Food for thought

Did I mention K can cook.  This man really can cook.  It's not a skill I claim to possess.  I can cook well but I don't enjoy the act and things don't always come out the way I want, so I tell people I can't.  For some reason, though, I was honest with him and told him I knew a bit about cooking.  He does, however, still claim I sandbagged on my cooking skills/knowledge comments because what I do know seems to impress him.

He was, for example, extremely tickled that I understood to take care with cleaning well-seasoned pans.

The first time he cooked he made tri-tip, prawns (huge ones), orzo salad and bruschetta.  Earlier this week we had appetizers at his place: he whipped up crab stuffed mushroom, prosciutto and cheese plate.  Thursday was halibut cheeks, couscous, asparagus and broccolini sautéd with lemon.  Last night was ox tail ragu.  This man loves his food and knows how to prepare it.  Every first bite is a bit of heaven.

On top of that, he's picked some really good restaurants.  I hate going to chain restaurants like Outback or Applebee's.  I'd rather spend a similar amount of money going to some place local.  Perhaps I'm a food snob: I feel like the quality is better when you aren't at a chain restaurant.  Things taste more vibrant  Luckily, the metropolitan area where we live has a lot of options and he also prefers local places over chains.

When he cooks, he insists that I take home leftovers, allegedly because he doesn't like leftovers.  Sometimes, though, I think it's because he wants to make sure I'm eating enough.

All this food is a good and bad thing.  It's a good thing because my appetite seems to have returned.  Part of me thinks it's just the joy of spending time with him. Part of it is that he really does cook very well.  It's a healthy thing that I'm eating more:  I really struggled for about the last three months with consuming enough calories because things just didn't taste all that good to me.  Honestly, there were days where it was pretty hard to make myself consume even the basic 1200 calories.  It was bad enough that my family still asks "did you eat today" when they see me.

The bad thing is I worked really hard to loose a bunch of weight and I fear putting it back on.  I'm still keeping up, mostly, with my running.  But I haven't biked for two weeks and had to return the loaner bike, so I likely won't bike for another two weeks.  I do eat fairly light when I'm not with him, but still.

And, in case you were wondering, I don't think my lack of appetite was purposefully aimed at the weight loss.  I lost nearly all the weight just by exercise and making small changes to my eating habits.  But I didn't ever consciously say "Hey, I'm not eating today because I'll loose weight."  In fact, my lack of appetite made my weight loss plateau and I recognize the body chemistry thing that you do need incoming fuel.  While I've been struggling with the appetite thing I've only lost 2-3 pounds, so, no, it was not meant to be a weight loss tool (and it shouldn't be - healthy weight loss is through exercise and diet changes).

As I've said elsewhere, I'm a curvy girl.  I like most of my current curves, but still want to loose a few more pounds.  At the same time, it made me feel okay about being a curvy girl last night when K said he really likes that I have an appetite and enjoy his food.  Little did he know I was just storing calories because I knew we'd be burning them off shortly thereafter.  Oh, and I needed the fuel for this morning, too.  Does this all count as exercise?