Picking Up Where I Left Off (Sort of)

So I bet you've been wondering where I've been for the past 7 months, dear blog readers.  No?  Well, I don't really blame you.  To be honest, I've been kind of wondering where I've been, too.  Thanks to Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Hormones (and no, I'm not pregnant!).  And trust me, I'll be writing on those topics soon.  Too many people try to present a perfect life on blogs...and just hide the tough times.  Me? I just disappear.  But I want to write about what I've been through, in the hopes that it can provide hope to others.  I just don't know what that will look like yet.  The past 3 months of my life have been so difficult. But I think I'm coming through it OK, thanks to the Lord's provision of modern medicine, wise counsel, loyal friends, and a most faithful, supporting, and loving husband.  

The best part is that even in the midst of this tough time, there have been some beautiful moments, and lots of fun times!  A few of those are:

• A fun visit from my cousin and her family
• An awesome vacation at Hilton Head with J and my family
• A quick trip to Jacksonville to see J's family
• The Olympics!
• A fabulous meal at Volt
• Hosting 5 dinner parties with great food and great friends

I'm hoping I can blog about those things to catch you (and me) up on the good things that happened this summer.  I've started and re-started and erased and re-started my post on my struggles with anxiety a number of times.  It's just so hard to put into words.  But I will try.  Look for some honest posts in the next few weeks...and hopefully some fun posts, as well!

Laptop Lunches

After stalking a friend's Blog, Facebook, and Flickr account for awhile (shout out to Kristi!), I noticed she has a lunch system she uses for her 4 kids called "Laptop Lunches".  Basically, Laptop Lunches is a company that sells Bento Box style lunch boxes.  A Bento Box is a Japanese type of food presentation that is typically used for sushi, tempura, etc.  But there is apparently a "Bento Box" movement for making healthy lunches.

For me, lunch is one of the most difficult meals to make healthy.  Mostly because all I ever want for lunch is Chick-fil-A.  My bad.

Anyway, in my recent quest for healthiness, I've decided I need some kind of system for lunches.  Enter Laptop Lunches.  While the Bento Boxes aren't cheap, I haven't had any type of "lunch box" for awhile.  I try to bring my lunch to work often, but usually I have some sort of leftovers in a Gladware container.  A Bento Box style lunch is beneficial for a number of reasons.

Number #1: The Bento Box is really cute.  I know, I know...a terrible reason for me to like it, but I do!

Number #2: Portions are easily controlled.  One thing emphasized by the bento box is variety.  Instead of bringing a large-ish portion of leftovers, I feel challenged to bring 4 different types of food in my lunch.  And since the containers are not very large, I can't bring "too much" of one item.

Number #3: As mentioned above, the variety makes it easy to bring fruits, veggies, whole grains, and protein.  I strive to have one container of each of those food groups in my Bento Box.

I'm in my second week of taking Bento lunches...and I love them!  I feel virtuous, they taste good, and I know I am being both healthy, and environmentally friendly.  I usually prep my lunches on Sunday, and then simply pack them up each night before I go to bed for easy transport in the morning (great for us non-morning folk).

Here is my first day of Laptop Lunching:

The outer insulated case

The actual Bento Box

The selection for my first week of Laptop Lunches: Homemade gazpacho (thanks, J!), Strawberries with feta and balsamic, deviled egg, and carrots

I'm hoping that making and brining healthy lunches to work will help me be healthier, lose a bit of weight, be environmentally conscious, and help me save money (Chick-fil-A gets expensive!)

Summer Time Warp

Ever notice how the summer just goes...Poof?!  Even though I haven't been in school for, oh...10 years, parts of my world still revolve on a summer schedule.  J and I had lots of plans for the summer, mostly to just spend time together after our busy, busy Spring.

Sadly, in terms of free time, the summer is almost over for us.  I start rehearsals for the September 11th Mozart Requiem performance on July 25th.  J starts his Tosca rehearsals at the beginning of August.  And things just get busier from there!  Thankfully, we still have a vacation coming (Maine, oh how I love you!) and I'm excited to introduce J to one of my favorite places to relax with friends.

I do still have some pictures to upload, and despite myself, I'm determined to get them uploaded to the blog tonight!  I may even have some recent ones for you...

So far this summer we've:

-Cataloged 1/4 of J's (and my) wine collection
-Gotten our house in its current state of order
-Worked in our vegetable garden
-Had a Harry Potter marathon in the home theater
-Made Chocolate Frogs
-Spent time with friends
-Cooked a lot of meals with our CSA veggies
-Spent a lot of $ fixing our HVAC unit

This summer, I'd still like to:

-Finish cataloging the wine
-Work on checking some items off the list on the right
-Continue eating healthy
-Make exercising 4 times a week a priority
-Relax

Happy Mid-July everyone!

109/365 The end of Ribeye and Cabernet Night

108/365 A week and a half...

Before we go to Scotland and need to eat all of these veggies out of the fridge!

85/365 Dinner

The perfect meal to go with wine...

46/365 Cooking

Tuesday night is really the only weeknight I am home to cook.  This week I did double duty by cooking a stir fry to eat tonight, and a soup to get us through the week.  Yay veggies...!

36/365 Charleston (The Restaurant)

Exquisite Food, Wine, and Company.

30/365 Good Times

So lovely to have good friends, good food, and fun times to celebrate a birthday!

23/365 Football Food

Sunday afternoon football and men cooking in the kitchen.  Love it!

Day 9/365 Lunch

I have been trying to incorporate more plant based foods into my diet (you know...whole foods).  Since I have a hard time limiting meat altogether, I'm incorporating it into one meal a day, a bit at a time.  This is what I had for dinner tonight, and will be having for lunch tomorrow.  Mmmm.  A loaded baked potato! With broccoli, spinach, sour cream, cheese, a bit of butter, and a piece of bacon.

4/365 Domesticity

My husband, in his Chef's jacket...cooking me dinner.

2010 New Years' Resolutions Evaluation

So, let's see how I fared with my Resolutions for 2010 (something tells me they didn't go so well).

1.  Complete the 365 Day Photo Project.  Hmm.  I started out well with this...got to March...and then lost my camera.  I tried to pick it up again in August...and then wedding planning got in the way.  FAIL!

2.  Read Through the Bible in a Year.  Again.  I made it to April, and then missed enough Daily Readings that it would be difficult to catch up.  FAIL!

3.  For every novel that I read, read a Nonfiction book.  Well, I didn't read one for one....but I did read a lot more nonfiction this year, which was the point of the resolution. Partial FAIL

4. Stick to my Savings Budget.  So, I didn't stick completely..but I did fairly well considering I chipped in for our wedding and we bought a house.  Finishing the year with some $ still in savings was an accomplishment.  And, I managed to curb my spending. EVEN

5. Attempt a No-Spending Month.  Absolutely didn't happen.  Pretty difficult when planning a wedding. FAIL!

6. Cook a Julia Child recipe every Sunday.  Uh... started out well with this (Boeuf Bourginon, Fish in white sauce, Boullabaisse...) and then...my excuse for the year...wedding planning and house buying!  FAIL!

7.  LOSE 10 lbs.  Oops.  I gained 7.  Of course, at this time last year I was running 30+ miles a week.  Now I am lucky to get in 5...Extreme FAIL!


Obviously, I should have made my resolutions for this year to be Get Engaged, Buy a House, Plan a Fabulous Wedding, and Get Married.  Hindsight, you know?

Stay Tuned for my 2011 Resolutions...

43/365 Typical Work Lunch

Back at the office after 2 days working from home...time for a Lean Cuisine.  No more home-cooked lunches. Blech.

31/365 Birthday Cake!

My birthday cake from Reynolds Tavern Tea Room.  It was tasty!

Downtime is Delectable...

I have to say, this weekend was quite lovely.  For me, it was the perfect mix of busyness and downtime.  I spent some time with J, got 2 training runs in, had my planned early Thanksgiving dinner with friends, sang a few Christmas carols, and spent Sunday on the sofa watching football, continuing to acquaint myself with my MacBook, and reading.

Even though cooking my early Thanksgiving meal was work, it was very enjoyable.  Friday night, I went to the grocery store and cleaned the house from top to bottom.  Saturday, I went for a 5 mile run in the AM, had grits casserole with J and watched College Gameday.  My turkey went in around 11, and then I started working on the dressing and broccoli spinach casserole.  It was a lovely fall day outside, which added to the enjoyment of cooking inside for some reason.  My Linner companions came over around 2, and the food was on the table by 2:30.  It was certainly a modest Thanksgiving meal...3 dishes and no sweet potato anything, but it was tasty, and I didn't need to have tons and tons of food leftover!  A friend brought a yummy pumpkin mousse pie (that I am still enjoying out of the fridge!), and after an enjoyable afternoon, we headed out to sing Christmas Carols at a holiday lighting ceremony.

Once the carols were sung, I headed up to Baltimore to hear a concert version of Donizetti's Don Pasquale.  It was a good performance, and I even managed to be home in bed by midnight!  Unfortunately, Marcello seems to be suffering from an ear infection (I took him to the vet yesterday), so he was restless and waking me up all night shaking his head and scratching his ears.  I was worried about him, and didn't sleep very well.  I was up at 6:30 AM anyway to run the Cold Turkey 10K race.  It was a fun race...so fun, in fact, that we decided to run it again when we were done!  Ok, ok, we did have 12 miles on our schedule for Sunday. :)

After I got home from the run, I ate some leftovers, took a nice hot shower, and crawled into bed for some football and a nap.  Di-vine, I tell you!  I managed to rouse myself about 3 PM, blow-dry my hair, and head downstairs to veg on the couch in front of football.  I haven't had an afternoon like that in a long time.  Everything that needed to be done was taken care of, and I just relaxed.  I did make turkey tetrazzini with the leftovers to stick in the freezer, and got to finish up listening to Pat Conroy's South of Broad in the process.  Since I didn't sleep well the night before, I was in bed by 10 PM.  All in all...a great weekend!

Tomorrow, I head to SC for a Homeland Thanksgiving.  As I've mentioned, we are headed to Charleston on Thanksgiving Day.  We'll start off with the South of Broad walking tour, and then have our Thanksgiving meal at Magnolia's.  Sounds like a great day to me! Let's all say a quick prayer that my flight tomorrow night is not cancelled and is relatively on time!  I'm bringing my MacBook, so look for some blogs from the Homeland.

Quick Update

Today, I feel the need resort to a bullet-point post.  Please forgive me...

• Last weekend's concert was quite enjoyable.  Good music, a decent performance, fun "hang-out" time...that's what I remember always loving about concert weekends.  While there was drama...this time I was not involved.  Thank goodness!
  
  
• I also went on the 19 mile running tour of DC.  It was a hilly, tough run...but a lot of fun at the same time.  And confidence-building...it was the first of 3 major back-to-back runs in preparation for the Goofy Challenge.  9 miles on Saturday, 19 on Sunday.  See my running blog for more details on the run if you are interested...
  

• I have a good plan in place for my mini-Thanksgiving feast this weekend.  3 friends, good food, and leftovers.  Ironically, after we finish eating our "Thanksgiving Meal" 5 days early, we are then headed off to sing Christmas Carols.  A sign of the times...
  

• I finally bought my MacBook!  After 8 months of coveting it...I finally was pushed over the edge when my 7 year old desktop stopped connecting to the internet and decided it didn't want to have anything to do with my external hard drive (where all of my music and video files reside).  I generally am the type of person to not replace something until it dies (cars, hair-dryers, etc.)  So, when I started coveting the MacBook, I guess I was waiting until I "needed" it.  Which happened last week.  So far, I haven't had too much time to sit down and explore it, but I do have all my music files transferred over and my iPods (all 3 of them) synced up.
  

• My roommate heads to Paris today, so I'm all alone for a couple of days.  Well, alone except for Marcello the kitten (almost cat).  I forgot that one of the perks of having a pet is their company when there are no other humans around.  Marcello is good company, and tends to keep me entertained, so I think I will be ok.  Hopefully we won't need to test out his guard-cat skills.

I think that's it...look for some photos from my Thanksgiving Dinner on Saturday!

Gobble, Gobble...Thanksgiving Turkey

For the past 12 years or so, it has been my responsibility to cook the turkey for my family's Thanksgiving dinner.  Believe it or not, even with my mom being the accomplished cook that she is, she has never cooked a Thanksgiving turkey!  Until they passed away in 1996, one of my grandmothers always cooked the turkey.  So, for the first Thanksgiving without them,  my mom declared we would not have turkey.  I balked at this, so she said, "Well, you cook it, then."  So I did.

I went online and found Martha Stewart's recipe for roasting a turkey, and bought a turkey from the grocery store.  I followed her instructions and got a 12 lb turkey.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Well, apparently since my family is small (only 4 of us at dinner that year), we usually got a turkey breast instead of the whole turkey!  Consequently, we had turkey leftovers, casseroles, and soups for weeks after Thanksgiving!  The turkey was fabulous, though...juicy and tasty, so I was nominated as "turkey chef" for the remainder of my days.  And, believe it or not, all of them have been pretty good.  There have been a few fiascos of course...one year we almost had "Thanksgiving Chicken" instead, but all in all I've been pretty proud of my turkey-roasting skills.  I actually look forward to cooking the turkey each year.  Since '96, I think I've only missed a couple of years...traveling one year, and my first Thanksgiving here in Annapolis that I spent all by myself and ate chicken fingers.

This year, I'll be flying into SC late Wednesday night, and back on Saturday.  Since I can't take leftovers on the plane and my parents can't eat that many leftovers, we decided to forgo cooking dinner.  Instead, we're going to spend the day in Charleston and have our Thanksgiving meal at Magnolia's.  Not too shabby, eh?  The culinary snob in me is certainly looking forward to that meal!  They do have turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving, but I doubt I'll be ordering it.

While I'm ridiculously excited about eating at Magnolia's, part of me is a little sad that I won't get to cook the turkey this year.  I was reading all the Home magazines with info about cooking turkeys, Thanksgiving meals, etc...and I got nostalgic and a little sad.  I thought about how much I'd miss the basting process, the turkey sandwiches afterwards, having turkey tetrazzini in the freezer for rushed pre-rehearsal meals during the crazy Christmas singing season, the turkey noodle soup...and I decided that I'm going to cook my own Thanksgiving meal the weekend before Thanksgiving!  It's the only time I have time to cook, and even then it will be a bit pushed with running, a singing gig and opera to attend that evening.  I will perservere, though!  I may end up having the meal by myself...which sounds sad but really isn't since it's not actually on Thanksgiving, and my whole point of cooking the turkey is for the leftovers.  My roommate will be in Paris (very jealous!), but perhaps I can find some other friends in town to join me.  If nothing else, I'm sure Marcello the kitten will be quite happy to sit at the table with me and snack on some turkey!

To document the process, I'll try to take some pictures and post them here for your enjoyment!

Restaurant Review...Quite Possibly the Best Meal I've Ever Eaten!

On Saturday evening, J took me to Charleston (the restaurant, not the city) for dinner. For those not in the Baltimore area, Charleston is considered by most to be one of, if not THE, best restaurant in Baltimore. As the name suggests, it's lowcountry/French style cuisine...very high end cuisine! It wasn't a special occasion of any sort; he has wanted to go for a long time, and I am always up for a fancy meal. The one caveat was that I had to be able to eat all of my meal. While I eat a lot of food during the day, I typically don't eat a whole lot in one sitting. I'm notorious for "hitting the wall" food-wise and announcing that I'm not eating anymore. So, J made me promise that I would "practice" eating a lot and be ready for the 6 course meal plus wine pairings. His thought was that we need to "do it up right" and go for the 6 course meal to get the whole experience. I also figured the 7 mile run I completed earlier in the day would help with the hunger factor.

The food was exquisite. At least, compared to anything I've had before. The closest thing I've experienced to this meal in the past is my family's Christmas dinners at Woodlands Resort (the only 5 star restaurant in SC). I started with a butternut squash soup paired with a Chardonnay. Second was cornmeal fried oysters with a French champagne (tasty!). Third I went "light" with a goat cheese salad paired with a Pouilly fume. Fourth, a southern crab cake with black bean salsa (divine!) paired with Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc. Fifth (at this point I was getting a little full...the portions are larger than tasting portions but about half the size of a regular entree), Pan-roasted salmon with sorrel sauce piared with Anjou, Domaine Jo Pithon “Les Pèpinières”. The last "real" course was Grilled Beef Tenderloin paired with a Malbec. Thankfully, the wine pairings were 1/3 glass portions or I would have been sleeping under the table! By the time we finished the 6th course...I was literally stuffed. The cheese cart came by though, so we had a slice of a soft cheese from the Italian Piedmont. I can't even remember what I had for dessert...I could only eat one bite! I think it was something chocolate with sesame ice cream? J had the creme brulee trio...maple, cappucino, and calvados. On the whole, J had the more adventurous courses...I can't remember everything he had...but snails, sweetbreads, and venison made appearances. He finished off the meal with a armagnac (like cognac). I had a sip. I feel full again just thinking about that meal!

Our friends were celebrating their 1st anniversary at Charleston that night, too. I read on her blog that they would be there, so we brought along a bottle of wine to "send to their table". They in turn sent over a bottle of champagne. We started with the champagne, and finished our cheese course and dessert with the champagne.

Wow. All in all, it was an incredibly special meal...and one I likely will not be able to top anytime soon! J promised me that if we go back, I can get the 4 or the 5 course meal, which will hopefully leave me comfortably full and able to finish dessert!

So, for those of you in the Baltimore area who haven't been to Charleston, I highly recommend that you go. It's a great special occasion type of restaurant, or like us, if you just want to have a special meal!