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Posted on June 25, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Bloggity Blog

On today, the sacred Lazy Friday which comes but once a fortnight, I take it upon myself to distract you from the lack of posting this week.

-Look! FoodBuzz’s Daily Special is frying pans! Special green frying pans that are ceramic! That’s pretty cool. My frying pans are stainless steel. That’s not nearly as cool.

-Look! My new MP3 player arrived!

On the left is my new 16 GB Creative Zen Mozaic; on the right is my old 4GB Creative Zen MicroPhoto. So far I like the Mozaic very much, although I find it to be a) rather slippery and b) not quite weighty enough (I would never own one of those postage-stamp-sized MP3 players!). I’m sure I’ll get used to it, though.

-Listen! My dog is quietly wuffing at something at it is driving me crazy! Grr.

I was actually hoping to spend this Lazy Friday doing some hardcore cleaning–my kitchen tends toward entropy and I’m still working on decluttering certain areas of my apartment. Unfortunately, my afternoon is booked after about 2:30PM; I have a PA appointment because my foot hurts still/again (and now my calf hurts thanks to the massive cramp I got in it yesterday morning ) and then a cooking/eating party later this evening. I have to go pick up a couple things from the store at some point and I also might go to the library and get a library card, because I’ve lived in Wake County for over two and a half years and don’t have a library card yet.

Also, North Carolina is very hot. The end.

Posted on October 4, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Lots of Potatoes…

I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted since Tuesday…whoops! My schedule got thrown off by the sudden drop in temperature in NC, a couple of sleepless nights and subsequent late days at work, and the final preparations for Saturday’s yard sale.

There were a lot of raw fruit and nut bars eaten over the past few days, but in the interest of not having 15 billion pictures in this post, I’ll just tell you about them.

On Wednesday I started the day with a cashew cookie Larabar. I was running not-quite-late to work (it was cold! D= ) and didn’t bring my lunch, so instead a coworker and I walked over to one of the convenience stores on campus and I grabbed a turkey pesto wrap. It contained turkey breast, spinach pesto, swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato…

…in a green wrap. I had half of the wrap with a well-ripened banana.

Later in the afternoon I snacked on half of a peanut butter cookie Larabar. I stayed at work until almost 6PM and I was famished by the time I got home. Fortunately, I’d put one of my favorite meals ever into the slowcooker before I left.

Beef roast (you can barely see it alllll the way on the back of the plate), potatoes, onions, and carrots. Deliciousness.

On Thursday morning, I was running a little late again (it was cooold again!), and had a Pure brownie bar for breakfast.

October 1st is the start of the fiscal year for the Federal government, so we had a small ceremony to mark the new year. At this ceremony, there were cheesecake-topped brownies that were actually cooked correctly.

That is what my brownies should have looked like! Very good.

We had a countdown and dropped a pineapple covered in gold stars from the ceiling.

It was a very slow drop–I was looking forward to seeing pineapple splattered all over the floor, but alas…

For lunch, I had the other half of my turkey pesto wrap…

…and a donut that was leftover from the morning’s ceremonies.

I stayed at work until 6PM again, grabbing half a LaraBar midway through the afternoon, and came home hungry but not so much that I couldn’t wait for some potatoes to cook. I decided to use the last of my blue cheese and some bacon to make the recipe that was on my blue cheese container.

Basically, it was potatoes tossed in olive oil, then sprinkled with blue cheese and bacon and cooked for half an hour. I threw in a piece of chicken as well. This was so good–it was like it much heartier loaded baked potato skins.

But blue cheese was involved, so they had class.

Definitely making those again…

On Friday I slept in, had a Pure cherry cashew bar for brunch, and then headed out for some food shopping early in the afternoon. I went to the farmers’ market, where apple season is in full swing and winter veggies are starting to make an appearance. I’m not so excited about this–not really a fan of winter veggies–but I’m willing to give them a try.

My Feeding America shopping bag was nigh overflowing when I left the market.

I purchased a loaf of sourdough bread from the Swiss Chalet bakery. I like their bread, but the lady behind the counter is always griping about something! Last time it was the cost of the bread, this time it was someone who was supposed to cover her at the storefront but bailed. So much drama…anyway, the loaf of sourdough was $4.20, which I thought was very reasonable.

At one vegetable stand, I purchased four turnips (minus the greens), three onions, four tomatoes, and three sweet potatoes for $10 even. I tried turnips last year and was disgusted, but it’s a great big culinary world out there and there must be some turnip recipe that’s good. I’m also not a fan of sweet potatoes, but I had sweet potatoes roasted with regular potatoes at a work potluck last year and was impressed, and I also buy and eat sweet potato fries from the store, so I think it’ll be easier to get accustomed to them.

I noticed that another booth had kale for $1.25/lb, and I’ve wanted to try it since so many food bloggers talk about how great it is. I stuffed a bunch in a bag and also grabbed a small cabbage at 49 cents/lb. My grand total: $1.25! Eating in season is so inexpensive. I wish I could do it year-round…

My last stop was inside the Market Shops, where I stopped for some mushrooms that I’m fairly certain were not grown locally since they were on a table with lemons and limes, but I like being able to get as many mushrooms as I want from a little bulk bin. Price? 40 cents.

My grand total for the farmers’ market was $15.85. I was trying to stay under $20 and celebrated by spending a dollar on a bottle of Diet Coke from the machine inside the market. Because next I went to Trader Joe’s and spent about $65. They were out of peanut butter cookie LaraBars!

Once I got home, I cleaned out my fridge…

…and was happy to find it was now full of fresh, healthy items. Well, mostly full of them, anyway.

At the checkout line at Trader Joe’s, they had a display of English toffee covered in milk chocolate and almonds. I had to buy some.

I ate half the container that day and there’s only one piece left as of Sunday morning…whoops…

But it’s so good!

I bought some not-whole-wheat pizza crust at Trader Joe’s and decided to have pizza for dinner. I topped it with marina sauce, diced sweet Italian chicken sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, yellow peppers, and goat cheese.

It was great–and the crust puffed up like pizza crust should! Like the whole wheat crust doesn’t!

After that, it was full-swing into final yard sale prep. I paused late in the evening to have half of a Harvest Cranberry Scone from Trader Joe’s.

It was good, but I want the orange-cranberry scones back.

Saturday morning saw me eat a cashew cookie Larabar and half of an apple pie one as I stood outside from 6:30AM until 12:30PM selling junk at the community yard sale. I had everything priced to go and was pleasantly surprised to count the days earnings at $72.75. The majority of that will pay for an order of spices from Penzey’s soon!

I had a piece of leftover pizza for lunch, and then crashed and napped for longer than I meant to. I’d invited myself over to dinner at my parents’ house earlier in the morning and ended up getting a later start than I would’ve liked. But I made it and a little while after I arrived there were steaks and baked potatoes, fresh off the grill.

Yummy. There was also this cake that my dad made–I think it was butter pecan cake? Something like that.

It was good except for the coconut. I’m not a coconut fan.

And that is the story of the last four days, foodwise….

Posted on September 29, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

A Day of Sundays

If you took a week of Sundays and condensed them into one day, that day would be today.

I woke up at 3:30AM and tried to go back to sleep until 4:45. And then I gave up and decided to eat half of a Pure cherry cashew bar…

…and go for a Couch to 5K Week 4 run. I was chilly walking to the fitness center–it suddenly got cold in NC at night! I made it all the way through the first 3-minute run, but the first 5-minute run was a bust–my legs started cramping up again. I called it quits and will go again tomorrow. I think there are two things I’m doing wrong–one, I’m not doing the full 5-minute warm-up walk at the appropriate pace, because I start the five minutes while I’m still in my apartment and then walk to the fitness center, and two, I’m trying to do all of the runs at 5.5MPH and it’s sapping all my energy in the first half of the run. I poked around on the Couch to 5K Facebook page and apparently this is a common problem coming out of Week 3 because of the big jump between Weeks 3 and 4. So tomorrow: full 5-minute warm-up walk and slowing down to 4.5 MPH for the first two jogs. We’ll see if that works…

After I showered, I started setting up my “alternative workstation” at my dining room table, since I had to work at home today as part of my agency’s pandemic preparedness exercise. I pulled what may be my last cherry muffin out of the freezer to eat while I started working.

These were superb when they were fresh from the oven and while two or three months in the freezer have toyed with the texture, they’re still great.

If only cherries could be in season  year-round!

I started working at 6AM and took a break sometime during the morning to eat the other half of my Pure bar. Lunch was a quick and mostly leftover affair–a grilled chicken thigh with Ozark seasoning, leftover lima beans and broccoli from Sunday night, and leftover potatoes, onions, and carrots from Monday night.

I’m really bad about using leftovers, and here’s one reason why–leftover potatoes taste weird.  They even look kinda funny…

I worked until 3:15PM, at which point I gave up for the day (and yet, I’m already ahead for the week…). It was the longest day ever! While I hope we don’t have any pandemics for obvious reasons, I also hope we don’t have one because working from home as a result would drive me utterly mad. There were barking dogs and people walking up the steps and planes and leafblowers and men climbing on roofs, and nowhere to go to get away from it. There’s no one to get up and talk to when you’ve been staring at your computer screen for too long–a minor point, as I’m a huge introvert, but a point nonetheless–and even worse, there’s not really anyplace to go. I can’t think sitting down and there’s only so much room in an apartment to pace. I will be happy to be back at the office tomorrow…

After I was done working for the day, I took an awesome nap with my dog. I think I fell asleep around 4PM and didn’t get up until 7:30PM. Naps are good…there were lots of naps at the beach last week.

In the half-hour in which I had to cook before The Biggest Loser started, I threw together some taco salad.

Dip made from refried beans, cream cheese, and taco seasoning, covered in cheese, tomatoes, and onions, then run under the broiler, topped with lettuce, and eaten with tortilla chips. Yummy…horrible for you, probably, but yummy. Although this is not a good shot of it, I would also like to point out the lovely blue au gratin dish that my mom found at the thrift store and bought for me. Innit pretty?

The Biggest Loser was crazy tonight…I loved Jillian getting all serious business with the purple team and while an Amber Alert interrupted the love fest at the end right when it was getting good, I thought the team that ended up getting sent home went out in a very admirable and sportsmanlike way. Can’t wait for more crazy purple lady next week…