Random Babbling

So I went to Israel a few weeks back. I've been sitting down and doing some post-processing (although really, in this digital age shouldn't it just be called processing?) on the photos. Some have lent themselves nicely to HDR in various degrees of visual veracity, but most have involved minor tweaks in colour, contrast, sharpness, etc.. Skies never come out quite as blue as they are, although the ones that seem least real are the untouched ones (but shot via polarizer). This shit takes awhile. I'm halfway through day 1 of 11.

I should also sit down and do my trip report. That needs to be done from home though, where I have my log. Yah, that's right, I'm blogging from a log.

I'm also trying to fit back into a suit in a month, for the one wedding this fall that I can actually make (it's in Toronto), and then continue to shift this belly somewhere else through the rest of the year. Israel derailed these plans somewhat, and I haven't really lost any weight. But I'm at least maintaining a daily exercise regimen again this week, and that should help things along. After all, my weight (181 lbs) isn't that bad for my height (5'11") - it's on border of normal and overweight, it just happens to all be in one place (my gut). This makes things like buttoning the jacket a bit difficult.

In that pursuit, I'm trying to eat less crap, with some success. I couldn't resist the coffee crisp at work yesterday, but the roast chicken on a bed of vegetables for lunch, while high in salt, couldn't have been that bad... could it? They probably soaked it all in oil.

But dinner was delicious, and I share it here.

As usual, all my meat is frozen, and I'm lazy, and somewhat on a diet. So I decided on salad, because I should really get to my vegetables before they go bad. But simply tossing stuff in a bowl gets boring after a while.

So I roasted.

I cut a couple tomatoes into quarters, seeded them, tossed them lightly in olive oil, laid a single leaf of fresh basil and half a clove of garlic in each piece, and sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. I laid them skin-side down on a baking pan. I then cut up a few large piece of red pepper, sprinkled those with salt and pepper, and put them skin-side up on the same pan. I drizzled everything lightly with a bit more olive oil, and put them in a preheated 425F oven for 40 minutes.

While that was going on, I slices up some white onion and tossed it into a non-stick pan over medium-low heat with some butter and vegetable oil. Then I poured some simple syrup on them and stirred them occasionally as they caramelized. Once they were a nice brown, I poured some balsamic vinegar on the whole thing and stirred it up until the balsamic had reduced and become a sticky coating on it all.

While all this continued, I hard boiled an egg.

Out came the roasted vegetables. I peeled the peppers and cut them up, and combined them and the tomatoes in a bowl with the onions. The egg was peeled and crumbled over the veggies. Then I shaved some carrot into the bowl, cut up and added a few sun-dried tomatoes, and mixed up the whole thing. No extra dressing required, as the caramelized balsamic onions, and the oil on the roasted veggies gave all the extra flavour needed.

Before the salad I had a couple cobs of corn. It all turned out to be a filling meal that at least felt like it was healthy.

Of course, I weigh the same today as I did yesterday.

Hmmm... and I just remembered I left my computer on at home. Whoops.