A new year, etc. etc. etc.

One of my new year's resolutions (I know, yawn) is to keep up my blog, including actually writing down recipes and including other topics like workouts, nutrition, diets and gratuitous pictures of my dog, Jackson.

On the workout and diet front, I'm down to only 8 pounds over the weight I was when I got pregnant. That's pretty good news, but when I got pregnant I was already 20 pounds over my ideal weight, so.... It's time to get to business. I'm following a low (white) carb diet for the most part and trying to get a handle on portion control--my weakness.

I've also registered for my first ever 5K on Feb 26th, so I  have no excuse but to run a few miles a few times a week. I've been doing pretty well so far this year, and am hitting the gym today after work for 3 miles. Woo.

On the baby front, I'm so happy that the little man has a couple teeth now and is eating real food:

We've got us some laughing cow cheese, white beans, turkey, tangerines, and blackberries...oh my!! He eats everything I offer him so far (fingers crossed).

On the adult food front, like I said, I've been trying to minimize the white carbs and stick with proteins and veg for dinner. I've been doing a lot of cool stuff with broths/soups, hot sauces, etc etc.  Here's one I've been making for dinner at least one night a week recently:

Yes, those are breadcrumbs on the pork chop. I know, I know. But I use my own bread dried out and chopped, and I use so little. Sigh. I use a couple slices of leftover sourdough or rye, toast them, and crumble them up. I should stop.  Then I dredge the pork chops in an egg, a little bit of those bread crumbs, and sautee them in oil. I should probably watch the oil too.

For the cabbage, which was DELICIOUS, I took:

1 medium head of red cabbage
2 small granny smith apples
1 small yellow onion
A few cloves of garlic, depending on your love for garlic!
2/3 cup white vinegar (but if I had apple cider vinegar I would have used that)
3/4 cup water
A few black peppercorns
A few dashes of salt
2 tablespoons sugar

I basically chopped up the veggies and apples and threw them in the slow cooker along with those ingredients for about 8 hours on low. So easy, healthy, and delicious. I could (I didn't) literally sit there and eat out of that slowcooker vat until it was all gone. I swear I didn't do that.

Finally, the apple of my eye, for no reason at all except that he's awesome:

I have a thing for salads...

Or maybe just taking pictures of them. Here's another beauty from the pregnant days:

 

We have green leaf lettuce, salami torn up, cannellini beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, red bell pepper. My usual vinegar and oil. <3

Most pretty salad

What can I say? I craved a lot of salads while pregnant and this was one of my favorite (or at least prettiest):

Black beans, avocado, heart of palm, tomato, spinach, red grapefruit. Oil and Vinegar to dress. Delish:

Been a long time, been a long time...

Not that I have any readers that I know of, but I still apologize for the lack of posts. I was busy giving birth to my baby and things like that. Speaking of said birth, I thought I would kick off my new posts with the meal I was served at Kaiser for dinner after giving birth:

I mean, this is a hospital we're talking about, so I'm not going to give it a long, loving review, but still. A "salisbury steak", baked potato, fresh veggies. It wasn't a bad way to celebrate the birth of my spawn. I'm a little bummed that they brought us Martinelli's sparkling cider rather than champagne, especially since I've heard rumors of other hospitals around here offering up the real bubbly.

Speaking of my salads...

Here are a couple I've made for dinner recently:

 Above we have butter lettuce, hearts of palm, celery, cucumber, carrot, and avocado. Red wine and olive oil vinaigrette.

 This puppy above was more butter lettuce, hardboiled egg, sunflower seeds, tomatoes, hearts of palm, and cucumber. My usual red wine and olive oil vinaigrette.

And finally, spinach, tomato, carrot, hardboiled egg, sunflower seeds, hearts of palm, and.... red wine/olive oil vinaigrette!

Salad out

This was a recent brunch salad at Luna Park in San Francisco:

It was good. Mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, chopped up hard-boiled egg, blue cheese, avocado, chicken, and bacon. The dressing was a light vinaigrette with balsamic. The chicken was a tiny bit bland and I could have done without the bacon. All in all, I ate the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure I make more interesting salads at home every night. (yawn)

Food not cooked by me!

As this blog evolves into more than what I just make at home, I think I'm going to start including all kinds of food--food I have at really nice places, at really cheap places, food I make at home by using the microwave, what I think about food in general, etc. To start things off, a few weeks ago the husband and I went to the Cliff House in San Francisco with my visiting parents. It was pricey and mostly non-disappointing. But. I wish I would stop trying to order fish stews (and all varieties thereof)--I never like them and I keep trying (excuse the Hipstamatic iPhone fun):

 

 This was smoked trout and arugula. It was heavenly:

The oysters on the halfshell. Kumamotos. Never disappointing, every delicious bite. And yes, when I finished, I chugged the vinegar:

 

Heirloom tomato and mushroom appetizer. It was good but it was trying too hard:

 This was actually my favorite item (ok, second to the oysters), which is saying a lot, considering I am not a sweets/dessert person. It was a lemony creamy little cake thing with berries and a perfect non-too-sweet sauce: