Happily Ever Regrouping

Life has definitely been a bit chaotic in the last month between the wedding, honeymoon, and subsequent reintegration into the real world. While I can't say I'll have all my thank you cards out by the one month mark, most of them will be done so I'm going to take that as a victory. May 11 was our perfect day, everything went off without a hitch and turned out beautifully. After all the agonizing about the little details and irrational worries, I can now sit back and be perfectly content with the wedding we had. If I had to give one regret it would be that due to the rain in the beginning of the afternoon we had to do our first look pictures inside the church instead of in the courtyard near the fountain. Luckily it cleared up in time do some some outdoor pictures after the ceremony so I'm looking forward to seeing those. Our photographer, Kristin at KLP Photography takes the most gorgeous natural light shots so I really wanted to get those when possible. I do wish we could have gotten more outside, especially some of the family pictures, but such is life. That said, I'm still tempted to put on our wedding clothes again and do another shoot with her sometime but I'm not sure if the pictures would really have the same meaning. Here are a few pictures from our sneak peek (naturally all photos via KLP Photography)

First look!

Walking down the aisle

Trolley on the way to the reception

Unfortunately I don't really have any pictures from the honeymoon at this time since we completely forgot to bring the camera. We did snap a few pictures with Eric's phone but both of us haven't bothered to upload them anywhere. We spent a week in Montego Bay, Jamaica at Sandals Royal Caribbean and it was amazing. The resort was a little smaller than I expected but I was pretty happy with the food and drink selection. We really wanted to get an adults only all-inclusive since we're not very active vacationers and just wanted to take it easy for our honeymoon. We did do a dolphin encounter at Dolphin Cove which was amazing, especially since while we waited for our timeslot we could explore the rest of the park which had several animal encounters and other activities like kayaking. We love stingrays so Stingray Bay where you could hold a stingray and then snorkel with them was a big favorite. Back at Sandals we did a couples spa package in a cabana by the ocean which was extremely decadent and relaxing. I'm starting to see the appeal of spas now.

Coming back to Omaha after a week in a tropical paradise was definitely a jarring change. While I missed our pets dearly, real world is not nearly as much fun as being a beach bum. As it stands, our house still looks like a wedding exploded in it. Thanks of the generosity of our friends and family, we received many wonderful gifts which we are now realizing we didn't plan space for. Everything will find a home but I think I'm going to have to reorganize the entire kitchen to do it. We've been enjoying playing with some of our new appliances this week but still haven't figured out where to put them. I thought we had a lot of counterspace until I actually started unpacking things. Our back room is probably going to look like a Bed, Bath, and Beyond for awhile while we get everything reshuffled.

Menu Planning - The Beginning

After a busy weekend of wedding planning I find myself back in Nebraska with an empty fridge and no meal plan for the week. In retrospect, I probably should have done this before I left so I didn't have to scramble today to get something together for dinner. Now that the bar is over and I have a lot more time on my hands, my current goal is to overhaul our diet to try and make it fresher and more balanced. Right now I'm only doing a full plan for dinners since breakfast and lunch tends to be a fend for yourself type occasion. I will probably start making myself a rotating list of lunch possibilities once I get a better feel for the dinner plan.

I have been writing up the week's dinners and grocery list for the past three years but now it's time to take it to the next level by starting to cut out convenience foods and adding in more vegetable sides. We have definitely had some difficulty in making sure that each meal has some sort of vegetable since I usually only plan the entrée which at times will be pretty much devoid of vegetation. I expect to be eating a lot of salads in the next couple weeks while I adapt to preparing actual side dishes with my meals. Frozen vegetables are also good options so that will be a matter of figuring out the best way to jazz them up a little. There's nothing wrong with a bowl of plain frozen veggies but it's easier to eat them consistently if they have have more flavor. I feel like fresh vegetables are easier to prepare plain since they tend to have a much better flavor than their steam-in-bag counterparts.

As far as recipes, I rely pretty heavily on the "Cook this, Not That" Books and Southern Living's 1001 Ways to Cook Southern. I do use some internet recipes when the mood takes me but there's just something about flipping through cookbooks that I enjoy. As I start cooking new and more involved dishes I imagine I'll start branching out more.

Without further ado, the current dinner list:

Hoisin Beef Kabob (salad)

Tacos (salad)

Burgers (fries and chili lime grilled corn)

Shrimp and Grits (salad)

Garlic and Herb Stuffed Chicken (garlic cream asparagus)

Shrimp and Pasta w/ Creole Cream Sauce (salad)

Coke has how many carbs?

I think the most frustrating part of a diet and exercise plan is the lack of instant gratification. I officially started doing this late last summer but moving/finals/holidays almost completely disrupted our exercise routine for the rest of 2012. The only progress on my measurements has been the 2" off the waist before everything got temporarily suspended. I suppose I should be grateful I didn't put it back on in that time but it's still frustrating. Sometimes I think I look pretty good but if I look from the right angle all I can see is my lack of progress. The worst part is knowing this lack of progress is completely my doing.

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit which in my opinion might need some readjusting. My current plan is to do three days of weightlifting and three days of cardio on the elliptical while keeping my carbohydrate consumption under 100g per day. This level of exercise/dieting should be a sustainable level for me. My last real attempt at dieting involving tracking everything I ate but weighing everything, calculating the calories in each ingredient, and logging it was just far more effort than I could hope to keep up with everyday. However, it was very enlightening to see how I ate for a couple weeks. My overall calorie intake is actually pretty reasonable but carbs are my main offender. Soda is one vice I'm not willing to completely give up which is unfortunate since I seem to be intolerant to all artificial sweeteners. Right now I allot myself one soda a day which eats up a little over a third of my daily carb allowance.

I am really hoping to see some more progress now that I am being stricter with my exercise. My diet could also use a bit more work. Most days I am meeting my carb targets but some days, like today when I cook something like quesadillas, I overshoot it significantly. I am also trying to add in more fruits and vegetables which will require further adjusting to compensate for these new additions. In a sense, getting married has provided the motivation I needed to really take a look at my habits and be completely honest with myself. In the past I have made a lot of excuses like "Oh, well I don't eat sweet things so I can't be doing that bad" or "I just have a muffin top because the rise is too low" (which is half true, my days of super low rise are over most likely) and that is how 30 pounds steadily added themselves to my frame while I justified my inaction.

I do hope that even if I haven't see the results in the measuring tape yet that there still are changes happening. Increasing my weights has been slow with the break and I'm still not lifting a lot but I think I'm getting stronger. I hope that by my next fitting in March the dress will have to be taken in even more at the waist. I hope that I can train myself to drink at least one glass of water a day (I really hate water and it does have a taste - previous attempts at using a filter have failed to entice me to drink more). Finally, I hope that I can start marginally enjoying exercise. For now we will start with 21 days of keeping the exercise rotation and go from there.

It's Bacon!

Today we learned a valuable lesson about recipes that involve a bacon lattice - don't. About a month or so ago I saw a picture of a bacon wrapped turkey and just knew I had to make it. One turkey and a pack and a half of bacon later we had this masterpiece:

All bacon, all the time

I apologize for the low quality of the picture since I used my phone. Once again I forgot to take that plastic thing off the legs. One of these days I will actually remember to a) buy twine, b) take off the plastic, and c) tie the legs like I'm supposed to.

Overall this was a fairly simple recipe. I sliced some of the bacon and put it under the skin over the breast, salt and pepper with onions and celery in the cavity, and then wove a bacon lattice over the skin. Because a bacon wrapped turkey wasn't decadent enough, I served it with mashed potatoes and stuffing topped with gravy which was of course made using the bacon fat laden drippings. One bonus of the lattice was that I didn't need to baste the turkey since the rendering fat did it for me. I put it in the oven for about 3.5 hours at 350 degrees.

The turkey itself was moist and the bacon flavor apparent. However, at the end of it all I think a regular brined turkey is a better choice. This was quite decadent and we ended up paying for it with a feeling of unpleasant, greasy fullness not long after finishing. I think Eric might actually be afraid to tackle these leftovers despite his general enthusiasm for turkey. It was a good you have to try this once dish but too much. It might have worked better with lighter vegetable sides but I don't think I will be making it again.