Turkey in November

Last Sunday, we had some friends over for delayed (for us) Thanksgiving-ish supper and a viewing of "A Dog Named Christmas" on CBS, which was a made-for-TV feature that both Trevor and I worked on in July. I had never actually made a turkey by myself and I had to email my Mom for our family stuffing recipe, so it was a challenge.

Here is the turkey, just finishing defrosting. Who knew that a 5lb turkey would take so long to defrost?

The stuffing. I had a heck of a time cutting up the onions, my eyes watered so bad. Cutting them under water does nothing for me, so I'm not sure what else to do. Therefore, we had chunky onions in our stuffing.

I made mini blueberry pies for dessert the night before. Trevor and I ended up eating half of them that night. The pie crust recipe came from my favourite baking website Bakerella.

Uncooked.

Cooked!

The best part of the leftover turkey was the turkey pot pie that I made the next afternoon. I didn't get a picture of the finished product (2x in the freezer) because I was covered in flour, but here is the one picture I took before I starting making the dough (same recipe as the mini pie crusts).

I heart turkey pot pie!

This Sunday, I'll be heading to my parents' house, where there are more ingredients and more people to test my recipes on. I'm taking my new camera, so hopefully I'll remember to take pictures.

I'm in a mood to make cupcakes, especially marble cupcakes from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. I own the Cookies! book, and don't have the cupcakes one, but that's the beauty of the internet!

Eating Healthy is Hard

Now that we're back home from living in a hotel in Saskatoon for 7 weeks, I've been cooking up a storm. Risotto, shepard's pie, meatloaf, chicken pot-stickers, homemade shake-n-bake chicken, cornbread muffins; that is just a few of the supper items I've cooked up since we arrived home last Thursday. Nothing is better than a home-cooked meal, especially after eating in hotel rooms and restaurants for so long, its nice to not have to pay and tip someone for the service of serving my meal.

The only struggle I'm currently facing is getting back onto the path of eating healthy. In my hotel room, I never thought twice of going to the 12th floor vending machine to eat something, simpily because that was all we had. Now that I'm back home, it's taking every ounce of my willpower to not walk down to the Macs and pick up a chocolate bar or a crunchy little orang bag of Cheezies (mmm). I pretty much do this everytime I work on a show, start out good, get stressed, stop exercising, destroy all good eating habits, finish work miserable and fatter, usually between 5-10 pounds heavier. The other crappy thing is that I'm finishing work so close to December, that not long from now, I'll be heading home where delicious family cooking awaits me and my Grandma, who strongly believes that a day with no baking is a day wasted.

So for the last few days, I've been trying to get an early jump on the eating healthy bandwagon. I stopped eating what I call "sugar-crap," meaning all forms of junkfood, including cookies, chocolate, and alcoholic beverages. I've been limiting my carb intake (I heart bread, which is unforunate) and upping my fruit, veggie, protein and fiber intake. I even bought some recommended low-calorie/low-sugar protein powder so that my am fruit smoothies are more filling.

Here is how the progresion of my first three days have gone:

Day 1 (Monday): Had egg-white/spinach omlet and whole-wheat toast breakfast. Thought that I could conquer the world. Played EA Active on Wii for 35 minutes. Ate very well throughout the day because, let's face it, first days are much easier.

Day 2 (Tuesday): Had protein powder smoothie with bananas, yogurt and raspeberries. Felt very full for the next 6 hours. Couldn't really exercise because I overdid it the day before. Lifted my hand weights for most of the day and did some Christmas shopping (aka cardio walking). Ate very well. Went for a job around Cathedral area. Watched Biggest Loser on TV, got no inspiration for rest of night. Body hurt like hell, empty stomach grumbled all freakin' night.

Day 3 (Wednesday): Had another protein poweder smoothie with same things as day before. Had to eat a bowl of cereal with it as it wasn't a big enough breakfast (weird). Ate awesome lunch. Lifted hand weights for most of the day, exercise ball and went for a walk as well. Fell off the wagon and ate a bunch of mini chocolate bars that I found in the freezer. Went downhill from there.

There you have it, it only took me 3 days to ruin my healthy eating habits. I really want to continue eating better because I know for a fact that when I get home for Christmas in 3 weeks, I'm totally going to lose it and eat everything in sight. I'm just hoping that since my parents have a treadmill that I can counter this future bad habit with some exercise.

Favourites

Since I'm a daily internet browser, I've come across my fair share of internet sites. My new favourites are ones that are generally making fun of people. Now these people didn't and probably still don't deserve it, but its usually still hilarious to go to these sites to laugh. I'd like to think of it more as a freak-show syndrome, where no matter what you just can't look away. Or in my case, visit enough.

1. Not Always Right - Their name derives from the classic slogan that apparently "the customer is always right." Anyone whose had to deal with a public-relating type of slave labor will disagree, which is generally 99% of the population. This site makes fun of the not-so rare moments where a customer is clearly in the wrong, but just won't admit it. Viewers submit their horror stories in a script/play he-said, she-said sort of format, which makes for a quick read and satisfying story. What's also nice is that you can view stories based on type of jobs, such as "bookstore," "retail," and the oh-so-classic "grocery-store clerk." On a good day, there's usually 5-6 new ones posted and I'll admit, Trevor and I have gone through and read every single story.

2. TFLN (Texts From Last Night) - This is a popular one, as whenever I get into a discussion about awesome internet sites, no matter what group of friends I am in, someone is always a big fan. It's supposed to be real texts that people have sent to each other, usually from some sort of intoxicated fashion, but on many I do have a hard time believing the far-fetchedness of the stories some of the texts seem to tell. My favourite part of the website is how it can be divided into two sections - best nights and worst nights. I tend to enjoy reading the worst nights first and then making myself feel less gross by reading the best nights (although I've noticed that new ones tend to overlap). You can also check where your province/state stands in terms of texts posted based on the area-code, which is an interesting feature.

3. Cake Wrecks - Since I love baking, I tend to randomly find websites dedicating to the making of food art. Enter Cake Wrecks. I've noticed that I'm especially a sucker for websites that include more pictures than text, so I can scroll through things faster and get to the point rather than reading through mindless paragraphs (kind of like this....) . This website indulges me in the terrible art of what some people think are professionally designed cakes. I'm no better decorator, but all of these cakes are ugly. My favourite sections are include mis-spelled cakes (or ones with "will call right back" written on them - maybe its because I once worked in a bakery?) and some wedding cakes that didn't turn out in any way that they looked in the magazine.

4. This Is Why You're Fat - This is my newest favourite website. Basically, its exactly what the name says, posting pictures of the most terrible, fattening, disgusting, heart-attack-ridden food on the planet. A lot of it does seem like a joke, where people clearly got bored and decided to make something nasty in their kitchen. But then there are pictures of people eating the food, and its the worst thing ever!! (Also, some of those meals exist - I've googled the recipes!) As nasty as it is, again, its the freak-show factor that comes into play. I just wish that they could update more often rather than just one picture every 1-2 days.

5. People of Walmart - Again, freak-show factor. I've been to Walmart a hundred times. I've even gone in my pjs once, but I have never, ever looked like some of these people. It's almost inspired me to hang out at Walmart and see if I can photograph people who clearly can't dress themselves.

6. FAIL Blog - Here is another that I'm sure most people have heard of. When I'm having a bad day, what mostly puts a smile on my face is watching videos and seeing images of people clearly having a worse one. Or the stupidity of people in general.

There are many other websites I check out, Post Secret is one (although he only updates on Sunday) and the various celebrity slam-sites. But I will find more websites. There's a whole internet out there for me to discover!

It's such a funny sensation to be, so happy that you wanna die

The title comes from my favourite artist this year, Marit Larsen, who oddly enough I discovered by going back to Ontario this summer, bringing home a ton of my high school crap and then putting my M2M cd in my player.

That's right, M2M! Everyone's heard of the bubbly Norway pop-duo M2M, mostly of the fact that they were constantly played on Saturday's YTV's Hit List (yes, I WAS cool....) and for the completely unknown reason that their first single was on the first Pokemon Movie soundtrack (sense a coolness trend with me here?)



So yeah, M2M broke up not too long after they become famous (they apparently put out a second album that no one heard of) and the two went their separate way. While listening to the CD, I then remembered the power of the internet and decided to look up what ever happened to these too.

The brunette, Marion Raven, I guess become a Avril Lavigne knockoff, or at least tried to be. She was offered a pretty hefty record contract the second the duo broke up, but this didn't seem to last long, as they dropped her not long after her first CD came out. The rest of her wikipedia page wasn't that interesting, but I guess she's still doing music. Oh, and she did a duet with Meatloaf. Still, whatever.

The blonde one, Marit Larsen, got nothing. No contract, no love. She disappeared for a while, but now she's got two CDs out and I have to admit it, I love them. She went the complete other direction of music, with a more pop-folksy feeling. It's very soothing, one of my more favourite things to listen to at work, besides the music from Glee.

The only crappy thing is that besides listening to her myspace page and countless youtube videos, I can't find her CDs anywhere! Even Zeus failed me, when they told me that she didn't exist. I found them on Amazon.ca for an almost seemingly crazy price of $27.99 each, which works out to be over two-bucks a song. I hate to say it, but its not worth almost sixty-bucks when I could just listen to the songs on youtube/myspace.

Yes, I love her work, but it's just not worth it right now. All I need to do is wait for iTunes to start bringing in more international artists songs and then I will purchase them. Until then, I'll just play them on youtube for a while longer.

PS: I was just re-reading old entries and this one was funny to look back on, especially the last paragraph. I wasn't serious when I wrote it, but sometimes I just don't like being right.

I want to go to there...

....the kitchen that is! Yes, I'm still in my dreaded hotel room, 2 1/2 hours from my apartment where awaits me is a stocked kitchen with my mixer and bowl sets and chocolates that are awaiting to be melted and made into awesome cake pops.

Like this:


And this!


OMIGOD CUPCAKES!!!!!


I would sacrifice a small kitten to finish this job quicker and get home so I can start baking again. And get off our sad diet of Captain Crunch, fruit smoothies and office oranges.

Sorry kitty, but my kitchen calls for me

By the way, orgasmic food pictures are courtesy of Bakerella.com, my new favourite recipe and food blog. Follow her website if you would like to see more pictures and even recipes to these awesome looking desserts!