Adjusted Reality

So sometimes, you just have to order out.  And what’s better than a gigantic burrito?  Zliten, myself, and Mr. P were hanging around being couch potatoes on a Saturday and ordered up food to last us the rest of the day from Freebirds.  Essentially, it’s a local Chipotle-type place where you can customize your burrito to your whims.  You can actually make a great burrito there for right around 500 calories, and if you can finish it in one sitting, you’re more man than I.  Which isn’t hard.  Unless we’re talking pushups or running.  At burrito eating, I am pretty much a wuss.

So I, at the coercing of my peers, got not my usual half bird, but a full bird.  They decided to go with the monster.  There is a super monster burrito, but I think it’s the kind of thing you might put on a tray and serve at a party, or offer to an attacking tiger, not something fit for consumption by one human at one meal.  When bringing home the bag, I think it was about 10 lbs, it felt like a bowling ball.  It could have seriously injured someone if thrown properly.  Here is documented evidence of burrito party ’08.

Mine is somehow longer, but way skinnier.

The boys breaking into heaven…

See, no joke, the size of his HEAD.

Pretty much, after this, I had to drop the camera and eat my own.  It took me all through lunch and dinner, and I finally gave up on the last third of it and put the contents over a salad, which actually may have even been better, if possible.

My poison consisted of a cayenne tortilla, chicken breast, black beans, a half scoop of rice, fajita veggies, corn salsa, garlic, onions, pico, tomatoes, lettuce, and hot sauce.  Om.  Nom.  Nom.  This place wins over chipotle because they list all their nutritional info on their website, and it is possible to create a healthy and lo cal burrito.  Though, I really wish they’d do barbacoa, which is pretty much the best burrito filling ever.

One warning: never eat this burrito before running.  I’ve done it twice, and almost PUKED both times from burping up garlic and hot sauce.  Do not try this at home, or especially in your gym.

I am pretty much a cam-whore these days.  No, not in the get-on-the-webcam-for-extra-money way, but I like being in pictures.  I figure it’s excusable, because I have quite a few years of hating pictures of myself for which to compensate.  However, I’m only sometimes-photogenic and have to take a lot of pictures to get some good ones.  Getting good ones of me and Zliten is like a miracle – either he looks fantastic and I am sporting chins I didn’t know I had and half closed eyes, or he’ll look like he’s about to attack someone while I have the most darling smile that could melt an iceberg.  Since I’m having a week of sort of “outtakes”, or posts I sort of let rot at the bottom of the draft bin, I figured I might as well make fun of myself here.

Last week I thought I looked pretty cute in my new spiffy red shirt and lipstick, so I tried to get a good picture of myself.  Here is probably what I would pick out of the bunch:

But the reality of night is I probably looked more like THIS gem:

Oy, mama would be proud.

Then over the summer, this pic was snapped, which is actually one of my favorites of all time and is my facebook profile pic:

And then, the same night, this wonder was snapped:

I am totally never going to be president.  Of anything.

I guess the moral of this story is no one is completely un-photogenic, you just need a lot of practice to figure out how to make the most of what you’ve got in pictures. The best way to practice is to take lots of pictures, you’ll look good in some of them, and you have a much better chance of figuring it out if you’re snap happy.  Usually the best ones happen when you’re not really trying or paying attention.  Or maybe the moral of this story is to hide the camera when you’re drinking.  Whatever the moral is, have a good chuckle, on me.

This is not the healthiest fare, but when served with a big ol’ salad with low cal dressing, it makes a hearty and yummy part of a balanced meal.   I do want to note, in the interest of full disclosure, Zliten made this all.  I pretty much took pictures.  All you veggies out there, I suppose you could make this sans ground beef, but you might be better off getting some of those soy crumbles that are supposed to be ground beef-like.  However, being omnivorous myself, I haven’t tried it.

Start by browning the thawed ground beef.  We use 96/4 (the leanest stuff you can get) so you pretty much don’t have to drain it.   If you get anything less lean, drain it before you continue.  Then, add 2 small cans of tomato sauce and about 2-3 cups of frozen mixed veggies.  Previously, we used a can of corn, can of carrots, and can of green beans, until we realized that our frozen costco veggies took care of that need and added yummy peas.  Extra credit: you can also add garlic, onions, and rooster sauce at this stage for extra spicing.

This is what you should be looking like now.  In another pot, make your potatoes.  Normally, we go the lazy way and get a package of instant taters, but a friend had just brought over his perishables since he was leaving on a 3 week trip, so we had a bunch of potatoes staring at us with their ever-growing eyes.  Five little ones became this:

Quix’s perfect mashed potatoes – cut up potatoes as desired and throw into water.  Leave the skins on, as mom said, they have all the nutrients (and I think they taste better).  Extra credit: throw in garlic and onions.  Pretty much anything besides cookies are going to have that extra credit direction – btw.  Leave an itty bit of water in and mash ’em up.  Add about a tbsp of low fat ranch and a tsp of light margarine, a handful of blue cheese, dill, rosemary, fresh ground pepper, and stir.  These, however, weren’t made by me, which was fine, they tasted great.  Just don’t know exactly what went into them.  For this dish, you can skip all the flavorings above and just do taters and lube (butter, ranch, or both) because the bottom is so flavorful.

Next, pour your meaty concoction in something you can throw in the oven.  Spread the tater goodness on top of it.

Now, the important part, the cheese.  Sprinkle a thin layer over the top.  Cheddar is the best, but we had Italian blend, anything is ok.  Just keep in mind, fat free cheese sucks at melting well, so you might not use that.  I guess you could skip the cheese, but I don’t suggest it.

Throw it in the oven for about 25 minutes on 350.  Go do something else for a while.  I suggest sometime during this time make yourself a salad to go with it or you’ll want to eat the whole pan of it.  Because shortly, you’re going to pop it out of the over, and it will look like this:

Hey there, beautiful.  My name’s Quix.  Wanna come to my plate for dinner tonight?  Just you, me, and salad.  Om… nom.. nom…

Oooh.  Sorry.  Got caught up there a moment.  So the calorie breakdown on this bad boy is approximately 400 calories per quarter section (which is a good size serving with some sort of side dish, I highly suggest a salad with but I can’t control your whims), and should feed 4 normal humans (somewhere between birdlike eaters and garbage disposals).  Time invested is about 30 mins prep, plus about 30 mins wait/cooling.  Feel free to liberally douse with more rooster sauce if you’re spicy like us.  Enjoy, and thank me later!

Since it’s Christmas Eve and I’m probably the only sucker at work (besides the few suckers still sitting here with me).  I am pretty much counting the unidentifiable minutes until they send us all home early *crosses fingers*.  I think any deep, meaningful thoughts I might have on the brain are being eaten by the bouncing up and down in my seat listening to my crappy pop pandora station and waiting for the moment I tear open the new DDR disc and start playing.  Yeah, we open presents on Christmas Eve in this house.  Makes up for my parents making me wait UNTIL AFTER CHRISTMAS DINNER when I was little.  I’m pushing 30 here and am still not over that.  Parents, don’t do it.

Anywhooo, here is how we celebrate the day before the day before Christmas in the Quix-Zliten household…

I got crazy and painted my nails.

My toes are all that green color, but I couldn’t resist doing at least ONE nail on each hand too.  Also, because it will unnerve my mother all day tomorrow and make her more susceptible to losing at games.  Oh yeah, we’re competitive in this family.    Tangent- an effect of weight loss I did not expect initially – my fingers went from sausages to not-so-sausage-like.  Here was a picture from the day I got the ring:

My ring was a 9 1/2.  I am now wearing a 6 1/4 and it’s almost a little loose again.  And this was actually the BEST picture of my fingers, I remember rejecting the ones where I laid the ring out flat because they looked even more sausage-like.  Interesting observation.

Anyways, my dearest Zliten baker-man made cookies.  Lots of cookies.

These are all for the neighbors – but we still have some of the dough in the refrigerator for baking of individual servings of fresh hot cookie goodness.  Or Quix walking by, throwing caution to the wind, and munching on the dough.  Salmonella be damned.  Just don’t tell Zliten or he’ll yell at me.

Last night about 4pm, when I was still at work, he had chinese food syndrome – ya know, being hungry a few hours after eating.  I told him to eat a snack, which he did, and headed to the gym.  I got im messages while the arc trainer was beating him up saying how HUNGRY he was (he uses his phone as an mp3 player).  Then, he went home and I went to the gym and was incommunicado (I leave my phone in the locker or it would probably be broken by now).  Apparently he baked over 6 dozen cookies, still feeling just as hungry hungry, and only ate one little one.

I come home and we start talking about what’s for dinner, and he has this gleam in his eye. Something like this:

I recognize this gleam, it’s sort of like our carnivorous lizard when he has a taste for man flesh.  If he could have grown a tail right then, I would have been tailwhipped when I talked about maybe starting to thaw some fish.  Instead, I did the quickest change out of my sweaties ever and we headed to the soup and salad bar before my arm looked like a viable option for dinner.  Soon, he looked more like this:

And that, dear friends, is our day before day before Christmas tale.  Happy Holidays, yet again, and make sure to feed your families and pets appropriately so they don’t start looking for body parts!

Well, I was going to post on New Years Resolutions today, but it appears that I have more thinking to do.  When I read over a resolution and don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say myself, I do believe I need to make some revisions.  Goals don’t work so well when you don’t have a specific course of action to take to achieve them – like in 2006, when I said I wanted to lose weight, it totally didn’t happen.  In 2007 when I decided I was going to count calories and work out at least 3 days a week to hopefully “de-porkify” (my own words from 2 years ago, good to know I had a sense of humor about it then too!!!), it totally did.  So back to the drawing board with those, and I’ll post some Tuesday randomness instead.

1.  You ever just have one of those workout days where your body just feels like it “leveled up”?  Like all of a sudden, what you were doing before is too easy and you have to go harder?  I had that yesterday.  All last week I’d actually had trouble completing my intervals so I took it a little easier, and weights just seemed heavy.  I had a full rest day Sunday, I barely left the couch!  Yesterday, I actually upped the recovery speed and went back to the same all-out speeds I was pushing myself to do the week before and didn’t feel like I was going to die.  Then, I upped about half of my weights/reps during strength.  It felt really good!

2.  I seem to be slightly stuck around 163-164 the last two weeks.  It might have something to do with cookies and candy replaced my breakfast foods half the mornings.  I know its my fault for eating them, and I’ve definitely been moderating (I threw half the delicious cookie away today), but still – homemade goods are my weakness.  And anyway – why does every holiday have to revolve around sweets or fattening food?  First we have Valentines Day (chocolate and Guilt), then Easter (marshmallow and Lamb Cakes), then Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day (fatty meat and mayonnaise-y salads, plus BEERBEERBEER), then the End of the Year Trifecta which is Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  Then, of course, there’s NYE and St Patties, which are binge drinking days (I mean, what holiday isn’t, but these especially).  I propose squeezing a few holidays in there we celebrate by gathering around a plate of veggies and lo-fat dip.  Like, official “eat-like-a-rabbit” day.  How about one where we eat grilled fish, brown rice, and veggies and go running?  Who’s with me?

3.  It’s a little sad to see a lot of people so frantic around the holidays (to the point where they drive and act rude) – but it makes me so happy we keep it low key.  It’s just my parents, Zliten and I having stouffers lasagna, playing games, and drinking some wine.  Though it looks like a different sort of fun, I’m glad we’ve never had huge family Christmases.  Helps that half the family is Jewish!

4.  Even after the great Grinching of 08 at work where they took away our Holiday break, I’ve accumulated enough time off I had to use by the end of the year, so I’m here until they shoo us away tomorrow, have Christmas off, have to come in a half day on the 26th, and then I’m off until Jan 2 (where I come in for one day and head out for the weekend).  I still have a pretty nice long break (even if I should have been off starting the 19th!!!).  Besides continuing the workouts and trying to not feed the inner cookie monster, I plan to scan some old photos, lose at least 1 day playing some sort of video game, organize my underwear and sock drawer, bag up all the clothes that are too big and donate them (and by donating them, I get 20% off so I HAVE to shop, hehe), have a good absinthe night, go rock climbing, go roller skating, figure out my new years resolutions, blog at least once or twice, and spend some quality time with Zliten, but that goes without saying.  I am so exciting, I know…but sounds like fun to me.

5.  I dunno if I’ve pimped this yet on the blog, but if I haven’t it’s so worth it.  Pandora is a fantastic free streaming music service that will get you into music you never thought you’d like.  You start a station with an artist you like, and thumbs up/thumbs down music as it comes along.  You can add artists or songs as well, and the station evolves over time, and with care and attention, 90% of the stuff that comes up will kick ass.  It not only pays attention to artist and genre, but stuff like whether it has major/minor/augmented chords.  Apparently, I like chick singers, upbeat music, lots of guitar, and augmented chords across quite a few genres.  The best thing – no audio ads.  Just banner ads which don’t interrupt the music.  Go check it out!

So, I’m not taking an “official” vacation over Christmas/New Years from the interwebs, but I don’t expect posts to be as frequent until 2009.   So let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a joyous Christma-Hauni-Kwanza-Festivus-Whateverus, and a Nappy Who Beer!