Trip to California Preparation

I just figured that I did not use this blog for a a few years. Boy time fly

I will try to continue to keep with Life around the Food, but in addition I will be sharing some other wonderful experiences in my life: trips to wonderful destinations that I have planned very scrupulously.

A recent (well a few month ago) adventure was trip to Northern California, a little bit of Nevada and Oregon.

I started to plan this trip way in advance with going through California and Oregon trip planning books. At that moment I realized that if I want to camp in Yosemite National Park, I have to book on the day when camp ground locations become available. I also was trying to get plane tickets with points, so I started to plan about 9 month in advance

Note: Yosemite is a very popular destination May through September and if you are new to booking campgrounds or usually do it at the last moment you might be lucky, but most of the campground in Yosemite are gone within 20-30 minutes after they become available for sale. There are a few campgrounds that can be reserved ahead of the time. Campgrounds become available for reservation on 15th of the month 6 month in advance at 10am EST. Choose the site you want in advance, login to reservation website about 10 minutes ahead of time on 15th of the month 6 month in advance, continually re-new the page until the site is released for booking. Book it without hesitation. I was booking the site for the Memorial Day weekend. I've got the site I wanted within minutes. Then I went back 20 minutes later to check how many site left available and I was bemused that about 99% were sold out. If you can't get the site don't tell me I did not worn you. You might get lucky to get the spot in a few campgrounds that are First-Come-First-Serve.

Note: If you want to spend least amount of points on tickets (United Airlines), book tickets as soon as they are at the reasonable price (~300/each) at that time more flight times and sits will be available to choose from for the same number of points

I wanted to see as much as possible in California and eventually I settled on the following (in chronological order):
San Francisco
Yosemite National Park
Kings Canyon National Park
Sequoya National Park
Death Valley National Park
Reno
Crater Lake National Park
Red Woods State and National Parks
Russian Valley, and
The Big Sur

I can assure you that during this planning a lot of different food was consumed. I hoped to to loose some weight, but I am not sure it worked out to be significant. I most likely enjoyed Five Guys, Chepotle, The Noodle Gourmet, Aja and some home cooking, but mostly I anticipated the upcoming trip.

I promise to write more often and complete my entire trip with pictures.

Here is one, just for starters

May 14th, 2010

It was Friday. I ran in the morning, that I remember for sure.

My breakfast was usual - 1% milk and cereal. However, I have no recollection of what I ate during lunch or dinner. There is very high possibility that we went out for dinner, but I don't remember where.

I also have no idea what did I do important for work. My memory is so short

May 13th, 2010

Morning started with a light walk/run on the road along the hotel. It was cold. I have to say that there was almost no spring this year. Some times I do miss Israel (I lived there for 13 years) because its warm weather.

We had breakfast at the hotel. I had poached egg with smoked salmon. It was great. Really unexpected breakfast in the hotel.

When we arrived to the meeting I've got myself coffee. After the meeting we had lunch at the cafeteria. My lunch included chicken noodle soup, mozzarella sandwich and desert. I ate too much. I was stuffed to the gilds.

I did not eat anything on the way home and when I actually came home me and MR went out to have dinner at our new favorite place: Chipotle.

Since it's been several days ago, I don't rememer if I snaked anything in the evening. Hopefully not

May 11th 2010

It had been several days since I started the blog. I am writing every day. I hope I will have enough energy to continue at that paste.

Today is Tuesday, so no running. MR forgot to turn on alarm, so he left house in a hurry. My alarm went off at 6:30, however I stayed at bed till 7:10 and probably could stay longer. Today is one of those days that you feel you can sleep for very long, but it is middle of the week, so you have to get up and go to work. I wish I could stay in bed.

So I got up. My chores as usual: feed kittens, cleaned around, feed big cats, shower and regular breakfast - cereal. I look at it like a ritual. I got out of the house about 10 min earlier than usual, but my arrival to work stayed the same.

It is cold. We are in the middle of May and the temperatures are barely crossing 60. Summer please. Enough of this cold.

There was nothing unusual at work. I had one serving edamame around 10:30. I read about these beans and they are suppose to be healthy. Interestingly, I feel full very quickly by eating only 30g of these little things. Maybe I just convinced myself that this is good snack, but we will see over time.

I had chicken masala for lunch (leftovers) and then pear, banana, and one more serving of edamame. Tomorrow I will be traveling for business, so I am not sure I will be able to keep with simple food, but I will keep you posted.

Since me and MR had a Dr. appointment in the evening we went to our favorite fast dinner place - Noodle Gourmet. This is Chinese restaurant with affordable meals. MR had Oriental noodle soup with flat rice noodles and sliced roast pork and I had beef Lo Main. MR finished everything and I had about 1/3-1/2 of the portion. MR will have the rest of it for lunch tomorrow. Eventually we came home around 8pm.

So I spend some time on computer, then we watched America Idol. I like when there are some talents in the competition and you feel it that people are competing, however this season is really bad. Two names are standing out: Crystal Bowrsax and Lee Duwasy.

I am really tired tonight and after I am done reading a little bit more wood burning stoves that we are planning to install in our basement (I am munching on grapes as I write this), I am going to sleep. If I can get internet connection during my business trip I will back, if not I promise I will post very detail update.

May 10th, 2010

Today is my mom's birthday. Happy birthday dear mamochka. Love you.

I am a bit tired for a very long discussion about my day, but I will try my best. I woke up with a little bit of a headache. Most of the time I will have headaches when I am dehydrated. Unfortunately I don't drink enough - which is very important ingredient of the diet. I do have galoned water at work and instead of usual suspects, like coffee or soda I try to drink water. I just know that amounts are not good enough. It is work in progress. Eventually I will get there.

I took 2 Excedrin's and went to clean kitten's area. I exercise 3 times a week, so on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I am going out to walk/run. Since I had headache, instead of doing my morning chores quickly I lallygagged, so by the time I went out it was quarter after 7. I have only 30 minutes for sport in the morning, since I have to leave hose by 8:30 to go to work (which I should start at 8:30, but we are not discussing this right now. It takes me 30 minutes to get to work). My usual walk/run is about 2.5 miles and I am trying to do about a mile on the football field of our highschool, since they made it good for the runners. Every time I am running I am trying to improve myself. If about 5 month ago I was mostly walking for 30 minutes, no I can say that I am running at least 50%, hopefully more. I still running with small steps meaning that even if I run I don't cover larger distance. I know from the past that my running step is wide, so my target is to get to wide step that I had when I was a teenager.

After shower I had my regular breakfast - cereal. I also take Acai capsules in the morning and vitamin E. Got dressed and went to work. During my lunch time I had some left over pasta and potato salad, that had been open for several days now and it has to be finished. After lunch I was munching on edamame, which suppose to be healthy (see below), an apple and banana.

Edamame Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy 448 kJ (107 kcal)
Carbohydrates 12 g
Sugars 3 g
Dietary fiber 6 g
Fat 6 g
Protein 12 g

Before I went home MR asked me what are we going to have for dinner and I offered to make rice and warm up chicken masala, that we've got from Costco an have to eat eventually. I like this meal. It is a biy too spice for my taste, but it warms you up and has feeling of fulfilment. There are left overs of cause.

After dinner I end up doing more physical activities, since I decides to move more boxes upstairs from the basement (we have to start this renovation soon or I will never have a baby). So I was doing that for about 1.5 hours. After 2 days of work (about 4 hours) 2 small bookshelves are empty. Two big ones to go.

At the end I watched one of my favorite TV shows - House (I think I have a lot of favorite shows: 24, Lie to me, NCIS, Bones, Fringe, and I think there are a few more. I also watch American Idol and Lost, but this year mostly because of MR, I am not sure I like these shows anymore). While I was watching House, I ate about 30 grape tomato. They are the best.

I am going to sleep right after I publish this. Be back tomorrow.

May 8th 2010

I sort of like the idea of posting things in the internet when no one reads it. Sad though, since I thought that blogging is all about sharing your thoughts with other people and get their feedback.

So today is Saturday and it started slightly unusual as compare to previous weeks. The alarm on my husband (MR in the all future references) cell phone went off at 7am and he moved out to the living room (our small agreement, since I am very very sensitive sleeper in the mornings). Around 9am I started to hear noises and realized that he woke up and went to feed our adult cats (our own) and 4 foster kittens, that we have right now. Very unusual, since he sleeps late when he doesn't have to go to work.

He was about to make coffee, when plumber came in. I schedule an appointment to do an estimate for our basement renovation (we had water coming through he walls into the basement during last big storm in NJ and that expedite our next renovation project. (I wanted to renovate a kitchen first, but it looks like I am out of luck). After plumber left we had a breakfast. I had the same cereal as I had the day before and almost every morning for the past several month (I order it from California, since no local store has it) and MR had Special K with strawberries. Call it healthy breakfast, but we just love it simple.

Later on the day we did some work on a house - I started to pack basement and moving stuff to the second floor, two loads of laundry and made flower baskets for the hanging flowers I purchased as few weeks ago at Rutgers Ag Field Day. MR on the other hand made the box and the rails for the ottoman that now I have to upholster. We do a lot of things our self in the house and you probably will be reading a lot about remodeling, new design and satisfaction from all that hard work.

So around 1pm, I realized that we don't have anything for lunch and I offered to go and get fat cats. Rutgers is also known for the fat cats - type of the sandwich on the itallian roll with hamburger, mozzarella sticks, and french fries. It can have a lot of different combination of meat and veggies, but french fries are the must. My favorite is Fat Sam with cheese steak, chicken, fries, mozzarella stick, lettuce, tomato, mayo and humus instead of ketchup.

After lunch we worked for a little bit longer on a house and MR took a quick nap before we went to see Iron Man 2. So, what is the must when you go to see the movie in the theatre, yes, you right - the pop corn and the soda. We split medium size snacks around 6pm. I like action movies and I like how almost unknown actor with a lot of problem in his life made such a huge comeback. Robert Downy Jr - way to go. I like most of action movies and this one is not an exception. I always rate movies I watch, so this one gets 3.5 Julie's stars out of 5.

I hope my posts are not boring despite they so long, I just have this urge to write about m life, to share. Like now you are probably thinking that after all that food that I already put into my stomach during the day (almost no liquid) I will be finishing the blog and getting ready to sleep. Surprise - I am sloooooly eating my favorite ice cream - Haagen Dazs Mango. This is the best ice cream in the world - reach, creamy with pieces of mango. If you haven't try it before - try it, highly recommended.

I am planning to read my book a little bit now and then go to sleep. One more day of pottering around ahead of me. Yey!

May 7th 2010

This is going be my first ever blog entrance. I am not really creative and English is my third language, so I am not perfect candidate for blogging. However, I have a desire to try.

Most of my life I was told that being overweight is not good. People wouldn't like me and I will never achieve all this good things that I could achieve if I would be slim. Easy to say then do. Some people will probably tell me that being overweight is not that bad and I just have to accept my weight and be happy. Also I often find people who overweight calmer and easy to communicate with. I am not a calm person, given that may be this blog will change me.

However, all this weight loss was engraved in my mind since I was little. I have never been skinny. I have wide bones and like to eat, the outcome is simple - I am overweight. But unlike other people I am not really happy, especially when I know that I loose these stubborn pounds.

So I decided to create this blog to make my food cravings a public record and I hope to get feedback from the readers. And may be writing this blog I will be able to create the great balance in my life I so need.

So a little bit about my appearance. I am 5'5" and weight 158 pounds. About a month ago I got married and my weight was 150lb (we lived together before the wedding for several years, so nothing changes much food and cooking wise). Took me almost a year before the wedding to drop 17lb and now I am watching them piling back on me.

I know how it is sound - here is another one who wants to track her diet. Well, not exactly. When I dropped 17lb before the wedding (during 8 month period) I didn't follow any specific diet and I was not tracking calories. I just was able to eat less since there was a target. Now - there is no target and I don't like diets, so I was thinking that by sharing my life and my meal choices during the day I will be able subconsciously and with your feedback to go right direction.

I've never felt that I will be sharing my life with complete strangers, however I feel very exciting about it. May be there will be no supporters and my blog will be online journal. I just want to try. I am not sure how often I will be entering information - target is once a day.

So, today me and my best friend spent several hours at Rummage Sale and purchase some cheap things for the house. I love that sale and trying to get there early enough in the morning (I even too the day off) to be the first in line. Before I left the house I had my cereal (whole grains 110ccal) with 1% milk. When I arrived to the sale place I had to wait for my BF (she stuck in traffic). When she came she brought me bagel with cream cheese and the Starbucks cappuchino. I love this coffee, but usually don't drink it much. So I had this big cup of coffee and half a bagel before 3pm. After we finish shopping we drove to my BF place and went for a lunch. I had large piece of salmon staffed with cheese and asparagus with spinach and rice. I ate almost all of it. It was soooooooo good. After we say good bye to each other I went home and together with my husband walk to eat ice cream. I've got medium size twist (soft ice cream) in regular cone with chocolate dip. I think I have 2-3 glasses of water/coke during the day and I am really hungry now.

Since it is late I promise that I will drink one more glass of water and go to sleep.

Good night