If I ever have a daughter, I'm totally making this dress for her

You can buy it here.

Grapefruit? Really?

In addition to diet and exercise, I started taking prescription drugs about a week ago to help lower my cholesterol. But just a couple days ago I noticed a warning on the bottle I hadn't seen before: "Do not eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice at any time while taking this medication."

I laughed out loud. Grapefruit? What could be wrong with grapfruit? And wouldn't you know it, I'd just bought grapefruit a few days before.

So I looked it up online and apparently grapefruit interacts with the enzymes that break down the medication, which can lead to potentially toxic buildup of the drugs in your body. There's no evidence that any other citrus fruit has the same reaction.

So, um, anybody want a free grapefruit?

Food Storage Made Easy!

I subscribe to this website that sends out "baby step" checklists to help you set up your 3-month and 1-year food storage, and now they've created what looks like a very usable workbook to help people like me keep everything organized. (My organization tends to look like random stacks of paper.) The 100-page PDF will be available for purchase ($17) on Thursday, but they're giving away 10 copies to people who help spread the word. So here I am. :)

The image above links to info about the binder and giveaway, and the sidebar on the left outlines their plans and baby steps. Check it out sometime. :)

Who knew low-fat could taste this good??

So I'm following Dr. Dean Ornish's super-low-fat plan for a month to try to get my cholesterol in check, and I thought it would be much more painful than this. We've had some hits and misses, but the hits have been dang tasty. Like this red-pepper coulis:

2 small red peppers, cored, seeded, and diced
1 med. tomato, peeled, seeded, and diced (I used canned tomatoes with roasted garlic & onion)
1/2 large onion, diced
1 3/4 cups vegetable stock
1/4 c chopped basil (I used 2-3 tsp. dried)
Pinch of dried thyme

In a medium skillet, combine the red pepper, tomato, onion, and veg stock and cook until veggies are tender, about 10-15 minutes. Stir in the basil and thyme. Puree in a blender (I left it a little chunky) and pour back into a clean skillet. Reduce until about 1 1/2 cups remain.

I made this to go with some labor-intensive veggie cakes (not quite a hit, but close), and it was pretty good. But then I added plain nonfat yogurt to the leftovers, and it became FANTASTIC. The yogurt mellowed and blended all the flavors and elevated it to something I want to have in my fridge at all times. Seriously. I would have included a photo but I ate it all before I got around to taking a picture.

I put it on rice, on salad, in a veggie wrap, and it was fantastic in all of them. The only drawback is that veggie broth is ridiculously high in sodium, so maybe when I make it again I'll use reduced-sodium chicken broth and trade some of that sodium for a trace of fat.

If you make it, let me know what you think.

My excuse for not posting more often...

"Oh, I love technology..."

Breaking barriers

Ok, that title sounds like I just won the nobel prize or something, but all I did was lose a few pounds. But oh how significant those pounds!

I'm going to break Woman Rule #1 and tell you how much I weigh/weighed: right before I got pregnant, I weighed about 190. This was the heaviest I'd ever been, a number I swore I'd never reach. Luckily I didn't gain a whole lot with pregnancy: my highest was about 205. But for a couple years before then I was in the 180s: sometimes high, sometimes low. I went on Weight Watchers a couple times and had some success, but I just couldn't get below 170. And after weeks of hovering at 170.2, 170.4, 170.0, I'd give up.

SO...imagine my delight when I stepped on the scale yesterday and saw 168! Woo hoo! I haven't seen the 160s for years! And I hope not to stay here long. I have 33 more pounds to lose before I hit my target weight of 135. That's toward the top of my healthy range, but it's a weight I think I can maintain. And considering that I weighed about 150 when I got married, it's a long time coming. I have no need to be a size 2 or to have ripped abs or Michelle Obama arms. But I want to be healthy, I want to be more active, and I want to be stronger.

And I just bought a sewing book that has cute skirts and dresses I want to make and look good in. It always comes back to vanity, doesn't it?

Anyway, I just had to share my success. And I'm going to need a lot of support to lose the rest of the weight, so I hope you don't mind if I post periodically about my progress.

Possibly the coolest cover art ever

I like lots of music, but Neko Case is consistently fabulous. Her new album is no exception, and it only improves on multiple listenings. Like all of her music, it is best listened to over and over again on headphones. Or live, of course. She was Atty's first concert when she was here last summer, and the time before that I was at the front of the stage, literally staring up her nose. She is coming again in May as part of the Red Butte Concert Series, but of course it's on a Sunday. Maybe I'll have to make do with some good headphones and the volume up high.