New Look!

So excited! Thanks sis for the great new blog design. I've been lacking on posts lately due to holidays, news of my new naval career and because I couldn't post on something so ugly. I'm excited to get back online and get things rolling! Happy new year! In less than 30 days I'll be headed 3000 miles to start my new career as a Naval Officer in the Nurse Corps. After 5 weeks of training in Rhode Island I'll head to Virginia where the Portsmouth/Norfolk area will be my new home. Can't wait! Hoping to continue published my food adventures, especially those in the military. Wish me luck!

What to do with 2011

My New Year’s Proposition

-Fitness: Let’s get this over with. Since January 2010, I lost 10 lbs and 1.5 inches. I’m pretty proud. With all the crap that went down, that sounds just fine to me. My new plan is to loose a full 5 lbs by my birthday.

Routine now (since July 2010): Run 15-20 miles a week + push-ups and sit-ups.

New routine: Trade/add 1-2 weight-bearing routines and SWIM!

I had no choice but to swim for cardio after my motorcycle accident. It’s so hard! I really like the challenge, despite my fear of drowning, and would like to get back to it-even just once a week/two.

-Allergy-Free: I was going to attempt a food challenge of trying out allergy foods to see if I react to them but, I’m not ready. It took me a year to figure out how to eat allergy-free so perhaps this year I could accomplish some intestinal healing and not have a stomachache for more than half the year.

-Keep on a’cookin! I had a great time trying out new foods this year. Some other cuisines I want to attempt are: Indian, Moroccan, and Thai. These dishes already use less dairy, wheat, and egg than your average American dish. And of course I want to continue my baking attempts and love of Spanish food.

-Crafting: Try something new! Perhaps knitting, decoupage, or the dreaded watercolor.

-Blogging: Keep on a’posting! And it’s time for a re-design.

-Reading: College seemed to bite my leisure reading in the butt. I read TIME magazine this year and allergy-free blogs. So I hope to start up real ‘book’ reading again-even though all I want to read is cookbooks, perhaps I need to find some food narratives beyond Under the Tuscan Sun. :)

-Buying a car. Yes, it’s time to break down and buy something a bit more reasonable-something that can carry crap, maybe a passenger or two and drive in the snow. I AM keeping the motorcycle and I can’t wait for better weather!

That's quite a start for me and sounds like an awesome year. Can't wait!

The Lazy Allergy-Free Cook

So when one has all these allergies it is often more work to eat. There's not a lot of 'quick & easy' options when you have to start from scratch every time. Lazy days happen when I'm never home, when I only get to cook for myself :-(, and when I really need to go buy some produce or when I'm sick of fruits and veggies for a couple days. My lazy day menu is: Gluten-Free Bisquick, meat, Amy's DFGF mac 'n cheese and applesauce. This can only happen so many times before I want something better-like a sweet potato fries and a burger with EVERYTHING on it or homemade stir-fry or really good fajitas. This post means-I'm cooking something good tonight and trying not to go to the store. Making something from nothing is what mom and I are good at. There's nothing in the fridge so lets make a homemade pizza with caramelized onions, prosciutto, and mushrooms or an awesome taco salad. :-)

Why aren't I cooking?

I am cooking-I'm just not cooking anything new. And I had two pizza fiascoes, broke a dish, and spilled a whole glass of wine. Rough week in the kitchen. The pizza's had crust issues that seemed beyond the GF-ness. Both were the same Namaste brand and both were soggy and both I made other friends suffer through (sorry Jackie and Barbara). Thank goodness I put such good stuff on top they can fake it for me. One was soggy due to the bottom oven burner at the beach not working and the other one stuck to tin foil and was cooked in a roasty-ish pan, not a cookie sheet (parchment paper is a true investment). Improvising has not proven helpful. To smite my bad luck in the kitchen I have just been eating artichokes for dinner. Which is heavenly.

Christmas recipes are coming to me slowly but, surely. I want to bake for others but want to save them from allergy-free-ness and just throw a 2 eggs,a cup of butter and milk chocolate chips in but we will see.

Epic Fail

So as I was serving myself up some more delcious mac n' cheese I realized my stomach is still upset from what I thought was going out to eat on Friday night. Four days of it though... is a little much. So I took that $6 cheese out of the fridge that I bought at whole foods only to find that is has casein in it (the milk protein I'm allergic to). That's what my over-distended, ouchy belly has been trying to tell me. So I dumped my $$$ mac n' cheese in the trash. Dammit.

What a week...

What a week. It was intense at clinical. Yesterday was sooo slow, and then at about 4:45 sh*t hit the fan. It was awful and I'm sooo glad it was my Friday. Today Jordan and I are going to drive his new corvette to Santa Fe and stay at the new resort. I'm ready to get away and not cook/clean/or do dishes. Blech. I just want to come over for dinner! So anyways, there will be photos soon. Laters

To Albuquerque!

I'm in Albuquerque! It snowed today-yikes! I went to whole foods and Smiths and dropped... a lot of money. It's hard because boys don't have anything. So I was buying flours, salt, PRODUCE, milk, butter, etc. It's never-ending. But I made some delicious scetty! Tomorrow I hope to sleep and go for a run, we'll see how that goes. :-)

Happy Valentine Collage!

Red things.

I'm off to start another week after having it easy. Lots of decisions to make theses days. Poo on money. I worked out five times last week without realizing it. I took three days off to recover but, now it's time to get back in the game. And I suck at calorie counting.

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It's been a while...

So I didn't post while I was on vacation... but I have a ton of posts and photos to put on to update things. It'll be sweet. I'm back from Albuquerque and getting ready for school. More to come!

Almost done! vent vent vent

Good god this has been the longest term of my life. Crashing my motorcycle a week before class started, having the flu for 5 weeks, being diagnosed with severe allergies and some supposed hereditary inflammation disorder, physical therapy, mental therapy, and lots and lots of pills. Gross. It's only been four months! I'm gonna admit that I'm ready to tie a noose. I finished my finals on Monday, a test and a presentation and did pretty well. I just discovered that my GPA is 3.41 (so far) and... nursing school is tough in addition to all that other crap so, cheers for me.

I've been working like a mad woman the past two weeks to cover medical stuff and christmas stuff. I am looking forward to holidays. It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel because I have to be at work for another 9 hours tomorrow before I get to take an official break. I'm sure the holidays will be great. I'm nervous for the family part of the and almost wish I was just in Albuquerque again instead but, I'm running away soon enough. I'm looking forward to having time to cook good food, drink, play, see friends and family and maybe even shop (maybe). I've also realized the increasing difficulty that comes with not having a set of wheels, especially around the holidays. There are people from my past that I would be interested in seeing but, it's hard to plan.

I hope I get to do some fun things soon. I'll be house-sitting and taking the bus around town which, could be fun in itself. Zoo, OMSI, the christmas ships, the Grotto, and there's always just plain old walking around. Brrr!

Sis and I hung out last night and it was everything I needed. Thank you!

Allergies

So I went to see an Allergist today to inquire why I've had constant hives for the past two months. She went ahead and did EVERY test on me at once. Two hours later I had had my forearms pricked 16 times, my upper arm pricked another 14 times and blood drawn from each arm because the first one failed.




You can still see the numbers that were drawn on.
RESULTS: I swelled up like a balloon. You could have fried an egg on me, I was cooking. So we found out that I'm allergic to everything but, the german cockroach-whuppee. So" dust, pollen, weeds, grass, trees, mold, cats, dogs, etc." I tested positive to everything. Neat.

Some days are better than others

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I feel this is all too familiar. Oh knees. Cheers!