Milestones (Amy's diary)
- Thread starter aiminglow
- Start date
That's great!
How did you do with the difficult phone call and difficult email?
I admire your ability to do baking without overeating on it! I often wish I could see baking and cooking as a pleasure. To me it's always been a bit of a pain!
Sorry i missed this post when i asked you how you got on with your phone call...Coming back in to say: made the phone call, wrote the email, am kicking myself for having put it off for so long.Things always get harder the longer you put them off - which I guess applies to weight loss and fitness as much as to business matters.
yes procrastination never seems to pay off...a lesson I can learn again and again!
Well at least you did get it done!
alligatorob
Respected Member
Good for you! I can be a terrible procrastinator, its selective, but there are things I put off way too long, and like you often kick myself after the fact. The only good thing about it that on occasion procrastination has saved me from a rash decision, in fact I can think of a few times procrastination would have been better than the path I chose. Oh well, its easy to look back and say what we should have done.
I agree, I like Flyer's theory that the elevation and reduced gravity in Colorado has made people less obese, makes sense. I think that I and probably a number of the folks here run counter to the poverty/obesity thing. I am fat, been obese most of my life, and while I am not rich I am not poor either. One more thing I can't blame I guess.
Bflat
New member
This is a hard time of year to cut weight, keep at it and know all of us feel your pain.
Thanks all, about the email and phone call - I'm so glad I got it done. There may still be fallout, but I have absolutely done what I could in conscience.
Oh, pastry-making is so much easier and more pleasant, even if it does come with calorific danger! I'm charmed and chuffed to think that I'm motivating somebody, Want2Lose! And it's to cooking skills in general, not baking, which is good, because of the aforesaid danger gloom gloom. What cooking would you like to do? Soups are great - and I loved the look of Petal's casserole recently - for me a challenge is making vego food which is as hearty as that looks without being loaded with carbs.
And alas, Liza, I did fall - not to the curry pies, because they were meat, and not to the apple lattices, because I'm used to not eating those, but I collapsed - I mean, my diety fortitude collapsed - in the face of the cheese straws, because I'd never made them, and they sounded right up my alley, and I wanted to see if the rough-puff pastry worked. And it did, though they were a bit heavier than I'd have liked; I got better as I went along on rolling the pastry as thin as it needed to be. I think, too, that the oven is slowing down. It's a mixed convestion-microwave, about nine years old - surely it should still be working well?
Yes, I generally can use good frozen pastry, Petal - Borg's is the brand I like a lot, a South Australia brand (I think?)- suitable for vegos and vegans both! - but I couldn't get it, so I plunged into the fun experimentation of Gordon Ramsay's terrifyingly buttery recipe - so buttery, in fact, that I rebelled about six ounces in, and flatly refused to put in any more.
I'm so heartened by your history of Mushroom Wellington-making, LaMa, that I'm putting it down as a certainty, now, for our Christmas menu. But only a small one; it will just be the two of us, and the other one of us (who is not a vego) will probably be having his traditional garlic-chilli prawns as well.
For sure, Rob, rich people can get fat! No doubt about it - see... ummm... Henry the 8th. But poverty tends to go along with living in a food desert, (or maybe having fruit and veg available, but too expensive to buy) and filling up on cheap food, both of which contribute directly to weight gain.
Thanks Bflat, for the solidarity - yes, a touch of scales-pain this morning, but onward, and downward!
Oh, pastry-making is so much easier and more pleasant, even if it does come with calorific danger! I'm charmed and chuffed to think that I'm motivating somebody, Want2Lose! And it's to cooking skills in general, not baking, which is good, because of the aforesaid danger gloom gloom. What cooking would you like to do? Soups are great - and I loved the look of Petal's casserole recently - for me a challenge is making vego food which is as hearty as that looks without being loaded with carbs.
And alas, Liza, I did fall - not to the curry pies, because they were meat, and not to the apple lattices, because I'm used to not eating those, but I collapsed - I mean, my diety fortitude collapsed - in the face of the cheese straws, because I'd never made them, and they sounded right up my alley, and I wanted to see if the rough-puff pastry worked. And it did, though they were a bit heavier than I'd have liked; I got better as I went along on rolling the pastry as thin as it needed to be. I think, too, that the oven is slowing down.
It's a mixed convestion-microwave, about nine years old - surely it should still be working well?Yes, I generally can use good frozen pastry, Petal - Borg's is the brand I like a lot, a South Australia brand (I think?)- suitable for vegos and vegans both! - but I couldn't get it, so I plunged into the fun experimentation of Gordon Ramsay's terrifyingly buttery recipe - so buttery, in fact, that I rebelled about six ounces in, and flatly refused to put in any more.
I'm so heartened by your history of Mushroom Wellington-making, LaMa, that I'm putting it down as a certainty, now, for our Christmas menu. But only a small one; it will just be the two of us, and the other one of us (who is not a vego) will probably be having his traditional garlic-chilli prawns as well.
For sure, Rob, rich people can get fat! No doubt about it - see... ummm... Henry the 8th. But poverty tends to go along with living in a food desert, (or maybe having fruit and veg available, but too expensive to buy) and filling up on cheap food, both of which contribute directly to weight gain.
Thanks Bflat, for the solidarity - yes, a touch of scales-pain this morning, but onward, and downward!
You sound like a very fancy chef! I think i would have fallen to the apple lattices!!nd alas, Liza, I did fall - not to the curry pies, because they were meat, and not to the apple lattices, because I'm used to not eating those, but I collapsed - I mean, my diety fortitude collapsed - in the face of the cheese straws, because I'd never made them, and they sounded right up my alley, and I wanted to see if the rough-puff pastry worked. And it did, though they were a bit heavier than I'd have liked; I got better as I went along on rolling the pastry as thin as it needed to be. I think, too, that the oven is slowing down.
The answer is usually fermented stuff or mushrooms. Have I promoted The Happy Pear in your diary yet? They have a website and a Youtube channel where they share tons of recipes - most of them healthy.
I'm not a fancy chef at all, Liza! I can cook up a few standards (like the biscuit recipe) and I plume myself on being able to make a good vegie soup, or a dhal, but no, nothing fancy. The apple lattices do themselves, practically - especially with the frozen pastry!
Yes, you tipped me off about the Happy Pear a while back LaMa - I enjoy their cheerfulness and energy very much. I'm heading over their way soon (ie tomorrow, not now) to check out the pumpkin soup recipe Petal's just made.
When you say "fermented stuff" - what is it that you have in mind?
Glad you enjoy the posts, Petal - as I do yours! I love the Christmas fruit tree, and think we'll be having that instead of pudding this year.
So what's new with me? Not a great deal. In terms of food, borscht has been added to the Christmas menu - for Christmas Eve, which is when I'm lifting the sugar ban/general eating-light plan. Having that ban in place really has made keeping my weight at or below maintenance pretty easy, though, so I think there'll be a takeaway from the experience. (It's also working to get the safety-net in place, though I'm not yet at 173lbs, which is where I want to be by Christmas Eve. By the end of the week, maybe?)
Yes, you tipped me off about the Happy Pear a while back LaMa - I enjoy their cheerfulness and energy very much. I'm heading over their way soon (ie tomorrow, not now) to check out the pumpkin soup recipe Petal's just made.
When you say "fermented stuff" - what is it that you have in mind?
Glad you enjoy the posts, Petal - as I do yours! I love the Christmas fruit tree, and think we'll be having that instead of pudding this year.
So what's new with me? Not a great deal. In terms of food, borscht has been added to the Christmas menu - for Christmas Eve, which is when I'm lifting the sugar ban/general eating-light plan. Having that ban in place really has made keeping my weight at or below maintenance pretty easy, though, so I think there'll be a takeaway from the experience. (It's also working to get the safety-net in place, though I'm not yet at 173lbs, which is where I want to be by Christmas Eve. By the end of the week, maybe?)
Soy sauce, miso, natto, kimchi, sauerkraut, (red) wine... Stuff that doesn´t make up the bulk of your recipe but ups the umami. Tomato paste and celery/celeriac usually help as well, even though they´re not fermented. Plus of course browning your veg, but I´m sure you´re good with that anyway. I have to mention it anyway as I once dropped into the comment section of a blog post where hordes of people were marveling at the fact that something they read in old (?!) recipes might actually make a difference and wasn´t just a waste of time. Pretty sure every single one of the people who didn´t know browning enhanced flavor had grown up in the US where growing up without home cooking seems to have started earlier than elsewhere. I shudder to think complete lack of knowledge about food prep could still be spreading.
Thanks, LaMa! I had to look up natto, so that's a new one for me.
Yes, it's a real social/economic/nutritional loss, that decline in home cooking, though the decline probably began a generation or two back before now - as in, I didn't ever learn how to make the headcheese my aunt could make.
I tried some experimental cooking this morning, in the interests of a neighbour who doesn't have an oven - I was seeing if I could cook biscuits in a frying-pan with fitting lid. And... failure! - but then as my old physics teacher used to say, "no experiment is a failure, because what science is about is the observed results. So long as you observe and accurately what's happened, you have succeeded."
(Are there any teachers out there? Please note that your words in the classroom can be remembered decades on!)
Note for the curious: The biscuits rose and browned beautifully on top, but burned on the bottom, and weren't really done in the middle. I'll try again, at a lower temperature, but without much hope.
But more cheerfully, I've hit a new low in weight - 78.9 = just a shade under 174, allowing me to feel that 173, the safety-net weight I'd targeted for pre-Christmas, is definitely reachable by then.
Yes, it's a real social/economic/nutritional loss, that decline in home cooking, though the decline probably began a generation or two back before now - as in, I didn't ever learn how to make the headcheese my aunt could make.
I tried some experimental cooking this morning, in the interests of a neighbour who doesn't have an oven - I was seeing if I could cook biscuits in a frying-pan with fitting lid. And... failure! - but then as my old physics teacher used to say, "no experiment is a failure, because what science is about is the observed results. So long as you observe and accurately what's happened, you have succeeded."
(Are there any teachers out there? Please note that your words in the classroom can be remembered decades on!)
Note for the curious: The biscuits rose and browned beautifully on top, but burned on the bottom, and weren't really done in the middle. I'll try again, at a lower temperature, but without much hope.
But more cheerfully, I've hit a new low in weight - 78.9 = just a shade under 174, allowing me to feel that 173, the safety-net weight I'd targeted for pre-Christmas, is definitely reachable by then.
