Weekly Round Up: Let's Cook!

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  After skimping on the cooking for a while, this week I got back into the kitchen with a vengeance to try out some new eats.

Eats

The inspo for my recent cooking spree was this video on a day of Olympic-inspired vegan meals.

I much prefer savory over sweet when it comes to breakfast, but there was something about the pancakes in the video that I could not get out of my mind.  The only problem is that the recipe in the video uses a few ingredients that I don't have, such as oat flour and flax.  I used a different, non-vegan recipe with ingredients that I already had at home.  I made half the recipe, which gave me two servings of pancakes, and skipped the blueberries.  As you can see from the top photo in this post, Doggo was very interested in the pancake making process, and of course she got a few bites of pancake at the end.

The other recipe that I tried was a BBQ tofu bowl.  My notes/changes from the video:

• I swapped Costco frozen broccoli for the asparagus and roasted it in the air fryer.
• I made the tofu the same way that she did with smoked paprika and soy sauce, but cooked it in the air fryer because it was easier.  Next time I will skip her seasonings and just go my normal route of seasoned salt and a little oil.  Adding soy sauce just messes with the crisping of the tofu.
• I already had a stash of roasted sweet potatoes in the freezer, so this was the easiest part yet.

All three things in this meal are things that Doggo loves, so of course she got a deconstructed version (raw tofu, uncooked/unseasoned broccoli, and I always keep a stash of plain roasted sweet potatoes in the freezer for dog treats).  She rated it 10/10, though to be fair that is her standard meal rating.

Workouts

I'm still trying to find the balance between being active but not being so active that I get exhausted.  To my credit I made it through two weeks of run/walk workouts before deciding (yet again) that I just don't want to run right now or possibly ever again.  What's a cardio workout that's a little spicier than just plain walking?

Google let me know about the Japanese walking method, which is just a fancy way of saying three minutes of brisk walking followed by three minutes of relaxed walking, repeated five times to get to a total of 30 minutes.  I like it.

I'm still trying to work toward diamond pushups, and I can't tell you if I'm any further along than when I started in mid-June, but I'm also not any further away from being able to do them.  I had been trying to do them against a wall and then on my knees, but my trainer ChatGPT suggested doing them on my toes, but with my hands spread out further and then over time work toward getting my hands in the diamond shape.  As always,  I will keep you posted.

Watching

Beef!  The last time that we talked, I was in the middle of season two and had not seen season one.  I have no idea why Netflix started me in season two, but IMO that's the right order.  The story lines and characters are completely different, so there is no benefit to watching the seasons in order.  The show is called Beef because it is about folks who have beef with each other and have to fight it out.

• Season two: way better story line, and a White Lotus kind of vibe (not my original observation, SHU said it and I agree with her).
• Season one: not as good a story line, no White Lotus vibe, definitely some shark jumping, but the offset is ALI WONG!!!  The only reason that I know the name is because Netflix promoted her stand up very heavily in years past.  God, she is a good actress.  And although I didn't like the story as much, there came a point where I couldn't stop watching and binged the final half of the season in one day.

Naturally after that I watched one of Ali's comedy specials, and it was...OK.

Reading

I consider myself to be in a reading slump right now and yet I have so many books to tell you about...buckle in and let's do this.

First up...a very predictable audio book for the road.  I listened to Little House on the Prairie on my most recent road trip.  Rating: excellent for nostalgia and for road tripping, and less good for extreme racist observations that were NBD when the books were written in the 1930s and are not cool now.  As someone who likes old movies, I am no stranger to seeing "it was fine back then" content, but this was a little extra.  I'm never sure what to do in situations like this besides to take a minute to say "whoa".  On the one hand I think it's important to let the past speak for itself and not to censor it, and surely we need to be more focused on the problems of the present, but also if I was going to select a book for story time it would not be LH specifically.

Next up: Third time is the charm for a DOUBLE DNF.  I had more time to fill on the road, so I decided to give Commonwealth by Ann Patchett another try.  My history with Patchett is:

• Have been hearing that she's a great author for my entire life.
• Picked up Commonwealth a long time ago and got the ick a few pages in and stopped reading.
• Forgot that about the DNF and tried Commonwealth for a second time a few years later, and also got the ick a few pages in.
• Read Whistler in June and was blown away.
• Read 50% of Tom Lake in July, went from being somewhat interested to being bored to tears and DNF'd.
• Hey I had nothing to lose so I gave Commonwealth another shot, but on audio this time.

The good news is that on audio I got past the ick that drove me away the first two times.  There's just something about the opening scene where an uninvited guest shows up to a baby shower with a bottle of gin that put me off.  

The other good news is that there are some incredible moments in this book.

But also...looking back now that I've finished the book...I kind of wish that I had let the sleeping DNF lie and read another book, any other book.  Many of the same themes were covered in Whistler, so I didn't really gain anything from Commonwealth.

Currently: I've got two books going.

Current book #1: The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding.  I read about this book in an article somewhere about great suspense books.  This was written in the 40s, and it's about a middle aged woman (aka a woman in her late 30s) who is holding down the home front while her husband is at war.  She writes him cheerful letters about how wonderful life is at home while dealing with her teenaged daughter's awful boyfriend.  This one started strong and is slowing down toward the end, so stay tuned until I finish and I'll give you a final verdict.  I do love the writing.

Current book #2: Dolly All the Time!  This is my first Annabel Monaghan, and I don't usually read romance but the hype on this one was too much to ignore.  I'm about 40% in, and I think my final verdict is going to be that it's a little fluffy for my taste but I'm also enjoying it.

What's Next?

I'm hosting a house guest for the next few days and will be taking a very long road trip, so the rest of August will go by in a flash and blogging will very likely fall off.  Spoiler: I will be seeing a number of my blogging friends in person along the way.

Peace out!  When was the last time that you had pancakes?  Have you cooked anything good recently?  Heard of Japanese walking?  Thoughts on Ann Patchett?