My Weight Loss Toolbox: Meal Calendar (Part 2)

Food/Calorie Journal
Scale
Walking App
Meal Calendar (Six Parts)
Digital Food Scale that Weighs in Grams
Weekly, Detailed, Shopping List
Walking Buddy (My Daughter & My Dogs)
Yeti 36oz Rambler
Walking Shoes and Walking Socks

Let’s explore these one at a time.

FYI: There are a lot of calendar pictures in this post.  Plus it is long, so I will be splitting it up in to several parts. This is Part 2. If you have not read my previous post, I suggest taking a look at Part 1.

Now to be fair, in January and February of 2018, we took the entry of our house down to studs and built the room back up.  See, Lucas was working at home full time and he needed a real office.  Our house was small.  I suggested making the entry to our house his office.  “Where?!”  Was the response from Luke.  The room was a nice size, two or three people could crowd into it, but it had a small corner closet that took up some space.  I suggested tearing out the closet so that a desk could fit in the room.  The floor needed to be redone, as the previous owners put tile down incorrectly, and the tiles were shattering.  I had a pet rabbit at the time which ate a whole in one of the walls and chewed on the baseboards.  Plus, the room was miserably cold.  It was an add-on to the house, and I figured it was another project that was done incorrectly, and I was ready to put an outside door on an inside door frame to keep the cold in the entry and out of the living room.  But since we were ripping up everything else, we decided to make it a new room.  New floors, new walls, new electrical, new windows, and a set of new entry doors.  It was all broke – time to get something that worked.  We opened the walls up and low and behold, what did we find behind the dry wall?  Solid – huge chunks of ice in our walls.  See, the previous owners hung something up in the ceiling in the entry way.  When we took the nail out, we measured it at about 4 inches.  The nail went through the ceiling drywall and punctured the vapor barrier in the ceiling.  It caused water damage to the ceiling.  We called in a roofing company to fix the roof leak – with basically a blank check – we just wanted the problem solved.  Well, they did some stuff, but never solved the problem.  8 months later, we were unaware, but water was still dripping through the walls but because it was Winter, it all turned to ice.  Our front entry was turned into a literal ice box.  The damage was so great we almost lost the brick work on one of the exterior walls of the house.  We had to tear the roof off that room of the house.  So, the several week construction did slow our healthy meal intake down.  A house in total chaos, dirt everywhere, and construction dust do not make for an ideal environment to prep food in.  Same thing happened in July.  Except we were not doing an entry, we were doing the master bedroom and walk-in closet (which was huge mind you, we were lucky).

We had our daughter’s second birthday party and then immediately tore apart the house getting ready for the demolition that we were going to do.  “Bullshit food” is sandwiches, fast food, and pizza.  A lot of it.  Because we had to feed our friends that were helping us do the demo.  I tried to get back into healthier meals on the 16^th, but with “Fish Foils”?  In July??  Fish Foils take oven time – and that is a NO for me in July.

*Explanation of food: Fish Foils.  I am sure these have other names, as I know other people make them.  I take a piece of tin foil, spray it with nonstick cooking spray, add two fillets of thawed fish (flounder works good) add raw diced potatoes, carrots, onions and bell peppers with a spoon full of canned diced tomatoes (with basil and oregano is great) and a couple of seasoning that catch my fancy (basically whatever on my spice rack smells good that day).  I wrap it up and bake it at 375 degrees for around 45 minutes.  I make myself a vegetable and potato only foil right alongside the fish foil packets and it turns out great.  And we call these “Fish Foils”.

Our house was still under construction into August.  It was getting old.  We were all missing game night so some of our guests hosted two of the weeks.  We really appreciated it.  (1^st and 8^th).  I love how on the 4^th we just gave up and escaped to Door County, Wisconsin for a day.  I pushed the ham steaks I was supposed to cook on the 4^th off to the 6^th, pushing chili to the 10^th, but not actually cooking it because of the heat.  We had plans for the 16^th, but those changed last minute, so we went to Qdoba for dinner, our 7year “dating anniversary”.

Dota 2?  Dota is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), five verse five, free to play game.  Their championships are held in August (not in 2020 though) and Lucas and I watch it every year.  Yes, we watch other people play video games.  2018’s purse was a bit over $25 million.  There is a lot of money in that game.  And it is free to play!  I do not cook much or prep much that week – so easy finger food is what usually gets brought out as we all watch these matches.  We would invite the game night group over to watch and make a week of it.

Drinking on the 1st was a blast. My father watched Catawba-Lynn while my cousin, Noah, brother, Matthew, Lucas and I went to an escape house (we won four tickets for an experience) and decided to have a couple of drinks on Water Street (Milwaukee) afterwards. It was a blast! But I paid for it, weight wise, as I gained several pounds from one afternoon, and it took several days to get back down again.

Travel was becoming normal with Luke’s work now.  When we would go to see his client, I would go to a fantastic grocery store called Meriano’s to purchase our meals from the salad bar and hot bar area, or to get the ingredients to make meals.  Meriano’s was quite a treat.  I love Aldi, but when Aldi is the only grocery store you shop at, an occasional change is appreciated.  Also, it was nice getting a great quality meal with little to no prep. 

We did a lot of traveling in October 2018.  We purchased our latest teardrop camping trailer (which has since been sold due to our out of state transfer) the previous month, September 2018, and drove it to Colorado.  Catawba-Lynn, our then 2-year-old, dictated when she wanted us to stop so we boondocked along the way.  I do not like staying at a hotel for 6 hours and paying for a whole night’s stay, so the teardrop came in hand.  She woke up annoyed that she was still in her car seat, we pulled over and slept for a bit.  It was out first trip to Colorado.  We were heading out to visit some of Luke’s family.  Excellent time.  Our visit consisted of cooking – cooking all day long, just a bunch of us hanging around the house cooking – me grabbing Catawba-Lynn and my dog, Jude, and going hiking, and Sprouts.  I was introduced to Sprouts grocery store and I instantly fell in love.  Like a crazy person I purchased roughly $200 in produce, tea, and protein bars for the week we were in Colorado.  The quality was mind boggling and the price was so cheap!  When I had leftovers after the week in Colorado, I waved off my over purchasing as “intentional” and not a spur of the moment or irrational, stating the rest of the food was for the trip to Texas.  When we left Colorado, we went South right away, going to Texas for Luke’s Army friend’s wedding.  Luckily, the hotel that the wedding was staying at allowed Jude for roughly $30 a night!  I was so excited – I love taking my dog with me.  We made it home just in time for our Trick-or-Treat handout on the 31^st.

There is one holiday that I said I would never host and that is Thanksgiving.  I said I refused to host it because Thanksgiving is the prelude to Black Friday – the best day ever – and I always spend Thanksgiving looking over the ads, writing my lists, creating piles of store ads – which stores are dad and I going to, which stores are we skipping, making plans, scheming – so that after Thanksgiving dinner is over, dad and I could plot our course of action.  Now, I do not like shopping, but I love Black Friday.  Black Friday has always been an activity that my father and I do together.  We would wake up early and have breakfast together, with our plans of where we were going and what we were getting, even sometimes having a map of the store ready to make hunting for the items easier.  We would stand outside the stores in the cold, excited for the doors to open.  Would we get the things we “need?”  (Pine scented candle that is $1 less that what it is normally priced?!  Yes!  Because mom hates pine scented candles!  Let’s get two!)  And when we went to our last store on Black Friday, we would head back home and relax.  I would not cook those days – I would mooch off family.

*Explanation of food: Pumpkin Stew.  I stumbled across a recipe for Pumpkin Stew from Taste of Homes Magazine.  Based out of Greendale, Wisconsin, I used to go to the store with my mother and taste samples of food from their test kitchen.  It was a treat to go there with my mother.  Anyway, cut the pumpkin and clean it out.  Rinse it.  Rub down the outside with oil.  Do not be stingy – the oil is helping this pumpkin stay intact while it bakes in the oven for four hours.  Set the pumpkin on a baking tray.  Fill the pumpkin with broth, cut vegetables, and browned meat, if you desire.  The recipe called for stew beef cuts.  I made one pumpkin stew with the meat and several without the meat, and those without meat tasted great.  When you have your pumpkin 3/4^th full of ingredients and have it set on a baking tray (very important), bake it in the oven for 4 hours (or so, you have to watch it) at 350 degrees.  When you pull in out, the pumpkin will be semi-soft.  Serve the stew out of the pumpkin.  When you ladle the stew in individual bowls, you can scoop some of the sides and bottom of the cooked pumpkin into the bowls.  When the stew is gone and we have left over pumpkin (we do not eat all of it) I slice it up and give it to the dogs, who love it as a treat.

On the 8^th we hosted a crafting afternoon for Catawba-Lynn and her young cousins.  The little ones made treats for outdoor creatures and made presents for their grandparents.  It was a fun success that lasted several hours.  With fruits, vegetables, cheese and crackers, trail mix and other snacks open and available for four plus hours, we did not need an official dinner planned.

I made scarves for all of Lucas’s aunts and uncles (as well as the game night crew and other close family members).  We dropped off Tony’s and Sue’s present on the 13^th and they made us dinner.  Cheesy broccoli soup in bread bowls – it was the best I have had!  And Catawba-Lynn devoured her soup and ate most of her bowl.  We loved it.  Jeff and Julie bought us pizza when we dropped their gifts off.  That was a great treat as well.  And it was good seeing some of Lucas’s cousins who heard pizza was being bought and found their way to their parents’ house.

My brother graduated with his bachelor’s degree and we celebrated with a huge party at my parents’ small house.  We had lasagna.  My mother made something like three massive trays of lasagna, and I made two slow cookers of vegetarian lasagna.  We had leftovers for weeks!

Yule for us is a two-day event, starting the evening of the first night with Boast and Brag and ending with presents the next day, as Santa came overnight.  Boast and Brag is basically New Years – talking about the prior year, bragging about what you have done, and creating goals for the next year, boasting what you will accomplish.  I usually do not cook these days – or I have something going in the slow cooker so I do not have to worry about it, and I can enjoy Boast and Brag with of course, mead drinking.  It looks like 2018 we went out.

We will end at year’s end. This was 2018. Looking back, I cannot believe we did so much remodeling. The office creation was a necessity and the bedroom/walk-in closet turned master bedroom/dinning room served us (and our guests) well. We traveled so much, for business and for family and friends. It was a FULL year! Our first year of fully independent employment.