onyah.com

Onyah Fail. Weeks 12 and 13 whizzed by without getting a chance to blog anything. I’m a big sack of lame, I know. Here are a few highlights from the past two weeks…

The End of Peaches! When I was picking up my share yesterday, Mr. Farmer said that there will be no more peaches, and a small cheer went up from the crowd. Which made me laugh. But the end of peaches heralds the arrival of craploads of apples! So it’s time for me to stock up on T. Marzetti’s fat-free caramel dip and start gathering apple recipes. Here are the results of some apple research I’ve done:

• Golden Delicious: Sweet and well-balanced flavor makes it perfect for fresh eating, salads, and processing in applesauce or pies.
• Grany Smith: Tart but well balanced flavor. Their crisp bite and tangy flavor can be enjoyed out of hand or in a salad, but their flavor really comes through when baked or sautéed
• Rome: Good eating apple due to its sweet and mildly tart flavor. Better as a cooking apple because its flavor grows richer when it is baked or sautéed.
• Grimes: Rich, distinctive, aromatic, and spicy in flavor. Perfect for applesauce. It is an excellent, juicy, cider apple; good for all kitchen uses except baking.

I’m happy to see squash, eggplant, and sweet potatoes. The DC weather has turned cooler lately, and I am loving the feeling that fall has arrived! I used the eggplant and basil to not-so-creatively make my usual eggplant parmesan. The sweet potatoes I foresee being turned into these curried Sweet Potato Wedges, which I’ve made before and found very tasty. I’m also planning on roasting the tomatoes and tossing them with whole wheat penne and shrimp for dinner tonight. (The tutorial on tomato-roasting on Smitten Kitchen’s blog is excellent. Interesting side note: I learned that my friend Karen and her boyfriend Jwon are friends with Deb from SK, and I was totally starstruck and dorked out in her dining room when she told me this. Deb is one of my heroes.)

My last peach recipe: This one was a real crowd-pleaser, so I wanted to share. Another gem from SK was this Peach Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting recipe. I brought them to a BBQ and to work and everyone thought they were mega-tasty. I was glad to see the Great Peach Onslaught of 2009 go out on a high note.

Weigh-in switch: I’ve been forgetting to weigh in on Thursday mornings. Every other Thursday I’m out the door before 6:00 AM to hit the gym, and I’m just not capable of remembering to weigh in (and then remembering what the scale said) that early in the morning. So I’m switching my weigh-in day to Sunday. Sadly, my first Sunday weigh-in was not a stellar one, likely because of all the beer and Mexican food I consumed on the Saturday prior.

I’m just about finished reading Julie & Julia, which is a book that I am very much enjoying. For those of you who live under a rock and haven’t seen the commercials, the book—now a movie—is about Julie Powell, a blogger who challenged herself to cook every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking in a year. I really dig Julie’s personality—I am constantly reading passages that make me nod emphatically or laugh out loud. I like how she swears a lot and likens cooking to bizarre sex practices, and today I read the chapter where she throws around the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkey.” Love it.

So… there’s an example of someone who embarked upon a wildly successful food/cooking/blogging adventure. I had the same pioneering spirit when I joined the CSA—but I’m lacking a little of the discipline. Taking pictures of the food when it arrives, and making sure I cook every last morsel of it before it goes bad, hasn’t been too tough. But the blogging part is coming a little slower. I think I’m just out of practice! That year-or-so that I neglected this blog took its toll. So, hopefully you’ll forgive me if I don’t post a new CSA picture every Wednesday and a weight-loss progress update every Thursday… but you can rest assured that, sooner or later, I will post them!

On the subject of weight loss, I’m happy to report (5 days late) that I had two good weeks, back to back! I’ve been ever-so-frustrated that the 30+ miles I swam in June and July only yielded about a 6-pound weight loss (and that’s including the 3.1 pounds I lost last week)! But I’ve tried not to let it keep me down, and I’ve remained a committed gym-goer nonetheless. I don’t want to jinx it, but maybe my body has decided to work with me on this whole swimming thing, finally?

Before I yak about the foodstuffs we got this week, I have some happy news. I lost three pounds this week! If you would’ve asked me at the end of the weekend what kind of weight loss I expected to see this week, I would’ve predicted, er, nothing, because last weekend was my birthday party weekend in the woods, and I consumed a ridiculous amount of beer, cake, quiche, beef, galette, cheese, and other deliciousness. But somehow the gorge-iest weekend I’d had in a while yielded the best weight loss I had in a while. It’s funny how that can happen sometime. It’s like eating a lot shocks your metabolism into paying attention. Sadly, I know it catches up with you eventually!

Anyhoo, here’s what we got this week. Not millions of peaches, but a lot! They are the best peaches I’ve ever tasted. I had one in my lunch every day this week, but it’s a lot of fruit for two people to consume. So I made some peach muffins, which turned out very tasty (even after I swapped out Splenda blend for the sugar, Egg Beaters for the eggs, and cut the quantity of butter way back).

I made and froze some more pesto with the basil – they gave us a ton this week! Tomorrow, I’ll be making a green salsa with the tomatillos, and I’m still doing research on what to do with the baby celery. While regular celery is kinda bland and watery, this baby celery smells very tasty and flavorful, so I want to make sure I do something awesome with it. I’m pondering making this chilled soup, but cutting back the quantity of leeks so that the celery flavor can shine through. It’d be an awesome thing to bring in my lunch this week (with yet another peach on the side).

I forgot to weigh myself before I went swimming yesterday, so I’m tracking my weight a day late. I lost 0.2. Again. Given the bachelorette happy hour and dinner, bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, and wedding that happened in the last week, I shouldn’t be too bummed about a 0.2 loss. But I was kinda expecting the weight to start falling off now that I’m exercising more ambitiously than I ever have! Grrr… This week looks like a far more normal week, food-wise. Here’s hoping that I’ll see something exciting on the scale next week!

I wasn’t surprised to see a loss this week—I had a little of a stomach virus (or such) on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, which meant I ate way below my points requirement for those days, and what I did eat was of the soup and white rice variety. Fortunately, I’m feeling better—it was one of those 24 hour things, I guess. This week’s loss means I have reached the fateful 20-pound mark, which means I get another pink star on my Weight Watchers weight tracker. Yay!

In other awesome news… our pool opens today! The timing couldn’t be better. While I’ve been enjoying my alternating Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels workout DVD’s, I’ve been getting a little bored with them, and have been eager for a chance to do something different. Plus it’ll give me a chance to try out my waterproof headphones! Steve and I are still a little miffed that our gym is not yet open. When we signed up, they said it would be open by the end of April. Jerks.

I was happy to see a one-pound loss when I got on the scale yesterday! I’m on the road to recovery from my weekend of eating like an Iowan. The things that helped me this week were the five-mile hike Steve and I took on Sunday (it was SUCH a beautiful day I could hardly contain myself), and this week’s lunch recipe:

Grilled Veggie Pasta Salad (4 servings)

4 ounces dry whole wheat pasta (I like rotini)
1 medium zucchini
1 medium yellow squash
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
½ white onion
1 c frozen green peas, thawed
2 T sliced black olives
1 c grape tomatoes, each cut in half
2 T olive oil
juice of one lemon
1 t dried oregano
1 t Dijon mustard
1/2 t salt
1/4 t black pepper
2 medium garlic cloves, minced

Cook the pasta per package directions. Slice the veggies into grillable plank-slices. Pour the 2 T of olive oil in a small dish, and brush both sides of the veggie slices before grilling. The peppers and onions take about ten minutes; the zucchini and squash only take five. Let the veggies cool a bit, then chop them into 1-inch pieces and mix together. Add the last six ingredients to the remaining oil and whisk together to make a dressing. Toss the grilled veggies, cooked pasta, peas, tomatoes, olives, and dressing together; divide into 4 portions. Like I do with the Southwest-ey Salad, I put each portion in its own Tupperware container, and each day for lunch I bring one portion and one baggie of mixed salad greens. Dump a portion over the greens when it’s time to eat! 3.5 points per serving.

Not two months ago, I was reporting a post-vacation gain, and here I am, doing it again! I went home for a few days, to see my family and my friend Sara’s new baby. There’s something about coming home that always causes me to throw caution to the wind, from the moment when I first step off the plane. This time was no different… I was only home for four days, but I managed to consume four meals that were of the burger-and-fries variety, and I drank more beer in those four days than I typically consume in two weeks! What the hell?

Well, the last vacation that caused me to gain was followed by an equivalent loss the next week, so maybe that history can repeat itself, too. Today is Sunday, and Steve and I are planning a hike followed by a major grocery-shopping trip. Here’s to getting back on track!

I have lost 19.6 pounds! While I feel like that sounds like a lot, I also feel like I am tall enough that it doesn’t really show. It seems like tall girls like myself can gain or lose as much as 30 pounds without anyone noticing. Which, I gotta say, has felt like a blessing at times.

So, while I’m quite proud of my progress, no one has noticed or said anything. My boss did recently say that I looked like I was standing up straighter. Maybe that counts for one-half of a weight loss complement? I’ll take it!

What matters, though, is that I can tell, and it’s awesome. Today I am wearing an outfit that I haven’t worn since last Spring. The next-size-bigger pants that I wore yesterday got all gross from walking in the rain, because they were sagging sloppily past the bottoms of my feet. So I pulled these pants from the dresser this morning with trembling hands, and did a little happy-dance when they actually fit! Is it time to establish a “Fat-Clothes for Goodwill” box? Oh I hope so. Nothing is more fun that getting rid of fat-clothes!

Nine days of eating hush puppies and drinking beer did catch up with me–I gained 2.2 last week. Which made me sad. But today, one week later, I’m happy to report that I lost 2.4 this week, so… I came out ahead! Woo hoo! I don’t know if it’s my Catholic upbringing, but I find something very comforting about this idea that my body can forgive me for my sins (so long as I truly repent, that is)!

I missed my weigh-in last Thursday, because I was driving around North Carolina on a weeklong vacation. I’m a little worried about what the scale will say this week. I started out the vacation strong, using my BlackBerry to track my points and making smart choices. But… my resolve faltered after a while. I ate more than a few hush puppies, drank more than a few beers, and ate full-fat ice cream on more than one occasion.

One thing I can boast is that as soon as I got home, I got back on track. That feels good. I doubt I’ll be able to un-do 9 days worth of damage in 3 days worth of healthy eating, but at least I know that the badness is behind me.

On another topic… I went in for a physical at the end of February and got a bunch of routine blood work done. While I was on vacation, my doctor called me with my results. My cholesterol, blood sugar and other stats were a-ok, but my liver enzymes were high. My doctor indicated that this is not anything to freak out about, and that it could be caused by something that would mean nothing, like maybe I had acetaminophen in my system.

But it also could indicate this thing called “fatty liver” (like fois gras!) that is caused by obesity. Even if that is the case, my doctor indicated that it’s still not anything to freak out about, as it could be reversed with weight loss. She asked me to come in for another test in a month. If the enzyme levels have gone down, then I’m in the clear.

There’s one more snag… I have to have booze-free blood to guarantee reliable results. So, for thirty days prior to my follow-up blood test, I can drink no alcohol. That’s right, a month without beer! I’m on day 4, and it’s been painless thus far. But… I like beer. I’m sure taking a month off will be good for my weight loss, but I’m sure I’ll have an evening or two that’ll be tough!