Day 20: Salty Risotto

I am currently blogging from home on a Saturday night so... super behind in schedule. I honestly don't remember much about Wednesday besides the bigger aspects: the killer work out Young and I did and the disgustingly salty risotto I made.

I have made quinoa risotto before, so I thought that I didn't need a recipe. But wow, it was a killer I feel so bad that I not only was cocky about making it and offered to make it for dinner for Young and myself; I offered some to Hyman as well. It was gross, I was offended when they told me it was good. They are clearly liars and don't want to hurt my feelings. It makes me think, "What else have they lied to me about?!"  Well I figured out that my chicken stock was salty and it didn't help that I added more salt before tasting the food.Life Lesson: Always taste your cook as you cook. Weight watchers will explain that you shouldn't and if you do you need to track, but wow. Always, always taste your food because if you don't want to eat the food why would any one else? Sadly, that night I did not want to eat my own food, it was gross my dinner that night did not get touched.

Our work out was a Turbo Fire HIIT 15, which is 15 minutes of per death. Just heart pumping anaerobic work outs. On top of that we did a PiYo: Upper Body Define, I am still feeling the after effects of this work out. It has been 4 days. I don't think it is normal but wow. It was a killer. I am actually enjoying the fact that I am working out more and trying to be healthy. I think I need to be more independent about working out just in case Young can't work out or our timing does not match up. I have a FitBit Charge HR and I haven't had a consistent 10K steps a day yet. I hit it once in a while when I work out but I don't normally hit it. I think I should try to either working out 30 minutes a day or walking/running/ biking 3 miles a day. I feel like saw that goal somewhere like: Every day do 3 miles or 30 minutes. If any of my readers have a FitBit and want to be my friend you can use my email to add me, I believe my username is KimTruongIll. I accept all friend requests.

I feel like I am so much lazier at my parent's house than I am at my house in Severn. But I have no work out equipment here. I guess it is just my mindset at home, I am a princess at home so princesses don't have to work out. But I am changing my mindset. I am going to work out tomorrow... I really am... right? Ugh self doubt gets me a lot of the time. I am trying to be more positive.... Sometimes it works and sometimes I tell myself, "Kim you are the the fail princess."

Day 19: The Oven Hates Me

I honestly late being two days behind, but I think by Friday I will be caught up. Since today I am not doing anything special besides my graduate school orientation, which I am insanely worried about. I just want to make friends. I think my housemates are getting a little tired of me and I feel like I need to get out of the house more. I don't think I have left since Monday. That is three days of not seeing the outside world without a window. I am leading a sad, sad life.

Anyways, Tuesday was a a great start to the morning. I had oatmeal in the morning with meatballs and tomato sauce. After eating my breakfast. I started to prep my berries in the fridge to eat with my yogurt or whipped cream. I started to prep my green beans too, I chopped off the ends and cooked them in chicken broth. I saved the broth to cook pasta noodles as well.

I combined a box of pasta, chopped green beans, cherry tomatoes, spinach and 4 tablespoons of pesto sauce in a large mixing bowl. It has lasted until today and there should be another bowl too. I have also been sharing it with Young, which has been super helpful or I would have never finished it.

Each time I have been cooking something, I send a picture to my mom. She told me that one day I will be a great cook like my dad, that is honestly my dream. I would love to be able to cook like my dad. He can make anything and it tastes awesome. She is a little jealous that I don't cook for her, my mother is just too cute sometimes.

This week I have been super missing my parents and family. I am actually looking forward to going home this weekend to see them. I know they miss me too... even thought my dad hung up on me when I called him. But I know it was a hang up out of love... Haha... at least that is what I am telling myself.

Later in the afternoon, I decided to make World's Best Chicken Recipe which I found on Pinterest.

I would like to promise that I actually read the recipe the whole way, it was really simple. But of course as I was cooking the smoke alarm starts to go off again. Even though I had the fan on so  I opened a window. I think the sauce began to burn a little in the oven so... when Young came home she told me to open the balcony door since it stilled like burning. I swear this time... I did everything right. The fan was on... I guess I just don't have skills with the oven. I didn't take a picture of my chicken, but wow it looked nothing like that photo... It was like brown and black... and not a pretty sight. It was pretty delicious though.

I feel like the oven HATES me. Luckily it all cleared out by the time Hyman came home. I think I need to cool it with the oven and only use the toaster oven for the next... I don't know... MONTH! Young didn't want to eat until about 6:30, so I watched Commando as I waited and the area smell cleared out. Just... Kim is a fail. Life Lesson: The oven and Kim are not friends.

But that night we watched Pain & Gain, since Young and Hyman hadn't watched it. About 3/4 of thew ay Hyman went upstairs but we continued without him.

Day 18: Why do my groceries end up costing so much?

I woke up around 10 since we had a late night of watching the Raid 2 and I had to facetime with my brother at like 10AM. The movie didn't end until like 1AM, my housemates were super tired after we were done watching. They seemed to like it.

I woke up to no real food that was good for me. So I made Shin Ramen Black with an egg (yolky) and a cup of kale. I then added some kimchi for more veggies, Sriracha, and lemon juice. It was pretty delicious. It just came to bite me in the butt later, much later. It was not pretty. Young actually came home and found me in the bathroom. Ramen retaliation. I love spicy but spicy does not love stomach.

I started to wash my sheets and clean my bathroom. I tried cleaning it with a dryer sheet since on Pinterest I saw that it would cut the cleaning in half. It was like the same but my bathroom smelled awesome and I didn't have to scrub since the dryer sheets were scruffy.

After showering, I went to Safeway to go shopping, and from my previous post, my groceries ended up being $118. I got about 43 items. I got lemons, tater tots, green beans, sweet potatoes, spinach, italian seasoning, string cheese, parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese, greek yogurt, hummus, cucumbers, baby carrots, berries, sweet onion, chocolate chips, brownie mix, cupcake liners, cool whip, frozen broccoli, chocolate sauce, oreos, sausage, panko bread crumbs, ground turkey, red wine vinegar, parsley flakes, chicken, and steak.

I think I get too much, I need to work on how much I get since I feel like I am sharing my food, which I don't mind. But I need to work on getting food for just me. But I feel like that is a selfish thought. I just need to work on actually getting things I need for that week. I think I need so much but in the end I only use about half of it.

After I put the groceries away, I started to work on making turkey meatballs which was going to be by meat for a couple of days. I used a large mixing bowl to combine ground turkey, italian seasoning, egg, salt, pepper, panko bread crumbs, cheese, cayenne pepper, garlic, and onion powder. I used my hands to make balls and baked them in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

I don't think the cheese was a good idea since it oozed out. But they came out great and can be added to any pasta sauce. I like using tomato sauce with it. I also made about a liter of pesto sauce as well to finish off what was left of my kale in the refrigerator. I put the extra sauce in the freezer to save for a later date.

Young invited me to go to Zumba at Gold's Gym with her coworker. It was a ton of fun, this was the first Zumba class I took where instructors were white. It was fun, there were little to no Asians like I am used to at other Zumba classes. We even talked about going to an Xpose class that is free for a trial since it is a pole class.

We came home and realized that we left our IDs at the gym so we had to go all the way back to gym and get it. So we didn't get home until about 9 and started to finish making our dinner. We decided to watch Big Hero 6 while we ate. Young was able to finish making her food first, so I let her eat first. Once my stuff was done which was pasta, red sauce, and meat balls, I sat with Young to watch the movie. I forgot to turn off the stove, luckily Hyman caught it and turned it off. I didn't know at all. He didn't say anything to me until I asked though, which I thought was weird. I would have told myself something a long the lines of: "Hey Dummy, learn to turn off the stove!" Yeah I apologized a lot for almost causing a fire. I am just not the smartest. Life Lesson of the day: Always turn off the stove. 

Day 16 & 17: To Do Lists Help A Lot

I started on Wednesday waking up and making a To Do List for the day to keep me busy and see what I need to do with my life. I tried to do it on my wall calendar desk organizer? It has a cork board, monthly calendar, weekly calendar, and a white board. The To Do list was harder to see, so I started to use post its. I think it really helps to sit and think about what I want to accomplish in a day.

Thursday's To Do List was:

• Work out with Young for 30 minutes
• Laundry
• Pack for New York
• Get 3 gift bags
• Update agenda for sorority phone conference
• Update budget sheet

I was able to accomplish everything but the gift bags. I did not feel like leaving the house on Thursday; it was just too cold to leave the house. 

As I was putting my thrift store finds into the laundry, I noticed that one of the dresses I bought had a broken zipper, luckily I only paid about $2 for the dress, so I did not feel terrible to throw it away. One of the pants has a hem on the leg that is coming lost, which I can sew. After finishing the laundry, I started to pack for my weekend trip to NY for my sorority's national conference. 

I am not a fan of NY, it confuses me and I am just... yeah not a fan. Everything is crowded and overpriced in my mind. Plus going to the conference I have to dress in business casual and before Wednesday's thrift trip, I had only about 3 things that were business casual. I just don't like dressing up, it makes me feel comfortable since that is not who I am. It is not my style. 

After packing everything, I started to work on sorority things for my phone meeting at 9PM. I was starting to make sure that I had everything in order. 

When Young came home, we were going to do a work out. She wanted to try out a PopSugar workout. We tried this one: 

Pop Sugar's 30 Minute Bootcamp Work out

This work out killed Young and myself. My legs were shaking after and it was just an intense workout. I suggest if you are on a budget and want to work out from home, PopSugar or Youtube in general is a great way to go. 

After the work out I had to get on the phone meeting, I am going to be honest and say that I am not the best person to be on the phone with since I just side tracked about halfway through the call and start thinking about something else or doing something else. So while on the call, I was updating my budget sheet. I do it on Google Drive Sheets. This is what it looks like: (This was updated today which is why it has NY stuff on it.) 

I am clearly spending above my means right now. I need to really start working... 

But I feel like since I started doing this I can really see where my money is going... and I waste a lot of my money on things, and I spend way too much on groceries. But I think I am going to try and do this throughout the year to keep myself in check. 

After my phone meeting and some facetime with my mom, Young, Hyman, Sarah (Hyman's lady friend) and myself hungout. We ended up watching the Raid, this is definitely one of my favorite action movies. It is just amazing fight scenes and enough gore for me that it isn't too much. Everyone seemed to like it and wanted to watch the 2nd one. 

Friday was the day I was going to NY, so I asked Young to drive me to the train station. My train was leaving the BWI station at 6:33PM. I was going to meet a friend on a train, she was coming form Union Station, so she was able to save me a seat next to her. 

Before leaving for the weekend, I wanted to make sure that food was all eaten before the weekend. I also wanted to make sure not to spend too much money over the weekend. I luckily did not spend any money on food since my sorority paid for the lunch on Saturday and the hotel has free breakfast. To reduce on travel expenses, I packed 2 PB&J sandwiches, 2 clementines, 4 chewy bars, and a bag of Cheez Its. I did not have to eat on Friday night since I had a large meal in the afternoon at home. This really ended up saving me a lot since I only spent about $32.36 in NY and that was just taxi. I did not spend any money on food which is really expensive in NY. 

I am not sure if I was being frugal this weekend or just a cheapskate because on Saturday night I did  not do anything in the city. I ended up getting a free chipotle burrito so I ate that in my room and went to bed at like 9PM. It got me a grandma label by my fellow national board members, but I was the only person super refreshed on the entire weekend. I just love me some sleep. 

Day 15: First Time Thrifting

Wednesday started off really casual and chill. I didn't have to do cook at all which was really nice so I just started off my morning relaxed with an easy breakfast of leftovers. I had the leftover green smoothie that Young made the night before, pesto pasta, chicken, and cabbage.

I am starting to realize that I don't like to eat heavy dinners or sweet breakfasts. So I am trying to have my heaviest meal be either breakfast or lunch, while dinner is rather light. I am definitely trying to have veggies and protein with each meal. A lot of either. 

After finishing my sorority stuff my emailing it to be printed, which ended up taking about an hour. I decided to work out I did three different PopSugar workouts: I did a 10 minute Cardio Barre, 10 minute Tabata, and Pilates Inner Thigh work out. It was like 30 minutes which was great. I showered and started to get ready to meet Young for my first thrifting shopping trip. If you haven't seen her blog yet, it is a fashion blog about shopping smartly. She has an awesome wardrobe and she gets everything affordably. 

So I went to meet Young at the Salvation Army Thrift Store which is about 20 minutes away from our house. Since I am on a major budget due to my lack of income, complete lack of income this week especially, I told myself that I could not spend more than $10 on an individual item and no more than $50. Young told me that her goal was always to spend less than $30 each visit. We spent an hour and a half in the store looking for clothes for each other. I will say that Young has a better fashion sense than I do, she loves prints, patterns, and colors. I love stripes, and black or grey. We have different tastes, but it made shopping with each other very fun and interesting. I getting up leaving the store with 2 pairs of Ann Taylor pants, two dresses, 1 panda tee shirt, 2 sweaters, 1 button down and 1 3/4 sleeve shirt. I was hoping to find a half zip sweater, but maybe next time I will find it. I ended up spending 31.40 in total, which was way under my budget and I went home with a ton of clothing. Luckily on Wednesdays, the thrift store is 50% off, which really reduced a lot of the clothing. I think it was funny that Young was searching for more casual clothing since she has mostly business attire. I was looking for more business attire since all my clothing is casual. 

I think I was especially not willing to pay too much for the clothing since I paid for school that morning and cried a little as I was paying for it. For my first time thrifting, I really liked it. I learned to better inspect the clothing since one of the dress's zipper was broken and a pair of pant's hem was coming apart. The hem can be easily fixed, but I threw the dress away, sadly. I would definitely go away with a better view and mindset about the whole ordeal. I am actually going to a conference this weekend and I will be wearing a lot of the clothing I got to the conference, so I am especially happy that I didn't have to waste a bunch of money to get clothing. 

When Young and I went home, Hyman was home too and wanted to each dinner together. So we each started preparing our dinner. I had vanilla yogurt with berries and Honey nut Chex for dinner. It was delicious. I was trying to have little to no carbs for dinner. We sat and talked during dinner, but then Hyman had to leave to take care of his business. 

Young and I cleaned up and watched Horrible Bosses 2 since we watched the first one the night before. 

Day 14: I am a Nosy Neighbor

I woke up the snow and hearing my neighbor shoveling the snow. Well that was the 3rd time I woke up that morning. Young called me at 7AM because she accidentally locked herself out of the house, I know she really wanted to see my face in the morning. I look like this:

Honestly, who wouldn't want at this in the morning? Sike, I wish I looked as semi-put together as Hot Mess Morning Anna from Frozen, I am definitely a lot worse. The 2nd time I woke up was because I heard Hyman talking to one of our neighbors. She told him not go out in the snow. 

Since it was soooo cold and snowing, I decided to have Udon for breakfast. After eating that I realized that I needed to cook my broccoli in the fridge. I found some recipes on Food Network and went with Alton Brown's Roasted Broccoli with some modifications. I didn't have any panko bread crumb and I added some onions since I needed to get rid of it. I feel bad cooking so many onions since Young is allergic to them, I feel like I might be killing her slowly. So I made roasted broccoli and I tried to pan roast it as well. That didn't turn out well since I added water and it ended up being steamed and I might have over cooked them. Since I was worried about the smoke alarm going off again, I decided to roast the broccoli in the toaster oven instead.  After cooking that, I had to finish cooking my Lemon Garlic Dump chicken. 

 Oven roasted

Pan Steamed

This picture doesn't look amazing, but it tasted really lemony which I loved. 

Young came home from work early around 1PM because of the snow, and she liked the pan steamed better. I sat with her as she ate lunch and talked about different things. She said that she wanted to take a nap then we could work out, have dinner and watch a movie. I told her that was fine since I had a lot more sorority things I needed to complete. I did that until Hyman came home around 6PM. He went down to eat dinner, and I texted Young to join us. 

For dinner I had chicken, cabbage, broccoli, pesto and oatmeal together. This was uber filling and I didn't want to eat that much after. Just a marshmallow on a chocolate chip cookie. I don't know why, but I thought it would be delicious. It was. 

I just thought the caramelization on the marshmallow was amazing. There is a chocolate graham cracker for Young. 

After dinner, Hyman went upstairs to do work and other things. Young and I decided to watch Dredd on Netflix since she hadn't seen it and I thought she would enjoy it.  After, she wanted to watch a comedy and we went with Horrible Bosses, since she hadn't seen it. In the middle of watching the movie, we ended up hearing a neighbor getting into an argument with a random guy. He was banging on their door so loudly that Young and I thought it was our door and they lived across the street. We went to the window to see what was going on; the man was knocking on the door and screaming at the homeowners. He started walking to the back of the house and kicked a car parked on the street. I called the non-emergency number for the police to let them know. The operator asked if I would be willing to talk to the cops and I said that I was. Young and I continued watching to see where the gentleman walked and did to let the cops know. He disappeared into the woods across the street before the cops arrived. Unfortunately, they didn't end up talking to us, but it was really terrifying to watch. I am really happy that Young was awake with me since I don't think I would have handled it well by myself. 

Day 13: Case of the Mondays

I will be doing two posts since I am really behind on my posts... I know you guys are waiting for them because my life is uber interesting... not. But I am glad that people are reading.

Monday... oh Monday. Everything was going great, I woke up with a plan to cook my allusive cabbage that I bought on New Year's Eve. I ended up searching Pinterest for different cabbage recipes. I knew that for one of my recipes would be cabbage cooked with bacon fat, which ended up pretty delicious. I found this on Pinterest:

So I went to this recipe, and read it and substituted some recipes because I didn't have any fennel seeds. As the cabbage was roasting in the oven, I was cooking the bacon. I think the heat from the oven and the smokeyness from the bacon caused a lot of heat... and the fire alarm went off. So I turned on the fan, fanned the smoke alarm, and opened a window. So, I tried to make sure that it would not go off. I started texting my housemate, Young, about the situation. She told me not to tell Hyman about it since that is something he would not be happy about. So I haven't, I just fail at roasting cabbage I guess. Lesson learned: Always turn on the fan when cooking!

Roasted Cabbage

Semi-steamed cabbage with bacon and onions

After making both sets of cabbage, I went upstair to work on some of my sorority things. Around 12-ish, Young came home for lunch and she had some of my cabbage. We talked during her lunch and I further explained what happened. She invited me to go to Zumba with her and her coworker at 7:30PM and that we would get back in time for our friend to come hang out and eat s'mores.

I declined since I didn't want to spend money on a Zumba class. After she left for work, I started working on more sorority things. At 2PM, I went to take a walk around the neighborhood for about an hour. I explored more of the neighborhood, which was nice but freezing, absolutely freezing. But it was a nice walk, I came back and showered in time to watch The Taste while FaceTime-ing with my brother. We like to watch it together to comment about the contestants and to predict who's going to be eliminated next.

At around 5:30PM, Young came home and I suggested that she start cooking her food before she goes to Zumba, so that she could have her food right away when she got home. She was cooking her dinner and I began cooking mine. I started to make pesto with kale since I had a lot of kale that I have not been eating. It ended up being really bitter with a weird after taste so I added lemon juice and it turned out pretty good.

Hyman came home in the middle around 6:30PM and he started doing his laundry. Young left around 6:50PM, and I started cooking my dinner. I finished cooking around 7:10PM and finished eating around 8PM when Hyman came down to eat his dinner. I sat with him and talked. He wanted to Plex to see The Interview, which I have now seen three times. We sat and watched as he ate dinner he was in and out of the movie to do his laundry. At about 8:30PM, Lacey came over to surprise Hyman, but also to hang out and eat s'mores. I offered her some dinner and cookies. She ate most of the cookies and once Young came home I offered to make everyone some s'mores. I made two each for everyone. Young ate hers after her dinner. Hyman only ended up eating one so the extra went to Young. After The Interview was over, Young wanted to show me The Man from Nowhere on Netflix. During the movie, I kept seeing people that we knew, which I think ruined Young's life since she was super into those characters and I related them to people we were friends with. I thought it was an interesting movie, it was like Man on Fire and The Equalizer but with consequences for the main character. After the movies, it ended up being around 12AM, so everyone went home and to their rooms. I folded my laundry that I did that morning.