Mundanity

So late this afternoon we headed off to the Palisades mall, because PreZ desperately needed new underwear in the worst way. Finally we managed to come across relatively nice underwear that wasn't hideously expensive, and not white. Why women get to have underwear in all colours, and for guys it's about 85% white and about 13% idiotic colours or plaids or things that would be downright embarrassing to have seen by people of the interested sex, I'll never understand. But he has 10 new pairs, which should last him for a while.

We also got him swimming trunks, for that one swim a year he has on July 4th ;) and a pair of sports shorts and a very light weight sports t-shirt with little holes in it, which will give him coverage, but not make him super hot either, like most cotton t-shirts do. That stuff will be what he gets to wear when we go to yoga. And we also found some nice black short sleeve button down shirts, so he has 2 nice shirts for summer. After that we headed over to Circuit City to turn a gift card we'd gotten for Christmas into some electronics, and we picked up a cheap Panasonic dvd player. So now we can actually watch dvd's in the living room, rather than just on the computers.

After that we were pretty much out of time as the stores all started to close, so I didn't get a chance to look around for anything for myself clothing wise. I still have a gift card to redeem at Victoria's Secret, so I'll be back eventually, no doubt. We had dinner at Chilis and headed home. Tested out the new dvd player with the first Harry Potter movie.

The other day we also worked out what sporting schedule would work. Which sport had the best session times on which days and would be best for us to do when. So we've managed to pencil in ideal days for 2 karate (kyokushin) lessons, and 2 yoga (bikram) lessons a week. This is pretty much our "new year's resolution", the old faithful 'get fitter/lose weight' one. He promised me once that if I went with him to karate, he'd go with me to yoga, hence the two sports.

Now I need to organise some sports wear of my own, and some other gear, like sticky mats and we should be good to go. I'm not sure if we're going to start with both at the same time, I'm leaning towards doing a month of karate before we add yoga into the mix, because I just think that considering our fitness levels are zero, starting it all at once will make us wish we were dead. I'm sure karate will do that to us initially anyway, as we try and convert our lazy asses into a more active lifestyle. The bikram yoga I'm really intruiged by though, as you do it in high heat (something like 90-105F), which makes it aerobic, and also better for the joints and muscles. Amusingly enough last week on Queer Eye For The Straight Guy they took the straight guy to bikram yoga too, he seemed to dig it. I thought it was cool to see, because other than a clip on a local news station once, I'd never actually seen a bikram class in action, only read descriptions. So that was nifty.

The concept of the karate class still kinda scares me. I'm just worried I'll make an ass of myself, especially when doing those yells with the punches and stuff. Yes, I get worried over inane and unimportant things like that. It's not so much screwing up, as screwing up in front of a large group of people.

Got Soup?

I've been on a bit of a soup making kick lately. I like making them, they're generally fairly easy, and they're always good weekend food... you make one on friday and it'll serve you for dinner (yummy with bread rolls) and cover at least another lunch/snack or two. These recipes come from a low fat cookbook I have, so they're at least on the low fat side of things.

Anyway, I decided to share some recent recipes.

The Spicy Dal & Carrot Soup I raved about a while ago, it's the one I made when vinlander71 and vgnwtch came over a few weeks back. I adjusted it for them as they're vegans, so the veggies among you can eat it too.

( Spicy Dal & Carrot Soup )

The soup I made for this past weekend was Spicy Lentil Soup and very yummy. Also a veggie friendly recipe too.

( Spicy Lentil Soup )

Tonight's soup recipe is Carrot and Cumin Soup. Carrots were on sale for extremely cheap, and this is a recipe that uses a fair few of them (and I might make some Carrot and Ginger cake later on to use up another bunch of them, recipe will be forthcoming if that's a success). Once again veggie friendly as well.

( Carrot and Cumin Soup )

Other than that, on a non-soup note, I tried an Oatbran and Applesauce muffin recipe on Saturday. It should have been just oat bran muffins, because the applesauce was undetectable in the muffins, which was a real shame. As that was the only sweetening in the muffins, it didn't make them much more appealing as the applesauce or its sugar content were undetectable. A pity because the recipe sounded appealing enough in and of itself.

I hate when recipes don't live up to your expectations. Of the soups I made 2 were like that. Sweet Potato and Onion sounded and looked promising, but the orange juice in the recipe just didn't make it appealing, and we didn't end up eating much of it. The Beef & Veg I made was nice, but it had the problem of becoming extremely thick in the reheating, which it wasn't supposed to do as a clear soup... I guess the barley in it had other ideas. That one was tasty though, it just stopped looking appealing after it had been reheated. Plus that one took forever to make.

Anyway, expect more soup recipes as I make my way through all the ones that look yummy in the cookbook that I want to try :D

Edit: Can't make the Carrot and Ginger cake because I'm all out of plain flour. So I'm making Oatbran & Peanut butter cookies instead. That finishes off the remaining oatbran I had, and even though it called for plain flour, I used wheat instead. At least this means I can get all the ingredients I need for the Carrot and Ginger cake, because I was going to fudge it and use minced ginger instead of stem ginger and root ginger anyway.