US meets UK

I can’t think of a single place I’ve lived where I couldn’t find sushi…until now.  Lancaster (UK) has tons of great Indian restaurants, a few cute Italian places and several (unsurprisingly) English Pubs – but no sushi can be found.

So we bought our own sushi mat, I wrapped it in plastic wrap like The Pioneer Woman told me to and purchased the necessary ingredients.  In case you’re in the UK, you don’t necessarily need to hunt down the specialty shop (like I did) for your nori – Sainsburys carries nori! Go Figure.

For my first experience I tried to keep it simple and purchased “krab”, avocado, cucumber and sesame seeds. However, I used brown rice and it was wonderful! While on a work trip to Houston I went to dinner with my friend’s family and had fantastic sushi with brown rice, so I decided to use it for my at home version.

Then I placed the rice first, then the nori, then the fillings and rolled – following Pioneer Woman’s Instructions.  What did I learn from my sushi experience? “Rice inside” rolls are way easier (and prettier) for first time sushi makers.  The only down side being I couldn’t cover them with the toasted sesame seeds Nick likes.

My other tip, use a sharp, sharp knife.  We had a dull one (even though Nick re-sharpened it, it was still pretty dull) and we pretty much had to saw through the roll.  This loosens the integrity of your roll and shakes the rice off if it’s a “rice outside” roll.

You can see the difference between the “rice inside” vs “rice outside” ones…and why I angled the plate to try and show only the “pretty” ones.  They were all delicious though, and we enjoyed with a lovely view of the English countryside.  Next time though, I’ll be making miso soup and edamame (sans salt) to enjoy with them!

Have you ever tried making sushi? Can you find it near-by?

There are lots of reasons that motivate people to lose weight.  For some (like Ash is Fit) it’s a wedding, for others it’s playing with their soon to be born children without getting winded, for Seth Rogan – it’s playing the Green Hornet. For me? It’s a combination, I’m tired of being overweight and blaming my knee surgery (it was 2 years ago, I need to get over it), I don’t want my wedding pictures to feature an overweight stranger, and most importantly? An audition in June for a local dance company.  I want to be back to my fit, healthy and dancing self.

Here are a few blogs that continue to inspire me:

I first saw Tyler on the Consumerist, I started following his blog, and then I was inspired by him – he’s gone from 344 pounds to 279 pounds in 13 weeks. He writes about his weight loss journey and blogs about his calories, weight, exercise and everything in between.  He even posts pictures about himself and clearly has more cojones than I do.  He’s run a 1 minute pledge on his blog – for every comment he promised to work out for 1 minute on the elliptical at level 14 (he ended up with over 90 comments!). Sure, he’s not losing weight for his wedding, but that doesn’t stop him from inspiring me!

My other favorite weight loss blog (which Miss Ballet Flat also loves) is Ash is Fit. I recently checked out her cooking site and tweaked her Chili Bean Burgers.  Mr.D (a meat lover) actually begged me to make them again in the same week! Ashley has lost almost 80 pounds in 2 years and was motivated to lose weight for her wedding.  I always figure if Ashley can  shred levels 2 and 3 back to back then I can at least do level 1 or 2 back to back.

Of course, no Weddingbee inspiration would be complete without a bit of bee lovin.  Mrs. Avocado continually inspires me as That Wife. A few months ago I would delete ALOT of pictures of myself – I just really wasn’t satisfied with the way I looked, so I’d delete the photos.  A post of her’s reminded me I should keep them so I have something for before and afters and that just because I didn’t like something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. What other bees inspire me? Obvi there’s Miss Meatball and her flab to fab series, but I also Gchat with Miss Ballet Flat daily, she sends me clips of the Biggest Loser and we gab about our days, diet and fitness.

I’ve started a weight loss race among my friends, inspired from Budget Beautiful. Instead of starting with 20lb we’re shooting for 10lbs and doing the race in legs, so that the goals are tiny and manageable. Obviously, this race isn’t for people that are at a healthy weight, it’s for people with more than 10lbs to lose. It’s been pretty fun so far, everyone sends a check in weight on Friday and I’m creating little charts for my friends.

What inspires you to be healthy?

Because they are amazingly yummy.  and Vegan.  Go Figure

Nick and I wont be able to make it to the grocery store for a long while so we had to figure out how to make do with the supplies that are left. We were both in the kitchen wandering around in a daze trying to figure out what to do.  We could have pasta…and plain tomato sauce. Or…beans? Or an omelet? Uhg, we were out of food and running out of appetizing ideas when I remembered I recipe I had recently bookmarked. Do we have kidney beans? oats? veggies? Success!

I stole the recipe from this blog and I’m so very glad I did.   We substituted a few things and these burgers still turned out quite delicious.

While they’re a bit high in calories they’re still pretty good for you (Nick even had two!).  Here is a link to the nutritional content.  Oh, and these are remarkably budget friendly – woohoo!

Edit: Nick begged me to remake them today (Wednesday).  The first time we made them using mixed beans and kidney beans and this time we used all kidney beans.  We prefer the ones with mixed beans and kidney beans.

Happy Easter!  Although these are on my “do not eat” list, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a splurgetastic time with them.  I made these a looong while ago, as in when I first made pretzels.

I would say “we” miss Cinnabons, but once Nick found out there was cream cheese in the frosting he stopped missing them. He pretty much has a cheese phobia, so although he enjoyed Cinnabons once he can never go near them again.

I was feeling emboldened after my pretzel success and decided while I still had a dough hook and stand mixer at my disposal I should get busy with them. I hunted around for a cinnabon copy recipe and there are TONS! I found one with UK measurements and just decided to go for it. I didn’t take as many pictures this times because I forgot. If you use the same recipe I did I’d double the frosting, I can’t imagine using that tiny amount for all the rolls.

I was getting pretty worried because unlike the pretzel dough which actually did double in size this dough ball pretty much stayed the same. But I forged onward, Nick rolled out the dough and then we slathered it in butter.

Sprinkled copious amounts of brown sugar and cinnamon on the buttered side and attempted to roll it up. In retrospect I would have heavily floured the board instead of lightly floured it because it got a bit sticky.

Put them in the oven until they browned and out they came!

Because Nick has the cheese phobia I made penuche icing for his and cream cheese frosting for mine. In retrospect I should have picked a different frosting because penuche is butter, brown sugar, confectioners sugar and a tiny bit of milk. Between the rolls and the penuche icing I used the entire container of brown sugar. Lucky for me, Nick has the largest sweet tooth I’ve ever met.

In the end they aren’t exactly cinnabons, but from what my tongue remembers they’re pretty close! The main difference is that my buns didn’t rise a second time (FAIL) so they didn’t get as huge and doughy. They were still delicious though and I’d make them again in a heart beat.

A master of the Master Cleanse that is.  Okay, maybe a novice, because it was my first cleanse/fast/detox whatever, but I succeeded.

This blog post is by no means telling you to do a cleanse/fast/detox what-have-you.  I’m just letting you know my experience with it, because hey, it’s part of my journey.  So let us journey…

As most of you know, I can’t work while I’m in the UK, this gives me a fair amount of free time (aka all my time).  Ample time to try things like the Master Cleanse; I have a confession for you guys…are you ready for it?

I actually enjoyed the Master Cleanse.

The cleanse gave me time to consider my relationship with food, what food I enjoy, how food affects my mental state, how/when/why I consume food.  I realized that much of the time I eat I’m not actually eating because I’m hungry, I’m actually eating because I’m bored, emotional, or worse, out of habit.  Yes, that’s right, I’ve actually been eating food because it’s a habit.  At this point I realized “wtf have I been doing?!”, Mr.D and I always get popcorn at the movies (habit), he also enjoys garlic bread with pasta so I eat it too (more carbs habit).  Not to mention I also realized the portions I’ve been consuming are out of this world.  If I’ve been surviving/thriving on 1-2 liters of the MC juice then why have I been overstuffing myself?

When my grandmother passed away it was the first day of the cleanse and all I wanted to do after I spoke to my mother was to drown myself in Macaroni and Cheese (emotional habit).  I stayed with the cleanse though and didn’t succumb to the emotional cravings.  One great tip I read while I was researching the master cleanse is that if you’re hungry for pizza, visualize a green salad.  If you still want to eat the salad then you’re actually hungry, if not the pizza was just a craving.  I repeated this over and over when we went to the movies in an attempt to avoid the popcorn.

Prior to the MC I ate a vegetarian diet with a slight addiction to cheese (just check out my WeddingBee bio!).  While this is okay (but potentially high in fat and refined sugar) and I get a wide variety of nutrients, I always think there is room for improvement.  The places I’m improving are:

• Avoiding refined sugar (big time, like it’s the plague)
• Avoiding Dairy (gasp!)
• Avoiding refined flour
• Eating more pulses, complete grains and kicking my veggie intake into high gear
• Proper portions

I’ve been exploring raw food and macrobiotic cooking as well to find recipes that fulfill what I’m looking for in my diet. I’m avoiding alcohol and caffeine, and as much as I’ll miss the coffee I think it will ultimately be better for me.

My theory is that if I survived without these things (refined sugar, dairy, and refined bleached flour) for 10 days I can certainly make a long term commitment to it.  Oddly enough my only honest to god craving has been for pickles and red peppers (go figure).

For those of you wondering about weight loss I only lost 8 pounds.  For all those celebs saying they lost a gagillion pounds in two weeks…I have no idea how they did it.  Maybe if I did 5 hours of cardio a day or something that would have been possible.  But with moderate workouts and drinking the juice I didn’t really have that much weight loss.  In any case, I’m much more excited for the weight loss that is to come from my revised diet.

Have you cut any foods out of your diet or done a cleanse in the run up to the wedding?

Wowwee Zowee Londoners, you guys are lucky!

(Segerius-Bruce Photography via Rock n Roll Bride)

In the jewelry area I found Laduree macarons.

(source)

I had a freakishly huge cupcake/muffin hybrid at Candy Cakes.

(source)

I passed Beard Papas and craved a cream puff (or 12).

(source)

I was in London for 2 days, but if this is any indication of the confectionery delights I can only imagine how delicious the desserts at London weddings must be.  I mean, that is if you’re opting out of the traditional fruitcake wedding cake (yes my American pals, Christmas type fruit cake).

What other non-traditional desserts have you discovered?  Any London faves?

I’ve been in London!  Have no fear, I’ll soon be doing a write up or two of my trip.  For today however, I’d like  to catch up with Nick, I haven’t seen him in 4 days (gasp!).  He’s making jerk chicken (fake jerk chicken for me) for dinner tonight and I made these again.  Have you made them yet? What on earth are you waiting for!??!

So, re-inventing Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is probably out of my range. Nick and I both miss big, doughy soft pretzels – the kind you can get at the mall or on the street. Mmmmm, street food. I’ve never attempted of bread project before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was inspired by Jenna of That Wife to go for it. I found a recipe by Alton Brown and got down to business.

This post is a bit photo heavy so click the link to enjoy!

I was nervous about the water being to hot and killing the poor little yeast – I think I did this right because it still got frothy. This is pre-froth though, it was just fun to look at.

Then I set the whole thing in motion with the stand mixer and it has re-affirmed everything I had hoped. A stand mixer is amazingly handy – I wouldn’t have attempted pretzels without it. A word of advice? If you have any rings on, take them off. I realized halfway through and dough all up in my ring.

Well mixed dough ball then goes into oiled mixer bowl for 50-55 minutes to double in size. Doubled dough:

Then you have to roll it out into 24 inch long “snakes”, I used the largest cutting board I could find and oil. But I still have no idea what 24 inches looks like.

Then you plop your little pretzel babies into the boiling water/baking soda. You can see the boiled one on the right.

Only one didn’t exactly survive and had to reformed…

The only problem I had? After baking the pretzels I had a hard time removing the pretzels from the trays, I don’t know if greaseproof paper is different from parchment paper. Or if I didn’t oil them enough, or if I should have let them cool longer. In any case – there was carnage.

Forget the carnage though – look at the end result! I ate one almost immediately and it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. I highly suggest you try this recipe!