oh you know, just bein' me

Oh hi blog! I have been busy!

I started a food blog for funzies because I am super into baking delicious treats right now and am trying to cook more dinners as well. I love it so much that I am considering starting a small business next year to sell unique baked goods at the Farmer's Market! How fun would that be?

You know what's cool about my food blog that is one thousand times better than other food blogs? I don't have a billion ads! My gosh, what is wrong with people? Half the time when I click to look at a neat linked recipe I'm taken to a page with a flyover ad that I have to click to get to a page which then takes five minutes to load because it has ads on all four sides of the screen blinking at me. I have never seen another type of blogger, not even video game bloggers, try to take bigger advantage of internet ads and sitting on their asses for profit as food bloggers. Most of the time it's not even original recipes either. They'll just steal recipes and re-post them or their whole blog will just be links to other blogs. It's frickin' crazy!

Is this just the end result of Pinterest? People realized how easy it was to link something a billion times on Pinterest for hits and then had to generate as much nonsense content as possible to make the most profit they could from clicks?

Oh well, I guess I don't care all that much. I've just developed a list in my head of links not to click because I know they go to super annoying ad laden food blog pages.

Speaking of food, for some odd reason I have two boxes of low sugar Quaker Oats in my possession that I did not purchase. I know one came from a co-worker but I don't remember where the other is from. I have them because these people were like "this is gross, maybe Isha will eat it". Haha.

The Maple and Brown Sugar one isn't very good. If it has sugar in the name, you just need to eat the damn sugar. It's got a creepy extremely fake overly sweet taste from the Stevia.

The Apples and Cinnamon one isn't bad though. It's a little bland, but not bad.

Here's the thing kids - you don't need "weight control" low sugar oatmeal to lose weight. Just eat regular oatmeal. The calorie difference is like, 20 calories. Jump up and down for two minutes and then eat normal oatmeal. If you are diabetic ignore that comment and go for the Apples and Cinnamon one.

And now speaking of weight loss, it is a thing I am not doing anymore! This sexy lady is in maintenance! Wooooo! I'm to the point where the number on the scale isn't doing anything for me, so I'm hoping that eating at maintenance and continuing to run will cause me to lose another size or two from lowering my body fat percent a bit more. That kind of change doesn't really show on the scale at this point, it shows in measurements. We'll see how it goes!

Finally, speaking of running, I have a 9 mile slow run today! I am excited and nervous so I am blogging to calm my nerves while I eat my oatmeal. I'll let it and my coffee settle for an hour or two before I head out. This will be the longest run I've ever done as I prepare for half marathon training. Next week will be 10! Wish me luck for the foreseeable future!

Kickstarter Reward: Gabe will shout out your name as he chases a duck

Hey neat! My name gets mispronounced around 22:25.

At first I thought he was stumbling on it, but there is someone actually named "Ish" on the list before me!

So, high five Ish! We have mostly the same name and both like video games!

I think we should hang out. Let me know.

breakin' the law - do you know where your Etsy or Storenvy food has been?

A little back story: my mom and step-dad use to have a custom walking stick business. They would go on hikes to the woods and pick out nice specimen, sand them down, throw on some varnish, and then my mom would decorate them. They never sold any out of a store front but rather attended a few large fairs/concerts/festivals every year and paid for a vendor stand. Often I would get to help them sell the walking sticks and I absolutely loved it. There's just something about being a vendor and selling hand crafted items. I love meeting and talking to people and did so with ease. Plus, I got to yell a lot to try and sell raffle tickets. I'm a loud person and I like to yell. 

So fast forward to today where I have been baking like crazy. For the time being baking has become quite the passion of mine. The problem of course is that while it's very cheap to make food from scratch, it becomes not so cheap when you are doubling and tripling recipes 3-4 times a week for fun and so that everyone you think of can have some. 

Recently I thought, why not try to sell some treats online to try and fund my baking craze? I remembered seeing chocolates and cookies, etc. on sites like Etsy and Storenvy. I have a few chocolate recipes I have been wanting to try and for Christmas this year I planned on putting together some homemade fudge and quirky and/or gourmet decorated chocolates for neighbors and friends. Why not getting started early and see if I might be able to raise a bit of money for extra eggs and butter. Then when summer rolled around, I could have an awesome time selling out of a vendor booth at the farmer's market or at fairs.

So I did what any responsible citizen would do and I started looking up the legalities of selling food online. I know from working in a place (a hospital) where sanitation is king that screwing around with cleanliness and health standards is a big no-no. I knew that I would obviously need to get a food handlers permit, but that costs next to nothing and is very easy to acquire. 

What I didn't know was about "Cottage Food" laws. In the state of Washington you have to pay a yearly fee and have your kitchen area inspected before you can sell baked goods or candies directly to customers. The restrictions actually aren't that harsh, though the fee was higher than I was hoping for. I also would have run into issues with Swiffer (my dog) being allowed to roam free in our regularly used kitchen, but we also have an unused mother-in-law apartment in our basement that has a kitchen that I easily could have got up to standard. 

Now, here's the fun part - notice that above I say "directly to customers". Cottage Food laws only apply when you are personally handing the food to the customer and they are paying you directly. If you want to sell online or through a 3rd party, legally you have to get a Food Processor License which I didn't read through as much but seemed like it had a whole lot more to it. 

In addition to all this, you legally have to provide a list of all the ingredients in the food. That means no "secret" recipe that your grandmother gave you. Everything has to be clearly listed. 

This is all specific to Washington state, and other states will have varied laws on the matter, but in general Washington tends to have looser laws than other places so I find it hard to believe that most of this isn't also required for selling food from anywhere else. 

Plus, it's food. You are giving it to people to ingest. It should be a little harder to sell it. 

That brings me to the point of this post - I have never seen a full ingredient list on an Etsy listing. I have never seen someone on Storenvy mention their Food Processor License. I'm sure some people have these things, as some listings are from legit businesses, but there are plenty of food listings from not so legit looking webcam photo bakers. 

How is this legal? Is it not? Does anyone care? Am I just stupid and naive to think that selling food on a "handcrafted" website should be regulated in some way? 

Etsy is already extremely sketchy when it comes to violating copyright laws, so it's not like I would be surprised if someone was selling chocolates they made in their kitchen with no permits and letting their cat sit on the counter and lick their fingers between batches. 

I guess I just wondered if anyone else thought about things like this. It reminds me of a co-worker who refuses to buy anything from the occasional fundraising bake sales because he has no idea what it is like in that person's kitchen and didn't personally watch that person wash their hands before preparing the food. Now that I have been thinking on the subject, I can relate to the sentiment. 

So my grand idea to raise some extra money for baking supplies is quashed for the time being. I still think it would be fun, so I am going to work on getting our downstairs kitchen up to code and then save up some cash for the inspection and licensing fees. That will give me plenty of time to practice my skills and actually come up with a product that might be worth selling. 

In the mean time children, please don't buy food on the internet unless you know where it's been. 

mobile gaming - Nimble Quest (iOS, but Android coming soon)

Every week - as many people do, I'm sure - I like to go through the iOS app store and check out the new recommendations and additions. One of the "editor's choice" apps this week is Nimble Quest. It looked cute so I decided to give it a click. Free game? Even better!

(It's worth noting that the app store mentions this game is made by the same devs that came out with Tiny Tower, which I know is super popular and that alone would sway most people, but I have never played it.)

But what's this?

AHHHHH! It's like Snake! Winner. I couldn't even begin to estimate the hours that I use to play a version of Snake on our very first family computer.

To be totally honest, I've never been huge on the whole phone gaming phenomenon. I have always had a Nintendo Gameboy iteration over the years so "gaming on the go" was never an issue for me. I also don't really understand how people can play hours of more sophisticated games (like Infinity Blade or Dead Space) on their phone. Don't you need that thing to be, you know, a phone occasionally? No? Am I that old?

Anyway I have a handful of games on my phone but to this point I have been mostly just playing Plants Vs. Zombies because that game works on any device with a screen. That game would work on my microwave.

OK OK, so, Nimble Quest! It is fun! Haha.

Basically you start out with a little hero and swipe your finger up, down, left, or right to move it around the screen. Just like with Snake you have to avoid walls and obstacles, but in this game you also have to avoid little baddies that sometimes have their own trains of followers. That means you have to not only not run into your own train, but you have to avoid what can get to be several additional trains of baddies. Baddies that also shoot crap at you!

You only start out with a few little characters to choose from but you start unlocking more as you manage to pass more of the stages. I started out with the archer, Merida but I couldn't figure out her attacks well enough. Then I tried Ulrich but since he's melee I just kept ramming into baddies. Finally I tried Blaze and we had a winner! I think he's by far the easiest hero to start with while you get use to the game. He shoots long range fireballs that explode on contact, so you can damage groups of enemies from farther away.

The game is simple enough but there is definitely a learning curve involved. As I mentioned above, I couldn't figure out how to make Merida's attacks work for me. You kind of have to get use to how each character uses their attack and when so that you know how close or from what side you have to come at enemies to do damage. There's also a surprising amount of strategy involved on top of that when it comes to tapping quick enough to change direction and avoid enemy attacks and navigating in such a way that your party is doing the most damage as it grows with more heroes and their varied attacks.

Also, be sure that you don't run at a baddie thinking he is a hero that is going to join your party! You know there's a party member to grab only when you see the words "hero" above them. I pathetically suicide ran into a few knights the first couple times I played in an attempt to pick them up as heroes before I figured that one out. Yes, I realize that intro screen above somewhat demonstrates that but I am dumb. Shut up.

In order to progress to the next stage you have to kill a certain number of enemies and there is a progress bar at the top that tells you how close you are to moving on. When you kill enemies, pick up chests, or finish a stage you get gems. The gems can be used to purchase upgrades for your heroes (like +25% armor, etc. it's different for each hero) and to upgrade some of the randomly dropped boosts. My favorite boost so far is a little magnet that draws gems to you.

You also start with a certain amount of gold coins (I think 10) and more randomly drop in game. The gold coins can be used to try a stage you just failed again without having to start from the beginning of the stages you just went through. I'm not sure if there's a point yet at which you graduate from the level 1 stages to additional levels or not and maybe start over at a new spot instead of Forest 1- so far I haven't been able to make it past Sewer 1, so every time I die I just go back to Forest 1.

This of course is where the free-to-play element comes in. You can purchase more gems or gold coins for real world money. After having to re-do Forest 1 a billion times, using those gold coins starts to look more and more tempting.

That's probably what I love most about this game though. You don't have to use real world money. Everything that you can buy with real world money drops fairly easily in-game. Obviously not as quickly as you would like if you're not wanting to constantly start over, but often enough that it doesn't feel like the game is forcing you to spend real money in order to enjoy it.

I'm not sure I would call this game easy to pick up and set down since the stages can take a bit depending on how skillful you are, but I've been able to mostly successfully pop it out through my day for a quick game. Of course, I fail a lot. Lawls.

Overall, I'd say this one is worth picking up! It's free, it's fun, it's challenging, it's extremely frustrating in a good way. It's a classic game mechanic that you loved to play when you were younger given a fresh, creative and super fun twist that makes it feel new again.

Right now it is only on iOS, but The Verge's great review of it says Android is coming next month. Go play!

brick and mortar seepage into digital game retail

Major Nelson announced on his blog today that Xbox Live Rewards members will now have a new "Play to Earn" program called MyPunchcard. What it basically boiled down to was that if you pay for more arcade games, pay to put purchasing points on your Xbox, and/or spend those points you get some small "reward" for doing so.

A friend pointed out that Microsoft is trying to make their rewards program as tempting to use as PSN Plus. That got us thinking about how brick and mortar retail practices have seeped into the digital domain.

"If you subscribe to our magazine, get a free make-up bag!"

"If you buy two DVDs instead of one, you get a coupon to buy another one for half off!"

These offers are not tempting to me. I don't want to buy something that I don't need just so that I can get a small cheap prize that I also don't need. 

When I purchase digital items I want them to cost less because they aren't a physical entity, I don't want to pay the same amount but then also get proprietary points or items that are only good in one place or given so that I have just enough to feel like I got a deal but not enough that I don't have to purchase more digital items in order to get anything substantial. 

@ozkfodrotski lol! Yup. I want digital things to cost less,I don't want to pay the same amount but also get a free tote bag with my purchase
— eye-shuh (@eye_shuh) March 28, 2013

How many times has Steam shown that deep discounts on video games equals towers filled with gold coins to swim in for the developers, publishers, and distributors?

It's like this behavior and these sales practices are so ingrained in these companies that they just can't bring themselves to make easy money. They have to keep trying to trick you into spending your money when you would just throw it at them freely if they were to employ modern sales practices for digital items.

I have an Xbox Live Rewards account but I rarely use it. Once my Live subscription runs out I won't renew it. I just don't have a compelling reason to do so. I'm sure I'll sing a different tune once the new Xbox comes out, but for the time being I'm over it.

So, no thanks Major Nelson. You were almost on to something magical with your digital download Xbox game deep sales but you chickened out and fell back into old and tired retail. My money won't be thrown at any screens today.

confessions of a newly skinny girl and chronic baker

I should totally re-name my blog that. Anyway, I had some interesting thoughts this weekend that I wanted to lay out here because, uh, this is my blog and I do what I want.

So, I went to a birthday party and there was a lot of food, including three entire cakes that yours truly baked. Here are my impressive stats for Saturday:

I packed away that 3200 calories without a second thought. Over 2000 is from dinner and dessert afterward. At first I was upset that I had managed to eat that much, but despite 1500 calories being almost a week of my weight loss deficit goal undone in one day, I feel fine about it now.

At first I was a little devastated at how much I had eaten (let's call it shock), but I don't feel bad about it now that I've had some time to think about how far I've come and how easy it will be to make it up this week.

I've always had some preconceptions about how thinner people eat. They just naturally eat less food, they stop eating as soon as they're full, they aren't tempted to binge eat or over eat sweets, they just kind of have an instinct built in that keeps them eating at an amount that doesn't cause them to gain weight.

I thought that when I came to the end of my weight loss adventure I would start eating that way. I wouldn't have to track my food anymore because I would have developed the instinct that tells me to stop when I'm full and how much to eat for the day and that I just wouldn't crave eating more. I think that a lot of people who are trying to lose weight think about things like "how a skinny person eats" and we form these pictures in our heads of what that will look like for ourselves.

That image has not happened for me now that I'm skinny. I still eat over 2000 calories most days.

However, I almost always exercise it all off and reach my deficit goal. The important part though is that I enjoy it. If I want to eat a 700 calorie slice of pie, I don't just enjoy that pie - I also genuinely enjoy doing the two exercise videos or the seven miles of walking or running needed to burn that pie slice off. I like eating a lot and exercising a lot. I like that I work to fuel my body but still remain at a small deficit or even out my calories for the day.

And sometimes, I don't make that deficit. Sometimes I eat 3000 calories and don't work it all off. Instead of feeling bad about myself all I can think about this morning is how much fun it will be to put together an exercise schedule for the next month and puzzle together my healthy meals for the week.

Who cares if I spent a Saturday eating an insane amount of calories? It didn't make me instantly fat again. It was fun and now I'm back to my regular schedule.

This weekend I came to the conclusion that I haven't taught myself to "eat like a skinny person". Instead, I taught myself to act like a positive, healthy and fit person.

I think I like that better. Especially if it means more cake.

exercise videos: more from Fitness Blender - HIIT total body and abs

Recently I did one of the cardio Insanity workouts with a friend who is going through the program...it was intense! Despite the high impact on my knees, it put me in a cardio and workout video mood so I decided to do a couple new to me videos from Fitness Blender.

I started with "When I Say Jump HIIT - Total Body Toning and HIIT Cardio Workout":



I absolutely LOVED everything about this video from start to finish! Seriously, it was that great! I really liked the mix up of the HIIT with random "ups" and "downs" between doing moves. It kept me on my toes the whole time, I was not bored for one second and by the end of it I was sweating buckets! Even the warm up and cool down are phenomenal. I will most definitely be bookmarking this one to do as often as I can!


Next I did "HIIT Workout for Abs & Obliques – High Intensity Cardio and Abs Workout":



What can I say? It was a HIIT kind of day. Also I wanted to get some good abs work in and this one was rated at a medium intensity level. Unfortunately, this was kind of a bust for me. I wasn't a fan of doing some of the abs moves in a HIIT format and they mostly hurt my legs from elevating them and didn't have much of an impact on my abs due to bad form from leg pain. I think both those things were not the fault of the video, but perhaps personal preference and fault. Probably won't do this one again though.


I had intended to do more than this but I got distracted! Such is life. I am considering going ahead and buying their 8 Week Fat Loss Program to see what kind of structure they set up. I have been doing well just setting my own schedule, but I figure it might be nice to see what additional advice they have to give and to support their site.