Cooking weekend

I've had a rare full weekend off (on a holiday weekend, no less!) and have been spending a lot of time cooking ahead. Not too much, though, because I've overdone it before and worn myself out. I wanted just enough to have plenty of meals for lunches and dinners ready and still get to enjoy my time ("Horrible Bosses" was very funny, and "Win Win" was great. Recommend them both).

So what have I been cooking? I tried some of the mason jar meals I posted about earlier: the sliders, corn dogs and creamy chicken curry with cilantro lime rice. I also made more chili and cornbread muffins (because CORNBREAD is what you serve with chili, dammit), and chicken enchilada soup. And I had already made some sloppy joe mix about a week ago.

Chili & cornbread muffins.

Chicken enchilada soup.

Here's notes on the others:

Corn dogs

I halved the recipe listed because I wanted to see how they turned out, plus by the time I got to this recipe on Sunday, I was down to just 6 mason jars. I ended up with batter to make only five, though (so that means Buster got half a frankfurter — he was happy!) They didn't quite look done at 20 minutes, so I put them in for another three and probably could have done another couple of minutes, really. I also forgot to grease the jar before pouring in the batter, but I just ran a knife sprayed with Pam around the edge as soon as I took them out of the oven, and they didn't stick too bad.

Sliders

These were pretty good right out of the oven. We'll see how they do after being frozen and reheated. I did forget to pat down the meat to get rid of the excess grease, but they turned out pretty good. I also had trouble getting them in jars, even the 16-ounce ones I have. Maybe it's because I used King's Hawaiian rolls for the buns? I bagged them in pairs in sandwich bags instead. Kinda defeats part of the purpose of using the jars, I know, but it's all I had.

Creamy chicken curry with cilantro lime rice

This was pretty good, but I'll have to do some tweaking. I made the rice a bit differently. First of all, I used brown rice, since that's what I had. And I made it more like the rice dishes at Something Edible, adding the cilantro & lime zest to the butter, browning the rice, then adding the water with the lime juice and salt in the water. It does give the rice a lot more flavor, but in this dish, it might have added too much lime flavor. Or maybe I needed more curry to balance out the lime? Haven't had a lot of curry dishes, so I'm not sure how spicy it should be.

So the final tally of my cooking weekend:
Sliders — 5 pairs
Chicken enchilada soup — 10 8 oz jars
Chili — 8 8 oz jars
Corn dogs — 4
Chicken curry & rice — 5
Sloppy joes — 7

So that's a total of 39 meals. Maybe along with the occasional turkey sandwich, and if I make some lasagna again later, I'll have enough variety to keep me from getting too bored and caving to a desire for going out to lunch or raiding the vending machine too often. It'll be interesting to see how my bank account shapes up later.

Back on the juice

Ooh, look, two blog posts in one day!

I haven't juiced for awhile, and after and long and tiring walk with Buster, decided it was a good time to get back into it.

So here's today's offering.

There's one each of a granny smith apple, cucumber, celery stalk and a carrot from a friend's garden; a quarter of a small watermelon also from a friend's garden (seeds removed and saved); a small piece of ginger; and the leaves from a couple stalks of kale.

All that turned into this:


This is what's left:

I've read tips that you can put the pulp through the juicer and get a little more juice out of it, but what I get is just fine. I put this out in my compost bin.

This batch, I can really taste the watermelon, and there really wasn't that much of it, but it was awful juicy, obviously, compared to the other ingredients. Could've used a little more ginger, but it was good.

Resolution update

I did only so-so last week on my resolution not to eat fast food. I got a bit down in the dumps about mid-week and didn't feel like making meals to take with me. Which was bad, because Wednesday and Thursday were also the days I worked the second job and so had to worry about two meals away from home. So I ended up eating out Wednesday through Friday's lunch.

I didn't do that bad, really. Wednesday's lunch was salad, soup and some fruit off the grocery store salad bar, and Thursday's was a turkey flatbread Sammie with soup from Quizno's. Dinner was another matter, though. Wedneseday, I had Chinese again from the place in the mall, and Thursday was KFC. And Friday, I really did bad with a chicken sandwich and fries from Wendy's.

But I did take dinner to work at the mall last night -- a baked potato with cheese sauce and shredded chicken for toppings, and I added a salad from the grocery store salad bar. So that's some redemption, right?

So far, so good

Six days into the new year, and I've eaten out only once! And it was sorta healthy. Chinese food. I mean, there were lots of vegetables. OK, I didn't eat all the vegetables. But it wasn't a greasy burger or corndog, after all.

Tomorrow and Thursday are my three-and-half year checkups with the surgeon and oncologist. Feeling good, so everything should go well. Send some positive vibes, though. Every bit helps.

Healthier 2009

So it's the new year, and I've been thinking about resolutions, as everyone does. How can you help it with all the diet/exercise product infomercials and organization stuff in the stores?

One thing I want to do, as I've said every year, is to get healthier. It means a lot more now than it did, say, five years ago, though. And I have done better, at least somewhat. I eat a little better and exercise more. But I never seemed to be able to lose much weight. Until this year. Once it warmed up this spring to where Buster and I could walk everyday, I lost about 15 pounds without even realizing it! That's the difference, I guess, of walking with an elderly dog vs. walking with a 1-year-old dog.

Really, I'm not that bad off. According to this site, I have a BMI of 26, which is just over the limit of being "overweight." According to that site, I could get down to 100 pounds and be considered normal weight. Yikes. I look of pictures of myself from right after college, when I was about 110, and that just looks too skinny (although it probably didn't help I always wore baggy clothes). I'd be happy with about 130-135, so I don't have far to go.

Anyway, back to resolutions. I've tried lots of different methods of keeping them, and it never really seems to work. So instead of saying "Lose weight" or even more specifically, "Lose 10 pounds," I'm going to go with small steps. So first step for January: Cutting fast food from the diet. This one should be easy, because I've already done a lot of that. I quit eating at McDonald's about a year or so ago after they ripped me off on my change in the drive-through and the manager was a jerk about it, and I lost about five pounds in the two months after that.

I go to Sonic once in a while (OK, more often than I should) for a corndog and tater tots (they probably start fixing them when they see me drive up now). Chicken (popcorn chicken, nuggets, KFC) is my downfall. But I hardly ever eat fast-food hamburgers anymore. And there are healthy options at fast food places. Wendy's (which is one of the best places for lunch here, service-wise) has chili, baked potatoes, salads, etc. There's a Quizno's near where I work, and I'm taking my lunch/dinner to work a lot more often now. So if I can just control the corndog/chicken nugget cravings, this one should be a smooth way to start.

I'll be working on some exercise goals this month, too, but I'm really going to focus on success on one goal each month.

Snow day

Well, a half day, at least. When I woke up this morning, there was already about 3 inches covering the ground. The snow wasn't as heavy in the town where I work, but it kept up all day (and blowing), and when I got home about 1:30 this afternoon, there was probably about 7 inches on the ground here. I had scooped a path on the back patio to the garage before I left for work, and when I got home, you couldn't tell I'd done that.

Before I got settled in and cozy inside, I scooped paths in back and up front, not that you can tell now, and decided to put out some more birdseed. The birds did not want to leave the feeders, though, and one little female finch wouldn't get off the thistle feeder until I nudged her a few times with my finger! I've gotten within a couple feet of the feeders before they fly off sometimes, but never have I ever been able to walk right up to the feeder, let alone touch a wild bird!

I tried my mom's chili recipe for the first time today (after she FINALLY she gave me the recipe). I browned the meat Sunday and tossed it and the other ingredients in the slowcooker this morning. It tasted just as good as when she makes it, I thought, but I'll take some to Dad tomorrow (after the snow dies down) and see if he thinks it's just as good as what he calls Mom's "damn good chili." I filled up on that and cornbread muffins this afternoon, and had popcorn for dinner. Hey, it's a snow day, I can indulge!

Looks like I need to get a dog door in pronto. Mom is off on her next adventure, so Buster has some long days by himself when I'm working the hotline on a weekday. I hate leaving him alone, but I thought I could wait until spring to put in a dog door (since you're supposed to take the door off its hinges to install one) and in the meantime, Dad could come over and let him out on those long days.

Buster's timid around strangers, especially men, but I thought he was used to Dad by now and would be OK. We tried it Sunday, when I worked an 8-hour shift on the hotline, but Dad said Buster would not go out for him. He greeted Dad at the door, but went right into my bedroom and wouldn't come out. So I guess Operation Dog Door gets moved up. It's supposed to warm up toward the weekend, so maybe I can get something done soon.

I fixed my shower door! One of the rollers had come out on one of the sliding doors last week, so I have just kind of avoided using it. Once I got a look at it today, though, and saw what needed to be done, it didn't take very long. It was simple, but I'm kind of proud of myself and feeling all handy. Not that I'm going to go put in a dog door right now or anything.