Monday, January 3, 2011

The fruits of my labor

Planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, eaten January 1st! Yum!
Black-eyed peas. From what I gather – in a completely unscientific poll – you either like them or you don't. Or, if you're my husband, you think you don't like them, but you do!

I made Hoppin' John for New Year's Day, using the recipe from my tried-and-true Betty Crocker cookbook. (Surprisingly, the Southern Living cookbook didn't have one!) I added celery and Tabasco to the called-for ingredients, and used a diced leftover-from-New-Year's-Eve barbecued pork rib instead of bacon or smoked ham.

Why is Hoppin' John one of the traditional New Year's Day foods? Here's the answer. Sort of. It's one of those things that's kind of hard to pin down.

The only thing I forgot to do was keep a few of the dried peas to plant this coming spring. Or maybe I did and I'll find them when I start figuring out what I need to order this year. Seriously, though, these came from a bag I bought at Kroger. Much better value!

To round out the meal and add to our luck, we had carrot "coins" steamed in a little orange juice and seasoned with ginger, and beet greens, which I'd blanched and frozen last fall. We love beet greens, and I think it's so cool that the liquid in the bottom of the bowl is as rosy as a beet, even though the greens are, well, green.

So far, so good on the goals. I couldn't wait for the New Year, so December 31 looks just as good as January 1 and 2 do. I've walked each day, eaten around 1800 calories/day (slightly less, but who's counting?) and feel good about being able to keep it up.

Marilyn commented that I need to eat the proper number of calories, and I'm wondering if she thinks I need fewer or more? I used the BMR calculator at Fat2FitRadio.com (my new gurus), and 1800 calories also is in line with the US Government's Food Pyramid. I use the FatSecret BlackBerry app to track food and exercise; their website suggests 1700 for light activity and 1900 for moderate.

Compulsive? Who, me?

Lessee, what else. Oh. Yeah. Knitting. My husband's grey boot socks are finally done. That second sock (mitten, glove, slipper, sleeve) always takes longer than the first! I should stick to hats and vests. Heh. I need to shop the stash for wool for the next couple of projects. It feels so good to be knitting again! And while I am mostly a process knitter, the projects in my queue are all going to people I love, so it feels darned good to be productive, as well.

My other big project, which I started yesterday, is to move my computer to a different part of the room to make room for the elliptical, which should be here Thursday. I worked for an hour on this yesterday afternoon; another couple hours should get 'er done. What I've learned from this exercise is that I have too much stuff!

At one time I got interested in polymer clay, for instance, and made beads for precisely two necklaces. Now in the first place I wear very little jewelry, very infrequently. And in the second place I bought many colors of clay, a machine that rolls out the clay into very thin sheets and various other tools to make different shapes and sizes of beads. I'm headed to Tennessee later this month and it's all going with me. I'll put it in my granddaughter's craft closet, where I know it will be used joyfully.

There's more, but it'll wait for another post at another time. You probably quit reading when you clicked on the New York Times link anyway. Heh. If you're still here, thanks for reading such a long, boring post all about me-me-me, and hopefully I'll come up with something more interesting tomorrow.

I'll leave you with this: Wanna see my limes?

3 comments:

gingersnapper said...

I'm one of those people who don't like BEPs. Other peas and beans are okay, but I don't care for those. Although, when it's got celery, Tabasco, and bbq pork rib, I could probably choke it down :)

LOL on the polymer clay. I've got a bunch of silk-screening equipment that I've never opened - the ink is probably turned to dust by now!

In The Happiness Project she calls that "aspirational clutter."

Unknown said...

I've been afraid for a long time you were not eating enough. I'll write more later but busy getting ready for our children to be here and husband's surgery tomorrow.

denise said...

I just read an article recently about getting organized, and the "organizational expert" pointed out that if you get rid of stuff you don't need/want, then there's little need to get organized - 'cause then you have space for what's left.

Love the idea, but "getting rid of stuff" is just not in my genes, so it's a hard concept to execute on for me.

Congrats on getting rid of the bead making supplies - I would probably look at that and figure I would get back into it some day...then reorganize it into a box that would fit in some small space not currently occupied by any of my other junk!

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