19 February 2011
warm, cozy, rainy weekend
It has been six weeks since I began lifting. This morning I finished Phase 1! This is what my hands looked like afterwards:
It's time for grips.
It was either these or full-on black gloves. I'm going to start with these.
You could say its been intense. I wake up at 5:45am on three or four workday mornings each week, and am driving home and dripping sweat by 7am. I go at least once on the weekend as well. In sum, I'm lifting three times a week and doing 1 or 2 sessions of interval cardio each week on off-days from lifting. I feel fantastic.
I've re-discovered Stumptuous. Badass website written by a badass woman.
Today I roasted a chicken.
I bought this kosher chicken at Trader Joes in December. I know this because the sell-by date on the sticker say January 3rd. I put it in the freezer for almost two months, defrosted and re-frosted it once when I thought I would have time to cook it, and finally a few days ago I was sick of having a frozen chicken body in my freezer and took it out for good.
This morning I roasted it, following these directions. (This woman is kind of living my dream life.)
First, though, I had to remove the neck. The instructions on the chicken also said to remove the giblets - inner organs - but these were curiously missing. Makes my life easier, though, so moving on. You trim the skin and stuff around the neck, then hold the slippery bony mass of neck in one hand and twist the body with the other until it pops off. It looks so much like a neck. I did not think I would be this intimate with a raw whole chicken at noon on a Saturday.
I thought I'd see if the cats would like the neck.
Bella would have nothing to do with it.
Klaus licked it for a while and then walked away.
Next time I have a raw chicken I'll try again. They say it takes up to fifteen exposures to a food...
Anyway, I roasted it. The apartment smelled like heaven.
Then I had to carve it.
I watched this video. She makes it look so easy.
There's the carcass in the middle, the lemon, onions and garlic that I stuffed inside (not to be eaten), and all the meaty parts - the breast, wings, drumsticks, and thigh.
The edible parts. Phew.
Since I had a very hot oven, I decided to roast an eggplant, zucchini, onion and garlic too. And a variation of sweet potato fries.
Delish.
Last week, I re-vamped my pantry.
Everything looks prettier in jars.
First level: Amaranth, sesame seeds, black rice, green split peas, rye berries, pearled barley and quinoa, among others.
I'm reducing the amount of wheat in my diet (see here) and this is where I'm starting.
Second level: Nuts, dried fruit, muesli, granola, tea.
This weekend I re-organized the storage areas under my three benches (two in the kitchen nook, one in the bathroom) and I joked that I had an orgasm at the completion of each one. I didn't think to take "before" pictures, and the "after" pictures don't do justice, but I hadn't cleaned them out since I moved in to my studio almost nine months ago. Everything is now in Trader Joes paper bags or boxes, organized by category, and completely accessible without any digging around. I have been putting this off - my white board in the kitchen has said "organize benches!!!" for weeks.
Feeling like a domestic goddess.
16 February 2011
the daily dilemma
After drinking coffee every morning (and, for some periods, all day, in various forms), for the last six years, I've recently, rather suddenly, grown tired of it.
Last fall, I accidentally bought a tin of loose tea. I thought I was buying tea bags, and it was only upon opening that I realized I now needed a tea strainer in order to drink the tea. So I searched and searched for a tea strainer, in Sprouts and the Armenian hardware store in Glendale and even Whole Foods and failed to find one in stock. Then my boss at the time gave each of her employees for Christmas a fancy KATI Tea Forte set, which included a tall pea green ceramic cup, a strainer basket, a lid, and two boxes of individually wrapped loose tea, enough in each pouch to brew one cup. I started my way down the flavors - Earl Grey, English Breakfast, and three herbals - as a once-in-a-blue-moon thing. "Oooh I'll be cliche and make tea!" You'd think growing up with a British mother I would have learned this is the way of life for some people, but I suppose drinking milky tea out of frustratingly small and dainty tea cups (seriously)... or not was my form of quiet rebellion. In any case, drinking tea was and is not something natural. Plodding into the kitchen half-awake, fumbling to pull the carafe out of the coffee maker and pouring a cup of rich black coffee, scent receptors rejevenated at the first daily whiff - that was natural. It was sometimes the best part of my day. But somewhere along the way, recently, coffee stopped being that magical thing in the morning and started being that process I go through because it's what I do. I noted this shift, and questioned it, and decided to pause it, at least for now. Perhaps I just need to clean my coffee maker with some white vinegar. But I've been putting the kettle on to boil, now, which, despite buying a cheap little kettle only when I moved to Los Angeles, it feels old and familiar to me. This is probably due to my mother, who puts her kettle on to boil, all the time. Boiling water is the start of everything.
It's too early to tell where lie my current allegiances to morning beverages. For now, the jury is out. And I'm enjoying it.