I’m having a boring, frustrating week. I did poorly on an exam (which I may have mentioned), and now I’m feeling the need to prove myself academically, and I’m having a hard time doing it. I just have so much to do that I can’t focus on any one thing long enough to excel.

The work – it is constant.

Anyway.

I know it’s no Dogfish Head – but I love me some pumpkin beer, and this one is pretty tasty.

On Monday I made vaguely Asian inspired tempeh and butternut squash tacos. I thought breaking the tempeh into smaller pieces would make it more flavorful, but then I baked it after marinating it, and it dried out. It took a lot of greek yogurt to make them moist enough again – but at that point, they were pretty tasty.

On Tuesday night, we went out with my parents to Southern Sun.

I had one of the specials, a steak sandwich with horseradish mayo and melted cheese of some variety called ‘I can’t remember but it was white and damn delicious’.

And my mom gave me a piece of her crabcake sandwich.

My dad had the other special, the fish and chips. I love fish and chips, but for whatever reason I was of the opinion that my sandwich would be healthier.

Obviously that was not the case.

Fortunately, my sandwich was good enough that I didn’t regret not ordering the fish. I wanted a bite, but by the time I looked up, there were only fries remaining – clearly the fish was not a disappointment either.

Crockett had a salad with pecans and arugula and who knows what else. He loved it, but he ate half my sandwich too. That’s the problem with salad, yo. Sometimes you just need a sandwich too .

On Thursday, Crockett made beer.

In an enormous pot in our kitchen.

With hops from our hops plant.

It’s bubbling away under my feet right now.

Yesterday, Crockett went to the CU homecoming game and I stayed home to work. I took two quick breaks – one to make chocolate chip cookies and one to make cauliflower gratin.

For breakfast today: plain yogurt with cherries and a crumbled cookie.

For lunch today: cauliflower gratin (made with orange cauliflower, not purple and orange like Deb’s).

The cookies are mediocre, due to some changes I made to the recipe because of last minute ‘holy shit I haven’t gone to the store lately’ shortages, but the gratin? People, it’s like macaroni and cheese if the macaroni were replaced with delicious firm cauliflower instead.

Anyway. I’ll be better about posting this week, promise.

How was everyone else’s week?

I taught my first full lecture alone today.

It was not as good as I’d hoped but perhaps as good as I had any right to expect.

I hope that the hour I last night spent making a dinner that could best be described as slightly-better-than-mediocre wasn’t the dealbreaker, awesome lecture wise.

I was planning on giving you the recipe, because I was really proud of my invention. We had chicken chili rellenos, that were not fried and did not contain any simple carbohydrates.

Yeah.

I don’t know how I didn’t see ‘slightly-better-than-mediocre’ coming.

I roasted some local Anaheim chiles in the oven.

I mixed cooked chicken with some low fat cream cheese and also some low fat Mexican cheese blend. And also some cilantro.

I made guacamole. (I also burned myself with the oven while roasting the peppers.) I stuffed peppers. I made and whisked batter (eggs and milk and almond meal – actually quite promising. Oven pancakes, maybe?)

They looked good.

They tasted fine.

They were not worth the work.

Another possibility for why my lecture wasn’t perfect?

Today’s breakfast smoothie, that you see on the right, was disgusting.

I’m not lying.

Don’t believe me? Ok – the ingredients were cottage cheese, V8, hot sauce, and a cucumber.

Yeah.

When I got home from lecture, I got sucked into the school vortex and only came up to scrounge leftovers.

Buffalo tofu lettuce wraps, anyone?

I entertained myself while I ate by perusing J Crew and W magazines most recent attempts to make me wish I were rich.

And that Crockett was Justin Timberlake.

(What. JT is hot. It’s an undeniable fact. Anyway, Crockett isn’t worried. He knows I wouldn’t leave him for anyone less than Ryan Gosling.)

Tonight I put Crockett in charge of dinner. Holy hell did he come through. Helllllllo steak.

I roasted some local (I include the word ‘local’ so that you know it came in our produce delivery and I was forced to use it - usually I think cauliflower is too expensive for the return) cauliflower and made a cilantro almond pesto to dip it in, as an accompaniment.

Have to go. Must eat steak. Lecture? What lecture?

Yes, it’s school time again.

It’s also been a year since I had my first cholesterol test ever and they told me that I was basically about to die.

…

Fine. I’m exaggerating.

But it wasn’t good.

My doc recommended South Beach, and I tried for awhile, and then got cranky because I eat (fairly) well and I exercise and South Beach seems to be geared towards those who don’t. My dad has high cholesterol. My grandma had high cholesterol (and was in her 90s when she passed away).

Of course, they both took medication.

Anyway, I’m going to make an appointment tomorrow to see if last year was a fluke, or if eating more oatmeal somehow worked a miracle.

(Cough*I don’t know if oatmeal can touch 279 but I can sure hope*cough).

If it didn’t, I may consider medication.

Now that I said all that, let me show you the terrible care I’ve been taking of my heart this week.

Chips and beer at Chili’s. (Girl date.)

Steak with Crockett when I got home that evening. (That is the piece I ate, so at least I’m practicing good portion control. That’s important, right?) Plus, everyone knows avocados are full of heart healthy fats, and those sauteed greens with summer squash were done in a non-stick pan with just a smidge – a SMIDGE I say – of olive oil.

After that, I figured I had a window where my heart would be so busy with the steak that it wouldn’t even notice more red meat headed its way.

You know, how the second cookie totally has fewer calories than the first.

My dad brought me some venison green chili, made with venison that I pulled out of me and Crockett’s freezer. (It entered the freezer before I moved in and I’m not entirely sure where it came from.) Since I have no idea what to do with venison, I let my dad fool around with it.

I poached a couple of eggs directly in the chili and ate it on my way to school.

Turns out I like venison when it’s super hot. The closer it got to room temperature, the more it tasted like something you shot in the woods.

I didn’t finish it. If I’d been eating at home, I would have just kept nuking it and happily devoured the whole bowl.

Last night we had a birthday party to go to, and the night before we had snacks on the town (including frozen yogurt from The LoCoYo, a new do-it-yourself place in town that I would totally move directly into if I could).

Tonight I did two important things. First, I got back on the lean meat and lots of veggies bandwagon.

Second, as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received a sampel of the new KC Masterpiece Buffalo Marinade. I actually used it as a marinade for pulled chicken that I put on a pizza way back before we left for NY, but a) I didn’t take pictures and b) the crust (homemade) was TERRIBLE – too salty and floppy and never really stopped being damp. Yeah, terrible. Tonight, I went simple.

Crockett was in Golden watching stage six of the US Pro Cycling Challenge until late afternoon, so I threw some mostly defrosted breasts into the marinade to throw on the grill when he got home.

Of course, by then it was raining, so ‘the grill’ became ‘the Foreman grill’.

Still totally worked. I ate mine with some of the light blue cheese dressing I’m madly in love with spread on top. Crockett just plain dipped bites of his into the dressing.

I am a huge fan of buffalo flavor (my favorite salad and my boyfriend both have their roots in Buffalo) and this doesn’t disappoint. This is the second pound of chicken I’ve used it on, and there’s probably another pounds worth in the bottle.

With it, we had tomato and cucumber salad with cornbread (based on this recipe). I made some substitutions (mint for the cilantro, reduced fat feta for the cojita, and crumbles of my dad’s cornbread recipe for the cornbread croutons) and it was perfect.

See? As along as you totally ignore the first two things meals I showed you, I am taking excellent care of my heart.

I hope my doctor doesn’t read this.

Just kidding.

So not done.

The important parts are mostly organized, though. For example, my office doesn’t look half bad… and of course the cookbooks and liquor are all shiny and appropriately placed.

Because I was on an ‘eat what I want because I’m moving damnit’ kick, I had cake for breakfast (it’s gone now – are you picturing me with a sad face? Because I have one.) and then was starving at 11 so had some steak and mushrooms and rice. Dinner was this stew that isn’t perfect. If I can make it better today with more salt and spices, I’ll hand over the recipe.

You know what the best thing about birthdays is?

Leftover birthday cake.

For breakfast.

Yesterday was sort of a whirlwind of snow and… well, honestly, I don’t know what else I did yesterday. Mostly, homework sprinkled with some mild packing.

Speaking of sprinkling:

Snow!

Crockett works from home about half the time, and he is less of a morning person than I am. In other words, when it’s 5 pm and I’m all ‘dude it’s time to throw in the towel on this whole ‘work’ thing’, he’s all ‘I’m just getting my groove on’.

Oh, I did do something else yesterday. I went to the grocery store. I bought steaks, because they were on sale, and I was going to make chili, and the stew beef was more expensive than the steak, and a little old lady who was also shopping convinced me it was a good idea.

Less good of an idea was buying dried beans at 2 pm, thinking we’d have chili at 7 or whatever. Doable? Yes. Likely? No.

Instead Crockett salted the bejesus out of them, I made a burgundy mushroom sauce, we whipped up some brown rice, and we got our snowdinner on.

Mmm, snowdinner.

Also necessary for snowdinner? Neck cuddling…

… lap cuddling…

… and just plain cuddling.

Why yes, it is Thursday morning and we have made a full circle, meal wise.

I’m a fan of closure like that.