Gaga & Tom and Lorenzo

Thanks for all your well wishes. I am still feeling under the weather, so when I returned home from work today, I immediately crawled back into bed. Here is my current view:

All three of us in bed, in our double back-up sheets, Bert & Ernie blankets, playing on our laptops, hoping and praying for this sickness to leave our home. Yes, I have infected my husband. I feel so bad.

Almost as bad as I feel for blaring Lady Gaga songs on You Tube all evening. I stumbled upon the LadyGagaVEVO YouTube site (because it has the Born This Way video) and the next thing I know it is two hours later and I have watched ALL of her videos. I never really considered myself a Gaga fan, but I think I am now. She is such a freak show and I can't look away. LOVE. In case you havent seen her new video, here it is:



Another website I stumbled across since coming down with the flu/cold from hell.... Tom and Lorenzo. Someone in my twitter feed retweeted them yesterday, so I started following their tweets before the Oscars, and then I clicked through to their website, and yada, yada, yada, I'm now obsessed. They had great pictures and gave amazing and hilarious commentary last night. On their blog, they post pictures and commentary for all the awards shows and other various events. I lost another couple of hours looking through their archives. Check them out. Actually, I'll get you started with some stuff from last night:

2011 Oscars Red Carpet Part 1
Vanity Fair Oscar Party Part 1

Hope you enjoy these two sites as much as I did!

Cough Cough, Sneeze Sneeze

Our lovely vacation ended on a low note....we sat next to a sick person on the plane from Miami to DC. This flight also happened to be delayed on the tarmac because of bad weather so we got an extra hour of exposure to his germs. Ugh! I've been flat in bed since Thursday night thanks to our seatmate. I feel a bit better today and my fever broke yesterday, but I sound like I've been chain smoking for 58 years and am still so stuffed up that it is making me dizzy. I am hoping I continue to feel better!

AJ is off playing hockey so I have the remote all to myself. I am switching back and forth between red carpet coverage and a Snapped marathon. My current medicine is a snuggly puppy, a mango peach salsa Yankee candle that is tricking me into thinking it is almost summer, and some tea with honey. I have been taking DayQuil regularly until today...this morning I decided I needed to give my body a break. I am such a freak about taking medicine. AJ basically has to force it down my throat. Any homeopathic remedies out there??

That is all my foggy brain can muster tonight. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Heaven

We had a great time on vacation. A long weekend getaway was just what we needed. I feel rested and relaxed and am ready to power through the last couple weeks of winter.

Grand Cayman is BEAUTIFUL and it felt very safe, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone planning a Caribbean vacation. Our hotel was nice (the Westin), but if you can spurge, definitely try and stay at the Ritz!

The water at Seven Mile Beach is so calm and clear, it was like swimming in a pool.


Here is my favorite picture from the trip:


We took this at 6 something in the morning while the sun was rising. I love that we just rolled out of bed. It feels real, as opposed to when I am all made up and straightened!

Sun and Sand

And we're off to Grand Cayman! See you in a few days!

Photo from here.

Veg Update

We have reached the end of our veg experiment, and I am happy to report that it went really well. We ate a plant based diet almost exclusively!

We did indulge in the "paris exemption" a few times, which is the acceptance of flexibility on special occasions...like when you are out to eat or don't have veggie options available. I think we opted for meat 3 or 4 times, which is pretty amazing considering we used to eat it, on average, once or twice a day. We also ate seafood 2 or 3 times throughout the experiment.

I have to say that I really enjoyed trying new recipes and learning how to incorporate vegetables as the main dish. It was also pretty informative to see that buying vegetables is not more expensive than buying meat. We also bought a lot of quinoa, lentils, and rice, and I found that you can make hearty, affordable dishes if you put in the effort.

Now that the experiment is over, we are going to buy meat again, but I am going to continue making vegetarian meals....in fact I am planning to do more vegetarian meals than meat meals each week. I think I would call that a success!

Veg Experiment

When you have to recap your weekend on Tuesday, it means it was a good one. One of my friends and her boyfriend came down for the weekend and we had entirely too much fun eating, drinking, and staying up late.

However, we overindulged so much that AJ and I have decided that we need to get ourselves back on a track to healthiness. Alcohol and junk food are not what I need to be filling my body with if I want to try for another baby someday soon. We have been itching to dabble in vegetarianism since we watched Food, Inc. a few months ago (and after reading Jenn Lives Well), but we have been lacking in motivation and initiative. We finally have both!

We leave for Grand Cayman in 18 days. Between now and then we are cutting out almost all meat and alcohol. I say most meat because we have a few Healthy Choice frozen meals in our freezer that we need to eat so that we can free up space. I know frozen meals aren't the healthiest option out there, but they make bringing my lunch to work a million times easier. (Sidebar: Have you tried the Healthy Choice kind? My favorite are Chicken Parmigiana and Roast Turkey. They are so much better than Lean Cuisine or Weight Watchers frozen meals. They actually look and taste like real food. They are a tad more expensive then the other brands, but I have found that they are well worth the extra dollar or two.) We are planning to eat those for lunch this week and then it is onto a no meat meal plan. I think this will be good because it will allows us to wean ourselves off meat during the first week.

I have a few recipes I plan to use throughout our veg experiment:

Quinoa with Spinach and Tomatoes
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=2001925

Rigatoni with Eggplant
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/trenette-with-eggplant-and-basil-pesto-recipe/index.html

Quinoa Stuffed Red Bell Peppers http://www.shape.com/healthy_eating/recipes/quinoa_stuffed_red_bell_peppers_recipe

Ratatouille
http://www.thedcladies.com/2010/03/ratatouille-from-moosewood.html

After vacation we plan to asses how we feel and at that point determine what kinds of meats (if any) we want to reintroduce into our diet. Have you tried something like this before? Any other recipes, thoughts, and/or tips for me??