A Thousand Is A Lot

TaDa!

today I have walked 1000 "exercise miles" in 2008 -- meaning purposeful exercising 'miles' - mostly with Leslie Sansone's WATP videos.

Actually, technically, I've walked a lot MORE than that -- my WalkerTracker stats say I've walked 4,548,745 steps in 2008, which would be equivalent, for me and my walking stride length, to 2082 miles. Ooops, and that's even before I put in today's morning exercise steps.

But I count my "walking miles" differently -- if I do a 5 mile WATP, I count it as 5 miles. If I walk around the house doing laundry, that counts for my total WalkerTracker Steps, but not for my "Walking Miles" ... if I take a walk around the block with the family in the evening, I don't count that as my "walking miles" (although I suppose I could!) ... if I do some wii runs with the kids or alone, I don't *usually* count them, unless they were purposefully in place of my normal WATP miles. But ALL of that goes into WalkerTracker -- in part because I really believe every step counts. Exercise is good and important, but walking in place while I fold laundry, or walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water, it all adds up. The more active we are in daily life, the better.

Which all is a lot of random babble more than you needed to know. The point, really, is that my little chart of mostly WATP morning exercise miles says 1000 today. And that makes me happy.

Also, today I'm 35 weeks along in this pregnancy! So ... maybe, if you're especially good, I'll have a belly pic for you today. No promises, though.

VegGyros - as close to a recipe as you'll get from me ...

Today was the Day Of The Great VegGyro Experiment. That's pronounced "Vej-YEAR-oh", by the way. Which means I took my personal experimentation to the next level and made my family eat it.

And it passed well enough that I figured I could share the 'close enough to a recipe' notes with you, since I will make it again but probably not keep taking pictures every time, LOL.

I started by kimodifying the famous (well, in some circles, maybe not yours) Seitan O' Greatness recipe ... which is a baked, rather than simmered, seitan.

I used the spices Becky had listed for the ground beef gyros instead of those listed for the Seitan O' Greatness, and I squarshed it into a flat roll rather than a round roll, both for the sake of finished shape and hoping it would bake quicker, since I was running out of time at the moment I decided this would, indeed, be tonight's dinner.

My kimodified faux-faux-lamb-spam was made as follows:

Ingredients:
1.5 cups vital wheat gluten
2 T. nutritional yeast
1 T. oregano
1 T. garlic powder
2 tsp. onion powder
2 tsp pepper

3/4 cups water
1/4 cup tomato puree
1 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp vegetarian Worcestershire sauce (um, okay, I admit MINE wasn't vegetarian)
a few shakes hickory smoked liquid stuff

Preheat oven to 325°.

I mixed mine in my food processor with the dough blade it came together in a few minutes nicely.

Form into a log 10-12" long, squarsh flat, wrap tightly in foil, twisting ends. Bake for 55 minutes. When done baking, unwrap and cool for a few minutes, until you remember you don't have time to dawdle because it's nearly 6 pm. Slice seitan into 'lamb-spam looking' slices ... sautee in a "beefy" broth (using vegetarian 'beef' broth or soy sauce) and a little more of the same spices added to the dry ingredients, above. When it simmers down and starts to brown, add a splash of cooking sherry, if desired, and cook down again, while waiting for the choir-attending-daughter to return home.

I find it easier to serve things separately so the family can pick and choose which items they want. I used Flat-Out Wraps again, with the faux-faux-lamb-spam, sweet onions, sliced tomatoes, and some lettuce, as well as the cucumber sauce.

The Kimodified sauce was:
1 cup plain soy yogurt
~2/3 c. finely diced seeded cucumber (about 1/2 a cucumber)
~1/3 c. finely diced sweet onion
garlic powder, unmeasured :-)
1 T. lemon juice
1 tsp dried dill weed

Then we assembled them and most of us seemed to like it, more or less. The grown ups more, the children less, but really only two of them stumbled over eating their 'try me' portion, so I figure that's pretty good. And in the end they DID eat them. In order to move on to peanut butter sandwiches. But still.

Ta Da! The finished meal.

These are a few of my favorite meals ...

I'm in a pleasant rut for lunch.

I didn't take pictures because I took pictures of similar meals not too long ago. I don't want to bore you.

But that's really my point, I keep eating more or less the same thing.

Which isn't bad! It's actually good. I don't really get tired of it, and it makes it easy knowing what to eat. It doesn't take toooo long to make, either. Early in the week I make a pot of brown rice for me. Have to repeat that I LOVE the Lundberg Farms Wehani rice, and usually make 1/4 c. of it with 3/4 cup of 'regular' brown rice.

For each lunch I chop up ~1/4 a head of Napa cabbage or bok choy (also known as pak choi), or occasionally even 'regular' cabbage, or mix and match. I often slice up some onion to go with it. Adding other veggies like sliced carrots, broccoli, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, pea pods, etc. would be fine, but I usually don't. Or mushrooms (shudders to herself)

Stir "fry" / steam in a nonstick pan until greens are as wilty and other veggies are as cooked as desired. (If you're using veggies that cook longer, start them first and add any bok choy or napa cabbage later)

For the sauce I make my own version of a local restaurant's "Veggie Delight" sauce, which by their own vague explanation is "a white sauce with some spices" Hah ha! They're so helpful. White sauce meaning a *Chinese* white sauce, not the butter-and-flour-and-milk kind. Here's a rough sauce guide. I don't measure.

~1/2 cup water
1 tsp "chicken" flavored bouillon (I use a lower sodium one ... use your favorite kind, enough to make 1 cup of broth, but only in 1/2 cup water, unless your bouillon is too salty for that)
2 T. cooking sherry (optional)
1/2 T. cornstarch, more or less
garlic to taste
ginger if desired
pepper if desired (I like cayenne, but black pepper or white pepper work, too)
a drop or two of sesame oil

stir sauce ingredients together to mix cornstarch in well. When veggies are *nearly* done, pour over veggies and continue to stir while sauce boils and thickens. Note that adding the sauce seems to wilt the greens even more, so if you're just doing greens you can add the sauce pretty quick at the start. Serve over rice.

Anyway. It's a pretty quick and easy no-thinking sort of meal, for me, and it keeps me eating healthy lunches.

Playing with Food - Veggie Gyro Prototype

My friend Becky recently helped make food for their local Greek Festival and talked a lot about Greek food, making me dream of Gyros. Of course, not eating meat throws a monkey wrench in those plans, and not eating dairy rules out the sauce.

But I'm nothing if not impulsive, and I decided I'd make myself some "beef" seitan and sort of kind of follow the recipe she gave us for a ground beef gryo. I used the seasonings you'd add to the ground beef to simmer the seitan. I also made the seitan not just with water but with a little soy sauce, per some other instructions I surfed up.

I made the Tzatziki (cucumber-yogurt) sauce with plain soy yogurt, and (more or less) followed her directions for the sauce.

Okay, okay, I admit, I had to kimodify the whole thing. After all, Gyros are not a plant-based meal. :)

I only made a little bit, in case it was awful. Soy Yogurt and I have a rocky history.

Here's my results, my prototype meal:

I have to admit I was somewhat surprised at how good it was. It wasn't phenomenal - wheat Flatouts are good, but aren't quite the same as fresh, warm authentic (made with oil) greek pitas -- uh, assuming I've ever had them. We had gyros once that we suspect were fresh and authentic. But in mid-Michigan, I can't assume most of the ones we have been served in restaurants are. But still, we like them. Can't blame us if we don't know better, right? And my tomatoes were a bit past their prime and not all that flavorful. And the "mock-mock-lamb-spam" seitan was a bit too salty, I'll have to use a lower sodium "beef" broth and maybe omit the soy sauce. And, lastly, the sauce I made was a bit sweeter than I would've liked, which might have been my loosey goosey sprinkle of unmeasured sugar or perhaps the plain soy yogurt itself. BUT! That being said, overall it was pretty good and I made short work of my little veggie meal.

So next time I'll make a little bigger batch of less salty mock-mock-lamb-spam, with fresh tomatoes and onions. Maybe I'll even make my own pitas. And if we like those, I'll post you a recipe.

Brown to Black

In case you're not following my every Tweet over there on the left sidebar or at Twitter, we had a brown out, then a full power outage today. Power went out briefly this morning, for a few seconds, then we had two brief "dims" for less than a second in early afternoon or so. But then a little after 3 we thought the whole power went out -- then realized the lights had gone very dim. Kinda freaky. We turned off most things, and called to report the partial outage. The lady said there were over a thousand calls from our area, although I don't know how big an area that means. The Grand Lunar came home awhile later, power was out downtown, too, and they'd actually evacuated his building. Apparently many things don't like brown outs, because they've got things to modulate their amperage and end up burning out their motors or something. I don't know.

Anyway, we ended up seeing most of our neighbors at the mall for dinner, and we hung out at the mall play area and Target until 8:30. Got home to find the power had been on for 24 minutes, so I guess we timed it well.

Grand Lunar went promptly back to work to restart all the things that had been shut down.

So ... and I ask out of concern for my finicky comments and curiosity, not trying to nag or pester for comments ... are my comments not working again? Or did no one read my last post? Or maybe I've become so sporadic in my blogging that no one reads here anymore. In which case you won't really need to know about the brown out. Although you might be interested in the baby swaddle sock. I will try to post about that someday. In the meantime I need to learn an *easy* and stretchy method of binding off 2x2 ribbing.

World Bread Day and other rambles

Apparently today is World Bread Day. I wish there was a little more information at that site. But the upshot is that someone declared it World Bread Day and I believe bread is a healthy global staple food. Or can be. I'm all for whole grain healthy homemade bread! Whooo!

So my plan is to kimodify a combination of two bread recipes The Grand Lunar sent me the other day -- for a whole grain bread that can be made with minimal effort, and a speedy non-whole-wheat recipe. 'Cause I'm all about the minimal effort. And the kimodification. If I were smart, I'd also think of a clever healthy soup or stew to go with the bread, for a complete dinner. Maybe I still will. I'll be out this afternoon, so getting the crock pot ready would be ideal, if only I can think up something that uses ingredients I have on hand.

Anyway. Won't you join us for World Bread Day and have yourself some healthy bread?

In other rambles:
I need to wrap up my knitting project (uh, no, not the shrug, it's been bumped for the moment) in the next day or two because I have an urgent project coming down the line.

Also, today iliacat and I used a kimodification of Feye's Self-Trim Method and gave me a haircut. I can't reach behind me well, so I use iliacat as my behind-the-head arms. We cut about 6" off the back, but since my hair insists on growing unevenly and in straggles, the effect is more to tidy up uneven ends than a drastic haircut. And then we parted it down the middle of the back and I pulled it together in a sort of loose pony tail somewhere out in front of my nose (rather than pulled down in front as shown in Feye's Method for the U- and V-) and pulled it out to where the bottom ends were slipping out, and snipped the end of that front pony tail to sort of taper the sides and make it a little shorter on top, although not really bangs. There are no before or after pictures, because I'm sure whatever you're imagining is more clever. I must say that this is one time I'm glad to have curly and forgiving hair that allows me such simple and inexpensive haircuts. Without some crazy hair stylist insisting on blowing it dry, somehow thinking it won't foof for them. Because it always does.

I thought there was something else I was going to tell you, but of course I've forgotten. Maybe I'll remember when I'm out and far from my computer.

And Then We Were Home

Well, our vacation is over.

We had gorgeous weather -- no small blessing, considering we're talking Michigan's U.P. in October, which could really go either way. We could've had all rain, all snow, nice weather, or a little of each. But we had 5 straight days of beautiful weather and wonderful fun with our cousins. I really must admit I didn't want to come home.

Most of the pix are on the Grand Lunar's computer, I did steal a few. Here's one my sister took of our family up at Gnome Rock, standing just behind the 6' or 8' or something drop off that we managed not to have anyone fall off.

And, for those watching/waiting for belly pix, here's one that shows my belly at 32 weeks, with The Grand Lunar and Sputnik ~ photo credits for both these shots go to my sister - Thanks, Kelly!

Of course there were many many more pictures taken. I just haven't had time to weed through them and send the ones I want to my computer.

Oh, 40winkzzz , I don't think I'm officially supposed to call the place we went what I called it on twitter ~ it's a little piece of privately owned land near the camp where we stayed, it's not really a tourist place to just go to ... but it IS like stumbling on a magical land. I'll try to get a picture up later.

Anyway. We're home. Yesterday when we arrived home I had good intentions of getting us promptly unpacked and back on track, but we're only muddling through those intentions, poorly, now that today is here.

Then I got a Twitter Thingie

Grand Lunar suggested I get a Twitter account.

So I did.

Now, assuming I post there when I don't blog, you'll know if I'm dead or not.

As long as I remember to post there before I die, I guess. Therefore, I hope I have some heads-up, should I be about to expire.

Riiiiight. Whatevah. Sometimes things just go from weird to weirder.

I think there might be some way to stick my little twitter posts into here. I'm not sure. (**Oh look! I did it! Over on the left!**)

But anyway. Did I tell you I'll be away from my computer and internet for a few days? So if I don't post and I don't twitter, don't assume I'm dead.

You've been warned.

Oh, ha ha ha, I didn't post the twitter link. So how can you check up on me? Unless you're a shrewd guesser. Here's the link, so that we don't have to know who's shrewd and who's not so much: http://twitter.com/kimodified

Whoo, that's a spicy lunch

I'm trying to be a better blogger again.

While I was walking (walking, walking, walking) this morning I thought of something I wanted to post, and then I forgot what it was. But that reminds me, remember that 1 million steps in 2 months challenge? I made it. I don't think I already told you that, did I? And then I signed up for another, which should take me up to the "baby window" ... it's a lot of stepping, about 18000 a day, a little more on weekdays to make up for my little less on Sundays.

Anyway.

there's my lunch today.

Sichuan Seitan with bok choy and water chesnuts.

It's a kimodification of This Recipe for Sichuan Tofu With Garlic Sauce at Fat Free Vegan.

'Cause I'm not fond of tofu, and I'd made some "chicken" seitan the other day, all by myself, and was kinda pleased with the texture it added to my unfried stir-fry.

I eyeballed the spicy ingredients, since I didn't have the called-for chili-garlic paste anyway, I just squirted some Sriracha sauce in, and added some garlic. Whoo, it's spicy. But in a good way. It's also tart, from the vinegars. It calls for two types, but I didn't have any black rice vinegar, although I must say now I'm intrigued and will look for it or at least read up about it. But I might use less vinegar next time.

Oh, and I'm eating it over a brown rice mix containing my favorite brown rice evah - Wehani rice. I think I've already told you how much I love love love the stuff.

How about you, what's on your plate today?

Apparently my blog is needy and demanding ...

... it seems it doesn't like 2 weeks of neglect. I think I have it set to show the last 2 weeks of posts. So if I don't blog for 2 weeks (which, perhaps, has never happened before?) it goes all blank unless you click a post link or category or something.

So. Where have I been?

Uh. With one exception, I don't really have a good, exciting answer for that. I've been here. Even at my computer. Even writing blog entries in my head. Sometimes even taking pictures to go with them. But my poor communicator tendencies have, apparently, blossomed. Not only have I not been blogging, but I haven't been answering emails, making phone calls, or the other things I ought to do. Not that I'm deliberately not doing so. I just am procrastinating and suddenly it's October. You know how it goes?

So a short recap of random things:

I knit all summer on a shrug. It was looking like it'd be very cute. As always, I had greatly kimodifed the pattern. Turns out the loose big-needle-stitches with thin yarn means it *stretches* under it's own weight. It 'fits' okay if I lay it out on the floor and lay down next to it, but if I actually put it ON and let my arms hang down, the sleeves stretch to the floor. I spent a few weeks debating whether to *finish* it or frog it. I have decided to continue knitting, adding some decorative *stays* to key portions. We'll see. I have pix. Maybe I'll post them, if you want to see. Keep in mind it's not *done*.

What else? Iliacat and I went on a very belated birthday trip up to Mackinac Island. We had a good trip, took a ton of pictures. We even did some exciting adventure things, although I'm not sure I should tell you, since some of you might scold me, doing adventure things while pregnant. I'll show you one picture of the one I did NOT do, so you can't yell at me for it. This is Iliacat on the rock wall at the Mill Creek place in Mackinaw City. And a few other pix that I already had gotten ready but not posted.

And two more of her doing the other adventure things:

While we were on the island this way cool fog rolled in. It was great. Here's two fog pix of the bazillion I took:

Uh, what else?

We're doing schooly things.

We did most of the seasonal clothing swap.

I've had some OB appointments with the midwives. Oh, they made me take the stupid 3 hour Glucose Tolerance Test because I followed the instructions on the 1-hour screening which specifically say "you do not need to fast" and I ate a big lunch RIGHT before drinking the goo. I was barely over the line, but still "flunked" and had to waste 4 hours in the lab. The good news is that my blood sugar levels are very good, not even close to the real danger lines. And I read a good book while in there.

So I guess that's what I've been up to. I haven't finished the shrug but did start a new knitting project that I hope to finish soon as a gift to my neighbor who recently had a baby boy. So I should be knitting rather than blogging.

Oh! And we got a wii fit, and we all think it's a lot of fun. I've heard some people say it's boring, but we didn't think so. I've heard some people say it's not a good work out, but I think it CAN be -- certainly the walking/jogging can be comparable to the WATP videos I've been doing, and it's fun to do the jogs with the little boys. They always beat me because they can wiggle their feet really fast, whereas I do it literally, walking in place. I don't really *jog* being 7 months pregnant and all.

So ... that's the news. And hopefully posting this fixed my blank blog of death. Plus, as a bonus, you know I'm not actually dead.