Jump to content

Jensen

participating member
  • Posts

    2,114
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Jensen

  1. Jensen

    Shakedown?

    I would suspect that the whole shebang would be written off as promotion. The investors should be happy, as it gives the JGV a captive audience made up of their target demographic. I don't have an issue with anyone comping their goods or services. *Asking* to be comped for a wedding is just tacky though.
  2. You're not kidding! And thank you, reesek and therese, for your congrats. They do help too. I've started dinner for tonight by way of making the soup stock. I remember watching Good Eats one day, either the show about making homemade stock or the one about making stock in a pressure cooker. At any rate, Alton Brown claimed that stock made from pork bones was "too piggy" (or "porky" or something like that). At the time, my first thought was "Man, is AB missing the boat on that one!" For any Asian-style soups, I prefer a pork-based broth. And so, I use pork neck bones to make the stock: I was going to try making the stock in the microwave, à la Maggiethecat. However, I like to pick the meat off the bones and add it back to the soup and I wasn't sure how it would hold up to extended periods of microwaving. So I went with the tried and true stovetop method.
  3. I would go for this. Of course, I'm crushed that no one has even mentioned my suggestion for choucroute garni... :sniff:
  4. I'm home from my meeting and, yes, I lost weight! (Thank God, she said, wiping her brow. How embarrassing it would have been if I'd gained!) For lunch, I wanted to use up the rest of the squash that I'd defrosted for the ravioli. When I'd first bought this type of squash (Kuri), I did some reading up on it. One thing I kept coming upon was that it was excellent in soups because of the flavour and texture. So, I mixed about one cup of the squash with an equal amount of chicken broth. Added to that were some onions, lightly cooked in just a bit of olive oil. For seasoning, I used a pinch of garam masala and a sprinkle of cayenne. Et voilà! 2 points for the soup and 1 point for the glass of milk I had with it!
  5. When we're out for dinner, we're face to face. At home, it depends on where we're eating. At the kitchen table, we're face to face but, at the dining room table, we're at right angles. This is an artifact of the layout of our place in Vancouver. The seat to the right of the Spouse's was nearest to the kitchen and so I sat there to avoid working around the entire table to pop into the kitchen. What's "PDA crap"? I'm guessing since it came up in the context of snogging and being schmoopy, it's got nothing to do with a Palm...
  6. Good morning, eGullet! Today is the last day of my blog and, finally, I'm having something other than porridge for breakfast. Today is the day that I attend my 12:15 WW meeting and get weighed. I will confess that, on more than one occasion, I have skipped breakfast on meeting day. However, as I've lost more weight, or maybe it's just that I'm now used to eating breakfast, I find that skipping breakfast will screw me up for the rest of the day. I get overly hungry and then I forage through the kitchen, looking for snacks. And I'm not even a snacker! So, I figured I'd better eat something: Oranges! That's actually two very small mandarin oranges. According to my WW book, one medium orange is worth 0 points but a large orange is worth 1 point. I'm going to count these ones as "free". They are awfully tiny, aren't they? To go with it, I decided I'd have a cup of coffee. This used to be my usual "breakfast" but, when I started WW, I quit drinking coffee. The decision to do that had nothing to do with any relationship between caffeine and weight loss or anything like that. I happened to like my coffee with a mixture of 1/2 and 1/2 and flavoured whitener (or, chemical cow, as I like to call it). That made my cup of coffee worth TWO points and there was no way in hell I was wasting TWO points on something that wasn't real food. I've since found the low-carb chemical cow and, if I make the coffee strong enough, I don't miss the cream. Unfortunately, I went so long without coffee that when I have a cup now, I get the shakes. So it's a mix of unleaded and leaded coffee that finds it's way into my coffee cup these days. And, using our pod brewer, that's easy to do. This particular brewer has settings for "European-style" coffee and "American-style" coffee. I like my coffee strong so I use the Euro setting and make two cups in one. One pod is decaf and one pod is regular. It's still enough caffeine to give me the shakes but not so much that I draw attention to myself...
  7. I've never had it but I love sauerkraut. Can you share a recipe? (and, while I'm waiting, I'm off to ask Mr. Google!)
  8. It was a day of eating up leftovers...I finished off the beans from Friday night's dinner. And then, I didn't have to cook tonight! The Spouse decided he was going to make dinner. So, I just sat back and watched (and ate, of course). bul go gi, rice noodle salad, and Shanghai bok choy I reckon the bul go gi was 4 points, the salad was 4 points, and the bok choy was free...so I had seconds of the bul go gi. The Spawn has actually requested a specific dish for tomorrow night's dinner so I will be making that. When we lived in Vancouver, we used to go to Ezogiku, a ramen restaurant. (Apparently, there are three Ezogikus outside of Japan...one in Hawaii and two in Vancouver.) They specialise in Hokkaido-style ramen; I think that means that it is ramen made with a miso broth. I've been able to make a somewhat similar ramen to Ezogiku's, even though I have a hell of a time finding real ramen noodles here. At any rate, that's what I'll be making tomorrow!
  9. How about choucroute garni?
  10. Jensen

    The Fresh Pasta Topic

    I definitely second the recommendation on Moby's eGCI course (link up there ^). I quit trying different pasta recipes after I tried his.
  11. Jensen

    Yogurt

    That's my favourite too. It tastes a lot like homemade.
  12. I just happened to see a link on a local website for a course on cooking for an entire week in one night. It's offered at the Whole Foods here; maybe something like that would be available near you too?
  13. This morning started out the same as every other morning in my world...with a bowl of porridge! Right now, I'm having my tea though: I buy two bags of tea: one is plain green tea and one is genmaicha (brown rice with green tea). Then I mix them 1:1. I also have had to deal with a mutiny. Apparently, I can't cook meatless main meals for two days in a row and maintain control of the kitchen. (Who knew?) The Spouse nipped out to the store last night and picked up some Korean-style beef ribs. Then, he stopped by our favourite sushi restaurant to ask the cook how he makes his bul go gi. As I write this, the ribs are marinating in the fridge. Guess I won't be using my juniper berries today!
  14. The salad had one point. It's just arugula with a vinaigrette. The arugula has no points but the vinaigrette has one (from the olive oil). And yes, I made the pasta myself. I use Moby Pomerance's eGCI course recipe. It makes a slightly softer dough than some other recipes but it's very easy to work with.
  15. Dinner! And now I'm off to watch the Kings' game. I miss Doug Christie already!!!
  16. Looking at that photo of my kitchen mess (well, half the mess, as the other counter was just as messy!) reminded me that I hadn't said how I was going to serve the different raviolis. For the sorrel/ricotta pasta, I decided on a simple tomato "sauce". I opened a tin of whole tomatoes (the tomatoes at the grocery store were icky), put them in an 8" square baking dish, broke them up with a spoon, threw in a smashed garlic clove, and then roasted them for 45 mintues. Here they are, awaiting their final destination: The squash ravioli will be topped with some browned butter and toasted pine nuts. And I figured out the points. (I've been sipping wine while cooking and, if not for this blog, I would have just said 'the hell with the points'!) The sorrel/ricotta ravioli work out to 1 point each. There will be 3 on each plate. The squash ravioli, with butter and pine nuts, work out to 3 points each. There will be four on each plate. I did remember to feed the dogs too! I was trying to get Dayton to look at the camera and Tighe took that as a signal to exit his dining room: On the top is Tighe (jumping down) and Rogie. On the bottom, you can see Dayton. Streaka is in the seemingly empty crate. She's the only one that didn't arrive here as a wee puppy and therefore, she has manners and knows how to wait nicely for her dinner.
  17. And on to today! Guess what brown brought me today? My very first Penzey's order! I couldn't really afford to replace all my spices and herbs (and some of them are quite new anyway) but I figured I could safely throw out the ones that were labelled in English and French. I reckoned if they had bilingual labelling then they'd come with us from Canada six years ago. I also bought some bagged herbs of things that I use a lot. I'll just fill up my existing bottles when they're empty. Here's what was inside the box: I'm particularly excited about getting the juniper berries. I'll be using them for tomorrow night's dinner! I've made the fillings for my ravioli tonight. First up is the sorrel/ricotta filling: I seasoned it with tarragon and salt and pepper. Most of this didn't get used as I made only a half recipe of pasta. Here are the filled ravioli: I made 18 of the sorrel/ricotta ones. (This is important because I'll have to figure out points later.) These went into the freezer. I usually do this so that I can make them ahead of time and get some of my mess cleaned up before sitting down to dinner. The Spawn is at her dojo until almost 8:00 most nights so this gives me time to take of all this sort of thing. Then, I mixed up the squash filling: A few months ago, I roasted a Kuri squash, used half of it for dinner, and then froze the other half. I took that out of the freezer this morning for tonight's dinner. To it was added one egg, a splash of balsamic vinegar, 2 oz. of grated Old World Portuguese cheese, and 1/4 cup of fine dry bread crumbs. Right now, I'm waiting for the sorrel ravioli to be frozen enough to put them in a container. I only have room in the freezer for two trays And, now that I've got my blogging day caught up for the time being, I have to go clean up my mess: I guess I'd better feed the dogs too...
  18. I haven't given a whole lot of thought about what's going to happen when I reach my goal weight. It seemed so far off when I started 6 months ago and now it's pretty close. For me, I think I will continue to "do" WW. Because I started it as a change to my way of eating and not just to lose weight, I don't really see a need to stop. There's nothing I want that I can't eat so there's really no benefit in stopping. Yes, the WW programme stresses excercise as well. So far, I have managed to avoid that. Since the Core programme has come out, they have stressed "healthy oils" (namely, olive oil) as part of the diet. This is one of the parts of the programme that I've never really paid attention to. Because I have always cooked with olive oil, I don't need to worry about adding it to my diet; it was already there! The other part that I don't worry about is water consumption. I've always drank a lot of water (more than their daily recommendation) so I don't bother tracking it. Great! When do I get to wear the dress? (Therese apparently bought us a really cool cocktail dress before Christmas.) I decided to do the points because there were fewer rules to follow (almost none in fact). I didn't really look into Core that much; maybe one of the other WWing eGulleteers can answer this one. Therese? chardgirl?
  19. As Therese said, if you attends the meetings, it's in your best interest to put your goal weight as high as possible. When you reach it, you immediately add 4 points to your daily quota to change from a "weight loss" routine to a "maintenance" routine. I plan to stay in "weight loss" mode for a while, until I reach my "personal goal". I've decided that my personal goal is to be Therese... I went through my journal and found that I tend to eat half of my points for breakfast and lunch and half of my points at dinner. But you can distribute your points any way you like. You can also start your "counting day" at any point. So, whereas I get up in the morning and start counting then, someone else might start their day at dinner time. That has been recommended at the meetings for those people who eat more earlier in the day. Breakfast was porridge again this morning. I've been eating it every morning for months and I'm still not bored with it. Once the weather gets nicer, I'm sure I'll want something different though. Before I started with the porridge, I had been eating Trader-Joe's fat-free granola with plain yogurt (sometimes homemade and sometimes the organic low-fat stuff from TJ's). I found that eating whole grains in the morning kept me feeling full longer.
  20. I think if you reduced or eliminated the cayenne, it would be fine. What a great idea! I did this and I couldn't taste the arugula at all...just the sorrel. So, I think I'll use them separately. I get 22 points per day, plus an extra 35 points to be eaten at any time over the week. When I lose a few more pounds, I will drop to eating only 20 points per day. I guess at that point I'll have to stop cursing people who say they only get 20 points. Because I had meat at lunch time, I didn't want anything too heavy for dinner. So, I made curried cauliflower and cheese soup. The head of cauliflower I had was small so I added some broccoli as well. I posted the recipe in the soup thread. I followed it with a couple of changes: I used Lee Kum Kee curry sauce (my favourite ) and I used 3 oz. of cheese this time. The entire pot of soup worked out to 12 points. It was divided into 4 servings of 3 points each. We also had steamed coconut milk bao with the soup. I count those as 2 points each. They're a little smaller than a dinner roll, which the WW book tells me is worth 3 points.
  21. Lunch today was leftovers from a couple of weeks ago. About four weeks ago, I had made Moroccan Braised Beef from Epicurious (sans sultanas though). Even though I cut the recipe down, there were two servings left over. Neither Wayde nor Kathleen particularly liked the dish (too spicy for them) so I froze the remainder. One of those was defrosted and then warmed up for lunch today. Served over plain couscous: Couscous is listed in the WW book as being 3 points for 1/4 cup dry so that's how much I made. It was just the right amount. The stew was 6 points.
  22. I think a lot of that comes from my initial thoughts when I decided to do something about losing weight (after having the Monty Python image of me exploding from eating a wafer, of course). My immediate thought was not "I have to lose weight." It was 'I have to change the way I'm eating." (I guess it also helps that I don't have much of a sweet tooth.) And I have been known to refer to my flex points as "alcohol points".
  23. Breakfast this morning was porridge again. No picture this time as we only have the one Bunnykins bowl. However, I did take a picture of my mushrooms. I'm growing oyster mushrooms in my laundry room: One of the mushroom vendors at the farmer's market sells these "logs" that have been inoculated with oyster mushroom spores. The "log" is really some sort of wood shavings or maybe hay packed tightly into a plastic bag. The bag has small slits cut into it, through which the inoculations are placed. Then, there is a larger plastic bag over the whole thing. You start your crop by cutting several 8" slashes in the outer bag. Every day, I reach in through those slashes and spritz the inner bag with water. Interestingly enough, it requires partial sunlight, not darkness. The window in my laundry room door never gets direct sunlight so we thought that would be the perfect spot for it. I've been tending the crop ever since Christmas and, as you can see, the white spots are starting to grow. If you get really close to some of them, you can see the little mushrooms starting to form.
  24. Abra, do you think it would make an interesting pasta filling? I am going to make ravioli this week and plan on making more than just one meal's worth. I've got some arugula for one of the fillings but, when I saw the sorrel, I thought maybe it would mix well with that and some ricotta cheese. The other filling will be Kuri squash... And the reason why I'm making more than one meal's worth is that I plan on sending a birthday dinner to one of my best friends. If she lived here, I'd have her over for dinner but she lives in Connecticut so I plan on freezing the ravioli and overnighting it to her. Just as an aside, the Spawn and I visited her for a week this past summer. She doesn't cook a lot and so whenever I stay with her, I cook for all of us. She lost five pounds while we were there.
  25. I think that's one reason why I have been successful at it...this is food that I like to cook and I like to eat. I've found that my tastebuds have adjusted to the new way of eating and, because of that, I have a deeper appreciation for some foods. For example, I used to have a really heavy hand with cheese in cooking (which is why I still weigh it) and the first time I used some after not eating it for a while, I dutifully weighed out one ounce to be shared between all three of us. When I tasted it...ohmigod! It was incredible! Creamy, cheesy, rich, pretty much everything that used to require gobs and gobs of cheese to taste. And all from only 1/3 of an ounce! I guess there really is something to that "moderation in all things" saying...
×
×
  • Create New...