Chai Tea

Yesterday I discovered an absolutely deeeelicious drink, that until I tried I thought I would not like.

(Spoiler Alert: I am so totally going to use this story when trying to convince kids to try a new food.)

I generally do not like chai tea on its own, but love those chai lattes or mixes because they are yummy and sweet. Luckily, yesterday in the market I saw a chai tea done by the Celestial Seasonings and decided to buy it, because I really love their teas. It is so good! And even better, the lid suggests brewing the tea, then sweetening it and adding milk.

IT IS DELICIOUS OMG. By adding honey and rice milk to the tea, I have discovered my new favorite drink. Which I am sipping right now.

It's so yummy go buy some! And then make me one. ^_~

Catching Up . . .

Well. I certainly seem to excel at waiting months between posts and then writing a belated summary of events, don't I? We'll see if I can nix that habit, but for now I will continue in that glorious tradition:

Work is going great: I love the kids that I teach computers to and my coworkers are all made of awesome.

ONE WEEK OF SCHOOL LEFT OMG. Technically two, but I do not have finals so HA SUCKS TO BE YOU NICK. Mwahaha!

Speaking of Nick, things are going great! Coming up on 4 1/2 years next month! And wow, it seems like our 4 year anniversary just happened, where the heck is time going? I have a feeling I am going to be one of those perpetually bewildered old people, always wondering how I suddenly got to be old when just a few minutes ago I was typing this post!

We're started going to the Farmer's Markets around us, and WOW real tomatoes taste amazing! I've been snacking on raw broccoli and ate a pear for breakfast and the oranges are so delicious and the eggs are tasty and the apple juice is . . . well, actually not as good as I hoped, I will try a different vendor next time. Overall, however, we love it.

My Uncle Steve is doing good! His fight with the brain cancer glioblastoma is documented here. To summarize: his surgery went well, his chemo sucked but he did it, and his latest MRI was the best it could be! There have been a lot of ups and downs and scary moments, but right now is good.

Oh! Hey! I got an ipad 2 for Christmas and I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

We ran in the Davis Lucky 7k and finished in like 48 minutes, or something. I forgot. But we did finish! We keep talking about doing more and then we don't. But I have found three new races in Sac that look interesting, so I will keep you posted.

I have one semester left at Sac State, and then I graduate! I should be graduating in December of 2012!!! Yaaaay!

That means I have to decide where to get my credential, and possibly my masters. Eep!

As for me, I keep pretty busy between work and school, especially this semester. I had to do 70 hours of fieldwork at 4 different sites, and write a lot of papers! That plus upping my work from 2 to 3 days a week teaching plus 2 days after-care . . . was challenging at times, but generally I enjoyed it. My stomach has been behaving (remember those days of gastritis/IBS/acid reflux? Me neither. Yay!) My biggest stressor lately has been trying to keep our apartment clean. That, plus wishing we had more sunshine on our patio so I could grow some non-shady plants (I would kill to grow some basil!).

Hopefully I will remember to update this blog every now and then. ^_~

Ciao!

Feliz dia de las madres

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! This year I learned that while our mother's day is on Sunday, the Mexican dia de las madres was actually on Tuesday. I had no idea!

For this year's Mother's Day, Nick and I drove up to my parent's and had brunch at the town's elementary school, where mother's eat for free and the rest of us were only a dollar! It is put on by a community club and has pancakes, eggs, sausages, orange juice, and coffee, and the drinks and things were fetched by little boy scouts. It was fun!

After brunch we hung out with my parents at their house. Troy was still in . . . Ireland, I think?( He bounced around from Italy to Ireland to England to Germany in just a few days, it got confusing. But he comes home tonight! In like . . . 20 minutes his flight comes in!!!) That was nice, I don't spend as much time with my parents as I'd like to anymore.

Then we went to my Nanny's apartment and stayed for a while to talk and wish her a Happy Mother's Day. She recently got new hearing aides and it is noticeably easier to talk with her!

And then we were off to Nick's aunt's house where all his family was gathering for a Mother's Day dinner feast, full of yumminess and delicious 6 month old baby cousin giggles.

We left early because we both had homework due the next day.

It was a great Mother's Day. (Though I must admit, planning holidays now for two families can be haaaard. But worth it.) ^_^

Delicious Eggless Whole-Wheat Waffles! My new breakfast favorite that doesn't make me feel like I am indulging!

Ingredients for Healthy and Delicious Eggless Whole Wheat Waffles

---

• 1/2+ C oats
• 1 1/2 + cup whole wheat (the 1/2 cup may be white flour if preferred)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 4-5 Tbsp applesauce
• 1 cup sour milk (milk with 1Tbsp lemon juice)
• 1+Tbsp water as needed to thin mixture as preferred
• Handful chocolate chips
  

Mix it all together the classic Katie way, which is to say, adding and substituting until you are happy with what you've got! Add more applesauce if needed, pour in more water or milk if it's too thick, play around with how many oats you want--it will still end up delicious!

PS The more chocolate chips the better!

PPS This makes a healthy, filling, still-fluffy and delicious waffle! We don't even use butter and syrup on top of our waffles anymore, but if you wanted to omit the chocolate chips I am SURE that adding diced apples in the waffles would be delicious, or putting berries and real maple syrup on top would be just as perfect!

So much cheesy goodness = Going to be running for hours at the gym

I baked a homemade pizza tonight, with a freshly made sauce and a dough with thyme and yumminess. Then I made some instant tapioca which is delicioso. At dinnertime I ate one slice. I felt pretty good. Like I didn't need more.

Flash forward to like an hour later, and I've eaten a quarter of the pizza and feel fit to burst. As soon as the super full feeling goes away I'm going to the gym and running it all off. Ugh.

I've actually been super good lately and lost some weight (don't know how much, I'm avoiding my scale) and eating really well. For some reason today though pizza sounded so good I couldn't resist, and who can eat just one piece, really? (I did, a week ago, and supplemented it with a salad. Which is probably why I was craving cheesy goodness today.)

Oops.

First Day of School

Short version, for I am tired and likely to misspell thingz:

Monday! Today! Four classes!

Biked three miles this morning getting to and from class, had a quick lunch!

Walked back, had class, walked home! Miles walked? Three!

Had snack. (Sliced tomatoes sprinkled with herbs and eaten with day-old sourdough baguette. Mmm.)

Nick drove me to my last class (three hours long!) and then picked me up.

Teachers so far: One Taiwanese, One Filipino, (both with English as a second language), and one Caucasian. All female.

I made lemon chicken with onion, red and green peppers, and Nick made sushi rice.

Then I ate TWO pumpkin cookies with icing that Vicky and I made yesterday! (TWO! Cookies are bad for being healthy!)

At some point tonight I have to do Day 4 of the 30 Day Shred.

Wish me luck!

Aaaaallways look on the bright side of life! (Dee dum, dee dum da dum dee dum)

I am cold.

Also, full.

With a side of whiny.

So I am taking this opportunity to complain about it.

Let it be noted I have no real reason to be so whiny. It is nearly 70 degrees in my apartment; I just had homemade chicken pot pie and fresh blueberries in cream for dessert; it has been a good day--and yet I am moping about.

I did not exercise today. I'm disappointed about that.

Instead I went to the grocery store. I received my textbooks for my classes that start soon while still in my jammies. I cleaned!

. . . totally think that the grocery store was the most important part of today. We had NO food left! I stocked up on yogurt and granola, veggies, apples, and wished desperately for tofu to go on sale. (Darn stuff is about as expensive as chicken! Hmph.) (I'm not really that cheap. We still have tofu, I just wanted it to be on sale so I could justify buying more cuz I like it.) (Note to self: find coupons for tofu.)

On the bright side, I ate really well today! One of my biggest problems in controlling my weight is that I have huge portions. Well, today I had oatmeal for breakfast, packed full of raisins (and brown sugar) and drizzled with milk, then a single bowl of miso soup for lunch (wow. I just NOW realized I forgot the wakame seaweed! No wonder it looked different! Way to be observant, Self.) And for dinner I had one serving of chicken pot pie, and then blueberries for dessert.

Now if I could just motivate myself to exercise! Gaaah. Somebody please pick me up and deposit me on the treadmill! (I almost ran today. I was dressed to go to the gym and then realized my ipod wasn't charged, YES, IT IS THAT IMPORTANT.)

The days that I go to work I am invariably more motivated to exercise. There's nothing like realizing that you CAN'T go to the gym that day to make you reeeaally want to (at least until you get home and collapse--then you're fine on the couch.)

On the bright side--I am moving pretty constantly at work, so yay! Shoo, calories, shoo.

In summary? Am whiny, silly girl, who had a good day today and decided to start to blog when she was cold. Tomorrow will be a good day as well. ^_-

Amazing Boyfriend Makes Amazing Meals!

Vermicelli rice noodles, home-made marinated chicken, sliced carrots, sliced green onions (I love slicing with our new Calphalon knives!) nestled on top of baby spinach, drizzled with a rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and salt mixture.



It was delicious. I love having an amazing cook for a boyfriend!

Seafood Birthday Dinner!

Every year for Nick's dad's birthday we go out to a delicious restaurant. This year we went to Rudy's Hideaway in Sacramento. 

THE BEST. LOBSTER RAVIOLI. IN THE WORLD. 

We started off with escargot and some crab-stuffed mushrooms. Oh, and of course our bread. Then our soup's arrived: a lobster bisque for me and clam chowder for Nick. Mine was mildly spicy and full of lobster, soooo good! Nick's clam chowder was amazing as well. Then there was the noodle course: a delicious red/cinnamon/cocoa? meat sauce spooned over hollow noodles. Then our entrees arrived: I had the lobset ravioli which had huge pieces of lobster stuffed inside with the richest cream sauce imaginable. Nick had crab-stuffed salmon, as did his mom, Clair had the children's prime rib and french fries, and his dad had a 1.5 pound lobster tail. It was all AMAZING. For dessert there was creme brulee and mudpies and chocolate mousse. 

I am so stuffed I cannot move, so stuffed I debated the relief of unbuttoning my pants at the table versus the embarrassment it would cause. 

So delicious, so yummy, thank you Nick's dad! Happy birthday! 

Delicious Japanese Dinner: Miso, Onigiri, Char Siu Bao & Adventures in the Asian Supermarket

Early this morning I discovered a terrible craving for Japanese cuisine. After scouring the internet for the most delicious looking and doable recipes I settled on the amazing website of Just Hungry which I had explored before. (Nick and I are . . . kind of obsessed with food. And we love Asian cuisine. I know I've mentioned before what sushi freaks we are.)

A few hours of obsessive clicking later and I dragged Nick away from his videogames, proclaiming, "We have to go spend lots of money! I need this food to ensure my happiness!" He was smart enough to go along.

I wanted to make Onigiri (rice balls with a center of your choosing, we had chicken teriyaki), Miso soup, and Char Siu Bao (steamed pork buns). If any of those sound amazing, click on the one you want and it will take you to that recipe on the JustHungry website.

We needed wakame, kombu, and nori seaweeds, and some shaved bonito flakes, and then some miso and sushi rice. At the online asian market which would ship what we needed that added up to maybe fifteen bucks. At Whole Foods it was fifty.

Needless to say we didn't end up with the things I wanted. I just could not justify spending that much money on things that could be found for so much less. We did purchase enough to make a non-traditional miso soup and seaweedless onigiri, and started to drive home without all we wanted. But then Nick had a brilliant idea! He searched "Asian markets" on his GPS and found one! We quickly made our way there.

Once we arrived at our destination, courtesy of "Shut UP, Woman" (our affectionate nickname for our chatty GPS, our jaws hit the floor. We had found a huge Asian center! Florists and restaurants, and in the middle of it all a HUGE supermarket!

This supermarket was unlike our traditional American ones. As you enter you practically trip over a large glass display case full of dust-catches and knick-knacks, "ON SALE!!!", kind of like what you would expect to find in Chinatown. To the right was the vegetables, but it was full of bok choy and all kinds of mushrooms and weird fruits! We were fascinated and didn't have enough eyeballs to see all we wanted. We walked around the entire store. Most of it was in Japanese characters with English printed on the side. We passed chicken hearts, tripe, testicles, ducks, quail eggs, oysters, every type of noodle imaginable, and so many more different things!

We purchased chilled steamed buns with a lotus center and frozen pork buns, one of which we shared tonight. It was delicious. I didn't take a picture because we ate it too quickly. We got pocky (chocolate dipped biscuit sticks) and peanut mochi and noodles and all the types of seaweed that we needed plus some instant dachi (integral part of miso soup; made from seaweed, sardines, and fish flakes).

Exhausted, we ate some pocky on the way back home and quickly started our dinner.

The Miso was very good. After simmering the dachi in some water (it was stinky!) I added the miso, tofu, scallions, and wakame seaweed. We enjoyed it but it was a little fishier than we like so next time I will simmer the dachi for half the amount of time.

We steamed the pork bun in our makeshift steamer (saucepan and a sieve covered in tinfoil) that worked surprisingly well! We did steam it about seven minutes longer than it said because some of the steam was escaping. It tasted so good, even though the pork was really more of a pork sausage than the char siu (seasoned pulled pork) I wanted. Keep in mind that it was a frozen bun and not the amazing looking one on the website. Someday when I have a lot of free time and the necessary ingredients I will make them.

The Onigiri was deeelicious! Nick made the rice (short-grained sushi rice but not made in the sushi style where you add rice vinegar) because I am a total fail at making it edible. I had made chicken teriyaki and chopped it up and put that in the center before squishing it and then wrapping it in nori (seaweed typically found around sushi). We decided it needed more salt. We have two left for snacks, yummy!

Here are my onigiri wrapped with sliced nori. You can make them look really cute with faces and shapes but since it was my first time I decided to stick with what was easiest. Each onigiri had about 1/2-1 tablespoon of chicken teriyaki.


Nick is taking the first bite. We were both nervous--me if it came out well and him if it tasted good!


It was good! Here you can see the chicken teriyaki. Sorry it's blurry--I had to take the picture quickly because Nick was trying to eat it!


We still have our peanut mochi to have for dessert but we are so full now I don't know if we will taste it tonight!

Everything was very good and it was so much fun to go to the Asian supermarket and find things for much less than we would have paid elsewhere. We have a new favorite place to shop! Also, I suspect we will be asking Santa Claus for a steamer and a rice cooker this year! At least we will if this fascination with Japanese cuisine continues. And with how delicious everything is so far, how can it not?

Sunday Morning Breakfast: Adorable Edition

Breakfast this morning made me laugh. So I thought I'd share. Doesn't everyone like to see two good-looking young men sitting at an elegant bistro cafe glass table, eating homemade chocolate chip waffles and laughing together?

Sigh. So cute.


Nick and Ryan, acting adorable together. I had finished eating and was about to sit in the living room when I glanced back. And saw them.


What else could I do? I needed evidence. It was too cute for words!

Er . . .


Yep. Simply adorable. Also a delicious breakfast.


PS That painting is by my dad. He has a blog for his paintings: Gary Symington.

STARVING

'SO HUNGRY. SOOOOO HUNGRY. Stoopid human goes away all day without putting enough food out and now I'm STARVING.'

'NOMNOMNOM.'

'Whut?'

Full disclosure: I do not starve my cats. I fill that bowl up like two times a day and my darn kitten goes through it like I go through chocolate. He just got really impatient this time and couldn't wait for Io to finish eating so he could have his turn.

Valentine's Day Weekend: Part Three

Homemade pasta and garlic bread! YUM! Nick has a red sauce and I have an alfredo sauce. We also had caesar salad, and then the amazing dessert!

There was this much snow! If the snow wasn't there you would be able to see the two-story cabin. I'm in the driveway right now. There was a lot of snow! We went outside and slid around on discus sleds but unfortunately didn't slide too far, and then threw snowballs at each other until we fell over.

Walking over the icy path to the cabin--I fell on my butt a few times!

I brought this wood in and stacked it! I may not be an "excellent" fire maker like I claimed (and produced a pitiful fire) but I am an excellent wood stacker. Ha!

Oops

I had a caesar salad with chicken (from Marie Calendar's) for dinner. A couple hours later the sharp bitter burning on the roof of my mouth and down my throat alerted me to the fact that THAT WAS NOT SMART.

Nick was all: "You know that tangy taste in caesar? Yeah. It's not from cheese. Have some acid!"

Oops!

Craving . . .

. . . the biggest, baddest, most Denny's-esque brunch. You know the type. Eggs and cheese, bacon, hash browns, more bacon, more hash browns, some syrup and ketchup for dipping . . . and refillable hot chocolate with whipped cream.

I dream of this because I can't have it anymore. Even now having two scrambled eggs and some toast for breakfast make me too full! I haven't had chocolate in ages, and haven't craved it until I was just thinking of a huge breakfast and what to drink with it. I haven't had dessert or candy in ages either. I didn't even have pie at Thanksgiving! For dessert then I had sweet potato casserole with pecans, and it was delicious.

This morning I weighed 137. Recall my starting weight was 153. I have lost 16 pounds.

I bought size 6 American Eagle Boyfriend pants, and now they're feeling a bit baggy. Crap.

Weight Loss Confusion

I simply do not understand it. I feel like I'm eating a lot! Internets, I do eat a lot. I eat every 2-3 hours (when I can swing it. Sometimes at school I go much longer. Hey, an 11-9 schedule doesn't leave much room for eatin', ya know?)

So how in hell's holy hand grenade am I still losing weight?! I dropped another half of a pound and am smack dab at 140. I am getting dangerously close to the 135 lbs I weighed when I got my drivers license, five freaking years ago. 

I thought I was going to gain weight, simply by eating immense amounts of chicken pot pie. Last night for dinner I had a half a grilled cheese (cheese = veggie slices) dipped in chicken rice soup. Two hours later I had a blueberry bagel with margarine. An hour later I had a slice of sourdough toast. Over the last week or so my appetite has come back--even when I take a bite of my delicious bagel I am dreaming of what I will eat in a few hours. Everything sounds delicious!

Granted, my meals are smaller than they used to be. (Thinks mournfully of my teenage years "snacks" after school--ramen, two bagels, maybe some cereal too, huge glass of orange juice, some cookies. [Not kidding in the slightest. I ate a lot]). I can't eat big meals now because it makes me reflux. 

Also, my cutting out dairy and eggs on the advice of my college's family practitioner probably has to do with the weight loss. I plan on discussing that with my doctor at my appointment on Wednesday. But I am still flabbergasted when I step on the scale and the numbers keep going down. 

Craving

Cream cheese. I am craving a blueberry bagel with cream cheese, and instead I have to make do with margarine because I have been off of dairy for over three weeks now to see if that will help my stomach in case I'm lactose intolerant, and now I crave cream cheese. 

Chicken Pot Pie

I believe there is nothing in the world at this time that is as delicious as home made chicken pot pie. With ketchup.

Weirdos

Why is it men can survive on one specific food forever?

My dad eats pistachios by the pound.

Troy eats chips and salsa like they're gonna disappear from the cupboard. (Unlikely. He finishes them before anyone else notices they are there. (My maaaannnggggooo!)

Nick could eat pasta with tomato sauce for every single meal. Seriously.

I just don't get it. How can they do that?!

Boyfriend+Vacation=Awesomeness

A few weeks ago, Nick and I went to his grandparent's cabin for the weekend. It was an insane adventure of finding food and watching scary horror movies from the 1960's, and it was amazingly fun. The back porch (that in winter apparently gets snow up to the roof!) led down to a creek and we spent hours hopping stones, climbing over fallen trees, and trying to catch a glimpse of tiny schools of elusive fish.

He picked me that pretty orange flower, (so sweet!) and it's actually much softer than it looks. We spent a day in a town nearby, walked through the little shops, didn't end up buying anything (although he nearly did get a wooden sling shot gun)(Do ya think I like parenthesis?). We stumbled upon a small fair and rode the fastest damn eggbeater ride I've ever found--so fast that I nearly threw up and we couldn't walk straight for five minutes.

For dinner the first night we made pasta and meatballs. HOMEMADE pasta and meatballs. I actually ground the sirloin. He actually blended the flour and eggs (from memory, he has done it so often). It took forever but it was absolutely delicious!

So I'd have to say as far as weekend vacations go, this one was definitely at the top.

P.S. Raisins in meatballs rock!


Yes, I know he's cute.


And yes, these are homemade waffles that he made us.


Pretty bluebird outside while we were eating said waffles.


Deck


Flower! For me!


Gnarled tree trunk.