Kitchen Disaster: A Beginner's Cook book

I started cooking a lot a couple of months ago and I love it. I love trying out new recipes, making unhealthy foods healthier by switching out ingredients, figuring out how to use the odd new ingredients(fennel anyone?)  Sean and I are eating healthier(though we still take far too many trips to what Sean lovingly calls, "Old McDonald's Farm") and I am teaching him that food doesn't always come out of a box.

However, along the way there have been some missteps. Mostly due to the fact that I was unwillingly to follow a recipe until my late twenties and I rarely let my mom or dad teach me how to cook anything.  Here are some of the recipes and substitutions that did not work out:

AWESOME BEER,
AWFUL SHRIMP MARINADE

 Porter Boiled Shrimp - My friend's husband is a fisherman and at one of their parties his mom told me a nice recipe for shrimp. Boil it in beer until it turns pink and season it with old bay. I tried this twice before my disaster; 1) once with a nice citrus beer and once with a cheap pale ale.  The shrimp were wild caught US gulf prawns and they were amazing. The next time I got shrimp at the store, I came home to find that the only beer available was a mocha porter. You know, the dark, coffee-ish beer.  And that is what my concoction tasted like: shrimp boiled in coffee.

Boiled lettuce - I subscribe to a CSA, they bring me absolutely amazing in-season fruits and vegetables every week and I love almost every bite. The problem is that the greens spoil quickly. During the winter, I would take the Kale, Chard and Collard greens and boiled them in vinegar, wine, or broth. It was tasty and made the vegetables last longer. The thing about the above greens is that they are bitter, and continue to retain their texture after boiling.  I did not get that lettuce would not do the same thing. It was limp and the wine I boiled it in made it taste vinegary, but not in a good way. And according to my co-workers, boiled lettuce does not have a pleasing look or aroma. 

 Convenient Salmon Lunch - I usually do salmon well. I buy a fillet from the guy at the farmer's market. I brush it with olive oil and squirt a little lemon on top. I bake it until it is flaky and it tastes amazing. Then, I use the leftovers to make salmon caesar salad.  This particular salmon had three problems: 1) I bought it sight unseen from a large online grocery outlet, it said it was wild-caught sockeye, but who knows, 2) I waited to bake it until one day before the "freeze by" date and 3) I didn't bring it for lunch until three days after I baked it.  I guess I am lucky that my sense of smell is poor because I microwaved my salmon the same day that one of my co-workers cleaned all of the old food out from the fridge and my salmon was apparently ten times worse. Needless to say, I am not allowed to bring salmon to work anymore.

Oh.....and I also suggest that you do not freeze shrimp and then saute it directly from frozen.....ewww

To tan or not to Tan....doing Florida as a pale chick

So, I am caucasian and live in Seattle. As a consequence, my skin color is somewhere in between vampire and polar bear. When I get make-up, I do not even even need to pick a shade, I just get the lightest one available.  I have come to terms with being fair skinned and I am usually anti tanning booth(I am just not into the getting skin cancer to look a little less blindingly pale).

But a combination of conceit and a desire to not turn into a lobster has taken over as I prepare to go to the keys in Florida and experience this weird yellow ball that non-Seattlites call "The Sun".

First, the lobster. I remember this water park in Denver, called water world. Growing up, we would go there during the summer and play in the pools, slide down the slides and otherwise generally engage in water merriment. The day after the water park, without fail, I would be beet red. I would blister and and peel and be miserable for at least three days. It didn't matter if I forgot the sunscreen or used super spf 5000 magic sunscreen. Sun as a child ALWAYS was followed by painful red body parts and a giant bottle of aloe vera.

Next, the conceit.  I picture women on a beach in the Keys in the following way: All perfectly put together, wearing very small bikinis with not a pale girl or lobster in sight.  I am not super fond of going to the beach and blinding everyone with my radiant whiteness, or in the alternative, getting sympathy for the awful burn I achieve the first day of my visit.  The idea of going to a tanning booth to stave off the burn and create a little color before I go is so appealing......and a tan might make my surgery scar slightly less visible.

But then comes the downsides. I am not a girly girl. I care about how I look, but I also buy most of my make-up at the discount store and I get my hair cut at Rudy's Barbershop. I buy all of my clothes at one chain because I understand how to make the colors match(and not everyone believes that I have achieved color matching). I am afraid that the very act of walking into the tanning salon will ruin my reputation. I will have to start carrying around a purse because it was designed by a snotty person in Milan and I will have to buy my make-up at Nordstrom instead of Bartell Drugs.

Also, there is the problem of the health risks associated with tanning. All of the science-y health people keep saying that we need to protect our selves from the sun's UV rays, use good sunscreen, etc.....etc.... We need to limit our time in the sun and we need to wear hats and other gear that prevents sun related damage (like cancer, aging spots, etc....) And tanning is basically sitting in a bed of highly concentrated UV rays with no protective equipment.

And really, the health risks should make the decision a no brainer.....I should just make sure I get super expensive wonder sunscreen before I leave. I should apply it every hour and avoid too much sun....but it wouldn't be that bad to get a head start on the sun......

Weight Watchers wins my too much time on my hands competition....

As I indicated earlier, I have had a lot of time on my hands after my back surgery. So, I experimented with using a calorie tracker and weight watchers online system to track my food intake.  Weight watchers, despite the increased cost, wins.  Here are the top 11 reasons:

11) If a food item is not in the database, it is easier to enter it into Weight Watchers than a calorie counter. All you need are the carbs, fat, protein and fiber. You don't have to enter in the entire label, which is annoying and takes a long time.

10) Weight watchers has tons and tons and tons of awesome recipes on the site. You can enter in ingredients that you have in your pantry and the online software will actually find a kick ass recipe for you using your ingredients. This is good for me since I have decided that I finally need to start learning how to cook using recipes (Without recipes, I end up boiling shrimp in porters and boiling lettuce instead of collard greens, mmmmm........)

9) My sister, who lives in Ohio, is also on weight watchers, and we are doing a challenge together and can send each other messages and support on the site, which is cool. It is not cool that my sister lives in Ohio. She really should live in Seattle. But because, according to my friends, I am not allowed to force people to move to Seattle, we will have to do the online weight watchers support.

8) Weight watchers has this healthy checks function, which has you click a check box every time you drink a glass of water or eat a fruit or vegetable. It is a really good reminder that I do not ever drink enough water. I will note that some calorie counters have the clear liquid counting feature.

7) You cannot survive on weight watchers without eating tons of fruits and vegetables. Without fruits and vegetables, you end up eating around 1000-1200 calories a day, which sucks and would make me incredibly hungry. However,  you can eat as many fruits and vegetables as you want without penalty on the program. So, I figure, even if I were to gain weight with weight watchers, at least I would be eating a lot of healthy food while doing it.

6)  It is easier to get weight-losss benefits from exercise on weight watchers.  When I am in non-back injury mode and exercising several hours a week, I tend to eat at least enough calories to make-up for my work out and then some. Example: after a 1000 calorie run, I might have a 1200 calorie hamburger at red Robin with a beer as an after workout treat.  This plan of eating tons after I exercise does not relate to lots of weight loss. However, on weight watchers an activity point is worth far less than a food point. So,  if you trade activity points for food, you end up eating less than the amount you workout, making the workout a weight loss instead of a weight gain activity.

5) If you go over your point total for the week, your point deficit shows up in a nice bold red color. -5 points  remaining is what my online software says this week. This is good because it reminds me every time I look at it, that I cannot eat tons of food until my points reset for the week on sunday.

4) Even if you go over your points total for the week, everything starts fresh once a week on weight watchers. It is as if the krispy kreme donut spree(mmmmm donuts), the hamburger at red robin and the pounds of shrimp and salmon I ate last week disappeared into the ether. Every week, I get to try again and there is no penalty for being a dork the last week. Calorie counters just keep going and going and are constant reminders of my shortfalls.

3)  The weigh-in is very supportive. If you gain weight the computer provides a nice caring message about how things happen and how you will do better next week. If you lose weight, you get a really great message even if you only lose .1 pounds. And the fact is, that all of the weight I have lost over the last several years has stayed off mostly because I lost it in .1 pound increments. Better to lose slowly and stay thinner, than lose quickly and gain it all back.

2) There is a list of healthy food on the site and there are little green triangles next to super healthy foods and foods that will fill you up for very few calories.

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON WHY WEIGHT WATCHERS IS BEST IS:

1) Weekly points. Without any remorse, I can choose to have a day where I go out with friends, eat a bunch of fries and hamburger and have a couple of beers. I just enter in my wonderful guttony into the online calculator and it subtracts my unhealthy food choices from my weekly points. Now, I can't do that every night (but wouldn't it be cool if I could), but I can go to the awesome pig roast I was invited to next weekend without worrying about whether the pork and mojitos would go to my thighs.