Extra Post(because it is thursday)

I am not a complex person. I am actually very simple, not much to figure me out. If you treat me good I will be good for you. If you are nice to me I will be extra nice to you. If you give me chocolate I can be a wonderful person to you. If you give me extra good quality chocolate the-one-I-was-dying-to-have I will be super nice to you and will be your sex slave for a whole week (not this week but some week before spring, I promise).

I don’t even keep it a secret, so I am trying to make life easier to anybody involved, well anybody involved with my life. Yeah, I am that good, go ahead, you can say it too, I know, it is a gift and so simple.

I have to quote it because it just makes all the sense:

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Intergalactic Tunnel

I know it has been too long since my last post but the options were NOT GOOD. If I did write in the last week it would have been about lousy weather (enough with winter already!), lousy clients (WHY they take so long to pay us?), He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed running for the Grumpo of the Year Award (and I must say he could have won it with his eyes closed) or myself moaning and complaining about getting whatever bug he had and feeling? You guess: LOUSY!

Nothing much changed but I decided enough is enough and why have a blog if you cannot go ahead and write about anything you fancy.

To be honest something did change, one of the dogs is also sick and tossing his cookies in a timely manner. Oh joy!

Then today I get an email from my Ma and I had to laugh so I decided to share this little nugget of funnyness with you.

She wrote that the package I sent her did not arrived yet, she did confirm that it arrived in Sao Paulo on the 23rd, just like the post office here told me via email ( once it arrives at the destination Country the American post office no longer keeps track of it), so she took the information to her post office and they confirmed it indeed arrive on the 23rd, they also informed it went to Rio and arrived there on the 25th , but it went to a neighborhood at the other side of town, so maybe it is why it is taking 10 days to cross town and get to my Ma hands. She wrote me not to worry, stay cool and just pretend I live in Alaska.

Ma it only took 3 days from here to Sao Paulo, the problem is the intergalactic tunnel between those neighborhoods in Rio.

Yeasterical!

I knew better and I still did it!

I got my Gourmet magazine Saturday, I have been trying to ignore my culinary magazines since I started a diet, knowing too well the temptation would be humongous, but then Saturday was a boring day, with He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed being sick( the poor man is all achy, and truly looks like he is suffering a lot, most probably is the flu with a touch of arthritis to make things more interesting). Anyways there was not much to do around the house (mmm’kay what if I was not in the mood for cleaning or ironing, give me a break it was SATURDAY!).

I am fanatic about bread and have been toying with the idea of making brioche, one of my top 3 favorites, but always end up thinking it was too much work. All those seductive descriptions on Gourmet magazine made me crave the thing worse than ever but I was still resisting. Mostly because I did not have all the ingredients but that is a detail. So I learned about a new food search engine and being slightly obsessed with the whole brioche idea I try it there. Voila! Another recipe even more promising than the one I read on the magazine. I knew I was doomed.

Sunday we had to do some grocery shopping and I end up buying the said missing ingredients, but still postpone the baking of bread. Since I know myself well I did get the eggs and butter out of the fridge, just in case, since they needed to be at room temperature for any recipe.

Then when I thought I was safe, it was late enough to start any baking project, He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed decided he needed to go back to bed since he was feeling lousy, so what is a woman fanatic about bread to do?

MAKE BRIOCHE!

I honestly try to reason with myself, since there was a 2 hour rise followed but 10 minutes of kneading and yet another hour rise, all things considered (the oven time being short 35 minutes) the bread will not be done before 9PM. That is silly, a little voice told me, the weekend will be over and your rule for allowing non-diet food window of opportunity will be almost closed!
But not quite!

So I did it! And it is a thing of beauty, and on top of that it is probably the best bread I ever baked, which I already knew it would be by the way the dough was just about so perfect to handle.

I confess I ate 2 slices, still warm from the oven, and yes with butter on top of the first one (the guilt was way too big to allow butter on the second slice, and yes I did make it a smaller one). He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed did have a warm slice himself but being sick I don’t think he was able to taste the full extent of my bread wonderfulness.

Only today I realized I should have taken a picture yesterday. I should take the picture before I had my first slice. Oh well I will get over it. Since He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed approved the bread and had a nice toasted sandwich for lunch today, I also froze two slices for a future French toast) now there is little left of my thing of beauty. I must say I feel content, baking bread is more rewarding than cooking, maybe because I don’t do it every day or maybe because it seems to involve a bigger transformation between ingredients and the result.

By the way if you want the recipe just email me!

How old can you be?

How many can you have?

Being a twin I learn about competition even before I was born, and to be honest I never liked it. I think we only shared one BFF, actually our very first friend ever, at age 4, but after that we had a silent agreement to have different BFF’s and make our lives easier.
I never liked to compete, maybe this is the reason I never excelled in any sports, was kinda good at swimming if it did NOT involved a competition.

At 45 I feel a bit silly about calling anyone a BFF but I do believe having female friends is the most important thing in my life. (mmm’kay… so He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is pretty important too but this is not what we talking about now)

Apart from the 3 I already mentioned in this blog there are two other women in my life that make me a better person, and even if I am not a phone person (sometimes I believe I “used” all my phone hours when I was a teenager and now I just hate the darn thingy!) I do feel I can call them anytime. We are very alike in some ways and very different in others and we sure had quite different life experiences but we easily found ourselves choosing the same dish in a restaurant or pointing the same clothes at a store, agreeing on those mundane ways that makes us feel connected. Sometimes it gets to be a bit scary how we can second guess each other’s choices.

Being with them has enriched my life beyond my expectations. I feel lucky that I got to know them, I feel blessed that they “get” me, I feel proud that they know they can count on me.
They constantly remind me why women need other good women in their lives.
Being part of their lives is a huge deal for me, be it because we support each other on diets, or we can laugh about our significant others silly similarities or we can have a therapeutic shopping day even when we are both broke!

I can be buying gifts for her kids or twisting her hand to let me pay for coffee, and don’t take me wrong, we can get pretty serious about stuff cause life is not just glasses of wine and rosy days. The connection is there no matter what we do together and funny enough even if we just talking on the phone and saying we have been bad and should not go that long without going out together.

Earlier this year one of them lost her sister, my heart hurt terribly even if I never met her sister, and I don’t dare to say I knew what she was going thru but I can easily say I would like her around if I ever have to go thru the same.

So I don’t really know the rules for how old you can be to have BFF’s or how many you can have but those two(now don’t smirk …you know who you are!) would be awfully deserving of the title!

Winter Wonderland

It is a magical winter wonderland outside, what was predicted as 4 inches of snow was updated to a FOOT, I did notice something like that would happen when I got up this morning and the storm that was supposed to arrive by late morning was already here before 7am!

As soon as I opened the door to the backyard the dogs were ecstatic with the fluffy white stuff. There short barks sure sounded like: “WOW! IT IS AWSOME DUDE!”Now is almost 4pm and He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed agree to go outside and take a few pictures of me and the boys!

I guess it shows I am wearing 3 layers of clothes! I feel like the Michelin guy!

Veramente

My dogs know it will snow today, how they know is beyond me but they have been pacing around, they gave me the special treatment, they gang up and place their heads, each dog on a thigh, press as hard as possible, do a little moaning, and don’t forget the begging eyes, big caramel eyes with expressive eyebrows all four of them fixed on me. Pretty please with sugar on top: CAN WE GO TO THE BACK YARD? NOW?

It is barely 9am and it happened already 3 times, right now Matisse just did the special walk around my chair, he is just waiting for Jack to come help him with the plan. They did not go for the loud approach, the one that comes with real loud barking and jumping , that is reserved for afternoons and mostly used with He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, unless I ignore their soft approach then I am deserving of the loud one.

I have no means to explain to them that today we will only get maybe an inch of the white stuff, and even that is only going to happen real late afternoon or even night time. The radio and TV weather people did promise a much larger storm by Friday, maybe the last one of this winter? But my dogs have a very bad perception of time, tomorrow is way beyond their understanding, the day after tomorrow is an abstraction of huge proportions.

Jack is getting even worse about eating lately, he has always been picky, his routine includes ignoring the food at first, and reluctantly agreeing to eat a bit, but that includes a couple of stops, when he will sit down, look around like he is trying hard to remember what he was supposed to do, look at me with an expression that says: “ Eat? You mean I need to finish that?...Oh… ok … if it makes you happy”

But sometimes he will look at the food and simply dislike it, so at first I could fool him shaking the bowl: “oh now it looks so much better I will eat it”… then he decided that the rearrangement of kibble did not improve the taste so I would sprinkle it with some water… it worked for a bit… then maybe if I use chicken stock… now he is into yogurt.. I eat half a cup for breakfast and he decided it is just the yuumiest thing on earth and cannot wait for his kibble to be smudged with a bit of 0% fat Greek yogurt, and yes dogs are not supposed to eat dairy when they are done with puppyhood but be my guest to explain that to a very stubborn adorable wirehaired pointing griffon.

Now I am off to the gym, it feels like a day for a double post so be warned I might be BACK!

Wobbly Bits.

I just got back from the gym, had to drag my wobbly bits there but even if the weight loss so far had only reached the 4.5 pounds mark I do notice the bits are less wobbly this past week. I am quite happy with my new headphones; He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed came up to the bat and bought it as a let’s say late Valentines’ Day gift. He did try the “I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day” approach so I had to explain it is NOT A RELIGION, you don’t need to BELIEVE, just get on with the program and since I made your life so easy choosing an inexpensive , much needed, headphone just be happy about it. And he did, meaning got happy about it and bought it.

Actually what I bought him as a gift was met with less enthusiasm, well the card went well and also the bag of licorice (I love licorice in the sense that I can have it around the house and NEVER be tempted, I tried it a couple of times and never got to like it at all) and again I digress … it was the whole new pillows idea that did not meet his approval. He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed claims changing pillows are AN EXECUTIVE DECISION, as in not to be made by myself alone, no matter how old and grungy his pillow looks.

I have to admit he did give it a try, but said pillow end up on top of my head by 3am so I guess it is going back to the store. I am keeping mine, well it was a double gift idea, not exactly romantic but hey I was thinking on the right direction.

I was looking forward to going to a Dog Show in Hartford but He-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed just told me he is feeling achy and possibly even flu-ish (lets us all pray he is wrong and it is a bit of cold) so all plans are cancelled and I will have to do with a gym visit and watching Becoming Jane with my dogs.

Now is time to go and make my famous low-cal, low-fat, and low-sodium Chinese LoMein.

Arrivederci bubbles!