Feb 4th POD – Curried ChickPeas with Cashews Mixed with Brown Rice

This recipe comes from the Flat Belly Cookbook. Fabulous recipes in there – haven’t found one yet that I haven’t liked.

This dish is a particular favourite of mine. It makes my far-from-flat belly very happy when I eat it. Like another chickpea dish I just love – chickpeas with sauteed spinach, tomatoes, onions and lemon zest, over rice. Yum Yum.

I haven’t gone vegan or even vegetarian. But I do love to add these dishes to my repertoire. I think I am following what is called a “flexitarian” diet. Doesn’t matter what you call me, you can call my tummy happy with this way of eating.

JD and I are really ramping up the wedding planning. We are meeting the wedding coordinator and a photographer tomorrow night. And I have been emailing the City to see if we can arrange to be married out of doors at the Village Park, down by the river. Backup plan (in case of foul weather) is to see if we can book a little country chapel (where my sis got hitched) 10 minutes away, or barring that, get married at the Village Hotel.

Note to self: ask WC about officiants tomorrow night!

I am continuing to make progress towards my 2010 goals a whole seven (count em, seven) days into the New Year. Yay me!
Not only am I trying to organize home, but also my home away from home (aka my office). What you see in the photo is a recycling bag full of old supplier catalogues. And I do mean FULL. As in, I have to split this into at least 2 more bags to get them to the curb without splitting open.

I’ve also gone through the filing cabinet in the background and come up with two Bankers boxes full of old files to store away (I still need them, just not on a daily basis) and another box of paper to shred. Amazing what can accumulate in just under 5 years!

Today I also called the Wedding Coordinator (WC) at the Village Hotel and she has tentatively booked our wedding date for us. Hoorah for that! If she had told me that our date was not available I don’t know what I would have done as I hadn’t been thinking about a Plan B. Now to peruse the wedding planning package she sent us and get some details down!

I feel really good about this venue. The food there is excellent and the customer service is pretty amazing. (We have a pool/fitness membership there and thus have had many interactions with the staff ). Also the WC, Tracey, seems quite warm and friendly.

Very different from the WC we met at The Highly Regarded Country Inn we had initally considered. The HRCI is in an idyllic setting about an hour from the Village – a real stunner of an old mill converted into a first class country getaway. I would have so loved to bring all of our guests there to enjoy the scenery and the wonderful food and lodging HOWEVER the WC left a bad impression on us. She was so disinterested and cold to us, that we left the HRCI with a real sense of foreboding about having to work closely with her for such an important event. Strange to have someone with that type of personality in that role, but I suppose the HRCI is renowned enough that people will book, regardless.

Anyway, JD suggested staying closer to home after this experience, to make things easier on our aging family members, and thus the theme of Wedding in the Village was born!

After a completely crazy December at work and a food free-for-all at Christmas, I am more than ready to get back to some semblance of routine and healthy living. This will be my year – I can feel it like I haven’t before.

I’ve made some simple resolutions (simpler = easier to remember and focus on, in my books) and so far, so very good.

They are:

Everyday I will:

– move my body in concentrated exercise (minimum time = 10 minutes)
– clean/organize something (minimum time = 15 minutes)
– take at least one photo of something that interests me that day. I will be posting these to the blog (probably not daily, but as close as I can get to that).
So far, so good.

Jan 1 photo, see above. New year, same old dog – desperately in need of a good grooming, I may add. Jan 1 cleaning/organizing task: creating an enclosure for Mizz L outside, so she doesn’t wander onto the street anymore. JD’s idea, and a great one. A little chicken wire, some stakes…eh voila…the terror of T Street is now confined to our side yard. Thankfully she is not a jumper nor terribly scheming…at least not yet. Jan 1st workout: brisk walk back and forth to our rental property and shoveling the sidewalks and 2 parking lots there.

It’s the third day of 2010 and I am following these resolutions and am looking forward to getting fitter and getting more organized. Last night my fifteen minutes of cleaning/organizing turned into an hour as I went through a large shoebox (from a pair of boots actually) full of hotel toiletries and sorted them into Ziploc bags for easy grab n’ go to fill up my gym bag or travel bag.
I went from this (Jan 2 photos):
To this:

To this:

Then I emptied out a junk drawer in my bedroom so I could store my nicely sorted travel goodies. I love traveling and going to the gym, so making a defined space for all those essentials is like making room in my life for more fun traveling and gym time. Getting organized/making room in my house is symbolic and hopefully synergistic with making room in my life for the things I want to do. Relieving me of physical and psychic clutter, I believe. Day 2 exercise: walking, walking, walking.

Today I am going to make myself a Green Monster smoothie and take a pic of that. I first heard of green monsters when I visited this website: Oh She Glows – the blog of an organic vegan baker I found through Spark People (see below for link). Her photos of the food she makes are so yummy looking I am seriously considering trying to incorporate more vegetarian or even vegan days into my diet.

My exercise today was Day 1 of the Spark People Bootcamp I signed up for. Daily 10 minute workout videos emailed to me for every day this month. Plus I am supposed to do 5 cardio sessions on my own. That should jump-start me!

Today, for organizing, I am planning on tidying up the Christmas wrap etc., which is still scattered about the upstairs.

Things I am grateful for today: A warm house!!! Bengal Spice tea by Celestial Seasonings. JD, for persevering through my stubbornness and baggage and wanting to marry me anyway.

Oh. My. Goddess. The Wedding! This month we must actually start booking things….it will be September 3rd before we know it. Monday morning I will call the wedding coordinator at the village hotel and get things moving in the right direction. Dress shopping is also on my agenda for this month. Wish me luck!

I managed to get thru the 4 day anti-bloat jumpstart and I’d better not EVER do that again!

Wow – was it tough! I can’t believe I used to eat a 1200 cal/day diet when on Weight Watchers many years ago. No wonder it messed me up and made me totally preoccupied with food. 1200 cal is not enough to get a person thru the day without hunger, headache, light-headedness. I felt weak most of the time too.

This experience made me think about all those people on the planet who just don’t get enough to eat on a daily basis, involuntarily. I promise to never let an opportunity to donate to the local food bank slip by me.

Anywho….. Day 3 was tough and Day 4 was super tough. It didn’t help that we were having a major crisis at work and I ended up putting in a 13 hour day on Day 4 (yesterday). I didn’t have any food left to eat and my staff person needed supper too so she suggested pizza. I ordered that sucker in and had 3 small pieces and thus regained some kind of sanity and stamina.

This probably affected my stats somewhat at the end of the jumpstart, but here they are and I am pleased nonetheless:

Weight – lost 1.4 lbs.
Waist – down 1″
Lower Abdomen – down 2″

Interesting how I lost so many inches in just 4 days, in my belly region. I can see it too. Yay! I didn’t take any other measurements though. Perhaps I should have?

Not bad for 4 days work, but not worth doing again, ever. It was an interesting experiment and I am glad I tried it. I learned I DO have the discipline required to alter my diet in order to lose weight. Today I am on the full Flat Belly Diet and loving it so far.

My plan is to start wedding dress shopping in the New Year with a New Bod. Oh yeah.

A dear friend gifted me with this lovely book, by Amy Nebens.

Last night I took a really good look at it and have pronounced it fabulous and my new bible. As per the title, it is FULL of lists. And those lists will guide me (I want to write us, but I know who is going to be doing the bulk of this. JD’s schedule is so hectic I’ll be happy if he shows up to the nuptials on time!) as to what we (pretty much me, see above) want this wedding to be. As I read through the lists I am coming across things I hadn’t yet considered and want/need to…like music, vows, receiving line!

In addition to checklists (and tons of ideas and advice (e.g. Bridal salons require appointments. Who knew?), the book has pockets for clippings and a plastic page to insert business cards into. And a handy elastic ribbon to hold the whole thing shut once it becomes crammed with the above. Neat!

Mizz Nebens used to work for Martha Stewart Weddings. Is this a magazine or a book? Sigh. I have so much to learn about getting married!