Smoothies

Just a very quick note to endorse the fantastic world of smoothies. I have not had too many of them in my life and I have recently fallen in love with them. This seems to be a great website that teaches how to make different kinds of smoothies. I can feel the freedom to experiment welling up inside me.
http://www.smoothieweb.com/

Trippin'

I am back from the coast and I do have wonderful pics. I have also completed an exam in Pharm and I feel like I wasn't just backsliding on my diet but my studies as well. Will power is hard to come by. I am not trained to handle this kind of stress. ;)

I enjoyed taking photos of clouds. They were distractingly beautiful.The beach was immaculate and the weather was perfect. Unfortunately I didn't get to spend much time in the sun. My trip was a nursing convention and just because it was inside doesn't mean that I didn't have a blast. I love spending time with like minded people

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I say the weather was beautiful but we did have a small amount of rain the second day that we were here. It was lovely though. The days were warm and the evenings were cool to cold for me. 

This picture was incredibly blurry but the colors were too pretty not to post it. 

This photo was taken out of the window of my hotel room. My husband pointed out the patch of sun on the ocean. It is beautiful. 

I built still lifes in the sand after the conference. I have more pics but I don't want to bore you with my silly fetishes.... oh wait!! That is part of the deal... I will post more!!!

So, every once in a while I come across a group of "things" mostly trash but sometimes there is a quality about the group that makes me want to save it or preserve it. So, I arrange it the way I like and then take pictures. Silly me, I know. This is a group of pics that I took in a parking lot about a year ago.







So, being home again is nice in some ways. I like the fact that I can get back on my schedule and I don't feel like I am just wasting a bunch of time goofing off. I do enjoy goofing off but I just can't live like that. I did not drink beer or wine like I thought I might but I did eat too much food and food that is pretty bad for me.

 This is fried eggplant with a cheddar hollandaise. (best way that I can describe it). It was by far my favorite dish!! Loved it.

This is a seafood stuffed portabella mushroom. It was fantastic but I prefered the eggplant. 

 My husband's dish was a fried seafood platter with collards and broccoli.

 My daughter picked chicken fettuccine alfredo with broccoli.

This is an up close of the happy couple. I love him so much!!

Roasted Cabbage

I have been having a rough few days. I am backsliding on my diet in so many ways and I don't see myself coming back to it in the next few days. I will be traveling to the coast for a nursing convention and I am planning to eat wonderful food and drink wine and beer. I probably will have a fantastic time doing it so there goes the idea that I might suffer guilt. Oh well. I hope to post pics.

Ok, so I made the roasted cabbage tonight and I tried one batch plain with just Irish butter and a second batch with red pepper flakes to give it a kick. The butter batch was very good and the red pepper batch was too spicy for me so I mixed them and it was lovely. My family is very fond of brussel sprouts so I thought cabbage would not be so far from what we like. My husband prefers the brussels for texture reasons and they are also less messy to eat. (He makes me laugh). I like the brussels better too but I am very happy to know that this is an option when the store doesn't have good looking brussel sprouts. The cabbage is more mild and is more influenced by the seasoning that I throw on them. I am very happy with several aspects of this dish.

My husband and I started our diet around the beginning of August and most of the diet has focused on portion sizes. We scaled waaay down. We also cut out a lot of meat. We haven't stopped eating meat but we stopped eating so much meat. I tried to cut out bread, pastas, candy, and pastries. Yes, this killed my soul. I haven't been following this over the last few days so don't pat me on the back just yet. The cabbage meal makes me very happy for many reasons: I am able to eat as much as I want and this meal does not cost hardly any calories, it is very cheap, and it takes almost no time or energy to make. I feel like I am cheating at cooking.

It doesn't look beautiful. Sorry. 

http://www.marthastewart.com/315062/roasted-cabbage-wedges

Above is a link to the original recipe that inspired me but I didn't do what she did.... big surprize. hahaha.

I sliced the head of cabbage, laid it out on the aluminum foil on the baking sheet, placed small (1/4inch) cubes of Irish butter on the cabbage, half of the batch also got red pepper flakes and dusted with red pepper, and then I baked them in the oven for 15 minutes on 350 and then switched the pans so that they had equal time on the top rack and baked for another 15 minutes. DONE and done. 

I have also been shirking my studies lately. I think I need to come to my senses.... I may not do as well on this next Pharm test. I will take the next exam the Monday after we get back from the coast so I don't expect my head to be in it. I am getting kinda worried now. Maybe I have time to straighten myself out before the exam. I can only hope. 

Belle and Sebastian is playing on iTunes

This is my cat Segundo. He is stealing my attention away from the Pharmacology textbook that obviously doesn't love me as much as he does. You are also able to see my bad snacks sitting all around us. Well the orange is not bad but the peanut butter and dried fruit that I usually stack on top of Ritz crackers..... yes very bad. 

I am at my workstation. Trying to think of something clever to say. haha. A couple of projects going through my mind. I would like to make more scarfs for my hair and I would like to make my own mini-skirt. I will keep you posted on those. Here are some blog sites that show off the scarves trend on people way cooler than myself.  http://www.divinecaroline.com/22260/125332-favorite-hair-accessory-and-ways-wear  I also like http://www.mygirlthursday.com/2011/03/style-it-vintage-scarves-in-your-hair.html

My daughter posing like Michael Jackson. She is cracking me up. We were in Nashville at a hat shop and she could not resist.

The First Day on the Job

     I have a quiz coming up Friday on nutrition. I should be incredibly interested in this because I am happy to be counted among the many Foodies on this planet. Nutrition as a subject in school is unique in the way that the instructors and authors of the textbooks have taken the wonderful act of choosing food, preparing food, and consuming food and bastardized it into something almost too awful to comprehend. But it brings up a great topic: How can I get the most flavor from the most nutritious foods?
     My husband and I have been in the process of a lifestyle change. We woke up one day and decided that we were not as healthy as we could be (translated: I saw a picture of myself on vacation and thought I looked too fat and proceeded to panic).

     So, we started changing the way we ate. We started eating mostly vegetarian meals, smaller portions, I started counting calories, he started exercising, and we both started moving our bodies a lot more than before. He has lost 20 lbs and I have lost 11 lbs in our 2 months of work. I am, of course, jealous of his enormous success but I am not interested in doing 100 push ups 3 times a week (http://hundredpushups.com/).
     Back to the topic of food, our weekly menu contains mostly vegetables and I am concerned about the repetition of meals that we have stumbled into. In these early days of my blog I will be sharing the trials of new meals as my husband (the guinea pig) rates them. I will share lots and lots of other blogs that I find entertaining and worth reading and enjoying in general. I also hope to share random projects and achievements from my sewing machine and from school.
     I have mentioned (briefly) what I plan to share in my blog but just to outline some boundaries I would also like to tell you what you will not see in this blog. I will not make religious comments. I will not make political comments. I will not blog about sports of any kind. I will try to keep all news topics related to food or they should be medically scientific in nature. I appreciate your comments but I would like for us to all stay focused on the common interests outlined here and not bring unrewarding topics to this forum. The only pot I am interested in stirring is the one on the stove. Thanks!
     If you have any suggestions, dear reader, please feel free to send me recipes or links of recipes to try out. I hope you enjoy my experimental project of sharing.