notice that they are playing you for a dumb ass.
I have the kind of job where there are days that I have at least one hour for lunch and can run all kinds of errands. Then I have days when I feel fortunate to find three minutes to pee.
On the latter days, I usually run to the vending machine to find something vaguely edible. My preferred choice is a Three Musketeer candy bar, but as this blog has blathered on about at length, I am trying to change my evil ways. So this week, I made this choice:
Nuts, raisins, seeds, little yogurt bits. Not salted. It’s from Mr. Nature! It crosses the border to HealthyLand.
And it’s damn tasty! And filling! Gave me energy without the crash. I’m think this is a helluva deal for less than a buck. And I checked he nutrition label on the back and felt even better about it. Look what it says:
Under 200 calories and under 10 grams of fat. This is pretty damn cool. Until I look up above the big black line and notice the “servings per container” is TWO.
What. The. Fuck.
What douche bag eats half of a bag of nuts and raisins? No one that I would choose to know. The damn bag only weighs two freakin’ ounces. Are they marketing this shit to anorexic supermodels?
They assume, and in this case correctly, that it SEEMS so much better at 130 calories and 7 grams of fat. Because an hungry, time-strapped idiot like me might balk at indulging in a snack that has as many calories and more fat grams than a frozen dinner, so if they play with the numbers, we feel better about our choice.
This sucks balls and it’s disingenuous, Mr. Nature. A reasonable person is going to eat the whole bag, so put the real numbers on the bag, dickheads. I may be Fatty McFatterstien, but I can do the math here.
See you tomorrow, Mr. Nature. But just so you know, I’m on to you.
Thanks, Facebook, for putting an ad on my profile page suggesting I need help with my emotional eating issues. What mathematical formula came up with that little gem? I must have too many food references on my status updates.
I was actually feeling pretty good about myself tonight. I made one small stride toward getting back on track with eating today by NOT finding a candy bar and making it my bitch this afternoon.
A small step, right? Yeah, I know.
Then Facebook pops up with it’s reminder that I think, and write, about food way too much. For fucks sakes, Facebook doesn’t even know about this blog. It would probably add Dr. Phil and those psycho You Docs to my friend suggestion list if it did.
Well, kiss my ample ass, Facebook. I am happy that I didn’t raid the vending machine for a shitty little candy bar today. And that’s the only emotion about eating I plan to dwell on today.
I hate to exercise. I really do. I know people who are physically fit (and I’m looking at you, Olympic athletes) get high from working out, and believe me, if it made me feel like I did at parties back in the day, I would probably love it too.
But I don’t get high. I get sore. I get depressed. I get pissed off that simple things are just so damn hard for me.
A lack of natural coordination pretty much meant I sucked at every single sport I ever attempted. The only thing I could do reasonably well was hit a softball, because let’s face it, you just stand there and time your swing.
I was always the last picked for every game in school. I was the first target in dodgeball and then I would plant my fat ass against the cinder block wall that no doubt contained seven layers of lead paint and tried really hard not to cry. I usually failed at that too.
So anyway, I hate to exercise. And I’ve been off work for three days and have not been to the gym even once, even though it was on the to-do list.
Making salsa was on the to-do list. I got THAT done. Priorities. I haz ‘em.
I am down to one pair of jeans that I can wear since I piled back on half the weight I worked so hard to take off in 2008. I have like, two dozen pairs of pants, and can’t squeeze my chubby cheeks into any of them.
I wear what were supposed to be my fat jeans for two or three days, wash them and wear them another couple of days. To my office. Luckily, my boss has yet to ask me why. I’m hoping she just hasn’t noticed.
I make sure to wear nice underwear every day because surely these overworked jeans will soon unravel into threads and fall off. I’d rather not be wearing granny panties with stretched-out elastic waistbands when that happens.
Last weekend, my dryer died. This was a surprise since I was reasonably sure it’s partner, the washer, would be the first to go. It’s sad when one half of a couple goes before the other. The washer seemed lonely standing there next the decaying corpse of its formerly warm friend.
Out of mercy and respect for their longstanding relationship I had no problem sending my 13-year-old Whirlpool washer and dryer together appliance heaven, even though the washer was still chugging loudly away. Brand new front loaders FTW!
But when the dryer died, that was a clear obstacle to my wash-and-wear jeans situation. The new appliances wouldn’t be delivered until Friday. I hadn’t washed my jeans since Saturday. I was not looking forward to smelling like ass by mid-week and I doubted anyone would believe I spilled ketchup on the exact same spot every single day on each pair of what has to be a wardrobe of the identical pairs of the same faded jeans.
So on Wednesday I figured out that, with just the right top, I could get away with wearing a pair of yoga pants to work. I’m so short that for me, yoga pants are just, pants.
On Thursday I sent my jeans through my washer one last time and then took them to the laundromat to dry them. Laundromats are scary places and I cannot say I missed them over the last 13 years. Jeans went from wet to dry and I didn’t get mugged so I considered myself very lucky.
The point of all this is that I have ballooned to the point that I have ONE THING TO WEAR on the lower half of my body and so I had to wear stretchy pants to work and risk getting assaulted at a sketchy laundromat to maintain the ONE THING with a zipper that I can wear.
And all this drama is the direct result of comforting myself with cannoli and tiramisu every time I have a shitty day and believe me, I have some pretty crap-filled days. Custard and chocolate beat the hell out of Prozac and Klonopin for endorphin building in my brain, and believe me, I take both.
I took Friday off so I could be here when my space-age OMG THEY ARE SO COOL washer and dryer were delivered. Then I was going to go to the gym. But I needed to study for what I sure was a midterm in learning to program this washer that promised to handle my bulky bedding and my whitest whites.
And then I needed to pick up an order from a For Your Pleasure party because, hello, you know. And then it was dinner time and Hoylier came home and I had planned a nice meal and I had all this laundry to do.
So I reasoned that the sweat I worked up scrubbing five years of filth off the laundry room floor was a good cardio for the day.
Yesterday I was determined to do two things: Go to the gym and buy another pair of pants. Then I got the sinfully brilliant idea that walking the mall would be a great way to get my heart rate up AND I could shop for fatty fat-ass pants at the same time.
I am nothing if not a good time manager.
The mall walking went better than expected. I was concerned that I would get too distracted by purses and shoes (fat girls can always find purses and shoes that fit, which is why we commonly obsess about them. I should write a book about this shit) but I really did stay focused and circled the mall three times.
I stopped at Macy’s and found a pair of pants in EXTRA FAT WIDE ASS size that would fit. On sale, no less. I picked them up.
And then put them back on the rack.
If only having ONE THING that covers my thighs and does not have elastic at the waist or ankles isn’t enough incentive to get serious about dropping some of this weight, well then, maybe exposing my silky floral drawers to the other customers in the deli aisle when these jeans disintegrate will do it.
I am wearing these jeans until they fall off, either from being too big or from sheer overuse. And probably the only way to get back into my other pants is to put on the yoga pants and really exercise. Which, as I covered earlier, I hate.
I am way to complicated from a woman with only one pair of jeans.
I spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen and it seemed like old times. FrankenThumb is healed; no more bandage and the tender new skin is getting tougher every day.
And every day I get a little more bold and a little less chicken shit. Body and soul are indeed connected.
It helped that it was a glorious day today. Temperatures over 60, sun shining, mutts wailing. Windows were opened. Dog farts wafted out and fresh air flowed in. It was invigorating. And since it was so warm and fabulous, we had to fire up the charcoal grill. It just had to be done.
Any old hoo, I decied to bake banana bread (post to follow, probably tomorrow) and make my hunny bourbonz chickens and our favorite grilled Caesar salad to go with it.
We had this salad in our favorite local restaurant and have been making it ever since. My initial reaction was, uh, do I really want hot lettuce? But the answer is oh yes, I certainly do. It’s extremely tasty and pretty close to healthy.
Here’s all the stuff required: Romaine hearts, olive oil, salt and pepper, Parmesan cheese and Caesar dressing. Could I make my own dressing? Sure I could, but the idea of anchovy paste is more than I can deal with. I prefer to leave that to someone else. Besides, this brand is delicious.
Slice the lettuce length-wise, leaving the stem intact. This holds the leaves together and makes grilling it so much easier. I might even go so far as to say grilling this lettuce would be damn near impossible, or at least a hot mess, without the stem.
Drizzle some olive oil over the lettuce.
Add pepper. Lots of fresh cracked pepper. As far as my husband is concerned, you can never have too much cracked black pepper.
Add a little Kosher salt. This can be omitted, but even with my high blood pressure, I can still have a little salt, and it really enhances flavor.
Then they go to the grill, with the seasoned, flat side down. Grill for about four to five minutes. Turn it once.
They are done when there is a nice light char on the lettuce leaves. I am no Alton Brown, so I can’t really explain the whole chemical reaction here, but whatever sugar there is in lettuce is now enhanced by adding a little heat. The flavor of this is amazing, and the leaves are tender but not limp.
Serve with a sprinkling of shaved Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of Caesar dressing, and I do mean a drizzle. We maybe used a tablespoon of dressing for both of these Romaine hearts, and it was plenty. We also added a few dashes of Bacon Bacon, which is a seasoning mix of garlic, pepper and dried bacon bits. Adds nice crunch.
Best salad ever. Makes light eating enjoyable.
I hacked the holy shit out of my thumb a month ago with a mandolin. To help me regain my kitchen confidence, and I am sure hoping it would help him get laid, my husband bought me a KitchenAid Artisan 5 quart stand mixer for Valentine’s Day.
I swooned.
Of course, I had to try it out with my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.
The recipe is:
1 1/2 cups of flour (the foundation of baking)
1/2 tsp baking soda (the riser)
1/2 tsp salt (for flavor enhancement)
1 stick of softened buttah (not margarine or any crappy substitute. Real artery-clogging, Paula-Deen-loving BUTTAH)
1/2 cup brown sugar (how come you taste so good?)
1/4 sugar (the Caucasian variety, granulated, not powdered)
1 egg
3/4 cups chocolate chips
The buttah needs to be soft. If it must be microwaved, just nuke it a little. Hot buttah could end up cooking the egg when its added and that is a good thing at breakfast, but so not a good thing in cookies. Put the sugars and the soft, room temp buttah in the spiffy new mixer and whip them into a cream.
Now pour in the egg and BEAT IT.
Add the soda and salt to the flour, give it a wicked good stir and pour it into the spiffy new fabulous mixer. It even comes with a fantastic removable spout guide that helps you stuff while the beater is in motion. This helps prevent the flour from flying back at the pourer. I didn’t use it here. I just poured the dry ingredient in very slowly.
Once the dough is mixed, fold in the chips by hand because they are sensitive and may be traumatized in the mixer. I use a teaspoon to dole out the cookies and I get about three dozen out of this recipe. I always use AirBake aerated cookie sheets. The are a layered sheet that allows air to pass under the cookies and it keeps them from getting burned on the bottom. They cost a few more dollars than a regular cookie sheet, but seriously, they sheets are worth the investment.
Now, the official recipe says to leave them in the oven for 10 t0 12 minutes. I say pshaw. That is far too long. I like my cookies soft, so I pull them at no more than eight minutes, often at the seven minute make, just when the very edges are barely brown. They still look like they are mostly dough but that’s OK. They will firm up as they cool, but they will be perfectly moist and soft.
This is what they looked like minutes before we poured a glass of milk and devoured them.
Three weeks ago I hacked a chunk out of my thumb while cooking. The injury required a tetanus shot and took six stitched to make it stop bleeding. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, some days throbbing all the way up to my elbow.
It was a simple mistake, a nasty little accident. A flesh wound, no ligament or tendons or bone damaged. The stitches came out last Monday, and other than inflammation, the wound is healing nicely.
And I’ve been scared ever since.
I am hypersensitive to everything I feel. Every time I bump my thumb into anything, I wince. Every time I hit the space bar while typing, the nerve ending in my thumb remind me of that missing hunk of flesh.
But what bothers me the most is that I have not enjoyed cooking or writing since this happened. And that makes me feel so lost, because those are the two things I enjoy the most.
I am soothing my raw emotions with food. Healthy eating seems like a punishment when I already feel like I’m being punished.
This is a deep spiral caused by a minor injury to my finger. The deeper injury is to my confidence.
Came home from work on Monday with a ton of good intentions, including preparing a fresh, healthy meal and doing some reading for an online course I am taking that is intended to help me organize ideas and become a more prolific writer. And I think Hoylier and I were gonna indulge in a little romance, too.
It was going to be a busy night.
And indeed it was busy, but none of that shit actually went down.
First thing I did after dropping my bags on the table and carelessly tossing my coat on a chair was to fire up the oven for a marinated pork loin. To the top of the pork loin I added the some fresh chopped fennel fronds (that’s the fine greenery at the top of the stalk) and into the oven it went. Then I planned to take the fennel bulb and slice it into a salad.
And I decided to use a mandolin slicer I bought a while back that I had not used yet.
Slid the bulb down the blade, nice clean slice. Slid the bulb down the blade again. And that’s when the bulb slipped.
And that’s when the fleshy part of my right thumb came off in a nice, clean slice.
Wow, ouch. Many curse words were uttered. Loudly. Ran my thumb under water, look at the wound. Damn. I could see the fat and the flesh, but luckily no bones. It was hard to see much of anything for all the blood. Hoylier found the severed part of my thumb on the cutting board. He threw it, the blood-splattered fennel bulb and the finger-eating mandolin away.
Pressure and ice didn’t stop the bleeding. I let the pork loin finish cooking and we tried to eat, but after 45 minutes the thumb was still gushing.
Shit. Another damn trip to the emergency room. I hate emergency rooms.
We tried to go to an urgent care practice over by the mall. Got there to discover their hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. WTF? That’s not even normal office hours.
So we headed to the other hospital in town, not the one I went to when my blood pressure spiked last fall. We checked in and hung out in the waiting room, where the TV was set to Fox News.
Like I wasn’t in enough pain, I was forced to listen to that cockknuckle, Bill O’Reilly. (Thank you, Bloggess, for the best word EVER.)
After a couple of hours I was ready to leave, because I was pretty sure my thumb had stopped bleeding. But then they called me back and we figured we’d come this far, might as well see the doc.
As soon as we removed my homemade bandage, blood squirted out all over the examining table. Almost four hours after I sliced this hunk of flesh off my finger the wound was still spewing. Not good.
I was very grateful to have Dr. StandUpComedian on duty. If I can’t have a doctor that looks like George Clooney, I like a doctor with a sense of humor.
I told him my thumb wouldn’t stop bleeding. He told me all wounds stop bleeding…sooner or later.
I told him I didn’t want to watch while he put six stitches in my thumb, two of them through my fingernail. He said it’s was only required that one of us looks. Might as well be him.
I told him I was tempted to take a shot of tequila for the pain before we left the house. He said I should have brought enough for everyone.
Loved this guy.
He put my Humpty-Dumpty finger back together again, put this huge-assed bandage around it and sent me off with a prescription for Lortab.
It occurred to me that I ended up hacking off a portion of my thumb, effectively ending any dream I ever had of being a hand model, trying to make a fresh salad with healthy vegetables.
I never required stitches at the emergency room when I dialed for a pizza or picked up a cheeseburger from a drive-thru window.
How dangerous is this “healthy eating” craze, really?
But hey, I did lose at least an ounce or two, right?
OK, so I had to wait until my beloved COLTS MADE IT BACK TO THE SUPER BOWL AH HELL YEAH! before I could get my chicken in the oven. So I was running just a wee bit late. In the meantime the next game started to determine who would face MY COLTS IN THE SUPER BOWL and I admit, I was a bit distracted.
I preheated the oven to 375 degrees, took the chicken out of the marinade and put it on a broiler pan, added salt and pepper and discarded the marinade. Here is where I preach safe chicken handling: Wash everything, especially your hands, when dealing with poultry. Always discard the marinade. You can’t boil the bacteria out of that shit.
I Safely tucked the chicken in the oven for about 30 to 35 minutes. Then I watched some of the NFC Championship game because either the Saints or the Vikings will play THE COLTS IN THE SUPER BOWL in a couple of weeks.
After 35 minutes (these were some big old breasts) I checked the temperature with my meat thermometer and it was only 140. I wanted to see at least 155 to 160 before I felt like the bird was ready to serve. Safe handling guidelines will tell you 175 to 180, but there is residual cooking when you let the chicken rest before serving, and honestly, as long as the meat is white and not even slightly pink, it’s done. Back in the oven it went for about five more minutes.
Five minutes elapsed and I turned the oven from bake to broil to get the skin crispy. But at that point, it was kick off on the Saints/Vikings game and I think the Vikings struck gold in the end zone first and I lost track of time and, yeah, I charred the skin. It should only have been in the broiler for about two minutes and I left it in for at least a series of downs, probably five to six minutes.
This ain’t the damn Food Network, y’all.
Any old hoo, the thermometer came quickly up over 160 and I knew the bird was done. Removing the charred skin is OK, since the skin is the majority of the fat calories. As you can see, I served the chicken breast with roasted asparagus and a lovely Pinot Noir, VICTORY WINE AS WE TOASTED THE COLTS!
And the chicken? Kick ass delicious. Much like my COLTS!
If you would be so inclined to vote for me today in the Aiming Low recipe contest, I would be oh so very grateful. I would think you were an awesome person. I would invite you over to my house for honey bourbon chicken, I promise.
And in case you were unconvinced of the awesomeness of this recipe, allow me to walk you through the marinade process. It’s easy, I promise.
Here’s everything you need to make this recipe. Assembling the ingredients before I start means I don’t fuck up and forget something important or get some step out of order. Cause I am very scatterbrained easily confused busy multitasking and being awesome.
Squeeze the lemons to render out at least a third cup of lemon juice. Acid is important to a marinade, because it helps to ensure tenderness, and lemon juice is the best damn acid I can use because I love the bright, citrus flavor it adds. It took two pretty good sized lemons to get the juice I needed for this recipe. If you have a lot of leftover juice, you can use it as a cleanser. No shit. Lemon juice is a very good natural cleanser, couldn’t be more green and environmentally friendly, and I use it on my shower tiles. Housekeeping tip from me to you, free of charge.
Squeeze the little bear until you get a quarter to a third cup of honey. This recipe is very fluid, adjust it to the size of your chicken breasts. These are some Dolly-esque chicken boobies here, almost two pounds. So I used a third cup of everything. These two breasts, by the way, will easily feed four people, and the package only cost a little over $4. Split chicken breasts are usually a better deal than the boneless, skinless variety.
Pour the honey into the lemon juice. You will likely have to scape the honey out of the measuring cup. If you are good at eye-balling amounts, you could just squeeze the bear directly into the juice. The honey in this recipe will not only add flavor, but it will help the skin caramelize later in the cooking process. So if you want to go a little heavy on the honey, you go right ahead.
Now it’s cocktail time! Add in an equal amount of bourbon as the honey and lemon. I am calling on my good friend Jimmy Beam, but Jack or Johnny could easily stand in for Jim. If you aren’t a bourbon drinker, and I confess I am not, you can buy the little airplane sized bottles at the liquor store. They only cost a couple of bucks and you aren’t investing in a booze you don’t drink.
Whisk the shit out of this concoction. You want the honey to dissolve into the juice and the booze. Then rest the chicken skin side down into the bowl. Cover it and put it in the ‘fridge until you are ready to cook it. The longer it soaks the better, so I did this at noon and will pop the bird in the oven around 6 p.m.
Next entry: The chicken goes into the oven and comes out delicious.
I am a fat girl. Always have been. Probably always will be. This blog is where I can write about being a lover of food and still trying to drop pounds and whatever other rambling shit runs through my head. I curse occasionally. OK, often. If you don't like it, don't read this. Seriously.
