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Cookies!

Last year, as much as I remember, I baked none. We moved into our home a week before Christmas and there was no time to do anything other than unpack some boxes, buy a tree and decorate it. This year, however, I decided to bake some. Originally, I wasn't going to do it either, but...

I guess I just had to? I started out with my favourit, traditional honey cookies. The recipe is from a forum I frequent and I've been making these for years. Or, well, my own version of it: wholegrain flour and no sugar at all. Derek says they are not food. I say he is not someone to listen to. He eats only creamy desserts, for the most part, and high-end chocolates. So who cares about him. They're only 70 calories a piece so I can indulge. Every once in a while, at least.

Here are my babies (okay, Grandma Ana's babies):

Then I tried something new. These guys are pretty damn famous and everyone and their uncle and aunt and mother makes them. I had to try it out, too, I suppose.  Man, did the house smell good as they were cracking up in the oven! Yup, they crack up, literally: before you bake them, all you've got are white fuzzy balls. No big adjustments made, here, other than swapping white flour for 100% wholegrain. At 63 calories a piece, these are, for now, the winners. I haven't tried any yet, though, because it's pretty late and I am very scared of coffee. (Yes, I am just that weird.)

Another experiment were marble-cookies, found on a famous Croatian recipe site and recommended by a friend of mine. They looked cool and easy to make so I baked them, too. These little guys are fatty and high-calorie: about 110 a piece and they are by far the smallest! Ouch. I have to admit that I followed the recipe, except when I poured in some insanely good orange extract and (surprising, huh?) swapped some white flour with wholegrain. The majority of it is still white. Somehow.

And, finally, here's my epic fail. I've been working on these for years and every single time I make them, I fail. Miserably. First I ca't roll the dough because it's too sticky. Then I add flour, likely way too much of it, and the whole thing crumbles into dust. Then I bitch an swear a lot and hate the whole world for at least a while. Eventually I beat them into submission and cut the shapes. Somehow. They break. I still bake them. Whatever wasn't broken before the oven, crumbles when taken out. The remaining pieces shatter as I put marmelade between them. I eat a few. Throw out a few. Hate the world.

...and then start all over again about a year later.

So here they are. My epic fail, which I promise I will master... someday. Yup.

With two of these baked Sunday afternoon and the other two tonight (after work AND a gym session, too!), I still have enough time for a few more experiments. Woohoo. Considering my calorie restricted diet, I sure am getting a lot of kick out of something I pretty much won't even eat. But that's fine. I've always been slightly masochistic, anyway.

P.S. That's not dirt. It's cocoa, stuck under my nails.

So, what's new?

Ooops.

I've been slacking, as it's been a couple weeks since my last post on here. I just haven't had time. With the end of the semester, regular work hours, Derek's annoying cold, almost-every-day-gym and house-related chores, I just haven't had time to sit down and talk about something random. Or less random, for that matter.

So, yeah, what's new? Well, we have a new christmas tree and, [un]fortunately, it is a fake one. I know I am a horrible person when it comes to poor trees, but there is those real ones really do have something. They really do. Except when they're dry and pretty much dead even before you buy them, which is exactly what they looked like when I went tree-hunting to the local stores. Finally, I caved in and bought a fake one. It's actually pretty nice, 7 feet tall (around 213cm) and pretty damn wide, too. It even looks remotely real, except for the smell: there is, of course, none of that. It took almost a week to assemble, fluff it up and, finally, load with ornaments. The rest of the tree story... is yet to come, at a later date.

We also had snow at some point. Within a matter of one day, or something like that, everything turned white. It was really pretty while it lasted. Again, I took a bunch of pictures which, I suppose, I could stuff in here. There are more, but, like I said, I have been busy. For now, they'll just keep sleeping on my computer. Oops, again. (This is, of course, in case someone actually cares about our street, our house or some random decorations!)

Just about everyone on our street had the icicle lights. Okay.

Then there's Windsor - a really cool half-siamese furry guy. No, no, not a furry; this one is really a furry cat and I have not yet encountered anything [ab]normal about his sexual life. My mother-in-law and I drove all the way to a shelter in St Paul a few weeks back, in search of a new cat for their home. Poor ol' Dude had to be put down after a long struggle with kidney cancer and their other cat, a feral named Izzy, needed a new friend. We went up to pick up some kitten from a pet store, but we actually came back with a seven year old crosseyed aristocrat. Not a bad deal, especially because I fell in love with his slightly ridiculous face. Too bad Kittica is neither sociable nor friendly. Pffft. Ohwell, she gets to live alone, for the time being, at least.

Aren't I purrrty?

Hm. What else? Aha. I had a doctor's appointment a few weeks back, too and I came back perfectly normal. Actually, not just normal, but very healthy. It was a regular checkup with my brand new (err, not new, but actually first) general physician ever. In the US, of course. Oddly enough, I liked the lady. It's pretty odd because I am not your favourite patient/customer/client. I ask questions and demand to have them answered. I also dislike being treated like a child who doesn't understand a thing. I also like to hear the truth and all the details that come with it, regardless of how good or bad it actually is. So this lady here somehow managed to meet my expectations. She also agreed to refer me to the lab with a whole list of things I wanted checked, and this particular thing earned her a few more brownie points in my book. 

I'm still waiting for my full report to be mailed to my address, but I did find out how great I did in 2010. I am no longer anemic (woot!) and my red blood cells count is, pretty much for the first time since I remember, within the range of normal. I have no clue what made the thing skyrocket in the first place, but nobody ever worried about it and, therefore, I didn't particularly care either. It was funny to be suited to live in some high altitudes, that's for sure (does the 7th floor count as one of those?!). My cholesterol was nicely low (woot!) and my triglycerides finally got down to where I want them to be. Take that, bread! You've not been a part of my diet for a few months now and, well, I've been doing fine. We'll meet again on some special occasion. 

One more thing that came back normal was my thyroid (or, well, it was only the TSH hormone that they checked). Damn. Now I can't blame the gland for my fat ass or for, hm, all the bad in the world, or something. Ohwell. What's important is that I'm doing fine and that it will likely get only better.

Yup, that elliptical is still my bitch. We meet almost on a daily basis and I have gotten to the point where our sessions last from 40 minutes to a full hour. It took a while to figure out how to adjust it to some setting which keeps my heart rate up, yet doesn't kill me within seconds, but we've overall been doing fine. I've been steadily increasing both my pace and the machine's incline and resistance and now I average 3.2 to 4 miles of.... spinning the weird wheel, or whatever belts it hides in its butt. Not bad, but there's a lot of room for improvement. The results? Already visible, which is good. I do wish my weight would shed faster, but I knew what I signed up for: I've always had a hard time dropping actual numbers on a scale. It probably happens because I am pretty active for someone this big and I carry, as well as produce, a lot of muscle. I've been strictly monitoring my intake, as well as gym visits and other activities and over the course of 38 days, I've lost 6 centimeters (2.4 inches, for the metric-challenged) in my waist area. Good enough, even though there's a ton to shed. (Yes, please do send me money for a cosmetic surgery that will turn all my loose skin into a set of nice suitcases.)

At the end of the day, my biggest problem is time-management. I wish there were more than 24 hours in a day. Life would be a lot easier if I started eating regular, everyday American food, premade, boxed, frozen, dehydrated... highly processed and easy to cook. But I won't. I guess I'll just keep struggling to squeeze homemade (by which I mean really cooked, from scratch) meals into my hectic schedule. Without them, I could probably say goodbye to my goals.

Guten Nacht. It's getting really close to my bedtime. (Hm. I should probably improve in the sleeping department, too. Oops. Yeah, I know it's very hard to be perfect. :insert_non_supported_smiley: )

P.S. Food for thought: out of boredom and lack of new exercise ideas, I'm actually contemplating running a 5k... whenever there is one in the area. Uhoh.