Day 9

I don't think I am going to have time to update tonight because I am going to a hockey game! Yay. Right now I am on my lunch break at work enjoying a lean cuisine for lunch. Mmmm five cheese rigatoni.

This is really random but I always wonder if No-Shave November is a completely separate thing from Movember and they just happen to both be in the same month. I think more of the No-Shave November crew needs to hop on board with Movember since the idea of both is to grow excessive facial hair anyway, at least if they merged there would be more people supporting a good cause or whatever.

I don't have anything to actually post about, just in case you couldn't tell by my totally random previous paragraph about men's facial hair.

Go Lightning!! :D

Day 7

I almost forgot! Whew, just in time.

Anyway my job interview went really well. It wasn't quite as formal of an interview as I was expecting, I mean she didn't ask me the annoying questions like "what is your biggest weakness" or "describe yourself in 3 words" etc. But there is a second interview with one of the higher-ups which if I get that (and it basically sounded like I am getting that) then I'm sure he will ask me those things.

Went out for some friends' birthdays tonight to Mellow Mushroom. They have really good food! I liked their mushroom soup.

Day 5 - Eggs

How do you like your eggs? I like mine:

~Scrambled with cheddar cheese
~Poached on toast
~Sunny side up

Now let me tell you about sunny side up eggs. It is interesting to watch me eat eggs. Whenever I'm at Denny's or such, I get a meal with hash browns, bacon, SSU eggs, and toast. I eat bacon first, then hash browns, then I cut the whites off the eggs and eat them. Then I run the yolks on my plate, eat the non-runny pieces, then I dip my toast in the rest and eat it that way. It's a bit of a process, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Last year the morning after Thanksgiving I had some eggs that were scrambled w/cheese, onions, and peppers, and they were pretty much the best eggs I've ever had.

When I was in college, we went on the Big Break trip w/CCC every year, and we always had like 15907325 eggs scrambled with a ton of cheese. And about a million pancakes. It was good times :)

Omelets are also awesome.

Bacon

In stark contrast to the post 2 below this one, today is International Bacon Day and I am going to go buy one of those microwaveable bacon packs (maybe even two) and eat at least one. So YEAH.

My summer was really bad, I don't want to talk about it.

Computer still broken!

I've gone through all kinds of different computer parts and the motherboard is the only one left, so my dad bought a new one and it was the wrong size! AHHH! Frustrating.

I am going to pause my fast tomorrow night for a couple of hours because the Bible study I go to normally has free dinner, and tomorrow's choice of food is pancakes and bacon. NOTHING can separate me from free bacon, and that is my own choice. I know I'm capable of not eating it, but I'm choosing to eat it anyway. So I accept responsibility for this.

On a completely opposite note from free bacon, I've lost about 5 lbs, so that's kinda cool. I'm honestly going to keep up this style of eating as long as possible. Yes, I will reintroduce things like chicken, CHEESE!!!!!, and butter into my life, but I'll also eat turkey bacon instead of real bacon, keep with the whole grains, and use substantially less butter and cheese in my pasta - a sprinkle of cheese and a dime-size of butter should add a sufficient amount of flavor instead of a heaping spoonful, plus I can still add spices and garlic and mushrooms (oh my!). Also, quinoa is awesome. And I love beans. And rice. (Minute Rice brown rice cups are my favorite.) I've started to enjoy cooking a lot more.

In the best news of all, I get to keep my job! Long story but it worked out for the best. I still don't fully believe it so I haven't started jumping up and down yet, but it's great news of course.

Hopefully the next time I post will be from my own computer!!! =P

Halfway point!

Shh, I'm at work! Don't tell!

My home computer is broken. Like, really really broken. So I haven't had a chance to get on here at all during my fast. The lack of computer has been good for me, haha.

I am officially halfway through the Daniel Fast. I haven't officially caved, though I did mistakenly assume that the brown sauce on Chinese food was just oil and soy sauce. Um, not. I think God will forgive me, since my heart was in the right place. I mean, do you know how hard it is to skip over egg foo young and crab legs at a Chinese food buffet!?!?!? CRAB LEGS. DUDE. Crab legs.

I've found so many different ways to cook things with various spices. I'm trying to acclimate my mouth to varying amounts of cayenne pepper. I even made my own gazpacho!

I'm not doing as well on the Bible reading or walking as I should, but I am working on that.

The job search is going surprisingly well... more on that at a later date, I'm going to go take my lunch break now :)

First couple days of the Daniel Fast

OK, so I was supposed to do a better job of:

-blogging this
-walking during this
-reading my Bible during this

But at least it's only the second day. The good news is at least I'm following the food/drink part correctly. I even came up with a yummy smoothie: 1 banana, some raspberries, some mandarin oranges, and a little bit of unsweetened soymilk. YUM! The raspberries are strong enough to drown out the bananas, so that is awesome. I will need to buy a lot more bananas because I plan on making a lot of smoothies :) I need other types of fruits too!

Yesterday was kinda rough, my body was all WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME and I had a headache for some reason which wasn't due to dehydration since I drank plenty of water. Oh well!

Who loses on day 1?

Apparently I do! I forgot to blog yesterday. Way to kick April off, self. I thought about it at work, but then I was like "I really shouldn't blog at work", so I didn't do it. So here I am now, blogging at work... :\ lol

So tomorrow is going to be my major shopping day for the DF. I already have lots of beans and other vegetables and whole wheat pasta and flour. I need to buy more herbs and other veggies and tahini to make hummus and I really want to see if I can find caffeine free cocoa powder. I Googled and I guess the caffeine is found in the outermost part of the cocoa bean, so if I can find some that was made from beans without that part, then that's good! If not, I will live. It's not a priority! I have been really tired this week so the no caffeine thing is going to kill me!! Oh well.

I am baking cookies for Easter and everyone better eat all of them because I won't be able to have them for 3 weeks afterwards, haha.

In other news, I have a job interview on Monday! Keep your fingers crossed :)

Preview of coming attractions...

As you have likely noticed, I don't use this blog. EVAR. Except for NaBloPoMo in November. However, Nablo actually runs year round with monthly blogrolls. So I decided to join up for April. Why?

I AM GOING TO DO THE DANIEL FAST!!!!

I have been wanting to do it for a while, and I really had to think about when I should do it, and I chose my start date as the day after Easter, because a)I know I'm going to be eating some FOOD on Easter and b)I think that having the ultimate reminder of Jesus's sacrifice for us is a good way to start my fast.

Another factor in the timing is that I just found out that I am going to be laid off from my job on May 14th, so one of my goals is to use this time to pray especially for my job situation, whatever God wants to bring me!

I want this to really cleanse me in so many ways. I don't eat that badly but there are certainly areas I could use some improvement on. While I am on the fast I want to make it a goal to go on a 30-minute walk each day. I can certainly spend that walk praying as well. I want this to be good for my physical AND spiritual health!

I have been looking up recipes for weeks so I think I am prepared here. I think my toughest challenge will be the elimination of cheese. I do love me some parmesan cheese on my pasta... man that'll be tough! But I am sure that it will be worth it.

So I am going to blog my journey (and a few days before/after since Nablo encompasses an entire month). This will include feelings, frustrations, recipes, and anything God might be doing!

I'll kick start with something I ate last night... I took a can of black beans, rinsed/drained them, and sauteed them in the following: soy sauce, peanut oil, onion powder, cayenne pepper, ground cinnamon, and a sprinkle of Tang mix. Obviously that last one isn't Daniel Fast friendly but I plan to mix in a few mandarin oranges next time. Anyway, it tasted really good! I think it would go well with brown rice or quinoa.

If anyone else is doing a Daniel Fast (as if anyone reads this) I encourage you to check out thosewhohunger.blogspot.com - GREAT resource!!

This post is long enough :)

I'm alive!!!

I haven't posted since Nablo ended... A LOT has happened!

Work has been ridiculous. Our team of 7 is now a team of 3. I am still one of those three. One of the four who was laid off was my supervisor, and he is the only one who was not re-hired in a different department. If anyone is actually reading this freakin' thing, please pray for him to find work soon. It has been a crazy transition going from 7 to 3, but for those of us who work there it's really a blessing. Not just because we still have jobs, and we certainly miss MOST of our former coworkers lol, but we actually are now kept busy doing what we are all good at, so it's a good change albeit a rather hectic one!

I have now been a youth leader for almost 6 months - it's a very bumpy journey to be a youth leader! There are days when I ask myself why on earth am I doing this, and even question whether it's really what I should be doing. But then there are moments - big ones and even small ones - that make me say, "This is why I'm here." That makes it worth it, though I still struggle to see this much of the time. I actually went to a youth ministry training event today and learned SO MUCH! I saw things that I need to work on as a leader, things that my youth pastor could use a little bit of work on (and we will share this with him out of love hehe), and things our ministry as a whole can work on. By work on I don't necessarily mean "improve" in all cases - my definition includes do better, enhance, and even start doing in the first place! I am excited to share all this stuff with our youth pastor and the rest of the leaders. I went with one of the other female leaders - the only other one who is remotely close to my age actually, and I think she is about 6 years older than me. So it was good to spend some time with her! We always bond at training events, lol.

There is nothing exciting going on in sports, politics, or my apartment. How exciting.

Evos "crispy thai trout" wrap is amazing.

That's all for now! I really just posted this because I just added someone to my followed blogs who probably could have really used an update on my life, haha. So there ya go!

day 27 - cheater cheater pumpkin eater

What? I had pumpkin pie this weekend.

So it's 2:36am which means I lost again. It takes a lot of talent to lose Nablo twice in one year. I have skillz.

Thanksgiving was great. Lots of great food and great people. I had fun and wish I didn't have to come back for like a month haha. But I did and went to my friend's birthday party and that was pretty cool too.

I am really ridiculously tired and am going to sleep for the next bagrillion hours :)

day 26 - turkey time!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving :) Today I am going to the same place I went last year, and probably eating a lot of the same food as last year, and hoping to have at least the same fun as last year :D I baked my cookies last night and they are good and they were a success last year so they better be all gone at the end of tomorrow. (I am staying overnight.)

I am already starving but like the past 3 days I've been randomly waking up with this hollow feeling like I'm super hungry. I'm not sure why but I'll sure fill that hole today! YUM!!!

day 24 - cookies

Today was really bad. Nothing in particular happened, just was in one of my moods.

But tonight I am baking cookies and cookies make everything better. :)

I tried to do handstands for you

(That iPod commercial with that song was just on.)

So, week one of my new job has ended. It's going well so far. I mean I'm not in love with my job or anything, but I'm definitely in love with having benefits for the first time ever. I have to go to AT LEAST 4 doctors. (Regular doctor, ~girly~ doctor, eye doctor, and teef doctor. LOL.) So now I can do this without breaking my bank! Anyway the job is kind of overwhelming because we learned A LOT of information this week and we have to apply every single bit of that information every day to these GIANT files with like 214907234 things in them. It's kind of scary but at least it will keep us busy, unlike my previous job where we sat around a lot and wondered why they were paying us $12/hr to sit on our butts.

The apartment that I mentioned in my last post is not available anymore :( But hopefully something else will open up with that floor plan since I can't move until at least February anyway. We'll see!

Also, I am going home for Christmas! Yay!!!! :)

Lastly, Boston Market has squash casserole again. The last time I went to a Boston Market that had squash casserole was in July of 2003! You should have seen me at Boston Market..... Actually, maybe you shouldn't have ;)

Operation: Baking = success!

I am SO proud of myself, it's not even funny. I don't bake often, so every time I do I fear burning down my apartment =P Also, I took a recipe and substituted a couple of things so it would be vegan, so I didn't know how that would turn out. (I am not vegan, and I'm sure many of the people I'm eating with today are not either, but one girl who might be going is, plus the family I'm going with is into health and such.) Fortunately, my substitutes worked out. I used Earth Balance instead of butter, and applesauce instead of an egg. Also I used a tablespoon of Simply Apple juice for an egg white, lol. Here is the recipe: Whole Wheat Snickerdoodles II. A couple things that I did different were that I also added a pinch of baking powder, I flattened the "walnut-sized balls" into 1/2" thickness before baking, and I found that 10 minutes was the magic number.

So now that I've yammered on about these cookies for a bit, I suppose you want some. TOO BAD! But I will frustrate you even more by posting a picture of one:



Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :D

NO WAY

You are not going to believe this... we actually did our JOB today! You know, the actual task we were hired to do... amazing. But there were only a few applications, and only 4 people have their computers hooked up anyway, but still we actually did our job! It was awesome, lol.

Also I ate at Five Guys today! You should eat there if there is one near you :) Nom nom nom!