Summer Vacation 2012

Well, the rest of my vacation was even more fabulous then the beginning of it. I was able to shift my thinking and priorities and get myself out of that little mental rut I was in. I cooked, spent time outside, played games, saw friends and just relaxed. I really needed this break from work and I went back in Saturday with a positive attitude.

I find it amusing that on my vacation from the kitchen I was most excited to cook. I guess food and cooking is a bigger passion for me then I like to admit. First I was craving meatballs, so I found a recipe for Italian Turkey Meatballs and made them at like 9pm on Monday night. I wasn't even hungry by the time they were done, but they came out delicious. I definitely couldn't tell they were turkey.

My next cooking project was Chocolate Mint Bars. It was a two day process (mostly because I started at like 8 at night), and mine didn't come out like the picture on the website but they sure were yummy! Though I'm not sure how healthy they really were despite coming from the Cooking Light website. The base of the bar was a cake type mix made from scratch. Once that was baked and cooled the mint layer was added, then a glaze (butter and chocolate...where's the light part of this?). I still have some, I should probably throw them away but come on now. There are starving children in Africa!! (That's good justification right?)

The next morning I made myself a brunch fit for a queen! (I woke up too late for breakfast) I'm a huge fan of quiche but it is NOT a healthy dish. If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a 1/2 egg, 1/2 cream omelet inside a pie crust. Delicious, but not figure friendly. So I found a recipe for Caramelized Onion, Spinach and Feta Quiche. It uses bread stick dough instead of pie crust (I just can't get into the whole crustless quiche thing. It just isn't the same), skim milk instead of cream and substituted egg whites for a couple of the eggs. It was really good for being a "light" version. I ate it all week! (Well I ate all these things all week. What else was I supposed to do with it?)

All these recipes were great, but the one I was looking forward to from the moment I saw it was Oven "Fried" Pickles with Skinny Herb Buttermilk Ranch Dip. I'm sorry to say I was pretty disappointed in them. The dip was amazing, but the pickles were only so-so. The first batch of breading was ridiculously salty (probably our mistake, not the recipes), and while the second batch was better, they still weren't that great. They were nice and crispy which can be hard to do with mock fried items, and we still ate most of them but they just didn't live up to the hype I had created about them.

So even with a week full of all this yummy food, not counting calories and not exercising I still somehow managed to lose 1 pound during my vacation week. I think the key was that since I wasn't around food like I am at work it was on my mind less and therefore I ate less. At the end of the week I went shopping for some dresses and jeans at TJ Maxx. I was so excited when I realized I can wear an XL dress and 16 jeans now! That mean's I no longer have to shop in the plus size departments/stores! Anyone who has ever been where I am knows how much of a big deal that is. Size is just a number, but not having to shop in the "fat girls" section anymore is AWESOME!

So after that little victory I decided to try on this little black dress that has been hanging in my room as motivation for months. I had bought it off eBay years ago and it never fit since apparently Japanese sizes are WAY different then American sizes (makes sense in hindsight). I zipped it up, and it fit perfectly. I was so happy I cried. I literally welled up with tears and cried while I was looking at myself in the mirror. I can't believe after all these years of hanging in my closet or from my curtain rod I can finally wear this dress. I can't wait to have somewhere to wear it!

The rest of my week included a nice day at Colt State Park, mini golf, smoking hookah, playing Arkham Horror with a group of dorks (love you guys!), and breakfast and a day by the pool with a friend I hadn't seen in years. It was great to catch up and try to remend a friendship I had destroyed by being distant and too caught up in my relationship at the time to keep the friendship going.

I finished the week off on Friday with girls night! We went to Centro Martini for drinks and appetizers then went to see Magic Mike. The food and martinis were awesome but the movie, not so much. I know the main objective of the movie was to attract horny swooning ladies by getting a bunch of hotties to dance around on stage. And that part of the movie was great, but the story line sucked and the dancing got old after the first 30 minutes or so. Don't get me wrong, I loved watching Channing Tatum thrusting and gyrating on the big screen but it was not worth the price of a movie ticket.

Saturday I got to watch 2 local singer songwritters perform in a friends back yard. It was a gorgeous night and the music was great. Yesterday I got to take part in the first step of the beer brewing process. Luckily the guy I was helping knew what he was doing because it was pretty involved. I'm excited to see what the finished product is going to be! It makes me want to make my own wine or something now.

So yea, that was a lot of stuff to squeeze into one entry, but I just couldn't get myself to stop living life long enough to sit down and type until now! And now I have a crap load of chores to catch up on since I slacked all week. But that's what vacations are for!