obsessed

Hello my name is Meredith and I’m obsessed with my juicer.

For approximately 2 years I have been lusting after juicers. I’ve seen them all over the blog world and always treated myself to a healthy juice on my trips to Whole Foods (which are rare, considering I am a grad student). For Christmas 2010 I was all set to get one and had told my mom all about it, but then reality set in and I realized there were things I needed more in my life and an extra appliance in my kitchen wasn’t it. But since then, I’ve kept my eyes out for a deal, promising myself I’d jump on a deal if I found one.

And I did! This juicer was randomly being offered as a Groupon Goods deal and I happened to have a gift certificate to Groupon (thanks, Mom!) so I ended up paying 1/4 of the retail value plus $10 in shipping. Not too shabby! I got the Juiceman JM400 Jr., which for a newbie juicer like me works perfectly fine — here’s the link on Amazon if you want to see.

The reviews led me to believe that this would be a great juicer for someone who isn’t planning on making huge batches of juice every day, more for the casual juicer than the religious detoxer. Since I’ve gotten it, I’ve made a juice about every other day and it has held up just fine.

If you are thinking of investing in a juicer, here are my basic recommendations:

• Start small, you can always upgrade your model if you want something bigger and better, but you’ll always regret spending $200 on something you found out you never used.
• To keep a juicing habit affordable, buy produce that is on sale and in season. With the 3 for $1 small apples, $1 bunches of kale, 3 for $1 lemons, and a knob of ginger root, my favorite juice costs me less than $1!
• Only buy produce you would eat otherwise. You may get sick of your beet juice and regret having a surplus of beets in your produce drawer.
• Get bang for your buck: produce like cucumbers, apples, and citrus produce a high volume of juice.
• Clean the parts as soon as you finish juicing! It takes about 5 minutes, but I let my juice sit after I make it and force myself to rinse everything off. This way, the sticky fruit juice and pulp doesn’t get crusted on everything.
• If you have a dog or other small mammal, consider feeding it the juice pulp. I feel a little wasteful throwing mine down the garbage disposal. For my all-vegetable juices, I save the pulp and throw it in pasta sauce.

I love my juicer and I love making fresh juice. My skin is looking great and I feel good knowing I’m getting in my vitamins when I sometimes might not meet my daily fruit and vegetable goals. I even love my juicer so much that I keep it near me at all times and somehow spilled acetone nail polish remover on it and it damaged the plastic coating. Go me! 

taboule turkey burgers

I love taboule! Anyone else? If you don’t know what it is, it is basically a very herbacious (just made that up) mixture of parsley, garlic, lemon juice, bulgar wheat, tomato, and magic.

Do you spell it “tabouli” or “taboule”? Or even “tabouleh”? I don’t know which to use! I bought my mix in bulk so that is unhelpful as it has neither a name nor instructions on how to prepare it.

Instead of making it to eat as a dip, I opted to make just a little bit of it to mix into some ground turkey. Turkey breast is, let’s face it, kind of flavorless on its own. But something as flavorful as taboule really punched it up.

If you’ve never had taboule/i/eh, I recommend you go to your local Mediterranean restaurant which likely has it on the appetizer menu. It is great with crackers or pita, and I really like to mix a heaping spoonful into my salads to give them extra flavor. You can also buy it in its prepared form or in dried mixes where you simply add some amount of water, olive oil, lemon juice, and diced tomato and mix to make good things happen. The mixes are widely available, check the part of your grocery store with boxed rice dishes and couscous!

Unrelated side note: do not slice your finger open with an apple slicer while these burgers cook. No bueno. But the Dora the Explorer band-aid is a-okay.

Taboule Turkey Burgers (makes 4 or 5 patties)
2 T dried taboule mix
1 T olive oil
1 T water
1/2 cup diced tomato (remove the seeds if you prefer)
1 1/4 lb lean ground turkey breast
1 egg white
salt & pepper to taste
In a small mixing bowl, combine the dried taboule mix with water and olive oil. Allow to sit for a few minutes while the bulgar wheat soaks up the liquid. Dice your tomato and stir it into the taboule mix. It is important to taste this mixture and possibly add salt and pepper — my mix wasn’t very salty so I added a healthy pinch of both salt and pepper! In a large mixing bowl combine the ground turkey breast, egg white, taboule, and (optional) salt and pepper. Mix well but don’t over mix. Divide the mixture into 4 or 5 equal parts and gently form into patties. You can cook them in a pan or bake them (like I did) at 375* for 25 minutes. They will be juicy and perfectly cooked! Remove them from the baking sheet immediately so any excess fat doesn’t re-coagulate on them. Serve on a bun with plenty of ketchup

bbq chicken orzo salad

Hey y’all!

I’m back in Austin after a month on the East Coast, where I visited with family for the holidays and stayed with Rahul in DC for 2 weeks. It was so nice to relax and especially to be with Rahul for so long, but I had to return to Texas eventually. And now we’re in the home stretch of my Master’s degree and it will be May sooner than I know!

While hanging out in DC, I cooked for Rahul but nothing blogworthy. In fact, I made this, this, and this recipe because they’re easy and make for lots of leftovers! I know them by heart. And so should you.

However, now that I am back in my own kitchen and a need to have food on hand to pack lunches, I got to cooking a bit yesterday and made a really simple pasta salad. Have I ever told you how much I love pasta salad? I really, really love pasta salad. And this one is simple, healthy, and contains one of my favorite condiments: barbecue sauce.

Note: this dinner seemed a little beige so I added some broccoli on the side at the last minute. Next time, I’d probably add it to the actual pasta salad, but that is your judgement call.

BBQ Chicken & Orzo Salad (serves 4-5)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup barbecue sauce (of choice), divided
1/2 cup orzo, uncooked
1 1/2 cup corn
1/3 cup plain, non-fat yogurt
1 tsp garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
In a bowl, marinate chicken breasts in 3 T of barbecue sauce for 20-30 minutes. Bake chicken at 375* for 30 minutes or until fully cooked. Using two forks, shred the chicken breasts and set aside in a mixing bowl to cool. Boil and drain the orzo, adding it to the bowl with the shredded chicken. Drain the corn (if using canned corn) and add to mixing bowl. In a small bowl, combine 1 T barbecue sauce with yogurt and garlic powder. If you use Greek yogurt, your mixture will be too thick so you may want to thin it out with a touch of water. Pour the yogurt mixture over the chicken, orzo, and corn and mix thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate at least 2-3 hours and serve chilled.

some January motivation

Ahh January… the time of year when gyms are overcrowded and diet commercials abound! Some people take January seriously, and others are totally annoyed by the so-called “January joiners” who invade the gym and produce section. When people roll into the gym with jeans and water bottles full of Diet Coke (bless their hearts), I have to force myself to remember one thing: that was me 3 years ago. Lost, unhappy, 250 lbs, but trying to fix it.

Yep, 3 years ago today I started to change my life on my own terms. As I’ve written about before, my dad died in November of 2008. Here is a picture of me from my mom’s wedding, just a day after his funeral:

Shortly after this, I finished my semester and had about a month of winter break to process things. Slowly, the wheels of change started to spin in my brain and I found blogs about healthy living and weight loss. I investigated my choices. I invested in myself. I started Weight Watchers on January 12, 2009.

I learned about making smarter choices with my food. I liked the burn I felt in my muscles when I exercised. I knew that I had to do something proactive to become a happier person and turn things around for myself. It all started to click.

I started on the elliptical, moved to running (using the Couch to 5k program!), and ran my first 5k! I then ran a 10k and a handful of other 5k’s. I got back into swimming, my childhood sport and first love. I took spin classes. I was healthy.

Over the next year and a half, I lost 80 lbs. I was happy. I was a new person.

In the 1.5 years since I’ve moved to Texas, I gained 10-12 lbs back (depending on what day you asked me). I got a little disheartened after falling out of some new habits and back into some old habits. But since August I’ve been trying to pick myself back up by my bootstraps (because I actually have bootstraps now) and I’ve gotten back on the bandwagon and lost the “moving-weight”. Now, I’m looking forward to getting rid of the final 15 lbs I want to shed. Full disclosure: I’m using Weight Watchers again and have been since November.

So why am I sharing all this with you? I wanted to write it out for myself as some positive reinforcement and motivation for me, as well as anyone out there looking at the calendar and wondering if this year is the year. It is! I did it. And not to sound like one of those tv commercials but… if I can do it, so can you. It wasn’t always easy, and it certainly wasn’t always pretty, but I did it.

My advice: pick some small things you can change and go from there. One change will snowball into another. You’ll be amazed at what you continue to accomplish. Find yourself a mantra (the one I’m using these days was 100% stolen from the Minute Maid orange juice slogan, but it works): “Put good in, get good out.”

Are you using this January to change things up? Are you looking for ways to get healthier? Did you already find a better lifestyle? I want to hear everyone’s stories! I need the motivation and I know other people want it, too!

 

do you believe in ghosts?

Okay this is totally random and off-topic… but since when do I have a topic?

Do you believe in ghosts? I’ve always been a firm believer in ghosts. I grew up in a very historic and haunted area of Virginia, where supposedly many ghosts from Colonial times up to the present reside. I’ve taken a ghost tour of Colonial Williamsburg, driven on Elbow Road in Virginia Beach, and been too chicken to hang out on the old battlefields late at night.

I don’t normally give my belief in ghosts that much thought, but on New Year’s Eve I was in Richmond, where I went to college, and a friend and I decided to visit the Edgar Allen Poe House Museum (which, by the way, is totally worth $5).

Before going, there was some general discussion among my friends about how ghosts supposedly appear in the windows of the courtyard at the museum. I started asking everyone about their belief in ghosts and then I busted out some knowledge: ghosts appear as orbs in photographs. You can Google it.

Well, I have proof of this. You see, my mom’s wedding was held the day after my dad’s funeral. (Yes, you read that right. They were divorced and his death was, obviously, unexpected).  So anyways, there is a picture of me from the wedding with a floating orb which appears in no other photo from my camera or from that room. I 100% believe it was my dad’s spirit.

You can’t miss it! (Nor can you miss how fat I was. Wow.)

Okay so there’s part 1 of your proof. Ready for the second? At the Edgar Allen Poe House, I snapped tons of pictures of windows hoping to see the elusive ghosts. On first glance, I didn’t see them on my camera. But after putting the photos in iPhoto, I can totally see them! There are TWO orbs in this picture, can you see them, too??

It isn’t quite a clear as the one from my mom’s wedding, but there they are! (On the right side, for those playing along at home).

So after all that, do you believe in ghosts? Or do you think I’m crazy and have decided to never read this blog again?