nonbionic woman

A meatless resolution and a recipe

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in Uncategorized on January 19, 2012

One of our new year’s resolutions for 2012 is to do at least one dinner a week meatless. This is a big deal for us. We love meat. LOVE IT. We believe bacon makes everything better. But we also love to cook, trying new things and mix things up. So we thought this would be a good way to flex some new cooking muscles, cut down a little on the weekly grocery bill, and just eat less meat in general.

We’ve been pretty good about it so far. We made a lentil and kale soup last week in the slow cooker that was pretty good, although I will admit that veggie stock just isn’t the same as chicken or beef stock, and I think the next time we do lentils, we’ll try something more curry based. We aren’t into tofu or meat substitutes, so I think we’ll be doing lots of bean dishes.

Today we made a version of this recipe for Mushroom Barley Soup from vegetarianslowcooker.com. We made some tweaks, which I’ve noted below, along with additional tweaks we think we’ll try the next time. It was very hearty and delicious.

Ingredients

1 cup raw pearl barley, rinsed, drained (note: we increased this by 1/3 cup)
7 cups vegetable stock (we used two full 32 oz boxes for 8 cups total)
1 tsp salt (we salted to taste at the end)
generous amount of ground pepper
3-4 Tbls dry sherry (we didn’t have sherry on hand, so used sherry vinegar)
3-4 Tbls soy sauce (we didn’t use any)
3 Tbls butter or oil (we used oil)
2 cloves garlic, minced (we would double this next time)
1 medium yellow onion, peeled, diced
1 pound mushrooms, sliced and diced (we used a mix of pre sliced shrooms and probably had more like 18 oz total)
Our Addition: 2 cups pearl onions, peeled (we got fresh ones from whole foods, but I’m sure frozen would work just fine)

Place the first 6 ingredients plus the pearl onions in the crock pot (should be at least 4 quarts). Using a large no stick skillet, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until softened. Add mushrooms and saute until moist and they begin to give up their liquid. Pour this mixture and all liquid into the crock. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4-5 hours.

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Project365 continues…

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in viewfinder on November 28, 2011

And it’s been another month since I posted my Project365 pictures, hence another catch up post. We left off at #62 around the beginning of November.

#63 11.2.2011, Statue of Columbus, a little late for Columbus Day. My friend Kay observed that they must have had Nautilus rooms on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

#64 was taken by my husband, of us girls hanging out in our robes.

#65 is yet another afterwork sunset pic from my phone.

#66 She’s worried about her lovey blanket in the washer.

#67 Fall in all of its fiery glory.

#68 My shower head could use a soak in some CLR.

#69 Sick kiddos get lollipops.

#70 Old boat moored in Hoboken, at sunrise, overlooking NYC.

#71 Hair braided by daycare ladies. Not sure how one gets a toddler to sit still for that.

#72 A rail asking for a grind.

#73 Bath time.

#74 I love squash. Squash squash squash.

#75 & 76 I failed to take a picture, so I shared a before & after edits.

#77 Canstruction at World Financial Center

#78 Hotel room art at the W Lakeshore in Chicago

#79 Interior arches of the Harper Center, home of my MBA alma mater, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business

#80 Table arrangement for pre-Thanksgiving dinner party with friends. Very similar to my Rosh Hashanah arrangement, isn’t it?

#81 Bottom line: I’m in trouble

#82 La la la la, Elmo’s World

#83 Craziest shopping experience in NYC

#84 Rocking her hat for the Thanksgiving feast at “school”

#85 There’s something special about the father/daughter relationship

#86 Swinging

#87 Just a few leaves left, winter is coming

Stay tuned for more…

procrastination, project365

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Instead of pumpkin pie this year…

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in recipe on November 20, 2011

make this. Trust me.

bourbon pumpkin cheesecake via smitten kitchen, original recipe from Gourmet Mag.

I recommend swapping out graham crackers for gingersnaps in the crust. Delicious.

get in my belly

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Making it rain…

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in just another day on November 9, 2011

tissues. The kiddo was home sick today. I left the room for a few minutes and came back to find every tissue pulled out of the box. So we had some fun with it. Sorry trees.

toddler cuteness

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Nonbionic?

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in all about me on November 7, 2011

You may be wondering what I mean by “nonbionic” woman. It references a few things about me.

Raise your hand if you know who Lindsay Wagner is. She didn’t always sell Sleep Number beds. Once upon a time, she was “The Bionic Woman” and her name caught my mom’s eye and that’s how I ended up Lindsay.

I am anything but bionic. I’ve had three knee surgeries, one an ACL reconstruction, but none installed super bionic parts (as far as I know). I don’t run, I shuffle, at about a 10 and a half minute mile based on my recent 5k adventure. I also can’t do it all super woman style, so instead I try to do a handful of things pretty good and try not to muck up the rest too badly.

navelgazing

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Obsessions, past and present

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in all about me on November 2, 2011

Present – what’s currently eating up my limited free time

Photography – Project 365 has me pulling out my Nikon D80 a lot more frequently, and my Android phone works in a pinch
Tinkering with photos in Lightroom and Photoshop (and trying not to over edit and abuse presets/actions)
Running – Which for someone who has had 3 knee surgeries is a total shocker. I just completed my second 5K!
Reading – I don’t think I’d be doing nearly as much if I didn’t have a Kindle and a daily commute on public transit
Cooking – A passion I share with my husband. We love puttering around the kitchen.
Keeping up with my toddler’s developing vocabulary (and trying to keep profanity out of it…in other words, trying to clean up my own language)
Empowered birth – I had a fantastic med-free birth in a hospital with midwives and would love for every woman to have the experience she desires…whether that’s unmedicated, or with an epidural, or an elective induction or c-section. If money and round-the-clock-on-call childcare were no issue (ha! no small issues there), I could see myself working as a doula and helping women achieve their own best possible birth experiences. Lots of birth blogs in my Google Reader.

Past – things that have been sacrificed to life (and other things) that I like to revisit from time to time

Travel – Buying a condo put a cramp on this…next year though, big trip without the kiddo TBD!
Wakeboarding – Being single and living in CA was much more conducive to regularly getting on the water
Snowboarding – Being single and living near real mountains was much more conducive to regularly hitting the slopes
Watching football – I haven’t been to a game in person in years. Still love to watch it on the weekends, but my teams (Seattle Seahawks and WSU Cougars) are sucking and it takes the fun out of it. I barely keep up with my Fantasy and Pick Em leagues anymore, it is shameful.

navelgazing

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Catching up on almost a month of Project 365

Posted by lindsay (nonbionic woman) in viewfinder on November 2, 2011

October was a month of traveling and hosting visitors, in addition to very busy times at work. It was all I could do just to take a picture every day and upload to Flickr, let alone create posts here. October was also the first month that I missed a day of taking photos. I’m a bit disappointed in myself that it happened within the first two months of the project, but I’m back on task. I’m better at staying on this wagon than I’ve ever been at any type of diet, so I guess that’s something.

Here are the highlights from the past month:

37/365 First base of the first baseball game ever played