Category: Food

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Weekly Post 12/16/2019

Highlights:

  • Lunch with a highschool friend
  • Started bringing leftovers for lunch
  • Finished The Wire

Lowlights:

Goals for next week: Try to reduce my lunch budget

Following last week’s post and I had another business lunch set up with a highschool friend downtown. Just to talk about the future and see if our forces could align and expedite some progress. This is still a new experiment for me so there is a lot to figure out and organize before these business lunches will start producing some juicy results. Either way, it was fun to catch up and talk about old times and the present comparing stories at how similar and yet different our lives past have been and how we still have a lot of the same experiences.

 For the majority of this week, I broke out the old’ lunch pail and brought leftovers to work to eat for lunch. To be fair these meals were planned leftovers with the full intention to have them for lunch the next day. In my quest to keep reducing my expenses on food this seemed like the next logical step. We quickly found out that usually dinner is the most expensive meal of the day and having the same meal for lunch the next day just doubles my spending. The good take ways for this habit is that I am now building a routine to bring lunch rather than going out to eat five days a week. If I can keep this habit than the next step would be to meal plan for lunch and be mindful of what the food costs are compared to a usual fast food meal. Those meals range between $12 and $8, If I can get my spend down to $7 or $6 I would be very happy. I don’t have a plan yet other than to keep bring meals from home into to work and once that habit it and nature then start to plan out my lunches.

I watched HBO’s original show The Wire. This came out right at the tail end of Highschool and finished up while I was still in college. Never really heard of it even though around that same time I was watching Entourage and Sopranos every Sunday night. Soon after though, this show kept getting recommend both by acquaintances and on my regular websites. I Started this show multiple times when over the last 6 or 7 years and never made it past the 3rd episode for some reason or other. New shows that come out that “You have to watch” it always got put on the back burner. Then I read another article about the 50 best TV shows you need to watch. I can’t remember which article but it kicked me in high gear and I made it past the first season in one weekend. That first season of The Wire was so good I just kept pressing play.

It hooks, line and sinker me in as I made it through the 2nd season in the by the end of the next week. after those first two weeks, I was on roll watching it every chance I got, during lunch breaks, in the morning before work. I was addicted by the time I finished the 4th season I was burnt out. Only 12 more episodes to in the final season… it took the entirety of that next week at that same feverous pace finish out the whole series.  

This was an awesome show. Lots of intricate storylines that build from season to season, yet each season had its theme that leads to entertaining season finales that almost stretched over the last 3 episodes of each season.

Watching this show blitzkrieg style isn’t recommend due to the 60 min length of each episode, If I had to do it again I would have tried to keep it’s at a season a week. That would have probably kept me from having that burnout feeling towards the end of the series. The Wire would be a must much recommendation from me, I’m sad a neve got into this show when it was airing that could have been fun to witness.

The 2019 Bears season is over. What a disappointment, there was so much hype after last year’s level of play and in the supposed progress we made in the offseason. The offense installed the 2.0 version and Mitch was making leaps and bound type progress. All that hype washed away after the season opener loss to our archrivals the Green Bay Packers. To be fair I did hold on to some hope that they could pull to it together but, halfway through the regular season it a was fools’ errand to still believe that this team was going to be better than where it was last season.  

It will be a long offseason, hopefully, I can fill it up with some golf and baseball and hockey.

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Weekly Post 12/9/2019

Highlights:

  • Steak and Cigar night Round 6
  • Family Birthday Brunch
  • Great business lunch

LowLights:

  • Can’t drink like I used too

Goals for next week: Keep inviting people to business lunches.

This was an action-packed week with tons of lunches and dinner and things to celebrate. It wasn’t easy on the pocketbook but lots of fun and some action items to follow up with that should lead to greener pastures hopefully in early 2020.

We celebrated the wife’s birthday with lunch at a new spot in the west river north area called Pacific Standard Time. It had a very west coast feel to the interior which wasn’t overdone and overall it was very pleasing to the eye and had a great contrast with the grey Chicago winter weather that has now settled in for the rest of the year. The brunch menu has the usual staple items that were decently priced for a river north restaurant. 

I ordered the steak and eggs, always nice to have a breakfast steak in my opinion. The highlight of the meal was the hot sauce they gave with the eggs and it was liquid hot magma. Passing this around the table to see who was brave enough to try and watch their face melt after only ingest a small was too funny.

The last big meal of the week was at GT Prime for the 6th semi Quarterly Steak and Cigar night. There will be a full recap post on this meal that will be published shortly that will give a full break down of the most expensive steak I’ve ever eaten. With all the steak, bourbon and cigars mixed with a late-night, I paid the price for it on Friday morning through the early afternoon. I can’t swig them back like I used too, and for the most part, I’m kinda happy about that. I’ve always been a big drinker and now that my life priorities have taken my attention elsewhere not going out and getting blasted every weekend night has been a hard adjustment but one for the better. Both for the here and now and the future. I will now need to learn drink at a pace that is new to me but this will be a necessary tactic to have when I’m out with boys for fun night out and not have to pay for it dearly the next day.

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Weekly Post 12/2/2019

Highlights:

  • Haircut and beard shape up

Lowlights:

  • Feeling all the repercussions on all that thanksgiving food

The goal for next week: Get to the gym

With No-Shave November coming to a close I decided to the beard through the holidays. To get ready for the Christmas and Holiday party season I needed to get a haircut and for the first time, I was also going to need to get my beard cut and shaped. The usual story is that I don’t touch my razor at all for the month of November. As my jobs have been getting more and more professional, walking around with a raging neckbeard was not appropriate. I compromised and kept the neck nice and clean but left the length of the beard as long as it could grow out. This lead to some issues around my mouth, it became very hard to drink anything out of a cup without a straw. The liquid would just run out the sides of my mouth and down onto my shirt making a huge mess every sip. In the era of the war on plastic straws, I am most certainly not going to be carrying around a metal straw in my pocket all day every day. 

The only choice was to get to the barber and let them do their magic. After my guy was done it felt like I had a whole new face. No hair would hit my lips or get in the way of my breathing or tickle my nostrils. The real mega moment though was when I had poured myself a nice big glass of ice water at home. It was an oddly refreshing feeling that I can only describe as one of the most comfortable drinks of all time. I had not realized how annoying drinking was when all the beard hair kept getting in the way my drinks.

For next year not only will I continue to condition from day one of growing out the beard but will also try and trim the edges as well to keep drinking from feeling like an impossible task.

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Weekly Post 11/25/2019

Highlights:

  • Went to the gym
  • Bears win!
  • Thanksgiving leftovers

Lowlights:

  • So much traveling

Goals for next week   Go to the gym again

I made it up to the gym for the first time in a long time. I found my old condo gym routine that hits the whole body with all of the weight machines at my home gym. It’s a basic 3×10 protocol with roughly 15 exercises that I can finish in almost 35 minutes with little rest. I need to make a concerted effort to make it the gym though. I don’t find the lifting and exercising to be that difficult. It seems that my brain doesn’t like getting healthier or put it at the top of the priorities list as I think it should be. There is time in the later evenings with my work and family schedule, but in the past working out late and taking a shower has made it difficult to fall asleep. To be fair back then I was getting an ample amount of sleep compared to now maybe this time will be different?

The Bears beat the New York Giants, but it wasn’t pretty we are still struggling and it this was a game we should have decidedly won but, we were so very close to losing I was on the edge of my seat for the entire game. This season is running of games and the Bears still is playing like trash. There are glimpses of hope but they are sporadic and we never seem to capitalize off them or put 2 good drives together. I’m hoping the Bears offense will start clicking so I can enjoy watching the games rather than biting my nails for 4 hours straight.

I had a great Thanksgiving with my family in downtown Chicago. Easily my favorite food of the Thanksgiving meal can only happen the day after Thanksgiving. The stuffing sandwich has been my go-to post-turkey day lunch for about the last 18 years. My Grandma whipped it up for me one year when she stayed over for the holiday weekend. It is a real game-changer combined with most of the food groups. Two toasted slices of white bread both have cranberry sauce spread like jam. Stuffing that was reheated in a frying pan giving it some crunchiness. Ham slices that are also hot, I mainly eat ham in Thanksgiving rather than turkey. That is the gist of the sandwich the hard part of the sandwich is cooking the stuffing into a patty and not burning them since you are working with leftover and you won’t have any more stuffing until next year. If you get that stuffing just right with the right ratio of ham this is my favorite sandwich of all time.

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Weekly Post 11/11/2019

Highlights:

  • Beard is coming in nicely
  • Bears beat the Detriot Lions!

Lowlights:

  • Only ate fast food for lunch

Golas for next week: Find a place to eat my bring from home lunch at

After a week and a half, this is the best shape my beard has been in since I started participating in No Shave November. The major tip I have learned is to stated conditioning the beard as soon as you can. I started after day 5 of no shaving and my beard hasn’t itched once. In the past years, it would develop this horrible itch underneath my beard. It would always sneak up on me before I knew it and the only remedy would be a couple of days of conditioning in the shower.

This year has been the most comfortable by far also due to the constant brushing whenever I walk past the bathroom. I read somewhere once that the brushing also stimulates growth which would be difficult for me to judge since this is the only time of the year that I will rock the beard. I will keep you guys posted on the beards progress in the coming weeks.

Finally, the Chicago Bears won a game, I was really about to lose all hope on this season and pretty much lost general interest in most of the NFL games while were all enduring some really bad football played by the Bears in the past weeks. It is nice to start the week with a little pep in my step on a victory Monday.

The new work location is still making my lunch decisions pretty limited to fast food only options. I still haven’t found any better/healthier options yet and starting to worry that I will have to mine the menus of a restaurant to eat more responsible. This is a task I have never attempted and don’t have much confidence that I will be able to do without just ordering fries all the time. The quest will continue until I find some good lunch options.

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Weekly Post 11/18/19

Highlights:

  • Quick Family trip to Disney World

Lowlights:

  • Cold and overcast in Florida
  • Bears Lost to the Rams
  • Horrible Mochas

Goals for this week:

    • Breakfast smoothies all week and find a place for lunch salads

The family and I headed down to Orlando to spend some time at Disney World and get some good extended family time in before the holiday gauntlet comes barreling down. Having two families within driving distance means that every Holiday equals 2 holidays. 2 Thanksgiving in one weekend is fun but a lot of time spent in the car when all you want to do is sit on the couch and digest lol

It’s nice we can get together before all that starts and enjoy our time together without being time-crunched in a natural spot where everybody can chillax and have a relaxing time without the usual hosting pressures.

The highlight of the trip was Brunch with Mickey and Friends. Tons of great photo ops with the OG Disney crew, they all came by one by one once the table had finished their 2nd plate of the buffet. The actors did a great job handling all the little children and the varying age of the groups. They mad sure every guest that wanted a picture got one and we’re very aware that I had the Sony A7II camera and not iPhone and the charterers made sure to give me the majority of the poses so my camera could do all the hard work and send off the pictures to everyone after the brunch.

I was pretty happy with how most of the pictures came out. I can tell that I am getting better at composing my pictures. I am starting to see how a picture should be framed before I raise the eyepiece to my eyes. In turn, I’m becoming a lot more efficient at taking pictures. I use to take 1000 pictures and the only handful would be worth editing or post right out of the camera. Where now am constantly moving to be in the best shooting position resulting in a better sample of pictures without having to wade through 95% to find the better-looking pictures. Now it’s about 20% decent looking pictures with about 1/2 the number of total pictures taken.

There happened to be a coffee shop that masqueraded itself as a full-service Starbucks when I did my trip due diligence to figure out my food, drink and golf options for the trip. I was very stoked to see there was a full-fledged Starbucks on a property within walking distance to get my Mocha fix all week. As soon as we walked up the first time I knew something was up as there were no building architecture ques of the usual Starbucks look. Then I saw it, the sign that put me in a 5 min depression “Starbucks Coffee Proudly Served Here” I didn’t have any hope for the Mochas after that, but since I’m a glutton for punishment I went ahead and got a Mocha each morning I was there. The mochas scored 5 to 6 out of ten on my scale with major points being deducted due to the overuse of nasty chocolate syrup. The other major factor was the expresso tased like it was over roasted burnt and gave some off-flavors that I didn’t enjoy. I was happy to get back to the airport to have a decent Mocha at a real Starbucks.

The weather did not want to cooperate while I was in Orlando. It just happened to be record-breaking cold weather while we were in Florida, seriously it was low 50s and high 40s on one of the evenings. There was one night when it wasn’t freezing, but still pretty chilly I was able to sneak away and hit the hot tub and smoke a cigar.

It was a fun night to smoke one on vacation but it was most certainly against the rules to be having one in the hot tub. I was on edge the whole time, all nervous that I was going to get busted and ruin the family vacation. Looking back what were they going to do? Lock me up and kick my family out of the Villa?? 99% sure they would have just told me to put it out and leave the hot tub.

Overall this was a great trip and something I look forward to all year. Yea the weather could have been better but if you need nice weather to have a good time- change your fun parameters and start having even more fun.

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Weekly Post 11/4/2019

Highlights:

  • New Low Weight

Lowlights:

  • Got Sick
  • Ate Mcdonalds
  • Bears Suck Agian

Goals for next week:  Breakfast smoothies all week with 3 days of salads for lunch.

It was a roller-coaster week health-wise for me as I hit a 2 year low on the scale and immediately got a bug from my son’s daycare that knocked me out for almost 48 hours. I still had to go to work due to me starting a new project at another location other than my home base and since this is on a short timeline I felt like I had to risk it to kick off the work and get the team making progress in the right direction before I would feel safe taking a day off.

I am usually a large proponent for staying home while sick no matter how important you feel it is to be at work. If it hadn’t been for this project I would have happily stayed home and destroyed some Netflix on the couch. With staring this new project at a new facility with a whole new leadership team I didn’t want me missing work be the first impression the new force had of me.

With that new work, location means I have lost my roster of restaurants that have enabled me to start eating healthy and shedding the much-needed weight I have been carrying for the past few years.

Losing those restaurants and food choices are scary, the new location has all the fast food choices you could want and the nearest grocery store or market is 2 or three times further making my lunch break that much smaller. I know I could be making my lunches at home and eating them at work but I value that time away from the office. Typically I watch some DVR shows or some Netflix and eat my lunch but, it does help me recharge/set my afternoon up to be nice and productive. Where in the past working on a closed campus I would get a stir crazy and my work rate would plummet toward quitting time.

This is how I ended up eating at Mcdonalds for the first time in a couple of months as I still view it as safe food and I was looking for some comfort after being sick.

Taking a step back maybe this is an opportunity to take another step forward in eating healthier and saving major cash. I have the skills to be making salads and soups at home. Buying the ingredients would reduce my lunch cost from 9 dollars a meal to closer to $4 a meal. That is significant savings at 20 meals a week. (20 x5)4 weeks that 400 bucks saved a month! close to $5,000 for the whole year. Wow, that is a lot of cash that’s in my pocket and the end of the day. I wonder if I could find a place to eat my meal outside of work to get those benefits and bring my lunch to save all that money. I will need to look into this further and see my options. Making food at home and bringing it in isn’t the hard part, Eating lunch outside the office will be the tough one. Time to start exploring!

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Weekly Post 10/28/2019

Highlights:

  • No work this weekend
  • Fun brunch on a rainy Saturday

Lowlights:

  • Bears lost 3 in a row now

Goals for next week: Keep trying to get rid of these work day Mochas

It was a nice low key week. I could have done without the cold rain during the weekend. Still managed to make it to Brunch despite the weather. This weekend we went to Tavern on Rush for a boozy brunch. Not gonna lie this place had some weak ass Mochas, so I guzzled mine down in 3 gulps and went straight to the beer before my food even came. In case you are wondering Heineken and french toast paired beautifully together. We followed up Brunch with some beers at my Brothers’ new spot downtown to hide from the cold rain. College football was on and the rain never stopped and we never left the couch.

I should try and purposefully plan some low effort weekends to use the off days to recharge my battery. Busy weeks seem to compound that tiredness that creeps in during the week. Recovery needs to start being a bigger priority now that my age gets up in value.

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Weekly Post 10/21/2019

Highlights:

  • Fired up the grill
  • Driving Range Session 

Lowlights:

  • Ate 2 Desserts On Monday
  • The Bears Are Embarssing 

Goals for next week:  Zero mocahs during the work week.

In the long-time effort of trying to reduce and or eliminate caffeine from my diet. Mochas/expresso has been the toughest to raign in. Kicking the soda habit only took three months. Albeit I did stop cold turkey style, the coffee is much more a social/ fun engagement for me layered with the added benefits that the jolt of caffeine gives on those weekend end mornings after a fun night out.
Maybe I need to change my goals to something more achievable in a short time and put some wins on the board and build off that success. So starting to this week My new goal will be to only have mochas 3 or fewer in a week. I will strive for 2 of those to be on the weekends and stay away from the weekdays as much as possible.

A quick recap of the Bears the past weekend. We sucked and I’m not ready to talk about it yet. This season is dangerously close to falling off a cliff. Not sure who to blame here but it feels like a lot of bad coaching decisions have not prepared this team at all for this season.

Got to fire up the grill this week for the first time in a while. Since both, I and the wife are back at work full time and the baby is at daycare. Family time has been condensed to 200 minutes daily. This has cut out a lot of time for things like grocery shopping, dry cleaners, golf. One of the services we have found to help maximize the time spent at home and not running errands was Hello Fresh. This meal-delivery service drops of ingredients for 3 meals a week. All of the ingredients are separated in a way to ensure a meal in less than 30 minutes. There have been some meals that took longer than that but all of those were due to a longer oven time, but the prep time is wicked fast. All of these meals are designed to be cooked with the least amount of tools and create as little mess as possible to eliminating the need for me to grill anything. I’m sure we could be grilling most of the meats that have come in the meals but they mostly cooked in a pan with sauce. So it was a real treat when I found some great looking bone-in ribeyes at the market this past weekend.

The weather was a little warmer on Sunday so I went to the range for an early morning practice session. I hit the first 5 or 6 balls well then the next 25 progressively got worse and worse. This time though I was able to work my swing back to some decent ball strikes. That process took way too long if memory serves me right it was close to 40 balls which do not is able in a regular round of golf. This is why we practice though. The best swings of the day came form hitting my 52 and 58-degree wedges. All of a sudden I’ve developed some distance control. I played a game where I would aim for the 25,50,75s yard flag and was sticking balls within a couple of yards and hitting the flag a few times. This is a major game-changer for me, if I can take the distance control to the course I should be giving my self ton of more par chances and maybe even some birdie puts on the Par 5s Now I just have to get out and play but it does feel like the golf season here in Chicago is about to slam shut.

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Weekly Post 10/14/2019

Highlights:

  • Pizza Party With the Famliy
  • Chicago Marathon
  • NO work on the weekend again!
  • Bears Bye Week

Lowlights:

  • Missed out on a skins golf tournement
  • Bears Bye week

Goals for next week:

Stay under 230 LBS for 2 days this week

With the Chicago Marathon taking over the city this week there was a ton of fun energy building all week. So the family decided Saturday would be a great say for a pizza party! The apartment complex where my brother lives have a pizza oven/grill outside next to the pool deck. It was way too cold to take a dip in the pool, but I was eyeing the hot tub pretty hard all day lol. My mom made enough dough and brought all the topping you could think of. We were all jacked up for this stellar pizza setup. The wind turned this adventure into a major struggle. The wind gusts were the overpowering heavily vented casing of the pizza grill leaving the inside temp close to 420 degrees and taking close to 22 min to cook a single pizza. I was shooting for 500+ degrees and hoping the pizza would be cooked in 12 to 15 min. With the extra time in the oven, the crust was becoming undercooked compared to the toppings. After two pizzas in the in grill, we decided to move into one of the party rooms that was set up to be a kitchen that you would see on the cooking channel. The kitchen is equipped with a super nice Wolf range oven. This monster of an oven was able to cook three pizzas at one time and have no problem keeping the temp over 480 degrees letting us catch up and get all 7 pizzas out in a short amount of time so everybody could enjoy their pizza at the table together.
The day after, Sunday the Chicago Marathon ran right past my house and gave me a great opportunity to practice my photography skills especially shooting in manual mode with some very fast subjects running right past me. This exercise turned out to be very hard, keeping the runner composed in the frame while panning seemed almost impossible. I tried to use the eyepiece, the back screen and just holding the camera in my hand without aiming at all. Pictures taken using the eyepiece kept the subject most centered in the frame. While not using any of the assets on the camera and panning using my hand and keeping my eyes on the subject yielded the best-looking results since the camera speed most accurately matched the runners at full speed. Not sure if I’m ready to share my photos just yet. I am still pretty new to this hobby and do not have the best practices for hosting and displaying pictures that are 75-6 MB each. Once I have that process figured out I will update this post and start making a gallery page for everyone to view.

My weight has continued to trend the right way and I am looking to have the scale stay in the high 220s. The breakfast smoothies and lunch salads are making the difference in my weight loss but, alas the salads are becoming boring. How long will I be able to stay with the ultra-consistent meals??? I’m not sure but the progress on the scale is making the fight that much easier to win.