My Regular Eats

Though I have been struggling with the last 5-7 pounds. I feel like I have a regular food schedule going, which I like, and is consistent enough to keep me from gaining. If I stop sticking to this for more than a week, I get miserable and get that “I feel fat” feeling.

Breakfast: Green smoothie (milk, frozen strawberries, spinach, half a banana, occasionally mangoes)

Lunch: Sandwich on whole “grain” with a bean/veggie patty i make on the weekends + spinach, I eat any fruit along with this and drink atleast 2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack: Another smoothie, or nuts, clif bars

Dinner: We have a pretty steady menu on a random rotation. There is no need for portion control with these meals!

Stir fry’s with a mix of LOTS of veggies + 1/2 cup cooked rice. The Ultimate Primer on Stir Fry w/ Sauce Here!

Yellow Dal + garlic naan (store bought/Trader Joe’s 2 per person) + pickle

Soup & salad night

Mexican night aka Chipotle at home – black beans, spinach, stir fry veggies with cumin, corn, avocado & yoghurt

The last day of the week – I just wing it, either homemade pizza or some form of easy food.

We have successfully

1. Cut down the amount of rice we eat – we have no control around rice, so we go crazy only once a week.

2. The meals are super easy and I don’t even think about dinner. Since all the veggies are prepped, the actual cooking time is less than 15 mins

3. We are always full, and never “still hungry after dinner” or grazing.

4. Lost weight!

5. We can go out for dessert! since we eat out less anyway!

Hummus!

How easy is it to make hummus? Easy-peasy! I swear

I put off buying “tahini” for a very very long time cause it was “relatively expensive”

So this is how I made my own tahini as well as hummus.

Ingredients

Sesame

Salt

Green chili

Chickpeas/Garbanzo beans/White channa

Sun-dried tomatoes/olives/roasted garlic/roasted red pepper - flavoring ingredient

Directions

1. Toast the sesame seeds – about 3 tbsp till they turn slightly browned and oily looking

2. Blend them up into a paste

3. In the same blender. Add chickpeas, green chili, flavoring ingredient of your choice and whirl it again

4. Add water to get it into a paste like consistency. Typically the hummus calls for olive oil, but in adding water, i find that the taste isnt noticeable!

5. Viola! Your hummus is done! Eat with cut up veggies or crackers etc.

My Regular Eats

Though I have been struggling with the last 5-7 pounds. I feel like I have a regular food schedule going, which I like, and is consistent enough to keep me from gaining. If I stop sticking to this for more than a week, I get miserable and get that “I feel fat” feeling.

Breakfast: Green smoothie (milk, frozen strawberries, spinach, half a banana, occasionally mangoes)

Lunch: Sandwich on whole “grain” with a bean/veggie patty i make on the weekends + spinach, I eat any fruit along with this and drink atleast 2 glasses of water

Afternoon Snack: Another smoothie, or nuts, clif bars

Dinner: We have a pretty steady menu on a random rotation. There is no need for portion control with these meals!

Stir fry’s with a mix of LOTS of veggies + 1/2 cup cooked rice

Dal + garlic naan (store bought 2 each) + pickle

Soup & salad night

Mexican night – black beans, spinach, stir fry veggies with cumin, corn & yoghurt

The last day of the week – I just wing it, either homemade pizza or some form of easy food.

We have successfully

1. Cut down the amount of rice we eat – we have no control around rice, so we go crazy only once a week.

2. The meals are super easy and I don’t even think about dinner. Since all the veggies are prepped, the actual cooking time is less than 15 mins

3. We are always full, and never “still hungry after dinner” or grazing.

4. Lost weight!

5. We can go out for dessert! since we eat out less anyway!

Facebook Color Updates – An irrational argument.

I love any charity that does innovative awareness campaigns, and the Susan G. Komen foundation undoubtedly had one of the best awareness & branding campaigns through the color pink at marathons, product promotions etc. Yesterday, seeing people post colors on facebook, like many others I was puzzled to say the least. I went on to then find out that these women were posting their bra colors.

Let me break down this mindless act for you:

Action: Posting Bra Color

Expected Reaction: To increase awareness about breast cancer

Actual Reactions:
1. People commenting on how boring or interesting or wild you are based on a bra color
2. People would google - to find out that those status messages were girls posting their bra colors.
3. Maybe a few clicks to the Breast Cancer Foundation (IF you posted a link, if not, sorry cant give you                                            that)

What puzzles me is why the thousands or millions of women think it exciting, funny, interesting to do this exercise & reveal their bra colors, without thinking for a second wheather this actually helps raise awareness for breast cancer or not. Assuming there are thousands of shallow women who want to post bra colors, the truth that hit me was that the women who were really, truly affected by breast cancer probably don’t wear a bra - post surgery. The Washington Post article on this goes on to support this thought. Did you think for a second that those women would have to post -”none” while you update your status to “zebra print” or whatever else?

If you are one of the persons who did update your status with a color:

I have a few questions for you, to understand your motivations.

1. Did you check for lumps in your breasts before or after you posted your color update?

2. Did you include a link (then, or later) to the Breast Cancer foundation?

Why on earth would any self respecting woman want to let the world know what color bra they are wearing without doing any of the 2 points

Just because it is in text (bra color) and not a photograph, does not mean it is suddenly acceptable and ok to share details about your body or your clothes or your ‘wild side’. Its like saying penthouse letters is better than playboy magazine cause it does not have any pictures.

In my opinion – this is what this managed to achieve:

1. It gave insecure women a way to get the attention of men & women on facebook. That might be a cynical thought, but why else would you do it, if you didnt post a link, clarify or do nothing na-da to be aware yourself or create awareness among atleast some facebook friends.

2. Increased masturbation on Facebook for the day. Yes, they did masturbate.

3. Gave women a chance to show the world what giggly high school girls they can be.

4. In an ADD world of shrinking attention spans, it increased the number of “fans” for the Susan G. Komen foundation by 100,000. And how many of those who did post status msg, and became “fans” actually checked their own breasts for lumps? or think about the true surviors of breast cancer who had to post the answer – none?

5. And lastly, this whole exercise pissed me off enough to write this.

PS: The Komen foundation has come out stating they were not behind this campaign.

Sending things into a black hole…

Ha ha, thats how I feel today. Writing in the blog feels like I’m sending my thoughts into a black hole, and I have no idea where it really goes.

Also reminds me of the movie “in the mood for love” by Wong Kar Wai, where the movie ends with a secret being whispered into a hole and covered up forever. I loved that movie, highly recommend it!

As for today
Bkfast: Oatmeal ! Oatmeal usually makes me feel too heavy or the milk in it makes me kind of sick, but today was perfect. I tried the pre-packaged oats with flax seeds sold at TJ’s.
Lunch: Vegetarian burrito (around 350 calories with less than 100 being fat) I know cause it also came from a TJ’s container
Dinner: Homemade pizza, my most favourite at home dinner! no cheese except parmesan, lots of veggies and a half whole wheat, half all purpose flour handmade dough. I use Mitch’s recipe.

The husband loved it and ate 3 pizza’s! I ate 2 and maybe a quarter. No leftovers either – all of it was wiped out!

Sanity check
I am feeling much better today – after staying up last night and reading about facing my fears. I have been avoiding interviewing and such over the past month or so for some SERIOUS fear of rejection. I actually have a physical reaction to interviewing now. Like heart palpitations, sweat, a very high anxiety level etc and I caught myself going back there when a recruiter called today. Over the past month I didnt want to receive any more rejection phone calls or emails – but this one quote stuck with me. You maybe faced with many many “no’s” but you have to realize that all it takes is one “yes”.

My need for everyone to like me – makes me want everyone to say yes, here is your new job. But instead I get rejection after rejection and so I stop trying, to spare myself the torture. But I tell myself – all you need is one “yes”. Lets hope that comes soon, and turns out to be the right match.

This last few lines almost sound like I am looking for a husband – and the quote “you have to kiss a few frogs until you find your prince” is truly representative of my job search, and I have been kissing a lot of frogs! urgh!

Cauliflower Soups On

Hi there!

Soups are big with me, now that its winter and all I want is a warm soup every night.
Yesterday was cauliflower.

1 head of cauliflower
1 cup celery
1 cup carrots
1/4 onion
1 garlic clove
1 cup milk
1 pinch dried basil
Lots of water
Teeny tiny square of butter

Sauted the onion, garlic in butter! Added in the veggies + salt, pepper, dried basil, a little water, steamed till cooked. Blended the whole mess.

Added in the milk, brought it to a boil. Voila! Amazing soup.

This was exactly like the soup I tasted on my visit to Napa. Loved it!

Source: online, but I swear it looked just like this

Also love love this Artisana giveaway, here’s my chance to win it!

Happy Thanksgiving! Holiday Talk

I’ve come to realize holidays are to be celebrated.

Festivals are what you make of it. My husband and I would never make the effort to celebrate anything – including birthdays and the like. We lived everyday like every other day. While this is a good philosophy in terms of love each other every day and not just valentines day argument. It doesnt cut it for a long period of time.

We realized after many, many years of being together that, we HAVE to make that effort to celebrate. We had no memories of any events in the past couple of years. Our children (whenever they happen) will never really have any memories of good times either. We both felt this creeping up on us around the sametime of year, so we made a decision. Even if it took more time and effort than a regular meal, or a regular day, it was worth it to try to recreate something special about the day.

Giving Thanks:
I am thankful for my parents who did such an amazing job, my husband who is a fighter, never gives up, and has the craziest personality, my brother who is such a patient friend and an amazing person to talk to, my friends who are few but very very dear to me, god for helping me keep my sanity through the rough times that never seemed to pass over the last year, for my new jacket, for discovering good healthy food, for green smoothies, for love, for Udavum Karangal which supports all those amazing kids, for yoga which saved my life, and lastly I’m thankful for many more years to give thanks!

Side Notes:
-I really want to try pumpkin pie (so much hula about this pie, I wanna try it!)