Cooking

Hi all!

I've been doing a bit of cooking lately. Here and there, a bit now and then. Nothing too fancy. I love making soup - adding lots of different things together to make such a great comfort food. My husband made the comment the other day that he should send my info to Gordon Ramsay's campaign to bring women back into the kitchen (no, not that way, stop your outrage in its tracks). I was a little teed off, then I started looking through my recipe files.

And realized part of the reason I didn't want to cook is that the recipes I have are exactly what I don't want to eat - too many carbs, too high fat, and too complicated.

So I've been searching the blogosphere looking at different people's blogs and recipes. One particular one popped out at me (while I was ...ahem...searching for a martini...picture) as looking really intriguing.

Dr Mary Dan Eades

I don't often spend time going back and reading past posts (save for the Bittersweet blog, but that's partly because I enjoy the recipes and partly because she's a damn good writer). This one I went back and read them. And found another writer that is refreshingly good with the English language, cooks a lot of interesting stuff, and BTW, happens to be the author of a best selling book. I like when people are like that - they may be celebrities, but they are refreshingly down to earth and seem like they understand the struggles of us little people out there (err...should I say not so little?).

I have been extremely busy lately, so no cooking as of my newfound discovery. The husband's been experimenting with low carb, though - Sunday's meal was a "pizza" frittata that I absolutely adored and sincerely hope he makes again.

Aside from the stress of putting a proposal together and suddenly finding your CFO forgot to do the cost estimate, I've been putting together a design for my class on the 25th. I need to get that photo over there...

I've also been going to the gym three nights a week since early December (yes, I beat all the stupid New Years resolution people in and I'm still going where they are not). I had been winning the stupid incentives - free water bottles, a tshirt, etc. Two weeks ago, however, I won a personal training session. I had two goals: 1. to lose weight and 2. to gain abdominal strength (of which I've had none since the cancer treatment).

What an eye opener when I went last week! She had me do things I swear I haven't done since high school. Push ups, weights, etc. and a few things with a new twist - lunges and crunches on a ball as well as my work on the extension machine to help my legs. And I'm embarrassed to say I got on the elliptical machine for the first time and am wondering why the heck treadmills exist now. Seriously? I can do 2.7 mph on the treadmill and be able to do 20 minutes. 8 minutes of elliptical and I've burned the same calorie count at 1 mph. And its a LOT more of a workout. I have to say I've been enjoying my workout sessions more with this new plan. I was a bit bored before and now the workouts are back to being interesting.

With the new(ish) diet and the extra exercise, I'm at least hoping to see either the weight or the inches go down (I've been having issues with water retention) soon. My membership at the gym is through February, I'm hoping to have enough money to renew it.

We shall see!