Taking charge...day 4

You know what?  I've always hated food journals.  Why the hell should I post, for the world to see, what all I've been inserting into my (former) pie hole, anyway??  Nobody cares but me, right?  And these are a bit of a pain in the arse to do, mostly because I can't update from work; we're expressly forbidden from posting on message boards using company computers (but I think everyone does it anyway).  Blah.  Anyway...

Today's eats:

- 3x coffee with almond milk
- Obligatory bag of plantain crack
- Leftovers from last night/Easter dinner; two chicken thighs with plenty of juice, with some mashed potato
- A bunch of blackberries
- A good amount of water

...Pause...
- For dinner, a panzerotto from Pizzaville (the result of lack of planning/defrosting, but oh so delicious!)
...Un-pause...

- Vitamin D3, fish oil, cal-mag
- More water

Shit, I gotta go take something out of the freezer for tomorrow night's dinner!

Taking charge...day 3

Have to post this before I forget!

Today's eats were:

Breakfast/Lunch (at work):

- 3 x coffee with chocolate almond milk (always the unsweetened flavour, so I'm not going to repeat that again)
- Bag of spicy plantain crack (chips)
- Small piece of prime rib (leftover from my dinner the other night)
- About half a cup of mashed potatoes


Dinner:

- 7-8 vitamin D3 drops
- Two tsp fish oil
- One tsp cal/mag
- Two chicken thighs, lightly coated in EVOO and seasoned salt (OMFGYUM)
- Water the rest of the night (after the 3 coffees with almond milk at work I was put off enough to not crave any at home)

Taking charge...day 2

All in all, yesterday wasn't so bad.  The worst part was after dinner when we were downstairs playing darts and watching everyone else munch away on popcorn.  Pretzels never did much for me, but the popcorn was tempting me something fierce.  I did not touch one kernel.

Hubby's making our usual Sunday breakfast this morning, which will consist of bacon and eggs.  I will not be eating any of the bacon, as that is not allowed on an anti-candida diet.  Boohoo.  I've done it before and will do it again.

He also made my coffee with cream, but it was still made with love so I will drink it and be merry.  He now knows that going forward my coffees will need the chocolate almond milk instead.  Such a sweetie - me so lucky. :)

So, breakfast was eggs, a tsp of calcium/magnesium (which, unfortunately, has fructose in it...nice) and two tsp of high-quality fish oil.  Oh yeah, and about 7000 IU of D3 drops.

Later...

Ok....so after Hubby left for his mountain biking date with his buddy it was time for me to get busy in the kitchen!  I got some beefy bones into the oven to brown before throwing them into the slow cooker to make some bone broth.  While they were in the oven I started peeling potatoes to do my part for Easter dinner at my sister's.

Of course I had to sample the product to make sure it was good enough, but I didn't have much.

At dinner I ate:

- A turkey leg
- My mashed potatoes (made only with butter and 18% cream, with a bit of salt)
- Mashed turnip
- A bit of stuffing
- A whole lot of homemade gravy (you don't pass up my mom's gravy for ANYTHING) ;)
- A glass of water
- A small goblet of lemon pie filling (you know, the Sherriff brand that you make a pie with), which had some pineapple tidbits on top with a green maraschino cherry

I think that's it...and once we got back home we went for a quick walk.  Only water for me until bedtime.

Taking charge...day 1

So!  Today's eats have (so far) been:

- 7 drops of Delicious D (vitamin D in cinnamon flavour)
- A small (85g) bag of spicy plantain chips
- Coffee with only un-sweetened chocolate-flavoured almond milk
- A few left-over scraps of delicious, fatty prime rib from last night
- Sips of water here and there

Later:

- Dinner at friends' house consisted of ham (the pre-cooked, small-ish, football-shaped ones that are honey-baked or whatever), a EVOO'd baked potato/onion/bell pepper concoction dish, and multi-coloured green beans.  It was damn tasty!
- Water with my meal
- A small shot glass of my friend's port wine that she made at some wine-making store.  It's a dessert wine, so it's best in a tiny glass with a big ice cube.
- Did NOT partake in the popcorn or pretzels that were sitting there on the bar while we played darts

Now that we're home I smell the sweet aroma of plantains getting fried up in butter with cinnamon and a touch of vanilla.  Wow.

- One butter-fried plantain with a touch of cinnamon on top.  OMFG I could die now. :)

It's time to take charge...AGAIN. (FAIL)

Beginning tomorrow morning, no more fucking around with my food intake.  My legs, stomach, and back are all itching like crazy and I wonder if I'll get any sleep tonight.  It's driving me nuts.

Tonight I made a nice prime rib roast and followed this recipe.  It turned out pretty damned good (thanks to the electronic meat thermometer we have) and the side of brussels sprouts were nice as well (I cooked them in a covered casserole dish in a bath of previously-made beef broth, onions and garlic).  MIL asked if there were also a side of yams and DAMMIT I didn't think of that.  One side was all I made.  Woops. :)

Anyway, for dessert we had half a cake that was bought at the grocery store last night.  A traditional, sugar-laden cake with lots of creamy frosting, chocolate shavings, and even chocolate-covered malt balls on top.  I had a tiny slice with my coffee (yes, with fucking cream in it).

As of tomorrow, no more crap.  And we're going to our friends' house for dinner, so this will get interesting.  I have no alcohol to drink, and that's just as well, because I'll be drinking water.  And I'll get ridiculed for it, because that's just the way they are; how can you be having a good time if you're not blasted on something?  Whatever.  This is the friend that works out for 2 hours a day so she can eat junk food all the time and not get fat.  This is the friend who had the lap band surgery before.  She sure as hell ain't skinny, but I guess she enjoys torturing herself.  Oh well.  That's her problem.

Welp, that's it...I'm fucked.

My sugar addiction has started to kick in again and I've been weak.  I'm back to having 18% cream in my 3 coffees a day and *shock* I just noticed that the bastards added dextrose to the cream.  Bugger.

Last week both of us were off and we decided to go see The Hunger Games.  Fearing I would pig out on movie theatre nachos and cheese (my fave snack when there...no pop!), we went to the grocery store to get "healthy" snack to sneak into the theatre.  These healthy snacks morphed into cookies and brownie squares.  Fack.  We snuck a bottle of water each in, hidden in my purse.

This week my skin feels like it's CRAWLING it's SO itchy.  Last night I had to pee at 2:30am and while I was doing so I was ripping away at my legs and it felt soooo good and yet so gawd-awful at the same time.  When I went back to bed the skin was all red and throbbing with heat.  Ugh.  This insane rash (which always seems to start in an arm pit for some reason) is making its way across my body and my taste buds better fuck off with the constant whining for sweet things!!

My mild rosacea  has returned as well.

I've also noticed that there is a lot more mucous in my nasal passages, to the point where I have to snork it back so I don't sound like I'm sick with a cold.  It's real pleasant to have to do this near co-workers while I'm on the phone with a client!  (Thankfully I have a mute button, which has served me well and prevented my firing on a daily basis.)

So, today I will start the changes to reverse this once again.  Coffee is bad when you have a yeast overgrowth problem, so I will reduce my intake (I hate caffeine withdrawal headaches!!!), will gradually revert back to using almond milk in coffee when I do have one, and will not partake in the very-sweet-looking cake we bought as dessert for tonight's dinner (his mummy's coming over).  I will hear about it from her, but I will ignore it.

Guess I won't be having bacon with our usual Sunday breakfast, either.  Grrr.

Oh wait, I do have something positive to report -- I weighed myself this morning, and after all this sugar-binging, the scale still reads 145.3.  Yay!!

Ah well, so much for that...

Dad did skip his usual bowl of cereal, at least for one day, but when I (gingerly, hopefully) asked him if he had bacon and eggs instead, he chirped, "nope, had a cinnamon english muffin!" *facepalm*

Anyway, Dad's now on vacation in Barbados for 3 weeks and is quite enjoying their rum and Coke (the lucky bastard).  If he brings us back a bottle of ESA Fields rum, you bet I'll be enjoying it with some Coke shortly thereafter!  :)

Here's a few pics of our eats from the past few days (we were home/off work this week)...

One night, hunnybun made dinner while I was working on my school assignment...he simmered some basa fish filets in a coconut milk sauce, made cauliflower mash, and gently cooked up the peppers in EVOO.  It looks kind of boring, but MAN-O-MAN was it tasty!!

The next morning he fried up some plantains in butter and other tasty ingredients (unfortunately, the raisins didn't exactly turn out the way he wanted...they were hard like rocks lol):

Then later I laid thickly-sliced sweet potatoes in the bottom of the roast pan, cut up some onions, put bone-in, skin-on, chicken breasts on top, and roasted it (covered) for about 2 hours before crisping up the skin on broil:

I also made slow-cooker ribs but didn't want to lift the lid to get pics and just plain forgot before we ate them all.  Sorry. :)

Dad: A breakthrough!!!

My dad's been sick with a cold.  Since the end of December.  Okay, maybe it's been two or more colds in succession, but you get the idea.  I hate hearing him sound like shit and he's tired of being sick.  Hell, he's tired of talking about being sick.  It was my chance, so I took it!

I asked if he had a lot of mucous and he said hell yes - when he blows his nose his eye shoots some stuff out.  Okay, that's odd, but anyway, the answer is yes.  I offered a suggestion to try avoiding dairy for a few weeks, to see if it would help with the snot overload.  He thought for a second, then said he didn't really have a lot of dairy...only with his morning cereal (Raisin Bran), but he could go without his cereal for awhile to try it.

BLAMMO!!!!!!!  Two birds with one stone!!

Holy shit, this is the first time he's ever been willing to give up his morning dose of sawdust.  The little crumbs get stuck in his throat all the time and make him cough - he's said this to me before, yet he continues eating the shit to get his fiber.  Oi.  The perils of being married to a (wonderful, lovely, funny) nutritionist.

Anyway, he said he'd try it!!!  YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Today was a good day...

...to be working from home, as the weather was absolutely gorgeous.  I was blessed with a quality movement this morning and my weight afterward was 145.0.  Yippee!!!

My work day wasn't as great; a PITA (that's PAIN IN THE ASS, for those who don't know :)) client that I've been dealing with for about a year REALLY got my blood boiling right before lunchtime.

See, I'm an implementation specialist by title, which means, once we've completed implementing the product for you and you "go live", we're supposed to hand your account over to the support team.  Well, this client has been "live" since bloody November and keeps trying to find ways to prevent this hand-over from happening.  It's REALLY getting on my nerves (and they're not pleasant to deal with, either, so that exacerbates MY problem).  In January we put together an "issues log" and told them that we would hang onto them until the listed issues are resolved, and then they're being handed over to support.  They resisted, but my boss absolutely rocks and she told them how it's gonna be!

Today, during a conversation with one of "them", they realized a new "problem" and they wrote an email, cc-ing everybody that's ever been involved in this project, saying that they felt this needed to be added to the motherfucking "issue log".   I.  LOST.  IT.  I asked my manager if she heard my screams all the way at the office, which is about 33 kms away from my house.  This new "problem" is a result of this client NOT LISTENING while I explained things throughout this project, and there were also many times where I would hear them whispering and giggling (on speakerphone) while I was talking.  Now they act like this "problem" is fucking NEWS to them (hence, the LOST IT part).  There's no fucking way they're adding another item to this issue log for ME to work on, and I wrote an email to my manager to say so (in a much nicer way).  After clicking Send I had to take some ME time and get these idiots out of my head. So, I went for a walk.

I did my normal lunchtime route around the block, stopped back at home to drop my sweater off, and went for another lap.  Except this time I incorporated some primal jogging into it - getting my feet/legs used to landing on my toes.  I tell ya, it felt pretty good!  By the time I was almost home I sped things up a bit too, almost running full throttle.  Anyway, this helped me get my brain calmed down and the stupid went away.  Yay!

When I got back to my laptop I read the response from my manager to the client's email.  She supported me by telling the client that, as previously discussed, no further issues would be added to the current issue log, and this new issue will need to be addressed by support.  YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!  I love her to bits. :)

Enough about work...  Mom came by after work to go for a walk with me in the warm sunshine - I put my froggy feet on for this outing - and we did two laps at a pretty slow stride.  Now my feet hurt in different ways than before!  Ah well, I'm sure it'll get better.  No running for me tomorrow...on Thursday my sweetie took the wheels off my Honda 599 and brought them to the shop, along with my new tires, to get the rubber swapped.  Well, today he put the wheels back on the bike and I'm betting the bike and I will get reacquainted nicely tomorrow!

FTW, we're goin' RIDING!!!  Here's my OTHER sweetheart:

Tonight's very interesting dinner

Due to lack of planning/shopping, we didn't really have anything ready to cook for dinner tonight...soooo, we decided that we'd have an egg dinner.  Yeah!  Mmm, eggs.

However, also due to the above, when it came time to cook these delicious eggs, I realized we only had three of them.  Woops.  Good thing we also had a lunch-sized portion of leftover hunnybun meatbeals and spinach to divvy up between us!  I also wanted to try frying the eggs in the rendered beef fat I made a few days ago (oh yeah, I forgot to load those pics!).

So, I put about a teaspoon of the fat in the pan and cooked the eggs.  EGG-citing story so far, eh???!  Well, seeing as I'd never cooked eggs in beef fat before (usually butter or bacon fat), I wasn't entirely sure how this would go.  Anyway, they turned out slippery (yay - no sticking to the pan like usual!) and were really tasty.  I'm sold!

Eggs (sunny side up) with meatballs and a small pile of previously-frozen spinach.  It was really yummy!  (Apologies for the lack of photo...)

Here's the pile of beef fat in the slow cooker...

After a few hours on low, the golden oil started to accumulate.  I scooped it out in two separate attempts...

And the crispies that resulted (some of which kind of tasted like fat from a steak, but others, not so much!)...

 

Lesson learned for next time:

- Spread the bits more across the bottom of the crock

- The bits should be cut into smaller bits - some pieces remained puffy and held the oil within

- I need to think ahead and get a glass jar to store this stuff in