Dinner tonight

So, the other day (on the weekend) I had planned to make a double batch of Mel's Favorite Chili so I could freeze some and have lunches for the week plus a back-up dinner in case we didn't have time to cook. However, Aaron only defrosted enough meat for a half batch so we made that instead.

So I'm making chili again today, but I have ribs in the oven for dinner tonight.

I feel like I'm finally getting into a groove of starting the next night's meal, or at least planning it out, while tonight's meal is getting re-heated or finished. Tonight the beef for the chili was still pretty frozen (our fridge doesn't really defrost anything) and if it had been for dinner tonight, I would have been stressed out.

Not only does having the meal started reduce the time to get it on the table, but I can think ahead if I am going to need something extra quick - like on nights I have a class to get to.

Kauai is awesome

We saw a giant Hyster in action (also some little ones like we design at CBDC).
















We went on two zip lines. I screamed my head off on both.













We also did some kayaking. We are not so awesome at the cooperative stuff, but we figured it out eventually.

Food for a month

I love cooking. And I love eating. But making dinner gets really old.

For a long time now, my strategy has been to make a big "pot'o'something" on the weekend which would provide lunches for the week and fill in gaps of nights when I didn't feel like cooking. That has worked out pretty well. We rotate between chili, Mediterranean stew, tortilla soup, and Moroccan chicken.

I am still tired of cooking dinner. Somehow Mel of "The Clothes Make the Girl" feels the same way.

So I decided to do some batch cooking. Last time I tried once a month cooking, I picked out way too many things and almost all new recipes. It was exhausting and didn't end up feeding us for as long as I'd hoped. This time I'm making double batches of a few big, easy meals. Like the pot'o'somethings we've been happily rotating already. Plus a few new ones for variety.

My wonderful man chopped up almost all of the veggies (for some reason the cauliflower is my responsibility). That meant 11 onions, 17 carrots, 8 bell peppers, 11 stalks celery, and 16 zucchini. It was a lot of chopping. It also made me think there must not be that much variety to our meals.

We made spaghetti meat sauce and paleo lasagna (from Everyday Paleo) after doing the shopping and chopping on Saturday.

Leftover zucchini became a smiley face. It makes me smile when I open the freezer.

 Aaron added some mozzarella to his half

Today we made primal chili (from Mark's Daily Apple), mediterranean stew (from Mediterrasian.com), and chicken. We also ground a bunch of grass-fed beef into hamburger since we don't tend to eat a lot of roasts, let alone 4-pounders. We still have a moroccan casserole, a shepherd's pie, and tortilla soup to make, but we should have about a month's worth of food, not counting the nachos we eat 3 nights a week, lol.

nacho toppings: cheddar, guacamole, tomatoes, onions, olives, and salsa

Assuming I can remember to get stuff out of the freezer the night before.

Pictures of Kristy

In November my older sister and I drove up to Seattle to see my younger sister who had a layover there on her way to Hawaii with friends. This post has been languishing in edit mode since then.

We left early to have some time to hang around before she arrived, but we spent a lot of time sitting in traffic so instead of getting a head start on shopping, we visited Gas Works Park. It's pretty cool. My dad lent me some of his lenses, his flash, and his tripod for the trip. His lenses won't auto focus with my camera, and I have absolutely no manual focus skill even with the little circle focus-assist thing, which my camera doesn't even have, so I quickly switched back to my own lens.

Kristy was a good subject, until our fingers felt like they were going to freeze off and we ran back to the car.

I didn't wait for her to finish her sentence

This one would have been good if her hair hadn't been in her eyes. I still need to get in the habit of taking as many shots as I can instead of taking just one and thinking I got it.

I obviously think she's beautiful.

Why I love Dax Moy

Dax Moy is awesome. He sends me motivational emails about once a week, maybe less. It's good to have a little kick in the pants every so often to remind me to keep working toward my goals.

He also has some great resources at his personal training site, like an elimination diet, a 9-day look great naked challenge, and workout videos. In addition to being a personal trainer, he has the magic hundred goal achievement program that I will buy once I figure out what it is that I want to achieve.

This is a message I got from Dax almost 2 months ago, but I've kept it in my inbox to keep reading and re-reading it until I absorb the message all the way:

When you think about it, there's nothing you have to be, nothing you have to do and nothing you have to have except what you're being, doing or having right now.

Everything else is a choice.

Everything else is something you WANT.

If you want it then why all the stress, frustration and unhappiness?

Go ahead, read it again. And then chill out and quit being so hard on yourself!

Encouragement

So, last night I was tired. This is not unusual. Yet I decided I was going to get all the way through my workout in a positive mood, so we could make dinner and go to the grocery store without it all feeling like endless chores. I try to make an effort to be in a good mood in the evenings since sometimes I feel like all I do is work and prepare for work.

It's amazing what a difference attitude makes, but I had help. And I don't mean Aaron's always-chipper attitude, or his actual help with the chin-ups*... I finally saw a little muscle in my arms while doing the chin-ups.

our chin-up bar

I've been whining and complaining about my lack of progress, despite the push-ups getting noticeably easier and despite our progress through the levels of our workouts. I want visual, physical results. I want to be hotter.

Since I'm still not sure how to appease my digestive system, I was extra focused on getting some definition in my arms. I "used to" have muscular arms**. After (6?) weeks of workouts, when I flex, there's the tiniest hint of a muscle, but when I was supporting myself on the chin-up bar yesterday, I happened to glance at my arm and there was some serious muscle showing! And that enabled me to get through the rest of the night in a great mood. Vanity has its upsides.

3 weeks left to Hawaii. I'm getting ready.

 ready for hawaii

*Aaron lifts me up and I lower myself very slowly for each rep. That way I can do 3 sets of 6 reps. He thinks I could probably now do a bunch unassisted, but I feel he is hopelessly optimistic.

**I have been trying to eliminate the phrase "used to", i.e., I used to be able to do 30 -real- push-ups, I used to fit into these pants. What I "used to" do or have is irrelevant and also counter-productive.

The bacon chip

In the process of making bacon guacamole cheeseburgers, we discovered something wonderful: crispy bacon makes a great chip. I can now dive in to Girl Gone Primal's Dip-de-dip-dips.