MFA Mama

140-calorie, wheat-free chocolate cupcakes

   So y'all know I'm on this LOSE ALL THE WEIGHT kick, right? It's less to do with vanity (Hotter is the only person who has to see me naked on the regular, and he actually PREFERS me zaftig, bless his poor blind little heart) and more to do with stuff like "not getting the Type Two Diabeetus" and "spare the joints!" My family tree is full of hideous, but largely preventable conditions either caused or exacerbated by being overweight, and I'm not getting any younger. It's hard. I'm not gonna lie. I fell wayyyy off the wagon over the holidays and gained back everything I'd lost in two months of hard work, partly due to an injury and partly due to lack of restraint. That sucked. But now I'm back at it, and I am sloooowly seeing results.

   All of that is to say that sometimes I would sell one of my children for some damn chocolate cake, but I've learned that I can't cheat on The Diet without going buck-ass wild and gaining ten pounds. Then I found this lady's blog, and thought "well hell, I could have some of THAT cake!" But I didn't have black beans, or liquid stevia, and I don't even want as much sugar as is in that much honey, and I have cholesterol issues, and I suck at following directions...anyway here is what I made, which isn't exactly her recipe, but is its kissing cousin:

MFA Mama's Poot-cakes

Trader Joe's Cannelini Beans - 1 can (420 calories)
Five egg whites -  80 calories (16 ea.)
Two egg yolks - 100 calories (50 ea.) 
Unsweetened cocoa powder - 6 tbsp (120 calories)
1/2 c. Horizon Whole Milk - (80 calories)
Coconut Oil - 7 tbsp (840 calories)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 c. Splenda

   Blenderize everything, ladle into a cupcake pan (WITH LINERS!), bake at 350 for about 20 minutes (until a butterknife comes out clean), and eat before going to bed facing AWAY from your spouse (HA!).

   They're really good, high in protein and fiber, and honestly you'd never guess about the beans if you just took a bite without knowing what they were. Next time I think I'll use actual black beans, I just didn't have any in the house, and maybe a teensy pinch of vanilla sugar sprinkled over the top of each one. These would probably be KILLER with peanut-butter on top, but obviously that would add a ton of calories (each of these has 136.666666667 total calories, which I rounded to 140 since there's no nutritional information on the ingredients without calories listed but they have to have a TINY amount, right?). 

 

All calorie counts courtesy of Myfitnesspal

today was a good day

  I am not going to go into specifics as of yet (or, who am I kidding, probably EVER), but today I got some EXCELLENT news on the career front, as in BENEFITS FOR ERRYBODY AND A MODICUM OF JOB SECURITY kind of news, and lo, there was GREAT REJOICING throughout Casa MFA.

today BROUGHT IT!

*   I may have a freelance gig doing something I am only marginally qualified to do for someone terrifyingly rich and important at PseudoCorp. When they asked me to meet with them I thought it was regarding PseudoCorp business, but instead they want my help with a personal project that is kind of neat but OH MY GOD DID I MENTION HOW BIG AND IMPORTANT AND RICH AND TERRIFYING THEY ARE? YES? WELL THIS IS ME DOING IT AGAIN BECAUSE GAHHHHH!

*   Okay. Deep breaths. I'm actually more qualified than I thought to do this, in fact it may be something I could start doing as a consultant on the regular if I can get over the overwhelming urge to puke on The Client's shoes and run screaming and waving my hands in the air, heedless to the enormity of my pit-stains (what, you don't sweat profusely when you're nervous? LUCKY YOU). I just...well. I have kind of a complex when it comes to rich people stemming back to my childhood when the only rich people I knew were banging The Narcissist and lavishing her with gifts, which I think my dad kind of accepted as his penance for transgressions of his own in prior marriages, but the whole thing kind of cheesed me off because it tended to throw fuel on the fires of her "I was meant for better than this" complex, with "this" meaning "me." WHOA. AWKWARD. I don't talk about The Narcissist on here (or anywhere else) much for a reason. ANYWAY. Rich people. TERRIFYING. Shit.

*   I have a strict "no turning down work" policy, however. I will put on my big girl panties and Do Lunch with the rich people next week and see where it leads. If I do a good job this might be a foot in the doorway to Better Things. So: YAY!

*   Then I came home and TORE UP the garden, and didn't even find and have to kill any venomous snakes in the process, so, you know, that was good.

*   And then...well. The boys had dinner visitation with their father tonight and I won't stoop ALL the way to juvenile lockerroom bragging, but...a bar has been raised in this house, and that's all I will say.

*   Hotter is feeling much better, obviously. 

*   I am starting to feel less panicky about Big Child's pending birthday. I Have A Plan. He has an Innernet Fairy Godmother who stepped in and is helping me out with the whole Red Robin thing (which is fabulous, because he will be thrilled but also because with his Asperger's if you do something ONCE you have set a PRECEDENT and if you don't do it again the next time the world will fly off its axis and crash into the sun and we will all DIIIIIIIIE...okay, not really. It's not QUITE that bad. But no matter how carefully I tried to explain it he would most likely internalize it as "Red Robin is where one goes for birthdays and we are not going this year because I HAVE DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLY WRONG" and start washing his hands raw again and making us repeat everything we say until we hit the magic number of repetitions, so: yeah), and the only thing Big Child has mentioned really wanting lately (my kids don't ask for much...they know we're poor and don't ask unless they're really, REALLY jonesing for something special) is a Hunger Games t-shirt that one of his friends has that he is convinced is ONLY sold at the very mall where the local Red Robin is located. So if I tell Big Child we have to wait until a non-schoolnight then I will have gotten paid and will be able to get him the t-shirt while we're there for dinner next Friday night. It'll kill me a little bit to buy it in person without a coupon or any cash back from eBates, but it'll make him happy so I will deal :)

*   And now I am off to bed...how are all of YOU?

social media-y goodness, and some stuff you should do/join/try [ETA]

Figure One: It has no soul.

 

   If you like garden porn and don't already follow me on the Instagram, you are missing out.

   If you like free stuff and have yet to join Swagbucks and started searching with it, you're REALLY missing out (and so am I, because I'd get a referral credit, but mostly you--I just cashed in some Swagbucks for an Amazon.com gift card YESTERDAY).

   If you aren't a member of eBates yet, you should totally join AND USE IT, because look:

Figure Two: This is why you want to join eBates! Also because you love me and want me to get credit for referring you.

   And if you join BOTH then sometimes you will search for eBates' site with Swagbucks, win eleven SBs for the search, and then find out that your favorite store is today's daily double and you will be motherfucking THRILLED.

   Now if you'll excuse me, I am way behind on my sleep, and work is nuts, and WHY WAS TODAY NOT FRIDAY? I CALL SHENANIGANS.

   How are all of YOU?

 

ETA: See comments section for an answer to WTF IS THAT THING UP TOP???

by popular demand...

...the story of how I gave up shampoo, probably forever!

   Going no-shampoo is apparently quite A Thing lately. Like as in all the cool kids are trying it! When I decided to give it a whirl I wasn't thinking "trendy" though so much as "green" and more importantly "cheap." We already make our own laundry detergent, and have even started making our own automatic dishwasher detergent (I'm still tweaking the recipe on that), but in my quest to shrink our household's carbon footprint (and hopefully grow our bank account), one of the very LAST things I considered going dirty-hippie with was hair product. Because, see, here is the thing: I am super-vain about my hair. It's stupid-long, and I love it, and my husband loves it, and I am guilty of spending upward of twenty bucks per bottle on things to wash, condition, and gloss it with, but clearly that had to stop with our finances being what they are.

   So I Googled around, and landed on A Sonoma Garden, and pretty much did exactly what she said. A tablespoon of baking soda to a cup of water, and let it age a bit before using (two weeks seems to be the magic number--I put a batch of baking soda and water in a Mason jar to sit while I finished the shampoo I was using, then rinsed the bottle out and poured my baking soda-water into that) (and once I saw the kind of results I get from this stuff I refilled the Mason jar so I'd have more when I finished what was in the bottle). After I've wet my hair through I shake the bottle vigorously and squeeze a generous amount onto the top of my head, then massage it in really well, using my fingertips to scrub my scalp. Then I rinse, use a TINY bit of conditioner (seriously, the baking soda mixture doesn't strip your hair the way shampoo does so you don't need as much), rinse again, and dry (by which I mean towel-turban that shit up, then use a little glossing cream and a wide-toothed comb and let it air-dry the rest of the way, although if you want to fry your hair with a blowdryer then by all means). That's it, y'all. 

   As to the results...well. Hotter read on here that I was going to give the shampoo-free thing a whirl and tried to dissuade me. "I don't like the smell of dirty hairrrr..." he whined. Hotter is very sensitive to smells. He's like a hormonal pregnant woman, except his belly is from peritoneal dialysis instead of a baby and he has boy-junk. But other than that EXACTLY THE SAME. "Okay honey," I said, "I don't have to give up shampoo."

   And then I did it anyway and just didn't tell him. I think it helped that I kept my mixture in a shampoo bottle (Hotter uses manly shampoo from a different bottle). In any case, I never had a "greasy phase" or anything; the mixture worked like a charm and my hair actually looks BETTER than it did when I was paying through the nose to strip it with toxic chemicals. I finally fessed up a couple of weeks into the experiment after Hotter complimented me on my hair looking especially nice (which? It really really does--it's soft and shiny and has more body than it did before!), and he laughed and said he hadn't noticed anything amiss. WIN!

Figure One: Do not adjust your monitors; I actually *am* that pale. But look how shiny my hair is! Incidentally if you ever want to a) look absolutely douche-tastic and b) reduce yourself to tears over the wrinkled state of your forehead, try taking a picture of your hair without any of the rest of your face in it sometime and have a gander at the outtakes. You see what I put myself through for you people?!?

plantorexia

*   I love my GP, y'all. Yesterday I started to panic about going into the weekend with my lungs sucking as badly as they have been (yeah, I haven't said much on here but...it's gotten bad, like "wake up in the middle of the night to use the nebulizer" bad, and asthma is an asshole, GAWD), and called to see if she or any of her partners could see me. They could not, but she had the front desk call me back and read me a note from her saying that if I was willing to come in it MUST be bad, she was leaving me a sample of Symbicort at the front desk, and we both knew that if that and albuterol nebs weren't helping then I needed the ER. LOVE. HER.

*   Yesterday I was able to do my run without having an asthma attack, which was a major victory.

*   After my run yesterday afternoon I planted ten feet of beets and ten feet of turnips. Whoo, root vegetables! Also a bed of beans.

*   Today? Oh my lands, y'all, today I planted fifty-three strawberry plants and many borage seeds before breakfast, then dug up a row, dug and hauled two loads of compost, planted my fertilized row with onions and bush beans, dug two wheelbarrows full of crabgrass from the front walk and garden, planted leeks, fennel, two kinds of shallots, horseradish, moonvines, and a triamble squash seedling, and my lungs finally let me know that they were DONE but holy cow I am pleased with the day!

*   There's also this:

Figure One: Tonight Hotter and I are grilling a couple of porterhouses and I am having some hard cider, and I am not going to feel even a LITTLE bit bad about that!

*   Speaking of weight and calories and things, MyFitnessPal is A-MA-ZING (you can SCAN BARCODES OF FOODS to enter them!), I am updating the weight ticker again, and I think the reason it's moving so slowly is that I'm building muscle like crazy as I lose fat, so that's all good!

*   Funny story: I am using kelp meal as fertilizer for the first time this year, because I have heard wonderful things about it. It has a tendency to make the yard smell like a fishmarket though, especially when I water things I've used it on. Hotter and I were standing outside on the porch and I remarked that the kelp meal sure was stinky in the manner of yucko rotten fish and he said "OH THANK GOD, I THOUGHT...well, you're really working up a sweat and...I didn't realize the kelp stuff...well. You just saved us a VERY awkward conversation, the end." So I punched him in the face.

*   How are all of YOU?

a quickie before bed

*   Today work got crazy (as in busy, which is a good thing, but also as in "OMG MEETINGS" and "GAHHHH NEW PROJECT"). If I'd known it was going to get THAT crazy I would've had more coffee. Oof!

*   I got a shipment notification from Burpee that struck fear into my procrastinating heart; I ordered strawberry plants during the dead of winter to be delivered at the proper time for planting, and it seemed early to me but...gahhh! I came home and cleared a row in record time, and...it wasn't the strawberries. It was two verrrrry tiny marionberry canes. Ha! Whew. D'oh!

*   Also, today was Day One of a new week in Cto10k. Ouch. I did use the nebulizer first though, and it made all the difference in the world. Yaaaaay!

*   What I didn't do today was go shopping, and I am out of spinach for my nightly smoothie. Yesterday I discovered that partly-flowered broccoli from the garden was NOT the same as spinach, and today I learned the same thing about leaves from the overwintered kohlrabi. Oops. Very interesting burps happening.

*   And how are all of YOU?

just like riding a bicycle

   The Freecycle gods smiled on me today! I got a BIKE! And it even came with a trailer that I can put the kids in (or a load of groceries!). I would have been happy with pretty much any bike I didn't have to pay for, but this is exactly what I would have gotten had I had money to spend on a bike (namely an old Murray Monterey Beach Cruiser just like this one, albeit less shiny) (YOU SHUT UP ABOUT MY OLD LADY BIKE). I lurve it, and now I have something to do to crosstrain between running days (I am being religious about my rest days in hopes of avoiding further injury), although the bike does need a little work. Fortunately, Hotter says it's nothing he can't handle. The very best part is that once I'm in better shape I can ride the bike to the verrrry end of the MFA City bus line and use that to get to work should the MFA Minivan cark it. YAY!

   As the writer of Birdie School noted via gchat today, sometimes the little victories are a HUGE morale boost.

a pinteresting weekend

   Sorry about the title, y'all. The devil made me do it!

   So today I set about doing some of the many wonderful things I have discovered on the Pinterest, and so far I've been pleased with all of them. First I made this; my parsley survived the winter in fine style, and the fresh parsley really adds to the flavor nicely; I used homemade white-balsamic vinaigrette as my dressing, substituted white kidney beans for the chickpeas since that is what I had in the pantry, and crumbled in a little feta. SO GOOD! I packed it up into five little tubs for my work lunches this week. Then I went out and put a HURT on the DIRT! I got a small bed ready to plant (cleared away weeds and hauled them to the compost pile, dug down and removed encroaching roots, turned some organic vermiculite into the soil, and spread a layer of last year's dark, rich compost overtop) and used this little trick when I set out my cabbage seedlings. Not only will it help prevent the cabbage moths from eating my plants, but I also found it helpful to position the squares of waxed carton before transplanting the seedlings to ensure even spacing.

Figure One: Look at that gorgeous compost!

   Here is one of my little seedlings wearing its waxed-cardboard cabbage-moth shield.

Figure Two: Double eco-nerd points for pesticide-free pest-control measures AND re-using the milk carton itself (our locality does not recycle these).

   And yes, I know, the cold weather isn't TOTALLY over. That is why I covered the bed up with a hoop-tunnel when I'd finished planting my seedlings and surrounded them with freshly-planted radish and clover seeds:

Figure Three: All tucked in until after the last frost date!

   Finally, we finished a bunch of celery today and I planted the base of it like this. I'm getting kind of a crap germination rate on celery this year, so I really hope it works--if it does I'll just plant the base of each bunch as we use it and in theory I'll end up being able to harvest new celery at the same rate we go through the store-bought bunches! So neat.

   What have YOU done after seeing it on the Pinterest? How did it turn out? And how the heck was your weekend? I'd really like to know!

 

P.S. We took Isis's cone off this evening, since she's pretty well healed up and her stitches can come out on Thursday. She's delighted to be able to lick her arse again, the nasty dog. Don't forget to go and check out every one of the fabulous advertisers who made it possible for her to have her surgery!

bullets! we haven't had those in a while!

*   I think I have that post-steroid taper depression thing going on. It sucks.

*   Today a red beverage exploded on me at work and drenched my shirt, my newest pair of pants, THE PURSE, and The Precious. To say I was not amused would have been an understatement; this motherfucking beverage basically assaulted every non-living thing I hold dear. I nearly cried, especially after Googling said beverage and finding that it is notorious for exploding on people and staining things indelibly. Fortunately, the Otterbox saved The Precious and Oxiclean saved everything else. YAY, OXICLEAN! BOO, SPARKLING ICE BLACK RASPBERRY WITH EXTRA RED #40! 

*   To try and shake myself out of the doldrums (and burn off angst from some fuckery on the part of the men of the planet) (The XY is being a tool and Hotter has lately confused his role as the resident Jackass Whisperer with being the resident Jackass Advocate), I started the Couch to 10k workout program today. YAY, RUNNING! Unfortunately, BOO, COUCH TO 10K! I found the app (a NON-FREE one, no less!) to be anything BUT user-friendly, and ended up programming the intervals it seemed to be suggesting for Day One, Week One into Runkeeper (which is free, which would seem to defeat the purpose of paying for Couch to 10K). You win some, you lose some, I guess. The good news is, I went running (or run-walk-run-walk-run-walkOMGing) and did not die. My legs felt alright. My lungs were a little bitchy. I had way too much jiggle going on. But I did it!

*   I was ready for it to be Friday yesterday. 

*   Chia seeds are my new favorite thing ever. SO delicious. I mentioned this on the facespace and people's reactions were divided between "HELL YEAH!" and "what do you do with them?" So yeah, you put them in smoothies or float them in beverages (I like them in kefir, both the milk and the water kinds). If you float them in beverages they swell up and sort of en-goo-ify to a tapioca consistency. So if you are skeeved out by tapioca they are not for you, but I happen to love the stuff! Textural bliss aside, the things are packed with Omega 3s and fiber.

*   k mentioned today on the Twitter that she wanted a soda fountain, a Murphy bed, and a butler for her office. Doesn't that just sound fabulous? I think I would like the same.

*   Condescending Wonka is cracking me up. The Northface jacket one is a classic, but this one may just be my favorite. Of course, this one is kind of awesomely meta...

*   I have a post brewing about my hatred of Banfield Pet Hospital...but I'm pissy enough today without getting into all of that hot mess.

*   Like right now? My ex-husband is sweating my jock via rather aggressively via text message about my youngest's shoes, which he claims are irreparably damaged. He wants to know when I am going to buy the child more shoes. I want to see the shoes before I answer that question, and possibly augment them with some duct tape as a stopgap measure. EVERYONE WANTS DIFFERENT THINGS, OH THE HUMANITY.

*   I noticed last night that Isis appears to be down one nipple as a result of her recent surgery, and it irks the hell out of me. Not because she has any use for ANY of her nipples or because of the symmetry so much as because THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HER NIPPLE, WHY TAKE IT OFF? Maybe I need to simmer the hell down with my feminism when it gets to the point of anthropomorphosization and body outrage by proxy, but MY DOG WAS ROBBED. Thank you to everyone from the Twitter who expressed their condolences regarding this horrible travesty. We are attempting to move past it as a family.

*   How are all of YOU?