Valentine’s Dinner (early), and how splurging a little can lead to saving money (iPad)!

I don’t really have many interesting food experiences this week (lots of green smoothies, kale, and avocados), since I’ve been keeping it simple in preparation for PIP. But last night, we had our Valentine’s dinner since Matthew is going to be here tonight (and he does not see eye to eye with us on food choices), and Joe will probably be out of town for work on Monday. Mostly, it’s because I’ll have started PIP on Monday and I don’t want my first night to include crab cakes!

Joe’s crab cake recipe, perfected over the past year:

Jumbo lump crab (I don’t really know which kind he buys, but I know 4 crab cakes worth of crab is somewhere around $20…which is way cheaper than eating out!).

1tsp dry mustard

1/4 cup veganaise

black pepper

worcestershire (couple shakes)

sprinkle of dried parsley

2 shakes of onion powder

2 shakes of Old Bay

He made a veganaise sauce with chipotle powder and lemon juice (yum!)

Nope—-no eggs in the crab cakes or the “mayo.” Joe is totally grossed out by eggs. And chicken. So we never have either of those things.

I made the salad:

It was the best dinner! And I think crab cakes are the reason I could never call myself vegan (besides that I think labels are unnecessary).

Now for what I’m really excited about:

The iPad.

Not only did I find an app to use the iPad as an extra monitor for my laptop…

I also did some searching and found out that if you have an iPad, there’s no reason to buy an AppleTV thingy. I have been seriously considering buying Apple TV because I don’t have cable…but instead, I bought a $30 component cable, and can plug the iPad right into the TV. We watched About a Boy last night with Hugh Grant and Toni Collette on Netflix…and it was awesome to not watch a Netflix movie on a laptop monitor! The movie was really good too. So, I figure I can subscribe to Hulu and Netflix for under $20 a month…and then rent movies from iTunes when I want to, whereas cable would cost close to $100 a month. For a non-frequent TV watcher, this really makes sense! I’m not much of a bargain hunter, so I’ll admit this all kind of fell into my lap (I just bought the iPad for fun).

Personal Improvement Plan (PIP) planning:

Making checklists, and grocery shopping tomorrow. A couple things PIP is going to include aside from food/digestion/fitness are: dental care, skin care, and stress management. I’m thinking about trying to keep track of the costs too—I’m horrible at that, but it should be easier during PIP since I’ll be planning what I buy anyway. Any interest in how much it costs to eat in detox-mode?

I have a body composition scale (Tanita) for wellness coaching that I never use for myself, but as part of PIP I’m also going to track my weight and just see what happens. I’m not actually trying to lose weight, but I’m thinking things might change a little.

Does anyone want to join me in PIP? If you do, email me, and I’ll send you my checklist in Word doc form so you can change them to fit your own needs.

What are you doing that’s healthy or unhealthy this weekend? I ate my crab cakes and some dark chocolate coconut thingys that Joe bought, and I think that fits nicely in pre-PIP. I’m not going to the gym today because my new gym doesn’t open till noon on Saturday (it’s the Jewish Community Center), and Matthew will be here later. I still haven’t gone to a Body Pump class, but I’m going to soon!

Do you have an iPad? Any app recommendations?!