Happy New Year!

The winter holidays are coming to a close. For J and I it has been delightful. We spent almost 2 weeks fully together enjoying Manhattan in its glorious Christmas season. We also decided, somehow, not sure when the train derailed....to buy a bag of flour (a first for me in YEARS) and do some baking.


I LOVE BAKING!

We made biscuits with fried chicken and gravy.
Blondies for a holiday party.
Sugar cookies for Santa.
Scones two ways with lemon curd and clotted cream.
Traditional meat pies.
More biscuits....

Not Paleo. Not even remotely healthy but oh so fun. Baking with traditional wheat flour is comfortably familiar to me. It's inexpensive, easy and for me serves as a creative outlet. Some people sketch. I bake. Hey, did I ever tell you that I won THE Bake Off contest for the Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast in 4th grade? Cuz I did and it was a huge deal. Every year your age class would have a category (muffins, cookies, cakes, pies, etc) and each individual troop would have a baking contest. Those 1st place winners would then be entered into the annual bake off which included the winners from each troop in our whole region. Every year I wanted to win so badly but never seemed to make it. How my brown sugar topped blueberry muffins lost out to another girl's mealy yellow corn muffins still eludes me but I think it may have to do with the fact that the judges thought my mom was doing the baking for me and passed my Martha Stewart-esque creations over for a more believable entry *conspiracy*. But finally cake year ended up being my ticket to elementary school stardom. Everyone knew the cake category was THE one to win so when they called my name and I walked down that long auditorium to get my ribbon and gift while all of the girls cheered, damn it was good stuff. I was a very tall, very fat, very loud little girl. People don't give you standing ovations when you're that kid.So being the belle of the bakeoff for an afternoon meant everything to me. All that to say: I love baking. I'm good at it, my treats make people smile and give me compliments.
 Too bad WHEAT = DEATH

I was such a chubby Brownie GS that the uniform fits in adulthood. Check out my badges!

2013 was the first year I made no weight loss resolutions. I was the thinnest I'd ever been thanks to the wedding stress (literally, pounds DROPPED in the months up to the big day thanks to my Hell on Earth nightmarish wedding vendors at The Obici House and Ava Clara Bridal. Yes, they were that bad. But before I go down that rabbit hole: No weight loss goal was a great feeling. I was 100+ pounds down and I could find my size in any store. I even planned to gain a bit of weight. People close to me felt I was a bit too small and my once buxom bosom was a thing of the past. A little bump up the scale wouldn't be such a  bad thing. Trouble is I took way too much liberty and tasted my way around the 5 boroughs. It has been an awesome way to explore the city but I am feeling the consequences of the SAD diet and am all too happy to clean it up from now on.


OKAY, so, I'm up 25 pounds in 2013. Ouch. Oops. Did it to myself.
What am I gonna do about it? Eat the way my body needs me to.

So today we shared organic eggs, avocado and uncured bacon for brunch.
An organic orange was an afternoon snack.
Dinner was wild sockeye salmon with peas and rice mac.
Yes, rice mac n cheese is not Paleo. It is faileo. But it was in the cabinet so we used it as sort of a transition item/to get it out of the house. No more rice pasta for the rest of January, promise.

So that's me on this first day of the new year. Aiming for transparency, honesty about my feats and failures along the road back to ideal health and hopefully a few tasty food finds. Be well~*

HAPPY NEW YEAR