Menu

Monday - spaetzle with butter and sage -- A simple pleasure.

Tuesday - chicken cranberry paninis

Wednesday - biscuits and gravy with poached eggs -- with Bundo and Kyungsun!!

Thursday - Thai chicken salad

Friday - Mexican cheese soup -- This is my slow cooker recipe for the week. I've made it before though, so I know it's a keeper.

Saturday - tuna cakes with creamy chive sauce on English muffins -- Before going to my first GT football game : )

Sunday - baked French onion soup -- Still have to get this one on the blog!


Happy cooking!

What I Ate Wednesday

For breakfast I had one of my favorite homemade granola bars and a maple walnut cookie. Yep, a cookie with breakfast : )

I tried making my granola bars without the brown sugar as I mentioned I planned to, and though the taste was still great (didn't miss that extra sugar at all!), they didn't hold together as well.....As I expected. Still working on the best solution, but for now, they are great either way. Just depends if you'd rather have a more durable bar or less sugar.

Lunch was a banana with peanut butter, almonds, and a carrot

I had an afternoon snack of a homemade Larabar style bar (the pictured one was cut in half, but I ate the other half later in the afternoon), another cookie (I have to eat them while they're fresh, right?), and a glass of lemon kombucha.

I had several pieces of this pizza for dinner

I know my sauce recipe has a long ingredient list, but it's really worth it! It's such a great sauce. Yum!

Here's a picture from our dinner party on Friday.

Menu

Monday - beef and Guinness stew on mashed potatoes

Tuesday - chicken dumpling soup -- I didn't end up making this last Sunday because we had an impromptu potluck style dinner with a few friends.

Wednesday - pepperoni pizza -- previously made, just have to pull it out of the freezer!

Thursday - Having dinner at a friend's place : )

Friday - butter chicken (leftovers that I froze from last time), naan, and rice

Sunday - Indonesian beef stew -- A new slow cooker recipe I'm trying!

Muesli - The New Oatmeal

I seem to know way more people that don't like oats than people that do like oats... At least oats in the form of oatmeal. I get it. I used to only like it with chocolate chips, and that was pushin' it.

Now I really like oatmeal, but I eat oats in many different ways.

Muesli is my current favorite. It's so easy to make, healthy, tastes nothing like oatmeal, completely customizeable, refreshing, and delicious. It's great for Summer! I guess I'm posting this slightly late for that statement, but there's still plenty of fruit around, and plenty of heat where I am!

Never heard of muesli? There are different ways to make it, and it can be bought in a box, but I'll give you a quick run down of how I do muesli.

1 part rolled oats, 2 parts milk, soaked together overnight in the fridge with whatever add-ins you like. That's it!

You could even just soak the milk and oats together overnight and throw in your additions in the morning if you prefer, but I like to have it all mixed together for the whole night so that the flavors can blend, and the milk will pick up some sweetness from the fruit (if you added fruit, that is).

Here are most of the ingredients necessary to make a few of my favorite kinds of muesli.

Banana Walnut

1/4 cup oats

1/2 cup milk

A couple tablespoons of walnuts

1/2 a banana, sliced

Pear Cinnamon

1/4 cup oats

1/2 cup milk

1/2 a pear, diced

A few hefty shakes of cinnamon

Marshall's Muesli

1/3 cup oats

2/3 cup milk (plus an extra splash)

A couple tablespoons of almonds

A few hefty shakes of cinnamon

pinch of mace (optional)

2 tsp. maple syrup

And there you go! Breakfast for three! (three people, one day OR one person, three days!)

I've only scratched the surface of what you could put in your muesli here, so be creative! When the blueberries were abundant and cheap I was really enjoying those in my muesli. Dried fruit works great. Walnut-raisin was a combo I enjoyed before Summer. Get it? Don't follow a recipe, follow your pantry, your budget, and your taste buds : )

Menu

Monday - butter chicken -- Had to make a Marshall favorite shortly after he returned ; )

Tuesday - honey lime chicken -- I recently remembered about my good ole' friend the slow cooker! I went on a pinterest rampage searching for slow cooker recipes that I thought we'd like. I ended up with several and I plan to try at least one every week. And, of course, the favorites will be shared here later.

Wednesday - pepperoni calzones -- Using these crust and sauce recipes.

Thursday - chicken and black bean enchilada skillet

Friday - chicken enchiladas

Sunday - chicken dumpling soup


Happy Monday!

Exercise Motivation - How I Keep Going

I wasn't feeling inspired to write over the past week. 

Well, I actually was until I remembered that Marshall has the camera in England, none of the the recipes I wanted to blog are photographed, and I wasn't about to ask him to mail it back ; ) ...First of all, that would be ridiculous, and second of all, that would be ridiculous. The first ridiculous is in regards to the cost, time, and effort he'd have to put into sending it back, and the second ridiculous is in regards to all of the photos I'd be missing out on from England! The camera will be coming back shortly. And more importantly, my husband is coming with it! 

But today I decided to discuss something different. If you're reading this blog and know the name of it, you could probably guess that I mostly talk about food. After all, it is a food blog! But for those of you who know me, you know that I really like to exercise. I'm a personal trainer, runner, fitness fanatic, fitness freak.....Whichever label you like best is fine with me. That being said, it's quite a big part of my life.

I plan on five workouts a week, sometimes falling to four, sometimes making it to six, the occasional three, and let's be honest, some weeks it just doesn't happen. In general, I don't workout when I'm sick, and if it's causing me a lot of stress to fit a workout into my day, I'd rather skip the stress and the workout then spend time working out simply to combat the stress. Make sense? But if I'm being honest, I do make it happen more often than I don't. 

I know this is something a lot of people struggle with, and I'd like to offer some tidbits of advice that have helped me along the way. 

First, working out is all mental. Okay, okay, there is a physical aspect. But as long as you're not setting unrealistic goals for yourself, the physical aspect should be attainable. It's really a matter of if you can win the mental game you're playing against yourself. 

I also see my body as a gift from God, and one that I should take special care of. It's the only one I get, right? I want to be capable of anything He calls me to do, and be the healthiest me that I can. 

Are you competitive? When I'm working out alone I pretend that someone else is there telling me I have to run a little farther, have to hold my wall sit a little bit longer, I have to do 10 more seconds of my ab workout, etc. And if I do, I win. And the really good part about this is that you're not making someone else feel bad about themselves by winning all the time, because they're not there. I hope I don't sound delusional, it's just a method that works for me.

If you don't have that ability to compete with yourself (meaning, you're happy to lose) and just need accountability, find a workout partner.

Set goals. Specific goals. Such as, I want to lose 10 pounds by Christmas, Or maybe you don't want/need to lose weight but would like to be able to plank for 1 minute. Or you could simply set the goal to workout three times every week. 

I find that motivational quotes help me in the middle of workouts when I don't want to keep going, and when I feel like I'm in a fitness rut. Here are a few of my favorites that I have come up with or come across.

Working out is as optional as going to work.

This is one of the best for me. I have been at the gym many times because of this piece of motivation.

When you aim for perfection you discover it's a moving target.

Some may find this discouraging, but this encourages me. It reminds me that I should workout day after day, week after week, striving to get as close to perfection as possible. And since I'll never get there I need to workout my whole life. Yes, I find that encouraging. I think it's because the more goals I achieve, the more I need to set. And the goals are what keep me going. If I could achieve all possible goals by the time I was 30 then I'd have no motivation after that. 

Sometimes you just have to move in order to quiet the mind.

Working out is one of my favorite ways to spend me time. When I run I get completely lost in my thoughts, sort out whatever may be going on in my mind, praise and pray to the Lord, AND it relieves stress.

How many times have you worked out and regretted it, and how many times have you skipped a workout and regretted it?

For me, I have never regretted a workout, and I have definitely regretted not working out. 

Don't stop when it hurts. Stop when you're done.  

How can you argue with that?

I hope that someone found this encouraging, motivating, or even funny (But preferably one of the first two). Making people laugh is important to me too, so if you find it hilarious that I workout against myself, I'm totally okay with that. As long as you're heart is a little healthier from the laughter.

Laughter is the best medicine, right?

Yes, yes it is. I did a speech about that in college : )

 

My Pizza Crust and Sauce Recipes

I can't claim credit for these great recipes because I didn't create them myself, but I have no idea where I got them from. So just know that someone out there made these recipes, they're great, and you should try them : )

Ingredients for Pizza Sauce:
6 oz. can tomato paste
3/4 cup warm water
3 Tbsp. grated parmesan
1 tsp. minced garlic (I often use garlic powder for this)
2 Tbsp. honey
3/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. each dried oregano, basil, marjoram, and black pepper
1/8 tsp. red pepper flakes
a pinch of cayenne
salt to taste

Directions for Pizza Sauce:
Combine all ingredients in a small ball, let sit in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes for flavors to meld.

Marshall likes more sauce than me, so I think this is too much for a pizza and he thinks it's just about right. It just depends on the size of your pan and how much sauce you prefer. If you like your sauce thin, this is probably enough for two pizzas.

Ingredients for Pizza Crust:
3 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
2 Tbsp. oil
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. white sugar
1 cup warm water

Directions for Pizza Crust:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients together. Add oil and water and mix until dough comes together. It will probably be a little sticky, but that's fine because you'll need a flowered surface for rolling anyway. I just put some flour on my counter and on the dough ball so it doesn't stick to the rolling pin either. As soon as you have it mixed together, roll it out, poke all over with a fork (to prevent it from bubbling up when pre-baking), and place in the oven for about 8 minutes.

My circle pizza pan has a 14" diameter, and my pizza stones are 14" x 15". We like a thin crust, so this makes two pizzas for us. You can definitely do a half recipe if you're only making one pizza and want the crust thin. I've done this many times, and I'll give you a tip; Don't cause yourself the trouble of being exactly precise with the amount of yeast in a half recipe ; )  But what I commonly do is make two pizzas at a time, throw one in the freezer and throw one in the oven. The frozen one should have the pre-baked crust, have all the ingredients on it, but then wrapped well to be frozen prior to cooking.


The picture below is quite old and I don't think I have ever put it on my blog. As I mentioned earlier, Marshall likes much more sauce than I do. We usually compromise and go somewhere in the middle, which doesn't really make sense since then neither of us have it exactly how we'd prefer, so that time we made a crust barrier down the middle, he had his sauce his way, and I had my sauce my way (And different toppings as you probably noticed).

 In THIS post I explain how I made the tomato-basil-mozzarella pizza.

In general, pizza pleases everybody. I've made pizzas using the crust and sauce recipes listed above for people from all over the world (quite literally), and it's always a hit.

Why not give it a try? Even if you mostly entertain Americans ; )