Things I have accomplished so far:
Running--I'm up to a fairly comfortable 5 miles now, though my legs hurt for a day afterward. Shooting for a spring 10K and a summer -lon of some sort...
Weight--backward progress. Thank you, Thanksgiving.
Recipes--Tried a Peanut Butter Chocolate Cheesecake, which was really, really good. (See "backward progress" above.) I found the recipe on allrecipes.com (here) but subbed out a basic chocolate wafer crust for the crust in the recipe, stirred chopped pb cups into the filling instead of chocolate chips, and topped it with a basic chocolate ganache (1 1/2 c choc chips, 1 c heavy cream), which I sprinkled with more chopped pb cups. Seriously, seriously yummy.
Here is where you discover that I am not a photographer. But for the sake of illustration...
Please trust me when I say that it tasted better than it looks here. I've never achieved cheesecake without big cracks before, but this turned out really beautiful. Don't know what did it...maybe the water it sat in while it cooked? It was super-smooth, and the balance of pb and chocolate was just right.
Anyway, Mark emphatically declared it the "best thing ever made ever," so there you go. I suspect I'll be making it again, but not until I get 40 new recipes under my belt. Or 39, now, I guess. :)
Crafts--The kids and I made a fall leaf garland. We picked up leaves we liked and put them in a phone book for a week or so. Then we drew on them with silver Sharpies...some got decorations, some got things we were thankful for written on them, and some simply had their veins traced. Then we glue-gunned them all to some gold ribbon. The results were really pretty:
Will destroyed a couple of leaves first (they were super-delicate) and then decided he only needed to do one, which he pretty much colored solid silver. Joy and I finished it just before bedtime, so I hung it up after she went to bed. I had to stand on the arm of the couch to hang it on the curtain rod, during which effort I slipped (stupid puffy couch!) and fell on my butt, dragging the curtain with me and putting a big bend in the curtain rod in the process. I also tore 5 leaves off.
The garland you see above, then, is Frankensteined back together with liberal use of the glue gun. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with it.
I got the idea on a fabulous blog, to which I will be returning often for more craft ideas, but I can't find it right this minute. It's bookmarked on the other computer...I'll post a link later.
Ethnic food--my awesome friend Sue took me to a Persian restaurant in Basking Ridge. Website here: http://www.narenjpersiangrill.com/ I had some stewy thing with beef and crushed walnuts in a pomegranate sauce over jasmine rice. I intended to eat only half. Yeah...that didn't happen. Also, appetizers (some eggplant thing and some potato-filled thing) and cream puffs flavored with rosewater for dessert. The dessert was both delicious and interesting...like, "this simultaneously is delicious and is reminiscent of my great-grandmother's perfume." I don't know how that works, but kudos to the Persians. No pics...we were already making spectacles enough of ourselves.
Oh, and hey!! I just realized...I've never posted photos to a blog before!! That totally counts as a tech thing. I'm crossing it off.
On my way!
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