My friend Heather from college recently posted on FB about her spiralizer, and it was like my brain exploded. Why don’t I have one of those? I’ve done a few paleo “mock” pastas by cutting zucchini ribbons with a peeler, but it’s time-consuming and awkward. I WANT TO CRANK. So I started looking around. I found several of the “pencil sharpener” variety, but they seemed very limited. (Let’s be honest: a spiralizer is already pushing into unitasker territory. At the very least I wanted one that’s as versatile as possible.) The 3-blade crank model definitely seemed like the preferred model by experts*. Amazon had it, but to my surprise I actually found it cheaper locally at Victoria’s Basement. (They have a sale on now, so be quick if you want one.) I picked one up on Wednesday and then put it to use last night on some Zucchini Ribbon “Pasta” with Fried Egg. Obviously I went with spirals instead of the ribbons though! The machine worked great and wasn’t too awkward to rinse down afterwards. WHAT SHALL I SPIRALIZE NEXT?!

* I discovered to my utter amazement and delight that there is an entire food blog dedicated to spiralized vegetables. I’m not even kidding. I’m going to have to read all of it.

As you may have surmised, I didn’t quite make it the full 30 days for the Whole30. I made it 25 and then got a bit derailed by Australia Day. I had bircher muesli with yogurt that morning at breakfast, and then over the course of a long dinner party had a lot of alcohol and some chocolates too. I definitely paid the price the next day. (“SNOOKUMS HALP I HAVE POISONED MYSELF WAAAAAAAAHHHH!”) I finished out the week eating clean with the exceptions of a gummy worm Thursday (during an 8-hour work meeting, so really just eating one qualifies as superhuman restraint) and some drinks last night to celebrate our mortgage refinance. I’m feeling pretty good about transitioning to more of an 80/20 approach, which should allow for a bit more spontaneity and the occasional meal out as well.

Overall weight loss in January 2015: 5.3kg. Woot!

What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women – Breakfast for me is served with a side of rage today. Quotes that resonated:

• “Researchers interviewed 350 female entrepreneurs, and most cited “lack of available advisers” at the top of their list.”
• “…venture capitalists talk about the need to get 10-year-old girls into science in order to bring up the numbers of women they will fund, but don’t fund the ones already in the industry”
• “But the problem for women in the workforce is that there are many more mentees than mentors. Also, the tech industry is changing so fast that women even five or 10 years older may have very little of practical use to share with younger workers.”
• “Wadhwa often talks about the importance of “pattern recognition” among VCs. The male bankers simply have an idea of what a successful startup founder looks like, and young women like Carey and Mosenthal simply don’t fit.”

That said, there was a silver lining from this article: I signed up for Glassbreakers. I’m not sure they’ll approve someone from Australia yet, but I figured it’s worth a shot. It’s a great initiative. I’ve met less than a handful of women here that I thought would be suitable mentors for me, but I didn’t want to ask them for fear they’re already swamped with requests. It would be nice to think the next generation won’t have that problem to the same degree.

Brunch: Three eggs scrambled in ghee; pork chipolatas; salsa
Snack: Nuts
Dinner: Meat loaf muffins and cauliflower slaw

I’m trialling the new Australian streaming service Stan, so the Snook and I have finally started watching Deadwood. I was getting a little lost in the stylised dialogue for the first few episodes so I googled to see if I could find any recaps. To my surprise, TWOP came up. I thought it closed down last year! Instead, the fan outrage seems to have convinced NBC to keep the archives up. I happily started reading the first recap and then ran into trouble when subsequent pages kept timing out or getting stuck in a redirect loop. I guess that while NBC kept the site up, they sure as hell aren’t doing any maintenance on the servers. Just as I was starting to get really, really frustrated, I found the answer: TWOP One Pager. That awesome little online tool allows you to paste in a TWOP recap link, and it will then fetch all the pages and combine them into a single document. It works great, even on the crappy archives. Highly recommended!

Also highly recommended: Deadwood. Damn. Although the more I watch, the more the, uh, colourful vernacular threatens to impinge on my own vocabulary. I almost called the cat a c**ksucking hooplehead this morning.

Breakfast: Coffee with coconut cream
Lunch: Green salad with tuna, bacon, and baby beetroot
Snack: Apple
Dinner: Carrot and cardamom soup with some sauteed prawns

Breakfast: Apple and a couple handfuls of almonds; black coffee
Lunch: Leftover Paleo Tex Mex casserole
Dinner: Apple Dijon Burgers (no bun of course!) and oven-baked sweet potato fries

Could You Go 40 Days Without Being Mean? — The Cut – Given that they include sarcasm in there, I’m gonna have to say “No.” (I’m amused by imagining Kylie trying this experiment. I think her head might actually explode.)

Lessons on Women and Power Dressing — The Cut – Interesting thing to think about. I want to be someone who has a definable personal style, but I’m constantly getting distracted. I can never quite get it together to ruthlessly curate and edit a wardrobe to just things that go together. A few years ago someone gave me a tip that Sportscraft would suit me, and I’ll since bought several of their dresses. But they’re mixed in my closet with dresses from Op Shops, Target, Heart of Haute, Myer, and of course, dresses that I’ve sewn myself. If I’ve got an important meeting, I usually dress a bit more “grown-up.” (That’s how I actually think of it in my mind.) But at the end of the week on a Friday, all bets are off. Yesterday as I walked to work in a homemade sundress, cardigan, and sneakers, I found myself standing at a crosswalk next to a 10-year-old wearing pretty much the exact same outfit. Hmm. I secretly wondered if I looked ridiculous, a grown 37-year-old woman dressed like a grade schooler. I went from feeling happy and comfortable to a bit embarrassed. Maybe the real problem is that I OVERTHINK EVERYTHING, RIGHT?

I did dress “corporate” for the three months I worked at CBA, and I hated every minute of it. I hated having to always tuck in my shirt; I hated having to carry a “sensible purse”; I hated hated HATED women’s slacks. It was such a relief to get out of there and back into a more “startup” style culture where a bit more personal expression was expected. Maybe that’s why I haven’t settled on a work “uniform” yet – because my career has meant that I never really had to.

Still, my style has changed a little. The big change is that I wear dresses a lot, LOT more than I did just a few short years ago. When I first participated in Frocktober in 2011, one of my co-workers at the time commented with surprise that “You never wear dresses!” And now I’ve got enough for every day of the month plus some. And now here we are a mere three years later, and when I wear jeans now people comment on the novelty of it. So I guess that’s pretty much the extent of my style evolution these days.

Oh, and I wear a little makeup now, but only when I feel like it.

The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit | Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy recut into a single 4-hour film – Interesting! I would like to see that. I did laugh when I read this bit about one of the additional cuts s/he went back to make: “taking out the Bombur “barrel bounce” (which is apparently the bane of some people’s existence)”.

Huh. I just realised that I used “he” in the original version of this post, automatically assuming that it would be a guy who did this. That bothered me. I changed it.