The Hunger

Since I've begun this regular running program, I've found I'm hungry ALL THE TIME. I only run 3 days a week. I do not run 7 days a week. I do not understand why 7 days a week I'm STARVING. The other part I don't understand is that it isn't like I've gone from complete and total inaction to exercising 3 days a week. Prior to starting the running program I was doing water aerobics (which I'm still doing) 3 days a week and swimming laps 2(ish) days a week. Swimming actually burns more calories than my walk/run does. What the hell is going on here? I don't get it. But damn I want to EAT it.

Pintester Movement - Bisquick Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since I love the Pintester's blog, I have joined her Pintester Movement. This is my second Pintester Movement experiment. This task was to take a pin she's already done and do it myself. I opted for Bisquick chocolate chip cookies. She found the original post here on Plain Chicken's blog. Since I'm gluten-free I miss the old chocolate chip cookies I used to eat. I like them to be a little doughier because that's what I grew up with. GF cookies tend to be super crispy.

 

 

 

Here are the ingredients. The bottle of peppermint and green food coloring are not part of the ingredients. They were part of another experiment. So the ingredients are 1 egg, 1 stick butter, 1 c brown sugar, 2 tsp vanilla, 2 3/4ths c of Bisquick and 1 c chocolate chips. After I experimented with my peppermint chocolate chip cookies I decided that it needed more moisture so I added 1 egg white too.    

I creamed together the butter and sugar. I remember that from the olden days of cooking. I don't know why you cream things, you just do.

 

 Then added the egg and vanilla. I love vanilla. It smells so delicious.

 

 

Look! Gluten-Free Bisquick. I bought it at Kroger. I can buy it in the regular grocery store! I didn't have to go to Whole Foods or Sprouts or another health food store. It is ridiculously exciting.

 

I added in the requisite 2 3/4ths cup (the entire package of Bisquick for me) and mixed.

 

But it was dry y'all. Dry like the desert. It was not bonding together well which is why I opted to do 2 things. 1 I started mixing with my hands because I always feel like I can really get things well mixed with my hands and 2 added the extra egg white.

 

 

Now I knew I was bringing in these cookies for my coworkers that were stuck at work with me on the Friday after the 4th of July. Seriously. There are 9 people in my department and there were 4 of us stuck there on Friday. That just isn't right. So to be all patriotic and supportive and good "go to person" (that's the euphemism for in charge that my boss uses) I brought them cookies. Don't worry, they know I'm gluten free AND they knew this was a cooking experiment so they were well prepared.

 

I've totally digressed. To make these patriotic I decided to color them with a little food coloring. But I didn't mix them so well together that it made purple cookies, just read and blue swirled cookies.

 

 

 

Look! See the swirls? You might have to look closely.

 

 

Finished product! The instructions didn't require parchment paper but I like to use it because I'm lazy and it is so much easier to clean up if I use parchment paper.

 

I'm not sure how I felt about the cookies. They were super dry which is a GF issue. As a result of the super dry cookies they are very fragile and tend to fall apart easily. I think if I do this again maybe a full egg extra instead of just the white. Otherwise I liked that they were doughy and not super crispy. My coworkers loved them. They thought they were great and I was being silly. They're good like that. :)

 

Recipe:

1 egg

1 stick butter

 1 c brown sugar

 2 tsp vanilla

 2 3/4ths c of Bisquick 

1 c chocolate chips

 

Mix the ingredients altogether. Bake at 375 for 8 - 10 minutes. I did add an extra egg because they were just too dry for me but that could be a gluten free issue.

There can be only one

I was super excited to discover that I can get Gluten-Free ice cream sandwiches at my grocery store. They are ridiculously over priced. (Well I suppose over priced is relative but I am too embarrassed to even tell you how much I spend on them which means they are over priced.)  But they are so damn good. So damn good.   So far I've been to the ice cream section three times to buy them. So far there has been one and only one container of them for me to buy. I suppose that's good because that means I have to ration my use of them and I can't go crazy and buy 6 boxes and eat them all in 2 days (which I might do).

Hedging my luck

I bought 4 lottery tickets tonight.  Two for Lotto and two for Megamillions. My fingers are crossed. (I know I know I know) In order to encourage my luck, I used my last dollar to buy an MDA shamrock. That's good deed right? So that means I should win right?

One of the harder things about moving to a new place (besides having to make new friends, don't even ask me about that at all) is finding new products and brands. I have lived on the west coast for so long the only brand of cheese I like is tilamook.  I love tilamook cheese.  It is very very difficult to find it here for some reason.  (You know not being on the west coast and all that).  However I've found something that makes me just as happy (or maybe happier)... Cabot cheese is available here! I first had Cabot cheese in Vermont visiting Katie girl (Hi Katiegirl!).  I do love me some Cabot cheese and even better it is "president's choice" (the generic Kroger brand). Yay! That's a happy thing to find.

Sing, Sing out loud...

I stopped in to my favorite barbecue place to pick up dinner tonight after work. It was odd. There were A LOT of cars in the parking lot. Hmm. Usually it is not that crowded. I go in. First of all there is a table of firefighters. Nice. Secondly, and far more unintentionally hysterical, there were about 6 - 8 old people jamming in a little group. They were singing and playing really old country and western songs (as opposed to what you would consider country songs). Most of them were along the Tumbling Tumbleweeds variety.

Friday night I went out for Chinese food. It was not good. Apparently the Chinese place (maybe it was Saturday) is a haven for single people to eat by themselves. I am pretty sure I got checked out by this one guy. Probably won't go back again if I can avoid it. The food was just eh.

I've joined REAL people...

Guess what I just did... you'll never guess... I just ordered pizza. To be delivered. Pizza. Delivered to MY apartment! This is the most exciting thing ever! Since I've been Gluten Free I've not had pizza delivered to my house. Pizza. Delivery. I'm so excited!!!

Cracked me up

I had to call Comcast today to ask a question. I had a voicemail that I needed to order some special digital add on to keep my cable working. I thought I had digital cable so why would I need this special add on. Turns out I don't. I do have digital cable and so the phone message was just stupid. BUT the part that cracked me up was one of the options on the IVR. As I'm listening it says "If you are in the Spokane area and your cable is stuck on CSPAN please press 7." I wonder how many people have been stuck for hours watching CSPAN.

Unrelated, I cleaned out my freezer over the weekend. There was a HUGE shelf of ice off the ceiling of the freezer (top?). I threw away a trash bag full of food from the fridge and the freezer. Today on my way home from work I stopped at the grocery store to restock. There's so much space in the freezer I don't even know how to cope. Now to hope it doesn't all get freezerburn in the next 2 days. Sigh.

Party People!

It's been a LONG time since I've been to a Halloween party. Back when V and I were still friends we went out to a bar one night in costume, but in general I'm fairly anti-Halloween. I do LOVE to give out candy to kids and all that, but I don't live in a house and even the last time I did, there weren't a lot of trick or treaters coming around which was a bigass bummer to me.

So Lyday is seeing a vegan. Let's all pause to consider the inconceivability of that... lyday is like me in that she eats meat and not so many of those things called vegetables. And she tends to be less adventurous in her food than I am and who really knew that was possible? (Although she has now eaten tofu and fake something else and she didn't hate them so more power to her, but in my defense fake meat tends to have wheat in it so I can't have it). Vegan had a Halloween party which we attended. I chatted with several guys there. One was a vegetarian, one was not, one was a vegan. The omnivore I met when I noticed he took some chocolate from the bowl for the trick or treaters. I joked that clearly he isn't a vegan. (Vegans can't eat commercial chocolate... milk you know. Vegans are weird). Clearly I had been drinking because honestly, I can't really talk to men otherwise. OMG! I'm like Raj on Big Bang Theory. (Not quite that bad, but I'm fairly anti-social. I know this.) (Also if that's not a sign I'm turning into a hermit, I don't know what is). Anyway, it wasn't bad. It could've been better. It could've been worse. I'm not too sad I went. :)

Experimental Cooking

I love it when the cooking I do actually turns out results that are edible instead of gross.

Lyday and I got lost Friday night looking for Wal-Mart out in Lakewood, but we found Fred Meyer instead. Oh how I love Fred Meyer. They had a muffin mix that I have been looking for so last night after going to the movies I stopped up at my grocery store. I picked up some raspberries, blood oranges and raspberry yoghurt. The instructions for the muffins say just add 2 cups water, 1/3rd cup oil and 1 1/4 cup sugar. Instead I mashed the raspberries with sugar and then squeezed 2 blood oranges into the mix. Added the yoghurt and then mixed in the dry mix and more sugar. I wasn't really sure how it was going to work out. After that I tossed in some mini-chocolate chips. Was that too much? Turns out, nope. :) They were really good. I'm excited. That'll be breakfast the rest of the week.

For dinner I had planned on simple pork fried rice. I browned the pork in chili oil with some garlic and ginger. I threw in a little sweet/spicy sauce and thought I was good. Until I discovered I was out of soy sauce. How can you make pork fried rice with no soy sauce? So I poked around the fridge and decided to make it an asian bbq kind of sauce and I tossed in some honey bbq sauce and a little worschester sauce. (then I found the soy sauce in the fridge which is not where it goes.) So then I tossed some soy sauce in too and it turned out pretty darn good. Who knew?

I went to see the movie Whip It last night. It was the preview before the movie actually starts next week. I really liked. I thought it was cute and fun. I really liked all the characters and thought it was well cast. I believe, although I could be wrong, the ladies in the audience who were there from our own roller derby thought it was pretty good too. I have a better concept of roller derby now, although I still don't know what the slapping the waist is about. :)

Invoking Murphy

I'm planning my trip to CA for Thanksgiving. I'm excited to go. K remembers me apparently and sometimes talks about me so I want to get back and hang out with her. OH and see Michelle and shop. :) I've decided to buy my ticket sometime this week (I think).

I've got a theory... Given that Murphy's Law is a big influence in my world, I've decided that if I buy a ticket from Seattle to Burbank (or LAX?) leaving on Wednesday afternoon and returning on Sunday I'll get a new job offer which will cause me to either have already moved or have to spend Thanksgiving weekend finalizing a move. Either that, or I'll get a pretty good rate for my flight and that'll be just dandy. (I'm seriously hoping beyond all hope it will be the former. :) )

Unrelated to anything else, I just cooked lemon chicken and I added sweet chili sauce. I don't know why I thought it wouldn't make it super sweet, but it is a bit more sweet than I expected. The spicyness is just right, though. Next time leave out a little sugar and it will be dandy I think.

Chicago!

So I'm going to Chicago for a few days later this month. Michelle's going to Blogher conference and I'm going to just be a tourist. You can imagine my joy at the email I received from my celiac group listing GF restaurants in Chicago. I'm not positive I'll get to go to one, but it is nice that there are options that I may be able to easily find. I may have to actively seek out Swirlz Cupcakes. Now to figure out what I'm going to do whilst there. :)

Wildfire
Rose's Wheat Free Bakery
The Balanced Kitchen
Da Luciano's
Stillwater Restaurant and Wine Bar
Gluten-Free Grocery
Adobo Grill
Weber Grill Restaurant
Lou Malnati's
Whole Bakers
Uno Chicago Grill
Vinci Restaurant
Lux Bar
Swirlz Cupcakes
Smith and Wollensky
Tavern on Rush
Ben Pao

Trying new things

This weekend has been a weekend of a few firsts.

Firstly, I went to a concert of the Lake Union Symphony on Friday night. They were good performers, but I did not like the 3rd piece they played. It was a little too discordant for my taste. Afterward went out for some booze with Big R and his boyfriend. I like them both and don't see them too often. Now that Big R knows I may be leaving, he wants to hang out. We'll see how long that lasts.

Today I field tripped to Michaels via the bus. Now this isn't really a first since I've taken bus 150 before. Bus 15o sucks. It is one of the buses that runs through all these little areas and makes you a little bit crazy. But I got a bunch of craft supplies and so the girls and I should be good for our next couple of meetings. I don't know if they'll like what I got for them to do though. They had these wooden bracelets on clearance. I bought a slew of those as well as some ribbon and some wood paint to decorate them. The other thing I picked up were some tin boxes and some rub on transfers. We'll put the transfers on and then modge podge the whole box to make sure they are sealed. I hope the girls like both projects.

Finally I attempted to make something different than I usually would for dinner. I found a recipe online for an Indonesian peanut sauce. It was a pretty simple recipe and somehow I didn't know I didn't have vinegar, but even without the vinegar it was pretty good. The peanut sauce is really peanutty (imagine that) so a little goes a long way. But otherwise it turned out quite nice. :) I now have another chicken recipe to add to my arsenal. I had to come up with something since all the usual recipes I would make seemed to be missing one ingredient. (Apparently I have nothing in my cabinets because it isn't like I was missing one thing. I was missing a whole slew of one things. Grr)

Related to grr... my tv is having issues... well not my tv but my cable. And now I've missed sesveral minutes of this movie. It is illogical because it has only been 2 minutes that have passed. I'm confused.

I'm on fiyah!

So I've been experimenting with cooking Thai curry you know? I bought a new type of Thai curry paste tonight. I followed the instructions which required 3.5 tablespoons of the Thai curry. The other recipe on the other kind of paste requires .5 to 1 tablespoon. That one is always too bland. Even when I add more of the paste (although I don't know that I've ever added 3.5 tablespoons) it is bland. This time... too spicy. However it is really pretty good. I also am pleased that I managed to make a one pot meal out of this dish by adding more water and the rice directly into the curry. I am quite pleased with the results. :) I also like the fact that the left overs give me lunch for the rest of the week.

I'm having a bit of a hard time believing that in less than a week I'll be on vacay. I still have some planning to finish up. I want to figure out transportation to and around Ireland and have some options in mind already. Since I'm leaving my laptop at home I won't be able to access the bus/train schedules online. (We are travelling by both. :) ) It just seems so surreal.

(Totally unrelated to anything but I'm watching this commercial where a monster truck drives up a ramp and over a bunch of maytag washers and dryers with the "Do not attempt" label across the bottom. Who in the hell would buy that many of the fancy new maytag washers and dryers and try to drive a monster truck over them? Really? This is a concern?!)

Sometimes all you can do is laugh

(Unrelated to this post, the commercials with babies that talk in grown up voices creep me out a lot)

So today was a completely unintentionally hilarious day. First, Lyday and I went to REI to get rain jackets for the big vacation. As we're getting ready to turn into the parking garage we notice that the car ahead of us is having rouble. It seems the driver forgot that his bicycle was on top of the car and the handlebars got tangled up in the 7' limit sign. Other people had to help him get his bicycle detatched. He seemed to not be able to figure out the best thing to do. First he unhooked the first wheel from the bike rack but he didn't unhook the back wheel. He was just trying to lift the front wheel to unhook it. Unfortunately the U shape of the handlebar had actually hooked itself around the sign. Really it was just funny.

Then we went to dinner. Now this is more of the you have to laugh or else be furious. We went to Applebees. Eh. Our waiter was TERRIBLE. Like I think the only worse waitstaff I've had was when Michelle, and I think our friend Janel and maybe one other person and I went to a Mexican place in Fairbanks and the waitress kept apologizing for her incompetence by saying that the restaurant was just so slammed. It wasn't. Including us, there were 3 tables. So our waiter tonight, Steve, was not just incompetent but also one of those who blames everyone else for his issues. Firstly, he was a mumbler. Half the time I couldn't understand what he was saying. We ordered an appetizer and a meal. We waited and waited and waited and waited and the meal came but no appetizer. At least once he came by and made a joke about our waiting. I'm like, dude, that's not good. If you know the food is taking forever you should be apologizing and doing what you can to make it right. Lyday's "cheeseburger" was a hamburger with a slice of cheese slapped on it, not melted like it should be. When I asked the waiter about it he blamed the kitchen and said they made him look bad but he's just the messenger you know? So at the same time I asked about our appetizer and he seemed shocked we hadn't received it yet. Although he also seemed to totally forget we ordered one which made me think he forgot to put it in altogether. And we eat. And Lyday finishes her meal. And I finish my meal, still no app has appeared. And he comes by and asks if we wanted it to go and I say no we'll eat it here. And we wait. And we wait and it finally appears. And I have pulled out my card to pay and we start eating them. And we wait. And we wait. And finally he reappears and we just give our cards without even waiting for the ticket because I figured if I have to wait for the ticket and wait for him to return we would never get out of the restaurant. So, and this is impressive because I'm not this person, when the manager walks by I caught his eye and told him how ridiculous the whole thing was - including that Steve blamed the kitchen for the food issues which made the manager's eyes widen. He gave us some gift cards. It was so bad. I think Steve's problem, quite possibly, was he was a fan of the pot.

However, as bad as it was for us, it was worse for the table next to us. There were 4 adults, it appeared to be 3 generations of men actually. So one guy ordered a bacon cheese burger. He received sliders. And then about 10 minutes later he got a side of cooked bacon. And then eventually he got a real bacon cheeseburger. The oldest man had ribs and fries. But something was wrong with them and so he sent them back. It took a minimum 30 more minutes to get his new ribs. All in all it was a bad night at the Applebees. The oldest man was quite feisty and said to his family that he would not be returning to Applebees. I mentioned to the manager when I was talking to him that their experience seemed to be terrible too.

But I did get a jacket that is light and was on clearance. It is orange and gray and a men's jacket. I found the women's "enhanced sizes" section, but sometimes I feel like my shoulders are too broad for women's sizes. When I would cross my arms in front of me it felt tight across my shoulders and back. I also bought 2 new pairs of shoes (another pair of bites and a pair of merrill hiking shoes). I am almost ready for this trip... now all I have to do is book the hotels, and figure out the buses/ trains we will be using to get around and book the tours and and and. :)

A bunch of random thoughts leading up to one whole post

I donated blood today. I was pleased I managed to have enough iron in my body to do it for a change. Usually I get yellow carded for at least the first two attempts. They have a new machine, now, to test the hematocrit. Weirdly, the first time they did it I totally failed. You have to have a 12.5 reading and I only had a 11.4. So they did it a 2nd time and passed it. It did make me wonder.

I've been having crazy ass dreams lately. Two nights ago it was a long drawn out dream that actually continued after every time I woke up. There was something about children and I rescued them from the side of the road where they were just sitting. Kind of like picking up a stray dog. I took them to work to find their keepers and I can't remember the rest. Although in the beginning of my dream they were boys but by the end of the dream one was a girl. I can't remember last nights except that an ex made an appearance and it was so real when I woke up this morning I was briefly confused as to whether or not I had seen him in Seattle. (He's not from here so why would he be here?).

Other thoughts include that I find this one concept for mascara creepy... lash tubes. I don't really get it but every time I see the ad on TV I get creeped out. (Completely illogical I know)

I'm trying to cook more at home. So far I've managed two meals in a row. That's not saying a lot. :) Although both were really good. :)

Chocolate for Itches

Last night Stephen and I went to NARAL's Chocolate for Choice event at Safeco Field. It was an interesting gathering. I probably won't attend again, but I'm glad I did and I picked up some nice chocolate. There was a silent auction, which Stephen won something from, and a regular auction of cakes. I didn't bid on anything, but I considered it. I always feel badly for the things that don't get bid on. Like somehow they weren't good enough. It's weird, I know. I think it is actually that I feel badly for the people that donate the item. I know that if I were donating an item (and a lot of the items were handicrafted) I would take care and choose carefully picking something that I thought would earn money for the charity. I guess I would be disappointed if I thought something was great and nobody else did. I might be too sensitive about rejection (or perceived rejection). :)

One thing I should have thought about, but failed to, was the amount of food I might be able to consume. I know I read that both bakers and confectioners would be there, but it was mostly bakers. There were only a few stalls with chocolate that wasn't a baked good. Although Stephen more than made up for my inability to have things. (I'm pretty sure he ate more chocolate than I did all the while proclaiming his dislike for chocolate. ;) ) I did have this wonderful chocolate gelato that had a burnt sugar something or other that was divine. I also got several truffles from theo's chocolate so that I haven't tried yet. I picked up some fudge. Have I ever mentioned I don't really like fudge? I know, for a chocoholic like me to not like fudge it is a weird thing, but I think it is the addition of condensed milk which kind of burns my throat that does it.

Yum

QFC has redeemed itself (well sort of, if they didn't have what I wanted when I wanted it does the fact they had it the next day make up for it? Not really) but they had chicken which is good. (Unrelated totally, one thing I don't get about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is was the character born an adult? That seems physically difficult for his mother or was he born a baby but then aged rapidly to start aging backwords. Ultimately I don't care that much because I won't bother seeing it. It seems to weird to me.) Back on subject... So I went to QFC tonight to get chicken (still no chips in the bbq flavor I want though) and I cruised the Asian aisle thinking what I was going to do with the chicken and I decided to make Thai red curry. I've never done that before actually so I wasn't sure how it was going to work out. Mostly it was good. It could have used a bit more of the red curry paste though because it was a tiny bit bland. But it wasn't gross and that's usually enough for me. :) Next I have to bake brownies for our work party and I'm going to bake a chocolate chip quick bread for breakfast this week. Yay!

Grocery Store Fail

So I went to my local QFC today to buy chicken for dinner and some chips. They were out of chicken breasts and the type of chips I wanted. How is that possible? It's a grocery store. My only option for chicken was the really fancy (and expensive) free range chicken. They didn't have any boneless skinless anyway. They only had like livers and legs and wings. When I asked the guy at the counter he said they were still recovering from the holiday. What recovering from the holiday? It's chicken and the holiday was a week and a half ago. Seriously. If they weren't the only place I could go to I would go somewhere else. So I got take out because I was so befuddled by the lack of necessities at the grocery store I didn't know what else to do. I was just kind of walking up and down the grocery store aisle like an idiot.

Unrelated I feel like I'm clenching my jaw/teeth too much. I wonder why I do that.

Unrelated to that, I have to make an appt for my annual exam. They have been calling and sending letters and all that because it has been over 2 years. Well the PA I used to see left the practice which is fine I didn't especially like her, but they want me to see my PCP for the exam. It is completely irrational I know but I really don't want her to do it. I need a separate 3rd party checking all that out, not somebody I see for all the other stuff in my life. I know, neurotic and irrational. Add to the list of neuroses, I think I have to have a lady lady parts doctor, I don't think I want a guy poking around. And she has to be old. :) Hmm... I wonder if Group Health can accommodate all that.

Massively disappointing

So this place Pizza Fusion is opening up near my work. They offer Gluten-Free pizza. Since I emailed them with a question, I got invited to their free preview for Saturday night. I was so excited. We had a seating time so we showed up within the 1/2 hour we were supposed to. I was starving. I hadn't had much to eat most of the day so I was completely ready to gorge myself on GF pizza. As I go and check in, I get told it was an hour wait. Are you fucking kidding me? An hour?! The worst part is that the young lady didn't seem too apologetic about that fact. That was the whole purpose of having a seating time... to avoid this. We declined and were getting ready to head back out when another person, who seemed to have more power than reservation chick, offered me a free pizza and wrote it on a menu. Now I just hope it gets honored when I go in. I was really disappointed since I had been looking forward to it for about a week. We ended up at IHOP because I couldn't think of anywhere else to go and was just hungry. Sigh.

On the not disappointing front, Lyday and her friend S and I went to PYOP. I still love PYOP and I think I am actually getting better at it. I painted a cute bowl with a snowflake inside and just little white dots on the outside. I hope it turns out well.

Groceries

Draino
TP
Chicken
Soda
Ice Cream

So sad the shopping list of the single chick.