Archive for the ‘eating’ Category

Posted on August 10, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Movin’ On Up

This afternoon I got an e-mail from the property manager at my future apartment complex informing me that the current tenant had given notice on “your new apartment!” Whoo-hoo! I spent the hour or so after I left work dropping some paperwork off at the new place and picking up paperwork at my current complex, where I had an extremely awkward conversation about why I wanted to leave. But that convo is hopefully done now. I’m moving the third weekend in November!

I was up super early this morning, so I did a rare thing and ate breakfast at my apartment.

It was dark and everything.

Then I went to work, where I was very hungry and decided to indulge in something that’s been absent from the blog for weeks…

Then I had Ye Olde Standard Lunche.

Then I was naughty and had a snack from the recently refilled candy bowl of a co-worker.

Then, I had another Kit-Kat, a Reese’s Cup, and some Cheetos. Fail!

When I came home, I reheated the leftover curry and rice.

And then I went for a 2.25 mile walk around the lake, to give my foot a test run. It kind of hurt but a lot less than it was hurting. Better than I expected.

And now…time to watch some Hoarders.

Posted on August 9, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Wachovia (Or, Satan’s Personal Banking Service)

How was your Monday, kids? Mine gave me a headache. I had a strawberry Liberte yogurt and a cranberry orange Pure bar for breakfast. And then things went south…

See, I decided to spend my lunch break running errands. So I went to Kerr Drug and dropped off a prescription to pick up later, and then headed to Wachovia to cash a check that I got from my car insurance company because of a settlement wherein they overcharged a bunch of people.

Except the cute teller told me my account was closed on June 24. The account that I’ve had since 2003. The account which, a co-worker later pointed out, I’ve had all of my financial life.

Now, I don’t use this account for much of anything anymore. I got it in when I started college, and the whole reason I picked Wachovia was because I went to college in Winston-Salem, which is lazy with Wachovias. And Krispy Kremes. I used to exclusively for four years, and after I graduated and started working I got an account with ING Direct, an online bank. But since I still needed a brick-and-mortar bank to cash  and write the occasional check, I also kept my Wachovia account.

So I got to stand in the bank gawking while the cute teller tried to figure out why my account was closed–the account to which, by the way, I attempted to transfer $600 last week. Then he called over another teller who checked it out and for some reason could tell me the amount of money I’d tried to transfer, but didn’t know why my account was closed. Eventually, she told me that after an account has been dormant for three months, it is closed.

I asked if they could cash my check, but they said they couldn’t since they didn’t have an account to draw it against. They said if I waited they could call someone (I don’t know who) and perhaps get it cashed, but I asked for it back, thanked them, and left.

I was hot. But a couple of years ago I would’ve made a big scene, so I consider the fact that I left quietly to indicate personal growth on my part. Because really, while I’m angry that they didn’t bother to tell me via e-mail or snailmail that my account was being closed even though I’ve been a long-term customer, I’ve been wanting to leave Wachovia for a while. I called my mom and vented a little, then went back to work, logged into my ING Direct account, and found my $600 had been put back into my account. So all I lost was some time waiting in the bank. I can get someone else to cash my check for me, and I can work around the no-checks issue when I have to pay deposits for my apartment. If this were on Twitter, it would be tagged #firstworldproblems. I’m letting it go…

(But Wachovia, your customer service sucks. If the devil banked, he’d have an account with you.)

I ate lunch–sungold cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, hummus, and gouda.

I wrote love notes to Wachovia on my white board.

I nibbled on some trail mix, and then ate half of this large banana with some almond butter.

I ate a piece of Godiva chocolate.

I don’t find Godiva that impressive, honestly.

Late in the afternoon, I got paged on a 911 call made from the fourth floor of my office building, so I grabbed my first aid kit, dashed upstairs, and discovered that someone had accidentally dialed 911 again. Let’s be careful with our phones, people. Good to know that so many first responders show up when the call goes out, though (our office first responders, not paramedics!). But this was the second time today that my BP and pulse got all jacked up with no place to go. Sigh.

I left work, went back to the pharmacy to pick up my drugs, and then drove to Target to pick up a few things I needed, plus a russet potato for dinner. I was too hungry to finish waiting for it to cook to eat, though, so I ate a piece of smoked salmon.

That’s appetizing, no?

For dinner, I had baked potatoes two ways.

On the left, half of the baked potato mashed with salt and Brummel & Brown. On the right, half of the baked potato mashed with leftover chicken and broccoli curry from last night. I wasn’t sure this combo would work (the potato+curry combo, that is), but it was great.

After dinner, a square of dark chocolate peppermint crunch…

…and now I am going to bed. I don’t feel too hot at the moment and maybe it’ll go away if I’m asleep…

Posted on August 8, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Sweet Sunday

Last night after dinner, I started getting that horribly thirsty feeling again. So I grabbed the jar of pesto sauce back out of the fridge…

Oh, that would be why. I’d checked out the calories beforehand but neglected to look at the salt. I’ll try to finish this off this week, but won’t be buying it again. Sad times; I was excited about pesto. But was it coincidence that after my salt-related misadventures this week that everything I ate today was sweet?

As you may know, I’ve been abstaining from caffeinated soda since around the end of May. Because I’m wired backwards, caffeine generally makes me tired, and I’ve felt a lot more awake since I stopped drinking it. However, I have found it necessary to take a certain OTC drug containing caffeine a couple of times since then, and did so twice yesterday.

I got up at 8AM Saturday morning and was up until 7AM Sunday morning. It was like, whoa. And I was tired, too, I just didn’t feel like I could sleep. So I spent the night thinking about apartment decor, reading Young House Love, and pondering religious mysteries.

It was fun times. But since I slept until 1PM, Operation: Clean Sweep didn’t gain any more territory.

I did straighten up things on the shelf in my bathroom, cull books and magazines from the food-and-fitness shelf in my hallway, and did some dishes. So not a total loss.

When I woke up I had a peach and passionfruit Liberte yogurt, and then I didn’t eat anything else until I was cooking dinner. I decided to make something I’ve been craving for a while–chicken curry! I pulled out my Abs Diet for Women book for the recipe.

I credit this book with getting me started on the path to healthy eating. And the “Hurry Curry” recipe is delish. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any rice made, so it was more like “Hour-Long Adventure in Curry-Making.”

I did discover that the rice makes a fine book-propper-opener.

And since I had to wait for the rice anyway, I took my time making the curry sauce. In fact, all previous times that I’ve made this recipe, I just cut the onion into big chunks,but this time I made an effort to put a finer dice on it, and it really improved the texture.

I didn’t follow the recipe exactly–I used Trader Joe’s Greek-style yogurt instead of fat-free yogurt and full-fat mayo instead of a fat free version; I used all the onion I had in the fridge instead of a mere three tablespoons (ha!); I left out the paprika since I didn’t have any and instead added a bit more curry powder. I used Penzey’s sweet curry powder, which lacks the heat of regular curry powder.

And back into the fridge the sauce went, lest I get food poisoning from it sitting on the counter for 45 minutes. I’m Food Safety Girl today.

Another recipe change: I added broccoli, which doesn’t appear in the original recipe. I cut it as small as possible (I practically shaved the florets) so that the texture would be similar to the diced onion.

While the chicken and broccoli cooked, I dug around in my pantry and found the last lonely cherry cashew Pure bar.

And I ate it.

Soon it was time to mix things up.

And I started to notice that my camera, which often mistranslates bright colors, was not capturing the vivid yellow-and-green that was my curry.

Even in the sunlight, on a  heap of rice, in a black bowl, the curry didn’t really pop like it did in real life.

I tried switching on the sunlight filter, which helped a little…

…but after that I stopped messing around, because I was hungry and I wanted to eat my curry while it was still hot.

I added some salt (it needed it). It was sublime. Now I’m thirsty. Curses.

After dinner, I had a single square of dark chocolate peppermint crunch goodness.

And I promise that I really only have eaten five of the eight squares in the package, as documented here on this blog. For real. Expensive food=a loss of taste for gluttony. Seems backwards, doesn’t it?

Oh, in vaguely salt-related news: my average blood pressure is now 124/82 and my pulse crossed the 100-bpm average mark this week and is now sitting at 101. Yeehaw. I meant to take a walk tonight to see how my foot would do (it was slightly twingy yesterday after all my housecleaning), but then I took a shower while my pictures were uploading and then I blogged and now it’s time to make lunch for tomorrow and read and go to bed.