A Blind Date With the Library

My surprise selections

Poem on package

For Valentine's Day, my library offered a 'blind date' program where you could enter your name in to participate and they would lend you a DVD and bestselling book of their choice as your 'blind date'.  What a great idea!  Valentine's Day we were snowed out so I got my selections this past Monday.  They were gift wrapped in bright red paper and tied up with white ribbon.  On top was a poem (see above) and a Dove chocolate heart candy.  Yum.  Anyway, my DVD was As Good As It Gets with Jack Nicholson and my book was The Song of Achilles.  I saw the movie in the past which is amazing if you haven't seen it.  The book I had heard of but didn't read.  I'm about 50 pages in and it's FANTASTIC!  So, the library did a great job and my 'blind date' was a success.  :-)

What I Baked On A Snow Day: Black & White Cookies

Look yummy, right?!  They tasted amazing...

Being from New York, I can't resist a black and white cookie, bagel, bialy, giant sprinkle cookie, good Italian food, and/or fruit tarts.  Part of the reason I'm thinking about food is because I'm still on my Weight Watchers diet so thinking about food can be entertaining.  Ha!

Anyway, during last week's massive snow dump I baked a dozen regular and poppy seed bagels from scratch and also three dozen black and white cookies from scratch (I made the icing from scratch too!).  In both cases, I used recipes from King Arthur flour's website and I highly recommend ALL of their recipes. 

You'll be proud of me. I gave away most of the cookies and some of the bagels as gifts so I didn't go completely off my diet.  The Valentine's Day candy is what did me in but we won't talk about that...

"Power Hour"

I was doing my grocery shopping yesterday and wasn't able to stand in the self-checkout line like I normally do because all of the lanes were full.  I stood in a regular cashier line and that led to my usual impulse buy: magazines.  I can't help myself.  So, I picked up three and one of them was Good Housekeeping.  I haven't read Good Housekeeping in over two decades but the blue cover looked good.  I am hooked!  Really good magazine although I am not sure if I am the target audience because there was a full-page ad for anal leakage pads.  For real.

I highly recommend that you read Good Housekeeping Magazine's March 2014 article about the "power hour" here.  The article's author, Gretchen Rubin, really nailed it.  Thank you, Gretchen!  Essentially, it talks about all the little tasks that add up over the months and slowly drive you insane and how if you dedicate one hour a week to getting these little things out of the way and accomplished that you'll feel so much better.  I gave it a try today and it was really successful.  Finally got rid of some clutter in my kitchen and living room and gave myself a foot scrub.  Oh, I'm so relieved!  Plus. the foot scrub smelled really good.  Mmmmm....

Okay, gotta run and watch Downton Abbey.

Happy Valentine's Day! (here's a song)

Happy Valentine's Day!  Hope you are enjoying it.  :-)   I sure am because I'm reveling in Snow Day # 2!!!! I cannot remember the last time I got to enjoy two snow days in a week.  It has to have been years and years...  My area of Southwestern Virginia received anywhere from 17"-21" of snow over the course of 24 hours.  This meant that the hubby and I had to shovel the driveway multiple times and a snow plow still hasn't visited our neighborhood even though it hasn't been snowing since yesterday afternoon.  Thank goodness for 4x4 pick-up trucks.

We ventured out to Red Robin for lunch at the mall and their food is very yummy.  We heard a really good song playing while we ate and the singer sounded like Tom Petty to me but we weren't sure.  Great song.  I Googled the lyrics and found out that it is Johnny Marr's "New Town Velocity".  Check the song's video out above - it's a really good song, in my opinion!

Well, off to try to be productive!

Plated

Saturday night's dinner ~ steak chimichurri

I was reading a blog that I like a couple of weeks ago and the blogger posted about how she tried a new food delivery serviced called Plated.  I had never heard of this company before so I checked out their website and thought, "Hey, this looks like a fun and cool idea!"  Essentially, you order two nights' worth of meals and Plated ships the ingredients to you via FedEx in a refrigerated box.  You assemble the ingredients to make a delicious dinner using their colorful instruction sheet.  It looked like fun and they were having a sale so I thought I'd give it a try!

Saturday night was steak chimichurri and it was DELICIOUS although my breathe was very garlic-y for a full 24 hours.  I had a blast cooking and the results were restaurant quality yummy.  I realized that I don't season as much as I could and it was fun to get an idea of what I could be doing to improve my own dishes when I was following their instructions so closely.  My husband helped out too and became a fan.

The box contained almost every ingredient we needed, including the meat.  I just had to supply the labor, olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper.  Easy. I added brown rice on the side for a carb.

Sunday night we had meal # 2 which was fish in parchment paper with baby carrots.  Really good but not as yummy but tasty enough that I'd definitely order it again. 

I'm giving Plated another try.  Two meals coming this weekend and two more in another week or so.  It's a fun adventure if you like to cook!

I Need a Cupcake

Viva la Cupcake's yummy gems ~ my wedding favors

Soooooooooo, I'm on a diet.  Doing the Weight Watchers thing seriously for a week and a half now because I put on some newlywed weight.  You know....15 pounds.  Ugh.  I'm not very proud of that and it's been driving me nuts every time I try to button my pants.  It's bad when you are sitting at your desk with your pants unbuttoned because you are so uncomfortable.  It's even worse when you get up from your desk, walk down the hall, and forget that your pants are unbuttoned.

I miss being able to eat certain foods like bran muffins (11 points!!) and fabulous cupcakes and cookies and Cook Out chocolate cherry milkshakes.  You can now see how I put on weight...  Before the diet, I purchased some special ingredients to make New York style bagels with (ex: malt syrup) and I keep toying with the idea of "should I still bake them or shouldn't I".  If I decide to go through with it because I feel like I have enough willpower I'll post a picture of my creations.  Yum.  Bagels with cream cheese!  Or loads of melted butter!  Or a bialy with butter!  Mmmmm....  Okay, back to the diet.