Zoe’s Journal

I’m on this new food regiment prescribed by the gym trainer. The purpose? Not really to lose weight, since I already look fantastic *bats eyes facetiously*, but to lose body fat. Right now my BMI is at 19%, and my goal BMI is 12%. Which translates to roughly ten pounds of body fat to lose or convert to muscle.

See what you think of this diet:

Breakfast:
1 egg
2 cups of strawberries
1/2 tsp coconut oil (as soon as I can find a store that carries it)
vitamins

Morning snack:
4-6 red grapes
1 oz nuts
protein shake

Lunch:
salad with 2-3 oz grilled chicken, vitamin B-12

Afternoon snack:
1/2 apple
heaped tbsp peanut butter
protein shake

Dinner:
3-4 oz coldwater fish (salmon, trout, halibut, etc…) ((and this is like 6 bites))
dark green veggies (salad, broccoli, beans, etc…)

Snack:
hardboiled egg - ICK

This is just a trial run - going for 10 days, with weekends free. And I’m starting today, enjoying my strawberries right now, as a matter of fact.

The book I am reading, The Lies of Locke Lamora, is one of the more difficult books I’ve tried to read lately! I don’t know what it is… something about the writing style… lack of action… the layout… something. I’m only 132 pages in, and have been working on it for about a week (not every day though).

So, I also don’t know why, but things have been really stressful lately! Maybe once I get caught up at work… I haven’t been able to stay late because I have gym appointments at 5:00, four days a week! Today, however, I got to stay late and left myself with just a tad less stress than I had. Which is good. And then I came home and sent out a bunch of email interviews for my homework. A rough draft is due next monday - eeps! I need to get my stuff organized!

I’ve been trying to eat really healthy lately - and it works… all the way until dinner-time. Yesterday was one of my first ‘real’ dinners since Napa Valley. I’ve been surviving on chips, salsa, and cheese dip. O.o At least, for dinner. Breakfasts and lunches are much better since I actually prepare those a day in advance. Taking my advice from that, I just took out some food from the freezer for tomorrow night - hurray! I’m getting a real meal tomorrow night!

Speaking of food, I discovered a REALLY good salad recipe! Perfect for summer, since it’s so light. Here it is:

1 can of white beans, rinsed

drizzle olive oil and lemon juice over beans. Salt and pepper also. Slice some cooked, cold shrimp in half and mix with beans. Add some pickled peppers (optional, but they add a lot). Serve over lettuce.

It’s delicious! I made some tzatziki to go with it. MMmmmm…

Now it’s time to go get out of my work clothes and practice some hapkido kicks!

This past Friday, the LotR and I went to see Ironman. It was good. Then we snuck in to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. It was good too - better than the first Chronicle of Narnia movie. By the time we got out of the theater, it was almost 1 am.

But a good fun night was needed. I had finished my Mythology homework right before leaving on our ‘date’. Stress relief!

I slept 12 hours that night, and woke up around 2 on Saturday. Rather, the LotR woke me in a rather unconventional way, which turned out good for all parties concerned. We were out and about by 3:30, with me lounging by the pool, and the LotR puttering around on his computer. I eventually lured him out to the sun, and we enjoyed a few hours in the water.

That night, we cooked hamburgers, and then, while the LotR was playing Grand Theft Auto IV, I suddenly found myself in a cooking mood and churned out a huge dish of potato salad (minus the eggs; apparently I don’t know how to cook them… they never got cooked completely! gross.) and a batch of chocolate chip cookies, which DID turn out good. I put most of them in the freezer for later.

Today, we had a couple of people over to play in the pool. They brought Pita Jungle, and we stayed out until about 5pm, when I did MORE cooking (tilapia fillets, salad, and potato salad) and we all enjoyed. We re-watched Family Guy’s Blue Harvest Star Wars movie, and then they left. I played a game of Age of Empires and then got started on my Biology homework. Then the LotR and I put away the laundry. He’s now back to his game of GTA, and I am waiting for the white laundry to finish drying so that I can set out my clothes for tomorrow.

I decided to make some banana bread today, since we had two ripe-going-on-brown bananas in the fruit bowl and the LotR said that he wasn’t going to eat them.

Well, I didn’t have a loaf pan, so I hied myself off to Target, where I ended up getting a LOT more than a loaf pan (that’s okay, it was planned). But now I didn’t have a recipe. So I called my mom. She gave me the recipe that she normally uses.

After getting off of the phone with her, I decided to try it. Sounded easy… only about 7 ingredients, and I can follow a recipe well enough. Right? NOOOO.

But I figured out what happened to make this gooey mess. She had said to put in 1 1/2 cups of flour, and I only heard 1/2.

So, there you have it, folks.

and I was just feeling confident enough to go cook up a new recipe of shrimp scampi. guess I’d better hold off on that for now.

GLOGG.

yep. At least, that’s the Svensk way of saying it. I prefer ‘mulled wine’. See, I was reading these books - Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin - that has tons of characters, and whenever they get cold, or stay up late at night, they demand that the innkeepers bring them “mulled wine”. It even went so far as to describe the drink - boiled wine with cinnamon and cloves. Sometimes raisins or dates. At any rate, it sounded so good and holiday-ish that I decided I absolutely needed to try it. Then tonight, the LotR and I watched ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ on tv, and couldn’t help but realize that one of the guys asked for mulled wine “easy on the cloves”. I just had to get up and make some. The first batch I had to drain down the sink - too many cloves, and it was as potent as seven hells. I just made a second batch, and this one is absolutely delightful (although I just realized that steaming hot wine fumes go straight to your brain). The LotR informs me that the drink is very popular in Sweden, but it’s called GLOGG there, and is a typical holiday drink.

So, drink up me hearties, it’s christmas