Recipe love: Lemon Poppyseed Quick Bread

Hey, guess what?

I've been eating, and cooking. So you know I have recipes to share!

Actually, calling it "cooking" is a bit of a stretch. Hubby's been grilling most of the summer, so my job has been to shop for and remind him to include a veggie with every meat, or to make a marinated veggie or salad of some sort for us. But we cannot live on grilled green beans and corn with every meal, so I made a few side dishes that we have loved.

First up, my friend J. found this easy-peasy recipe for refrigerator pickles on Smitten Kitchen; she made a batch for us on our vacation, and they were so delicious I bought my own gallon-sized mason jar and made my own!



Those are the ingredients. All of them. (I didn't even bother with the dill.)

Slice the Kirby pickles with a mandolin, add in 3 smashed cloves of garlic, 1/2 cup of vinegar and 2 tsp kosher salt. Seal and shake every hour while they combine in the fridge. Done!

Here is the finished product.



Insanely easy and good. Hubby just had a plate of them after dinner, LOL. And they're 0 pts on WW.

I still make black-eyed pea hummus pretty regularly. This came to work a couple of weeks ago as my afternoon snack. Yum!



This week I added sun-dried tomatoes instead of my usual roasted red pepper. It's pretty pungent but I think it will be great in a revised version of this wrap sandwich; I have a batch of peppered turkey bacon, carrots, cucumbers and red bell peppers ready to go inside a whole wheat tortilla.

Ok, enough with the healthy stuff. Let's get to the real reason I'm posting: lemon poppyseed quick bread. I saw this recipe on Cooking Classy a couple of weeks ago and have been daydreaming about it ever since. I ordered poppyseeds from Penzeys, and picked up some lemons last week, but had been putting it off because it seemed like a lot of work just for a quick bread. Zest the lemons? Squeeze the juice out of them? Rub the sugar and lemon together? Brushing the glaze on? Maybe I could just buy a muffin at the store...

It was worth it. It was soooooo worth every extra step. The fresh lemon in it was just...OMG. Lemon poppyseed is my favorite of all muffins, but I have never had anything this lemony and delicious.



The mise-en-place before I started. Had to let the eggs and butter get to room temperature, so read the instructions in advance, and get everything you need out before you start. Trust me on this.



This was when I started to doubt -- that was a lot of work for so little to show for it. Juice on the left, zest on the right.

I WAS WRONG TO DOUBT. I wish I had thought to save the extra juice for my hummus. Argh!




Out of the oven, and looking good but a little dry.



Not so dry anymore! Do not stint on the glaze, just keep brushing it on until it's gone. You won't regret it.

Finished and ready to completely cool.



I cut it up and Hubby and I each had a half-piece. (*cough* Hubby may have had a couple of half-piece.) The rest is going to work; I think I am going to be the most popular person there tomorrow morning!



God. I need another piece right now.

If you decide to make it, go tell Jaclyn over at Cooking Classy how much you like it! It's totally her recipe -- she deserves all the credit.

Where I've Been, Part II: Work, Life, Body Woes, and the Creative Slump

So here is the real reason I haven't been posting...

You guys, I have run out of things to say.

I don't have anything new to talk about. I know, right? Me, with no opinions to spout, no goofy outfit pictures to share, nothing at all??

But that's where I'm at, and have been for months.

I'm not really following fashion trends or blogs anymore; I still use Gwynnie Bee, and I have been continuing to edit my closet monthly. but I don't have a lot of time or inclination to take photos of my outfits or castoffs. I get lots of compliments at work so I assume I am still dressing well, but the obsession and interest in writing about my clothes or photographing them is gone.

(At least for now.)

I'm not really dieting, either. This hasn't really been a summer of good eats; lunch is whatever crap they have in the cafeteria, and Hubby is in charge of dinner now so it's a lot of grilled chicken or sausage with an occasional veggie when he remembers.

Exercise is a bust: I hurt my ankle a few months back, which my doctor assumed was a sprain and recommended I take it easy until it healed. Two months later I was back in her office, and now we are on the hunt to find out the source of the problem. Gout, stress fracture, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus have all been ruled out, and there are more blood tests and a trip to the rheumatologist coming up next.

On the plus side, I do love my new job. But my schedule has changed dramatically -- I go in much earlier than I used to, and I work 9-10 hours a day. Then I come home and take care of Abby while my husband takes a much-needed break. Doesn't leave a lot of time for creative ruminations, you know?

All of that together leads to stagnation on the Low Fat Dressing front, unfortunately. I do miss the interaction with my fellow bloggers and everyone who has commented over the years, so I am determined to keep up with you all on Feedly and try to comment on your blogs when I can, but for the time being this blog is going to go dark.

It's been a really great four years (egads, 4 YEARS?!) here. I've learned a lot about myself, my limits and my accomplishments, I've made many friends, both here and on YLF, and I've loved having this as a creative outlet and my internet home, so to speak. I so, so appreciate everyone who stuck with me, all the commenters and cheerleaders and just all-around nice people who stopped by and read whatever silliness I had to say. Thank you so much for reading.

And who knows what six months or a year will bring; maybe I will come back some day. Hubby did just get a new job, so our lives will be changing again in a few weeks. Who knows, maybe the shift will inspire me again. We'll see. That's why I won't be deleting the blog, just not updating it in the foreseeable future.

Thanks again, and good luck to you all!!

Blogging Time-Out: Over!

Hello! I am back.

Thank you for your patience and your sweet notes checking in on me. When I started my hiatus I only expected to be gone a week or so, but then other things in my life start piling up and making everything that much worse, and I just couldn't think of anything to say on Ye Olde Blogge, so I stayed away until things started to improve again.

But this has pretty much been my mood all month.



Shamelessly stolen from my buddy Helen, who is going through her own winter doldrum period. (Hang in there, sweetie!) In a weird way, this cartoon helped nudged me out of my mood; I'd been procrastinating, just pushing things off for "just one day" while I was hanging in limbo waiting for resolution for various things, and every day feeling guiltier for not posting and getting back in the swing of it. The cartoon was like a period at the end of a run-on sentence; a hard-stop declaration that I was at the end and I just did not want to run on anymore. It allowed me to forgive myself, weirdly enough, and then to just take a week and lie facedown on the floor, then get going again in a forward direction.

So here I am, moving forward.

How shall I do that? By showing you photos of my time away! ;-D

I have been taking tons of photos, and am even back in the rhythm of daily outfit photos; I convinced Hubby to move some things in his office so I could get my old corner area back for shooting, and there I have been taking a 4-set every day.



I liked the pairing of the hunter green tee and the turquoise necklace. The contrast complemented each other well.

The timing of moving the tripod upstairs could not have been better, by the way, since we had major seepage in the basement for about a week. The condo guys finally came yesterday to cut into the drywall and find the cracks in the foundation, which unfortunately they could not find. So we have moved the carpet and the drywall aside and are waiting for our most recent snowfall to melt so they can find the leak. Oh joy!



We had to rip out half the padding in the room with the last seepage a few years ago, and the carpet will have to be replaced once the leak is found. We got it all dry without any mold, but the water stains are just too big and ugly to ignore. And carpet is a must; look at that God-awful linoleum underneath!



They covered up the bottom hole with the drywall pieces, and are keeping it secure with a piece of Hubby's fishing stuff; apparently it's very easy for a little nosy cat (like our own curious George) to crawl in there and get stuck behind the walls somewhere. Yikes!

But it hasn't all been gloom and destruction! I've had tons of time with my friends, wandering through Ikea with Babyfriend and then last weekend playing with Legos with her and having our minifigs talk to each other for about a half-hour (heh). Plus hanging out with Babyfriend's Mom and with Jessie, also always highlights of those visits. My buddy Phillip left the company so we had a nice dinner out to celebrate that. Shopping Friend is getting married in May so we did a foursome dinner this week to talk over shower stuff and just re-connect and have some laughs. AND I had dinner with my local YouLookFab buddies Laura and Marianna where we chatted about blogging and writing and shopping and all the fun stuff of life. :)






YouLookFab forever!







Man, I miss that guy. He is even more of a ham than I am!
(From an earlier night out.)



Speaking of someone who makes me laugh, Hubby has turned to money laundering. ("Money dyeing" might be the better term.)





But his black jeans are looking good, so that's all that matters in the end. Hee!

I have more posts to come. And yes, Lorena, I have my edits from January. :)

Yay! It feels good to be back. 

Links and Thinks

Is the title too twee and/or dorky?

1. I've been making good headway on a few of my resolutions already. My 45th birthday (!!!!) is this March, and the day falls in the middle of the week. I had a few grandiose plans for celebrating but those usually end up getting scrapped. Instead I decided to give myself a gift I sorely need: I am taking the entire week off. A birthday staycation!

I am already counting down the days: 45 business days to go. Seriously.

2.  Also from the resolution front: I dropped off a couple of bags of food at the Food Pantry, added this Donate page to my bookmarks, did my monthly edits/purchases post, and got the 3 posts in last week.

3. I am also working on the budgeting. For years I used Quicken on Windows, and loved the program. It was linked to all my accounts, I could categorize all my purchases easily, and setting up budgets was a breeze. Switching to a Mac changed all that; Intuit refuses to make a good version of Quicken for the Mac, so I had to abandon my beloved program. I've been half-heartedly using Mint, but my Nordstrom account doesn't link to it, and after all this time, I just don't love the idea of doing all of my financial planning up in the clouds. I have online banking so it seems like a weird tic, but when I pull all my accounts together in one place with their account numbers, I just feel better if it is on my computer.

So I have been comparing programs and I am torn between two: iBank and Moneydance. Anyone have any experience with either? Thoughts?

4. I want to add Helen's dinner-table "aspiration" as an addendum to my own New Years resolutions; we have a great kitchen table, and we only use it with company. Not only is it a great way to truly slow down and appreciate our food (when I did Core we sat at the table all the time), but it is a way to spend more time together, take a breath between working and laying on the couch watching TV, and most of all, will eliminate most of the food stains on our clothes, laps, computers, and rug. ;-D

5. Lest you think all of this resolution business is a waste of time, a recent study showed that our personalities are changing all the time even though we think they are not. Science! (TM Jessie) It's never too late to change yourself.

6.



This is what I needed the plastic shoe boxes for. ;-D

Yes, those are all of my frozen bagged foods. I made tomato sauce and a batch of Sheila's green pasta sauce, and froze them flat on a cookie sheet.



Then I stacked them in the plastic boxes, alongside another container of soups. They had been scattered throughout the freezer, and I realized we weren't eating them as much as we should. This should help with that.



That's chicken noodle, smoky black bean, Tuscan bean, and butternut squash-carrot soup on the right. My friend Amanda created another recipe for a savory parmesan-nutmeg muffin that I am going to try, and I think we will be making quick work of some of these soups this week. (I will post the muffin recipe once I have tried them out!)

P.S. I stole the shoebox idea from Kat at Corporette, from a post from many moons ago. The frozen baggies idea I incorporated immediately, but I waited on the shoe box until now. It felt way too anal-retentive organized, but...that's what I am! Might as well make it work for us. :)

7. Meal planning frequently falls apart for me when I try to do it over the course of a week, and sometimes (like this one) even Sunday Cooking doesn't get done. I think sometimes I am just too ambitious; I buy all the ingredients but for whatever reason I just don't feel like doing the work, and the food goes bad and we order pizza instead.

So when my friend A linked this cooking challenge, it was a light bulb moment. OH! Not every meal is made for the same reasons, or with the same amount of effort -- and even comfort non-cooking foods have their place in meal planning!

I can use my own lists of known classics and my Pinterest board for new ideas, but this categorization from that post is one I want to use over and over:

• Classic Weeknight – Exactly what it sounds like. Quick, simple, healthy, meals that require minimal effort when you are charged with getting dinner on the table fast.
• Make-Ahead – Some of these would also fall under “Classic Weeknight,” but the beauty of them is that you can do a large chunk of the work on the weekend and store in the freezer.
• Keep the Spark Alive – These are a little more involved than regular weeknight dinners, but they are every bit as crucial to your psychological health because they take time and love and have the potential to get you excited about cooking again.
• Security Blankets – These are not recipes, per se, but suggestions for finger-foody things (peanut butter, hummus, baby carrots) that don’t need to be cooked.

The challenge is that you look at your calendar for the week, and see which nights should be Security Blankets or Make Aheads, which are ones that you have time to try new things (Keep Spark Alive), when you can prepare Make Aheads or just Classic Weeknights. You are supposed to pick a couple from each, and Security Blankets for the rest of the days.

I LOVE THIS IDEA. I can tweak it for us so easily, to ensure we definitely do more home cooking, with a reasonable mix of new, favorites, easy, hard and pre-made, or just a happy PB&J or baked potato.

8. Doesn't this sandwich look amazing? I don't know why it never occurred to me that we could make reubens at home. We can make reubens at home, OMG. And it can be a healthier version too: turkey pastrami, good sauerkraut and rye bread, a light Thousand Island...my husband is going to love this one. Oh my yes.

9. Did everyone see Ally's trick for wearing collared shirts under crewneck sweaters? She doesn't button the shirt underneath except for the top and bottom buttons, and tucks the rest to the sides. As I commented on her blog: Woman, you are a genius.

10. Is it time for my birthday staycation yet?

Thanksgiving 2012: Leftovers

On the last day of Thanksgiving, there were leftovers.

All weekend, Hubby had been polishing off most of the leftovers in their purest form: he just makes himself another plate of his favorites and microwaves them.

Me, I like to repurpose. The first couple of days were sandwiches and soup, but on Sunday I decided to extend the life of what we had left a little bit longer.

First up was a variation on this Thanksgiving Salad. I heated up the last of the Brussels sprouts and green beans, some sweet potatoes and a chopped up slice of turkey in a skillet...




then cooked some quick couscous, and mixed it all together.



That should be lunch for the next couple of days.


Next was a variation of one of my favorite sandwich spreads, Turkey Salad with Cranberries.



I chopped up the last of the turkey (all those little pieces on the platter came in handy!), the last of the celery, and some dried cranberries. Seasoned it with Mural of Flavor and added fatfree mayo.



Yum.




YUM. On toast with carrot chips. Yesssssss...

I have another idea to meld two recipe ideas into Sweet Potato-Spinach Ravioli. First was from this recipe, then I saw that My Bizzy Kitchen made a great one with spinach that I knew I wanted to incorporate.

Unfortunately, work is taking over my life and I am getting a little tired of leftovers. We shall see if I end making that or if the sweet potatoes make it into a pot of soup or just the trash.  I'll let you know by Friday! ;-D

My hair is bouncin' and behavin'

I dub Day/Night 1 of the Night-Shower Experiment a success.



All I had to do was brush it in the morning. !! Apparently bed head is a good look for me. I did make one mistake in letting it air dry the first night; it was a little flat on the top of my head, which a good volumizer and a quick blow would have fixed. I will work on that.

I also liked the outfit; the pants are a grey pinstripe, so it's not as all-black as the photo would indicate. You guys know me, I'm not a all-black person so it feels like when I do wear it, it packs a punch. The turquoise Blogger Necklace helps soften it up around my face, too, which I need.

The shoes are Circa Joan & David kitten heels from several years back. Shopping Friend will remember them; they're the first "heels" she convinced me to buy! When the pointy-toe look faded the last few years, I tucked them into the back of my closet, but now that it is making a comeback -- and frankly I needed the kitten heel height for the pants, and these were all I had -- I pulled them back out. They've held up well; guess spending a few extra dollars on quality shoes instead of Target/Payless cheapies pays off.

Speaking of spending, this is now following me around the internet.



The two-tone brown booties are the ones I was talking about the other day, and the wedge casual booties on the left are a fabulous find from Angie at YLF. Now that I can wear jeans a few other days besides the weekend, and I do have a good number of said jeans with long hems for heels, I think I can justify a fun bootie like that.

I may scrap the fall/winter purse idea for another year -- since none are jumping out at me as The One -- and go for some solid bootie additions instead.  And maybe a smart daytime clutch -- it's very on-trend, and the only clutches I have are summer woven ones.

Dammit, the ads win again.

Fall Style: Blazers and pants

I may have mentioned in my Closet Purge post that I am wearing a lot of blazers and suit-like outfits these days; mostly it's due to having so many meetings these days at work, but blazers are also an easy cop-out on weekends to having to buy more fall jackets.

This is what I wore yesterday:



Pretty much everything is from Gap or Old Navy. The cobalt blazer is this one, the pants are the modern bootcuts, and the button-down is actually this military style jersey. I've decided I like this better than a stiffer cotton button-down, which tends to square my torso off in terrible ways.

But the parts of this outfit that make it interesting, IMO, are the necklace and the shoes. The necklace is what Gracie over at Fashion for Giants teasingly (and affectionately) calls the "blogger necklace", the colorful statement style that has definitely been making the rounds on many blogs. I picked two of them up as part of a Groopz deal that Kimberly from Fab Finds under $50 linked to a while back, and I've been wearing both all summer, and getting many real-life compliments on them. Even though the turquoise is a summer color, I used the inspiration from a Nordstrom display to wear it for fall too.




(Next time, I am going to try it with my trusty striped blazer.)

The other item of note are my flats. I have been thoroughly unimpressed with the shoes out for this fall; I've bought many and returned just about all of them, only keeping one pair of black studded flats so far. But these flats have been sitting in my closet for a few years now, an impulse purchase from the Ann Taylor Factory outlet, picked up for about $10. They've been mostly unworn because their style hasn't quite fit with my dress obsession or any casual looks on the weekends. But since hurting my back last week I've been wearing mostly flats with shorter-length pants, so I pulled them out and gave them a try. Good thing I didn't purge them; they look professional and cute with my new blazers look.



All in all, I thought this worked well for the season. I was actually one of the better dressed people at my meeting!



(Our new fish doormat says hello. A birthday gift from my parents to my fisherman-husband, heehee.)

Closet Purge: a new monthly feature

Egads! According to my blog archive, I only posted 3 times in September. I am so sorry to have abandoned you, internet! I have been very, very busy during our time apart, with work insanity, social engagements, and just general lethargy. But I am back, and I promise to get back into posting more. In fact, I will promise to post every day for the rest of the month, just like Jenful did. Some posts might be pretty brief, but I need to work my blog muscle again. :)

One of the things that has kept me busy was a huge, massive closet purge. MASSIVE.

Long-time followers will remember there was a time, nearly 3 years ago now, when I was very fit and thin. And I slowly gained it all back, right in front of everyone. As I crept back up, I didn't want to get rid of sizes that I swore I would get back into, so I squirreled them away all over the house, one size up at a time. I ended up filling:

• 2 portable closet spaces in my husband's office
• 2 more portable closets in the basement
• 5 jumbo plastic bins
• 3 random boxes
• 2 garbage bags
• 1 extra drawer in the hall bureau
• 1 flat plastic bin under the bed

I am not exaggerating. Here is our basement before the purge.




All five bins are overstuffed.


(Yes, those are mannequins. I bought them when Forth & Towne closed. Don't ask.)

Two weekends ago, I tackled the basement and office closets.  I went through every single piece of clothing I had, and sorted them into 3 piles: one for donation, one to keep, and one to give away to a couple of my friends. My method was pretty cut-throat, out of sheer necessity; I really streamlined what I kept down to favorite pieces or ones that were of excellent quality and were classics. The ones for my friends were styles and brands I knew they liked, or ones I hoped would fit them well. Everything else went to donation.

When I was done, this is what it looked like:








The clear plastic bins are all I have left for myself. The two blue bins went to my friends.

The rest that went to donation filled my entire back section of my CR-V with overstuffed garbage bags. Twice.

• 19 blouses
• 23 button-downs
• 33 camisoles
• 27 long-sleeve knit tee's
• 52 short-sleeve knit tee's
• 53 long-sleeve sweaters
• 21 short-sleeve sweaters
• 15 pairs of jeans
• 5 pairs of pants
• 9 skirts
• 29 dresses
• 6 blazers
• 10 pairs shoes
• 9 purses/wallets
• 18 belts
• 6 outerwear coats
• everything else that I gave to my friends (uncounted)

Yeah. It was a lot. In my defense, I inherited some of it from Shopping Friend and my sister, and it does cover sizes 8-20, and it took me several years to purchase all of it, but still...I am glad I don't shop like that anymore. Being a size that is harder to find has its perks, I guess.

Once the big purge was over, I was ready to tackle the everyday closet. I had been keeping too many items in there that didn't quite fit anymore, or that I didn't want to admit was a shopping mistake. They were hogging up my ability to see what I really did have, so it was time for them to go.

When I was done, it was amazing. I sorted everything by type and then by color.



Hubby gave me the whole tall section of our closet (we had been sharing this part) so it went pants, skirts, dresses, and sweaters. (Boots and casual shoes are on the floor. The bins are clutches/small purses in one, and athletic shoes in the other.)


Sweaters by color. I did not realize how many purples and corals I had!



The second half of the closet. Hubby has the top part, I have the bottom. It goes on longer past the left edge of the photo.


Tops by color. I included even knit tees that I wear as under layers; stuffed in a drawer, I tend to forget they exist, and I end up buying more tops than I need (as evidenced by the 121 that I gave away!)


Jackets and blazers. I've been wearing more of them lately as I am attending more meetings at work.

I love it. LOVE IT.

Everything is on good wooden hangers (Forth & Towne again!), it all has room to breathe, and now I can see everything at once. This makes it 100% easier to figure out what to wear every day, and what hasn't been worn in a while. I can also see where my "wardrobe holes" are, and even more importantly, what I have too much of.

Angie at YouLookFab has written many times about maintaining control of your closet (the physical storage space) and your wardrobe (the clothes within it), the latest being a great blog post about asking what your wardrobe goals are. While I have no desire to establish a one-in, one-out system like she does, I can see now that for some item sets -- sweaters, for example -- if I buy any new ones I will have to get rid of some so they fit in the space. Truthfully, there are a good three or four sweaters already in there that I probably should have purged but that I decided to hang onto for one last chance for this fall/winter.

Therefore, I am going to steal a page from my blogger friend Lorena, and not only purge every month, but document what I got rid of, what I added, and why. I am always fascinated by her monthly edit posts and her monthly purchase posts. Now that I can see my own wardrobe, with everything lined up so nicely, it's obvious which items are on their last legs. It will be good discipline to go through them more often.

The Goodwill by my office is going to love me. :)