If you’re happy and you know it…

Ok, first of all, I guess we’re putting in an offer on a house!  Yikes.  We loved this house, it’s walking distance to the farmers market and a few restaurants, a library, and a bakery.

Also, it comes with a trampoline.

(All the pictures online are kinda crapy… but what more do you need to see than this?)

I got some Dave’s Killer Bread at Winco, and ate a piece as a mid morning snack.  My brother (daddy to monster baby), who lives in Eastern Washington was telling me when he was here about how he had this amazing bread that was “like Dave’s rockin’ bread or something” and how good it was.  There is a guitar on the logo, so his thought process makes sense….

Then I went out to lunch with some friends from school.  Turns out as much as I don’t love not having a job, I’m a lot less depressed than most of my classmates.  We drowned our sorrows in tater tots and diet coke

And I had a salad with chicken, crasins, nuts, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

It was McMenamin’s food.  Their stuff is never bad, it’s just never really good either.  They’re everywhere in Portland.

When I got home I found these in the garden!

And got dinner started:

tomatoes, basil, and roasted peppers.  All either grown by me or my parents!

I’m happy that I have yummy food.  I’m happy that my fiance has a job that can support us.  I’m happy the lion exhibit opens this weekend at the zoo.  I’m happy there are three timbers games coming up.  And most of all, I’m happy that I’m happy….

What’s something you’re happy about?  I need some more-I just spent two hours hearing how things suck!

Sunday Afternoon

I love Sundays… We never seem to have much to do.  It’s a day for Costco and church and reading the paper…

I found this in the ads today, is it not super creepy?

Depressed baby wearing bunny ears… 5 1/2 inches tall, 40 bucks AND buying it puts you into some sort of creepy baby of the month club.

For some reason the fiance didn’t want to buy it for me.

I scarfed this down before we went to church

Oats on top of a ton of berries, with almond butter, and chai to drink.  I’m loving all my berries!

Our sink has some sort of a funky smell, so I tried this to fix it:  baking soda

plus vinegar

And I washed it down with boiling water.  We’ll see.  Anyone know any good sink stank tips?

Lunch was thrown together from stuff in the fridge.

Whole wheat spaghetti, chickpeas, broccoli, tomatoes, peas, corn, basil, olives, and some parm on top.  Mine had olives, the fiance’s of course did not.  April mentioned it last time I did it-I like adding chickpeas to boost the protein without having to cook any meat.  It was yummy!  Although, what isn’t good when it’s full of tomato and basil?

Costco time!  We’re getting Costco brand vitamin water-the fiance lives on it. What’s always on your Costco list?  We get the vitarain, vitamins, and samples 🙂

Poor choices, Good choices…

So, we just joined a gym about a month ago.  And I’m loving having somewhere to work out.  But, it’s been a long long time since I’ve done any yoga or anything like that.  Which means right now my body is KILLING me.  I did yoga on Wednesday, and zumba yesterday (we danced the hora at zumba too-weird).  After the classes I felt good tired and sweaty.  But, later on oh my goodness!  My legs and butt are killing me.  It’s better today but last night I was totally doing the old lady style easing myself into the chair.  Ouch.  

So, I think I might’ve overdone it a little.  Which is a poor choice.  Not a poor choice?  This:

One raw ear of local corn (so sweet!), 3 smallish tomatoes,  3 hot peppers, cilantro, lime juice.  Oh my word.  Wow.  We had this at dinner.  Amazing.  I wanted to use some of my ginormous produce haul, so I bought an ear of corn to go with the tomatoes and peppers and made some sort of salsa-ish concoction.  No onions, because then it will kill you dead, of course. 

It was to go on our not so healthy dinner of nachos.  It was the fiance’s Friday last night, because he’s got a furlough day today, and we tend to do meals that go well with alcohol on those nights.  Yeah, we’re klassy.  

I also made this 

Turkey, tomatoes, hot peppers, cumin, garlic, onions (cooked onions, if chopped small enough, are ok, and won’t kill you), and cilantro.  It smelled like chicken tortilla soup! I cooked it down till it was just meat and peppers.  

Mise en place.  Of my nachoes.  Oh yeah

The olives and onions only went on my half.  Those chips are amazing.  They’re much closer to restaurant tasting ones than what you normally get at the store.  

 

And then we ate them and I was too hungry to take a picture.  Yum!  

We followed that up with drinking enough that setting the alarm to go work out didn’t sound fun.  Poor choice.  

So recap:  good choices-making that corn salsa stuff, eating yummy nachos.  poor choices-overdoing it at the gym so i look like an old lady, drinking too much.  

And now I’m going to go make breakfast.  Because french toast is ALWAYS a good choice!

Quinoa again

I loved the quinoa we had the other night so much we made it again!  Here’s what I did

Finely dice onion (big pieces will be visible, and thus kill you dead).  Saute in butter until transluscent.  Add quinoa and chicken stock (I freeze mine when I make it, so it’s those round things you see)

Keep adding liquid until the quinoa won’t absorb more (I was low on stock, so I used water too).

Dice tomatoes and add in

The tomatoes will start to dissolve as they cook, so you don’t have to chop them too small, but you also don’t want huge chunks of tomato skin.

Chop or rip (I was feeling lazy so I ripped) basil and add in.  Add in crushed garlic as well

Basil shrinks, so you can’t add too much.  (I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as too much basil, right?).  Now you either let it cook on the stove, stirring, or you can turn the stove off, and cover the pot to let it steam, the way you cook couscous.  I started making this before picking up the fiance, and when I left I put the lid on so mine did a little of both.

You end up with this

Delicious, protein + fresh produce… mmmmm!

We added a few shakes of parmesan at the end, and ate it with chicken sausage and green beans

And I had leftover quinoa for breakfast too!  Yum!

MORE produce!

My parents being here means that I have, yet again, a ginormous amount of produce.

(yes, that’s an entire shopping bag FULL of peppers!)

The ziplock in the corner is basil.  My dad asked “you like basil, right”, and then got worried “I should’ve brought more”.  Because a quart sized bag just isn’t enough 🙂

The peppers are tricky for me-I don’t eat them unless I have them, so I’ve gotta figure out some creative things to use them for.  Any ideas?  

This morning I was in the mood for a savory breakfast, so I made this

It’s zucchini, tomato, pesto, and then a little bit milk and some cheese.  Weird for breakfast, but I like non breakfasty foods some days.  (I might eat chicken nuggets as breakfast sometimes too?  Let’s not judge).  

It was super tasty.  Pesto makes everything good.  And it’s actually kept me full, which I was doubtful on…

I did some grocery shopping today too.  I really like grocery shopping.  Like, a lot.  And since we make pretty much all our meals from scratch I end up running to the store a lot-I need flour, or milk, or more broccoli or whatever… Today I went to get peanuts, flour, and sour cream.  I came home with this:

 

whoops.

I got 5 lbs of whole wheat flour (Bob’s Red Mill), bulk peanuts, bulk whole wheat pastry flour, bulk spelt flour, bulk wheat berries, an avocado,  a zucchini, cilantro, sour cream, Nancy’s Yogurt, Walla Walla onions, albacore tuna, and butter.  

If you can’t tell, I have problems resisting the bulk bins.  Then I get home and realize I now have 5 types of flour (WW, WW pastry, buckwheat, white, and spelt).  I should maybe stop.  

Nancy’s is my favorite yogurt.  I get the whole milk honey and it’s amazing!  It’s made in Eugene, Oregon and the milk comes from Oregon dairy farmers.  I’ve tried a million types of yogurt, and I just can’t get anything else.  The day that Nancy’s starts making Greek yogurt i will be the happiest girl on earth.  Expect to see me make some granola to go with the yogurt soon!  

And since it’s been rainy all morning, I’ve been doing this 

Full details this afternoon.