100 Days Culturally 'Pear'ed

Stuck in a weight loss rut, this week started off with another 3-day wheat-free stint!  After my shift at the school I drove to Curves and weighed in at 144.25 lbs.  Honestly, I feared it would be higher than that after my extra large piece of Katie's carrot cake the day before.  Nonetheless I continued with my workout in good grace and vowed to turn things around once more!  As per my usual schedule, I went to pick up my weeks' worth of groceries afterwards.  I bought some new items - a flat-leafed parsley plant to keep my basil company, basmati rice, turmeric, and a variety of pears.  Also on my list was Gorgonzola cheese which I discovered is a form of blue cheese (ewww!), so being that I am the 'Nutritional Gatekeeper' of the house, I made the executive decision to pass on that and alter the recipe omitting the Gorgonzola!  Trust me, my kids, and even my husband will thank me later!!!  The recipe I needed it for was for Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Cranberries with Barley - and for the life of me I couldn't find the barley so I'll have to alter the recipe anyways and substitute....quinoa??  Moving back to the pears...I've had this idea for quite a few weeks that I wanted to try.  I was astonished at how many different varieties of pears the store stocked and wanted to perform a pear taste test, so I did it!  I bought one of each of the 12 varieties!  Of course when the kids arrived after school, there were questions about, "Why so many pears?" and probably a few, "Uh oh, here she goes again!  What are we in for now?"'s.  This is when I broke the news that tomorrow after school, we would be taste testing all of the pears and that would be their snack!  Kristen didn't want to wait a whole day and begged to eat one straight away.  Really?  This is kind of fun - my kids begging for fruit?  This power I'm beginning to hold over them elicits such joy in me!  I can't let them see that of course, else they'll begin a coup and what will happen then?

Just last week I mentioned that I needed to quit while I was ahead when testing my blood pressure.  Apparently I needed further reminders of this.  I tested it at the supermarket pharmacy and the first one was 139/81 (high normal range) and the next one was 144/85 (high range).  I stopped at that one!  Reading Colin Firth's biography I read that a woman aged 103 was taken to hospital with high blood pressure and was advised to stop watching episodes of his Pride & Prejudice BBC series!  Can you imagine?  I think it's wonderful that Colin's 'chiselled contours' can have such an effect on someone 103 years old!!!  And here I am using Colin as my muse to decrease mine!!!  That being said, I have yet to begin watching the series myself which I received for Christmas!  Perhaps I should have a medic alert attached to me on the off chance the same happens to me!  LOL?

When I arrived home for lunch, I cooked some brown rice shell pasta and added some of my pesto and the left over roasted tomatoes I had in the fridge!

Later I had to drive Kristen to gymnastics which reminded me of a story I forgot to mention last week.  I was driving her friend Seren to her skating lesson after gymnastics and the girls were discussing what foods they liked best.  Seren, who recently moved here from England started talking about the live lobsters at Longo's.  Well, as you can imagine, with her cute British accent, hearing her say 'lobster' reminded me of Love Actually when Daisy announces to her mother that she has the part of the lobster in the nativity play!  "The lobster?"..."In the nativity play?"  Can you tell that Love Actually is my favourite movie?  I won the screenplay on an eBay auction, and am anxiously awaiting it's arrival!!!

So...moving on - for dinner I decided to make something easy that I've been making for years!  Salsa chicken.  It's as simple as that.  I added some sesame oil to the frying pan and added cut up pieces of chicken breast, ground some fresh pepper on to it and cooked it through.  Then I added some salsa to it and voila - salsa chicken.  Serve it with rice and some fresh baby spinach and you have yourself a well balanced and healthy meal!

Afterwards, John and I were off to the Nelly Furtado concert - another Christmas gift!  I've mentioned before how this journey of mine isn't just about losing weight - rather a meshing of physical, mental and spiritual life changes and that my success was going to be dependent on the symbiosis of the three in order to make a lasting lifestyle change.  Well, after this week, I'd like to add a fourth element to the mix - that being 'cultural'!  Can I just say that Canada has talent!  We are so lucky to live in Burlington and have access to a plethora of cultural arts!  I was pleasantly surprised with the two opening acts - Jessica Tyler and Dylan Murray whom I hadn't heard before.  Both artists were friendly and very approachable.  They were so brilliant in fact, that I was worried that Nelly herself would be a let down in comparison.  She did not disappoint and provided a stellar performance!  John and I were both commenting on how lucky we were and promised to do more of this kind of thing in the future!

The next day, an author was visiting the kids' school.  Michael Wade - another great Canadian talent!  He is the author of the "And Then it Happened" series.  This prison guard turned author, had the kids in stitches with stories he told of his own personal exploits as a child and others he fictionalized for his books!  Jacob is the most difficult kid to get to read - and I knew Mr. Wade got to him as soon as he tricked Mr. Baswick to say 'fart'!  When he was done speaking, Jacob wanted to purchase his whole series!  And how could I not agree to that?  End result - one very happy kid with a stack of books of which he is keen to read!!  He finished Book 1 that night before he went to bed! (I am now currently reading it myself!)

When the kids came home from school that day, I had the pear taste test all set up!  I had washed them all and placed them on the kitchen table with labels.  I also made little sheets up where they could check which ones they liked and those they didn't.  Turned out to be a pretty fun little experiment!  We had Yellow Asian, Brown Asian, Bartlett, Decana Del Comizio, D'Anjou, Bosc, Ya, Abate Fetel, Fragrant, Red, Forelle and Taylor Gold.  I looked up on the Internet how many varieties of pears there were and was surprised to read there are over 5,000!  We all said 'Nah' to the 'Ya', and Kristen and I liked the Red pear best.  Matthew's friend James came over afterwards and we put him to the pear test too!  Then he called his mom and Carla and Amy came over - good thing too, because it was a lot of pear to bear!!!  Now Jacob is requesting we repeat the process with apples!!

Yesterday, after finishing my shift in the school library, I went to Curves and weighed in at 143.25 lbs.  I had to pick up a few groceries I forgot on Monday so I tested my blood pressure again and the results were 138/83, 138/85 and 130/83!!!  Driving home I saw a man crossing the street smoking a pipe.  I haven't seen someone smoking a pipe in years, maybe even a couple of decades.  It made me nostalgic, reminiscing about my Grandpa smoking his pipe and telling jokes!  The scene before me was perplexing.  Stereotypically, one would envisage a pipe smoker sitting in a well worn chair situated in the corner of a den, wearing a collared shirt covered with a warm cardigan, reading the newspaper, perhaps with some moldy oldy tunes playing in the background.   It struck me as funny to see a man outside, walking steadily across the intersection, pipe in mouth!  

For dinner I made a honey-lime tilapia from a recipe I found on Pinterest.com which I had to alter somewhat to make it wheat-free.  I coupled the tilapia with Coconut Rice taken from "The Cleaner Plate Club".  The coconut rice consisted of basmati rice, coconut milk, water, sugar and turmeric - which gave it the yellow colour.  Surprisingly the kids weren't turned off by the different colour and John thought it was rather tasty.  Another successful dish!

Today marked my 100th work-out at Curves!!! Remember earlier this month I was complaining that they took down the 'tree' from the wall?  I was disappointed because I was so close to moving up from a 'maple key' to a green 'maple leaf' and they took it all down.  Well, all was not lost since they ended up putting a smaller 'tree' on the bulletin board and are adding the 'leaves' for a month after people reach their next level!

  So I got my leaf after all!  And in the bottom you'll see my silver leaf for being the biggest loser for the month of December.  ...And that's not all!!!!  Today I weighed in at 142.25 lbs!!!  That's my lowest yet!!  I definitely see some Colin in the near future!!!!  Surely I can make that happen by Valentine's Day!!!  Also, I have a new goal - to reach my 200th work-out by the end of this calendar year!  Tonight after the kids are in bed I think I'll treat myself and begin watching Pride & Prejudice to check out those 'chiselled contours' myself!