Excuses, Excuses.

I am well known by friends for making up excuses to avoid the gym.  One of the more memorable excuses is not being able to find the other sock even though there are many other pairs.  Because of this, my boyfriend bet me yesterday that I could not go every day this week to the gym.  I could physically do this without the bet, but some friendly competition gives me extra motivation to actually get there.  I am hoping this will be a strong start to my losing weight plan.  Day 1 of 7 is complete.  I did not have class today so I also had time to take the beagle for a walk.  It was a beautiful day for walking in the park and she enjoyed herself as always.

Since I have the day off and the boyfriend works until later, I decided to have a healthy snack before dinner in few hours.  We don't have any unhealthy food in the house right now but still, I wanted something lighter than granola or an entire salad.  I picked up some 0% fat greek yogurt on the way home and made a dill, walnut shallot veggie dip that I saw on this blog.  Very tasty, I will be making more dips this week!

The Healthy Weekly Menu

We are trying to get back on our healthy eating diet (I say this as I'm munching on an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and green olives for breakfast...) and one of our best tools is planning the weekly menu in detail on Sunday.  Let me share our menu for this week, which is mostly foods that we eat on the FourHour Body diet:

Sunday, November 10th, 2013

• Tarka dhal (from a curry cookbook at home, recipe below)
• Hungarian spice rub roasted chicken (Sunday night dinner)
• Salads
• Make bottle of Carrot-Ginger salad dressing
• Shredded Korean Short Ribs with cucumber slaw
• Homemade granola for his breakfast
• Soft boiled eggs for my breakfast

As for the salads, we eat those for lunch and with dinner throughout the week.  For lunch, I usually add canned tuna for protein to mine while he likes to eat a side of the lentils and beef with a smaller salad.  Most of the shopping is done at Trader Joe's and they have lots of bags of mixed greens, different sprouts and other healthy salad toppings. We do the shopping and cooking Sunday afternoon then roast our chicken to start off the week with a nice healthy dinner.  It is a great feeling to have lunches and dinners cooked for the whole week.  Plus, it is easy to heat up so we can still enjoy a relaxing dinner at the table even if we've worked late.

The tarka dhal is one of our favorite recipes.  It is really healthy and very easy (and cheap) to make.  We usually have a lentil dish every week and we have been hooked on this one for the last three weeks.  I add avocados to mine usually because I love avocados in pretty much everything.  It also mixes great with any meat for a complete meal.  Last week we have had a spicy ancho brisket that was great with the dhal.  Here is the recipe we use (it is a little modified from the original since we have made it often).  The original recipe comes from a book called 'The World's Greatest-Ever Curries" and I would highly recommend it.  

Tarka Dhal 

(This is for 4-6 servings, for two of us for a week, I usually make 4 times this amount, but usually only use 3 or 4 jalapeños and 8-ish red chillies):

Dhal ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of red lentils, washed
• 1/2 cup toor dal (split pigeon peas), washed
• 2.5 cups of water
• 1 tsp. grated ginger
• 2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. turmeric
• 2 jalapeños, diced then pulsed in food processor until a pulp
• Salt to taste

Place everything in a large pot, bring to a boil then cook for 15-20 until lentils are soft and the liquid is gone.  Add more water if lentils are still not soft but should be more like an oatmeal consistency than a soup.

Tarka ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. of vegetable oil
• 1 onion, cut in half then thinly sliced
• 1/4 tsp. of mustard seeds
• 4 dried red chillies
• 1 big tomato, cut in half then thinly sliced

Heat oil then add all ingredients.  Cook for 2-3 minutes then stir into the finished dhal.  Serve with cilantro or if you want more heat, raw chillies.  I recommend a garnish of avocado.

First Day of "Vacation"

Today is sort of the first day of vacation.  Yesterday, I finished my second semester of graduate school and I am so excited!  I am not going to think about how much more I have because this is a moment worth enjoying.  I start class in a little less than two weeks and still have my internship to finish up as well as my job at school to do.  However, without papers and class, I have a lot more free time.

I want to make a list of things for me to do when I feel bored.   I have ADHD and when I take breaks from medication (like this week), I find it really hard to get really into any project.  I start a lot of stuff and usually end up making a bigger mess than was there to begin with.  A list of ideas might give some inspiration when boredom strikes.  The only time I veg out and watch T.V. all day is when I don't take my medicine and I really would like to change that pattern.

I eventually want to make a prettier list with Photoshop that I can hang in my office but for now, this will do.  Today's task is going to be cleaning or organizing something- namely my office/dressing room and getting out summer clothing.

When Boredom Strikes

• ·      Read a book
• ·      Garden
• ·      Go to the gym
• ·      Take Caly for a walk
• ·      Blog
• ·      Cook something
• ·      Make recipe scrapbook
• ·      Clean or organize something
• ·      Finish an art project
• ·      Find a geocache
• ·      Draw
• ·      Write in journal

Sick

All yesterday I was feeling sick with a sinus infection.  This morning, I'm feeling better but still not great.  I decided to upload some of my pictures from vacation.  I got a new camera for Christmas and have not been using it as much as I would like.  Part of me wanted to get up and go the gym this morning, the other part wanted to stay in my pajamas until noon (which seems to be where I am headed) then start being productive.  It is my last week of break and I'm starting to really want to take advantage of the option to not get dressed until way past breakfast time.  I didn't go to the gym all weekend though or take Caly for a walk because I felt terrible.  I went out once to get groceries and felt like I was going to pass out the whole time.

For dinner last night, I made Trinidadian Doubles from Munchin with Munchkin.  I've never made bread before so I was very excited when it actually started to rise.  Greg, who makes bread a lot, was not as impressed but he did do the frying of the pita bread.  The doubles were pretty good.  They would have been fantastic with this thick, Greek style yogurt that we love but we did not have that.  I also finally took some pictures with my new camera.

And of course, what would be a blog entry without a picture of my pretty beagle?

Stay in Saturday

Today we worked on cleaning and organizing the house.  My boyfriend is getting a long awaited espresso machine next weekend and in order to get in the kitchen, we had to do a lot of rearranging.  There is an old shelf in the basement, it looks almost homemade but also is very sturdy.  We are going to use that for the machine.  It is still in the basement now and I'm making dinner and with one whole wall of the kitchen empty it seems a little strange.  

We were going to have left over soup then catch a movie at six but instead, we are going later tonight.  I was really into reading The Walking Dead then decided to make a salad but boiling eggs led to making a lentil dish with chicken sausage on the side.  The dish is very loosely based of this recipe from Real Simple.  I am not really a big fan of their recipes but I needed an idea for a quick red lentil recipe.  I cook red lentils a lot but usually they take an hour or so.   

One of the best things I've learned from a cookbook is how to cook onions for an Indian dish.  Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni is a great Indian cookbook.  I like that is uses Indian names for dishes instead of saying 'red lentils' or 'chickpeas'.  For a lot of the meat dishes, onions are cooked for almost a half hour on low heat.  The flavor is so much deeper then just quickly sautéing.  Another hint I learned from that book is after adding spices, the time to add liquid is after the oil starts seeping back out of the spice mixture.  So, we are having a curried red lentil dish with carrots, ginger, and garlic.  I added in a little bullion because we don't have broth and tomato paste.  

The onions are almost done.  I blogged over the summer when I made a recipe from this cookbook, must be waiting for the onions to cook makes me want to write.

Stay at Home

Today is my first day to myself in a while.  We’ve been at my family’s for over a week and then traveling home.  Today though, it’s just the beagle and me.  I woke up early but still got eight hours of sleep.  Usually, I fall back asleep after my boyfriend leaves for work but the combination of him making me laugh so hard this morning (I think he is funniest in the morning) and sleeping so well being back in our own bed, I got up and started with making a plan for the day.  

Right now, I am making a soup for dinner.  The soup is from The Spice Spoon (really glad I found this blog!).  I realized we had a ton of chana dal in the pantry and in line with my resolutions, I am trying to declutter the house.  This is much easier with less in the house but unfortunately we just brought home a car full of new stuff from home (mostly kitchen stuff).  So, I decided to use the chana dal for a spicy soup. 

I love being able to do grocery shopping and cook during the day but it does make me feel really housewife-ish, which I don’t like.  While the soup is heating up and before I start tackling organizing the basement, I thought I would post- which I forgot to include blogging more regularly in my resolutions!

Earlier, the beagle and I went on a walk in the park near our house.  I thought she would have fun watching all the geese but she ignored them.  However, she was fascinated by the people sledding and got very excited.  I realized I should bring my new camera to the park with me.  I really want to get in the habit of taking more pictures!

Tonight, my boyfriend and I are going to go the gym together though I wish I had gone this morning.  I hate working out in the evening.  Another plus of vacation is going to the gym in the morning when there are only a few people there.  Again, it feels a little like I’m a stay-at-home person but its nice doing things while most people are out of the way at work.