shopping MUST be the answer! 1/29/05

Of course, I was not aware, but today and today only was half off of all clearance items on clothing and other stuff at Sears. I don't subscribe to the local newspaper, so I didn't know until this morning. Customers rushed in as soon as I got in. For a couple of hours, it reminded me of holiday shopping season. Instead of staying in one place for fixing things up, I had the phone almost all day and customers constantly stopped me. And I spent an hour after I ended the shift shopping. Because of this deal plus employee discount, I got $30 jeans for $7, my size, my length. OK, this is not a shopping blog. My bottom line today is; I took over 19,000 steps and burnt 700 calories. Wow.

fat content truth or mystery? 1/28/05

I compared the result of fat content from last week's Health Fair with various data from the gym and also from Debbie's class last summer. My fat content has not changed. Neither is my weight. So does this make sense after all? Then why is my dress getting loose? Is this a mystery or simply everything is making sense? Grrr.

portion sizes 1/27/05

In Health Fair last week, I was given a photocopy of this photo titled "changing portion sizes, THE IDEAL". It has a baseball for fruit, domino for cheese, stack of cards for steak, soap bar for burrito, computer mouse for pasta, light bulb for potato and a dice for butter. I looked everywhere on the Internet to share this photo, but I can't find it. In the future, I will elaborate more on what I think about any diet plan, but I think for a lot of people, changing portion sizes is a very important one.

30 min. run 1/26/05

Boy, new year resolution people are keeping up! Some mornings are still very busy. Today I made it to the gym around 5:30 and both ArcTrainer machines and all Ellipticals were taken. There was only one treadmill, so I decided to get on it. I found some machines are configured so that you can only use it 30 minutes at a time. I knew this one was also, so I got my radio ready. (I couldn't stay up late enough for 10pm news last night.) After walking for 0.2 miles, I speeded it up to 5.0 miles per hour and stayed that way until the machine made the cut at 30 minutes. Running is rigorous and rather boring. Listening to news somewhat distracted my attention, but then I feel like I wasn't concentrating enough. When I do 3 mile run, I take a break at 1.5 mile point. Today's run was a little over 2 miles and I didn't take a break. So when it is not very busy, I will find a machine that lets me stay longer than 30 minutes and I can build up my strengths...

papitas 1/25/05

After writing the last entry, I slowly realized that what I bought was just INSIDE of pumpkin seeds! No wonder they looked different. Also my favorite recipe was for the whole seed including shell, so no wonder it was strange. Except a few slight burnt ones, I really enjoyed papitas, just inside of pumpkin seeds. But maybe there is a proper recipe for this. If I can get this right, it is possible to get snack that is a little luxury, but a very tasty one all year long.

pumpkin seeds from Wild Oats 1/23/05

I made a quick visit to Wild Oats in the neighborhood to check out prices of brown rice and healthy snacks. Brown rice is close to twice as expensive as Whole Foods and none of healthy snacks are no way close to Wal-Mart's energy snack. So I looked around and bought about $3 worth of what I thought said "organic raw pumpkin seeds". They looked like pumpkin seeds except they were green. I didn't take too much notice of the color. I came back and followed my favorite roasted pumpkin seeds recipe. Soak in salt water for 8 hours and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes. I noticed the water was turning green!?! But I drained the water and put it in the pan with canola oil. Then I heard a pop, like popcorn! Pumpkin seeds are plump. Next thing I noticed was after about 15 minutes, I still don't smell that wonderful aroma, but started to smell like burning! I noticed the bottom of the pan left green residue. It is fairly tasty, I have to admit, but I don't know if will go through this process again. Grrr.