
As I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to tell you a little about some of the changes I’ve been making to bring my eating and my life into balance.
I’ve been going to spin class twice a week since the beginning of the year. This is a big improvement over the end of last year. Even so, I kept thinking: Isn’t exercise supposed to make you feel better? Aren’t you supposed to lose weight? Why am I not seeing progress?
Then I’d sit on the couch for 5 days moping. The closest thing to a vegetable I ate during the mope-fest was lemon-blueberry yogurt cake which is seriously good stuff but sadly does not qualify as a vegetable or even fruit in the real world.
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Tagged as:
balance,
exercise,
reality check
Hello, my name is Patricia, and I am a sugar addict. It has been ten days since my last binge.

By now you should know that I love sweets. Even if this is your first visit to my blog, it is pretty obvious with a quick glance around. From brownies to biscuits, and from cravings to obsessions, I have been at the mercy of that dynamic duo of butter and sugar my entire life but never as much as in the last year and a half.
I started baking after work as a way to escape the stress. And then I started keeping track of the food here on this blog. And while baking and blogging have brought me joy, stress relief, and a black belt in cookie baking, it also brought with it a spare tire, bigger jeans, and a matching set of saddle bags.
So I started this year with the intent of losing that extra weight. I even joined Ten in 10 to help get me over the hump. But after eating pancakes one night for dinner and then making another batch for breakfast the following day and then baking 3 versions of this lemon yogurt cake in 3 days, it was time for a reality check.
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Tagged as:
balance,
reality check

Seventy days. Ten weeks. Two months… no matter how I express how long I have been away from work, it does not match how long it feels. I left work about that long ago. I voluntarily, without coercion or drugs, bid adieu to my job as a software engineer and left my colleagues with dulce de leche brownies. Seventy days. That sounds like a lot of time, but to me it barely feels like two weeks.
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Tagged as:
biscuits,
breakfast,
fall,
pumpkin,
writing class
Okay, not really. I did hike up and down a mountainous hill yesterday and have the sore legs to prove it. Still, I have not moved any mountains. What I really wanted to say in this quick little post is that I’ve been making tweaks to my site. Some are subtle like moving and/or removing a few things from the right rail over there –>
Other things are bigger and I’m excited about them, even if they do not equate to moving mountains. [Continue reading...]

How are all of you? I’m okay. I’ve had a fever of unknown origin for a few days and I smell of illness. You know, the I’ve been in my pajamas much too long kind of a smell. But my temperature is down to only 99.5 today, woohoo.
I probably don’t need to point out that cooking has been the farthest thing from my mind these last few days so unfortunately I have no recipe to share with you today. I’ve failed at the nablopomo thing also but I’ve decided that is not so bad… I should have waited a couple of months to try it and I should have planned a bit more before embarking on such a challenge. Ah well.
While I have not been cooking or baking, I have been thinking about food a fair bit. Things like ceviche and stone fruits (no, not together). And I hope in the coming weeks to find the time to make all of these dreams come true. I also started reading David Lebovitz’s The Sweet Life in Paris and so far I love it. He has such a great voice, and the recipes are intriguing. I can’t explain it really but the last few months I’ve been really into French things so it really is up my alley. By French things I mean everything from trying French foods and restaurants, reading about people who have lived there, etc. I guess the last few months is not really the right timeframe… I’ve been a bit of a francophile for a few years but the last few months it has cranked up. I don’t know if it’s all of the Julia Child talk leading up to the Julie and Julia movie coming out or reading her book My Life in France
. Or if it’s just been the amazing restaurants I’ve been to with Dan (La Toque in Napa, La Note in Berkeley, the Plumed Horse in Saratoga, etc). Or is it just the fascination with food in general? I’m not sure. My next step I think is to learn a little of the language as well as more about the cuisine.
Anyway, I hope I wasn’t too rambley today. What’s on your mind these days?
Tagged as:
david lebovitz,
french,
julie and julia,
my life in france,
nablopomo,
the sweet life in paris