Food.Gameluv.com

Cincinnati Locavore says The Northside Farmer’s market will be moving indoors for the season!  New location is North Presbyterian Church Auditorium at 4222 Hamilton Avenue on Wednesdays 4:00- 7:30pm. Glad to know it will still be happening off season!

My manager went on a cruise. This past week was the first total week without her. She’s taken vacations before, but this time I have more duties to take some of the load off my coworker. Considering, I didn’t stress out like I have before, but I would get home and be all “bleh”.
I got a new PC with my bonus from work/tax return. It runs really well and I can play Sims 2 again! It’s a refurbished HP from microcenter. I was bummed for a while because it was being really, really noisy and it was looking like I would have to just live with it, but it’s been quiet for a couple days now.
As far as food goes, we’ve been eating out too much this past week. We went to Keystone Grill in Covington with Veggie Option & husband. The food was ok, the smoke got terrible, but the company was great! We’ll have to try again in a non smoking place when we have time to talk longer.

All the Korean banchan I had made for lunches were great, but I didn’t want anymore after eating it for a whole week.  I actually think I am “off” Korean food for a little while.  That’s shocking because I could almost eat that for every meal.  I think I’m afraid I will get sick of it if I have more now.  I still have a container of kimchi in the fridge, I’ll bet it’s good and stinky now.  I did buy a new vegetarian Korean cookbook though, so I’m ready when it next hits me!

I’ve posted a little over at Gameluv lately.  I mean to post more often, but I am busy playing games.  That or I am being flighty between too many games to say anything relevant about any of them.

We’ve been discussing the idea of a podcast.  The problem is, we don’t want to do it the way everyone else seems to.  We’re working out our kinks.

I am trying to make Kimchi from the “Eating Korean” cookbook. It’s the Quick Kimchi recipes.  I made a half gallon amount (halved the recipe) so we shall see if it turns out ok.  I sent my Dad a text message of this photo and asked if he wanted some if it turned out good.   He replied “YES”.

Here’s Monday’s lunch! Oh boy! I portioned them all out and had some left for myself today and one for Shawn. I have quick kimchi started and a radish salad too so that can be snacks or added later.
Yay! Now the test will be whether or not I keep this up or get lazy and don’t want to make all my lunches on the weekend. Or maybe I get tired of eating these? I ordered a new cookbook today that is Korean vegetarian, so maybe I will find other stuff!

Shawn & I got back from Orlando last Saturday 01/17.  We had a great time, but it was pretty tiring doing so much!  Our flight down left on time, but had to land again due to a sensor saying a wheel well was overheating.  They told us to assume emergency landing positions & to review our emergency pamphlets!  Five fire trucks followed us to the gate, but it all turned out fine.  We waited for hours in the airport, which was an annoyance, but we didn’t have a connecting flight & didn’t get hurt!  After checking in we went to The magic Kingdom for dinner at Liberty Tree tavern.  They had a vegetarian pot pie that was delicious!  Check my photos for a photo. (Shawn’s photos here)  We rode Haunted Mansion first, then Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise & Swiss Family Robinson Tree house.  It was extra magic hours for Disney resort guests, so the lines were decent!

I need to try to figure out what we did each day, I can’t remember currently.  We made trips back to each park plus two trips to Downtown Disney.  It’s all running together at the moment!

We ate lots of yummy food at many different places.  Most places had at least one vegetarian item on the menu.  More on our trip to come, but in the meantime check out our photos!

I haven’t had much to write about in regards to food because we haven’t been properly cooking for a while.  Family meals were very accommodating, even going past my expectations.  New Year’s eve we spent at Shawn’s parent’s house playing Wii sports and eating food.  Shawn’s Mom made an additional batch of her sausage balls using fake sausage!  They tasted the same as last year when we ate the meat variety   Day after Christmas we had egg casserole (no meat) and potatoes at Shawn’s sister’s house.  We ate lots of food and I’d guess I gained at least 5 lbs if not more.  Oh well.

It’s six days until our trip to Disney World.  I’ve put in a hold on our mail, bought an automatic pet bowl for Molly and planned as much as I can tolerate.  We don’t have any dining reservations because neither of us what to commit to a particular park each day.  We may regret this, but we’ll learn from whatever happens.  We did get the dining plan added to our tickets, so we don’t have to fret over shelling out so much money for meals while there.  I’m anxious to say the least.  It’s also been almost ten years since I last flew on a plane.

I got the neck pain again from the bed bowing down the center.  Our tempur-pedic mattress is fabulous, but our Ikea bedframe has trouble supporting it (the same way our platform bed before it did).  We have propped up the center beam with a crate and a bunch of phone books, but the top book became crimped, so the bed bowed again.  It’s fixed now using old shelves, but the damage was done on my neck.  I resorted to a chiropractor on 12/29.  He “cracked” neck and back stuff, which initially hurt.  Took x-rays and put me on a machine that made my back muscles spazm.  The next day I ached, but by Friday I felt so much better!  Friday he showed me my x-ray results and my spine is a zig-zag, my neck is inverted as if I had been in a car accident (he said), but I can’t think of anything recent that would have caused that.  I’ll be going a lot for a while to fix all this, which I expect to fix many of the other problems I’ve been having.  My head congestion has improved already after two visits.  Unfortunately it all drained down my throat last night though.

Between this and the dental work I still need done, it’s going to be an expensive year.  Too bad my health insurance doesn’t cover more of it.  It almost makes me regret the Disney trip, but that can’t be helped now, so I shall just relax and have fun!

Back in 2004 or 2005 Shawn and I counted calories religiously and lost a bunch of weight. I lost close to 40 lbs after being at my max weight of around 170 lbs. I’ve gone back up 10+ lbs, which is enough to make me uncomfortable. I’ve had to buy larger pants, feel too lumpy for some of my more fitting shirts. You may know the feeling? I’m trying to count calories again, but the recent trip out of town had me snacking and not counting. I’ve been going to the gym and walking or using the elliptical machines. Today I did some exercises from self.com and now I feel all wobbly. A few lunges and I have kicked my own ass.

It’s discouraging, but I’m trying to use it as fuel to get past this, rather than thinking it’s impossible. I just have a hard time figuring out what I should do. I have gathered that I should do cardio 3 days and strength 3 days, but what? Please comment suggestions & links!

I guess I didn’t really have much else to say about it. I’m just feeling frustrated by trying to get fit. Also it will be interesting to see how holiday eating goes as vegetarians. I never cared too much for turkey anyway, I’d have preferred chicken with all the sides instead. So how are things like Tofurky stuffed turkey thing or the fake turkey log thing I saw in the fake meat freezer section? Any recommendations on how to make this easier for the cooks who are worrying about fitting our diets in?

I searched online to find a recipe that’s like the one I sort of use to make shepherds pie, but none of them were quite right.  My version may actually be a little boring to some people who are used to more stuff in it.  When I made it with meat it was just beef, onion, potatoes, celery, carrots and spices.  Now it still that, but with fake meat crumbles instead of beef.  I don’t really use a recipe anymore, but I probably should write one down next time I make it.  I also cheat and buy the packaged mashed potatoes, but I think in the future I will make my own because there’s a lot of junk in those packaged ones.  Ok so here’s a slight recipe without exacts, because I haven’t paid attention!

Ingredients:

1 12oz. package of fake beef crumbles

small or medium onion, chopped

1 large carrot chopped

1-2 stalks of celery, chopped

rubbed sage

paprika

salt & pepper

2-3 cups mashed potatoes, or 1 pkg of Bob Evans pre-made

cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. saute onion until translucent, I sprinkle paprika as I do this. Not sure how much, until it has a nice brown color
3. while doing that blanch celery & carrots and set aside
4. add fake beef crumbles to onions and basically just heat that up.  Sprinkle with rubbed sage to your heart’s content. I really sprinkle a lot of the sage and paprika, really.
5. add carrot & celery and heat that up with it
6. salt & pepper to taste
7. pour all this in a pan (I have a pyrex casserole type thingy, see photo)
8. cover with mashed potatoes
9. sprinkle with shredded cheddar or lay slices across (I used Cabot sharp cheddar in slices)
10. sprinkle more paprika for color (I forgot to that time)
11. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or so.  Basically you’re just trying to get it hot & melt the cheese since it’s all cooked prior

Sorry I am a bit vague, but you can get more ideas searching for shepherds pie on allrecipes.

Other people even put tomatoes in their’s, which sounds gross to me, but that’s what is great about this recipe; you can throw whatever you want in it and go!

Organic Miso soup in cup packets are pretty good, especially to have stuck in a drawer at work. It’s vegan, easily prepared and pretty tasty. It doesn’t taste exactly like miso, but it will do. The tofu has a powdery taste to it at times and adding more seaweed helps a lot.  I buy packs of dried seaweed at Japanese food shops to add to soups, it’s very easy, tasty and healthy.

When I feel hungry at work and lunch is still hours away this really helps!

The Amy’s Spinach pizza pocket was really good! It had a soft pocket shell with lots of melted cheese. The ratio of cheese/tomato sauce/spinach was just about perfect. The Spinach & feta pocket I had today was not quite so good. It needed more cheese or something. The cheese pizza version is ok, but it lacks the substance of the spinach one.  These are very easy to prepare at work and heat up perfectly.

Moosewood‘s Farfalle & Spinach pesto sauce was sort of like the Amy’s spinach and feta pocket. It was missing something and I couldn’t fix it. I added red pepper flakes and that didn’t help the taste any, it just made it hot. The pasta cooked up great, but the sauce needs something. Maybe tomatoes?  Oh and the bits of mushrooms were nice, but not enough of them.