Potato Soup

I made dinner yesterday from scratch! 

Let me tell you, I am no chef.  I'm not even a cook and I'm barely a baker, but I want to be.  Only very recently have I started yearing to cook more and I've gotten that high from creating something delicious.  Friends would tell me they love to cook, that it soothes them, makes them happy, and I never got it.  Cooking stressed me out.  I would get super scientific, needing the exact measurements and ingredients and if I couldn't follow the directions exactly I wouldn't do it for fear of ruining the food and wasting my time.  Over time my fabulous husband has tried to help me out and loosen me up in the kitchen, showing me that it doesn't need to be exact (except in baking a lot of the time) and it will still turn out yummy.  If it isn't yummy, you can tweak and fix to make it at least edible the majority of the time.

I'm still not confident, but I'm learning and making an effort.  Last night, right before I left work, I was going through my Google Reader and found this recipe from Angela at Oh She Glows.  I thought about the recipe all the way home and kept going back and forth in my head about whether or not I should try to make it.  By the time I got home and was pretty hungry I had worked up the courage to make the attempt.  With my husband in the other room, I followed the recipe as best I could and improvised where I needed/wanted to (I only had chicken broth, not vegetable; I didn't have rosemary so I used something else in our spice cabinet that I don't remember now; I wasn't in the mood to add nut butter; and I didn't have nutritional yeast).  It didn't turn out perfectly at first, but I was able to fix it and I think it turned out wonderfully!  My husband wasn't a huge fan which means I was able to bring leftovers to work today and continue to be proud of myself.  Baby steps, right?

In other news, it is Friday, which is my weigh-in day.  I slept in gym clothes last night because I had to go in early today if I wanted to work out before work, which meant I didn't take them off to weigh in this morning.  I was on the treadmill for 45 min working on building my running endurance by loosely following C25K.  Afterward, I was in the locker room and it was empty so I weighed myself on the doctor's office looking scale with my gym clothes on.  I didn't particularly like the number and I knew that the clothes were adding some weight so after I showered I snuck over to the scale again and noticed that the locker room (and gym) was still totally empty so I took a big risk and jumped on the scale, sans towel, to get an "accurate reading!"  I was so nervous someone was going to come in that I was on and off in a matter of seconds but I think I can record 165.5 for this week.  I'm not going to beat myself up for such a small loss, actually I am going to do the opposite.  I ate crap Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon nights before I finally snapped myself out of the funk, pulled myself up and decided to get help.  I'm just starting The Beck Diet Solution that I picked up at the library on Tues and I have started working toward processing and overcoming the anxiety and stress that is ruling my life.  I'd say losing .5lbs is an accomplishment!

(Note to self: Long posts need pictures!  All posts need pictures!)