I'm all about the semi-homemade food, I don't have time to cook from scratch every night.

Me too, just not Sandra Lee. I have been "preparing" meals long before I could actually cook.

I miss Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet.

Oh yeah! Wow, I had forgotten all about him. Stephen used to watch him religiously.

Sandra Lee makes me want to hurl, but I don't mind Rachael Ray.

I miss having the option of "preparing" food. Well, okay, I can get a salad bag, but canned soup would be really nice to have. And making my own chicken broth feels all noble and stuff, but is a pain. I've started using Knorr cubes, although they don't measure out exactly right.

Food -> Diet

As of July 1st I'm on a quest to downsize. Y'all keep me honest. A pound of fat equals 3500 calories, so if I reduce what I eat by 250 calories a day and exercise for 250 calories a day, that's one pound of fat gone per week. So I should be at my target weight by Xmas. Wish me stick-to-it-ma!

And I have pictures from the 4th of July weekend festivities, including the firebreathers, burlesque show, and the parade on the 4th: [link]

It's not all my pictures, because I didn't have time to load them all last night. So there will be more later. But check them out. Firebreathers! Dancing girls! Parade!

Stick-to-it~ma, Raq!

I joined Weight Watchers online a while ago. I don't think I have really posted about it around here. I am not very good at sticking to it, but I am trying. I want to lose some weight, so that it will hopefully ease some fo the pain I am feeling, especially in my knees. When I was 90 lbs in high school, my orthopedic told me to stay that way if I wanted to continue to walk for a long time. I have no intention of being 90 lbs again, but a little less weight would probably be better.

FWIW, I found that actually going to the meetings was huge in terms of keeping me in line. Not to say the content of the meetings necessarily did anything for me, (we used to weigh in, make and excuse, and, um, go out to the bar as often as not) but just the having to go and face the music.

Thanks, Brenda. I don't think I can handle mettings, and it is cheaper for me to do it this way.

I hate Sandra Lee with a passion usually reserved for Anne Coulter. She's a mockery of everything I love about food and cooking. Her "food" takes longer to make than cooking from scratch, and looks and tastes like crap.

Her fish-n-chips batter has an ingredients list half a page long, and involves more finicky mixing and measuring than most entire cookbooks. Mine? Mix together: one beer, enough flour to make a batter, pinch of salt, pinch of cayenne. Dip fish in batter. Deep fry. Done.

Her recipe for butterscotch involves unwrapping and melting down a bag of individual Werther's candies. Explain to me how that's easier or faster than melting butter and sugar in a saucepan?

Her pastries...I didn't think it was even possible to make pie dough sound that complicated. Or that expensive.

And don't even get me started on the phone calls she takes from her husband during the show, sweetly reminding the audience that "her man comes first" and how all this "effort" she's putting into her "tablescapes" is just for him. Fucking Stepford fucking bullshit.

[Okay, I hate her a lot, but not enough for two posts]

Bloody well done, Raq! (Although heaven knows, the prospect of you being MORE gorgeous than you already are boggles my mind.)

I have just spent at least an hour, perhaps longer, trying to get my 'phone to accept a UK simcard.

When it didn't work smoothly, I called Vodafone UK like a good little customer. And they told me to call Vodafone Egypt, my previous network. Which I did. And THEY told me to call Vodafone UK. Which I did. And they said, nope, still got to speak to Vodafone Egypt, you need them to give you the unlocking code. So I called Vodafone Egypt again. This time they left me on hold a lot. No, really. A LOT. And eventually they said that, no, they couldn't give me an unlocking code, but maybe Nokia Egypt could. At which point I called Vodafone UK again and said, look, I've been on hold to fucking CAIRO for the past twenty minutes, and do I seriously really have to phone Nokia Egypt in order to change the motherfucking Sim Card from one Vodafone network to the other. Except I was rigidly polite, in a might-crack-and-kill-people-at-any-moment-but- listen-to-me-make-jokes-in-my-dangerous-possibly- psycho-but-painfully-courteous-customer-on-the-edge voice.

They were a bit puzzled, and suggested I try texting.

I have had a weary crack, once more, at calling the ChargeYourPhone number to charge my phone with its prepaid credits, for the 5th time, and suddenly it works.

I do not know at what point in the proceedings it started to work. I do not know whether calling Egypt helped. I am just glad that I was able to multitask to the extent of being able to read Deadzone angsty NC17 threesome fanfic whilst on hold, because otherwise there would have been a bodycount.

Ahem. So, anyway - yay for having a working 'phone again.

draws deep, soothing breath. is calm. honestly.

Hey, Gud - lovely pics! Bless!

I don't know who Sandra Lee or Rachel Ray might be, but it doesn't sound like they're going to come between me and Nigella Lawson anytime soon.