Cooking, Fishing, and one day (maybe) Cooking the results of Fishing

Hey, look at me go.  Two posts in the same week.  Which is proving to be a pretty stressful week.  I'm trying to wrap up everything in my old job before starting the new one next week.  It's proving to be exhausting, mostly in the emotional way.  I'm feeling pretty anxious and having a hard time sleeping.  And I haven't even started the new job yet.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm excited about the potential of the new job.  But the reality of the situation is that things are going to be pretty rough there for a good while after I start.  Lots of valid, and exciting, reasons for that, but still.

On to the goals update.  As I intimated in my last post, I tried a new recipe Sunday evening (#34).  We had picked up some pork sirloin roasts at Winco (can I just tell you how much I love the Winco bulk selection?) and I had no idea how to cook them without them turning out tough and dry, as they have very little internal fat.  I found nothing particularly useful on my usual go-to recipe site.  So, after a while of googling, I found this recipe.  Basically, if you don't want to see the actual recipe, it consists of coating the roast with rosemary and salt and pepper, browning it in a pan,

cooking some onions, carrots and celery,

adding red wine to the skillet,

plopping the roast on top of the vegetables and wine, and cooking it slowly at a very low temperature (225 degrees).  You are supposed to roast it to an internal temperature of 145 degrees.  This probably would have worked out better if I had placed the thermometer more appropriately.  Not that I put the thermometer anywhere inappropriate, just to clarify.  I made sure to insert the thermometer in the thickest part of the meat, but failed to put it in the center of the thickest part of the meat.  Important lesson.  Here's what it looked like before I did a little pan-frying to alleviate our fears of food poisoning:

While you're pan-frying your undercooked meat, you add additional red wine to the vegetables in original plan and cook for around 15 minutes, followed by pureeing in the blender.

Served it all with some cabbage fried in butter and called it good.  It was pretty good.  The meat was really tender and juicy, and the sauce was actually pretty delicious.  It turns out really tangy, which surprised me a little bit.  It's a good cooking technique for such a lean cut of meat, which I'll probably try again.  This time with correct thermometer placement.

In other news, I bought a fishing license this week (#70).  I ordered it Sunday evening and it came in the mail today.  I'm pretty excited about it.  Now I just have to get some fishing gear and find someone to go fishing with me.  Part of the motivation for getting it was that you get one free vehicle use permit for Fish and Wildlife lands.  So it will be useful for both fishing and birdwatching.  And maybe hiking.

I went to the gym on Monday(#4) and did the Wii Fit Plus today (#18).  I really worked out hard at the gym, which felt really good.  I was pretty sore the next day, but I love that feeling.  Bicep curls without pre or post stretching resulted in a pretty excruciating massage today, however (#45).  The main problems I've been having that got me into the medical massages in the first place have been related to my shoulders, so I had been taking it easy on the upper body exercise until this week.  I guess stretching probably has some benefits...

Whew, that was a lot of goals to update on.  It makes me tired just writing about it, although, to be fair, I was already pretty tired.  Two more days to get through this week.  I'm very much looking forward to plans for the weekend.  Ethiopian food and pie with some wonderful friends on Friday night, cocktails and appetizers with other friends on Saturday night, and seeing a movie (probably 127 Hours, despite my squeamishness) with one of my best friends on Sunday.  All low key and fun.  Now I just have to get to the weekend.

Exercise and Eating Out

I am fortunate to have a partner who is good at helping me keep on track (well, at least most of the time).  My plan to go to the gym after work today devolved into doing the Wii Fit Plus workout at home, to making an offer of dinner and a movie to my LL.  Lucky for me (in the long run at least), in response to my offer of dinner and a movie after she had already agreed to do the Wii Fit Plus with me, I received the following text message "Workout.  No dinner and move."  So after a brief stop at Safeway to pick up some hamburger and veggies for spaghetti (the sauce of which included yellow squash, orange bell peppers and kale, served over whole wheat pasta), home we went to get our Wii on.

One thing I love about the Wii (#18) is that it really just seems like you're playing a game until you notice that you're sweating and you've burned a couple of hundred calories (#4).  The problem I have with the Wii Fit exercises is that they really hurt my feet (plantar fascitis which is exacerbated by my gym shoes being in the car and me being too lazy to go out to the car and get them.  a bit ironic, I guess).  The other thing that I sometimes love and sometimes am really annoyed by is the humor programmed into the Wii Fit.  It played the same joke on each of us in turn tonight, which wound up being a little annoying.  And then I find myself talking back to it, or accusing the trainer of hitting on my LL.  Good times, overall.

Date night this week (we try to do this weekly, but usually succeed in accomplishing 2-3 nights per month) has evolved from eating at the mall food court and going to see Harry Potter (finally), to eating at a new restaurant and trying to see the Picasso exhibit at the SAM.  I'm excited about the restaurant, and had the realization tonight that it is often the dessert menu that sells me on a restaurant.  We are planning to go to Urbane Restaurant and the clincher was, quite honestly, the pumpkin brulee served with pecan shortbread on the dessert menu.  The rest of the menu also looked interesting and delicious, however.  You'll get a full report in the days following and I will try to take some crappy pictures of the food on my iPhone.

I just realized that this bit about date night is apparently about one of my imaginary goals, which I swear I had written down, of trying a new restaurant each month.  Let's just pretend that it's a goal, although I think that the truth of the matter is that it might be my LL's goal.  Oh well.  I'll tell you all about it anyway.  It might get boring if all I ever talk about is my goals.  And eating delicious food is always the goal, even if it didn't make it onto the list of 101.