Rec: Hungry Girl

I like catching the Dr. Oz show when I can. So many good tips about weight loss and health! Earlier this week, he had Hungry Girl on. She's lost a couple hundred pounds by eating more food. Wacky but true! A bunch of others have lost a lot of weight with her help, too.

Turns out it's not as wacky as it sounds. Things like taking a frozen meal with 300 or so calories and mixing it into a giant bowl of veggies, so you're getting four or five times the amount of food for basically the same calories.

Her daily newsletter (subscribe here) is really, really useful. Recipes, suggestions on new foods to try, etc. I've only been subscribed to it a couple days now and I already have a bunch of tips and things to try. (If only I could make time to get to the supermarket and shop!)

I'd like to try the foil packet chicken from today's newsletter, but it calls for fresh thyme and fresh basil. When they're even in the supermarket, fresh herbs cost $5 a packet, and I use them once and then they go bad and I toss them out. I have the space, I wonder if I could actually grow some potted herbs myself? Ponder ponder ponder. This could be interesting.

(And I have to laugh at myself. I never before thought about growing my own herbs. Is this a reflection of current RP? Thistle's joy at growing his own herb garden leaking over into RL? I think it's more a happy coincidence. Still, the idea of planning this out, buying benches or tables to set pots on, is making me oddly happy. Or maybe it's the idea of being able to cook food that tastes good!)

All the plants!

I'm starting this backwards. I went out to buy a bench or small table, something I could set up pots on, but instead I found lots of pots and no table!

I got a lot more than I intended to, too.

First thing I spotted were these tiny little pots, maybe one inch high, with different sorts of flowers. At 88 cents each, I bought three different ones. They came with their own little bits of soil and seeds, and were just so darned cute. Those I started tonight.

Second thing was a "herb garden". A long container, soil, and three different herbs. Two of the herbs were ones I didn't really need, but it was so cute I got it anyway.

I got a set of three small pots all attached to a tray, very cute, but now I'm thinking they might actually be too small. :/ I need to get a bigger pot for when I get live plants from the farmer's market.

The last thing I got was a strawberry pot (again with soil and seeds). The pot was so cutely painted and had lots of little holes for runners, I had to get it. (Sensing a theme here? So cute!)

Big Lot (a dollar store type place) is actually not very cheap at all. Well. Cheap quality, not cheap prices. I should have run next door to OSH (hardware store) to look for benches/tables, but one store per day is about my shopping limit. Maybe tomorrow!