Pasta Sauce

Last night I made my own pasta sauce! I used tomatoes, onion, tomato paste, garlic, brown sugar, Italian spices, and salt and pepper. After blending it all up in the +Vitamix, I simmered it for about 35 - 40 minutes and put them on top of the pasta. The sauce tasted very fresh and healthy! I am really loving making all of my own stuff! Pretty soon I am going to tackle making my own pasta!

Tonight I made salsa again, and we LOVED it! I used tomatoes, onion, cilantro, garlic, lime, and green chillies. Next time I'll add a little more tomato, but I think I have pretty much perfected my salsa. Look at how pretty it turned out!

We had a lot of the wing sauce leftover from the other night so we are using that tonight to marinate chicken to make chicken and broccoli stir fry tomorrow!

We had to run a lot of errands today, including going to wal-mart, yuck. But, we were in the back and walked by the bikes. I decided I wanted to look at the bikes, and I decided to try to ride one down the aisle. Notice I said TRY! The ones I tried we too short so my legs wouldn't really pedal. Yeah.. imagine me, on a bike, in wal-mart! It was pretty ridiculous, but fun. I think I want Jimmy and I to get bikes so we can ride around the neighborhood. I think it is a good first goal.

Hope everyone is having a great week! Only 2 days to go. I'll be in an Employment Law CLE for the next two days, but then my dad is coming to town this weekend. What should I take him to do??

Everyone loves wings!

The cilantro limes fajitas we made the other night turned out so well! They were really good, but very lime-y. Citrus fruits go a long way. In the future I may cut down the amount of citrus food asked for, but that's just a matter of personal preference. Here's a pic!

+Jimmy Ho and I love chicken wings! Unfortunately, because they are fried and covered in who really knows what, they are not healthy. Because we want to make foods we like in a healthier way, Jimmy and I began baking chicken wings a long time ago. Most of the time we would just make hot wings, and I also made lemon pepper for me. We like Asian sauces a lot, and luckily my +Vitamix recipe book had a recipe for a wing sauce. I used soy sauce, sesame oil, an orange, orange peel, garlic, and ginger. I mixed it in the Vitamix and tossed it with the baked wings. We LOVED it! Can't wait to try other sauces.

This morning I made a type of milkshake/smoothie for breakfast. I used banana, 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, a cup of soy milk and some ice. It was really good and kept me full until lunch time. I'm thinking about adding protein powder or oats next time.

This weekend was really busy for Jimmy and I! The weather has warmed up, and all I can think about is plants! I was dying, for rose bushes. I seriously talked to Jimmy about roses almost every day for 2 - 3 weeks. On Wednesday, we went and bought my roses! I bought 2 bushes to put on each side of the garage. So Wednesday night when we got home, we started digging the holes. The ground was SO hard, and there was stone mixed in with the dirt I'm assuming from the contractors that built our home. We even found a glove! It took so long for us to dig the holes, that we were not going to be able to plant them until Saturday morning. Saturday morning we planted the roses. The roses are a really pretty light purple/plum color. They are still small, but here is a pic of one of the roses.

I had been researching plants I wanted for a hanging basket, and I happened to find both of them on Sunday! I was SO excited. So of course I had to buy them, hanging baskets, and soil. I almost walked out of the store with a tree, a hibiscus, and a fern too, but Jimmy talked me in to waiting for some of those things. We'll see what happens this weekend! So I have planted the plants in the hanging baskets, but even though we hung them yesterday, I had to bring them in because of high winds. When I say high winds, I mean 30 mph. In Lubbock, 30 mph seemed completely normal. Here, 30 mph winds are crazy. There are trashcans blown up and down the streets, Jimmy's smoker has blown over, and our rug is out in the back yard somewhere. It's crazy. Luckily it was not as windy this morning, and the plants got a few hours of sun. I'll take more pics when they are hanging and as they grow.

And finally, our little seeds continue to sprout! The seed party heated up b/c the jalapenos and bell peppers showed up! Yeah.. that joke was cheesy, but it made Jimmy laugh when I said it the other day.

Over the weekend we also went to Whole Foods, and I was able to buy wheat berries and soy beans! So this week I'm going to make bread again, but this time I'll be making my own flour as well! I'll also make soy milk as soon as I use all of the HEB kind I bought. Hope everyone has a great week!

Marinades!

Okay.. so while I have really enjoyed writing this blog, sometimes I am almost dreading writing because I feel like I have to share all of my kitchen disasters, and I am embarrassed! I won't let all of these failures stop me though because I am learning so much, and eventually, I will be an okay cook!

So.. that brings me to today. After a rough weekend, I am thinking that I may possibly be lactose intolerant. It makes me SO sad to think that may be true. I've decided to cut out dairy for a week or two to test it out. To help, I wanted to make soy milk in my +Vitamix!! When we went to the store this weekend, I bought soy nuts to make soy milk. Unfortunately, you need SOY BEANS to make soy milk, not soy nuts. Fail #1. I'll still eat them, and I'll go find soy beans. Sigh.

+Jimmy Ho and I decided to have cilantro lime fajitas this week. I decided to make the marinade today, so the chicken could marinate overnight. Because I was going to make that marinade I thought "well, maybe I should marinate myself a chicken breast for dinner tonight!" Jimmy was eating leftover pizza, and I was not about to eat any more cheese so I was excited about my idea. For the marinade for my chicken breast, I threw in a lemon, a clove of garlic, a sliver of onion, and pepper!

I blended it up, and put it on the chicken and put in the fridge for about half an hour.

Here's what I did wrong. The chicken was not completely defrosted. It was mostly thawed, but it was obvious it was still a little frozen. DON'T EVER DO THIS. I should have defrosted it before baking the chicken. It took so long for the chicken to get to 165 degrees internally that the chicken was tough and completely dried out. The marinade was REALLY good, but the chicken, not so much. Never doing that again. Fail #2.

Even with the failures,  some really good things have also happened. I am super excited about the cilantro lime marinade! I really can't wait for tomorrow. For this marinade, there is lime, cilantro, garlic, olive oil, pepper, salt, and oregano. I blended it up, threw it on the chicken, and it is in the fridge. I tasted it, and it was so good! I'm thinking about using the same recipe as a salad dressing. Yum.

The other exciting news today is that our seeds are beginning to sprout!! So far tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, and basil have sprouted. It is really cool to see something you planted come to life. I'm looking forward to watching them grow and eventually planting them. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

So for those of you who don't know, I have, as of today, officially started working from home full time! This week has been kind of crazy with the transition, and I have not been able to use my +Vitamix as much as I would have liked to so far this week, but I did today! One thing I am really looking forward to about working from home is being able to make all of my food. I don't have to worry about attempting to pack healthy meals and snacks, and I would really like to avoid eating a frozen meal for the rest of my life! Another plus, or drawback depending on how you look at, it is I will not be surrounded by the candy, cookies, and whatever else generous coworkers bring to the office.

I started off this morning by making some oatmeal. It was just Quaker oatmeal, but I need to use what we have before I buy something new. I would really like to try steel cut oats! Today I just used the quick oats and cooked them with milk, a banana, coconut, and cinnamon. It was really good! Suggestions on what to put in oatmeal are welcome because I think I should start eating more of it!

For lunch, I decided to make potato soup! One thing I love about the Vitamix is that you can put in cold ingredients and make HOT soup that is ready to eat right then. In this soup, I put in 1 russet potato, 2 cups of milk, 1/4 of an onion (sauteed), 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp rosemary, and 1/3 cup of shredded cheddar into the Vitamix, and let run on high for about 6 minutes. It was steaming hot! Then I reduced the speed, added another potato and some turkey bacon just for long enough to chop it into chunks. And boom! Hot homemade soup in about 10 minutes including sauteing the onions. [Note: The potatoes had been baked previously as the recipe calls for them to already be baked. I baked them on Tuesday and threw them in the fridge until it was time to use them. They probably would have been better if used right away, but they were fine, and since they were cold, I just peeled them instead of scooping out the potato.]

The soup was pretty good, and I'll make it again. You should know that it doesn't taste as good as potato soup from a restaurant, but I'm going to assume that is because mine does not have heavy cream and all of that fat! I knew exactly what was going into my body, and I loved it. Plus, it made a good amount of soup! At least 3 if not 4 big bowls full. Can't wait to make other soups!

Because I was originally supposed to start working from home tomorrow, Jimmy and I planned to celebrate Valentine's Day yesterday, Wednesday, so that we could pack up my office to bring home and to avoid the crazy Valentine's Day Crowd. Tonight we are just picking up a pizza and having some wine at home. I'm really looking forward to a low key night! But last night, we chose to have dinner at Maggiano's at the Domain.

So, Italian food is not my favorite. I like it, but it is rare that I eat some kind of pasta and think it is amazing.  For an appetizer, we got Pepperoni Fondue. That was amazing! There were 4 different kinds of cheeses and pepperoni, and scoop it up and put it on small pieces of bread. Healthy? I'm sure it isn't, but delicious, it was! I meant to take a picture, but I think we got too excited.. So..

The food at Maggiano's was pretty good, but I'm more excited about the great deal we got! I LOVE being thrifty. Being thrifty is cool, being cheap is not. Maggiano's offers a deal where you get 2 of their classic pastas for $13. One for today, one for tomorrow like Olive Garden. So I got Ziti for last night and Lasagna for later. +Jimmy Ho got Eggplant Parm last night with Ziti for later. 

I was so full after the appetizer, that I took about 3 bites of my Ziti. Because I didn't really eat my dinner, instead of 4 meals for $26, we have 5! Our total bill was $38 and some change. Jimmy also had a coupon for $10 off of $30, so our total with tip was $35 for an appetizer and practically 5 meals. It was kind of insane and awesome.

I thought maybe the second meal may be smaller than the portion you receive at the restaurant. I was wrong! They give you full size meals to take home as well. Clearly what I ate was not healthy, but it was an amazing deal. We will go there sparingly!!!

I hope you all have a great Valentine's Day no matter what you're doing!

Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year, y'all!! +Jimmy Ho and I celebrated by heading up north and having Asian food. Jimmy always eats vegetarian on Chinese New Year, so we had meatless Sunday instead of Monday this week! Here are some pics of our food. Jimmy had lemongrass tofu stir fry, and I had green bean tofu stir fry. It was delicious!

I'm still not hungry, so I may not use the +Vitamix today. I used it yesterday and made a really good smoothie with broccoli, kale, peaches, pineapple, strawberries, a banana, a squeeze of lime, protein powder, and coconut oil. Loved it.

So remember a few posts ago when I chopped onions and said I needed a new strainer? Well when I was making my smoothie yesterday, I see a new strainer sitting on the counter. I texted Jimmy and asked if he bought it for me. He said no, and for one hot minute, I seriously thought I had a blog stalker and waited for a creeper to pop out! Then Jimmy texted me and admitted to buying it. Love him, but not cool!

I planted my seeds today! I will post pics when/if they start to sprout! Here's a pic of the creepy strainer. :)

Zinger!

I made my own dressing tonight! :) But... I didn't really like it :(. Okay, so it isn't that I didn't like it. It had WAY too much lemon. It was so sour I could barely eat it. +Leslie Hernandez would probably love it. So I followed the recipe exactly! 1 lemon peeled, halved and seeded, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp hot sauce, and 1/3 c olive oil.

I put it in the +Vitamix, and less than 2 minutes later, boom! Dressing!  

Okay, so I think if I would have put less on my salad, I really would have liked it. The saying "a little goes a long way" has never been more applicable! There are other recipes I'm going to try, but I just happened to have all of the ingredients for this one. I will try it again, but it definitely is not on the top of my list. I do like being able to make my own dressings though. It feels healthier, and I know exactly what I am eating. You don't need a Vitamix to make your own dressings. There are tons of recipes online. Try some out, and if you find a good one, let me know! If you were wondering, the soup on the side is Chicken Tortilla from +Costco. Tomorrow may just be a smoothie day because I have lunch plans with +Chris Atkins, and then +Jimmy Ho and I will probably get dinner. We did cook every night this week though, and I used the Vitamix every day. This week, even with my failures, was a success!

Salsa!

Tonight +Jimmy Ho and I made tacos at home using ground turkey. You can't have tacos or anything really without salsa! We LOVE salsa! I threw in 4 Roma tomatoes, a jalapeno with half of the seeds, about 1/3 of an onion, a clove of garlic, a bunch of cilantro, and the juice of 1/2 a lime. I put the tomatoes in first, so it pureed the tomatoes before it started chopping everything up together. It was almost exactly like the salsa from Taco Cabana! Good thing we like Taco C. It tasted really fresh and healthy. Next time though, I'll put the tomatoes on top so it will be chopping the harder veggies before it gets to the tomatoes. Here are pics!

Something pretty awesome happened tonight at dinner! My full button worked! Most of the time when we eat, I don't feel full while we are eating. Then after we stop eating, I will feel like I ate entirely too much! But tonight, I was taking a bite, and I felt something, and I knew I was full! I immediately stopped eating, even though I wanted to keep eating. After sitting there while Jimmy finished eating, I felt full, but not like I over ate.  Maybe I never felt full before because I was not eating good foods, and my body was not getting the things it needed. Whatever it is, I'm excited about it!

I also made a smoothie today with kale, a carrot, an apple, strawberries, and a lime. Jimmy said it looked like baby poo.. He didn't lie, but it was still good.

 Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle a salad dressing. Loving my +Vitamix.

Learning

So today +Jimmy Ho and I made Alaskan Cod 1/2 with lemon pepper and the other 1/2 with garlic and herbs. I used the +Vitamix again to chop the garlic. I love that! The half with garlic and herbs was way better than the lemon pepper, but I'm not crazy about fish. I'm trying.. Along with the fish I made mashed cauliflower! I had tried this before because I heard that you can eat it in place of mashed potatoes, and I got to try it once in a food from +My Fit Foods  that Jimmy and I really liked it! But when I tried to make it before, I steamed the cauliflower and just mashed it with a masher. The consistency just was not right, and neither one of us were crazy about it. Tonight, I found a recipe online. I used 5 cloves of garlic, rosemary, and 2 cups of organic free range chicken broth. I brought it to a boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes. After that, I took the cauliflower out, put it in the Vitamix for about 1 minute and boom! Creamy, smooth mashed pot- I mean cauliflower! Now the title of this post is learning because I still I am. I think I may have over blended the cauliflower because it was TOO creamy.. a bit liquidy like when you overcook potatoes.. Hey.. maybe I just overcooked the cauliflower? If you haven't already figured it out, I am not a great cook! I'm working on it. Anyway.. I liked this WAY better than the last time I tried to make it, but I'm going to keep trying. Here is a pic of dinner.

So I told Jimmy recently that I wanted to plant a rose bush. We decided that we would go to Lowe's after dinner and look at them. While we were making dinner, we talked about starting an herb garden, and we decided we would look into that while we were at Lowe's as well. Well, once we got there, we discovered it is GARDEN season! They had all of the seeds out for veggies and fruit trees. Jimmy started talking about us growing vegetables. The next thing I know, we have purchased seeds and the things we need to start the seedlings. We are starting a GARDEN! Mostly herbs and a few veggies to start. I'm not sure how we'll do, but I'm excited to try. I'll post pics of the seedlings if they begin to sprout, but we haven't started them yet. Here is what we'll be growing!

Even with all of the excitement, we did look as rose bushes. I picked the one I want, but we did not buy them since we couldn't plan them tonight. We'll probably go back this weekend and buy them. Pics to follow! Okay.. time for bed. Tomorrow, I'm making salsa!

Uh oh...

After reading my first blog entry last night, one of my best friends sent me a text eloquently stating "so this thing makes your juicer look like a piece of shit." I don't think I could have said it better myself! I really am falling in love with the +Vitamix!

Along with successes, there will also be FAILURES! Today I used the dry container for the 1st time. The dry container is used to mill grains into flour and to make dough.. maybe some other things, but I'm not there yet! Today I attempted to make dough for the first time. I haven't ground my own wheat yet because they are sold out of the wheat berries I want online. I may get some other ones just to try it out, but that will be a later post. Today I had to just use whole wheat flour. I used King Arthur's because if you have seen America's Test Kitchen, you know that it has won the taste test at least twice. There is a recipe in the Vitamix cookbook, and I just followed that.. kind of. I found that we had a loaf pan, but it was called a "medium loaf pan." That freaked me out because I just assumed it was small. I should have actually measured the pan.. oh well, cook and learn! So.. because I thought the pan was small, I halved the mix. Because I halved the mix, I probably shouldn't have mixed it for as long as I did. By the time I put the dough into the pan, it was more like a sticky batter than a dough. I let the dough rise, except, it didn't really rise. Fail. I baked it anyway. The bread had a pretty good flavor, but it was pretty dense since it didn't really rise. I'm going to look for a normal size loaf pan, and next time I will follow the recipe exactly! Here are pics of my tiny bread loaf!

We used normal butter tonight, but I'm looking forward to making butter in the Vitamix. Yes, you can make your own butter. So excited!

Okay... So the bread was not perfect this time, but I did learn to do something pretty cool with the Vitamix today. For dinner we had whole grain spaghetti with 97% fat free ground turkey and a heart smart pasta sauce. I'm going to make my own pasta sauce in the future, but we had some that we needed to use first. Tonight, I chopped my onions and garlic in the Vitamix! It is so easy and seriously takes 5 seconds. I quartered the onion, and put half of it into the Vitamix. You then put about 4 - 5 cups of water into the Vitamix with the onions. You pulse it about 2 times on high, and that's it! The onions are chopped pretty finely. You then strain it. Same thing with the garlic! I learned I need a better strainer because the onions particularly were a little wet. But, in my opinion, getting a better strainer is worth not chopping onions anymore! No more tears for me.. The top pic is the onion and the 2nd pic is the garlic.

Who knows what I will do tomorrow... I think we are having fish so maybe some kind of sauce for the fish.. or possibly pureed cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes. Oh! And here is a pic of the tropical smoothie I made last night! It was delicious, but I did not add any greens since we had big salads for dinner. Can't wait until tomorrow!

The beginning...

Most of the people who know me know that weight is something that I’ve struggled with most of my life. Is this going to a weight loss blog? Yes and no. I’m blogging to hold myself accountable for making healthy choices that will become a healthy lifestyle. If I am successful, I think weight loss will continue to be one of the major benefits.

For those of you that know my husband, Jimmy, you know he is a dedicated runner. Not just any runner, but a marathon runner who is more committed to running that I have seen anyone commit to anything else. I admire him for that. If you me, you also know that he and I could not be more different. I don’t have a desire to become a runner like Jimmy, but I do have a desire to live a healthy lifestyle. I owe it to myself, and I owe it to him.

Jimmy and I once decided we were going to go an entire month without eating processed foods. We quickly decided how incredibly difficult that would be, and we gave up…. until now!
I recently found out about the +Vitamix ! If you haven’t heard of it, it is a “blender.” I really hate to use that word because it does so much more than blend, but that is the best way to describe it. I’ll be posting all of things I do with the Vitamix to improve the way that we eat. I think the Vitamix will get us the closest we will get to eating unprocessed foods.

Ok.. so this is the Vitamix I bought. https://secure.vitamix.com/5200-Super-Healthy-Lifestyle.aspx Is it expensive? Hell yes. I got mine at Costco and saved $50. I still almost threw up when I ordered it because of cost, and almost got sick again when I got it wondering if I would actually use it. After just a few days, I feel like I’ve made one of the best decisions ever. If you browsed the Vitamix website at all, you have seen some of the cool things you can do with the Vitamix including making smoothies, ice creams, hot soups, nut butters and nut milks. If you have the dry container, you can also mill your own flour from whole grains.

I have really high aspirations, and I am hoping that this choice will be the first of many great ones. I will keep you updated with my weight loss, as in the number of pounds I have lost, not how much I weigh! Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not that brave… yet!

I just got my Vitamix last Wednesday, and here is what I have done so far!
Smoothies! The first one had frozen strawberries, banana, an orange, and spinach! As you can see, it was a really pretty green color. The Vitamix blended everything so well. It was nice and smooth, but very thick like a smoothie from Jamba Juice.





The next smoothing I made had frozen raspberries, strawberries, a banana, kale, and some orange juice. This one came out BROWN! I was a little scared to drink it, but it was delicious. I use to juice quite a bit, but one the Vitamix is so much better than a juicer. The Vitamix takes the entire fruit/vegetable (peeled if needed and de-seeded if needed), and it liquifies it. You still get all of the vitamins and minerals, but you get the fiber too which is something you don’t get out of a juicer.



Any blender can make smoothies right? Maybe.. but today I really began to use the Vitamix to make things I like to eat in a healthy, unprocessed (except by me) way. Today I made peanut butter from dry unsalted peanuts, and I made coconut milk from unsweetened shredded coconut and water.



I used 2 cups of dry unsalted peanuts, and it took about 2 minutes to grind them into peanut butter. The peanut butter was so creamy, more so than when you get fresh peanut butter from Whole Foods. The bubbles you see are air bubbles. I was really surprised by how delicious it was! I didn’t need to add salt, sugar, or anything. I am thinking about adding a little honey in the future though. The peanuts I found for $1.99/lb. I paid $1.79 so I had just under a pound. It probably made about 4 - 6 ounces of peanut butter, and that will last me 2 - 3 weeks since I only eat it about once a week.



The coconut milk was even easier! 1 cup of shredded coconut (I used unsweetened) and 2 cups of water. It took 3 minutes, and I had fresh coconut milk. I spent $1.48 on the coconut, and it made about 2 1/2 cups of coconut milk. I’m storing it in a Quart Mason Jar. It tasted really good, but it did have a little bit of a “gritty” consistency. Since I’m going to use it for smoothies and curries, that does not bother me. I may try to blend it a little longer next time and see if that helps.

Tonight is Meatless Monday, something Jimmy and I have been doing for over 2 years now. We are having salads and smoothies for dinner. The smoothie I’m going to make tonight will have frozen pineapple, coconut milk, a banana, and a plant based protein powder. If it was for breakfast I would also add coconut oil, but I’ve heard it gives you a lot of energy, so I’ll try that another day.

I’m looking forward to this year and all of the changes in store for me! Feel free to follow and leave comments. I’ll need all of the support I can get!