Cereal, Scarves, and 25 Things

Hey all ... the weekend has arrived!

First off, for all those that might care or not care an update on how much I love my still-fairly-new Golden Flax Ezekiel cereal ... I have it with frozen berries, almond milk and sprinkle some cinnamon on top. (I have also recently put a dab of agave nectar in with it, making it taste even better! However, I don't all this all the time). I find myself perfectly content in eating the exact same breakfast every day and look forward to each morning. Yum! In other news, my lovely, crafy, good-at-just-about-everything mom FexEx'ed me three scarves that she made and they had arrived when I got home from work ... I think my favorite is the green one. And though my mom will probably never read this ... Thanks, Mom! (btw, Danelle, if you're reading this, she has instructed me that one is yours, so now you know you're getting one;)
Normally, I don't do things like this, but since all the cool kids are doing it (?), and since I've gotten tagged a few times on Facebook already, and after having read healthy ashley's post, and since I don't have anymore neat recent food pictures, I've decided to follow suit with "25 Random Things About Me" ...

1. My wonderful husband and I will have been married 2 years already on June 23rd.
2. All I do at my job is type all day, and I really like it.
3. I love to read but am finding with my more "real job", "grown up" life it's hard to find any time to do it.
4. I love food.
5. I'm extremely grateful I had my sister growing up. We've always been really close and now live six hours away from each other and I often really miss her.
6. I feel like I have really started to become "me" this past year or so and am loving it.
7. I want to become more spontaneous as my life seems to get busier and busier and I start to feel older and older.
8. I recently have been thinking I may want to pursue something like a Nutritionist degree.
9. I want to love people and be known for my love for them.
10. The thing I want the very most in my life is to be apart of what God is doing.
11. My prayer is, "Lord, Thy government come, Thy policy be done on earth as it is in heaven".
12. Only within the past couple years have I become interested in health, nutrition and cooking.
13. I love my husband more and more each day and am SO thankful for him and our live together.
14. In high school, I often preferred hanging out with my grandma on a Saturday night rather than doing anything else. (that's just how cool she is;)
15. I think brussell sprouts are really good.
16. I never dated nor kissed anyone until I met my now-husband.
17. Sometimes I depend on my daily routine too much and forget to have fun and just live life.
18. I love the feeling after a good workout after I didn't feel like working out but did it anyways. (ha, a couple years ago I never worked out and never thought I'd love it).
19. My husband and I love to workout and lift together.
    
20. I'm grateful and amazed at the (un)answered prayers that have happened in my life.
21. Just like my sister, I often miss times with my best friend growing up, Danelle, and don't know what I would ever have done without her.
22. I never realized how much work puppies really can be until we had two at the same time.
23. I like to watch good movies.
24. I think it would be neat if there were still balls like in Pride & Prejudice, and I think it would be neat if I could talk like that.
25. I love this journey of life. I'm grateful for the past, doing my best to live in the now, and am excited for the future!

And that's all for now! I'm sure I'll think of things I would have rather put up there later but oh well!

Have a great weekend!!! Anyone have exciting plans?

Sprout Hummus

Happy Thursday!

Today as I got the mail after work I discovered this in the mailbox ... I haven't decided what I think about this magazine yet. This is only the second issue I have read. In the first one, not much interested me but this one is way better so far. I haven't gotten a chance to read through it all but upon opening it I found an article about sprouting that immediately caught my attention since we (or more so my husband) has been sprouting different beans and grains lately. I was excited to discover several different recipes/ideas using sprouts. I then saw Sprout Hummus and thought fun! I want to try that. There was conveniently already some sprouted garbanzo beans and quinoa in the fridge (thanks, Erik!) so I whipped some up.
It turned out really good ... yum!

Here's the recipe:

1 cup sprouted beans, peas or lentils (I used garbanzo beans and quinoa)
2 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste (I left out the salt and still love it)

• Boil bean sprouts 10 minutes or until soft then drain. Mix with remaining ingredients by mashing with a fork. (For a smoother consistency, use a food processor). Serve with seasonal vegetables, chips, crackers, or toasted pita bread. Serves 6 as an appetizer.

I think I'm going to have to have some sort of wrap with hummus for lunch tomorrow ; )

Hope you've all had a great Thursday ... who's ready for the weekend??

Wonderful Wednesday

Hey all, how's it going??? Hopefully your Wednesday has been good/was good. Now that Wednesday is drawing to a close it sure feels like this week has been flying by!

My husband made some more flour less sprouted-grain bread last night, but altered it a little from last time. We're discovering to make it into a "normal" bigger loaf of bread it's going to be quite the process! You're actually supposed to dry out some of the sprouted grains and then grind them into a flour-like consistency, among other things. So, he kind of just took a short cut last night and didn't do all of that and it still tasted really good. But, getting it the way we want it is going to be a process! Meanwhile, the experiments taste pretty good themselves : )

My lunch today consisted of a spinach leaf salad (I like those, if you can't tell!) with some of this chopped up inside of it ... Baked chicken breasts with sliced fuji apples and baby carrots sprinkled with cinnamon. It tasted oh-so-good in my salad!! (I also ate a yummy tangerine). Speaking of tangerines, can anyone explain to me why some tangerines have seeds and others do not??

And random picture my husband snapped of me and Adrian as I was bundling up to face the cold right before work this morning.As every Wednesday night, Erik and I are helpin' with youth group tonight. Being the last Wednesday of the month, (already?!?!) it's small group night, or as we call it "Tribe night" (we're division leaders of the "Central Tribe"). Tonight our topic is:

Romans 12:1-2:

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." -the message Bible-

And that's all for me ... only two days left until the weekend!!! : )

Turkey Burgers and Mr. T

Hola!

Since I always seem to give the weather updates of the day, haha, today was about 15 degrees ... is it Spring yet??

I've had some clumsy moments lately, but I'll get to that in a minute. Last night, dinner was turkey burgers on an Ezekiel bun with some almond cheddar cheese, sliced onions, honey mustard and spinach leaves served with brussel sprouts (my favorite!) So, I get my plate all fixed up, I'm really hungry and my mouth is watering in anticipation. I pause to take a picture (of course), then finally I sit down to eat. I was kinda messing around on my laptop while I was eating, a little less than halfway done, and my plate was kind of at the edge of the table. Insert clumsy moment. The next thing I know, I somehow bumped my plate and there is my plate, on the ground, food all over the floor, and my plate breaks clean in half. Needless to say, it made me very sad! And I had been enjoying my food so much!!

My husband came to my rescue though and picked most of it up for me, recovered what could be recovered and even got me a new plate and put some more veggies on it. What a nice guy ... he saved my dinner! Haha. Theeen, this morning while I was going up the stairs to my floor at work I completely fell up the stairs and dropped everything I was carrying (but thank goodness my Tazo Zen tea didn't spill!!). It actually hurt more than you'd think, but I quickly recovered (and no one saw;)

Back to today ... here was my on-the-treadmill entertainment today ... I'm a big fan of the A-Team ... especially BA, aka Mr T. If anyone else out there likes Mr. T, I'm sure you'll appreciate this:
Haha, I love it.

And my snack after work today was a piece of toasted hemp bread with cashew butter ... so good! And last but certainly not least, For the Love of Peanut Butter is organizing a blog "Secret Cupid" Valentine's Day exchange and if you want to be apart of it, you've got to let her know by the 30th ... so check it out!

That's all for me ... peace out girl scouts! ha.

Water, Chili, and Almond Cheese

Well, weather's back to being 16 degrees and snowy here in my part of Missouri ... joy oh joy. Ha, but despite the cold, my Monday went very well.

Here's some more weekend recaps ... one of the most exciting things was that we got a reverse osmosis, yay! Tap water is disgusting, and I don't like buying a bunch of bottled water so I really hadn't been drinking like any water when I'm home. I just try to drink a bunch at work when I have the water/ice machine, haha ... (though I'm not sure that tastes great either but it's typically so cold I don't notice). My wonderful husand put that in on Saturday and now our water tastes good! : ) Not a very good picture but here is our lovely new clean water spout. Yesterday was my mother-in-law's birthday so after church we had her over for lunch. We had turkey and white bean chili served with a spinach salad that had chopped apples, carrots, dried pitted dates, almond cheese, and dried goji berries with some good ole Mrs. Dash garlic and herb seasoning with red wine vinnegerette. (sorry, no salad picture). Here's the basic recipe I used for the chili in case anyone cares, but I made mine in the crock pot, added some black eyed peas and rice, and just chopped up plain old tomatoes. Speaking of almond cheese ... we also got some of that this weekend because Hyvee was out of the cheese we normally get. That being said, we may not get the cheese we normally get anymore becuase this is so good! We got mozzarella and cheddar and they're both really tasty! I would definitely recommend it.

And to end this blog, here's a random quote for the day that I like to think about by C.S. Lewis (does anybody LOVE the Chronicles of Narnia as much as me??)

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." -CS Lewis

Hope you all had a great Monday! : )

Whole Foods Recap, Homemade Sprouted Bread

Hey all!

I feel like it's been forever since I last posted but it's only been a day! ha. This weekend has felt really long and way too short at the same time. Anyways, our Whole Foods trip/grocery shopping was good, as always. We were out of just about everything it seems. In fact, I didn't realize how much we didn't have until my husband cleaned out the fridge yesterday morning before we left (he's the best, btw!!). Here it is before ... aaaand after ... That's much better : ) Here are some of our Whole Food trip highlights...
Yes, I finally got some almond butter and I love it!! It's definitely a toss up between cashew butter and almond butter for favorites at the moment. Along with that, some more cacao nibs, coconut butter, organic vanilla, cacao powder, and some natural toothpaste. Haven't ever used any and didn't really know what kind to get but we were out of toothpaste and thought why not? I like it so far.

As you can tell, a couple of those new items are baking items which leads me to this ... my husband made his first attempt at flour less, sprouted bread yesterday and it went very well! We didn't even have a clue if it would turn out and it needs perfected but it tasted really good and now we know it will work. So ... here is some more sprouting grains in the making for some more near future bread making perfection ... Today has been good, too, but as this post is already becoming pretty long I'll probably talk more about it tomorrow ...

So, you all have a great Sunday evening!! Anyone ready for Monday yet? (Personally, I'd like to have one more day of weekend! haha).

Also ... Kelly at Every Gym's Nightmare is having a "The World is Fat" book giveway that ends this Friday, Janary 30th so check it out : )

Thick Greek Yogurt & Grocery List

It's the weekend!! : )

Since my husband only works one weekend a month now I've come to really look forward to the weekends. (He used to work at least every other and have crazy hours!) So anyways, as I previously mentioned yesterday, we're hittin' up Whole Foods tomorrow. I'm proud of us because two weekends ago we bought tons of groceries and they have lasted us up until now, minus one trip to get a few things like fruit and milk. We try to at least only have to go to the grocery store once a week and we pretty much never eat out and both pack our lunches everyday and my husband (and myself) eat a lot so we kinda have to stock up. How often do find it necessary to grocery shop?

(In case you didn't read this last time I said it, the closest WF is about an hour away, so we have to plan to go there on weekends such as these). We don't always get to grocery shop there but we love it when we can because there's a lot there that we love that we can't get where we live (or that's just not as expensive as it is here in our Hyvee health food section.) So ... there is a grocery list to come shortly in this post ...

My most recent batch of greek yogurt turned out nice and thick because I let it strain all day while I was at work ... just thought I'd share that with you all ... I love greek yogurt! Aand, here's what we're planning on getting tomorrow ...

DAIRY (and a little bit of non dairy)

• Organic skim milk
• Organic eggs
• Organic 2% cheese slices
• Unsweetened Almond milk (chocolate and vanilla)

FRUITS/VEGGIES

• Mushrooms
• Apples
• Bananas
• Frozen Berries
• Dried goji berries
• Frozen Veggies
• Brussell Sprouts
• Spinach Leaves
• Baby Carrots
• Lemons
• Tangerines
• Tomatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Kale

OTHER

• Olive Oil Cooking Spray
• Natural Almonds
• Truvia
• Ezekiel Bread/Hemp Bread
• Peanut Butter
• Bee Pollen (erik likes to eat this on a piece of toasted bread with peanut butter, and we'll often grind it with cacao nibs and flax seed and eat it with yogurt ... here's some info on it)
  
• Cacao Nibs
• Ezekiel Buns
• Tea
• Canned Tuna/Salmon
• Canned Beans
• Ezekiel Cereal
• Rice
• Heinz Less Sugar Ketchup
• Honey Mustard

MEAT

• Frozen Mahi Mahi Burger/Ahi Tuna Burgers
• Ground Turkey
• Frozen Chicken Breasts

*just in case anyone cares, the items in italics we'll actually get at our good ole local Hyvee

And that's all folks ... what are your weekend plans??

64 Degrees, Golf, and Chicken

Guess what? When I got off work it was 64 degrees!! It hasn't been this nice in quite awhile and it's wonderful! I even rolled my window down on the way home from work : ) And then when I got home, I opened my front door to let the lovely weather inside ... I love it! (I'm not bothering to think about the fact that tomorrow's supposed to be back in the 20s).This is what I wish I were doing right now ...That's me in high school. I golfed all through high school and unfortunately haven't done much since, but today really feel like it. On my way inside from putting my car in the garage I even took a club out of my poor dust collected golf bag and swung it (ha, as best as I could in a garage while holding two bags).

Now for some food ... don't have many food pictures today, just last night's dinner. Once again, I baked some chicken breasts. This was one of those put together something with what you have left in your kitchen kind of meals, as we really need groceries! (We're hittin' up Whole Foods on Saturday though: ) I basically just threw some chopped zucchini squash, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms in with some chicken breast and put an assortment of seaonsings on it all. It tasted pretty good, though some of the sweet potatoes weren't quite soft enough. And now I'm off to enjoy the rest of this lovely weather, do some boflex-ing, eat dinner and spend the evening with my hubs : )

Catch you all later!

Burt Review, Hemp Milk, and Rice

Well, only two more days until the weekend : ) I'm excited because it's supposed to be 55 degrees tomorrow, woo hoo! I won't know what to do with that nice weather! Although, today is has reached the mid 40s.

After work, I looked at my phone to find a lovely voice mail from my wonderful husband that simply said, "Just wanted to say hello and I love you!" : ) That makes a nice ending to a day of work!

A few people asked how I liked the new shampoo, so ... here's my unofficial review of Burt's Bees Volumizing Pomegranate & Soy Shampoo & Conditioner (after having used it once) ... I love it! First off, I love the smell ... pomegrante & soy ... mmm ... it smells are good as it sounds! While the shampoo was thinner than I was expecting, I thought it worked great. My hair didn't seem to be nearly as ratty as it normally is afer being washed and conditioned and it has felt very soft and fresh all day. I've been wanting to try more natural shampoo/conditioner and I think I found myself a winner : ) (and just a side note, I absolutely loved the face wash, too ... it felt so good!!).

Next up, I said we might have Chickpea Turkey Burgers last night buuut we didn't. (But they will be coming soon!) After we worked out we were just hungry and wanted something fast! So, we just took some frozen salmon burgers out of the freezer and had them with some steamed veggies. (On, of course, an Ezekiel bun and a slice of 2% organic cheese, and some less sugar ketchup). And here's my husband's plate also with another burger on Ezekiel bread with rice & quinoa ... he's a growing boy : ) For breakfast this morning, I had my cereal with hemp milk and a half a banana. We're out of almond milk and we had some hemp milk that we're not sure if we like, ha. So, I was forced to use it and decided I'm starting to like it with my cereal.
















Anyone have thoughts on hemp milk??






Last by not least, here's out rice blend for the week ... Wild Rice, Pearled Barley, and Quinoa. Hope you all have had a great Wednesday. Erik and I are gonna eat pretty soon and then we'll be off to help with youth group. I'll leave you with this quote that I got e-mailed to me today ... I figured many of you would appreciate it : )

"Man cannot live on bread alone. He must have peanut butter."

-bill cosby-

Burt's Bees

Hello everyone!

How's it going??

After work today, I had to stop by Target to pick up a few things and while I was there I picked up some Burt's Bees shampoo, conditioner, and some face wash. I LOVE Burt's products. It all got started with Burt's Bees chap stick (the best chap stick in the world ... does anyone agree?) I haven't ever used their shampoo and conditioner before but I'm excited to take a shower tonight. And it smells so good ... pomegranate ... mmmm! After that I came home and had a night warm cup of tea and a piece of toasted cinnamon raisin bread on Ezekiel bread with cashew butter (and we're almost out!).Speaking of almost being out of things, our dried goji berries are gone and I never thought I'd end up saying this but I actually want more!! Ha, I officially like them now. (Though frozen, I'm still not sold).

Cutting this a little bit short today, next I'm off to use the Boflex with the husband ... (yes, I'm working out today!!). I'm thinking of making Chickpea Turkey Burgers for din-din tonight but we'll see what we feel like when we're done. Maaaaybe I'll have some pictures of tonight's dinner up tomorrow ; )

And to end this lovely post, here's a random quote for the day:

"You'll be the same person in 5 years time as you are now, except for the books you read and the people you meet" --John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach

See you all later! : )

Earphones, Salad, Chicken, and Lack of Working Out Blues

Well, I don't really feel like I have anything exciting to say today. I had a pretty good Monday, though! I realized today that January is already two weeks away from being over ... weird!!

Work was slightly more entertaining than usual because I got these last night and got to use them today ... new headphones. They work really good!! I basically listen to recorded statements of insurance claims and type them all day long, so it really helps to have good earphones! So far they work a whole lot better than the ones I did have.

Here was lunch today ...Spinach leaf salad with a little over half a can wild pink salmon, some sprouted kidney beans and sprouted rice, a half of an apple sliced, mushrooms, Mrs Dash Garlic and Herb Seasoning, some onion powder, then sprinkled with some hemp seeds. I then sprayed on some white wine vinaigrette. It was very tasty!

Aaaand, for dinner we had chicken.I had a pack of 6 frozen breasts so I baked them. I seasoned them with chili powder, Mrs. Dash Garlic & Herb seasonings and added a sliced apple, a can of garbanzo beans, and chopped mushrooms and onions. I then sprinkled some chopped spinach leaves over top along with some cinnamon. With my chicken breast and small portion of garbanzo beans, we also had steamed brocolli.

And folks, I think that's about all I have to say! I've been having problems motivating myself to work out lately : ( ... I'd been really good about working out almost every day for a long time and lately I've been pretty bad at it. So, I hope this week I can improve! It's making me antsy!

How'd your Monday go??

Relaxing Sunday

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Last night Erik and I went to see Marley & Me (we were going to see Gran Torino but it was sold out already ... too bad). Anyways ... oh my goodness ... I figured it would be sad and good just because of what I've heard about the book but I had no idea! I seriously have never cried that much during a movie before. Ha, I told Erik that if we would have been home watching it I think I literally would have been sobbing!! (And though he may not like me to mention this, my husband even shed a few tears -- plus some more). It was a very good movie, but I'm a huge softee when it comes to dog movies like that because I love dogs.

Speaking of which, we couldn't help but love our dogs more than normal when we got home from the movie so I had to take pictures of them while they were playing last night. Adrian looks kinda sad in this picture but she's really just staring Rocky down giving her the, "wanna play??" look where at any moment she could pounce off the chair and dart towards Rocky. As it turns out, Rocky pounced her before she had the chance ...And so play time began ...Adrian's funny, she'll actually stampede and scratch her paw on the ground like she's about to charge when she's trying to get Rocky riled up to play. Haha, they make for some interesting times.

Switching subjects ... after work yesterday, I bought myself a planner. I recently find myself making random lists throughout the day of things I need to remember and/or do then I stick the list somewhere and forget about it, or they build as trash in my purse, so I decided to try to be more organized and write everything down in one place ... I'm hoping this will be effective!


Anyone else have this problem?



Anyways, my Sunday has been a very nice one so far. We went to church this morning and then went out to lunch at Panera with my mother-in-law.


I got the fuji apple salad with an apple and a honey ginseng hot tea. It was very good!Last but not least ... I tried to take a picture of my husband and I earlier but my husband was just goofing off, so I caught us both looking retarded laughing instead ...That's all for me ... hope your day is going great! : )

Saturday Sprouting Extravaganza

Ha, so I made my title a little more exciting than it is because we really haven't spourted that much, but it sounded fun and exciting.

Hooray for Saturday! I was sort of bummed about this weekend when it began because Erik was supposed to work all day, and we originally wouldn't have had time to do anything "fun" together, which is something I think we both need right now. Buuuut, it has turned into a better Saturday than I anticipated.

I went to work for about four hours this morning and then stopped by Target to pick up a few things, meanwhile, my husband got off work early!! yay!! : )

So, as I previously mentioned in an earlier blog about our sprouting quinoa, I mentioned that my husband had started sprouting a few other things, too ... and now excitingly they're about done! First up, kidney beans ... they're so crunchy and good! Not all of them are done, but they're sprouting great. Next up, sprouted wild rice ... You can't see them very good in this picture, so here's a cute little sprouted ricelette (yes, I think I made that word up) haha. Watching these sprout has been a lot of fun for us! Here's a picture of a sprouted quinoa that my husband discovered this morning as he was putting some quinoa in his lunch. It has such a huge sprout I coudln't resist showing you all! As far as my eats so far today ... I had the best cup of yogurt ever this morning. I guess my combinations were just right or something? I don't have a picture, because I wasn't expecting it to taste that good and I've photographed my yogurt before. Anyways, it had ground flax seeds and cacao nibs, a packet of truvia, some tart frozen cherries, aaand I sprinkled just a little agave nectar on top. Yum! Here was lunch ... A small Ezekiel wrap with some of last night's leftovers in it with a little of this on top ...... and an apple.

That's about all I can think to say for now ... hope you're all having a wonderful Saturday!

As for me, I've got a hot date tonight with my husband! ; )

Clean Eating

I sort of feel lame tonight because it's 7:30 on a Friday night and I have just finished a long, hot shower and now I'm all snuggled up in bed with my laptop and a magazine ... and it feels good!! (But, hey, I'm working tomorrow, so it's okay, right?) I discovered a magazine, Clean Eating, yesterday that I really like. If they're all like this one, it may just be one of my favorite magazines. It has a ton of neat, healthy recipes in it that, some of which I just might be trying this coming week. For dinner tonight, this sounded good ... (excuse the bad picture with the giant flash in the middle) We had Baked Sprouted Grain (I love Ezekiel!!) Penne with Chicken and Asparagus.It could have tasted better with some more tomato sauce buuut I used all I had. (I make my own "sauce" by simply blending together in a blender chopped tomatoes, garlic, basil, oregano, and olive oil ... healthy and yummy and quick!) First, I preheated the oven at 325, meanwhile I sauteed some onions and mushrooms, sliced some chicken breasts and added them to the onions and mushrooms. While this was going on, I cooked the penne about halfway and then strained. Then, I slightly steamed some asparagus. Once the chicken was pretty much cooked, I mixed everything all together with the tomato sauce, and but it in a baking dish. I then sprinkled it with a little bit of cheese and chopped spinach and baked it for around 20 minutes.As to not eat too much penne, I added some brussel sprouts to my plate. Though it doesn't look very appetizing, I promise it tasted very good!

Now I'm off to finish my magazine, drink my sweet orange Tazo hot tea, and enjoy my relaxing evening : )