Straight Stitches

Monday, January 09, 2012

New Year - New Ways

Heather January 09, 2012 0 Comments

Hello all!

How are all of you? Have a good holiday? I hope so.

I have nothing to post.

No projects. No recipes.

Just a sick baby at home. I've been pinning stuff, but my space bar is not working so well, and its driving me batty. Otherwise, I'd have a longer post, and probably include some pins.

Oh and I'm not going to be posting everyday. You've probably noticed that my posts are starting to get spaced out. I like it that way. There's less pressure on me to produce something every single day. I get tired.

My schedule has changed. I go to the gym 4 out 5 days a week. Then there's the normal house crap to do. I still love crafting, creating and sewing, but I just want to focus on me a little. Ok, a lot. I have 70 more pounds to lose. Its going to take some work. Ok - a lot of work.

I'm still going to share things, but I'm going to focus more on quality than quantity. I think the blog will be better for it.

I hope you guys agree!

Heather

Friday, January 06, 2012

Pursuing a Legend

Dana January 06, 2012 0 Comments

I've talked about my long of French food, right? Of course I have! Remember this post? Did you see the gift I wanted from Mike? Well, look at what he got me for Christmas...

It's so beautiful! This was, by far, my most favorite gift. So what did I make first? Cassoulet! If you don't know, cassoulet is a heavy French stew with beans and meat. Oh, and it's epic! Sally and I had some at a restaurant when she visited last May, and we both loved it.

You all must forgive me for not posting the recipe, though. See, it's three pages long...in tiny print. Five pages if you count the description and variations. That makes sense, though, seeing as how this is, literally, an all-day cooking dish. Not for the faint of heart.

The recipe called for pork rind, which I haven't the foggiest where to get. Thankfully one of the variations was using a ham hock instead by just simmering it with the beans. It also called for a lot of beans. Two pounds to be exact. This is my largest stockpot. Look how close the beans come to the top!

Oh, beautiful, smoky bacon, forgive me! The recipe specifically said to either buy unsmoked bacon (yeah right, this is America) or to simmer a pound of the smoked stuff for ten minutes. It even looks sad without all its smokiness.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. There's a fine line between lazy slacker and creative genius, and I walk that line everyday. I couldn't be bothered to find a string for my bouquet garni, so I wrapped it up, twisted it, and tied it. Genius!

This is a trick I learned from Alton Brown. After the beans are cooked, you add a whole bunch of onions and the bacon. Then you're supposed to skim the scum off the top. With the veggie steamer in there, the scum gets separated from the rest of the food, making it easy to skim away.

Scum isn't the only thing that floated to the top. The ham hock left some pretty serious grease in the pot. That's when my gravy separator came out. The filter caught any solid food I accidentally scooped up, and look at all that grease that didn't go into my stew!

Not gonna lie, lamb shanks make me drool. I was almost sad that we were putting these into soup and not straight roasting them. By the way, I got the shanks because the recipe called for lamb bones to be seared and cooked in the soup. Delicious! See?

This trick is one I learned from Rachael Ray. Cook your sausages in an inch or two of water until the water evaporates and then let the sausages brown.

Oh hey! Did you know that this stew has goose in it too? The original recipe has pork, but a variation of goose was offered, and I had goose leftover from Christmas. There's a method to my madness. When dismantling a cooked bird, I just dig into it with my hands and tear it apart...really.

The cassoulet eventually had to be layered in my stockpot because that's the only dish I had that would fit it. This dish makes enough for 8 to 10 people? 8 to 10 starving people maybe.

And that's just day one! Into the fridge it goes till the next day.

I needed two cups of breadcrumbs with parsley, but I didn't have quite that much, so I buzzed up some frozen cheese bread that I overcooked a bit and some butter crackers.

I love that my breadcrumbs look like a sandy beach. I also love that all that butter made it all lovely and toasty.

Two days of work in a bowl! And, boy, is it delicious! This dish is rich and hearty and so tasty! It is not for those on a low cholesterol diet, though. I am not even going to share how many tablespoons of bacon fat was called for. Like the saying goes, though, everything in moderation. So who wants to come and help me eat up the 8 quarts it made? :-)

Wednesday, January 04, 2012

New Year's Resolutions

Heather January 04, 2012 0 Comments

I AM NOT MAKING ANY RESOLUTIONS!!

Ok, that's out there. :)

In July (the 26th to be exact) I joined a local gym, and started hitting it hard.

Since then I've lost 30 pounds, run a 5k and started training for a 10k distance.

Dana and I will be running an 8k in March and I cannot be more excited about it. :)

My thought on resolutions. Why set a goal for an entire year? That's hard. It even sounds hard. Intimidating.

What I've done? I bought a planner. A small one that fits into my purse and it goes wherever that purse goes, so pretty much anywhere I go it's there too.

When I first started going to the gym, the daycare at the gym required you to schedule your times ahead of time. There was limited space, so I scheduled the times for the boys a week in advance and their scheduled times went into my planner as a play date. Thinking of these gym visits as play dates meant that I was less likely to cancel or talk myself out of them.

Harrison, at that time, needed socialization outside of Dev and me so this solved that problem. Now Harrison loves his time away from me and at the daycare. The gym has since moved into a new facility and the daycare facility is much bigger. Of course, it helps that he plays with children that he's seen and gotten to know over these 6 months. Its so rewarding to see him coming into his own and not constantly bullying everyone. We recently have had several weeks (not in a row) of hit-free behavior!

So now that I've got my mothering need and aspect of my gym visits out of the way - I think I'll share what I did for me. I went to classes. A lot of them. I was afraid of the free weights (still kind of am) and the machines. Not to mention the treadmills and bikes. Yikes.

So I went to classes - every day. For about a month. Then I got bored. So I scaled down the classes to my favorites (Zumba and BodyFlow) and then started at the machines and treadmills. I joined one of the challenges that the gym was running in September to further motivate myself.

I was still using my planner to record what I was going to work on that day. One of the three major muscle groups plus the two classes I was still taking and the schedules for the kids daycare at the gym. It was very satisfying to see all of my work written down.

Then the new gym opened up! Yay for new stuff! New machines! So shiny and new. Wait - no more scheduling. How am I going to keep motivated? It really wasn't a concern though. I was hooked. I am addicted to the gym and my endorphin rush.

So November brought some hiccups because of the hospital stay that Dev had, but when I finally made back to my normal routine it was time to train for the 5k in December. I started recording even more information in my little planner. I also signed up with the Daily Mile. I wanted to show off my work.

Its so gratifying to see my pace times go work their way down. I also like tracking how many donuts I've burned. :)

So December brought another challenge, that I did win one week. I ran that 5k and while I was disappointed with how it was run, I was quite happy that I finally competed.

Now here's January. I'm training again. 11 miles this week. I did 3 yesterday, 3 is planned for tomorrow and then 5 on Saturday. Can't wait. I haven't run 11 miles in a week yet, my longest over a week was 8 miles. Yay for new distances!

Anyways, that's my gym story and my un-resolutions. I make goals on a weekly and monthly basis and I write them down. I set time limits for myself. I am accountable only to myself and I had to disappoint, but this was not a journey I did by myself. I started this journey with a friend and she was invaluable to my staying on this path. A path that I had wanted to start, but was to cowardly to do it by myself.

To all of you who are resolving to lose weight, my first suggestion - find a gym buddy or at least a gym cheerleader. Dana is my cheerleader and my friend is still my gym buddy. I'm lucky that I have two, but I would definitely find someone that can be your picker-upper when you want to quit or hurt to much to want to go back. Having those people make all the difference in the world. At least for me it did.

Good luck and happy new year all!
Heather