March Photo a Day: Before / After

So I know that I owe you March 11-19, but let's just say the iPad ate my blogpost. No, really, it did. I'm still angry about it. I had this great post of photos to share and it posted fine. But then I saw a typo and couldn't help myself. I logged into blogger and whammo --- all content from the post was gone.

That being said, I'm so excited about this photo. Confession: this was taken on Saturday, but I made the collage today (on my iPad :))

The top two "before" photos were taken from our drive our here in September. That's me around 138ish pounds. Ugh. That sucked to type out. My weight went down a bit and then went up in December. I think it was around the 138 mark, but I honestly stopped weighing myself.

Since the last week in December, I've been working out pretty consistently. Leading up to the bar exam, it was 6 days a week. Mostly the stair machine and sometimes a P57 DVD. The last 2 weeks, however, I've started going to The Bar Method, which is very very similar to P57 (sorry no links -- haven't figured that part out in the app yet).

I'm happy to report that yesterday, I put on pants that were starting to get tight (despite being a size up from my normal size) and I needed a belt to hold them up! Seriously, they were about TWO INCHES too big! And today, I weighted myself -- I've lost 12 lbs. since my last official weigh-in. I'm somewhat regretting not having a better before picture, but I'm really good a avoiding cameras and/or "wearing it well". I think you can tell the difference in my face the most.

So, sorry this is a braggy post but I'm just so gosh darn excited! It's great to finally see some real results. I'm well on my way toward accomplishing #6 on my 30 Before 30.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I know I've been a bit delinquent in posts so I've purchased an app (Blogsy) to blog from my iPad (that arrived on Friday afternoon!!!). I think this will help because I will be able to blog from more places now.

At any rate, this is a test to see if it works how it's supposed (and if I figured it out).

 

Since it's St. Patrick's Day, I thought I would share a bit of my luck with all of you today (it being St. Patrick's Day and all). Funny enough, this is not the only four leaf clover I've found. The first was in Northern Ireland in 1996. Talk about lucky. And, yes, I still have it! I found this one in Central Park last August while exploring the northern part. I filed it under the "finders" cases in my 1L property casebook because I'm cool like that.

 

 

Butternut Squash & Quinoa Stew

I bring my lunch to work every day. Don't worry,
that spoon is biodegradable because my firm is aware like that.

Last weekend, during our marathon cooking session, we got to this recipe. Well, let me back track. The weekend I'm taking about was the weekend after the bar exam. Erik grocery shopped for us on Saturday and we put off cooking until after our hike in the redwoods on Sunday (bad idea). We also forgot some of the ingredients so Erik had to go back to the store. For dinner Sunday, we just decided to buy a rotisserie chicken and have the breasts with a salad to make it easy. We don't normally buy pre-made items but I used the leftover meat on the bones for the butternut squash & quinoa stew and attempted to make chicken broth with the bones (yeah, attempt #1 failed (mostly because I got lazy), but I'm sure there will be others).

Anyway, because we were so exhausted I just couldn't imagine following this person's recipe.  She lost me at "Steam the butternut squash until barely tender, about 10 minutes. Remove half of the squash pieces and set aside. Steam the remaining squash until very tender, an additional 4 to 6 minutes. Mash this squash with the back of a fork. Set aside." Umm.. what? There was a lot of cooking and setting aside in her recipe. No, thank you. So, I give you my adaptation.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lb. butternut squash, peeled, seeded & chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 sweet potatoes, diced into 1/2 inch cubes (we had leftover sweet potatoes from another recipe because we over bought.) 
• 3 1/2 cups chicken broth (or whatever chicken broth you have left + water; if adding water, it might be helpful to add a little bit more salt)
• 1 1/2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (I used leftover pieces from the rotisserie chicken carcass)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 can (14 oz) petite diced tomatoes
• 2/3 cup uncooked quinoa
• 3/4 cup pitted and quartered kalamata olives (I just put them in whole -- just warn your spouse so he/she doesn't break a tooth on the olive)
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 1/4 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley (fresh parsley really makes this dish; I minced an entire bunch from the grocery store instead of just the 1/4 cup)

I was a little wary about the dried oregano because I wasn't sure about the flavor profile and normally I cook with many more spices. But it all worked out just fine and was super tasty.

Directions:

• Heat the oil over medium heat, add the onions and garlic and sauté until fragrant.
• Add the oregano and sauté for 3-5 more minutes.
• Add onion mixture to the slowcooker with all the other ingredients (except for the parsley). No really, toss them in (save yourself time and dishes).
• Cook on low for 7-8 hours (or high 4-5).
• Save the parsley in a separate container to add on the top of the dish later. I found that having the fresh element on the top was a nice contrast to the heartiness of the dish.

All in all, I found our adaptation of the original recipe very delicious and much less time consuming. Because I added the sweet potatoes, the stew was a little hardier than what's pictured on her website.  I think we also got about 8 servings out of it (and they were big portions!). I would say the most time consuming part was dealing with the squash and sweet potatoes (for obvious reasons).  All in all, this was probably about 30-40 minutes of prep for me, but please keep in mind that I tend to be very slow.