How are you, lovelies? It is 11:02 PM on a Friday night. I hope that you are having/had much cooler nights than mine, sitting in my bed writing a blog post after babysitting for the evening.
So, what's new? Foodwise, I had a pretty successful week. Tuesday night I made Cornell chicken and roasted potatoes, which we enjoyed with watermelon. See pictures below!
For the potatoes: for four people, cut two to three medium-large potatoes into quarters or bite-sizeish pieces. Place in a large glass baking dish. Mix together half a cup of olive oil, salt, pepper (you know, "season to taste"), and a teaspoon each of rosemary and thyme. Pour that over the potatoes and turn to coat. Bake at 450 (I think) for about an hour. Check on the potatoes and stir a couple of times. Mine were probably done in less than a hour- a few pieces were a little darker than I would have liked. But they smell and taste delicious.
The next day was my friend Meagan's birthday. Meagan told me that her favorite dessert/baked good is lemon poppyseed cake, or anything flavored lemon. So I made a lemon poppyseed cake with a lemon glaze. Recipe courtesy of epicurious.com. It's a really easy recipe: just butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and lemon zest, I think. The glaze is confectioners' (aka powdered) sugar and lemon juice. Things I learned: confectioners' sugar is the same as powdered sugar- I always think that I have to buy it, when we actually have it in the house all the time. If you forget to soften your butter, don't worry; leave it out for an hour and it will be ready. And for this recipe- and maybe others!- a stick of butter can be swapped out for a 1/4 cup of applesauce. The original recipe called for two sticks (1/2 cup) of unsalted butter, but I saw in the comments section that someone suggested you swap out one stick for some applesauce. It is a great calorie and fat cutter, and especially good if, like me, you only have one stick of unsalted butter in the house and you hate to have to buy it since it's really only used to bake in your house. I don't know if you can cut the butter out completely- that might mess with the chemistry of the baked good a little bit. Plus fat adds flavor. And I'm not a huge fan of major substitutions, even for the sake of health. Just have a smaller piece. Honestly, don't go to the trouble of figuring out how you can substitute applesauce for butter and stevia for white sugar and all that stuff. You can eat dessert!
The glaze was very sticky and gluey at first and necessitated the juice of a whole lemon. So it turned out to be quite tart, like a good lemonade. Pictures below!
From the top, unglazed.
From the side. This isn't a dessert that gets really puffy and tall. So don't worry if it doesn't rise much.
Glazed. Here is where I had problems. Maybe the cake was too warm or maybe the glaze was just a shade too liquid-y. I may have added a tad too much lemon juice because I wanted it to drizzle, like this:
The consistency before this was still too gloppy, like frosting, rather than a glaze. See the distinction I'm making? And I'm a perfectionist. And I do appreciate aesthetics. So I wanted the whole cake to look like that little pocket below: the cake is drizzled with glaze, but not totally covered by it. There is an attractive dripping of the glaze in this part of the cake.
Instead, pretty much all of the cake but that corner was just coated in glaze. It spread really, really quickly. Also, I may have had too much, since it all promptly slid off the cake and pooled around it. So the cake is coated and sitting in glaze.
P.S. Those two photos are like the best photos I have ever taken with my dinky little digital camera. Look at the lighting and focus. Maybe I can do great things with it...
But, despite my frustration at the glaze's misbehavior, Meagan loved the cake and thought the glaze was especially delicious. So I guess it's good that we had a little extra around the cake! Like a glaze wreath; it was a bonus prize.
So those were my cooking adventures this week. I also made brownies out of a box. I undercooked them by about five minutes, and they are especially fudgy and moist.
What else to talk about? Workouts and food have been all right. I've slacked a little bit running, partly due to time constraints, partly due to the fact that I thought I was going to be running a 5K race tomorrow (which means I lay off a bit in the days leading up to it), and partly due to exhaustion. For Meagan's birthday we went out to bingo at the local casino, and I didn't get home until 1:30, which is late for me. Plus, I had to be up at 7:30 to drop my dad off someplace and then get our rummage sale ready. Day 2 of the rummage sale is today, and my profits stand at almost $200! I also babysat tonight, so the money I made this week is more than I make in a week's worth of work at my job, which I start Monday. And this money is all cash- so no taxes! Thank goodness; my savings account really needs a bolster.
But, I did try to get back on track today by eating a little better and doing core and a quick run today. Hopefully I'll have some time in the afternoon tomorrow for a longer run and some weights. I'm really going to try to do a little core work and yoga every morning before I go to work these next four weeks, just so I have an energy boost and can say that I've done something, so I don't have to fit it all in after 5 o' clock. I've started food journaling again, so I can get a better idea of my caloric intake and nutrition. I also believe in doing the little things- a little less cheese on a sandwich, a few less chips, a smaller scoop of ice cream, a quick set of core exercises- which can be just the extra push you need to get somewhere.
I also need to be more efficient with my time, and step up the intensity if I'm not willing to put in the time. Example: if I'm not going to run a full 3.1 miles, then I need to pick up the speed in intervals in a 2.7 or 1.9 mile run (yes, I run weird distances; those are just my routes). Also, I have to do the moves that I hate: bicycles (where you extend one leg and pull the other in and then touch the opposite elbow to your knee or whatever. I hate those.), lat raises, etc. I feel like I hate them because they're hard. And if they're hard, they can only be more efficient and better for me in the long run. Right?
Let's face it, I have to be more efficient with my time elsewhere, not just in workouts. Like, I don't need to spend twenty minutes dancing around in the morning, and then rush to get ready to go. Nor do I need to spend who knows how much time poring over Foodgawker (but Lord, how I love it), or sorting through the Health and Fitness and Beauty blogs on Glamour.com. There's a lot of stuff I do that is just filler. I would really love to work on that this summer so I have better habits at school- less Facebook, less dawdling- and can use my time more wisely- more time for workouts, homework, studying, rehearsals, meetings, etc. And then at the end of the night I'll have more free time! Maybe...
That's all I've got for now. This rummage sale has been demanding my attention for the past couple days. Today was really quiet, so I plowed through Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, and I may be about halfway in less than a week. The sale's over tomorrow, and then I go to work on Monday! Next week in food, I hope to have photos to you of a yellow cake with chocolate frosting I'm planning to make for Father's Day, and I may be doing a picnic with friends next weekend. I'd like to make it a little sophisticated, so we'll see if that works out.
As always, comment away and share your stories, questions, criticisms, advice, etc. Also, if anyone knows how to get cool templates for Blogger, the engine powering this blog, let me know. I'd like it to look a little cooler.
With love,
Imara
US poet (1883 - 1963)
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