​Feb 13
Thank God, I've lost 4 lbs. again after hitting my peak weight a few days ago (seriously, it was the most I've weighed since coming down post-pregnancy 14 years ago, and also just crossed over the line into clinically "overweight" for my age and size).  I guess there was a larger than usual premenstrual "bump," but I'm also trying really hard to back off on the eating.  Anyone reading this food diary over the past couple of months would see that there are very good reasons for my gradual weight gain: holiday food chaos, a change of schedule that makes me more sedentary, and a series of binges that have occurred as I sat here at home, not knowing quite what to do with myself.  Oh, and there was all the baking.  It's not just "water weight."  It's been a while since I did a cleanse or tried a special diet, and those do work, but the honest truth is that I just don't feel like restricting my food choices right now.  I like eating and cooking too much.

Breakfast (eaten late, at 10:15 am-- I slept until 8 today!): the end of the soda bread with butter and jam, half a grapefruit with sugar, half an avocado, little packet of mustard peas.

Lunch: mandarin orange, little packet of mustard peas, crystallized ginger, two fried eggs.

Appetizers (at my sister-in-law's house-- they always put out some kind of extremely filling appetizer(s) before dinner.  Pork is typically involved): Triscuits and club crackers with cheddar cheese and salami.  Not sure how many.  We actually got off easy with these appetizers, since we are often additionally treated to German sausages with honey mustard, and spinach-artichoke dip served in a bread bowl, and/or ham-and-herb-cream-cheese rolls.  While I enjoy these offerings, they do not generally serve the purpose of promoting my appetite.

Dinner: the biggest, fattest pork chop you have ever seen, butterflied and stuffed with a large amount of bread stuffing, topped with (I think) sausage gravy.  Mashed potatoes.  Green beans with lots of delicious garlic.  Two little slices of good baguette with the Amish butter my brother-in-law is so proud of.  Served with hours of tech-and-internet-media talk between my husband, whose birthday was being celebrated, and his nephew.  I did not finish my pork chop, but took the rest home in a Ziploc baggie.  I however declined taking other people's half-eaten pork chops home in Ziploc baggies, which was an option offered to me.

For dessert: my sister-in-law's epic, three-layer German chocolate cake that she bakes every year for her baby brother's birthday, because it is his favorite.  I can't remember how many sticks of butter it has in it, but it is a lot.
In the kitchen, my sister-in-law and I discuss the fact that she barely eats breakfast or lunch, so that her body can accommodate the vast caloric intake demanded by her household's typical dinners. 
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Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 3 regular, 1 decaf, with half and half.  One cup of black tea with milk and sugar.  One glass of red wine, Kirkland brand, which my sister-in-law said was perfectly good, and was.
 
Feb. 14
My darling Valentine, who can never wait past early morning to present any gifts he has for anyone, gave me a frying pan, a lemongrass-colored Fiestaware place setting, and a big box of Godiva chocolates before breakfast this morning. 

Breakfast: the same breakfast quesadilla and home fries I had last week at the Woodside Deli, except this time I managed to only eat half of it and take the rest home in a box!  Victory!  Decaf coffee.

Dinner: I went with a classic Valentine's menu of giant porterhouse steaks (16 oz. each!) with sauteed mushrooms on top, baked potato, and oven-roasted broccoli, with a mini chocolate-sea-salt chess pie shared for dessert.  The porterhouse steaks were cut thinner than is usual, and unfortunately I overcooked them: well done when I was aiming more for medium.  Still very edible, though.  For the third meal in a row (!) I had more on my plate than I could eat, so I saved about 1/3 of the steak and 1/2 the potato for another time.  While I had anticipated that this was a meal I'd be having alone with my husband, my daughter ended up being up being present as well.  She has decided to eat vegetarian for Lent, so she had a grilled cheese sandwich instead of a steak.

Feb. 11
Breakfast: leftover pasty filling, 3 kim bob.  I was starving an hour and a half after eating this breakfast, and afraid today may be shaping up to look like yesterday.

Late morning snack: 3 more kim bob, cup of "Fusion Green and White" tea.  My brain had that low-sugar, cottony feeling.

Lunch: 2 vegetable dumplings, 6 injulmi (3 mugwort, 3 plain).  This felt like just a snack as well, but I imagine it had some significant calories, so I'm trying to have self-restraint.

Late afternoon snack: cottony feeling again.  4 more injulmi (two of each flavor).

Dinner: 6 boiled quail eggs (see yesterday), oven-fried potatoes and red onion, strawberries, and this Savory Soda Bread from Cooking without a Net.  I tried hard to make the quail eggs medium-soft-boiled, as in this post, but just over 3 minutes yielded mostly hard-boiled eggs.  They were still delicious, though, with a richness and indefinable unique taste missing from chicken eggs.  I raved about them while my family looked on indulgently. 

 I really wanted to love the soda bread: first, because it came from a lower-name-recognition blog with writing I enjoyed, and second, because it is dead easy and contains buttermilk, an ingredient I am often looking to use up.  Unfortunately, I found it no tastier (although it is healthier) than my usual, even easier soda bread, which contains basically no ingredients, though I have been known to partially substitute more interesting flours.  Basically it is the same: dense, a bit sticky, with a doughy flavor that lends itself well to butter and honey but is not so good plain (although it does go well with beer, as I discovered in graduate school).  I'm still gonna read the blog, though.
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Snacks: besides those aforementioned, 4 cups of coffee (2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half), 1 glass cabernet.
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Feb. 12
Breakfast: leftover soda bread with butter and honey, slice of Pepperidge Farm whole wheat toast with butter, half a grapefruit with a little sugar, little packet of mustard peas.

Lunch: ambasha with butter, 2 white flour tortillas dipped in sour cream and salsa.  Note: I do not believe this, or my breakfast, for that matter, to be a healthy meal.  But, as my daughter lamented this morning while packing her lunch for school, "All there is, is bread!  Look!  Bread (pointing), bread, bread, bread!  We have like four kinds of bread and nothing else!"  While this was not strictly true, it was close enough to true to be unfortunate.

Shopping (Co-op): mini sea salt chocolate chess pie, 3 rolls toilet paper, quart of Brown Cow vanilla yogurt, quart of Brown Cow maple yogurt, broccoli, 3 russet potatoes, 2 avocados, Cabot sharp cheddar, 2 gigantic Porterhouse steaks, 3 lb. bag of mandarin oranges, super-hi-potency probiotic capsules (for my husband), Baby Bella mushrooms, Equal Exchange organic Love Bug coffee, 2 prepared Ethiopian meals, $105.  I spent about $44 on our Valentine's dinner, which seems like a lot, but I calculate that the same meal would cost us around $85 in a restaurant (including service), so the cost isn't really so terrible.  Plus we will not have to fight the crowds.

Dinner: the two prepared Ethiopian meals I bought at the co-op, which consisted of injera, a yellow lentil dish, a greens dish, and a potato-carrot dish.  These were okay, but not great.  We live in a heavily Ethiopian area with many excellent restaurants, and this food was comparatively bland, with sour, slightly stale injera.  It was cheap, however, and I bought it at my neighborhood grocery store, so there's that.  You can't do that in Montana.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  One cup of Pero, with half and half and sugar.  Glass of cabernet in the evening.  2 fun-size green tea KitKats in the evening.

Feb. 8
 Breakfast: 1 mochi strawberry (I'd meant to have two, but ugh), half a leftover pasty (they are huge, and how the hell did I gain 5 lbs. in the past 4 days?). 

Lunch: a few mustard peas left in the dish from the night before, leftover lima beans, mix of yogurt-covered Goji berries and pecan halves (this latter turned out to be an especially good combination).

Dinner: Madhur Jaffrey's Green Bean and Potato Curry, white rice, tofu the usual way.  Making the green bean curry required first roasting a variety of spices, curry leaf, coconut and rice for an hour to create a Sri Lankan Raw Curry Powder, so there was an initial time investment.  I have curry powder left over, however-- another jar for the overcrowded spice shelf (see photos below).  Then the  vegetables required a fair amount of prep as well.  The very spicy curry ended up rich and tasty, however, though I imagine it would have been even better if I'd remembered to add the lime juice.  Was it worth it for close to two hours worth of prep/cooking time?  Probably not.

Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  About 1/8 of a sticky bun given to me to try by our kitchen manager: a new product she is baking herself.  Glass of Madeira in the evening.

Feb. 9
Breakfast: leftover pasty filling (I had  lots of extra filling and baked it in a pan), leftover lima beans, leftover green bean and potato curry.

Lunch: leftover tofu and white rice, 4 egg whites plus one whole egg, scrambled, half grapefruit sprinkled with a little sugar.

Dinner: soft white flour tacos with: a mixture of roasted beets, potatoes and carrot; scrambled egg; queso fresco; salad of romaine and cilantro with lime juice dressing; salsa and hot sauce.
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Snacks: 4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  3 pieces of crystallized ginger left over from my daughter's lunchbox.  Glass of Madeira in the evening.
 
Feb. 10
Breakfast: leftover pasty filling, leftover lima beans, leftover green bean and potato curry.  As yesterday.  Lots of little diced potatoes going around.

Lunch (after work, quickly, while regrouping to go pick up my daughter at school): little bowl of leftover roasted beets, carrots & potatoes, topped with queso fresco, salsa, and sour cream.  It wasn't much and I hit an exhaustion wall about 2 1/2 hours later, while standing in JC Penney trying to choose men's undershirts.

Shopping (HMart, after the mall): whole milk, Lactaid 1% milk, HMart prepared fried vegetable dumplings, HMart prepared spicy fried chicken wings, 2 packages green tea KitKats (because my daughter thought they were only available in Japan and was really excited-- I didn't notice till later that they cost $5.99 apiece, and that was the sale price-- they're usually $7.99!), HMart prepared vegetable vermicelli, Kellogg's corn flakes, quart of Chobani strawberry Greek yogurt, black pepper, kim bob, mugwort injulmi, plain injulmi, green tea Pocky (also for my daughter), decaf coffee, 18 speckled quail eggs (my daughter said, half-mockingly, "Mom, are you sure you don't want to buy these quail eggs?"  And I said, "No... I'm not sure.  I think I will."), cage-free brown chicken eggs, $69.

Dinner: An assortment of delicacies from the HMart: 6 kim bob, 4 injulmi (2 mugwort, 2 plain), 2 vegetable dumplings, 1 spicy chicken wing (so sugary that it had what I thought of as a crunchy candy shell).

Snacks: Here is where things got dicey today.  4 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 2 decaf, with half and half.  The last decaf was purchased at the Panera at the mall, after hitting the exhaustion wall.  (My daughter asked me to buy her a tea at Teavana instead.  I was shocked that it cost over $5.)  At work, I was fed small amounts of sample baked goods by our kitchen manager, who was trying out some new recipes: a couple of bites of fresh sweet potato doughnut, rolled in granulated sugar, and a few bites of fruit-filled crepe with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.  I had a total of 4 fun-size green tea KitKats, one on the drive home with our groceries, and three more after dinner while watching TV.  1 glass of local cabernet in the evening.  A combination of under-eating wholesome food, no real rest breaks, and the availability of  treats and snacks made this a not particularly great day nutritionally.  This is how every day is for some people, I expect.  Oh, and I had a morsel of "mango chicken" held out to me on a toothpick at the food court in the mall.

Just a short plug for an interesting article.  Mosaic Science, on January 26, published "Why the Calorie is Broken," and proceeded to discuss at length the means by which scientists arrive at caloric estimates for foods, as well as estimates of individual caloric requirements,  and all the ways in which these can be inaccurate or variable.  Some highlights:

• I know I was taught that food calories were determined by setting portions of food afire, then determining the amount of heat produced.  However, scientists eventually recognized that we do not receive 100% available energy from foods, but leave portions of them undigested.  SOOO... nowadays the scientists also burn people's poop after eating the foods, burn that, and subtract the two numbers.  At least, I think I am understanding this correctly, though it is explained more delicately in the article, natch.