What a concept, eh? Keep yourself encouraged if you’re looking to reduce your waistline by making one menu for each day of the week. Reaching a goal for yourself, as most of us realize today involves compromise. It requires discipline, change in habits, better use of time and a number of other topics we could list but then would realize; WOW, that’s a lot of work ahead of me! So, lets here look at the food category and some options to assist us.
Planning: Establish a goal and get the facts on how to reach that goal? Read, consult a professional, ask advice from others you have noticed a change in there size or shape.
Action: Take some recipes you really like and try to build off them. Make adjustments to ingredients or portion size to reduce calorie consumption and create additional recipes with ingredients you have on hand.” Prep time” is the biggest challenge I hear when conducting sessions. So when you’re chopping away think about tomorrow’s delight!
Get Cooking: Taking the idea ”this is the menu for tonight” makes it easier to reach your goal. I found if you create too many choices you fill up your refrigerator with unnecessary ingredients and potential waste.
Savor Every Bite: Ask yourself? How does it taste, what would I do different next time, consider adding to making it more appealing or taking out of the recipe, did I make too much or was it just enough, no leftovers is a bonus I found helps out.
Simple steps to making you feel better and look better…just with one meal. So if you’re cooking for yourself this can become a good habit to follow, if you have other people who depend on your culinary talents, teach them how to cook so they have no excuses later on!
If you want to skip reading my blog due to the consistent rambling on about nothing that I do and just listen to the interview I did with Tori & Dean, click here. But you should still read my blog anyway as it will kill some time at work.
Today I had a call from Tori Spelling & Dean McDermott to promote the season finale of “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood” (which airs Monday night @ 10PM on Oxygen). I was happy that they were calling me because I’ve had some burning issues to talk with them about. For instance, when I talked to them at the end of the previous season, they had committed to giving me a TV show called “Big Daddy & The Chicken” and they were going to send me an autographed copy of Tori’s book. Well needless to say, I have not shot the pilot episode yet and my book has not arrived! I know that I am batting .000 with Celebrities sending me things, but I was hoping these 2 things would come true, even more than Oscar from The Office sending me a pony (click here to read about that mess). After all, I really don’t want a pony but would love to be on TV doing something silly!
I was wondering if they would remember our conversation or not before the phone rang. And to my surprise, they did! Being the nice people that they are, they let me down easy about the TV show…something about the title not working and that chickens aren’t hot right now. Dean also remembered about the book and apologized. It sounds like the TV show still could happen and the book is on the way again.
Tori & Dean
If anything, I think they should let me move forward on my reality show idea for my friend Hartley. Without giving away too much of the details, he is an adult in his 50′s who needs help with fashion, cooking, cleaning, relationships…just everything! He is a super nice guy who just needs some work, to which he fully admits. I shot a video of him a few years back to send in to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy but they felt he was a bigger project than the Fab 5 could tackle in 1 episode. So, I continue to hold out hope that “The Hartley Project” can get off the ground. I would be willing to temporarily hold off on my show to work on Hartley’s because I’m a good friend like that. If you want to watch the 30 minute demo I shot of Hartley, click here. Keep in mind, I am not Steven Spielberg!
Hartley getting "arrested" by Jess at Smokey Bones in Tyngsboro
During the interview, the audio was dropping out a bit and I was helpless in my little office trying to fix it. I am a 1 man crew, so I had to make the best of it. Besides talking about me and my needs, Dean talked about hitting a bird on his motorcycle, all of the projects Tori is working on, their new show coming out, parenting and if they have worked on their pet peeves that we talked about last time. I know most people ask questions about what is going on with Tori & her Mom and a bunch of other drama type questions, but is there really anything different that will come out that you already haven’t heard? And after doing a ton of interviews before they talked to me, I’m sure they would rather have some fun and talk about Big Daddy & The Chicken and the bird that Dean hit. They seem to be good people, good parents and are happy. What is wrong with that? Maybe the drama you read about doesn’t exist? From the sound of them on the phone, they sound happy and in love. People love to hate on celebrities who are happy and try to find ways to bring them down. Well, not this “journalist”. I have bigger things to ask about, like where is my book?! Besides, they may need me to DJ one of the Weddings for their new TV show!
While shopping recently I was picking through some packages of fresh strawberries as were other consumers, trying to find the best ones. I inquired with one young lady what she was making; she had so many containers in her cart. Like most people sometimes do, she looked puzzled at first per my request than I think she noticed I had quite a few as well! I told her what I was making to make her feel a bit more comfortable and then she happily explained to me what she was doing, how she was doing it, for how many people, etc…I asked her if she enjoyed cooking and her familiarity with what she was making. Her first response was a no and the second was “I make this all the time”. She quickly asked about my recipe and if I liked to cook? My answer was yes to both questions and then I explained what I did and it seemed as though she was quite envious. So I gave her my card and told her about the classes we teach and that it may be something she and some friends would enjoy taking. The recipe she was making was a classic, so I decided to dig into my repertoire and share this one with you. This is the season where fruit becomes abundant. What’s your favorite summer fruit recipe? Give us something to talk about…
Old Fashion Strawberry Shortcake’s
Ingredients:
2 qts, fresh strawberries rinsed and sliced – Reserve 6 whole strawberry for garnish
1 cup sugar-divided
2 ¾ cups all purpose flour
4 t. baking powder
¾ cup butter chilled
2 large eggs
1 (8oz) container sour cream
1 T vanilla extract-divided
2 cups heavy cream
Procedure:
Toss pre sliced strawberries with 1/2 cup sugar, place in a sauce pan to warm over low heat 3-4 minutes, set aside
Combine in a sifter; flour, ¼ cup sugar, baking powder and sift into a bowl. Slice the butter into tablespoon size pieces and with a pastry cutter blend with the flour mix until crumbly
In another bowl stir together the eggs, sour cream, 1 t vanilla and combine with flour mixture until moisten
Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead with your hands about 10 times (mixture should be moist but tender to touch)
Form the dough into a 9” square and cut into 3” squares, place on lightly greased cookie sheet and bake in a preheated 450* oven for 12 minutes or until golden, remove and set aside to cool
Combine heavy cream and vanilla in a chilled bowl and whip the mixture to soft peaks gradually adding the remaining sugar, then on to stiff peaks
Split the short cakes in half horizontally, top each evenly with the strawberry mixture and a spoonful of whipped cream, cover with remaining top’s, garnish with fresh a strawberry and more whipped cream
A few years back, I recorded some harmless prank calls. A friend of mine was getting these notices in the mail that said she won $1,000,000. We knew it was a scam and I decided to call them back and mess with them. I found a few of these calls and decided to make little videos out of them so I could learn how to use iMovie on my new Mac. Here is the 1st one because I love to share (as well as make prank calls):
