2013 - Week 48

Hello from Week 48 :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Due to the holiday week, we had a few fun firsts. It was our first Thanksgiving in our new house, and although I woke up with a migraine, it still ended up being an awesome day. Some of our lovely friends brought over their Thanksgiving leftovers when I was not feeling well enough to go to their house, so even though I felt lousy all morning and slept most of it, I still got turkey and all of the fixings, and got to spend a whole day in our new house. I did get quite a bit of laundry done too . . . hooray for having a washer and dryer in my house :)

Thanks Bill & Kathi for all of the tasty food :) 

We also ventured out for our first ever Black Friday shopping experience. I don't like to give in to the consumer culture too much, but there were some great sales at our local home improvement store :) We clipped the items out of their weekly flyer before we went and knew exactly what we were getting, so it was pretty painless. We didn't even have to get up early :)

Since our TV is still not set up, I counted the walks that we went on with my in-laws over Thanksgiving weekend as my exercise for the week. It wasn't too cold out, so the walks were rather nice :)

I did make a few recipes this week, but nothing too exciting. I made the roasted cauliflower that I had made before (still good as ever) as well as the Panera Bread focaccia bread recipe (I use 2 tsp. active dry yeast and 1 Tbsp. Italian seasoning mix) and my mother-in-law's pumpkin pie recipe. My husband is the king of pie crust, so he made some wonderful crust while I whipped up the filling. I convinced him to try the braided edge on the pie, and it looked nice until, during baking, half of it fell into the pie . . . oops. Next time we'll have to attach the braid to the rest of the crust better, but it still tasted wonderful.

Braided crust

Pie when it was still beautiful ;)

As far as my crock pot meals good, we had the pork with veggies this week, and it wasn't very good. It was a little mushy, but I guess that is to be expected as it cooked 12 hours (8 hours on low and 4 hours on warm). We still have another one of those, but that's okay...it was filling when served over rice.

That's it for this week . . . see you next week :)

2013 - Week 47

Hello from Week 47 :)

This week was full of unpacking. It's so nice to be getting settled in our new house. I did take some time to do some yin yoga to stretch out my muscles that were pretty sore from moving boxes around. It's just not as good because it's not in a heated studio, but it was still a good practice.

The following picture is of the first real meal we had in our house. It was the chicken broccoli alfredo crock pot meal that I prepped a few weeks ago. Overall, I would just review it ask okay . . . it needed more salt and some crushed red pepper and the sauce was very thin. The recipe said to "salt and pepper to taste" but considering the mixture contained frozen raw chicken, I was not tasting it, so adding it afterwards was okay. The second day we ate this, I put the sauce on the stove and thickened it with a cornstarch + water solution and it tasted better that way. The meal was rounded off with garlic bread and salad . . . not too bad :)

The better crock pot meal came later in the week with our first trial of the chicken taco soup. It was actually really good, just a slight kick, and full of good flavor and healthy ingredients. I added a bit of sour cream and topped it with some shredded cheddar cheese . . . yum. It was especially tasty scooped up with tortilla chis too :) I'm glad we have another frozen meal of that recipe to look forward to.

I did a little baking too and made some mint chocolate cookies from this recipe. I didn't really want to make cookies, I was more in a cake mood, but I had the chips to use, so I made them, and they were pretty good. Not my favorite (even though I do love mint chocolate), but good nonetheless.

Okay,  back to more organizing now . . . have a great week :)

2013 - Week 46

Hello from Week 46 :)

Now that we are all moved in, it's time to unpack and do lots of work around the house. That was my exercise this week . . . raking leaves and hauling boxes. Thankfully, I think we have most of the boxes moved to where they need to go now, so we just have to unpack, sort, and put everything away.

I did manage to find a little time (mostly for a few minutes before bed) to do a little knitting this week, even though we were so busy. Sadly the scarf is not done yet, but it's close. One of these days I'm going to be done, but for now, we've been spending most of our time cleaning, unpacking and organizing.

Speaking of, my new thing for this week was deep cleaning the washing machine that we were so graciously given by a friend. It came with their house and they already had one so they gifted it to us. I think the previous owners didn't clean it very well, so it was kind of gross, but I followed the directions on page 14 of this cleaning guide (with the addition of a load with the bleach container filled with vinegar and a rinse load of just hot water at the end) plus scrubbing in every nook and cranny I could reach. I think it's much better now and if I just keep doing the cleaning cycle about once a month it should stay nice and clean :)

In other cleaning news, the lights above our sink in our bathroom were frosted glass . . . or so I thought. Upon closer inspection, it appears they needed some dish soap and elbow grease. Which one of these is not like the others?

So much better :) 

Now, lest you think it was all work and no play for me this week, I present you with Snickers Apple Salad :) I actually forgot to take a picture of it once it was done, but it was beautiful and tasty :) I couldn't really remember how I'd made this in the past, so after looking at various recipes, I decided to try a combination of Candy Bar Apple Salad from Taste of Home and Snickers Caramel Apple Salad from chef-in-training.com. My recipe (which is a double batch of those recipes, of course) was:

2 - 8 oz. containers of lite whipped topping
8 medium Granny Smith apples (I know there are 9 in the picture . . . I got hungry)
16 fun sized "snickers" bars
2 - 3.4 oz. packages of vanilla pudding mix
2 C skim milk

I combined the milk and the pudding mix while I chopped the apples and candy bars up. Then I added them in turns with the whipped topping, folded it all together, and served it with caramel ice cream topping drizzled over the top. Yummy, and I didn't even have to turn on my oven ;)

Anything that starts with these ingredients is bound to be tasty :)

Well, I think that's all I have for this week . . . let me know if you have any other cleaning or organizing/unpacking tips for me. See you then :)

2013 - Week 45

Hi from Week 45 :)

This entry is going to be rather short because I don't have a whole lot to share. We were really busy all week packing and then on Saturday we had our big move. A huge "Thank You" to all of our friends that helped us move . . . I am so thankful I didn't have to move all of those boxes of books myself :)

I did manage to get my hour of Wii boxing in before we packed up the Wii and the TV and I'm still making progress there. I don't think I'll ever "beat" the game because the sensors aren't quite sensitive enough to pick up all of my movements, but it's definitely still good exercise.

Knitting is still going well too . . . the scarf is almost done :) Stay tuned for pictures of it soon. The only picture I really have to share with you this week is a brilliant Pinterest find that made moving my clothes much easier:

Wrap garbage bags over your clothes in the closet and move them "as is" to your new closet. I packed all of my hanging clothes in less than 10 minutes :) Hooray

Alright, I'm off to go unpack some more . . . talk to you all next week :)

2013 - Week 44

Hello from Week 44 :) This week has been very hectic as we prepare for our big move :)

My Wii boxing is still going well and my husband is starting to think I'll be able to beat up anyone that tries to mess with me ;) I'm not too sure about that, but it's a good workout at least. My task of knitting is still going well too . . . I started my third skein of yarn for my scarf and I think I should be able to finish it very soon. I can't wait to post pictures, I love it.

For my recipe this week, I'm sorry, but I can't actually give you the recipe. I had some leftover carrots, celery, an onion, some hamburger and some red potatoes from my Crock Pot Meal Prep Extravaganza last week, so I thought shepherd's pie would be a good option. I perused various recipes, and after finding so many that included things that I didn't have or didn't want to use, like canned soup or gravy, I finally decided this one sounded the best: Zippy Shepherd's Pie. I felt like doing it my own way though, so I basically just used that as a guideline (and that is also why I can't give you the recipe . . . I don't really know what I did). I browned the meat, drained off the fat, and then added various seasonings like Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, Pampered Chef red curry rub, salt and pepper. For the veggies, I cooked the onions in a bit of olive oil and then added some chopped up raw carrots and celery, a generous amount of garlic (have you figured out how much I love garlic yet? ;)), and two cups of beef broth. I let that cook, covered, until the veggies were done. Then I fished out the veggies with a slotted spoon and brought the broth to a boil and thickened it with some cornstarch + water. While I was doing all of this, I also had the potatoes (I don't even know how many . . . sorry) boiling and then my husband mashed them into red potato garlic goodness. I mixed all of the meat, veggies and gravy together and divided it between a 9" x 13" and an 8" x 8" pan, then he covered that mixture with the yummy potatoes and I topped them off with grated sharp cheddar cheese (Shh . . . I almost used a whole 8 oz. block of cheese . . . it was worth it :)). I placed them under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese had melted and slightly browned in a few spots. Looking back, I think I would have preferred it without the browned spots, but it was still really good. This was WAY better than my last attempt at shepherd's pie. So, be brave, add flavors that you like, and make up your own shepherd's pie . . . let me know what you come up with :) 

Mmm . . . Shepherd's pie :)