The boy and I have been dieting and working out for a few weeks. We’ve both already lost weight and I’m feeling stronger but that isn’t really making the transition much easier. It’s great to step on the scale and see weight loss or to notice new muscle striations in my arms. It sucks to feel hungry or tired or crave candy.

We work out 5-6 times a week, for me a combination of cardio/weights at Bally’s and classes at Flirty Girl Fitness. Flirty Girl classes are surprisingly hard. I haven’t taken any of the pole/stripper-robics type classes. I have taken classes that involve circuit training, lots of sit ups with medicine balls and step ups onto chairs. (That last one practically killed me.)

On the diet side, I’m aiming for about 1200 calories a day.  At first, that sounded too low so I was eating more around 1500 and not losing. I can go down to about 800 a day but then I’m cranky, hungry and so bored with salad.  I used FitDay to figure out what I could eat in my calorie range. I don’t keep track of my food daily but it was helpful when I was starting to figure out just how much I can eat.

I think the biggest changes have been sweets and liquor. I eat a lot of fruit so I still get sugar but no candy at the movies, funnel cake at the street fair, cupcakes just because it’s someone birthday at work. And I haven’t had a drink since we started. I’m usually a juice and liquor mixed drink person, so my drinks aren’t as fatty as beer but aren’t as low cal as diet coke and liquor. I don’t drink carbonated things so I have to find something I can have other than liquor on the rocks. I’m not that hardcore.

So some foods that have kept me from going crazy with soo many boring salads and wraps:

Chicken salad with tofu herb dressing
I made the dressing seperately and use it like a salad dressing. I’m new to tofu so I don’t know how to cook with it but this recipe just requires food processing or blending. The dressing is creamy like a ranch dressing.

Banana “ice cream”
Peel and freeze a banana. Blend or food process it. Refreeze if its gooey. Add nuts or berries as toppings if you like.

Egg whites
Egg white scrambles for breakfast! Throw in whatever veggies you like.

Sugar free jello
Makes you feel like you’re eating something

Not that those foods completely keep me from going crazy and wanting to eat Zingers but they help :)

I realize this blog (the interesting parts at least) is kind of turning into a food blog. Eventually it will turn into something like This is why you’re Fat.

This cake actually wasn’t supposed to be very fattening. My friend asked me to make a rainbow cake for a potluck at her house. Most of my creative food stuff is for potlucks. She sent me this recipe from The Omnomicon (love the name and I’m pretty sure the author is a SA goon.) There is no rainbow cake recipe, just a white cake of your choice recipe plus tips on making it rainbowed. This cake just called for soda and cake mix.

It’s all lumpy but I was afraid to use an electric mixer because of the carbonation. It doesn’t matter in the end because you stir it a lot more when you add food coloring.
So I divided out the batter into 6 bowls and used my pretty gel dye. I thought the dye would be brighter with less. I felt like I was using a ton of dye. I was scared to make the red an actual blood red because of the amount of dye I would have to use. Isn’t red dye poisonous to children? Oh well, no kids died at the potluck. That I saw.

Then I poured the batter in to the pan, one color on top of the next. One of my friends commented that the batter looks like fake food in the movie Hook.

And then I baked it according to the box instructions plus a few more minutes like the rainbow cake directions say. Its a very squishy cake because of the soda. I took the cake out when the yellow started to look dark.
I let the cake cool while I tried my new dino muffin tins with the leftover cake batter. I set up my cooling rack and tried to get the cake out with disastrous results. The entire middle of the cake stuck, one of the sides started to slide off the rack and I started to make howling noises. No way to repair with frosting. Oh the agony of a broken cake.
No pictures of the broken cake, it was too hard to look at. The dino cakes didn’t turn out well either. The cake didn’t want to come out of the tins. It was the first time I used the muffin pan so I may not have properly greased it.
So I didn’t want to make a new cake and I didn’t want to waste the already made cake. So I made some pudding, used the whipped cream my boy made the night before for dessert, some leftover berries and made a rainbow parfait.

And it was good! It was tasty and still rainbow and kind of pretty.

I was telling my boy yesterday that I think the best job would be reviewing bakeries. He pointed out I would be huge if I had this job but it would be a delicious premature death by suffocating in my own fat.
My roommate and I reviewed local cupcake bakeries for science a couple years ago with excellent results. The excellent result being using Sweet Mandy B’s for our awesome volcano cake the next year.
The boy and I are planning my No-Baby Shower and once again I have the chance to summarize cupcake findings FOR SCIENCE.
Reviews behind the jump.

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The more work I have, the less I do. I brought summaries of the grants I’m interested in applying for to the executives and they said yes to three! How do I go from zero to three? Could it have something to do with state budget cuts and the agency having no money?
One grant is only research, the 2nd is resurrecting an old program and the 3rd is mostly a program and I might throw some evaluation components in to give myself a part in it. Normally I wouldn’t get involved in a program grant but this one is big so I want to be part of it and see if I can get a raise out of it.
Even with my slacking, I’m still doing more work than I was last month. A lot of what I’m doing is independent work so it’s easier for me to get things done. I’ve stopped going to the 4 hour meetings. Now my boss just pulls me in for parts I’m involved in. I’m having more one-on-one meetings. And my boss finally laid the smack down on a pain in the ass director so I no longer have to chase him. It’s not that he’s suddenly doing his work. It’s just that I no longer have to follow up 10 times to remind him to do stuff. Let him sink.

I have 3 clients again at the GLBT center. The 3rd client is the easiest to work with so far. I identify with her in some ways which is something I will eventually discuss with my clinical supervisor. Last week we talked about one of my clients that is “internet famous” in her subculture and asked me to read her blog. I took her blog address without saying yes or no and I admit, I looked at it. I told on myself, knowing my supervisor would tell me I shouldn’t look at the client’s blog. My information should come from sessions, directly from the client, not through the information she shares with her internet community. The next session I told her I wouldn’t be reading her blog and she seemed OK with it. She has a lot going on in her past and I think she wanted to be able to say “just read this and understand me” but telling me all of those details in session is important to The Process. I’m slacking with clients, too. I haven’t done progress notes in forever and haven’t started my monthly report.

What have I been doing with my time? Not quite sure.
I went to the Chinese Democracy listening party, got a new GnR tshirt and the CD in the mail. The CD is growing on me, I really like Better. And the shirt is a total boy magnet.
I made Mac n Cheese Pancakes twice and they’re so simple and good. The 2nd time I made bacon, prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe and mimosas to go with them.
I’m making meatloaf cupcakes for the family tomorrow. My mom is jealous of hearing about my adventures in weird food and not tasting any of it. My mom called me today and told me a list of the liquors and wines she has at home and didn’t even mention food. I called her back and asked if we were just drinking this year and told her I fully supported that idea.

I was planning on making these for a pot luck months ago but got sick the day of the party. The little meaty guys have been stuck in my head so when my friend had another potluck, I busted out the cupcake tins.
I used this recipe with slight variations due to laziness. The recipe is for regular size cupcakes, not mini. I made minis because it was a pot luck and I wanted everyone to get to try one!

Step 1. Mix everything in a big bowl. The directions say with your hands but I was reluctant to touch the meats. This is not one of my prettier batters.

Step 2. Grease and fill the cupcake cups with meats. The meat shrinks so it is good to fill the cups to the top and pack it in so the cups don’t detach from the meat.

Step 2b. While you are doing all of this, boil some potatoes. I boiled the hell out of mine so I wouldn’t have to work hard to get the lumps out. You want the mashed potatoes to be nice and smooth so they look like icing.

Step 3. While meat is cooking, make your mashed potatoes. I decided to use a few drops of blue food coloring to make it looking more icing like.

Step 4. When the meats are done, ice those bitches! I slopped on a lot of icing but it still looked cute. I chopped shredded cheese into small bits to look like sprinkles.

Keep them warm, mashed potatoes don’t taste great when cold. Unless you’re serving them to kids. The kids at the party shoved the cold cupcakes into their mouths like rabid beasts.

I’m not a big fan of meatloaf but these tasted pretty good. My mom is asking me to make them for Thanksgiving!

I made bruschetta tonight with tomatoes and onions from my mom’s garden. It’s pretty tasty even though I fucked up and added too much balsamic vinegar. I just added more tomato and basil to make up for it.
Now I can’t get the onion and garlic smell off my hands. The internet suggested salt, fondling metal bowls and mouthwash. Salt did nothing, rubbing metal just made the wok feel dirty so I tried the mouthwash. My hands don’t smell like onion anymore but now they smell like citrus mouthwash! Goddamn, I can’t win.

Other than the things I’ve touched with my dirty onion hands, the apartment smells like clean. We had a cleaning woman come in this morning and de-fur the apartment. I threw some stuff on the back porch last night and the living room almost looks livable now. I still need to work on find a nice, cheap couch.

We gave my roommate’s cat to a friend tonight so we are on our way to become fur free! I am cruising Craigslist for a new desk chair and maybe a new couch. Not that she messed up the couch but it is horribly ugly.

My mom gave me some vegtables from her garden and I made some awesome pico de gallo. I should make it more often, it’s really simple. The onions actually made me cry while cutting them! That’s never happened to me before so it must be because my mom has an awesome garden.

This whole patriotism thing can suck me but I was loving the backyard fireworks this weekend. I stayed out late Thursday and Friday so instead of cursing the 2am fireworks in the alley, I was on my back porch watching them. Due to a technical failure (listening to a boy) I could barely see the city’s fireworks show on the 3rd. North Ave beach may be crowded on the 3rd but there are a bunch of goddamn buildings in the way between you and the fireworks. A ton of other people didn’t seem to know this either so I don’t feel too stupid.

Boxing boot camp is almost finished so I need something new to keep me active. Jabb boxing gym has similar classes that I might go to. I like boxing but I really want to run away and join the circus. OK, it’s not quite that kind of trapeze training but it’s still trapeze! My upper body strength has got slightly less sad since starting boxing but it’s still pretty pathetic. I’m hoping the aerial training class will help me work toward the awesome back I want. (Awesome back=showing off tattoos)

I didn’t do a pictorial like I usually do with new recipes but I made some really good granola just now. I’m taking spoonfuls while waiting for it to cool. I’m concerned how its going to clump when it cools. I used my friend’s family farm honey and expensive Irish oats that come in a tin. I didn’t use the wheat germ suggested in the recipe and my fruit is raisins, dried cranberries and dried cherries.

(Answer to the title is Yes. And there is a 5th,6th and 7th of July, too. Haha! Egocentric Americans!)

I’ve been slacking on meditating and not really feeling like I have a good grasp on this whole Buddha thing so I started an intro to Buddha class. I was meditating at a Zen temple/dojo and I’m taking the class at a Pure Land temple.

I’ve talked a little about the difference between Zen and Pure Land but the best comparison I’ve heard so far is that you can walk or take a boat, you’re still going to get to the same place. (That’s not the direct quote but the idea is there.)

That doesn’t mean I am giving up on meditation. I liked meditation especially at the temple. The little bit of ritual helps me focus.

The first class was about the different sects of Buddhism and where they came from. I started thinking about how long Buddhism has been around when the teacher pointed out that certain terms are Sanskrit. One person in class said his family has been part of the temple all of his life but he has never learned the basics. No Sunday school as a kid for him. Buddhism goes much deeper than reading scripture and sticking a Jesus fish on your car. It’s like gender. Society and family teach you what it means to be a girl but they don’t give you a book or make you take lessons on how to be a girl. Some people see Buddhism as more of a culture or philosophy than a religion. Older members of the temple pride themselves on not having studied Buddhism, they say it’s not necessary when you live it.

I like the teacher for this class. He’s an old white guy, retired teacher, a forgetful professor type. He became interested in Buddhism about 30 years ago but I think he comes from a Jewish family. I googled him and found a site with his poetry. Some of his poems are dirty! I am well aware that seniors like to get it on but it’s always surprising to see evidence of it.

The nice weather has put me into a good mood. Pink jelly shoes also put me in a good mood. I had a hard time finding jelly shoes last year but Target has a bunch this year. They’re not comfy or practical but they scream summer nostalgia.
I walked around a lot yesterday. I stopped at Starfruit along the way. They have Kefir frozen yogurt. It’s a little bitter at first but the more I got into my cup of cherry, the more I liked it. And according their noisy, boingy site, it’s all low fat.

I brought my mini cupcakes and cherries in snow to the parents’ for Easter and some of it was actually eaten! The cupcakes were a bit misshaped because I couldn’t find mini cupcake baking cups so the cupcakes stuck to the bottom of the pan and I had to pry them out with a knife. Everyone made fun of their appearance and likeness to poop but everyone ate them.

Cherries in snow was a bit harder sell. A few of my family members ate it. I thought it had a good contrast between the sweet cherries and milk gelatin. I took the leftovers to the boy’s place and since he doesn’t actually have food in his fridge, he is probably reading this, thinking about how he forgot about the dessert in his fridge. Yes, it’s probably still good.

I’ve been trying to eat healthy so I’ve been making more food rather than buying prepackaged. I like to take recipes down to a basic level, something I can make anytime. Tonight I made guacamole and chips. Guacamole consisted of some leftover avocado, tomato and onion powder. Chips were flour tortillas baked in the oven. Tadas! Chips and guac.

I have been making an effort to lose weight for a month now and I recently weighed in on a good scale and found out I have only lost a couple pounds. I’m eating better and more active so there is obviously a need to rework the plan. I’m also tired a lot. I started using FitDay again to keep track of my foods and activity. I talked to a few people that have lost weight in the past, consulted the internets and to my surprise I need to be eating more. My calorie intake was too low (which is why I feel OK about just eating a snack).
The elliptical was betraying me, too. So I started doing a short, hard workout on the elliptical then moving to weights. I’ve just started doing these things this week. I’m sore already. I need to weigh in more and it’s a pain to hunt down my coworker that owns the “official” scale so I’m going to buy a scale. I should have been weighing myself weekly all month but my previous superstitions about motivation and weight loss kept me away. This time I am giving myself a week and if there is no change, reworking the plan again.