Losing a part of me

Category: Cooking

  • Day 1056

    I did pretty well yesterday, not cheating at all. I had my regular breakfast, then a buddy from the Lodge came over for a cup of coffee. When he left I hit the treadmill, and while I did complete five kilometres, I only jogged the first three of them, slowing my pace for the last two clicks to a brisk walk.

    After I got off the treadmill and showered I had a meal replacement shake, and then I took Her Floofness out for her walk. I was about 2,000 steps shy of my steps goal for the day, and a good walk with her would finish that off. The flaw in that plan was that it was raining, and Princess Sophie does not enjoy walking in the rain. Yes, she did her business… but I was not able to coax her more than a hundred feet from the door we walked out of. The neighbour who lives right there came home as I was ‘arguing’ with the pup, and welcomed us to come into the building through her apartment (rather than having to walk all the way to the front of the building in the rain). Okay, that issue was solved… but I was still short nearly 1,500 steps! Solution: I got back onto the treadmill for a short walk. It was not strenuous exercise, I was not pushing myself, and while I did get a little warm, I did not break a sweat. With a steps-goal of 11,010, I went to bed with 11,092 steps on the tracker. That increased today’s goal to… 11,030. Don’t hold me to it, but I think I might be able to make it.

    I have to go shopping today… and not for the usual provisions. I decided a couple of months ago that I was going to make homemade doggie treats for Chanukah, and I bought the cookie cutter shapes back in September. As I am planning on driving down to the USA later this week to mail some things to my wife, I am going to make them today so that I can ship some to her for Duchess. We also agreed that while Duchess and Sophie would devour them, I found a recipe without peanut butter so that I could give some to Charlie (our next door neighdog) as well. He is the only dog I have ever met who does not eat peanut butter. There’s always one weirdo in the group, right?

    Knowing that I have very little planned for today, I will probably extend my treadmill workout to six kilometres. I want to make sure I extend my streak (currently at 11 days), but I do not want to overdo it and find out that tomorrow’s steps goal would be 12,500. I am thinking strategically to give myself the best chance to beat my current streak record of sixteen days. For the record, this streak is only accounting for the time since I switched from Fitbit to Garmin, so probably five years now.

    I fell asleep without much trouble last night… and then at 3:15am I woke up and could not get back to it. I finally picked up my phone and spent an hour watching TikTok and doing whatever else until my eyes were exhausted, and I dozed off again. My sleep score was 70, which considering the hour-long interruption is not too bad. My body battery was up to 79… also pretty good. My weight was down nearly two pounds from yesterday and is now the lowest it has been in a week; it is still 2 lbs. higher than my best weight eight days ago, but that is what falling off the wagon will do. Fortunately, I am mostly back on the wagon. I will probably eat today… but I will do so smartly (both with regard to portion and choices.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 290

    I am in Facebook Jail. I have to stop telling idiots who instigate cops that they are idiots. Facebook, I’ll see you Friday!

    I finished up with the soup today… almost. I now have seven plastic containers in the fridge filled with Jewish Penicillin, and the kitchen has been completely cleaned. The only step left is to take the congealed fat (chicken schmaltz) off the top of each container before freezing them all. I will do that today. For the most part though, I stayed out of the kitchen.

    As has become my habit these last few weeks, I bought two challah rolls for the Shabbat blessing yesterday; following the blessings, I indulged in them with some peanut butter. I decided that would replace not one but at least two meal replacements. My food intake yesterday was a meal replacement shake in the morning, my regular lunch, a mid-afternoon meal replacement bar, and then around sundown I had the challah. Nothing after that, save for a nice cigar on the balcony. The result? This morning my weight was down .4lbs. I am not back into best-ever territory, but I am back below the ‘When Mitchell Met Leslie’ milestone.

    These last few days have been what we used to call Indian Summer, although I truly hope that term has fallen out of favour. It is not often that on November 4th I have been able to sit on the balcony in Canada wearing short sleeves and be comfortable. For my evening cigar (which accompanied another James Bond movie) I did put on a jacket, although I could have gotten away with a long-sleeved shirt. No matter, it was quite pleasant. Today’s forecast is more of the same, although there is a chance of rain later in the day. Tomorrow is forecast to be warm and sunny, and I have been invited to a herf in Georgetown. That should be fun, although I rather suspect someone will try to get me to eat. I will do my best to abstain, sticking to my program.

    I should be getting together with Eduardo later today for a cigar, and hopefully our friend Sam will join us. He has been rather difficult to pin down of late, but he has a lot of family obligations, and I do not blame him. It will be nice to see him though.

    So much for that. I just got off the phone with Eduardo, who is not feeling well today. He had a bad reaction from a vaccine yesterday (either flu or pneumonia) and is going to take it easy today. To see how easy I can shift, I am going to take Princess Sophie to Cambridge to hang out with Ryan and the gang. Knowing that, the goal is much more important: Do not snack! I have to be able to sit there and resist all of the temptations. To that end, I plan to:

    1. Go after I have had a satisfying lunch.
    2. Bring a couple of good cigars, that are tastier than the chazerei they always have sitting about.
    3. When Glen tries to tempt me, punch him in the face!
    4. Bring a couple of meal replacement bars, in case I do get hungry.

    Okay, Number 3 is exaggerated. I will simply thank him and decline. That might be easier. I have already ruined my relationship with Ryan’s sister (because of her boyfriend who thought it was funny to tell Hitler jokes about gassing Jews to me). I want to stay in the good graces of at least most of the family!

    I want to wake up tomorrow back under 305lbs. The only way I can do that is to stay on track, stay on course, and do not succumb to temptation. No problems, right? Sounds simple, right? Simple… but not easy.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 288

    An entire pound gained? That is just preposterous. I must protest! Okay, there is no protest and no appeals process. My weight is back above 305lbs… but not quite back above the best-since-meeting-Leslie weight.

    I took on a very ambitious endeavour last night. I made chicken soup… from scratch. It probably does not sound so ambitious for people who spend a lot of time in the kitchen; for someone who cooks every day, but almost always the same simple items… yeah, that’s ambitious. I started in an Asian market, where I bought the chickens. I also picked up some vegetables from different sources. My buddy Lyle told me how much to buy – and considering he gave me the pot, boy did he over-estimate that – and I came home, put everything into pots (I had to pull out a couple of extra ones), and started the process.

    I do not know how good the soup will be. I have made chicken soup before, but never from scratch. Also, I followed much more Jewish recipes, which did not involve an Asian market. Anyhow, the three pots simmered overnight, and will cool all day. This evening, I will remove all of the solids from the pots, at which point I will likely be able to consolidate into one pot.

    My plans for today got complicated when Lyle asked if I was still willing to drive him and Dorothy to the airport today. I am happy to do so, but that eats my afternoon… literally. He wants me to come over for lunch at noon, then after lunch enjoy a cigar with him. Around 3:30pm we will drive to the airport (they live in Hamilton, but they are flying out of Toronto Pearson), hoping to avoid traffic on the way there… and on my way back. I am happy to do the favour for my friends and know that the lunch they are going to make will be very tasty.

    What else is going on today? Nothing that I can think of. It is a foggy morning, but the forecast says it will start to clear up around noon. Hopefully, this evening will be a good night to sit on the balcony with a cigar. We’ll see about today… but the next four days are going to be nice, so it should be a good weekend to relax.

    I am still frustrated that my weight went up yesterday. I am no longer less than five pounds from dropping below the 300-pound mark. I hope to be able to do that before my weigh-in at the doctor’s office on Monday, but even if I do not, it is a goal to do that by the time Leslie

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 87

    I almost asked for a recount. I got onto the scale this morning and was a full two pounds over what I weighed yesterday morning. I am back above 350 lbs, and I am not happy about it. I will focus today to get back to where I was… focused.

    This morning’s weight gain was not a surprise. I went to see Lyle and Dorothy yesterday, and as I headed for home, I stopped to pick up a small container of milk. I was hungry, which is never the right time to walk into a convenience store. In fact, when you are dieting there is never a good time to walk into a store whose entire business model is to sell you fattening and unhealthy foods that are overpriced. I picked up an all-beef pepperoni, and a bag of peanuts (in addition to the 2% milk). By the time I got home half an hour later, all that was left was the milk, and the empty wrappers.

    I was not feeling particularly weak when I walked into the store. I was not sad or despondent. I was simply tempted by the myriad food choices that were all calling out to me.

    It was far too windy for a cigar yesterday evening, but I did have my holiday dinner. A piece of fish, a piece of chicken, a bowl of chicken soup. I should have cut one of those three out… but it was the holiday, and I defrosted what I defrosted, and that’s life.

    I am relieved that last night I finished the last of the expired meal-replacement shakes. Some of them tasted better than others, but they were the old formula, and the new ones taste so much better. I am enjoying my first new one in several weeks. Aside from better flavour, they are also creamier and smoother. I am definitely glad that the old ones are done, and if another lot of them comes up for sale I will be passing on them.

    Today I am going to do my best to get back on track. In a little while, HRF Princess Sophie and I will head out to see my friends Jacqueline and Matt, and their puppy Charley. We will not be out too late – I plan to hit the road to come home around 4:00pm. I do have to do some shopping today, but I will likely drop Sophie at home first, and then head out anew. While she does not really mind it, I do not like leaving her alone in the car while I go into the store. I need to pick up chicken and fish, some veggies, and of course my distilled water. I cannot think of anything else that I will need.

    Leslie’s plane is landing at Pearson International Airport in twenty-three days and twelve hours… if anyone is wondering how badly I miss her. We speak for hours every day, but it is not the same. Yes, it is true… the fact that she will be here in just over twenty-three days means that in just over twenty-four days we will be in Cuba, and I am excited about that… but I am much more excited to see my girl.

    It is a beautiful day outside today. Last night’s rain seems to have washed away the dirt, and there is nowhere near the kind of gusting winds we had yesterday. I strongly suspect that there might be a cigar in my future.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 34

    I am going to the doctor’s office to get weighed today. I do not think that it will be a successful attempt, as I still think my weight is over the upper limit of the scale. However, knowing that my bathroom floor will not allow me to take an accurate reading (and that it might be up or down fifteen pounds!) I decided to go anyways and see.

    My evening class is going well, and with the exception of IPv6 I am extremely comfortable with the material I am teaching now. DHCP and DNS are two topics that I have been lecturing on for over fifteen years, and frankly the changes to them over the years have been minor.

    I was mostly good on the program yesterday… I had a salad with canned salmon for lunch, but for the evening meal I bought and prepared salmon tails for Leslie and I (as well as making a large salad). I put them into the air fryer with lemon juice, a little salt, pepper, oregano, and dill. I air-fried them at 400°F for 11 minutes and plated them alone (opting to serve the salad in separate bowls. I brought the lemon juice to the table to allow for extra flavours, and the result was fabulous. I daresay, I seldom choose to prepare fish for dinner, but it really is an easy dish to prepare. The only cheat that I had yesterday was a slice of all-beef salami.

    For this evening Leslie is marinating chicken, and I know that if she is making it then I will love it. She is a really good cook. She asked me last night over dinner where I had learned to cook, and I gave her a bit of a rundown… yes, the genesis was in my mother’s house, but I cooked for myself ever since the Army, and on several occasions have even cooked for others. My repertoire is not too extensive, but I have a base that I can go to pretty easily. She told me that she asked because her ex was none too handy in the kitchen, and she does not want her son to get to the age of thirty without knowing how to make a sandwich. I told her about my grandfather, who after my grandmother went into the home would eat cans of anchovies for dinner because he did not know how to make anything else. I told her about my father, who I was certain would never leave my mother because he did not know how to make toast. I told her that I do not want to be that guy, and that I want to be able to eat well without having to eat out or order in every meal. I may not be able to make a lot of things, and what I do make is not complicated… but everything tastes good, and there is enough that I could make a different meal for every day of the week if I had to.

    —

    I am back from the doctor, and I am still several pounds above what their primary scale can measure… but they have a secondary scale that measured me at about what my bathroom scale has me at, if we take into account the weight of my clothes. I am unhappy to be this heavy, and I am certainly unhappy with the slower rate of progress (over my two previous attempts at this program); with that said, it is firstly possible that because of the floor/scale issues at the apartment I started out heavier that I recorded, and secondly, I need to remember that I have not been as religious with the program as I was the first two times. I might have already lost 40 lbs, who knows?

    I have a few hours to kill before I teach this evening, and I am going to spend most of that time on the balcony smoking cigars. Have a great day folks!