Happenings and Goings on...

Well Dear Friends,
There has been a lot going on that has kept me busy so here is my attempt at filling you in.

 I am not sure if I have updated about this since, but we got a new dog named Daisy Bean. She is half mini pinscher and half dachshund and is 100% nuts! She has so much energy and is very agile. She has a huge heart and is very lovable. She loves to sleep right on top of either Brian, I or her sisters. Brian swears she is the reincarnation of Charlie.

 I am still managing the bakery and I have had to do regular hohum cakes. Here are a few that I have really enjoyed doing and seeing the finished product.

Baby chick baby shower cupcakes.

I had to do a wedding cake for a coworker. Her daughter wanted alstromeria on them so this is what we came up with. LOVE IT!!

I am not sure why I love this cake so much. I think it is the simplicity and the bright spring colors. The customers loved it too!

 

 During my undergrad I was president of YSUnity the GLBTQ group on campus. I recently got hired on as a part time contract  Academic Advisor and I was asked to donate some goodies for a bake sale they were having during the Relay for Life on campus. I saw a picture of these online and here is my version of them. I added extra gayness and fabulousness!

 

 
Here is a picture of me bored as heck on my first day of advising. It was slow at first, but now as the semester is over it has really picked up. 
 

 

In other exciting news I applied and got accepted to Graduate school at Kent State University. I will have to step down as the manager of the bakery I work at and stay part time. I am excited to get my masters degree. I made sure to show my boss here at the university I am working at now my acceptance letter and she said, "OH GOOD YOU CAN TEACH FOR US!" which is my ultimate goal with this degree. 

 

And you know this would not be a post without a picture of baby Lucy. Look at her nails!

 

Our goddaughter Millie is getting so big. I have the opportunity to babysit her on Wednesdays. Look at her! isn't she just adorable!

 Speaking of Millie, I have made her birthday cakes ever since she was born. She wanted a Strawberry Shortcake cake for her 3rd (I can't believe it) birthday so here is what I came up with.

 And she LOVED THE CAKE. Everyone did!

 

  

During the winter I took up knitting. I made a scarf for myself and 9/10ths of a scarf for my sister. I will pick back up with my sister's later. Here is the beautiful, perfect Sofia modeling my scarf.

 

Now I am a a very nice caring person. I loved my garden and we had some really, really awful people move in next door. I started this blog as a way to document my accomplishments and downfalls gardening. Well I am so excited to say that they are gone. During their time there I let my garden go and now it is a patch of grass. I am excited to start taking the steps to growing my own food and finding the joy I once had in the garden. I am typing this during my final minutes in the office. I have 6 minutes left and I can say that I truly miss every one of my fellow bloggers and I am eager to catch up and share my joy and read all about yours.

Vegan "Tuna"

So tomorrow will mark what will be the three or one month anniversary of me becoming vegan. I can't say that it has been hard. I miss cheese, but I thought that at this point I would have had to been institutionalized. It has been fun trying new things and learning new recipes. I can say that Youtube has been an invaluable resource for me some of the recipes I have found have been common sense. Others have been like, "Oh well that is new" I don't know why, but this recipe has had me curious so I decided to give it a try. 

The ingredients are very similar to regular tuna salad. Swapping out minced garbanzo beans for tuna and vegan mayonnaise for mayo. It is my firm belief that salads such as potato salad, egg salad and tuna salad are extremely personal. To me I can compare them to a cup of coffee, you can customize them to suit your taste. I used garbanzo beans, pickles, onions, celery, mustard, pepper and a few other things which were recommended by various youtube users for more ''depth.''

I started off by draining my canned garbanzo beans and then giving them a whir in my food processor. A few pulses until they were minced up. 

 You can see here they are not pureed or chunky just minced.

Personally, I love onion so I then minced up my onions and celery real small, again my personal preference. 

My pickles I decided to hand chop because I just love them to be chunkier.

I then added about 2 tablespoons of vegenaise, a teaspoon of mustard, some soy sauce (recommended ingredient from youtube) some pepper and that was it!

I at them on some toasted ciabatta that I made at work. I know it is vegan because I made it myself. It is fun discovering new things to eat. I would not necessarily say that this tasted like tuna. I have seen people add seaweed flakes to give it an oceany taste and nutritional yeast for a "cheesy" flavor. I will experiement and find out what I like the best. Now I am off to do some knitting!

Vegan Egg(less) Salad!

Two days from now will mark two weeks after the day I decided to become vegan. In case you don't know I have been vegetarian for about 17 years. Meat started to gross me out. Being on Weight Watchers taught me about moderation and counting points. During the holidays I lost my will power and I actually gained 30 lbs back.

Being back on track I've lost about 20 of that, but I still lacked the self control to only eat one ounce of cheese or just egg whites. So I decided to cold turkey.

I listened to Ellen talking about a movie called Earthlings. This movie shows how humans destroy and devour almost everything. I didn't finish the movie, but I will try. I mean I absolutely love animals. As I type this look what is going on on my lap.



























I usually like animals more than people. Haha. I just really can not justify something suffering to give me something to consume. I am not trying to sound like a preaching hippie, I am just explaining what led me to my decision.

Trying to find vegan things to eat while being new to this has not been that hard! I took some classes at The University of YouTube (sarcasm). Tonight I made Vegan Egg Salad and I loved it. Have a look:

Here are all of the ingredients I used Tofu, Veganaisse, onions, turmeric, celery, Dijon mustard and salt and pepper.

I first had to cut and lightly press the tofu to get a lot of the moisture.

I then cubed the tofu and fried it in a bit of olive oil with the turmeric.

The tofu had to cool on a plate in the cooler while I prepped the other ingredients. Diced celery, onions, salt, pepper, veganaisse and mustard.

I then added the cooled tofu.

I had a delicious wrap with arugula and it was sooooo good.

Long Time No Blog: I'm Not Dead...

I know, I know that I really should be ashamed of myself. This blog went from being about my gardening, to every now and then, then to a full blown passion of mine. I updated almost every day and I really found pleasure in it. 

My mom came to stay with me for a while and I loved it. We did a lot and crafted together and I posted those events. Well she left and I got depressed and such and then I became the manager of the bakery which I was so excited to post that I did my internship three years ago. I don't know why I was so quick to drop something that I found such pleasure. I can not promise that I will post every single day or even every month, but I would like to pick of the ruins of a blog that I left and post more regularly. 

More about me: I would never ever ever post photos of myself on this blog because I was ashamed. Even the photos of myself when showing my hands would cause me to panic and think that these people will find out. I know it was obvious that I was "plump" but I tried to hide the fact that I was 20 lbs away from being 400 lbs. I never realized or felt like I was that big and how it happened. I know that it did not happen overnight, but somehow it happened. When I would see pictures of myself I was just horrified! Moment of my life that I should have been proud to show the world I would hide such as:

My College Graduation in 2009:

Or the day I met my idol Martha Stewart:

I truly was repulsed to see pictures of myself. My partner Brian has very good insurance and we decided to set the wheels in motion to get gastric bypass surgery. There are certain criteria which one needs to meet before getting this surgery such as going to a support group meeting, going to a bypass 101 meeting, getting a psychological evaluation, we did all of that. The last step was to go on a medically supervised diet for 6 months. My doctor was not too keen on the idea of getting the surgery, but he understood that being 400 lbs was not a way to live. He suggested a few diets such as South Beach, Atkins and Weight Watchers. I chose Weight Watchers and little did I know that it would be what worked. 

Before trying Weight Watchers I had come to accept the fact that my weight was going to be what killed me, and I was okay with that. I remember getting my uniforms for work and it was nothing for me to say I needed a 5x shirt and size 56 pants and sister those pants and shirt were snug!

Weight Watchers taught me how to eat again and not just shovel food down my throat. It taught me that a salad can be healthy, but when cheese, croutons, eggs, potato salad, pasta salad all piled on top of that salad and drenched it delicious, delicious bleu cheese the Points add up so fast. Very FAST. I never realized that I consumed so many "Points" before I never thought twice about what I ate I just thought, Hey it tasted good and it was a wee bit indulgent. Well I can say that that wee bit of indulgence got me to nearly 400 lbs. 

I became obsessed with counting Points and it worked for me. I dropped pound after pound I remember losing 5 lbs then 10 lbs then 20 lbs then 50 lbs then 60 lbs then 80 lbs then 100 lbs then 120 lbs and 130 lbs. I feel great. I feel so much better. I didn't know how much weight that I was carrying. I didn't realize how hard every day tasks were such as getting out of bed or tying my shoes or getting out of a car.

I have to admit that a majority of days I feel like I still weight 400 lbs. When I look in the mirror I still see my face with fat cheeks and chins. 

In December of 2010 I posted about the first wedding cake I made and I posted pics, but I was too ashamed of the pic of me next to the cake and you can tell on my face I was not happy about being in the pic. I should have been proud to pose next to this beautiful cake, but I was not. Here is the pic. 

I started to post my weight loss to my facebook page and the encouragement and amazement I received was great. People were so proud of me. Looking back on all of the time that I spent ashamed of myself makes me sad, but it makes me proud of the work and time I put into MYSELF and doing something for MYSELF and my health. In case you are wondering about me today here are a few pics. 

 

Everyday I try and be proud of who I am and it is a struggle. It is a struggle to stay on Weight Watchers for me, but all I can do is try. 

I Was Craving Stuffed Peppers

When I first started trying to eat healthier I found myself at a loss of healthy meals that I found filling and well balanced. I became a vegetarian about 16 years ago. I thought that it would help me lose weight. Boy was I wrong! My diet consisted of pasta, cheese and bread. Vegetables were not something that I loved or even liked. I became huge!!! I lost weight in my early 20s, but I was in the percentage of people who gain weight back in the first five years and then some.

When I joined Weight Watchers I was given a certain amount of points I could eat in a day and fruits and vegetables are free. I have come to embrace vegetables and experiment with all kinds of whole grains and other things that were outside of my comfort cooking zone. Quinoa was something that I was unfamiliar, but not unwilling to try. Quinoa is a seed that is cooked like a grain. It is versatile and can be eaten savory or sweet. The deli department at work made stuffed peppers and the smell got me craving some. I tried to make them healthy and delicious. Have a look:

Quinoa has a bitter coating on the outside of it. The powder acts as a natural pesticide. To get rid of the coating I simply rinsed the quinoa under water. I also rinsed black beans for later use in the filling.


In a heavy bottom pan I sauteed mushrooms, onions and jalapeno. I then added the black beans and brown rice.


While the filling was cooking I spooned some of my homemade marinara sauce into a 9x13 casserole. I then added 1/4 C. of Parmesan cheese to the filling.


After tasting the filling I felt that it was missing some acidity. In the pantry I found whole canned tomatoes. I used kitchen shears and cut them into pieces directly in the can. I added it to the filling and then one cup of cooked quinoa.


I then halved bell peppers and stuffed them with the filling. I lined the baking sheet with the peppers and sprinkled them with more Parmesan cheese.


I baked them covered in at 357˚F oven for 40 minutes and then uncovered for about 15 minutes. They were very delicious, healthy and filling. I am taking some to work tomorrow for my coworker and I to enjoy for lunch.


I have lost 50 lbs since starting a healthier lifestyle (cliche I know) and I feel as though I have totally renovated and expanded my tastebuds and cooking. I look for any opportunity to stuff vegetables into whatever I cook and as far as Weight Watchers I try and get as much bang for my buck as possible. I do not like to waste Points on empty calories and processed foods. I prefer real and fresh ingredients that are made from real food and not chemicals.

Baba Ghanoush

Since starting Weight Watchers on the turn of the new year I have started to venture out of my old stand by meals. I have begun to eat so many vegetables and I have tried to adhere to the rule of eating a variety of vegetables the colors of the rainbow. One day shopping for groceries I pointed out to my Brian that our shopping cart looked so different than it would have about 3 months ago. Instant macaroni and cheese, white pasta, ice cream and other delicious, but not healthy foods were replaced with whole wheat pasta, fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains. I have been a vegetarian for over 16 years. I became vegetarian thinking that I would lose weight, but I was wrong. I did not lose any weight on a diet of pasta, cheese and bread. Vegetables were not exactly my cup of tea.

Since starting Weight Watchers 6 weeks ago and striving to live a more active lifestyle both Brian and I have lost weight. I have lost 45 lbs and I can honestly say that I am eating more throughout the day than I was before and I have come to embrace vegetables. My go to meal has gone from mac and cheese to a whole wheat wrap filled with roasted vegetables, Tofurkey lunch "meat", cottage cheese, any kind of fruit, and lots of water. I pack my lunch every day and I try and be as proactive as I can be when it comes to eating. I love shopping at a store here in Youngstown called Ghossains. They make whole wheat flat breads which I use for wraps, burritos and even pizzas. While really hungry one day I tried a sample of an eggplant dip/hummus called Baba Ghanoush. It has a smoky creamy flavor and is low in fat and can be used for various things including a spread on a sandwich, filling in a wrap or dip with pita.

I tried my hand at making my own today and for a first time I must say that it came out SO DELICIOUS! Have a look!

To give the Baba Ghanoush its smoky flavor you first start out by charring the eggplant on a grill.


Once charred the eggplant bakes in the oven until tender inside (about 10-15 minutes).


After removing the eggplant and once it has cooled a bit I removed the black skin from the soft flesh inside.


I have seen various preparations of this part of the dish. I watched one woman smash the ingredients together with a fork for a chunkier texture. I decided to put mine in the food processor for a smoother texture. It is really up to your own personal taste.


Tahini, which is a sesame seed paste is first added to the eggplant.


Then fresh garlic.


And lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.


Here is the finished dish with some pita. It was really good. I have had eggplant dishes which I really did not care for, but I must say that this dish is completely different and extremely delicious! Give it a try!