Today was my first day of the Jillian Michaels Body Revolution program. I'm doing the Kickstart Your Metabolism Week this week. For breakfast I had Greek yogurt with almonds, which I was not too please with. The recipe said to put cinnamon in it, but I don't much care for cinnamon. I'll have to figure something else out for the yogurt. For lunch, I had vegetable soup with poached chicken. I didn't like the chicken, but the soup was good. For dinner, I made turkey patties topped with avocado and brussels sprouts and carrots, and it was really good. I overcooked the turkey a little, but the avocado made it good. I had a little extra avocado so it wouldn't go bad; we aren't going to eat the leftovers for a couple days.

I struggled a lot today about the diet part of BR. On one hand, I love food and think it is one of the great pleasures in life. On the other hand, if I want to reach my goal, the BR couldn't've made it easier. They have recipes and meal plans for the entire 90 days. I imagine I'll still struggle with this each week. A friend suggested that I have 1 meal on a specific day that I can indulge, which sounds like a good plan. But I tend to get obsessive about these things, so I may not be able to handle that. I guess we'll see what happens and how I do with the diet part. I'm sure I'll do fine with the exercise portion, and I'll look forward to Sunday rest day every week.

After seeing a picture of this bag online, I just had to make one; I reverse engineered the bag and created one for myself in natural denim and terra cotta denim lined with cotton. It has an adjustable strap with clasps at each end so I can attach it either at the top to make it a tote bag or on the sides for a purse. I am going to pick up a carbinger clip to go into the grommets set at the top and on the front. The inside has a zippered pocket and a cotton print.

I haven't sewn anything in a while, so my stitches are not perfect. DH insisted that I let it go and I decided that he was right; I did what I could and pushed through the project so I wouldn't get discouraged and quit midway through. The cotton webbing that I ordered for the strap did not arrive even after a month of waiting, so I just went ahead and made a strap out of fabric.

One of the most challenging parts of making this bag was getting the proportions correct. I still don't feel like the measurements are visually ideal, but the bag will function well enough, and by the time I noticed, I was too far along to change anything. I may try again later, but we'll see.

The strange weather seems to be benefiting my tree. It has a lot of new growth and buds coming in and other buds that are maturing and beautiful. I pinched off some of the flowers because I read that doing so will encourage the tree to have higher quality and quantity fruit in the future.

One concern about the tree is that its new growth has a weird purple/brown tinge to the leaves. From my search, I found that this can be due to spider mites. I saw a spider on the tree yesterday but left it alone because I remembered last time when I killed a spider and later thought that it had saved the tree from another bug. I couldn't find the culprit this morning, but I'll keep looking.

Soon the time will come when I should start my seedlings. I need to figure out when I started them last year and where I put my seed packets. No tomatoes this year, though - just zucchini.

I threw a handful of my mixed greens seeds into my container a few weeks ago after pulling up my tomato plant. They are sprouting nicely!

The Meyer is doing amazingly well! I'm really excited to see it in full bloom even in the middle of winter. I have left it outside since it is growing. I don't think the weather has been cold enough to cause concern, and its health seemed to fail more easily when the tree was inside. I am planning to trim it back a little to shape it, but last time I did that, I ended up setting back its growth; I'll be more careful this time.

When I saw the Grab-Its for the first time, I dreamed up all sorts of foods I could use them for. I love nachos, even just plain ones, so here are my Grab-Its with simple nachos and homemade guacamole.

I went to a pot luck Christmas party last month and someone brought something called a California Roll Bake. It was basically a CA roll topped with furikake and baked in a casserole, and then you spoon it into squares of seaweed instead of rolling it into sushi. It sounded amazing, but I didn't have money to buy CA roll ingredients, so I just made a spam musubi version. Delicious!

This one came today, and it has a small chip and flea bites along one side of the lid. I guess I won't be buying this stuff online anymore. It's not worth the risk since they are expensive to ship to me and to return if something is wrong.

The seller was very nice and gave me a generous refund to make up for the oversight, so I feel ok about the purchase. But it's still disappointing, and again I'm not sure if I can use these lids since they are damaged. I don't want any exploding Pyrex in my home =(

A grilled cheese and chicken sandwich plus very NOT delicious Santa Fe Style soup by Progresso. I actually prefer TJ's soups, but I think I picked this one up when I was sick and making a quick stop at Safeway.

I was so excited to find a somewhat inexpensive 5 quart casserole in the Spice o' Life pattern. When I emailed the seller, she said the piece did not have cracks, chips or stains. But when I received the piece today, it had a small chip in the lid and a long stain on the handle. The stain might be removable, but I can't do anything about the chip. It's small and I could see how she missed it, but I've heard that once your glass piece has a chip in it, you can't use it anymore.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I may be in the market for a new lid =/ I've emailed the seller, so we'll see what she says. Other than those 2 things, the set is in good shape. I've been looking in my cookbook that I mentioned for a recipe to try out the larger casserole.

Also, I picked up these small plates from the local thrift store yesterday for $3 total. I was going to sell them, but they are stained pretty good, so I'll just keep them.

*Update* The seller gave me a partial refund, so I feel ok about it now.

Also, my Sidekicks came in and they are perfect. It's like they were never even used. They are a lot smaller than I was imagining, but I realized that I never actually read the measurements. Whoops. Oh well, they are still awesome. Now if only my toaster oven were big enough to fit them.

Every now and then, I find myself thinking about our trip to Hawaii in September 2011. I had never been, and it was an amazing vacation. On our first full day there, we drove literally the entire way around the island and along the Road to Hana. We made stops in towns and I picked up a bag of candied coconut and a mini loaf of coconut pineapple bread at a spot with a couple of stores and a restaurant that served fried fish and fresh guava. I cut small slices of that loaf every morning for an after-breakfast treat, so the bread lasted us more than half our stay. I was really sad when the last piece was gone.

In my search for a recipe to try out my new Corningware Spice of Life loaf pan, I stumbled upon this Phyllis Coconut Bread recipe and was intrigued that the writer seemed to be referring to the same bread that we had in Maui. I went with the traditional way and did not brown the butter or toast the coconut, but I'm sure I will be making it again, so I'll try it other ways as well. In fact, I will pretty likely try to adjust the recipe for white whole wheat flour, though I haven't had much success with other recipes.

I bought a 14oz bag of sweetened (per the comments on the site) flaked coconut and did not use the entire bag, even though it is less than what is called for in the recipe. A full cup went into the batter, but I didn't add a ton on the top because I didn't remember my loaf being totally covered in coconut when we had it in Hawaii. Also, I didn't know how many pounds my loaf pan is, so I just filled it to the brim. That was probably a bad idea because it took forever (1 hour 30 minutes) to finish baking. Next time I might grease the pan with oil so the crust doesn't get so brown.

This recipe turned out great. Not exactly how I remember, but that's ok. It's still a really tasty piece of Hawaii when I start to miss it again.

Next up will probably be this Chocolate Marble Bread, which looks pretty challenging. Or Fresh Mango Bread, sans the raisins. Or this Better Than Starbucks Lemon Loaf.

Bought this baby on eBay and it came only 3 days after I paid. It has a few more signs of love than I would have liked, but they are all cosmetic and on the outside. I'm sure I would have done as much damage just storing or washing it anyway. These little things are expensive and shipping prices always seem so inflated. Why are my habits so expensive?

Found this little gem at a thrift store for $3. It matches the 3 quart casserole dish I found at a local thrift store (though I can't remember which one) and the loaf pan I bought online. I got super lucky with my sugar container today. I also saw a matching ~4" skillet that I was going to buy, but I changed my mind since it was so small. My rule for collecting pieces from this set is that I can only buy the things I will actually use to cook.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to track down some Grab-Its, but I'm hoping to score some of those locally too, since they are expensive with shipping. The Grab-Its seem to be difficult to find with lids especially, so finding several to make a set will take a while. I will probably also buy a 5 quart casserole and maybe one of those square 8"x8" pans I've seen.

My mom bought me this Blueberry Hill Casseroles & One Dish Meals cookbook for Christmas. I actually stopped buying cookbooks because I usually only use one or two recipes out of them, but this cookbook has a ton of recipes that I want to try. Today I made the Firehouse Chili Con Carne recipe (p114), which is excellent. I added a little salt, jalapeños, and omitted the chipotle because I didn't have any.

As an added bonus, I got to use my sort of vintage 3 quart Corningware Spice of Life casserole, which fit the recipe perfectly. I got lucky finding this piece at a local thrift store. This was my first time cooking with any Corningware, and it is amazing. I would have normally used my non-stick Calphalon casserole, but I'm trying to get away from the non-stick stuff and wanted to try out my Corningware; I'm glad I did. I've ordered a couple other cooking pieces and also found the Corningware Grab-Its, which I decided to hunt down.

My brother is staying with us for the holidays, and he suggested that we use the grill as much as possible while he is here. Genius! I marinated some fish last night, DH slapped it on the grill and I made some quick and cheesy mashed potatoes. I used this Grilled Fish Steaks recipe that was simple but tasty despite my not having basil. Next time I will use more lemon juice though.

I made my usual carrot cake recipe with white whole wheat flour. The texture changed a bit and the cake is not as moist as usual, but otherwise the flavor is excellent. Next time I will try adding more yogurt to the batter...