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I'm BAAACK!
May. 27th, 2012 08:02 pmI have MOVED! Into a very nice small house that's mine and only mine! And I have a brand-new washing machine! A TV with built-in multi-region DVD player! Internet download limit that is just for me! And CAST-IRON COOKWARE!
I am really excited about everything, but the cookware is a really pleasant surprise, because the rest pretty much followed moving out of my brother's place, but I was expecting to have to buy my own pots and pans. But when I told Mum about it, she promptly pulled out and gave to me the set of cast-iron cookware she had bought herself just before she and Dad got their glass-topped induction-heated cooktop, that she had never been able to use (the cookware, not the stovetop, the stovetop is doing its job nicely). It was all still in its original wrapping. So now I have to season it all (how do you season cast-iron cookware? According to the internet, I oil it and then put it upside-down in a hot oven to cook the oil with a tray underneath to catch the drips, except for the dutch oven which apparently I can do on the stovetop, but again has to be upside-down and they don't explain what happens to the drips there. Also, nobody agrees on what type of oil, with some saying it must be lard, others solid vegetable shortening and some saying olive oil is fine, or how long it goes in the oven for). And now I have to answer the real question - what the heck do you cook in a French pan? (It is round, has two handles like a dutch oven, is 26cm in diameter and is 4cm deep. It's almost but not quite a really big and deep frypan, and has a slightly domed lid that adds about 3 more centimetres to the depth.) It feels like it should have specialised dishes that are cooked in it, like a tangine, but I think I'll be using it to poach chicken or something like that.
Diet is going well - I weighed myself today and I'm now at eighty-five kilos. Eighty-five! That's thirty kilos gone in five months. Thirty kilos without surgery, medication or meal replacements of any kind. I didn't think it was really possible when I started. But now I'm here, and I'm starting on the downhill stretch of the last fifteen kilos, and I'm thinking of how I'm going to manage this for the rest of my life. Because I don't know if I can let myself eat anything near the 8700kJ daily average, but equally clearly, once I reach my goal weight, I probably should ease up on my current limit of 6000kJ a day. I'm just afraid of how badly I'll yo-yo while finding that happy medium.
I am really excited about everything, but the cookware is a really pleasant surprise, because the rest pretty much followed moving out of my brother's place, but I was expecting to have to buy my own pots and pans. But when I told Mum about it, she promptly pulled out and gave to me the set of cast-iron cookware she had bought herself just before she and Dad got their glass-topped induction-heated cooktop, that she had never been able to use (the cookware, not the stovetop, the stovetop is doing its job nicely). It was all still in its original wrapping. So now I have to season it all (how do you season cast-iron cookware? According to the internet, I oil it and then put it upside-down in a hot oven to cook the oil with a tray underneath to catch the drips, except for the dutch oven which apparently I can do on the stovetop, but again has to be upside-down and they don't explain what happens to the drips there. Also, nobody agrees on what type of oil, with some saying it must be lard, others solid vegetable shortening and some saying olive oil is fine, or how long it goes in the oven for). And now I have to answer the real question - what the heck do you cook in a French pan? (It is round, has two handles like a dutch oven, is 26cm in diameter and is 4cm deep. It's almost but not quite a really big and deep frypan, and has a slightly domed lid that adds about 3 more centimetres to the depth.) It feels like it should have specialised dishes that are cooked in it, like a tangine, but I think I'll be using it to poach chicken or something like that.
Diet is going well - I weighed myself today and I'm now at eighty-five kilos. Eighty-five! That's thirty kilos gone in five months. Thirty kilos without surgery, medication or meal replacements of any kind. I didn't think it was really possible when I started. But now I'm here, and I'm starting on the downhill stretch of the last fifteen kilos, and I'm thinking of how I'm going to manage this for the rest of my life. Because I don't know if I can let myself eat anything near the 8700kJ daily average, but equally clearly, once I reach my goal weight, I probably should ease up on my current limit of 6000kJ a day. I'm just afraid of how badly I'll yo-yo while finding that happy medium.
