The good stuff...

It's flu season. It's also the season for crazy insane viruses and people walking around all germ-y coughing up a lung and insisting it's okay for them to be among other healthy people. To be fair, I do that sometimes too, so let's be real. 

But so far this winter I've been pretty much fine. Except for a little blip this weekend when I was feeling sort of run down, and Monday when I felt like I might be coming down with something, I've been feeling like a rock star. I'm typically the person who catches every little bug that goes around, so you can imagine why I'm feeling rather perplexed this cold/flu season. Even my husband (who has - from what I can tell - some kind of titanium Captain-America-type immune system) has been feeling pretty awful for the past two weeks. I don't get it, why am I not sick with everybody else?

I started thinking about it on the way into work this morning, and I think I've come up with the answers: 

1) My fabulous juicer...

My super in-laws gave it to me for Christmas, and I've been obsessively using it almost daily since I got it. It's SO much fun! It's like a grown-up Play-doh fun-factory: you squish in fruits and veggies, and stuff squirts out the bottom. My favorite things to juice are carrots, oranges, grapefruits, pineapples, and ginger root. I've become convinced that anything with ginger root in it is pure magic. I LOVE how it smells when I pop a few pieces into the juicer. Sometimes I'll even mix my morning juice with a little club soda and make it a little fizzy breakfast-cocktail. You really can't go wrong. Check out those pulpy layers in the juicer - it totally reminds me of that sand art that kids make. So pretty! Sometimes when I juice pineapples, I'll juice them separately. That pineapple pulp mixed with some Sriracha sauce makes the most crazy-delicious dip for coconut-breaded shrimp. 

I'm pretty sure this stuff is like 50% of the reason that I've been so healthy this season. It's hard to get sick when you're sipping tons of vitamins (not to mention a veritable boatload of vitamin C) through a cute little paper straw. Plus, it tastes like pure sunshine, and it hardly feels like the day has begun until I've gotten up, turned on some music, and had my first sip of juice. Here's my recipe in case you want to try it: 

- 1 grapefruit, peeled and cut into quarters

- 1 good knob of fresh ginger root (I like to soak mine for a minute in some warm water, I feel like it gets more juice out)

- 2 good-sized oranges, peeled and cut into quarters

- 1 pineapple, cored, and with the skin removed 

This recipe makes about three mason-jars worth of juice. Once I'm done juicing, I throw a few straws into my lunch bag, toss in the jars of juice, and put them in the fridge to chill once I get to work. The mason jars make a pretty awesome drinking-glass substitute, not to mention the fact that they're glass, so they don't hold stains and gross smells like Tupperware does. 

2) My awesome chiropractor!

I love my chiropractor's office. All the people who work there are so nice. I have to say, when I was having back trouble about 4 months ago, I was super skeptical about chiropractic. When people crack their knuckles, it makes me want to throw up a little, so I was less than thrilled with the idea of someone cracking my neck/back three times a week for 6 months. What I didn't anticipate is how much my adjustments have benefited me in other ways. I have tons more energy, I sleep much better, and I feel like it's given a huge boost to my immune system. My chiropractor Dr. Roberto swears up and down that every time I get an upper spine adjustment, it boosts my immune system. 

3) It's a new year

Okay, maybe this isn't an official reason, but I feel like I've been in a much more positive frame of mind this year. Between reading my Bible more, spending more time doing constructive things (less tv, more reading, less sleeping in, more getting-up-and-doing), I've noticed a big change. Plus, I've been trying not to sweat the small stuff. I've never considered myself a perfect person - far from it - but it's now, in my 28th year, that I'm learning to let myself off the hook now and then. I make mistakes, but so does everybody. My satisfaction comes from working hard, staying focused, and trying to love people the way God loves me. 

The Meal Plan!

I used to hate grocery shopping. I used to be the girl who would spend forever in the grocery store just picking up random things, and getting home to realize that she'd forgotten like seven things. Frustrating. Frustrating and boring.

Then, a while back, I grabbed a piece of paper and one of my favorite paper-mate flair markers, and tried to plan things out a little better. I wanted to be free of driving home from work trying to figure out what we were going to eat.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I've got my meal plan pretty well streamlined! I thought I'd share it with any of my readers who find themselves struggling trying to figure out what to make for dinner, or who find themselves spending a lot of money buying lunch at restaurants every day.

Step 1: What are you in the mood for?

I have a pretty good rotation of a few dozen dishes and combinations floating around in my head at any given time. It helps that I read a lot of food blogs, and I'm always drawn to magazines that feature great simple recipes. If you need a few fun food blogs to get you started, here's a few of my faves:

Joy the Baker - Joy is so fun, and even though she's a great baker, she has some great healthy meal recipes, too!

Shutterbean - Tracey's blog has given me some of my favorite recipes. I love her Tuscan Kale Salad with Pecorino (which I made here) and her Totally Addictive Brussels Sprouts Salad (which I made here).

SpoonForkBacon - they make such creative things! I love all the interesting Asian flavors that they use.

I also have a good stack of cookbooks that I like to flip through for inspiration. Even if (for low-carb reasons) I can't follow a recipe down to the letter, I can always use it for inspiration! For example, I saw a great recipe in my Rachel Ray cookbook for bone-in pork chops in a spicy tomato sauce with scallions, but it was served over polenta. Polenta is super high in carbs, so I switched it out and served it over cooked pureed cauliflower with plenty of butter, and salt and pepper for seasoning. In this step, you're just looking for a good handful of recipes you think will work for the upcoming week.

Step 2: Get organized!

On a trip to Target, I found a little pocketbook sized calendar/planner. Essentially, I just put a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks into the little boxes for each day. Sounds easy, right? Go for it! I like to do repeats for lunches and snacks since it cuts down on the amount of things I need to buy at the grocery store. I also make pots of soup/stew for dinners sometimes, and those are usually perfect for two nights in a row! It feels a little like cheating to intentionally make leftovers, but I won't tell Martha Stewart if you won't. It'll be our little secret. If you don't have a cute/handy little calendar planner, you could just use a piece of paper, like I used to do. Works just as well.



Step 3: Shop your kitchen & make your list...

I usually do the first part of my meal planning at my desk, but for this part I move to the kitchen with a plain piece of lined paper for my grocery list. Now that we've decided what we want to eat, it's time to figure out what we have, and what we need! This step has saved me from buying multiple cans of crushed tomatoes when I already have 3 or 4 in the pantry already. Go through each meal in your mind, and quickly assess what you will need to get while you're shopping. Add it to the list!

A note on grocery lists:

I take my list-making to a big of a crazy place by sorting everything by what section of the store it's purchased in. Since I always shop at Publix, and know the layout of their stores, I actually make my list so that from top to bottom it actually takes me counter-clockwise through the store, ending in the freezer section. This may sound like a crazy step, but it saves me from running across the store for things I forgot to get.

Step 4: Shop!

You're done! Head on out to the grocery store, go through your list, and feel super-accomplished and ready to take on the week knowing that the guess-work has been taken out of the usual "what's for dinner?". Just take your trusty meal plan calendar and stick it somewhere in the kitchen so you can figure out what's up next!

Ever since I started doing this, I've loved grocery shopping! I'm in and out of the store in a flash, and the whole planning/list-making process takes me around 10-15 minutes. I want to hear from you guys, though. Do you have a fave food blog or magazine? How do you plan your meals?

Kale-laluia

Okay.

I love kale.

I should say that I've had kale before. Mostly kale chips, or a few handfuls of kale in a smoothie. Never have I had fresh kale before, until today.

We slept in a little this morning. Bed just felt REALLY good. Once we got up, we were pretty hungry. Kevin wanted bacon and coffee for breakfast - such a manly meal! I decided on something a little more....clean.

This is usually what my kitchen looks like when I'm cooking. Laptop on counter, ingredients scattered all over the place. This morning's recipe was adapted from one Tracey put together over at Shutterbean. 

It's pretty simple. I just took half a bunch of kale, removed the hard parts of the stems, and tore up the leafy bits and washed them. 

Then for the dressing: 

- 1 clove of garlic, minced (okay...maybe a little more than a clove....I like garlic)

- 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

- 1/8 teaspoon of pepper flakes

- pinch of salt and pepper 

I finished up by adding the juice from half a lemon, and about 1/4 cup of pecorino romano cheese. Once I mixed the dressing in with the kale, I let it sit for about 5 minutes. I took it as an opportunity to make a little fresh juice by just throwing two carrots, two peeled grapefruits, and a peeled orange into the juicer with a little knob of fresh ginger. 

Let's just say this recipe is a winner! It's sort of like a caesar salad, but more savory. The kale is so delicious and hearty, and I could just about eat the dressing by itself. Try it, I know you'll love it!

Brand New Year

I can't believe it's 2013. I was making some delicious carrot-grapefruit-ginger juice this morning using my fancy new Breville juicer (a lovely Christmas present from my sweet in-laws) when it really hit me that the new year is here. It was a good Christmas; cozy, warm, and full of time with family. I go back to work on Monday, which has given me lots of post-Christmas time to do some shopping, do some organization projects around the house, plan for our new kitchen (hooray!), and pretty up my desk a little bit.

I'll be the first to say I hate the idea of new year's resolutions. I don't know why it rubs me the wrong way. I say if you want to resolve to do something, just DO it. Don't wait until January 1st. That being said, though, I always like the idea of a fresh start...365 days where anything can happen.

So despite the fact that I don't like calling them new year's resolutions, here's a little list of things that I'm going to try to do over the course of the next year!

Be More Thankful

I love a good Thank You note. I feel like we're such a society of texting and super-quick phone calls that I always feel so special whenever anyone takes a minute to hand-write a sweet thank you note. So yesterday while I was out running some errands, I stopped by the cute stationery section at Target and picked up some cute (and discounted!) thank you notes and blank notecards.  I can't wait to sit down at my nice clean desk a couple times a week to pen a little "thanks", or just a note to say hello. I also stocked up on a few of my Papermate Flair markers (I'm so picky about what I write with!)

Another thing I'm going to try to do is keep a little journal. Not the kind of journal or diary where every aspect of every day is recorded. Just a line or two a day about what I'm thankful for on that day. I've done it every day so far, and I think it'll be fun to look back at the end of the year and see how blessed we are.

Read More

I've been off the wagon with my reading. I'm a pretty fast reader, and I always love a good book when I make time to sit down and enjoy one instead of watching tv. So I've decided on at least 1 book per month (actual books, not the ones on my Kindle), and I even stacked them up on my desk and numbered them.

A few are titles I've read before, but love dearly. A few are books that have been on my mental checklist of books to read for a while: Grapes of Wrath, Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre. I'm excited to get into them! As soon as I finish reading the David McCollough bio of Theodore Roosevelt, I'll start on my first book on the list (Anna Karenina)

Stay Organized

I've done a lot of organizing projects over the holidays - I want the clean and tidy-ness to last as long as possible!

Take care of myself

Take my vitamins, drink more water. Be more careful about what I eat, and get the sleep I need.

Take time to enjoy little things....

Sip a cup of chai, enjoy a glass of fresh-made juice, cook an especially nice meal for dinner, give myself a facial, walk the dog at sunrise/sunset. There are so many things that I just miss out on because of how busy and hectic things get. The week flies by, and weekends go by so quickly. Time to slow down a little and enjoy the small stuff.

So what are your new year's resolutions? Anything special?

Adios Microwave!

Let me start off by saying I love being in my kitchen, cooking and baking. I will love it even more once we start re-doing our kitchen, which is a little lopsided. The cabinet doors are all a little crooked. Some of the drawers require a little encouragement to open and close without sliding off their tracks. The genius who put the kitchen together in the first place opted for white counter tops, which show absolutely everything. Every speck of dust, every drip. Everything. I can't wait for those to go.

We just recently (a few days before Thanksgiving week) got some lovely new appliances, which I have been loving! A new French Door refrigerator (it has a water dispenser in the door! I love it!), new stove (that has a window on the door, AND an oven light! My old stove was really not fancy), and a new dishwasher that is SO quiet that I sometimes wonder if I remembered to turn it on. 

But the one appliance we didn't get? A new microwave. As a matter of fact, we ended up donating our microwave to Goodwill. I never used the darn thing except to make the occasional batch of popcorn or to melt some butter, and you know what? I don't miss it! It freed up a huge amount of counter space, and it prompted me to look up a YouTube video on how to make popcorn on the stove top. 

Let me say, it's totally delicious! I just grab a little saucepan and melt a little butter while the popcorn is popping. You can even get fancy if you want and add some taco seasoning to your popcorn for a little extra flavor. Powdered Ranch dressing mix is pretty tasty, too.

All this to say: I don't miss our microwave at all!

Have you ever considered getting rid of yours? Tell me about it!

Pretty Cheap...

I'm just going to go ahead and tell you the title is totally a pun. This is a post about cheap makeup that's also awesome. Get it? Pretty Cheap. Pretty. Cheap. My co-worker Paul would be laughing right now if he were reading this. He loves a good pun as much as I do.

If you know me, you know I LOVE Target. I think it's great. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up in Canada, where the shopping options are kind of limited, especially if you didn't want to pay a fortune. I love the fact that Target has cute clothes that last a long time, fun home decor stuff, and that their store brand products are pretty darn great.

I had never tried their E.L.F. brand beauty products (eyes, lips, face) until a couple of weeks back when Kevin and I were in Target and this caught my eye:

I love Essie nail polish - they have such cute colors - but at $7 a pop, it's a little pricey. So when I saw this cute little set of 14 nail polishes for $10, I grabbed one. At about 70 cents a bottle, the polish is really nice, the variety of colors is great, and they even have a few glitter polishes in there. 

Anyhow, I was in Target last night picking up a couple things, and popped by the beauty area. I love a nice bright red lipstick, but haven't really been able to find a nice shade that doesn't come off whenever I sip my tea, or eat something, or have it end up on my teeth when I talk (very attractive...). Anyhow, I picked up the E.L.F. Matte Lip Color in Rich Red (below, far right) for $1, and it is fantastic. It goes on smoothly, you don't need a lot, and after a few minutes, it's set! I applied it this morning at around 7:00 and after kissing Kevin on my way out the door, a cup of coffee, two clementines, a few ginger cookies, a bowl of soup, a ginger ale, and a whole lot of talking, it was still in place. The color is awfully pretty, too - just a nice red, not too blue, not too orange. I did apply a few dabs of Smith's Strawberry lip balm mid-morning and mid-afternoon, but it's pretty dry in my office, so you probably won't have that problem. 

So if you're out shopping for Christmas and find yourself at Target, grab a couple of these! So pretty, and so worth the $1 price tag!

Struggling...

Some days you get up and basically cruise through the day like an 80's rock star wearing a leather jacket with a popped collar. Other days you just sort of make it through. 

Today was not an 80's rock star kind of day. I was struggling today in a BIG way.

Kevin and I got back Saturday from being on a fantastic week-long cruise. We had so much fun, and really got a chance to relax (the couples massage really helped....warm vanilla oil, hot stones....what's not to love?). Since we got back though, I've been in a funk. Maybe it's the fact that we were gone for a whole week. Or maybe it's the fact that it was relatively fall-like when we left, but came back to decidedly winter-y temperatures. Maybe it's because it felt like summer everywhere we went, and all of a sudden we were home putting up the Christmas tree. What?

Maybe it's the fact that the minute we got Ruby home from Kevin's parents house, she turned into a total basket case. She was trembling, and when we put her inside to unload the luggage from our car, she bolted and made a very impressive attempt at running away. Picture me sprinting down the street in our neighborhood yelling after her, totally panicked that a car would hit her when she got to the main road. I did catch her, and hauled her unwillingly into the car that Kevin had come after us in. I spent the rest of the evening worrying about her, and trying to coax her to eat french fries from our drive-through Wendy's dinner. Yes, trying to feed them to her. It took a good half hour before she'd even look at the people-food I was begging her to eat. 

All day today I just felt like I was suffering from a huge case of post-vacation depression. What do you mean I have to get up before 6am? Why is there not a fluffy stack of pancakes sitting at the breakfast table waiting for me? 32 degrees outside? Surely you must be joking. Why is our delightful waiter not anticipating my arrival to the dinner table with my preferred wine, and several plates of fresh steamed lobster? I'll have the chocolate melting cake for dessert. What? Make it myself? What is going on? WHERE IS MY PINA COLADA?

On the bright side, I'm starting to get excited about Christmas. Our tree is up and looking lovely (note to self: water Christmas tree so it doesn't look like Charlie Brown's by December 25th), and we had our first glass of eggnog last night (added a little splash of bourbon, and a little sprinkling of nutmeg and cinnamon). Kevin wasn't a huge fan, which just means one thing: more for me. 

Now time to buckle down and get our shopping done!