Sunday, January 9, 2011

New Year's Cooking

I have been bad at cooking since New Year's. And even worse at dieting, truth be told. I made it halfway to my goal- 20 pounds down, and 20 to go!- but I've been eating terribly for the last week and a half. So I've gained two pounds back, which has lead me to the conclusion that I need to start running. Of course, I won't be doing that right now. We have a family vacation coming up, so I'll be starting running after we come back from that. Hopefully Netflix will help me along.

But, I wanted to continue my health crusade with my morning muffins at work. Mama Bird got me a cupcake holder for Christmas, so I can safely bring muffins into work in the morning without wasting bags, or letting them get squashed. Of course, most muffins aren't healthy, so of course I tried to make something healthy. So I made cornbread muffins from The Hillbilly Housewife. I was a little curious by it not having sugar, but figured that she knew what she was doing.



The tops of the muffins collapsed, and I thought it was funny. I grabbed one while they were warm, and took a big bite. I barely managed to finish chewing it, and tossed mine in the trash. Sister Bird didn't believe they could be that bad, and also did the same thing. Boyfriend Bird insisted they couldn't be that bad, and said if I kept them for him then he'd take them home with him and eat them.

I told him he was very, very wrong, but held onto them since he was coming for dinner that night. He arrived, and forced himself to eat a whole one while I laughed at his horrified face. He was very, very sweet about it, but finally admitted that yes, he did not want to take them home, and they were pretty bad.

Luckily, the stew I made went over very well.



Using both Rotel Original and taco sauce was too much for my family, and they thought it was almost overly spicy. I thought it was quite good, and would make it again. I might use more potatoes and carrots, as I thought it could have used a little more veggie. But we also used beef tenderloin, so I think I just wanted more stuff to balance up the meat.

I had a bit of an OCD fit over the short winter break, and went through two of the three freezers in our house. I threw away a lot of food that was past good. Some frozen meals that were labeled as expiring in 2007, some meals I recall my mother making right after the end of the school year, some bags of things that had been ripped and were completely frostbitten... and the worse, finding somehow a bottle of red wine had exploded in the freezer and I had to clean the sticky up. Mama and Papa Bird were very, very appreciative, though, and now we have a checklist of everything in the freezers and when they'll expire. We're working through it slowly, and it makes me happy.

I've had a lot of ideas for things I'd like to do with this blog. Self challenges, things like that. Things like using that homemade ice cream maker to make a big vat of vanilla ice cream, then making a bunch of homemade syrups and just trying them all out. I also really want to go through all of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, and cook everything from there that sounds interesting. That, however, will take a right long time. It's also really hard to find those episodes anywhere without buying the DVDs, and while I like the show, I don't think I like it enough to buy it. So hopefully I'll make more use of this. =)

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