Lifestyle Change: Prep Work

This weekend was a total loss in the Hopkins house.  Both of us were sick with the stupid common cold.  It was a bummer to be sick on a beautiful weekend, but I figure we'll have many more of those in our future as Spring approaches.  It's also better for me to get sick now and not in two weeks because...I'm going to New York City!  I have a job up there for 4 days and decided to go up a little early with Mom, stay on our Hilton points and spend some quality girl time around the city.  YAY!  So, it's much better to be sick now than then.

Back to the task at hand.  Even with the illness in the house, we kept up with the lifestyle change this weekend.  On Sunday afternoon, I decided I would pull out all of the items we need for a few days supply of food and plan our lunches for the week.  This is what my island looked like while I was prepping:

From Top Left: 

Oxo Scale, deli cheese, baby spinach in salad spinner, babybel cheese, grater (haha), lime ball, granola bars, grated carrots, grilled chicken, sliced avocado, applesauce, cheese sticks, my favorite knife in the entire world, roasted red pepper spread, chocolate soy milk, whole wheat tortillas, mustard, deli meats, tuna fish, natural peanut butter in jar and in little tupperware containers.  Also shown: leftover wedding napkins.  Someday we'll use them all up.  :)

On the Menu for the week :

(some items change for me because I can't handle yogurt and some other dairy items)

Breakfast (not shown):

1 Cup of Yogurt with 1/4 Cup of Blueberries and 1 Tablespoon of chopped almonds

3 Hard Boiled Eggs with 3 slices of lunch meat and a whole wheat english muffin

(or)

3 Egg Whites scrambled with 2 Tablespoons of Salsa and 1/4 Cup Avocado in  a whole wheat wrap

Snacks:

2 Tablespoons of Peanut Butter

1 Macintosh Apple

1 Cheese Stick (or) 1 Babybel cheese (or) 1 box of chocolate soy milk

1 3oz can of Tuna Fish with:

1 Tablespoon of mayo

1 Teaspoon of relish

1/2 Hard Boiled Egg White, chopped

Plus: 10 Triscuits

(or)

1 Tablespoon of Olive Oil

2 Tablespoons of Lemon Juice

1/2 Hard Boiled Egg White, chopped

Plus: 10 Triscuits

Lunch:

1 Whole Wheat Wrap

4oz of Grilled Chicken Breast

1/4 Cup of Avocado

1/4 Cup of Salad Greens

1/4 Cup of Shredded Carrots

1 long squeeze of yellow mustard or 2 Tablespoons of roasted red pepper spread

Wrap all ingredients together in burrito fashion

(or)

1/4 Cup of Whole Wheat Penne

2 Tablespoons of Pesto sauce

3oz Grilled Chicken, diced

1/2 Cup of Baby Spinach

3/4 Cup of grated carrots

2 Tablespoons of low-fat shredded cheese (I use mozzarella)

Can be served warm or cold

Dinner:

4oz Steak, sliced

1/4 Cup of Salad Greens

Two slices of whole wheat bread, toasted

Mustard or Steak Sauce

See?  It's really not that bad.  I'm serious, it's really not.  I haven't had any really bad cravings for cookies or other sweets.  We have these babies for chocolate cravings:

Mmmmm dark chocolate

The worst part of it all so far is the measuring and planning ahead of time.  Dan even mentioned something about it on Sunday night when I had covered the island in our kitchen with food.  He asked if I really felt that we could keep this up.  I told him we could...he just might need to help here and there.  After getting the initial panicked look (the man doesn't like to cook) and then the unsure look, I let him know I would only ask him to do jobs like fill the little tupperware containers with peanut butter.  :)

 I'm glad I got a lot of that out of the way on Sunday so I have a few days this week to go home, make dinner and go straight to bed with a cup of tea.

Go away cold!  Go Away!!

The Diet/Eating Plan/Lifestyle Change

Hops and I love to eat.  You can probably tell from the recent recipes I have put on the blog.  We both love sweet and savory foods.  There are very few foods we don't like.  In that category we have:

While I have serious issues with the things that Hops doesn't like, I've learned to live with it...and to hide mushrooms in his food.  No, I'm kidding.  Sort of.  Actually, I just don't make certain dishes, like beef stroganoff and chicken paprikosh as much because of his lack of love for mushrooms.

Recently, we both decided we needed to start eating healthier.  We also decided we will start exercising again.  Hops made the first move - he moved the treadmill from the downward-dog, storage position it was in when we had company at the beginning of the month to an upright, ready to be used position!  That's positive forward movement if I've ever seen it!

The biggest (and honestly hardest) change we are making is with our diets.  We're adjusting our food intake from 3 meals a day plus any random snacks a day we may want (whether it be a fiber one bar or an apple or a box of cookies).  Yes, box of cookies.  We've I've decided we're going to do the "Belly Off" diet.  After some research, it appears to be a healthy way of attacking a diet without starving yourself or leaving yourself wanting items you're not getting because "this week" you can't have "this item."  

You might notice, if you go to that link, that it takes you to Men's Health Magazine.  I will admit, I am not good at dieting.  No good at all.  I don't even like the word diet.  I think any time someone uses that word, it means they're not eating healthy.  Remember the Hollywood Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Grapefruit Diet and of course, the infamous Atkins Diet?  I'm sure there have been many people who have succeeded with diets like these.  What I want to see, though is what the people who lose all the weight on these diets say two, three years later when they can't handle it anymore and fall off the wagon?  What happened when you fell off the wagon?  What happened when you wanted a box of cookies?  When you wanted an orange?   Anyways, the reason I picked this one is because I want to do this less for me and more for Hops.  This eating plan is more geared towards men than women.  I am the cook in our house.  What I cook, he eats.  I want to make a healthier lifestyle not just for me, but for him, as well.  I asked him about this before I started and he agreed to start this change with me.  I love that about him.  If it is something that he sees is really important to me, he will do it for me.  Therefore, I will eat this way for him.

What I want to do with this eating plan is make it a lifestyle change.  It's like when we changed our financial lifestyle by taking Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey, this is making a lifestyle change in our eating habits.  Yes, we will still eat out every once in a while (we don't eat out a lot as it is right now) and yes, sometimes we'll eat really bad-for-you desserts.  The main goal is to stay on this plan, to stay within the 5-6 meals a day, to eat under a certain amount of calories per day and to lose excess weight.  

Here goes nothing.  Day 2 of the new lifestyle has ended and Day 3 has started.

The Easy Part:  Surprisingly, it's been easy to get up in the morning and make breakfast for Hops before he leaves at 6:20 every morning.
The Hard Part:  Figuring out a range of health snacks and lunch foods to send to work with him.  I'm easy, I can take a bunch of stuff and throw it all together at work.  I feel like I need to make his sandwiches and put together the snacks for the day for him.  He's not helpless by any means, I just like to do it.  That way I know he'll eat it, too.  We don't want to keep a lot of different fruits in the house because we don't want them to go bad.  He can't eat peanut butter and apples for every snack or he'll get tired of it.  So, it's all about figuring out what will work and what each of us enjoys eating.
The Next Big Challenge: The weekend.  The time when we both eat the most.  There are still things like Girl Scout Cookies and Wheat Thins and pretzels and other not-so-good for you things in the pantry that are easy access.  I'm hoping we can stay busy this weekend so we don't think about the foods we're not eating.

This isn't meant to be that hard.  No, we can't have cookies or cakes after dinner anymore but at the same time, we're not stuffing ourselves into oblivion and feeling really bad after eating a really good meal.

In future posts, I hope to write about how I'm planning ahead, making meals that are easy to toss into a bag to take with you and preparing for those times when you're just so hungry, the air sandwich isn't cutting it and your arm is looking better and better.

Funny of the Day

A couple of weekends ago, Hops and I put a whole bunch of pictures up on the walls.  I'll admit, most of these pictures were wedding pictures, but they weren't all of us!  At the top of our stairs is a narrow wall between two doors - one to the bathroom, one to the linen closet.  I have a bunch of photobooth pictures that I framed and wanted to hang up somewhere, so we decided this would be the perfect place.

Last night, Hops came upstairs and stopped in the hallway.  He came into the bedroom and said, "I love this picture of your parents.  You can tell what your Mom's next move is going to be..."

This is the picture he was talking about:

Now, if you know my Mom, you pretty much know what he was going to say next.  My family has problems talking with our hands.  It's inherited, I do it too.  Hops continued to say, "She's either in the middle of telling a story or she's looking at someone about to tell them a story.  That hand coming out is a sign, your Mom's about to tell a story.  'J, remember when we did this...blah blah blah...'"  

Ok, so maybe it wasn't as funny for everyone else, but I enjoyed it.

He then told me my Dad looks like Mr Magoo.

Roast Pork Fried Rice

I had a half of a pork tenderloin that I had cut off when I made another dish a few weeks ago.  I put it in the fridge to defrost on Thursday knowing I wanted to do something with it this weekend.  I started thinking about how delicious pork fried rice is and did a search for that online.  I had never roasted pork before, so this was new for me. I came across this post and decided to try it.  I liked the recipe for the roast pork, but I didn't have any packets of fried rice seasoning, so I made my own.  I tweaked the roast pork recipe a bit to work with just the items I had in the house.

Note, most of my recipes consist of ingredients I have in house.  I don't like to go out and buy something special just for one recipe.  So, I will tweak my recipes as needed just to keep me from having to drive to the grocery store one more time.  For example, I use regular onion instead of green onion in my fried rice.  Doesn't hurt it, in my opinion.  Also, you will never, ever, ever, ever find peas in any of my recipes.  :)

Here is what I came up with:

Roast Pork Recipe

2T Soy Sauce

2T Hoisin Sauce

1T Brown Sugar

1.5T Vegetable Oil

1/2 Heaping teaspoon Garlic Powder

1/2 Heaping teaspoon Cinnamon.  I used Vietnamese Cinnamon.

Pour all ingredients into a sturdy zip-lock bag with the pork and refrigerate for 8+ hours.  Mine went in around 7pm Friday night and I cooked it at Noon on Saturday.  Heat oven to 500 degrees.  Line an 8x8 glass pan with tin foil and place pork into pan.  (Do this step.  I didn't and I'm still trying to scrape out all of the charred black stuff from the bottom of my pan...)  Bake at 500 for 30 minutes. Cut into bite-sized pieces.

*Note: This was so, so very good, I couldn't stop tasting it as I was cutting it up in to bits.  Like I said above I had never roasted pork before and I was just taken by this simple yet super delicious meat!

Fried Rice Recipe

3 Eggs, scrambled

4 Cups of cooked rice

1/4 Onion, chopped

1 Carrot, chopped

4T Soy Sauce

1T Oil

1/4t Salt

1/4t Pepper

3/4t Garlic Powder

1t Sesame Seeds

Heat a wok to 350 degrees.  Toss in scrambled eggs and cook until firm, remove to plate.  Add oil to wok and then add onion and carrot.  Saute for a minute or two and then add the rice.  At this point, turn the heat down to 200.  Add the eggs to the mixture and blend rice and eggs with carrots and onions.  Add the soy sauce.  Add salt, pepper, garlic powder and sesame seeds.  Now, toss in the pork.  Mix all of the ingredients together well and serve warm.  

Olive Oil and Tomato Pizza

I have two ways of acquiring pizza dough.  I like to make my own.
When I do, I use this recipe from Joy of Cooking:

Pizza Dough
Combine, in a mixing bowl or bowl of heavy duty mixer and let stand about 5 minutes:
21/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
11/3 warm water
add
31/2 cups all purpose flour
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon salt

Kneed for 10 minutes with dough hook on medium low speed until dough is smooth and elastic.  Transfer to bowl that is coated in olive oil.  Cover with plastic wrap and a twoel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume.  (about 2hrs...depends on how warm the area is).  Punch dough down and divide into two balls.  Let rest another 10-15 minutes and prepare pizza toppings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I don't have time to make my own or decide last minute I want some pizza, I try to keep Trader Joe's pizza dough on hand.  It comes in a bag and you can freeze it. You just need to let it defrost overnight in the fridge.  There's no speeding up that process, unfortunately.  They have both regular white dough and whole wheat.  While I prefer the regular white dough, I will make some pizzas with the wheat dough, just to feel like we're trying to be healthy.

This recipe demands the white flour dough.  It's very simple and tastes just wonderful.

Olive Oil and Tomato Pizza
1 Package of Pizza Dough.
2 Vine-Ripe Tomatoes
Italian Seasoning
Olive Oil

Let the pizza dough sit on the counter for 15 minutes to let the chill come out of it a bit.
While that is happening, remove the top shelf from the oven and place the bottom shelf on the very lowest section.
Preheat the oven, with pizza stone or inverted cookie sheet inside to 500 degrees.
While the oven is preheating and the dough is settling, thinly slice the tomatoes.
Once the dough is ready, stretch it with your hands to approximately 9".
That's the size of my pizza stone, so that's the size I use.
Drizzle olive oil over the dough in a side-to-side motion.
Use a pastry brush to cover the entire dough with oil.
You can leave the crust uncovered, if that's what you prefer.
Shake the italian seasoning over the olive oil.
Use just enough to give some flavor, don't overpower it.
Lay the sliced tomatoes over the seasonings.

Bake at 500 for 15 minutes.

The crust should be nicely browned.  This pizza's crust comes out crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.  It took me a while but I finally found this temperature works best for pizza in our oven.

I Don't Put the Cookie Press Away After Christmas

Just in case I feel up for a fun treat like these:

Extreme Close-Up!!!!

Mmmmm, cheese straws.  I had never heard of cheese straws until I moved to North Carolina.  3 main ingredients: butter, cheese and flour.  Um...yum, much??  This past summer I had a huge wedding shower with my mom's closest friends.  Each woman's job was to bring a family recipe to pass on to me.  This is the first time I tried this one and I have to tell you, they're delicious.

Cheese Straws

2 Sticks Butter, softened

1 Pound Sharp Cheddar Cheese

3C Flour

1t Red Pepper

1T Baking Powder

1/2t Salt

In a food processor or blender, mix butter and cheese until well blended.  In a separate bowl, mix together flour, pepper, baking powder and salt.  In parts, add flour mixture to cheese and butter.  I used the food processor to start this process and then my hands to finish it.  It got crumbly towards the end, so I just mashed it all together with my hands and it came together better.  Place the star insert into the cookie press and add some dough.  Instead of placing the cookie press directly onto the tray, hold it at an angle and squeeze dough onto cookie sheet.  

I found it worked best when I squeezed consistently to make a long straw.  I then used a butter knife to cut the long straw into 2" lengths.  Some are longer, some are shorter, some are almost curly.  I like that.  

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until crunchy.

Mexican Night - Chipotle Inspired Dinner

Week 1 of Menu Planning has begun.

We screwed up already, Mexican night had to be pushed back to Tuesday b/c of Valentine's day pizza and calzone's. No problem...

On tonight's menu:

Dinner from Chipotle, made at home. Yup, this place:

Cilantro Rice

1t Butter

1 Cup of Jasmine Rice

1.5 Cups of Water

2t Cilantro, chopped

1 Lime

Melt butter in pan large enough to hold 1C rice. With heat on low, add rice to the pan. Heat rice for 10 minute - don't brown it, you just want it to get slightly opaque.
Add Rice and Water to a Rice Cooker and set. (Sorry, now that I have a rice cooker, I have no idea how to make rice in a pot anymore). :)
When rice cooker is finished, let rice sit in closed cooker for at least 10 minutes.
Move rice from cooker to medium bowl. Add cilantro and juice of the lime.
Mix together.
Try not to eat the rice yet...but feel free to taste it. I promise, it's delicious.

Marinated Grilled Steak

2 steaks (I actually used London Broil and saved the rest for another meal or two)

1/2 onion, quartered

1/4 C oil (olive oil or vegetable oil)

6 garlic cloves, crushed

1t black pepper

2t cumin

2T oregano

Mix all ingredients together in a large zip lock bag and refrigerate for at least 1 hour
Grill steak to medium rare
Discard marinade
Cut into bite sized pieces

Guacamole

2 Avocados

1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

1/4 of a red onion, finely chopped

2T Cilantro, finely chopped

1/4 lime, juiced

1/4t salt

Slide a knife around each avocado and separate the two halves.
Remove pit by holding avocado in one hand and put your knife firmly into the pit.
Twist the pit until it is loosened, remove from avocado.
Carefully remove from pit from the knife by pulling gently.
Spoon Avocado into medium bowl. Smash with a fork.
Add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl.
Mix ingredients with a spoon until avocado is just slightly lumpy.
Add more salt and lime juice as needed to taste.

To Prepare Burritos:

Heat 2 large tortillas in the microwave for 20 seconds.

Add rice, steak and any other ingredients you desire to the tortilla.

We added hot sauce, lettuce, tomatoes and salsa.

Wrap and Enjoy!

Tonight's dinner review: Food Coma.

Tonight's dinner rating: A.

ps...this stuff is delicious on any Mexican food.

Yum.

Why Haven't You Been Blogging? ...Update!!

Update: I figured out what was different between my old settings and the new ones.  (smacking forehead).  As a Blogger user, if you go under Basic Settings, scroll to the bottom and look for Select Post Editor.  Change Old Editor to Updated Editor.  Works much better.  Makes me a much happier person.  :)

No one actually asked me that because I have approximately 5 followers. I actually ask myself that question each time I write a new post and then don't publish it. So, after asking myself why I'm not blogging, I found my answer. Blogger is not my friend anymore.

I don't know what happened but since I moved to my other Google account, Blogger has lacked the user-friendliness it had before. Not sure where these changes are, but I guess I could look into my Google settings and see if there are changes that need to be made in there. It's frustrating beyond belief because I have some fun posts that I want to post.

My reasons for being angry with my new account's Blogger settings:

• When I load pictures, they all show up at the top of the blog page instead of where I've placed my cursor.
• The pictures no longer have the option to delete, resize, justify, etc on the picture itself. I have to delete the picture and re-add it the way I want it. ANNOYING.
• It won't let me format anything the way I want to if I load it in Google Chrome (my go-to). I have to load Blogger in IE to have the formatting show up properly.
• Something's just ... different.

And all of that is annoying me so, I haven't been posting the blogs that I really want to post. Yes, I'm whining, but this is my blog, I'm allowed.

In other news: I saw The King's Speech this weekend. It was awesome! If you haven't seen it, I would suggest doing so. If you're all frugal like me or just despise going to the theater because people make funny noises and annoy you (eh hem, like me), it's a perfectly fine movie to wait to see at home. No need for the big screen for that one. Now if you asked me if you should see Harry Potter in the theater, I would say, please go and deal with the annoying people because it's just that good in the theater.

That is all.

No pictures in this one...see above for more details on that.

Take It Elsewhere

In November/December of 2011, I made a pact with myself that I would 'let it go.' Anything that was causing drama in my life that I did not need, I was going to let it go. With all of the wonderful things that happened in October, there were a few things that caused major sadness and heartburn for me, which turned into a turning point in my life. I sat down and took a look at the things that may be causing my life to go in a direction I didn't want it to go. At that point, I decided to let those things go. I might have started by cutting out a major source of drama in a bad way, that actually caused unnecessary drama, but I learned from it. In the end, I'm glad it's gone, but wish I had removed it in a more tactful way. <-- Lesson: Learn from your mistakes.

Ways I'm Excluding Drama From My Life:

• By not getting involved where I'm not needed or not included in the original issue, story, message.
• By not putting myself out there when I know it's not going to be reciprocated, thus not getting all bent out of shape when it actually isn't reciprocated.
• By not responding to something in a snippy or snide way when I'm not completely sure the original message was meant to do emotional harm.
• By asking questions, if need be, to find out the true purpose of what I might perceive as an emotionally harmful message.
• By letting what will be, be.
• By trying to talk about something else when all I can think of is thatonethingthatisreallypissingmeoff!!!! (this is a huge work in progress...)

My plan is to continue to grow and learn in this journey to see where it can take me. I know for some people, this may just be what they do every day. I wish!! :) For me, it's a struggle, one I will continue to work on all my life. The good news is, I can tell it's helping already. In January, while sitting at the dinner table one night, my husband told me I seemed happier and had less things to complain about in my life. This is exactly what I wanted to hear. I wasn't trying - I tell him most things that go on, whether they are bad or good - to get his opinion or just to let it out. He is a very good listener and does a really good job of encouraging this change.

I feel so lucky to have a husband and friends who understand this adjustment in my life and are willing to help and show guidance along the way. Without a good support system, this would not be as successful as it has so far. I'm thankful for that and will continue to be thankful for it as I work towards making myself a better person.

Holy Crafts, Batman

Sometime in December, I sent American Crafts this picture:

Photo by Elizabeth Scott Photography

Those are my wedding shoes that I wore for most of the day, until the flip flops made an appearance. On the bottom of my shoes are Thickers, one of American Crafts' very popular products. I sent the picture in for fun. I thought maybe they'd use the picture on an idea board, but didn't think much about it after I sent it in. Three weeks later, I received an email from Julie Haight, one of American Crafts' Customer Service representatives. She thanked me for the picture and asked me to send her my mailing address so she could send me some Thickers. Today I found a box on my front porch with this in it:

Wooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thickers Galore!
How great is that? I really wasn't expecting a box full of Thickers to come to my house just for sending them a picture of how I used them!!

Now I just need to figure out how to use all of these new ones!

February Book Check-In

2011 Book Count

Books Read: 5

Books Started: 1

Ouch.

Reading came to a screeching halt 2 weeks ago when I started New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherford. It was an enjoyable book, full of names you would recognize like Ben Franklin, George Washington and J.P. Morgan, but man was it ever long! I was trying to keep up with names/dates/places which made me keep back tracking to figure out who was related through the decades. What a challenge, that book was. I'm glad I'm finished with it but I am also very glad I read it.

From the challenging book to the fluff read, I'm on to a James Patterson book. Unfortunately Patterson really lost some quality when he started outputting multiple books a year. I can't say I don't enjoy a Patterson book though, so onward to fluff we go! I'm guessing I'll be reading February book #2 in approximately 3 days or less.

My book map for 2011

View JBH Book Tour 2011 in a larger map

The idea for the book map came from Sheila's Book Journey blog

New Adventures

If you arrived here from Croppin' Turtle, welcome! Thanks for stopping by. If you arrived randomly, hello...how did you find me? I decided it was time, after not blogging about crafts for approximately a year, to create a blog for our life vs just my crafts. I am a "we" now, after all. My plan continues to be to write as I think about it, whether it be about life, house, projects, love and food. Especially donuts. I can't wait to write about donuts. For that you have to wait until next week, though. Tease.

If you follow me on your Google Reader, please follow my blog as well, and I will do the same for you. If you blog about food, home, books, wine, crafts, biking, weddings, photography or are a friend, I want to know who you are!

Oh and one other thing...I love reading blog posts with pictures, so here's my picture for this post.

A favorite place to be