Walk on, walk on

February was an unexpectedly busy month — lots of different family visiting at all different times, which is always great — but I must say, it was nice to have last weekend to just kick around with no plans. I can’t even remember what we did, exactly, but I know there were calzones, so is anything else really important? (No.)

To circle back on my mileage goal for February, I did in fact reach it. I think I mentioned I’d run 41 miles in January, but it turns out it was more like 42.5, so on the last day of February, I walked three miles to complete 44 miles total. No too shabby. Of course now I’ve decided to not run at all in March.

You know that boyfriend you spend all your time with and then after awhile he’s all, “I think we need to take a break? I need time to miss you.”? That’s me and running. I love it (and I’m not lying like the boyfriend probably is) and it’s an easy, or easy enough, workout for me. But it’s just too much lately. Plus my foot is a little sensitive right now, so I guess resting it from running wouldn’t be the worst thing ever.

Because I’m an obsessive worker-outer, though (I need my ENDORPHINS!), I decided to do more weight-lifting workouts. (This makes me laugh because I am not sure my piddly little three-pound hand weights can be considered “weight-lifting,” but it’s three pounds more than I lifted at all in February, so I’m going with it.) I’d also like to do more yoga, which I consider a form of weight-lifting. What? Pushing your body weight up and down and over and backwards for an hour and a half? It is too weight-lifting.

So! We’ll see how I fare.

Oh, speaking of walking, the other day LG looked at me and said, “Let’s go on a walk.” This is the child who still doesn’t reliably call me “Mom” (sometimes “Ma”) and yet a whole sentence? Pretty amazing, that one.

Posted in All About Moi, LG, Workin on my fitness | 1 Comment

Hawaiian pulled pork fries recipe

If you live in Northern California and have a Raley’s nearby, I highly suggest you pick up their (free!) quarterly magazine. I think most store’s magazines are kind of hokey, but Raley’s is really good. Sure there is a lot of pimping specific brands (“Use such-and-such salsa in these tacos!”), but the magazine has a lot of really good recipes and features.

One such recipe that caught my attention last week was Hawaiian Pulled Pork Fries. I almost always have a frozen pork loin and potatoes on hand, so making this was not a stretch. Also, I made it in the crockpot, so it was super easy. I’m going to go ahead and give you the technique of how I did it, but if you want the original Raley’s recipe, I’ve taken a photo and posted it below (they cook theirs in a Dutch oven, so it requires a bit more work than mine.)

What You’ll Need

1lb. pork loin
1/3 cup Veri Veri Teriyaki sauce (or whatever kind you like — I just always have Veri Veri because I buy the enormous jug at Costco)
1/2 cup-ish chunked up pineapple
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. paprika
3 russet potatoes
Shredded cheese
Diced onion of your choice
Olive oil, salt, and pepper

What You’ll Do

– Toss your pork loin (I cooked mine from frozen, even!) in the crockpot, along with the Veri Veri, pineapple chunks, ginger, and paprika.

– Cook on low for six hours, then shred the pork with two forks and let it sit in the remaining sauce on a warm setting.

– Meanwhile, cut each potato into eight wedges; coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper; and bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, turning the potatoes halfway through. (Alternatively, you could cook the fries using your favorite fry-making technique. I don’t really have one, so I tried the Raley’s recipe (changing the times a bit for my oven) and it worked well.)

– When it’s time to eat, top some fries with the pulled pork, cheese, and onions (and sriracha) and enjoy!

So easy. So delicious. So many leftovers (my favorite!)

And here’s the recipe from Raley’s magazine, if you don’t want to use or don’t have a crockpot:

Posted in Food & Wine | 1 Comment

Dishwashers and mixed greens

Oh you thought I was kidding when I said I was going to talk about dishwashers and mixed greens today? Hahaha too bad for you, I am not.

So, the dishwasher. It stopped cleaning the other day, which is like the most annoying thing ever. To run the dishwasher and think everything is going to come out shiny and clean and then it’s all dirty? SUCKS. I guess what would suck worse would be, like, a flood in my kitchen or a leak under the sink, but still. Dirty dishes. NOT done, man.

Luckily we’re still under warranty (by like 19 days, PHEW), so a really weird guy came out today and told me that basically I can’t use gel dishwasher detergent. Granules only, apparently. He cleaned the bottom cover, where the bottom water sprayer arm thing sits and then he ran the dishwasher and left. And I was all, *head tilt* erf? That’s all? But when the cycle was done, the damn thing was clean, so what do I know about dishwashers?

Onto mixed greens. So, I really like fennel. In herb form or in bulb form, fennel is where it’s at. I hate black licorice, which is weird, but fennel or anise? Cool. One of my favorite salads is thinly-sliced fennel on greens, with Parmesan or blue cheese or whatever cheese I have. I rarely actually have fennel on hand, though, but what I do have on hand is fennel seeds, and even better, I currently have a wee little mortar and pestle full of ground fennel seeds leftover from a recipe. What I’ve been doing recently is sprinkling just a bit of the ground fennel seeds into my salad, then dressing as normal. Just a hint of fennel. Very delicious.

Well, that’s all I have for today. Tomorrow I have to go pick up the dry cleaning and I am going to roast up some parsnips and rutabaga (first time!), so gird your loins. (Kidding.) (Maybe not.)

No really, though, the Hawaiian pulled pork fries were DElicious, so I’m going to share that recipe and I am experimenting today with a roasted corn salsa, so I’ll report back! Happy Wednesday! We’re almost there!

Posted in Food & Wine | 1 Comment

Smog checks and hummus

Part of Project Feel Like A Real Human Person (in addition to getting dressed every day, as you recall) is coming up with activities during the week for me and LG. I am not really an activities person/parent, but I have recognized that LG wailing at my feet day in and day out is probably not conducive to a healthy child-rearing environment.

To that end, this morning we went to get the smog checked in my car. That was sort of a shitty activity, I’ll admit, but it had to be done. LG enjoyed watching Sesame Street in the smog check waiting room and when another girl (maybe 3-years-old) came in, LG shouted, “Baby!” and then when a burly man came in, sat down next to us, and crossed his arms over his chest, LG did the same. I think she was just happy to see someone other than me, even if it was only for half an hour.

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After a long weekend of eating whatever, I am back to eating vegetarian occasionally. Here’s what I had for lunch today:


Massaged kale salad with roasted cabbage and avocado and artichoke hummus and veggies.

Meanwhile, LG ate cheese ravioli and blackberries…

…Or should I say “ate” because while my back was turned (busy hoovering hummus, probably), she did this:


“Uh-oh.”

Yeah uh-oh.

Anyway, we’re having pork for dinner, because I believe in balance. (We’re actually having Hawaiian pulled pork fries, the recipe for which came from the local grocery store’s free magazine. I’ll report back if they’re good.)

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Now that I’ve talked about what I had for lunch and smog-checking my car, I guess I’ll sign off for the day. But don’t worry, tomorrow I have to wait around for the dishwasher repairman and I’ve got an enormous box of mixed greens from Costco, so the content here will be positively RIVETING.

Posted in Food & Wine, LG | 1 Comment

Don’t bother me, I’m blogging


Busy at work, updating my Twitter...


…Hmm, what kind of quippy thing can I say?


Let me think about it…


Ah! Thought of the perfect thing…


Done! Publish!

Happy Friday, friends!

Posted in LG | 4 Comments

January and February goals

Awhile ago I wrote about “positive” goals and you guys all responded very wisely (you are all much more wise than I am, but we knew that already), but I never mentioned any specific goals that I’d set, so I thought I’d discuss a few of them here.

For January, I wanted to work out every day of the month. This was the only goal I set (I figured it was a pretty lofty one) and I am happy to report that I (almost) succeeded. Hell, I worked out 26 days out of 31, and three days I had a stomach virus, so I’m calling this a WIN.

My goal with this…goal…was to try to shake up my workouts a bit. I am very much a run-three-miles-and-call-it-good kind of person but that gets mundane after awhile. In January, I didn’t run more than three miles at a time, but I did go on a lot of shorter runs, where I was looking to come in at a certain pace (sub-10-minute miles.) I also went on more just straight-up walks with LG (to the dreaded park, ew, no thanks) and in the end, had completed 41 miles. More on that later.

I wish I could have gone to yoga more than once (once a week would be nice; twice a week ideal), but I did download the Nike Training Club app and did a handful of workouts from that. I would recommend the NTC app if you want to get in a quick workout that is actually pretty hard (I’m not talking Crossfit here, but you know.) I’d recommend watching a video of each workout move prior to doing the workout, though, so you can see what you’re supposed to be doing. There were a couple times when I was like, “Okay wait, what’s a frogger?!” and I had to run over to my phone, look at the picture or video of the pretend Nike trainer showing the frogger, and then run back. The app doesn’t have the best pause/resume function after watching a video, so by the time all was said and done, I’d wasted half my time looking up how to do frogger and then the other half actually doing frogger. Minor glitches aside, I liked this app and would do it again. (And the glitchy stuff gets less glitchy each time you do a workout; once you know what frogger, etc. is, you can move through a workout pretty seamlessly.)

For February, my goal was (is) to beat my mileage from January. A couple weeks ago, I was at nine miles, so I didn’t think I’d be able to make it, but now I’m at 28, so what do you know? I think, barring any stomach viruses, I should be able to make it to 45 or so.

Another February fitness goal is do more yoga. I think I’ve been twice. So, it’s not ideal, but whatever. If money and time were no object, I’d go to yoga every day, but as it is, money and time are both objects, so I go when I can. Now that my favorite teacher is back, I definitely want to make it every Sunday, at least.

I also decided a couple days ago to try to go vegetarian for a meal (or two) a day. The goal here is many-fold. I’d like to eat more vegetables as that’s always a good thing. I’d also like to save some money (less meat at meals equals less meat I have to buy.) And finally, I’d like to get a little more creative in the kitchen and not just cook old (meaty) standbys.

As I said, it’s only been a few days, but it’s been going pretty well (minus the leftover chicken pot pie I had for breakfast today.) The real struggle, though, is finding something filling enough. Earlier in the week, I made vegetarian enchiladas (this Martha Stewart recipe) and while they were really good (although a tiny bit bland) and very filing at the time, I was starving an hour later.

Last night we had faux-lafels (I used this recipe, but used garbanzo beans and made eight smaller, falafel-sized “patties”) and they were filling, so that’s good. (Or maybe that was just the Reese’s heart I ate after dinner.) (And LG’s animal crackers.) (Who knows.)


“My girlfriend’s a vegetarian, which pretty much makes me a vegetarian.”

So, any recommendations for filling vegetarian meals? I’d like to stay away from tofu/soy and really focus on just vegetables, but am not opposed to cheese or eggs.

Posted in Food & Wine, Workin on my fitness | 6 Comments

What’s up Wednesday

Last week, I broke the cardinal rule of the Internet and blogged about my child’s sleeping, so of course she didn’t nap on Sunday. I don’t recall her not napping since we put her on a nap schedule around three- or four-months-old, so you can imagine how I took that. Not well. Luckily my parents were coming over that day to hang out, so Chris and I were able to escape to the bar. You think I am kidding. I am not.

(Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

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I had a birthday last week. I can’t remember if I mentioned that. Anyway, I did and I’m 30. It feels the same as 29, pretty much, except like I should have more maturity or something. Except I don’t.

The weekend before my birthday, my mom and dad took LG for the night so Chris and I could go out to dinner in Sonoma. It was absolutely fantastic, made more so by the bottle of champagne my parents sent over. (Meanwhile they were dealing with a literal shit-storm thanks to LG, who has not yet learned that you never, ever do that to your grandparents. You save that…shit…for your parents. Rookie.)

(Again, thanks, Mom and Dad!)

The morning of my birthday was spent crying into bacon, so that was not really fun. It wasn’t because I was 30 (I am not that much of a cliche), but it was just stupid little parenting things that I feel very ill-equipped to handle. It was all very, “I am not good at this, this is not fair to anyone, etc.” So, Tuesday was hard and Wednesday wasn’t as bad, but still challenging. Thursday was a good day. One day at a time, I guess.

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Speaking of naps, or lack thereof, I was at yoga when Sunday’s initial nap standoff occurred, but luckily Chris got video of it. Unluckily, it won’t let me embed the video here, but if you click the picture below, it’ll take you to the video.

Are you ready for a nap?
LG’s 14-second nap.

Posted in All About Moi, Chris, Family, LG | 2 Comments

That one parenting thing

I try to be relatively laid back about parenting — and life in general, but especially with parenting — because I feel like there’s just so much out there that you can do (everything now has a name or an acronym or a hashtag) and it all has a very good possibility to make you crazy. You want to do it all, to control it all, and I don’t know, but I feel like despite everything I set out to do, LG is still going to turn out to be her own version of herself, not my version of her, and just because I am really set out to do these things, in the end, it doesn’t really matter, and in the now, it could stress me out and that’s not good.

THAT BEING SAID.

I think every parent has that one thing that they take very seriously, that maybe makes them a little crazy. Something that is their hill to die on, if you will. For me that is naps. I am very high-strung about naps. If we’re going somewhere, I plan the outing around naps. I know her nap schedule like the back of my hand. I know that recently she’s started waking up about halfway through her nap, crying for a second, and then falling back asleep. Some people might think she’s done napping, but OH NO SHE IS NOT DONE NAPPING. I am starting to see that I probably rely on LG’s naps more than LG relies on her naps and I can tell that the day she stops napping will be a very difficult day for me.

But, for now NAPS ARE MY THING. Case in point: We were in Oregon for Chris’s brother’s wedding last summer and at the rehearsal dinner, I got to chatting with the maid-of-honor (who I had met and chatted with the night before.) I mentioned something about LG’s nap (I, uhh, am pretty sure it was relevant to the conversation — GOD I HOPE IT WAS) and the maid of honor said to me, “Yes, I know how important the nap schedule is to you.” This is a girl who I’d only just met, a relative stranger, and in less than 24 hours, even she knew that naps are my thing. I am not proud of this fact, but there you have it.

Everyone has their thing. Naps are mine. What’s yours?

Posted in All About Moi, LG | 5 Comments

Current…

Totally jacking the idea for this post from Holly. It’s like quick takes but BETTER because there’s a theme. And that theme is food, TV, movies, and books. Can’t beat it.

…Recipe
Roast Chicken Breasts with Garbanzo Beans, Tomatoes, and Paprika
I got this recipe after someone randomly linked to it on Twitter a long time ago and it’s become a staple here. We’ve made it with and without the yogurt sauce and it’s great either way. (I have also used leftover yogurt sauce as salad dressing the next day and it’s delicious.) I am forever trying to church up chicken breasts and this recipe does that, plus it’s easy and healthy and the other night my chicken was a little frozen and it still turned out great. Also, FYI, I add sliced onions to the pan because what’s better than crispy, caramelized onions? (Answer: Nothing.)

…TV Show
I mentioned I was excited to see The Americans and (I know you’ve all been waiting for my assessment) I have been watching it and enjoying it. It’s not very believably ’80s (in the same way Dirty Dancing is so not believably set in the ’60s), but I think when you have attractive characters, it can be hard to ugly them up with big hair and blue eyeshadow (although I’ll have you know my mom rocked that shit.) Anyway, I like that they’re unveiling smaller details and flashbacks in each episode, rather than huge things (which is what Homeland does and what I was sort of worried this show (or other new shows) would try to do. That method works for Homeland, but I am not sure it would work in another series.)

…Movie
I am sooooooooo not a good movie person. I don’t really like going to the movies (not like I ever really have an opportunity, either) and it takes a lot of convincing to get me to sit down and watch a movie at home. I like TV shows for being short and sweet — movies are long and I’ll probably fall asleep and god, what kind of whatever is Denzel going to save this time?, but I did recently sit through all 10 hours of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy and I’m sort of itching to watch them all again. Also, I have since noticed so many references that people make to LOTR in some way and, being the queen of references, I am sort of embarrassed over all the LOTR references I probably missed throughout the years. If you’re like me and haven’t watched these movies (10 HOURS, I totally get it), then I recommend sitting down over the course of many days and watching them. Or you could read the books, but that seems absolutely ridiculous.

…Book
Much like movies, I am not really a new! and current! book person. I’d love to be, but most of my head space is being used up keeping up with the Real Housewives of Wherever or thinking about dinner and I just don’t have the capacity to research new books, too. So, when I’m in need of a book, I’ll usually go check out what’s on our bookshelf that I haven’t read and pick something. That current something is Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille, which is like 10 years old, but in my opinion, DeMille never goes out of style. The thing I have always loved about him is his ability to make me laugh out loud; very few fiction authors have made me actually LOL, so kudos to DeMille.

What are you currently eating/watching/reading/enjoying?

Posted in Book, Movies, TV, & Music, Food & Wine | 4 Comments

Lentil soup recipe

Chris made this lentil soup the other day for lunch and it was SO GOOD, I thought I’d share it here. We ate it with grilled cheese, but the next day, we added a bit more curry to it and served it over leftover coconut rice (the curry in the recipe is very subtle, which made it perfect for eating with grilled cheese, but it needed a bit more oomph when served over the rice.)

This recipe comes from the Williams-Sonoma Soup cookbook (with paper pages and everything OMG), which I bought Chris a couple years ago. Chris and I were recently discussing online recipes v. cookbook recipes — Chris is a great cookbook user/referencer, whereas I’m more of a recipe Googler — but it gave me pause to think about the recipes I get online. As I’ve mentioned, I “ask the Internet” for a lot of my recipe/dinner ideas, but as far as websites I frequent, I’ve become a bit more discerning.

I’ve found that I’ll almost always trust a recipe from Epicurious (which I only recently realized was where recipes from Bon Apetit, Gourmet magazine, etc. go to live on in perpetuity) and Ina Garten. There is just nothing bad that I’ve ever gotten from Ina and I think she’s one of the few who takes recipe testing very seriously.

I’m not on Pinterest, but I’ve been seeing a lot of complaints about some of the recipes people have found on there turning out to be shit, so I thought it was an interesting discussion to have. Should you take a gamble on the “pretty” and “shiny” Pinterest recipes or go for the tried-and-true recipes, even if they’re old or in a cookbook with no pictures or whatever?

Anyway, enough food for thought (pun intended) and onto the soup!

We halved the liquid and lentils in this recipe, but kept the vegetable amounts the same, and got four meals out of it. In parenthesis below, I’ve noted the full recipe amounts in case you want to make a whole mess of this.

What You’ll Need

1 onion, diced
1 celery stalk, thinly sliced
1 carrot, peeled and thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, minced
Almost 1 cup of lentils, rinsed (recipe called for 1 1/2 cups)
1 can of diced tomatoes (recipe called for 1 cup, but what the hell am I supposed to do with leftover canned tomatoes? No. Just use the whole can)
3 cups broth or stock (recipe called for 6 cups)
1 cup coarsely chopped spinach
2 lemon wedges (recipe called for a whole lemon, cut into quarters)
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. curry powder (2 tsp. if you’re making the whole recipe)
Salt, pepper, and olive oil

What You’ll Do

– Saute your vegetables (onion, celery, carrot, and garlic) in a bit of olive oil until softened, then add the curry powder and bay leaf.

– Add the diced tomatoes, stock or broth, lentils, and lemon slices and simmer on medium-low heat for about 30 minutes, until the lentils are cooked through.

– Taste for salt and pepper and add each as needed; remove the bay leaf and lemon slices. A few minutes before serving, add the spinach to warm/wilt through.

– Serve with a grilled cheese sandwich or over coconut rice or with avocado slices on top or whatever you fancy! Enjoy!

Posted in Chris, Food & Wine | 3 Comments