Recipe Post - Bacon Wrapped Dates

This is one of the hors d'oeuvres I made for Fakesgiving. I found the recipe in November's Good Housekeeping and mostly followed it. I thought these were so tasty I made some more this morning with the leftover dates (I made a special morning grocery run to get more bacon) and wanted to share the recipe with you guys. The recipe is simple and I'm not including amounts because really it's one to one to one for everything.

Ingredients:

Pitted Medjool Dates
Pecan halves (cut in half, so really, pecan quarters)
Thick cut bacon (uncooked) slices cut in half so you have short slices
Fresh Rosemary
Toothpicks

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stuff each date with a quarter of a pecan. If you're using pitted dates it's easy to just pack it into the hole.
2. Wrap each stuffed date with one of the half slices of bacon and secure with a toothpick.
3. Bake on a cookie sheet lined with foil for easy cleanup (it will get very greasy!) for 25 minutes or until crisp. Turn once during baking.
4. Take the bacon wrapped dates out and let them cool on paper towels. Remove the toothpicks and shove little sprigs of rosemary into one hole where the toothpick was. Serve immediately.

These little bundles of tastiness are soo yummy and they make your kitchen smell wonderful too.

Fakesgiving

Tomorrow (today, I guess since it's 3am) I'm having "Fakesgiving" with Peter, Garrett, Michael and David. It's a themed get together and the theme is cross-dressing.

I decided I would dress up as Karl Lagerfeld. I tested out some options and came up with a plan for an outfit:



Also, I just finished baking this pie. YEAH, I know. It is amazing.

Cabbage Rorschach

Sometimes everyday things just really catch your eye. Tonight I was making a salad, cutting up this giant head of cabbage and I was completely mesmerized by it. I took some photos and began seeing different things in it, like when you stare at clouds and see different shapes.

Do you see anything going on in these cabbage pictures? If you click on the picture, it'll take you to my flickr page where I say what I see in it, but I don't want to write it here and sway your vision (;





Not enough cabbage for you? Check out my flickr for more.


And just for good measure, I'll include this picture I took earlier in the summer while tanning in the backyard. (:

Foooood.

Tonight I made chicken noodle soup! It was a bit different though because I added peanut sauce and spinach (no celery, I hate celery). As always I put lots of Sriracha in my soup and it was delicious and mouth-burning! Yum.

frustrated

I am so hungry. I don't like to talk a lot about eating/weight issues here because it seems trivial, but I am really irritated I have a pair of jeans that don't fit me anymore. Honestly I fucking hate working out. It never works for me as a means of weight loss because it makes me SO hungry and I end up building a ton of muscle and putting on fat too because I eat so much more. I'm trying to cut calories without going too crazy about it, but that's hard for me to do too.

Today is sunny, hopefully that will help my mood.

Today I have an "intake appointment" at a mental health clinic. I am not sure what this means, but I think it has something to do with changing therapists. Not excited at all about that. Also not excited about how my mom wants to go with me and then go to thrift shopping afterward. Meh. She might buy me stuff though, so maybe I should have her come along. And I do hate driving ...

Stupid.

I started writing some letters to friends that I've said I'd send fun surprises to. If anyone wants a snailmail letter and probably stickers and maybe some other fun stuff, send me your address to moenoep[at]hotmail[com]. I just bought a bunch of stamps and I love sending and receiving mail.


I took these pictures a few days ago when I was out sunbathing. Hope it's another day like this ...

WTF am I going to eat for dinner?

hahahaha. I am hungry because it's 7pm and I've only eaten 4 crackers and a glass of Sierra Mist Free because I've been making this all day!






http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=24924836

And last night I made this:




http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=24906023

Lunch.

I need to stop complaining about my body. If I'm not skinny enough, it's not like I need to look far to figure out why. Today's lunch:







chicken katsu stuffed with gouda w/sweet red peppers. on salad of cabbage w/miso vinaigrette, yam, green bean, onion and shrimp tempura. henry weinhard's private reserve.

So good. And fun to take pictures of too. What's the last thing you ate?

"ugh."

I ended up getting a little less than 5 hours of sleep last night (this morning. yesterday morning? my schedule is so f-ed up) before my therapy appointment. Usually this means I kind of sit there and stare off past her a lot. But I was actually quite alert and chatty.

We didn't talk about religion as we'd planned to. I decided I wanted to talk about

a) My mom
b) My issues with eating
c) My dad's issues with my eating
d) MY issues with my mom's eating

Hahaha. On my way home from the counselor I stopped by Goodwill to look for fabric. While I was shopping, a girl complimented my shoes and it made me smile. I bought some awesome fabric and was planning on going home and immediately whipping up a dress or something but when I pulled into the driveway my dad was outside because he had just gotten the mail. He works at the hospital as a chaplain. I opened my car door and had one foot out ...

"I just saw Jill. She would really like to see you. Today would be a good day to do that, she's having a good day."

"Oh. Okay." I said and put my foot back in my car and closed the door and drove to the hospital. I met my friend Jill when I was working as a caregiver, and she was one of the people I took care of. She's only like 61 but has a lot of health probz and she's one of the coolest people I know. I kept telling her I'd come over and watch a movie with her or something but I didn't. One or the other of us was always having a "I'm-laying-in-bed-crying-and-don't-want-to-see-anyone" day. But she's been in the hospital awhile and even spent two weeks up at Harborview and was about to die. And I feel like such a shitty friend.

I bought her a stupid stuffed duck because I honestly thought "If it were me, I'd rather have a stuffed animal than flowers because I would probably be lying in that hospital bed crying every night and then I'd have something to cuddle with." OH and she's blind so I figured a card wouldn't be the best idea.

Apparently though, she likes being in the hospital because she's been there so often the nurses and she know eachother and she didn't seem too down about the sitch. I went to her house and picked up some stuff for her and all in all spent about 3 hours with her.

I hadn't eaten yet so I told her I had to go home and eat.

I went home and heated a can of soup. Then I started feeling really nauseous and I passed out from 8pm-2am. I still feel nauseous. And sad. And awake. When I first woke up my face kept curling up into that awful "I'm-gonna-cry" grimace that happens. But I didn't cry very much. And then what did I do? I texted my ex boyfriend (not the recent leaves-the-toilet-seat-up one but the Left-Me-For-Japan-for-Two-Years one) and I said "I want to smell you so bad." WTF? I very frequently really really hate the things I do.

Ugh.

PS Gilt.com had a Bally sale recently and they had THESE shoes. Which I actually almost bought at Nordstrom when they were new because I'd seen them online, but thankfully the Nordstrom in Tacoma did not have them (duh) and while they could have ordered them for me, there was no way I was paying $600 that I did not have for a pair of shoes that wouldn't even be instant gratification. Then I saw them at Nordstrom Rack like a year later, but just when I was about to purchase them THEN, I realized one of the shoes I had was a 7 and one was a 6 1/2. And the white leather was different colors on each shoe. Awk-ward. Gilt.com did not have my size but it was a bittersweet reminder of what could have been. Sigh.

stupid worries. weight gain.

Lately I can. Not. Stop. Eating.




It's ridiculous and I'm sure I'm gaining weight which is stressing me out. Too bad my coping mechanism for stress is eating. I spent way too much money at the craft store yesterday so I'd better put it to good use. I feel like I can't focus though, because I have all these ideas of things I would like to do ... For instance, tonight, should I sew some ruffly underwear? A purse? Dolls? Should I do some more watercolors? Should I take some reference photos and start my still life series? Should I just take a nap?

Here is an average day in the life of me:
10am-1pm: wake up, check google analytics, my eBay, myspace, hotmail then go back to bed for bit
12pm-1pm: obligations/errands such as therapy, post office, bank, force me to get out of bed.
1pm-4pm: errands, shopping, eating
5pm-3am: eat, internet, make art/crafts
4am-7am: go to bed.

I guess my schedule is pretty fucked up. But the fact that I actually sketch or sew or think about art is pretty cool. It kind of scares me too though, I keep waiting for it to end. Like when you are learning to ride a bike and you get up and going ... but you know at any second you might fall over and bite it.

A potential job keeps calling me and I keep not answering. My friend Dana calls me like clockwork on her lunch break every day (i don't answer), which without fail, wakes me up. Ugh.

I think underwear sewing is winning out.