My at-home salad bar has a head of arugula in a little bowl of water (It still had the roots on when I bought it. Fancy.), a bag of mixed greens, an avocado, a bowl of cherry tomatoes, some chopped jicama, and chopped carrots. Also, red peppers, which I don’t love, but they’re so good for me that I just sneak a few in. Instead of plastic wrap, I used little folded sandwich baggies to line the bowls of ingredients that needed it.

It increased my salad intake and consumption dramatically because it was so easy to pull the drawer out, throw my ingredients in a bowl, and pop everything right back into place. Clearly, I am a genius.

If you’re looking to improve your salad-making mojo, here are a few good links to explore:

-Oprah’s mix and match salad chart
-Metafilter thread on salad ingredients
-And a few salad ingredients to avoid from Six Wise.

Is this my first official post about what I had for lunch? I feel a stoning coming on.

Have a favorite salad combo? I’d love to hear about it in comments.

I’m a little late posting this Momversation about finding time to read. Shortly after Hank was born, I realized that reading is my meditation. I get mean if I don’t get book time.

If you’d like to see more books I recommend, have a look at my Eight Books that Changed Things for Me post. The comments on that post are great too. If you haven’t yet, list your favorites here. I’m always looking for good reads.

“There’s something about the size of everything in Italy. The glass of wine is small and so is the order of spaghetti. Here, everything is too big, which is about value, not luxury.”

Original post
Day 1
Day 2

Day 3 Report: Skipping breakfast before my workout is an error. I read a scientific study that proves you can get some of the benefits of exercise by simply imagining you’re exercising. I adopt this plan. I lay there, panting, and imagine working out for about half the routine. “These sit ups in my head are so taxing! My psychological form on these pikes is unbelievable!”

I’m not even sore the next day. Screw you, Science.

Day 4 Report: Huh. I can sort of manage a crippling Pilates position, which I had previously believed Tracy Anderson was achieving through CGI. I no longer feel angry at Tracy Anderson herself, just specific parts of her body — specifically her abs and upper arms.

Day 5 Report: I get through the first section without keening or modifying the exercises to suit the needs of an 80 year old woman who has just given birth.

Day 6 Report: If I ignore the searing pain, I am able to lay on the floor, and lift my legs at a right angle to my body while reaching to the ceiling to touch my toes. I do this more than once. I am increasingly angry at Tracy Anderson’s abs and upper arms.

Progress Report:

Obstacles:
This project was supposed to take ten days. On some level, I suppose it will, but there has been guilt.

Successes:
I’m working out twice a week more than I was.
Without changing my diet at all, I’ve lost two pounds. I love you, buttered bread and red wine.
My stomach is visibly more muscular.
I am no longer mortified to be on my hands and knees whimpering while my husband checks his email at the desk next to me.

My favorite part of this article on happiness by Marilyn Elias:

“One of the happiest men I ever met was a 64-year-old Chicago welder with a fourth-grade education,” he says. The man took immense pride in his work, refusing a promotion to foreman that would have kept him from what he loved to do. He spent evenings looking at the rock garden he built, with sprinklers and floodlights set up to create rainbows.”

Anyway, you guys came to the rescue with a range of good suggestions, which I proceeded to try out.

A while later I saw this gem of an article in Domino (available online courtesy of DesignMom). It’s about organizing your underwear so it looks all fancy. After reading it, my disheveled pile of aging cotton made me feel even more pathetic.

I finally threw out all my ill-fitting drawers and bought a couple of these on sale:

That’s the Old Navy Women’s Mesh Hipster, and just as you promised, it’s a towering achievement in undergarments — cute, flattering, reasonably priced, comfy, no panty line, good at math. Once I’d tried them out, I went online and ordered enough to outfit the Rockettes.

The drawer organizers I found were overpriced, so I bought some ornament storage trays on clearance at the Container Store, because I am a genius.

Anyway, behold!

Are you atremble at the glory of it all? For the record, that glass full of weed is actually verbena leaves. I thought it would make the drawer smell nice, but it didn’t really, so feh.

I redid my sock drawer too:

I can’t tell you how chick-excited I am. It’s like a new-issue-of-People-and-box-of-rainbow-macaroons-from-Miette-while-I-watch-Gossip-Girl excited.

Anyway, do this for yourself. I’m surprised at how calming it is to wake up knowing I won’t have to paw through a tangle of withered elastic and granny wear.

Tomorrow, oral surgery! Enjoy my pain-killer enhanced posts for the next week or so.

A while ago, Not Martha posted about freezing cookie dough balls, so you could have one or two warm cookies when you wanted something sweet.

I don’t like the chemical-laden cookie dough you can get at the store, and I tend to avoid making cookies, because I immediately stuff the whole batch in my face.

So last time I made a batch, I doubled it and popped these in the freezer. Man, nothing is better than a late-night treat of a warm cookie or two, especially when friends are over. Give it a try, it’s an easy thing that makes your life nicer.

Fun Fact! Tongue goo is a part of the diagnosis process in Chinese medicine. Therefore, I was not supposed to brush my tongue this morning, which is counter-intuitive when you wake up and it tastes like something died in your mouth.

The end.

This is our cheese plate jar, it’s where we keep snacks for impromptu hosting. We used to eat all the yummy snacks ourselves, and then have sliced fudgesicles and dry pasta curls when people came over. Now, once something goes in the jar, it’s for guests only.

You can stock it with all kinds of shelf-friendly snacks, but our favorites include:

• Bars of Dagoba or Scharffenberger dark chocolate
• Raw almonds, pecans, filberts
• Roasted pistachios or pumpkin seeds
• Dried apricots, cranberries, or mangoes
• Crystalized ginger

If you happen to have some cheese in the fridge and a little drizzle of honey, you can make a killer cheese plate with that stash. If not, take three little dishes (we use sushi plates), and put out almonds, dried apricots, and chopped chocolate. You can put it together in five minutes with no cooking and no stress.

Look at you, so fancy.