In which Sarah Barr discovers the One Ring. On the hob. Along with some Other Rings.

[Sarah Barr]

Deep in the caves, the little hobbit opened her eyes, and it was so dark it was as if she hadn't opened them at all. She fumbled through the blackness, nervous and gasping at every little sound, and her shaking hands chanced upon a cold shape. She felt its strange, mesmerising smoothness, and, out of their own volition, her fingers closed around its circumference.

 

A metallic taste slowly crept onto her tongue. Her eyes darted through the dank gloom, back and forth, her heart pounding, gorge rising, suddenly knowing. This, THIS, this long forgotten thing, of which she'd known so much and so little, had treasured, and had lost. Back. Back in her own hand. She stared forward, gimlet eyes piercing the emptiness, alive, and fierce, and unafraid. 

 

"How long have we had this flaming parsnip?!" 

 

Her companion, Boyfriend, turned on the kitchen light.

 

"It's all bendy now. Why do I never use them up in time?" the little hobbit asked.

 

"Bleeeeee!" said Boyfriend, absent-mindedly, and went back to bed.

 

 

Last time, I kicked my Irn Bru habit, and I'm a very happy hobbit who has now haddit with bad habits.

One of my bad habits is buying a basket full of vegetables with every intent to cook them, then leaving them in the fridge until they go all brown and wrinkly. Thus, instead of lovely steaming tureens of stew all ready to microwave on lazy week nights, I just end up with a fuller bin and a stodge-and-cheese-based diet. So I'm going to fix that. Calorie counting is very dull and unproductive, so I'm going to focus on portion control for things that I would like to eat less of, like stodge-and-cheese. I'm walking to Mordor, but miss strength training and want to feel less feeble, so I'm bringing that back too.

 

Main Goal:

"Get lean and healthy enough to be an awesome field ecologist."

 

Challenge Goals:

 

1.) Cook food. A mostly vegetable-based recipe. At least once a week. In a quantity that will last at least four meals. (CON +4)

2.) Get back to strength training. BBWW thrice a week, yoga once a week. (STR +3, STA +1, DEX +1)

3.) Control portion sizes. Weigh food! (CON +2, WIS +2 [because I need to do all the learning about portion sizes])

 

Life Goal:

 

4.) Finish one item from your list of unfinished craft projects every week. Pics or it didn't happen. Also, maybe find a camera. (WIS +2)

- Finish kusudama balls

- Finish pom pom rug

- Finish pleather armour

- Finish grey cushion cover

- Finish red bag

- Finish turtle painting

- Finish green fascinator

- Finish Christmas wreaths

- Finish Christmas ornament set (I'm really behind on the whole Christmas decorations thing.)

- Finish squid tentacle thing (sculpture? Hmm.)

 

 

Things to do before challenge starts:

- Get some cheap tupperware boxes and portion out rice and quinoa for cooking; treat self to half-decent veg knife.

- Dig up some recipes that aren't mostly jalapenos and tabasco. Write shopping lists.

- Make sure the kitchen is clean, tidy and inviting for maximum cooking likelihood.

- Make sure there is space in bedroom or living room for workout

- *gulp* Tidy my craft cupboard.

 

 

 

The little hobbit rubbed her hands together. She grinned a bright, confident grin. She turned on her heel to march off to victory.

 

"AAAAAA" screamed the little hobbit as she saw Boyfriend suddenly in the corridor, minding his own business.

 

"AAAAAA" screamed Boyfriend, startled.

 

"AAAAAA" screamed the little hobbit, scared of the loud Boyfriend noise.

 

"AAAAAA" screamed Boyfriend, conversationally.

 

"SHUT UP" shouted Other Flatmates.

 

 

 

Anyway.

 

 

[xanjra]

I know what you mean about the veggies!  Although in my house it is Fiancé that buys them.  I have started throwing them all in the slow cooker with some meat.  Last night leftover fruit got turned into a paleo banana bread and a heart-shaped pear and dark chocolate sponge.

 

I am excited to see your finished crafts.  I like to knit and crochet and I have a massive collection of half-finished things!

 

M x

[Sarah Barr]

Hi Xanjra! Both those things sound amazing. I'm going to look up paleo banana bread in a bit!

 

 

 

A mini-quest! Yay!

Now to tackle the questions.

 

1. Is your overall quest achievable (over a short or long period of time)?  Is it reasonable?  Yes: over a long period. It is reasonable: I don't need to be micro-skinny or super-strong, I just need to be capable.

2. Do your 3 main goals all build towards it in little ways, or are you taking on too much?      Yes: Not biting off too much this time! 1) and 3) deal with weight, which I need to lose to move about more easily, 2) with strength which I'll need for lugging things up mountains. 4) gives me less to get in the way of things like studying.

3. Are your main goals realistic? Can you scale them to smaller steps to fit your life better, even if it will make it take a little longer to achieve them?  Yes: as long as I remember that if I can't do all three sets of BBWW per session I shouldn't be discouraged, and don't let the walk to Mordor interfere with my ability to do my strength workouts. (i.e.: if I'm planning on doing BBWW, maybe don't also walk 3 miles on the same day.)

4. Are your goals able to be measured and tracked?  What will you use to track them? Yes: all by ticking off boxes, and putting gold stars on a chart every successful day.

5. How are you grading your goals?  Are they pass/fail (“every dayâ€, “not even once over the six weeksâ€)?  Is there a reward for the effort, or are you only grading yourself on whether or not you “lose the weight†or “run the distanceâ€? Pass/Fail: 1), 2) and 4) every week, 3) every day. I want a reward, and I think it shall be a trip to the Scottish Seabird Centre or somewhere like that.

6. What is your plan for continuing/altering/grading those goals if you become ill or injured? The point of cooking a big vat of something every week is so I have things to eat with minimal effort during the rest of the week. So there should always be something healthy and properly portioned out in the fridge if I get ill or injured. If something happens and I can't do my strength training, replace BBWW with things that don't hurt the parts that are hurt. So if I hurt my ankle I can still do adapted press ups, and if I hurt my shoulder I can still do squats. 

7. Did you take into consideration any special occasions (Passover, Easter, Cinco de Mayo, birthdays, anniversaries, etc) that may occur during the challenge?  What modifications do you need to build into your goals for those? Can't think of anything that happens in between now and the 25th of May; but if I am eating out or eating at a friend's, it's still possible to watch portion sizes. NO DRINKING. Drinking leads to nachos and pizza and more drinking.

8. Do any of your main goals conflict with each other? Will one goal make it hard to do another? None of them should conflict, as long as the things I cook are things I can have in big portions without problems, like ratatouille as opposed to, say, haggis. 

9. Do you already have the time in your schedule to actually complete the goals you’ve set?  If not, what are you planning to do to make time for them? I have so much time in the evenings and at work; when I've nothing to do my boss doesn't seem to mind me sewing, and I blocked Buzzfeed, so I have all the time in the world on weekends, and plenty in the evenings.

10. Are you trying to build multiple habits, or is all your energy focused on your main quest? I'm a bit stuck on this one. I want portion control to be a thing I just do habitually, and the other two challenge goals are more "things I want to do routinely this challenge but will probably change/step-up next challenge". But they do all contribute to the main quest. I think my answer is, er, both, then? 

I should probably do work now. I will probably just look at banana bread recipes.

[Teros]

That's why food shopping day is also- make everything that I could possibly eat this week ...day.

 

 

 

Sounds like a good plan!

 

I will be! It's going to be some sort of big peacock tail bustle skirt to be worn with a blue dress. I maaay be throwing a fancy dress party just as an excuse to make costumes.  If I manage to get it to work, there may be pics!

*glances at watch*

 

Did it work?

[Sarah Barr]

OM NOM

I want all that food! Especially the bolognesey-thing!

 

 

The costume's nearly working! I have to get it finished by tomorrow night without fail and so there will be pics on Sunday! I've had to hand-sew the whole lot of it so I've hand-stitched about 20 metres of fabric and lace so far. But it will get finished! 

 

(Wow, 16th of March? I have been doing this for waaaay too long.)

[xanjra]

You really have gold stars?!?

 

I am so going to buy myself some next time I am in town!

 

M x

[Teros]

OM NOM

I want all that food! Especially the bolognesey-thing!

Left to right

Sloppy joe mix, other red stuff is meatsauce, coconut flour fried chicken, yellow bags are peeled oranges, sausage and squash quiche, the very end there is spaghetti squash all scraped out to eat with the meatsauce.

[Sarah Barr]

You really have gold stars?!?

 

I am so going to buy myself some next time I am in town!

 

M x

 

Gold stars are excellent! I've got a sheet hanging over my desk covered in them and it is so satisfying to see lots in a row!

 

Teros: the same sloppy joe mix you posted in the recipe mini-challenge? I'm going to make that this weekend!

[GingaNinja]

Awesome stuff Sarah! Look forward to keeping up with you again! xxx

[Sarah Barr]

Getting ready for challenge; preparations going well. 

 

Mostly posting because I have pictures of that costume as promised! I made the skirt and the hair bows. Crappy fashion corset available for about £11 on eBay, industrial-strength waist-training corset underneath it available here (The former just makes you look lumpy, the latter takes about 7 inches off your waist). Black part is taffeta, coloured part is polyester satin. Should all be taffeta so it looks less costumey, but I wasn't prepared to gamble all that money on something I'd never made before.

I didn't have time to make the wired underskirt I'd need to make it stand out, it's flatter than it should be because I had to sit on it, and the light's not exactly brilliant here. There was also a large quantity of fabric feathers that didn't really work, so it became less "peacock" and more "blueish greenish thing".

But you get the general idea!

 

Now to go write shopping lists.

 

[Teros]

AWESOME

 

How come the feathers didn't work?

[Guzzi]

Hey! Totally subbin ya girl! Love the costume, you're looking damn good.

[Sarah Barr]

Hee! The feathers were teardrops of different colours of satin overlapping to look like peacock feathers; they didn't work because they ended up looking like huge fish scales, and the edges frayed too much. I tried to fix the fraying by lining it with gold silk paint, which did look very pretty but went all squiggly and lumpy when it dried. Going to try and find a way to fix them, and then maybe make a papier mache peacock.

 

Just bought the ingredients for your Sloppy Joes, Teros! And some of the other recipes posted for last time's Mini Challenge 4. Beaucastle's chicken bake sounds good. I don't know why I've never bothered getting frozen onions before, it's like magic! I could cry for joy. But I won't. Because I don't have to chop onions.

 

\o/

[Beaucastle]

Subbed   awesome quest.  I love the outfit!

[Sarah Barr]

So: things I have cooked today!

 

- Paleo sweet potato pie (which I am currently eating, and is delicious - but I'd add more butter or maybe some apple sauce to the base, it's very dry. I get confused around non-metric or non-UK-imperial measurements so maybe I didn't add enough butter in the first place)

- Teros' Sloppy joes, with quorn mince

- Vegetable chilli

- Beaucastle's chicken bake, with pretend chicken and a leek I found floating around in the fridge.

 (last three recipes on the first/second page of last challenge's Mini Quest 4. Which is now basically my main recipe book.)

 

And I prepared flour mix for coconut southern fried something (probably pretend chicken, maybe mushrooms!), and have extra paleo pastry for more pie goodness later this week! I'm thinking my friend's Finnish berry pie - it's full of egg, cream, big fat blueberries and raspberries, with the tiniest hint of cardamom. Sometimes I nearly get as excited about the prospect of that pie happening as I do about her coming over from Finland. I love her lots; the pie is just that good.

 

Feeling good about this week. Esp. since I've kind of done my first goal for this week before it's even really started. That still counts, right? Not that I'm not going to do it all over again next weekend, mind. 

 

Onward to Monday! This week's finish-a-craft-project will be the kusudama balls. 

 

Good luck with the challenges this week, guys!

 

<3

[Beaucastle]

 the kusudama balls?

*dashes off to the land of google.* 

 

 

 

OOOOHhhh   pretty... can't wait to see the photos.

[deftona]

Hi Sarah, good to see you again! I know what you mean about leaving veggies to rot! I signed up for one of those organic veg box schemes. That really makes me use it, the stuff is so fresh and amazingly tasty. I have really expanded my cooking repertoire to use some of the weird ass vegetables they send me. 

 

Good luck on your challenge, I'll be subbing. 

[Teros]

Hee! The feathers were teardrops of different colours of satin overlapping to look like peacock feathers; they didn't work because they ended up looking like huge fish scales, and the edges frayed too much. I tried to fix the fraying by lining it with gold silk paint, which did look very pretty but went all squiggly and lumpy when it dried. Going to try and find a way to fix them, and then maybe make a papier mache peacock.

 

Just bought the ingredients for your Sloppy Joes, Teros! And some of the other recipes posted for last time's Mini Challenge 4. Beaucastle's chicken bake sounds good. I don't know why I've never bothered getting frozen onions before, it's like magic! I could cry for joy. But I won't. Because I don't have to chop onions.

 

\o/

If you do make a papier mache thing, pics.

 

Awesome to hear. I usually put a scoop of it on a sweet potato, but just plain or even on a bed of spinach works too.

 

Never got frozen onions? My g/f swears by them. That's the only thing she doesn't chop fresh.  The only reason not to use them is if you want big fat chunks of onion that will get reduced (like just quarter a whole onion for a roast in the crockpot or something.)

[Sarah Barr]

So this week seems to have gone pretty well!

 

Food:

I have been weighing things! Even cheese! I am bad at bothering to weigh cheese but I am! The food I cooked didn't quite last till the end of the week: I cooked a tonne but it has to do boyfriend's meals as well as mine. Going to make things stretch a bit further with some extra mushrooms and courgettes, and freeze some because five-day-old veg chilli is probably fine but not exactly appealing. I bought all the ingredients for this week's cooking today, cooking them tomorrow.

 

Exercise:

My flatmate's girlfriend is over and they have commandeered the living room all week, so I haven't had anywhere to do BBWW or yoga (my room is tiny), which makes me a bit sad. Modifying my goal on that one: If I haven't been able to do at least one strength workout by Wednesday I should walk home on Thursday and Friday; that way I definitely get in exercise even if it's not strength training. I have tomorrow off; I'll be cooking lots but I plan on getting up early and sneaking in some yoga before flatmates wake up. I did walk today; spent ages in the museum and walked the 2 miles back to my flat.

 

Crafts:

I've made an earnest start on lots of unfinished crafts! I gave my mum half my hair grips and showed her how to make kusudamas a while ago (she's signed off work due to heart problems and bored to tears) and that means I don't have enough grips to hold together all the things that need glueing at once, so they're not finished but I have glued and folded all the things that can be, so they just need assembled now. I'm estimating they'll be done in another couple of days. It's weird saying I don't have enough grips; I bought 1000 for my dissertation (holding mesh onto insect traps to stop mice falling in) and I thought I'd never get rid of the 500 leftover ones.

 

My turtle painting was originally a dragon painting that I screwed up by trying to use marker pens to add detail. I've added layers and layers of white paint over the top but the marker keeps seeping through. So I think the turtle painting will now just have to be a dragon painting. Or I should just buy new canvas. Or do both.

 

I looked at my red bag, and I miscalculated something, so it's not going to fit an A4 binder. So I'm making it a purple bag instead. 

 

I now have all the pom poms I need for my pom pom rug. I just need to work out what I'm going to sew them onto. Might investigate cheap doormats. These pom poms are like tribbles, and I keep finding them everywhere. The rug's colour theme is Kevin from Up, just in case you were wondering.

 

Found another forgotten craft while rummaging in my cupboard - I'd collected about a hundred cockle shells and painted them white, gold and blue. I can't get them to stick together with superglue and my glue gun's broken, so I need to find a way to make them behave. They were going to be a mirror frame or something. Oh, and I found a box of driftwood, shells and seaglass, so there's also a windchime I need to finish.

 

I haven't touched the pleather armour yet - it's upholstery polyurethane that is considerably nastier than I thought it would be, so I'm thinking about ways to line it and make it less ugly.

 

Not touching the peacock sculpture until I get the painting finished, because that's going to take up a lot of space in my craft room and that's the only place wet painting can be.

 

Had forgotten about the squid tentacle sculpture till just now. 

 

Going to go meditate, and hope this puts me in the mood for yoga in the morning.

 

Have a good week 2, everyone!

[Guzzi]

Haha! Sounds like you're up to your eyeballs in crafty projects. They all sound really cool though. Nice start to the challenge, hope week 2 goes just as well for you.

[Beaucastle]

You have inspired me.  Should I complete my current task list for the challenge before the challenge ends, I will add going through my craft closet to the list.

 

If I don't I shall use it on the next challenge, as one of my goals.

[Teros]

TIme to rock week 2 !

[GingaNinja]

Yep yep, good luck with week 2

[Sarah Barr]

So week 2 was ok. Flatmates still strewn across living room but enacted new walk-if-you-can't-bodyweight-workout clause so still got exercise. I really don't want to join a gym again, but somehow I don't think I'm going to get much strength training done without a little space. 

 

Boyfriend's mum bought him a grocery shop for his birthday, which essentially means boyfriend handed me some paper and told me to write things down, since I'm the one who cooks the food. She then did a strange thing. I wrote "2 tins mixed beans", as in chickpeas, kidney beans, haricot beans, etc. all mixed together in the same can. She interpreted this as "buy 18 cans of assorted kinds of beans". I now have an entire cupboard devoted to beans. I don't think I've ever used borlotti beans before. I am very grateful but also very amused and confused. Guess what we're eating this week.

 

(My dad once said that when he and mum had just got married, mum had a dish called Bean Surprise. The surprise was that it was beans for dinner again.)

 

Got a bit sloppy with portions. TBH, I feel like clothes are getting tighter, so I'm going to track calories again as well as watching portion sizes. 

 

Crafts are going ok; kusudamas kept falling apart so I'm going to need to re-glue them with PVA rather than just a glue stick. Got a hammerhead shark painting started, and I'm going to work on building the details into it. Bag pieces are all knitted and cut out, I just need to find the structural fabric and cut out the lining then stitch it all together. 

 

 

 

Edit: unfinished quotation marks. Ooft. (Don't you just hate it when you miss a close-quote or bracket?

 

Have a good Week 3 guys! Bean recipes welcome. 

[deftona]

When life gives you beans, make a cookie pie! 

 

http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/05/31/deep-dish-cookie-pie/