Meal Plan Monday

It's been a LONG time since I shared some meal plans with everyone. This weeks is a little interesting because I am trying to cook for only two since the girls are currently on vacation without the husband and I. We are trying to get out of the fast-food rut we let sneak up on us during our move, and taking advantage of the fresh fruits, veggies and grass fed meats available to us without blowing the budget. So here is it.

Bulgogi
Rice
Banana Pudding

Alice Springs Chicken
Green Beans
Crescent Rolls

Steak
Scaloped Potates
Cheesy Broccoli

 Hot Dogs
Baked Beans

 

“Pink” Pasta
Garlic Bread
Salad

 

Biscuits and Gravy
Fruit Salad

Grilled Chicken
Garlic Cheese Biscuits
Cheesy Baked Zucchini.

So there are some ideas. I'll be taking pictures to add to the post through the week and linking up to recipes too! Enjoy!

Fab Ab February.

Ok, so who's with me? I'm starting the Fab Ab February Challenge that is all over pinterest tomorrow. Who is doing it too? If you don't know here is what it looks like. Thanks to this blogger for setting it up.

Meal Plan Monday - Fall is Finally Here

This week is all about easy to prepare, warm, comforting foods. However my goal is to make sure that it is healthy instead of starting to pre-pack on the holiday pounds. I attempted to start couponing this week. Well let me tell you, it was a failure. I managed to save $40 according to my receipt, however I spent twice as much as I have been spending per shopping trip, so I am thinking that maybe I need to just keep up what I am doing.

So here are the meals in no particular order, mostly. We have a busy weekend with 5 extras so those meals are specifically set aside for that day.

Chicken and Rice Casserole
Green Beans

Peppercorn crusted pork loin
Rice
Glazed Carrots

Whole Wheat Spaghetti
Marinara Sauce
Garlic Bread
Stuffed Quesadilla's
Salsa
Jicama

Chili Dogs
Sweet potato Fries

Grilled Cheese
Vegetable/Tomato Soup

What's on the menu at your house this week? What's your favorite fall meal?

Zion National Park

Meal Plans haven't even been thought about yet this week. I usually get all of that together over the weekend and finalized on Sundays so that I don't need to do any shopping during the week. However since I was having an amazing time camping with my family and friends my meal plans are currently non-existent. The plan for today is to take stock of what we have in the house and to make plans from that. So when I do finally share them with you it will be a bunch of pantry and leftover style meals.

Now on to the fun part of this post. My camping trip this weekend. My family and three of my neighbor families (14 total people and 3 dogs) went to Zion National Park for a weekend away. I had an amazing time. It was so wonderful to get away from the desert that is Las Vegas and see some soaring sandstone cliffs and trees. For those of you that don't know I am from Northern Arizona so that type of natural surrounding is what I grew up with and what I am used to. We did some hiking trips with just our little family and some with the large group and enjoyed both times. I saw some wonderful wild life and landscapes all while filling my lungs with clean fresh air. There really aren't words to describe how beautiful it was so I'll just share some pictures.

Meal-Plan Monday

Happy October to you all! It's Monday and time for some meal plans. This week will be a little less interesting than the others since we are headed out for a camping trip this weekend and our food plan for that is..... well you'll see.

Monday
Crock-Pot Zucchini Ziti
Grilled Steak

Tuesday
Chili
Cornbread
Salad

WednesdayGinger Soy Pork Roast
Roasted Veggies

Thursday
Baked Potatoes
Broccoli
Chili
Cheese
etc.....

Friday
Dinner on the Road

Saturday MRE's...

Sunday MRE's

Monday Menu's

I am starting to make the switch over to Fall food this week and I am trying out all new recipes. So this next couple of weeks will be an adventure. I can't wait though.

Monday
Grilled Mozzarella Cheese
Tomato Basil Soup

Tuesday
Pizza Casserole
Salad

Wednesday
Soy-Ginger Pork Tenderloin
Roasted Veggies and potatoes

Thursday
Crock Pot Tika Masala
Rice

Friday
Sliders
Sweet Potato Fries
Carrot and Celery Sticks

Saturday
Chili
Corn Bread

Sunday
Crock-Pot Baked Potatoes
Leftover Chili
Cheese
Broccoli

Itchy and Scratchy... the story of my life.

I am totally off on my creative thinking today, I admit it, maybe by the end of my post today I will have title for this, but as of right now I've got nothing.

I am using today as a catch up day both for me and to catch up everyone out there in blogging land on what is going on in my life right now. I realize that I went from a lot of blogging to absolutely nothing pretty quickly but I do have an excuse, it might not be a great one, but it's there all the same.

I am allergic to something. Now this statement is pretty ironic if you have known me for a long time. Of course I am allergic to something, in fact I am allergic to a lot of somethings. It has gotten better as I have gotten older, but I am allergic to a ton of things. However this allergy is different for two reasons. The first is that the cause isn't extremely apparent. After a lot of thinking the Dr and I have a theory, but no answer. The second reason is that it is giving me hives. Usually when I have an allergic reaction it is confined to the normal sinus, eyes, breathing area. This however is making me itch, all over, badly. Last week I even itched on the insides of my eyelids. That was fun. So we tried treatment 1, which was a ton of steroids and removing the possible offender. I am in the process of weaning off the steroids and the itch is coming back, so I'll be headed back to the Dr's office in a day or so to try round 2. Hopefully that is more effective.

In other news I made a great homemade pot sticker recipe last week, but forgot to take pictures. I did freeze some so I'll take pictures when I am cooking them and share.

Maybe I should listen to myself.

After writing that blog last week about holding yourself accountable when you ,make plans to change your eating and exercise habits I blew it. I ate horribly and blew off exercise. There really wasn't any reason for it other than I just didn't want to. How sad is that? I wish I had a good reason, like I was on vacation or I was sick or something but no, my only excuse is that I let myself fall back into my old bad habits.

So I guess my make-up day today isn't so much a make-up as it is a re-start. Back to the habits that I want to form instead of the habits that I want to stop. The funny thing about my jumping off the healthy train is that I actually didn't like any of the things that I was eating. While I was eating the cookies I kept thinking that they were too sweet and not as good as usual. While I was scarfing the chips I kept thinking that they were not nearly as good as I remembered. Did that stop me? Nope. Yeah, I think that makes it all the more pathetic.

Starting today I will get back to the kind of living that I enjoy, with good foods full of fresh veggies and lots of exercise. Hopefully it will help to pull me out of my grumpy mood too.

~DD

MM ~ Exercise, getting back into the groove

Exercise is a part of my life, it is a part of who I am. This wasn't always the case in my life, in fact it has only become the truth in the last few years. When I was younger, especially in my teen and college years, I viewed exercise as something I should probably be doing, but hated. I had given myself a million different reasons and  excuses as to why I couldn't or wouldn't ever take that step to work out.

The habit of exercise that I have developed actually came from a few different things. The first was really out of boredom. I did my student teaching at a DoDDS campus in England. It was an amazing opportunity to travel and meet new people, that's where I met DH, but I had long frustrating days trying to take what I had learned in school and mold it to fit myself, my students, and a supervising teacher who did not share any of my teaching philosophies. So I would get home from school and run straight to the gym. The change in me was amazing. I found that not only was I losing weight that I had been carrying around since my freshmen year, I was happier. That's right, happier. All of those years that I had ignored people telling me that it improved their mood thinking that they were full of it. Oops. The second thing that motivated me was a common thing. I had two babies. If you don't take care of your body during and after pregnancy it can wreak havoc on your figure.

Working out has been a part of my life for years now and it has become a habit that I love and miss when I can't do it. When I miss my exercise time for a few days in a row I see my mood go downhill, especially when it comes to patience. I also start to miss some of the other benefits as well, especially the ability to treat myself to junk food without worrying about what it will do to my waistline.

In January when I had my surgery I was explicitly told that I could not work out at all for 8-12 weeks. That time just about killed me. I am happy to announce that I have been cleared for full workouts for almost 2 weeks and I am loving getting back to this way of life. It's harder than I remember and things that I used to do with ease are tough. I know that it I keep it up I'll be back on track soon.

~DD

C - Is for Challenge

I think I may have over committed myself in the last few weeks to this. I love the whole process of blogging and sharing, but when I sat down yesterday and actually looked at my blogging schedule, Holy Cow. I am currently doing the April A-Z challenge which will require a new post a day for the entire month. I have joined in with the Hodgepodge Wednesday which is so much fun to answer and to read all of the answers that the other participants give. I also started a challenge to myself with the Diva Days of the Week, which gives me a task for every day.

So now I wonder where I am supposed to find time to blog about what it is that I started this blog to talk about. I don't want to lose site of the goals that I started this whole blogging experience with. I started this to share some of what I am as a housewife, military spouse and mother. Participating in the challenges will help me to become a better and more consistent blogger, but I need to find a way to do it that doesn't depart from my purpose.

So starting tomorrow with Take a Picture Tuesday, and letter D I will find a way to incorporate all of my challenges not only together with each other but also in a way that stays within the frame work of talking about what makes me who I am, and shares how I succeed and how I fail on a daily basis. Also how these things help me to grow and become a better person.

~DD

MM - Getting back to the gym

Monday this week is dedicated to two things. One of them I have already complained about, laundry, so I'll just move on to the next thing I am working on today. I am working on catching up and re-starting my exercise routine this week. I have added weight lifting and abdominal exercise back into my routine. It was a lot of fun to get back to feeling like I am accomplishing something in the gym. I find this totally funny since I was not an exercise person at all when I was younger. I hated to do anything that remotely resembled exercise and avoided it at all costs. Yet another time where I wish I knew then what I know now. I find that beyond the obvious benefits of getting active I have come to depend on the endorphins that exercise releases. If I do something every morning and every night right before bed I am a happier person as well as being a healthier person, and who wouldn't love that?

MM ~ Laundry is NOT my Best Friend

It seems like everyone has that one household chore that they hate just a little more than the others. One that every time they start to do it they want any excuse to stop. For me, that chore is laundry. I just don't like it.

I hate the gathering of the baskets, I hate the sorting, I hate the moving it from machine to machine, I hate when I forget to move it so I have to start all over. Most of all though, I HATE folding it and putting it away. The piles of clothes all over everything as I work on it bothers me, the piles of neatly folded clothes out for everyone to see bothers me, and the fact that I never have enough time to do it all at once and get it put away REALLY bothers me.

Of course this means that laundry is the task that I most often have to catch up on. So today's make up Monday is dedicated to that necessary evil, and the chore I love to hate, laundry.

Make-Up Monday

Oh where to start, there were so many things that I let get away from me this weekend but it was all with good reason. I didn't do laundry at all this weekend instead I weeded for HOURS and washed my car, so it wasn't that I was being lazy I just thought that my time would be better spent outside in the beautiful weather.

So today I did laundry, scrubbed the kitchen table and chairs and the stove. So all is going well in my little world. I also plan to get on a few new recipes for you guys, I've been slacking in that area. The next one I will do is a quinoa stuffed bell pepper. Yum!