Stuffed Peppers

I cooked again! And I'm posting the recipe here mostly for my own future reference. Because it was relatively simple, pretty cheap, quite healthy, and easy enough to alter depending on my mood. Not to mention that it actually resulted in leftovers. I've been eating stuffed peppers all week long.

The first thing to do is cook the rice. The recipe told me I should have 1 cup of cooked rice per pepper. I missed the word "cooked" and ended up with roughly twice as much rice as I needed. But that's okay because rice is cheap and it made the leftovers last longer.

While the rice was cooking, I chopped up an onion and some mushrooms and sauteed them with garlic. Then I chopped up some tomatoes and shredded a bunch of Parmesan cheese. You can add anything else you want to the stuffing. I may try putting in some nuts next time. Or throwing some chicken or beef in with the onions and garlic.

Mushrooms and onions

Tomatoes and cheese

I also prepared the peppers at this point. This is pretty easy. Cut off the top, just like a pumpkin, and remove all the seeds. Give them a good rinse to make sure you get all of the seeds out.

Cleaned peppers

When the rice is done, throw it in a bowl with all of your veggies and mix it all up.

Stuffing!

At this point, you can either throw everything in the fridge to be cooked later, or you can proceed. The most appealing part of this recipe to me is that you can get all of the heavy lifting out of the way hours before the food actually needs to be cooked.

When you're ready to go, spoon the rice stuffing into the peppers. Push it down to get all of the air out. Then stick the peppers into the dish you'll use to bake them (I actually used a pot. It worked. But I'll probably buy some corning ware in the nearish future). Once the peppers have all been stuffed, dump the extra rice mixture into the pot around them. You can definitely tell that I made way too much rice.

Stuffed peppers, plus all the extra stuffing. I think there was more rice around the peppers than in them

Now throw a bunch of mozzarella cheese on top (if you want) and grind some pepper on, too.

mmmm, cheese

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes per pepper (so I baked this for 40 minutes).

Then serve! This is so much more food than it looks like. I ate about half of what I put on my plate.

A deceptively filling meal

These keep pretty well in the fridge and heat up nicely in the microwave. Next time, I think I'll want to add some protein to the stuffing so that I don't have to worry about that part of the meal during the leftover phase. I'll also remember to use less rice.

Motivation

Three weeks after my first personal training appointment I'm not quite doing everything I want to do. I'll admit that I was rather ambitious. Six days a week is a lot to commit to. But the bigger problem was that I basically failed to get on my bike.

The weather is changing here. Days are alternating between muggy and rainy. I don't want to go outside in either type of weather, much less to exercise. Especially after walking the dog. Summer is coming and I'd rather be indoors. And that means getting my butt to the gym for some cardio.

It also opens up a new opportunity to motivate myself. I've started reading The Count of Monte Cristo on my kindle, but I'm going to try to only let myself read it while I'm on the bike at the gym. Hopefully this will provide the extra motivation I need to actually go to the gym. The book is long enough (1200 pages) that this should last for a while.

I also adjusted my lifting schedule. Instead of three days a week (back/biceps, chest/triceps, and legs), I'm down to two slightly more intense days a week. It'll be back/biceps and my easy leg routine one day during the week and chest/triceps with a harder leg routine on the weekend. Plus I'm going to try to do my core workout every time I'm at the gym. I think my lower back is getting stronger, and I don't want to lose momentum there.

I'm going to try to ride the bike three times a week. We'll see how this goes. At the very least, the book will make me more willing to stay on the bike for 45 minutes.

Is This What Growing Up Looks Like?

I was going to have a marvelously lazy Sunday. Kevin's sister was in town and the two of them were going on a 55 mile bike ride in the morning. Then his mom was coming over in the afternoon for a mother's day BBQ. There was nothing I really needed to do, and I was looking forward to a lazy morning spent in front of the television.

Even a year ago I would have been able to do this. I would have spent hours on the couch with a stack of DVDs. But somehow I wasn't capable of the much laziness yesterday.

After a single episode of Angel, I began to seriously crave a shower. Then I came downstairs and realized that the dishes needed to be washed and I should probably clean the bathroom and clear off the dining room table. Suddenly I was scrubbing the toilet, folding laundry, and sweeping the floors I had just swept the day before. Between the mud the dog tracks in and the amount of hair she sheds I'm having a hard time keeping the floors clean. (Kevin: They don't seem that much dirtier to me. Me: Because I clean them.)

By the time Kevin and his sister got home, the house was clean and I was about to enjoy a beer and a book outside. The amazing thing is that even with all the cleaning (and later cooking), Sunday still felt like a perfect lazy day. In some ways, it felt even more relaxing (or possibly rejuvenating) than spending all day on the couch would have been.

All of this responsibility has got to be a side effect of growing up. I just hope it doesn't slip away from me again (though ten straight hours of Supernatural can be enjoyable in its own way).

Geeky Day

The fourth of May wasn't exactly Star Wars day for me, but it was still filled geekery.

After work (which I left a tad early) I went to see Kristin Cashore speak at a library in Bethesda, MD. Well, I tried to. Google told me it would take about 20 minutes on the metro and I failed to account for either rush hour or my complete lack of direction. I didn't arrive until nearly half an hour after she started speaking, but I did get to see the Q&A. Most of her talk seemed to be about the writing of Bitterblue. I recognized the end of it from some of her blog posts.

The Q&A led to some fun tidbits. Like the fact that Katsa means  peenis in Italian, or that Po means butt in German. Some of the names had to be changed for translations. And on the topic of crazy fans, someone (not at the event, this was just a story) asked if Leck had been based on President Obama. Some people just completely fail reading comprehension.

Cashore also confirmed that she wants to write at least one more book in this world. She didn't drop any other hints, but I'm excited for any news that comes next. And I got my book signed. :)

Later that night, Kevin and I went to see The Avengers. It was so awesome. I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in a movie theater. The whole audience was laughing and groaning and cheering. I almost missed Hulk's "puny god" line, because everyone was laughing so hard at the scene that immediately preceded it. I'm definitely going to have to get the super special edition feature packed DVD when it comes out. And I may even need to see the movie again in theaters.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome and very geeky Friday

Adventerous Kitty

The cat decided to go on an adventure. And while he's fine now, the last day was a little harrowing.

Onyx is an indoor kitty. It's not just that we don't let him go outside; he mostly won't go outside. I've carried him into our backyard a couple of times, and he always flips his shit and runs back inside as soon as he can escape from my arms. He may sit at the back door for hours staring outside, but as soon as we open the door he disappears.

This led to us being a little lax about leaving the back door open. Especially now that we have a dog. Kina likes to go in and out. She'll explore the backyard for a bit, then come back in to make sure we're still around before going outside again. Mostly we close the door when we go up or downstairs. Certainly if we're going to leave the house.

Unfortunately I forgot to do this at some point on Sunday. Either that, or the cat was sneakier than I can really imagine him being.

While I was putting laundry away on Sunday afternoon, I noticed that Onyx wasn't in his usual spot under the bed. I had been impressed that he wasn't howling at the dog, but it turned out he just wasn't there. I assumed he had found a new and exciting hiding place and tried to put it out of my mind.

I went the rest of the day without seeing the cat, which isn't that unusual. I mentioned this to Kevin, and we weren't able to find the cat after a quick search. But we decided not to worry too much. He'd come out when he got hungry enough.

Early Monday morning we were woken up by fight outside. Kevin assured me that the howling was too high pitched to have been Onyx. But when I noticed that he hadn't touched his food I began to get really worried.

There wasn't much I could do, so I went to work and tried to keep my mind off the cat. When Kevin got home, he put the dog in the basement and left the back door open so Onyx could come home if he wanted to. I sat in the backyard and read for a while, occasionally calling for Onyx, but he never showed up. I decided to go searching through the woods behind our house to see if I could find him, certain that if I found him at all he wouldn't be alive.

Eventually the sun went down and I had to go home. A few hours later, Kevin went back out with a flashlight. When we called Onyx this time, he meowed back. But since it was so dark, it took us a while to find him. It turned out he was sitting on the neighbor's fence.

We went to collect him, but he ran away, hopping from one back yard to the next. So we went inside to give him some time to calm down and decided to try again in a little bit. It didn't take long for Onyx to make his way inside on his own. I think the prospect of food and water is what ultimately convinced him to come home.

It seems that Onyx spent most of the day and night hanging out under our neighbor's deck. He didn't have any scratches or bruises. The worst he seems to have suffered is a little bit of dirt. I'm really happy that he managed to make it home okay. I'll definitely be more careful about keeping the door closed in the future.

Adventures in Dogwalking

Kina is an incredibly curious dog. She loves to smell things and will often plant herself at an interesting branch of patch of grass while I'm pulling on her leash trying to get her to continue our walk. We've managed to work out a bit of a system that seems to keep both of us happy. Kina will run out ahead of me as far as her leash extends. Then she finds something interesting to smell and stops. I amble along past her until the leash catches again. Then Kina's off and running ahead of me again until she finds the next interesting thing to smell. This doesn't work as well when we're on a path that Kina's unfamiliar with. But when we're going over worn ground, she's more willing to keep walking.

Kina hates staying on the path. She's usually off in the trees. If we're walking on a sidewalk, she's in the grass next to the sidewalk. This mostly works. But when we come across a tree or a sign, I have to either pull her back to the path or leave the path and walk around the same way as her to avoid getting her leash caught. Last night I made the mistake of calling her and following her. So Kina came running back to me and started following me around the tree. We walked around in circles a couple of times, with me looking like a fool, before I managed to get everything straightened out.

Kina's a pretty big dog (75 pounds) which has gotten a few comments. I wasn't too surprised when the little girl said "Big doggie!" and made sure to stay out of our way. I was surprised when a grown man reacted the same way. Kina's big, but she's not mean or poorly behaved or anything. She doesn't even bark. But people are still scared of her.

It turns out that the only reason Kina hasn't chased Onyx is that Onyx hasn't run away from her. Kina's pretty content to approach cautiously and just sniff when Onyx is sitting there. But I've found that she has a penchant for chasing things that run. I've had to hold her off what seems like every cat in the neighborhood and a few small dogs at this point. She still seems pretty uninterested in squirrels, though. Perhaps because they're so small.

For some reason, Kina has yet to poop while on a walk with Kevin. But she makes sure to go every time I take her for a walk. You'd think this would mean I've gotten used to picking it up, but that's not the case yet. Yesterday as I was leaning down with the bag, Kina saw something and took off. She managed to tear the leash out of my hands and I had to go running after her across the park. Then I had to drag her back so I could pick up the poo. I really hope that doesn't happen again. On the bright side, I can catch up to her across short distances. Or maybe she just slowed down because I was shouting at her.

I got to experience my first rainy dog walk. It actually has me not looking forward to winter for the first time in my life. But hopefully Kina won't like the cold as much as she seemed to like the wet. She was having a ball running through puddles and pulling me off the paved path so we could tromp through the swampy grass. My pants were soaked almost up to my knees by the time we got home. Thankfully, at this point Kina proved what a good dog she can be. I told her to stay in the kitchen while I ran upstairs to get a bath towel. She refrained from attempting to follow me or even shaking herself off and I was able to dry her completely before releasing her into the rest of the house. Now I just need to teach her to stay after she's pooped.

Back to the Gym

When I first joined the gym, I was doing really well. I had a few sessions with a personal trainer, and then I was going several times a week to lift weights. Even though I didn't lose a ton if weight, I was definitely able to see the effects. Clothes were fitting better and all that.

But then the holidays happened. Between Thanksgiving and New Years I was out of town every single weekend which made getting to the gym basically impossible. I started going back in January, but quickly gave up the weight training in favor of attempting to train for a 5K. Then the weather warmed up and I traded running in for biking. Over the months the muscles turned back in to fat. Again, I wasn't really gaining weight, but my clothes stopped fitting as well.

Then I received two more free personal training sessions simply for continuing to be a member of my gym for six months. It seemed like a great way to get back on track with some sort of training schedule.

I had my first session yesterday, and it was a great success. The trainer I met with was much better than the last one I met with. She was a little more on the same page as me as far as goals were concerned. She also listened to me a bit better. Rather than just walking me through a full body workout, she actually helped me put together a comprehensive schedule that focuses on different muscle groups and means I shouldn't be in the gym for more than half an hour at a time.

She agreed with me that, given my ankle problems, it made more sense to keep on biking rather than returning to running. And when she noticed how much crunches were hurting my back, she gave me some exercises to help rebuild the muscles there (muscles I'm not sure I've ever had).

The bottom line is that I now have a whole program that I'm going to do my best to stick to. It involves three days a week of biking and three days of weightlifting. Each weightlifting day focuses on a different muscle group (back and biceps, chest and triceps, legs), though I'm supposed to work on my back all three days. None of the workouts are too long, which should make it easier to stick to the schedule. Since it won't be eating it my entire evening, I won't feel like I'm sacrificing all of my time working out.

I even made a spreadsheet so I can track my progress. Hopefully that will keep me motivated. I also have a second appointment with the same trainer in three weeks. That alone should motivate me enough to stay on track. After that I hope I'll start seeing enough results that it'll be easier to continue going. Wish me luck.