I am a certified nutrition and wellness consultant, but I am not a doctor or a R.D. Everyone's nutritional needs are different, for specific medical questions please contact your doctor.
Product Review of the Week
Food Should Taste Good Tortilla Chips...coming soon!
What are your favorite songs to workout to? Any great recommendations?! Let me know! I need to make a new playlist of bootcamp songs and one for spinning!
Lately it feels like I am a cleaning lady 24/7. Whenever I turn around I need to dust or vacuum or clean the floor and I do laundry everyday. I know that I am not dusting and vacuuming everyday (although I am doing laundry on a daily basis – spit up and #2 on baby clothes can’t wait!), but it feels like it. So I need to figure out a new plan that helps me get the house clean without feeling like I am doing it all of the time.
Unfortunately, staying home with Anna (or teaching for that matter) does not allow us to afford a weekly cleaning lady, so that cleaning lady is me. I have no problem with this because I love having a clean house, but it does get monotonous.
So I have decided to make myself a cleaning schedule. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before now! I love schedules! If something is on the calendar or “the list” I love doing it and crossing it off. I am the person who writes shower on their to-do list just so I can cross it off. I even write things down I have already done to make myself feel more accomplished.
So in an attempt to make me feel like a more accomplished person – here is the schedule I created.
Daily:
Anna’s laundry every time I need to – so probably daily, especially when she starts eating real food!
make dinner
Dishes – all day….
washing the kitchen floor – it’s white tile – don’t ever get a white kitchen floor unless you want to wash it every day
Brady and I are good about sharing household chores.
He is charge of :
garbage
recycle
bills
yard
deck
fixing anything random (this includes adding batteries to Anna’s toys – which you have unscrew to add)
We have a list system worked out too. Either of us (but mostly me) can add things we want to get done to the list.
For example:
refilling the extra propane tank for the grill,
cleaning the ceiling fan in the kitchen
going through our socks and getting rid of old ones
Then we work on the list when we have time or on the weekends. This way – I don’t have to keep repeating myself about things I want to get done and Brady can just look and see what I want done and not have to guess.
I realized after being married for a short time that boys see things differently than girls. I couldn’t understand why he “couldn’t see” that the insides of our vents were dusty or cords to our Wii and DVD player were all tangled up. Then I realized that he didn’t care about these little details. He said he would be more than happy to fix them or clean them, but he was not going to “see” them. This is how the list was born.
How do chores at your house work? Do you split them 50/50 or do you each do certain things?
For someone who doesn’t eat meat, I sure cook it a lot! It’s hard to cook it for other people though because I don’t know how it tastes. This proved to be a problem with this dinner because I over “tenderized” it. I added quite a bit of meat tenderizer, not really paying attention to the fact that meat tenderizer = salt. So if you make this, don’t overdo it on the tenderizer, it won’t go over as well as you hope it will.
Chipotle steak
sirloin steak cut 2 1/2″ thick, figure about 3/4 lb per person.
4 cloves garlic
1 cup loosely packed cilantro
3T chipoltles in adobo(can in mex section)
1T mustard powder
2T coriander
2 T salt
2 T pepper
1/4 c fresh lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
pick up meat the night before and don’t freezein the am
sprinkle adolph’s meat tenderizer on both sides of the meat
put all ingredients in a food processor or blender to make paste
about 2 hours before grilling schmeer this paste on both sides:
For someone who doesn’t eat meat, I sure cook it a lot! It’s hard to cook it for other people though because I don’t know how it tastes. This proved to be a problem with this dinner because I over “tenderized” it. I added quite a bit of meat tenderizer, not really paying attention to the fact that meat tenderizer = salt. So if you make this, don’t overdo it on the tenderizer, it won’t go over as well as you hope it will.
Chipotle steak
sirloin steak cut 2 1/2″ thick, figure about 3/4 lb per person.
4 cloves garlic
1 cup loosely packed cilantro
3T chipoltles in adobo(can in mex section)
1T mustard powder
2T coriander
2 T salt
2 T pepper
1/4 c fresh lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
pick up meat the night before and don’t freezein the am
sprinkle adolph’s meat tenderizer on both sides of the meat
put all ingredients in a food processor or blender to make paste
about 2 hours before grilling schmeer this paste on both sides:
I made it for dinner tonight for Brady and our friends. It is a cheesy, gooey mess. This was a recipe he really like before but tonight he said it could have had more flavor. I omitted the jalapenos in this version but I am going to put them in the recipe so you add them.
Street Corn
5 ears corn on the cob
5 ears corn on the cob
1 T butter
1 onion diced
1 block 1/3 less fat cream cheese
1/3 c. parm. cheese
1/3 c. mozarella
1/2 c. minced pickled jalepenos
salt and pepper
shuck the corn
spray with olive oil spray
grill until charred somewhat on all sides
slice the kernnels off the cobs,set aside
brown butter and onion until just browned
add the corn into the skillet
add cream cheese and 1/3 cup grated fresh parm and mozzarella mixed
cook slowly until it all melts.
add 1/2 c minced pickled jalepenos
turn this gooey glop into a cassarole dish and top with crushed lime taco chips
heat until bubbles 350 20 min
I couldn’t eat any of it because Anna does not like when I have corn, but let me know if you try it!
What is one dish that you make that does not look as good as it tastes?
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I am having trouble connecting my camera to the computer and my time is limited so if it didn’t happen when I was working on it, then it didn’t happen this weekend.
Last night was really fun though! John and Ashley came over for dinner. We have been trying to coordinate with them for a while but our schedules just kept missing each other.
For dinner, I made ribs. It seemed like the thing to do because summer is almost over.
I cooked them for about 4 hours on 250 before Brady grilled them. This is because they like it when they fall off the bone.
I also made a potato salad that my Aunt Marilyn often makes. It was the first time I made it and I think it was a recipe to reuse again! The ingredients are simple and fresh.
And I made a variation of our family recipe of zucchini appetizer. I used a little 8×8 pan so this was more like a bread. This is also because I didn’t use any oil and used egg whites instead of eggs.
We also had watermelon and this delicious salad Ashely made.
Before dinner Brady put on his glasses because his allergies were bothering him and Anna had to figure out what happened to him.
I was trying to catch with you on the weekend but I think it is just not going to happen! So, we had a great weekend with a block party, wine party, bachelorette party, lots of friend time, new friends meeting Anna, runs, library trip and much more!
One thing I did over the weekend was try a new green smoothie. Anna thought it looked delicious!
I used the things that Americas Nutrition sent me to try out! They have an easy to use website with many things on it.
I had never tried Muscle Milk Light so I thought it might me good. I am not a huge protein person, but I don’t mind it. This has a great cookies and cream flavor. I think when this is gone, we will be buying some more. I also found it is good to mix a little in some plain yogurt!
And I put a scoop of this in my smoothie. It is similar to wheatgrass but made from barley.
Presentation of book: B+(soft cover, clean presentation, lots of great photographs, no pictures of many of the recipes )
Difficulty of recipes: B+(not many ingredients in each recipe but the recipes had a few steps that involved many different things)
Healthy: B+(many whole food ingredients were used, great way to keep veggies and fruits, lots of added sugars and salts to preserve)
Vegetarian/ Gluten Free: A(lots of options for this!!)
Entertaining: B+(you could use this to make great hostess gifts or favors for a party!!)
Overall, I think this book is really neat! It offers recipes from everywhere! Something from each season plus many other great ideas! I think this would be great for using to make Christmas gifts! I have a bunch of recipes flagged already!
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