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.

Posted on August 7, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Operation: Clean Sweep

The first day of Operation: Clean Sweep has been a success, but only because I took out the easy targets first. I cleaned out the laundry room, which is essentially a closet big enough to house the washer and dryer. Then I took out the dining room, which involved cleaning off the table behind my sofa and organizing the dresser drawers I didn’t get to yesterday. Then I realized my living room was basically done already, so I finished it off. I marked all three of three locations off of the map I made of my apartment (seriously–I made a map on a giant sticky note and stuck it to my living room wall). Next up will be the hallway–a sea of bookshelves scattered with odds and ends–and the kitchen, where I intended to remove everything from every drawer and cabinet.

Or maybe I’ll do the bathroom after the hallway. Don’t want to strain myself.

I had no idea what to make for dinner. Then I spied a box of rice spaghetti in my pantry and the wheels started turning. I threw some in a pot to cook while I sauteed part of a vidalia onion, some baby bellas, and a few shrimp. Then I mixed it all together with some pesto sauce.

It was swell. Loved the sweetness of the onions with the pesto.

To cleanse my palate afterward, I had some more of that delicious dark chocolate peppermint crunch bar.

Later, I caught Heath sleeping on my throw pillows on the couch.

Well, I was going to take a break from cleaning the kitchen (which I did already start doing, so I guess I should finish…), but now some downstairs neighbors have decided to play Spanish music and it’s shaking my bedroom floor (and my keyboard), so I guess I’ll wander as far away from it as I can, even though I’m fairly certain I can feel the floor shaking in the kitchen, too. Sigh…

Posted on August 7, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

The Weekender

I always have trouble getting back into the blogging groove if I get away from it for a couple of days…I’m also way behind on my feedreader. Uh-oh!

After my last blog, I decided I needed some chocolate, so I finished off my Lumpy Bumpy Bar.

On Tuesday, I went to work for two whole hours, then ended up leaving because my blechy feelings from the day before were turning into a migraine. I had a yogurt at work and a cookie after I got home, then curled up on the living room floor to sleep it off. When I woke up I felt much better even though I still had a little headache. So I headed out to Cook-Out to feed myself some much-needed calories.

Milkshake!

Chicken strips, onion rings, and fries.

It was so good while I was eating it, but man…I don’t eat much salty food anymore and this about did me in. I thirsted the thirst of the unquenchably thirsty. I drank I-don’t-know-how-many glasses of Crystal Light before bed, then got up three times during the night to down another glass (and also to pee). It was the middle of the next day before the thirsty feeling finally went away. Oy…

Breakfast and midmorning snack on Wednesday were the usual…

…wait, what’s that? That’s the new Pure bar packaging! Of the four boxes of Pure bars I had delivered when Amazon’s subscribe and save went haywire on me, three were in the new style (the fourth came from a different location and was in the previous packaging). I was a little surprised because Pure just changed their packaging not too long ago, but I really like the new style–it feels more commercial and I think it’ll help them sell their product better. The only think I don’t like is that they dropped their cute slogan–”It kinda does grow on trees.” I loved that! But they’re still the same tasty raw, vegan, gluten-free bars as always. And now I have a stash of them to eat through!

Around lunchtime, I munched on some trail mix…

And then I had lunch a bit later than usual. I was pretty full from the trail mix, so I ate the cheese, all of the tomatoes, and a couple of the carrots with some “Greek-style” yogurt dip I made.

I also had two plums.

This held me over all afternoon, until it was dinnertime and I made some teeny tiny potatoes and onions tossed with olive oil and Bavarian seasoning.

Thursday morning’s breakfast was the usual yogurt, chased by two Dunkin’ Donuts I got at a meeting. We know how I feel about donuts, but I considered the first donut to be a trade–I didn’t eat my scheduled Pure bar–and the second donut to just be some extra calories for the day (I knew I was going to be low anyway). I enjoyed that maple-frosted donut and the glazed chocolate cake one!

Lunch consisted of Wednesday’s leftover carrots, plus cherry tomatoes and hummus. I had one last piece of cheese that I took out of the fridge but forgot to put in my bag, so it stayed on the counter all day and had to be thrown away. This was particularly sad because it left me without my chunk-o-cheese for lunch, and I rely on that for protein to keep me full. Fortunately, I had a container of raw almond butter in the fridge and an excellently ripe banana on my desk.

Some people would trash that banana. I think it was perfection. I ate most of it, covered in almond butter…mmm.

After work, I wasn’t  hungry for dinner, so I set to work on cleaning…and packing my first box for my upcoming move.

—

Tangent time!

Yep, that’s right. I’m moving when my lease is up at the end of October. I’ve lived in my current apartment for three years and I’ve thought about moving every time my lease is up, and I think it’s finally time. This is the only place I’ve lived since I graduated college (excluding the summer I graduated, which I spent at my parents’ house), and for whatever reason, I’ve never really felt at home here. I just have this vague and persistent sense that I don’t belong here, like this is a transient situation, and as a result I’ve never really settled in. That feeling is so much in opposition to what I’ve experienced in college (where, despite roommate issues, crazy stress, and being a conservative on a liberal campus, I always felt that I fit in) and at work (sure, I have my gripes, but I love my co-workers and I find my job very fulfilling)–it feels so wrong–that I can’t ignore it anymore.

My apartment has served its purpose well and for the first two years I lived here I was satisfied with the community, but things have been building up for the last year or so. My apartment is less than 650 square feet and poorly laid out; there is little storage space or counter space. It’s extremely outdated and showing its wear–I’ve called maintenance more times this past year than I did the first two years I lived here. And while I could possibly move into a bigger, updated apartment in the same community, I’ve also had more issues with my neighbors in the past year than I had previously. All my neighbors slam their doors, apparently not realizing that it shakes the entire building. I’ve listened to the yapping of the chihuahua that lives in the apartment that I share a living room/bathroom/closet wall with; my floor has vibrated thanks to the music from the apartment below mine; and I’ve put up with what is becoming constant sounds of either sex, music, or fighting (both of the latter, for instance, while writing this post) from the apartment I share a bedroom wall with. People pull up in the parking lot at night and leave loud music playing in their cars. The woman who lives in the apartment building facing mine has two dogs that have pinned me and my dog against the railing on the stairs to my apartment while barking and snarling to the point that I felt that my dog and I were in danger, and prior to that I had been lunged at by her dogs or warned by her not to come down my steps while she had her dogs out on our shared lawn.

I’ve attempted to handle some of these situations on my own and in other cases put it on the management to take care of it. I asked the guy below me to please turn his music down; he did and now I rarely hear it, perhaps because he’s barely home. I left a note for my next-door neighbor with the chihuahua explaining that I’d done what I could to minimize the noise from my size and would appreciate it if she could do something about her dog’s constant barking; she did take care of it, but I can still hear the dog barking whenever she’s home and when I’m outside my apartment. I called to complain about my bedroom neighbors and nothing happened, so I wrote a very annoyed letter to the leasing office and they talked to the neighbors about pulling the headboard away from the wall and quieting down with the moaning and “Oh, Danny!” noises, but the neighbors denied having anything more than a “small stereo” and I felt like I was arguing with the leasing office on the phone, trying to convince them that I lived in the apartment so I was pretty sure that I knew where the noise was coming from (and since the noise continues, and since I’m a very thorough person when it comes to this sort of thing, I am positive about this). I told the lady with the attack dogs not to bring them near me anymore and went into the office personally to make a complaint, and my complaint was taken down in case of future incidents, but I felt like my concern was brushed off because “the dogs are always nice when she brings them into the office.” I’ve lived here for longer than any of my neighbors and I’ve been a good tenant; I feel like the office owes it to me to take my concerns seriously.

So…

—

After cleaning and packing up my Christmas stuff, it was pretty late and I still wasn’t hungry. But I made myself a piece of salmon anyway. I needed to eat.

And yesterday, my mom came up and she and I toured an apartment complex that I really liked when I first moved to Raleigh, but was out of my price range at the time. It happened that we’d come at a great time–I want a one-bedroom with a den (slightly less than 1050 square feet–spaaaaace!) and they had one that someone was moving into today, so we got to go in and look at it. I loved so many things about it–closets, shelves, a kitchen I can actually get some cooking done in!–and it happens that there might be a woman giving notice on her ground-floor, one-bedroom with den soon, in which case it would be ready a couple of days after my lease is up. I very much hope everything works out, but if not, I’m still on the waiting list for the next available first-floor apartment in my chosen floorplan, so it’s a matter of time. The apartment complex is much nicer-looking than my current place and still local to the areas I frequent, and it’s a tiny bit closer to work.

I was very nervous about going over to see the apartment (thanks for being my wingman, mom!), but when I got home I was crazy excited. I told the dog we were mooooving and he just stared at me like I was nuts.

—

Before the apartment visit, I hadn’t had anything to eat, so I went to Burger King and snagged a Whopper Jr. with cheese and a small fry. And spent the afternoon thirsting again. I also swung by Whole Foods for some food for the coming week.

Then I came home and used the rest of my teeny tiny potatoes, part of a vidalia onion, and some carrots to make a delicious rosemary-covered dinner.

I also decided that instead of buying cookies or ice cream or anything that triggers me to shove carbs in my face, I was going to splurge on one nice chocolate bar that I could break into when I needed something sweet. I picked this $2.79  dark chocolate peppermint crunch bar even though it was smaller than similarly priced bars.

I had two squares after dinner and am very pleased with my choice–it’s awesome. My frugal nature tells me that if I spent a lot of money on something, I better make it last and enjoy it, which is why I love smoked salmon but make three meals out of a tiny container of trimmings, and why I can make a tiny carton of Haagan-Daaz Five last for a week.

I also checked out the LaraBar selection to see if the Carrot Cake was in stock yet, and indeed it was, so I grabbed one. Since I was a meal short for the day (having skipped breakfast), I had it for an evening snack.

I see what everyone’s raving about–pretty complex taste for a vegan, raw, gluten-free bar! The only thing I didn’t like about it was the coconut–I couldn’t taste it when I was chewing the bar, but afterward the little coconut shreds lingered in my mouth and grossed me out with their icky texture. Bleh.

This morning I got up at 8AM (on a Saturday!), ate some yogurt, and spent the morning lounging around with the dog and watching TV. Then I got to work on my Operation Clean Sweep project (which is basically to go through everything I own and play keep it/trash it/donate it). And then I had lunch.

I feel like I’m doing pretty well with my mostly-raw/vegetarian-before-dinner deal. No, I haven’t been successful every day, but it’s easy to plan my meals and now that I’ve added in the trail mix and the almond butter it’s keeping me full a lot longer. So I decided that, since I enjoy good cheese and since cheese has been a lunchtime staple for me recently, I would splurge a little.

So  I bought some smoked gouda from the expensive cheese section at Whole Foods.

I bought the smallest piece of the kind of smoked gouda that I chose, but it  still felt pricey.

Except then I realized, it’s really not that expensive…this is over 6.5 oz of cheese, which means it’ll be part of at least six lunches, and I’ll enjoy it a lot more than I will a brick of Kraft cheese that would be $3 or $4 for 7 or 8 lunches (provided I don’t leave it sitting on the counter…). The frugal yuppie knows what’s important enough to them to splurge on, and for me, this is splurge-worthy. (And so is an apartment that costs $150+ more than what I’m paying now.)

And so I threw together a wonderful lunch of somewhat squishy grapes…

…carrots, tomatoes, roasted red pepper hummus (decided to give the WF kind another try–it’s much better this time), an ounce of gouda, and–since it’s Saturday–a strip of smoked salmon.

It was delightful.

And now that I’ve spent eons writing this post, I’ve got to turn on some music to cover up the neighbor’s bassline and get back to my big cleaning project…I’ll be back later with dinner!