Damn You Scuba Steve

How dare you call me out!?!? The reason why there have been no updates is there hasn't been any progress, almost regression. After feeling that I accomplished something by losing 10 pounds, I celebrated by not working out. Its amazing how quickly you lose routine and how much of a chore it feels like to workout after you've stopped for a few days. Then you start to feel really guilty and slightly ashamed. You almost don't want to workout because you don't want to see how much weight you gained back. Sure I lost 10 pounds, but 238 isn't where I want to be, and I'm going to just go back up to 250 if I don't workout.

Anyway excuses really don't mean anything. They aren't going to help me lose weight. I regained my motivation again this evening. I got back on the elliptical and did another two 30 minute sessions. Afraid of being something like 245 I even had my wife turn away when I weighed myself. I was completely shocked to be at 238.5 lbs. So I consider myself lucky and its time to get myself down to 228 lbs.

Brian

10 Pounds!

I suppose you can call it a New Years resolution.  Since January 13th, I've been actively working to lose weight.  Today I've dropped 10 lbs since December 29th.   I'm quite excited since this was my first tangible goal.  

What are my goals?  Well I'm taking this in 10 lbs increments.  So my most recent goal is now 228 lbs.  Next I would love to be no longer in the "obese" category of Body Mass Index (BMI).  For a 6 foot tall person, dropping below 221 lbs the BMI category changes from obese to overweight.  I'm really shocked I'm considered obese.  That's the highest weight category.  I would think there'd be something higher, maybe fluffy or even just $@&#$.  I'm currently in the same category as some guy who can't even leave his bed because he's too fat.  Far off goals would include sub-200 lbs, and leaving overweight category of BMI and reaching normal (184lbs).  Those are so far off, I can't even image myself those weights.  I really don't have a timeline, other than steady improvement.  

How am I losing weight?  Well starting with Jan 13th, I've been exercising.  Each data point on the above chart corresponds to a day I worked out.  Back in January,  we dug out an old exercise equipment Anna owned, called Tony Little's Gazelle Edge.  I don't really recommend it.  I has nearly zero resistance.  In order to sustain a good workout I had to combine it with a heart rate monitor and 5lbs leg weights.  It took me 15 minutes just to reach my target heart rate and it was really easy for it to drop out of my target range.   However, I still worked at it and would do two 30 minutes sessions.  What I really liked about it was I could entertain myself with the TV and their was no impact on my shins.  At the end of the workout I was quite happy of not needing to ice my shins with bags of frozen peas.  At the beginning of February we upgraded to a real piece of exercise equipment, an elliptical,  Sole E25.  Yes it put a dent in our savings, and yes it takes up quite a bit of valuable space in our living room, but losing weight is really important to us.  We vow not to let it collect dust like most exercise equipments you see in people's homes.  Again I work out in two 30 minute sessions.  I usually have it on the heart rate setting, the Sole E25 has its own heart rate monitor that allows the elliptical to dynamically adjust resistance to keep you near your preset target heart rate.  I'll take a 5-10 minute break between the 30 minute sessions.  We monitor our progress using the Nintendo Wii Fit.  

  Anna said to tell you that she's extremely proud of me.  I'm proud of her also.  She is also working out with goals of weight loss.  Unfortunately, its much more difficult for her. The biggest issue she is working against is her work schedule.  While I'm able to work out in the evenings after work, she cannot.  When you work a 12 hour shift all you have time for outside of work is maybe a meal and sleep.  It unreasonable to think she would have enough energy (she doesn't) and sacrifice valuable sleep to exercise on days she works.  Anna is working on days she has off, but progress is much slower than me.  Regardless of all this, she keeps putting in a good 60 minutes on days she has off.  I do think we'll see progress, and I'm extremely proud she's keeps working at it.

Food Menu Feb 15th-21st

Thoughts on past dishes:

Wed (Feb 11):  We had pork, fennel, and roasted red pepper stew.  It went on top of rice, so I guess it really wasn't a stew.  I liked the fennel, onion,s and red pepper and the sauce was good too.  Using rice was a nice touch also.  Unfortunately the pork was dry and tastless.  I'm not really sure why, its a slow cooker shouldn't everything be juicy.  I may have over-browned the diced pork, or maybe we chose the wrong cut at the store.  I think we could significantly improve this dish, we just need to give some serious thought on how to improve the pork.

Thurs: We went to Baja Frash before the hockey game.  Tacos are always a solid choice.

Friday: Anna worked Saturday night, so we had our valentines dinner.  We cook quite often, so its a nice opportunity to have a great meal without the work or cleanup.  We decided to be somewhat more budget concious this year, so instead of going someplace like Margots, we went to the Commerce Street Grille.  Its the restaurant attached to the Renaissance Hotel.  They advertised a special at the hockey game of a valentines dinner, bottle of wine, free valet for $75.  The food was what I expected for the cost.  The salads were standard, nothing inventive/creative.  For main course I had grouper stuffed with lobster and Anna had filet mignon and bacon wrapped scallops.  At first I thought my dish was a bust, the grouper by itself was not anything special.  However, it became fantastic once I included some of the lobster stuffing with each bite.  I especially enjoyed the spice to the lobster stuffing, I think there may have been diced jalepeno in it.  Sides included roasted asparagus and dirty rice.  The asparagus was good, and the rice seemed more of an afterthought of trying to include a starch on the plate.  Dessert was fantastic.  The plate had a long skinny dark chocolate brownie with chocolate moose.  It was a great combination of bitter chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate.  A big thin sheet of chocolate in the shape of a heart and a layered chocolate "pastry" (I think it had marzipan in it) were on the plate.  There was also a few strawberries and blueberries.  The wine was a cheap pinot noir.  I like pinot noir,  even cheap ones, I just ignored the bitey finish.  When we drove home we stopped by the wine store and picked up a bottle of rose champagne.  We had never had a champagne that was a rose until our honeymoon and wanted to have it again. 

Saturday:  Anna tried to stay in bed to prepare for work, but ended up getting up at 3pm because she was hungary and had some leftovers.  I didn't want to make anything major since she would only pick at it before she left for work at 6:15pm.  I picked up already cooked chicken breast "fajita style", and we had burrito/taco/tostada thing.  Not really sure exactly what to call it, it was just your standard meat, cheese, salsa, sour cream semi-folded into tortillas.

Sunday:  We baked frozen lasagna.  Is there a better frozen lasagna than Stouffers?  I can't imagine that there would be.  One of these days I'm going to try to make lasagna from scratch.  I just haven't because it would be quite involved, and I'm happily satisfied with Stouffers.

Monday:  Hockey game, but Anna had to do a peer review at work.  We had to drive straight to the game.  We ate dinner at the arena.  The Sommet Center doesn't seemed to have any impressive food options.  I had bbq pork nachos.  Anna used our last meal voucher and got a slice of pizza.

Tuesday:  Anna worked.  We had frozen pizza.  There is one Kroger near us that carries a wider selection of frozen pizzas.  We managed to find a Spicy Chicken Supreme from Digorno's.  I don't think any of the other nearby stores (including some other Krogers) carries it.

Wednesday:  I prepared fettucini in spicy cream sauce Tuesday night, so Anna would have something other than frozen food before work.  We got this recipe from my sister-in law, Cara.  The cream sauce includes onion, bell pepper, jalepeno, and garlic.  That may be my favorite combination to include in entres.  We always seem to have these vegetables on hand.  Anna has always made this dish before, this was my first time.  I didn't realize how involved the recipe was, there was even a step of tempering the sauce with sour cream.  I only learned the concept of tempering recently, so I was shocked that this recipe needed it.  Tempering is a method of adding a dairy product or eggs to a hot liquid.  Essentially when you want to avoid a potential of curdling.  Instead of directly adding the dairy/eggs to the hot liquid, you slowly stir in spoonfuls of hot liquid to the dairy/egg slowly raising its temp.  After about a cup you've finished tempering and you can then add  the dairy/egg mixture to the hot liquid.  

Upcoming Meals:

Thurs (Feb 19):  Hockey game, we've had 6 home games this month, that is a lot.  We'll either go to Blackstones or Baja Fresh.

Friday:  Shepherd's pie.  Well not the real version, the one we're making is more a caserole with crescent rolls bake on top.  We're using some venison my Dad skillfully acquired back in November.  Anna's mother, Jane, is coming to visit.  A lot of times when we have visitors, we try to plan a special meal.  We had already decided on shepherd's pie though.  While it isn't fancy, or contains any advanced cooking method, its a great comfort food and thus we didn't want to change our plans.  I've been excited about it all week.

Saturday:  We may be going out to the movies and thus may have dinner out.  Not sure though, we may put something together.

Food Menu Feb 7-14th

In an effort to post more often to the blog, I am going to try to write about something that interest me, food. Dinner schedules can be complicated: Anna does not have a set work schedule, I'm rarely home when she leaves, and sometimes we have hockey tickets. Ideally we also use the leftovers for our lunches too. We've discovered that its a lot easier to cook during the week when we have a plan. Every Sunday, Anna and I, sit down a create a menu and go shopping. My sister-in-law posts a sidebar on her blog with their upcoming menu. I'm not really sure what I have planned, but I don't think a sidebar is enough. Formatting will be a work in progress, assuming I do this regularly.

If you're interested in any meal, just let us know. I don't think any of our recipes are secrets.

Sunday night: Chicken, Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Pepper Pizza
We made the crust ourselves. It was a success in that it wasn't too soggy in the middle. In the past our crusts were not cooked in the center. However the crust was bland, the ends were not tasty and seemed to dry out my mouth. I'm not surprised though, we decided to make this at the last minute. We didn't have time to do a true crust, one that sits over night and goes through a bench proof. The recipe for this crust came out of the KitchenAid mixer manual. We left it for 1-2 hours to rise and thats it. We roasted a red-bell pepper ourselves, its pretty easy if you know how. The bulk of the cheese was mozzarella with blobs of goat cheese. Anna put a light coat of a marinara that advertised itself as being from Lynchburg, TN (Jack Daniels). Overall the pizza was extremely tasty. Even though the crust was lacking, you could only tell when eating the ends.

Monday night: Slow-cooker beef ribs
One of our slow-cooker cookbooks hyped up its ability to cook ribs. We've never tried until now. It may be one of the easiest slow-cooker dishes you can make, although that isn't saying much since most slow-cooker dishes are easy to put together. Essential you put the ribs in the pot, cover in bbq sauce of your choosing (we used a couple sauces that had been in our fridge and added some honey). Then you cook on low for 8+ hours. While they turned out tasty (... I may need a thesaurus) they were also very greasy. We didn't trim the fat of the ribs and it showed. Also unlike an oven, smoaker, grill where the fat can drip away, it cannot do that in the slow-cooker. Maybe it won't be so fatty with pork ribs.

Tuesday night: Ham, peas, and penne pasta caserole
We thawed out leftover chrismas ham, tossed it into our dutch oven with cooked penne, frozen peas, and a tomato-onion-creamy cheese sauce, and baked. Its your standard caserole, almost all the ingredients can be swapped with something similar, and it produces good results every time. Unfortunately I didn't get this ready until 15 minutes before Anna had to leave for work. The sauce did not sit long enough to firm up and was more soupy than intended. Oh well, still tasted great, and makes perfect leftovers.

Wednesday night: Pork, Fennel, and Roasted Red Pepper Stew.
Another slow-cooker recipe, these work really well given our schedule. Anna and I are starting to become souped/stewed out for the season. I picked this recipe because it has a completely different flavor profile than anything we've had all winter. We're not roasting the red peppers ourselves, and instead are just using the kind you can get in a jar. I'm torn, I'm excited to try something new, but at the same time I'm tired of soup/stew.

Thursday night: Hockey game, we'll probably stop at Baja Fresh or Panera.

Friday night: We're having our valentines dinner at Commerce Street Grill. I hope the place is good. I've really been wanting to try Margot's, but we found a really good deal at Commerce Street Grill. Given that we've been budeting our money, it was difficult to say no to Margots. However we're probably going to spend 1/2 to 1/4 less.

Saturday night: Nothing planned. Anna works this night so she'll be counting on me to come up with something.

Well, I'm not sure if you really cared about what we're eating, but thats really not the point. I want to write to the blog more, and I may do so by blogging about something I love and is new each week.

Brian