Friday, August 04, 2006

Concatenated Ephemera

My current list of projects are all things you know about and are probably bored silly with.  So I thought I’d take you on a bizarre little tour of my kitchen :) Are you afraid yet?  MWA-HAHAHAHAHAH....

Ahem…



Diet journal with stickers



This is my diet journal.  Though I had never used one before for any previous diet, this has been a real help to me.  I also think it helps me to stay honest - you know - by recording that little piece of chocolate (dark chocolate, low-sugar, of course!) instead of just blowing it off by letting myself think: It’s just a little piece; it doesn’t really count.  So I use it to record calories.  And because it amuses me, I also save fruit and vegetable stickers which, otherwise, annoy the crap out of me.  Have you ever tried to take the sticker off a tomato without damaging the skin?  I swear it can’t be done!

The stickers cover a lot of ground - bananas, cantaloupe, peaches, apricots, lemons, grapefruit and watermelon.  Also tomatoes, kiwi fruit, oranges and strawberries.  They aren’t as interesting as the old fruit and vegetable labels.  In fact many of them have no information on them at all besides the distributor’s name and a code number.  However, occasionally one comes along like the watermelon sticker at the bottom of the right-hand page.  The beautiful, playfully seductive sun is just perfect!  And the watermelon was pretty good too!  The Joraik sticker about half way down on the left-hand side - I brought that one home with me from my last cruise, from a Brazilian banana.

Another big help on the diet front has been this soup:



Thai Kitchen Lemongrass and Chili Soup



This stuff is awesome and we could both eat it until it comes out our ears.  We don’t though :) The principal flavor is of lemongrass which I understand is a commonly used flavor in Thai cooking.  I would have been tempted to dismiss this as a tasty, but not particularly authentic soup except for one thing.  I had some Lemongrass soup not too long ago in a pretty fancy Oriental-themed restaurant.  Except for the fact that it had shrimp in it (big ones!) the taste was identical to my little packaged soup here.  I do have to watch the sodium on this one but let me tell you - a bowl of this soup and a medium sized one of these (without the chicken, probably) makes a hell of a nice lunch that comes in at around 350 calories.

We recently found these things and decided to give them a try…



Sip Sac empty Sip Sac full



They are little, foam-lined paper bags designed to hold your soft drink (and beer too, I guess) and keep it cold.  The cold thing is a nice theory but it doesn’t really work out that well.  However these are wonderful at keeping the condensation contained so that it doesn’t get all over your furniture, your hands, in your computer keyboard, etc.  They came three-in-a-package and won’t last past the summer.  And that will be fine as I won’t need them after that :)

The last little diet aid I wanted to mention were these things.



Seasonings



The McCormick stuff is probably self-explanatory.  They are Italian herbs on the left and Peppercorn Medley on the right.  Both come in grinder bottles so they are easy to use.  I was a little nervous about the Italian herbs because the label indicates a quantity of sea salt in the mix and I generally try to avoid adding more salt to my food than is already there.  However, I went to McCormick’s site this morning to look up the nutritional information.  As it’s a seasoning and not an actual food, there’s no information on the bottle - and even if there were, it would have to be so small in order to fit on the label, you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway!  Turns out there’s only 15mg of sodium per 1/4 tsp serving of seasoning.  I can certainly live with that :)

The Peppercorn medley is interesting and has the usual blend of white, black, green and pink peppercorns (yes, I know the pink ones aren’t really pepper) but adds allspice and coriander to the mix.  At first I didn’t care for it much - mostly because I thought I was buying a standard peppercorn mix and was surprised by the other spices.  But I kept trying it and discovered that it works very, very well with mild foods like chicken.  I also use it in chicken soup, when Myria makes that.  It turns out to be useful after all, though I usually want unmixed pepper on most things.

The Mongolian Fire Oil is very interesting.  I have to tell you, I think I bought it as much for the romance of the name as for the product itself - which turns out to be pretty darn good :) It’s a base of primarily cottonseed oil with sesame oil, chili pepper, capsicum, onion, garlic and a couple of other assorted seasonings used as flavorings.  The color is this lovely clear red-orange which, I imagine, comes from the chili peppers since there are no artificial colors or flavors (in fact nothing but the oils and the spices) in the ingredients list.  You don’t use much of this - just a few drops - but it provides a nice kick to bland foods.  It also helps with the ingestion of green beans which are ubiquitous in frozen, low-cal dinners (such as Healthy Choice or Lean Cuisine) but which I don’t care for much :)

Two more things, having nothing whatever to do with food or dieting, just to round out this weird concatenation.  For those of you who might be familiar with the on-line game Guild Wars, we finally mastered the Thirsty River mission yesterday morning after three weeks of tailoring skills, researching builds and procedures, and generally getting our asses handed to us.  Boo-yeah!  We prodded buttock!

Also, we saw a movie a couple of nights ago - a Russian film called Nightwatch.  It is an urban vampire, good vs. evil kind of thing which posits an alternate universe where the good guys and the bad guys, realizing that they are equally matched (and therefore no one can win), call a halt to their eternal warring and declare a truce.  Of course, because there exists a balance of power, something will come along to disrupt it and therein lies the story.  It’s...visually somewhat crude, but that very crudity makes for a powerful presentation.  The plotting is spotty, but trackable, and there are more loose ends than I’d like.  And yet… It was absorbing and engaging none the less.  If this is your kind of story (Bron - are you listening?), this film might appeal to you.

Have a great weekend, all! 

Babbled by Robbyn on 08/04 at 11:42 AM
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  1. aren’t the mccormick’s seasonings in their little grinders neat? i’m easily amused and find the grinding process adds all kinds of zip to anything from coffee to spices-

    since i’m trying to work out a whole new sodium avoidance i am constantly amazed at the salt/sodium content of almost anything that is already prepared or packaed- heck, i bought some frozen chicken breasts the other day and found they were ‘infused’ with salt- evidently i should learn to live on bean sprouts and lettuce leaves!

    stay happy-

    Posted by  on  08/04  at  12:14 PM
    Location : right here- waving at you...

  2. I saw Nightwatch last month, and I enjoyed it, mostly for all it’s little crudities/quirks.  I have learned that it’s part of a three book series.  I wonder if they will do more movies.  What did you think of the creepy little spider crawly thing in the old ladies kitchen, or the woman that turns into a tiger or panther.  I think I enjoyed it more than a movie chock-full of overblown graphic effects.

    Posted by Kim  on  08/04  at  03:03 PM
    Location : s fl

  3. Barb - Yes, the sodium content of prepared foods is the bane of my existance.  But I deal with it by allowing a certain amount per day and if a frozen dinner or packet soup uses that amount up, then I’m done :) I hope your doctors were more helpful about your diet than mine were - they had nothing to suggest, nor have they asked.  I could be living on bananas for all they know :)

    Posted by Robbyn  on  08/04  at  04:37 PM
    Location : Sleeping in my chair :)

  4. Kim - As I understand it, there is a second film already out in Russia and the third film is either being made or being planned.

    I thought the spider/doll was exceptionally creepy!  As far as the animal/people go though, I like Olga’s transformation sequence (the owl?) the best :) I’m looking forward to the second film and hoping I can find the books in translation sometime soon!

    Posted by Robbyn  on  08/04  at  04:40 PM
    Location : Sleeping in my chair :)

  5. Myria had a little comment test,
    Whose text was white as snow,
    And everywhere that Myria’s comment test went,
    Code updates were sure to have followed…

    Or something like that, anyway.

    Posted by  on  08/05  at  09:30 AM
    Location : Under a rising moon

  6. Ooh!  Guild Wars!  I have a character or four on GW… Roweena Fleece is my main, but I have been tooling around with a new necro lately.  Can I ask who your main character is?

    Posted by  on  08/21  at  09:01 AM
    Location :

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