Sometimes You’ve Got To Give A Gal A Break!!

I miss my blog! 

After two totally crazy, warp-speed weeks of nonstop events and working, I crashed!  I needed time!  I just had to take a break…from blogging…scouts…everything. 

Let’s  step back a little.   Last we spoke was the day of my 5K (recap yet to come!).  The weekend before that had been filled with extended family drama (Oh God), Girl Scout events and SheTeen’s and my birthday celebrations.  We were nonstop from Friday to Sunday night!

Monday was packed with the produce delivery, while Tuesday I baked cupcakes for SheTeen’s class to celebrate her real birthday.

Wednesday I took a bunch of young and cute sheteens to the mall and the movies to celebrate Ms. SheTeen’s birthday.

In between all of this don’t forget work…and school…and homework…and regular family maintenance (they want rides to places, clean laundry, help with homework and projects…and they expect to eat EVERY SINGLE DAY!  Can you imagine?)

Thursday night was the 5K.  Tons of fun!!!!

After the 5K we came home, kind of late, had a little nap, and jumped up bright and early the next morning to go on a field trip with the SheTeen!

Field trip over, we came home and scrambled to get packed for that weekend’s Girl Scout camping trip down in the beautiful Florida Keys!

Somewhere along the course of the day (thankfully BEFORE we got the car loaded and BEFORE we hit the road), FabHubs noticed car trouble ahead.  So after a few-hour scramble on his part (and some patiently ignoring the grumpiness on our part), he fixed it…(I LOVE having a handy guy) and we proceeded on our merry way.  Albeit a lot later than we wanted to be!  FabHubs and FabTeen We still had tents to set up when we got there!  UGH!

Sunday we rushed home from camping early in order to shower, change clothes and not look like we were camping anymore to attend an elegant dinner ceremony honoring Eagle Scouts from 2009/2010, of which FabTeen was one!  Another late night!

Monday kicked off early (too early) with kids to school, work, and produce…and the week went on in a similar vein as the previous week.  Nonstop event to event to event...

And I found myself overtired, overwhelmed, and overdone!

I needed time!  Time for me..time to do NOTHING (well, other than work, and school, and that family maintenance issue again!).

And so I did.  And while blogging was not supposed to be included in the unexpected retreat, somehow I just couldn’t force myself to sit down and think and type!

But I am back now…refreshed, recharged, and ready to go!

I have lots to share too!  From the 5K to updates on our fabulous garden…and don’t you miss my lovely organic meals?  I did (missed sharing that is..we still ate them!)

Welcome back…I missed you guys!

A Super Sunday!

Today was SuperBowl Sunday…and while I am not a football fan, having the game right here in Miami made it all the buzz everywhere I went!

The weather was absolutely super too!  Our church meets outdoors and today we met under brilliantly clear blue skies with a slight chill in the air and no humidity.  Perfect!

After church I ran over to Starbucks for my blogger meetup.  I was a little bit late because I had a stop I had to make in between…but they were nowhere near finished by the time I got there.

I met up with Amanda from Run To The Finish, Meredith from Pursuing Balance, Jessie from Vegan-Minded, and Melissa from Trying To Heal.  Weird how blogging has changed the way some of us identify people!

We had a great time chatting for a while in Starbucks.  What an interesting group of ladies!

When it was time to say goodbye everybody kind of had the same goal in mind next…walking over to Whole Foods to do a little shopping!  So we all walked over there together and chatted up and down the aisles.

I hadn’t eaten since before I had left for church that morning and I was craving a fresh juice…but when I saw the green juice I wanted was nearly $10.00 ($10.00!!!!! for juice) I decided I would just head home and juice my own!

Back at home, ravenous now, I made my favorite blend of carrot/apple/ginger/beet/parsley.  I really wanted to down the whole thing myself…but I had to share with the family!!!

  Then inspiration took over and I decided to compete with FabHubs over the kitchen!

He was making us homemade pizza and guacamole for dinner and snacks…and out of the blue I had a weird driving need to make juice pulp muffins!

So side by side we worked…he rolling out the pizza dough and chopping veggies…

Me throwing ingredients into a bowl for my juice pulp muffins.  Some of us (hint, not me) were a little less thrilled about the space sharing than others!  Good thing we have a double oven so I could have my own!

I found this fantastic recipe on this blog I fell in love with and used it as a basis for my muffins, tweaking it here and there to make it my own.

I doubled the recipe since I had plenty of juice pulp!  I used one cup of spelt flour and one cup regular.  I also threw in some golden raisins, I had some fresh organic cranberries on hand (YAY!), and even some organic orange peel.

Sweetened by honey and no oil added, these are quite healthy.

I mixed all of the ingredients together but they seemed really dry for muffins…so I added a little bit of apple juice for extra moisture.  (I would have preferred to use orange juice if I had any!)

They were still thicker than most muffin batters…but I was afraid to add too much so I just went with it this thick.  I scooped up big handfuls and molded them into balls and placed them in the muffin pan….where ACK!  They looked just like mini meatloaves!!!!   While they cooked I snacked on our homemade guac with my new snack love,  Stacy’s Naked pita chips.Then the pizza was ready…custom-made for various tastes….my half has ricotta, portobellas, pineapple, tomatoes, green peppers,  garlic, and onion.

YUM!  And finally the meatloa….er I mean muffins were ready! 

They were a little dense but still pretty good!  Everyone liked them except….FabHubs of course!

He still made “the face” but on a scale of faces it was not a “10” face (which means I hate this…where is my steak and sausage…don’t you ever make this again) but more like a “3” face (not my favorite and a tad too healthy for my tastes, but I will eat just this one). 

Good enough for me!

Okay…Superbowl is over..Saints are winners and I am tired on this superfun day!

Where Did The Week Go?

I can’t believe it has been a week since I have blogged! 

A jam-packed week at that!

We had the usual produce delivery, which I have not blogged about either!  I had a few appointments that took me out of the house.  Of course this week I unexpectedly had my transcription workload doubled (good for $$ but bad for time management!)

And to add craziness to all of this…..

This week is GIRL SCOUT COOKIE kickoff week!

For us that means hyperdrive.  My daughter is a determined young cookie seller, which means I have a lot of lugging, carrying, and setting up to do over the  next month.  (I try to picture it as forced exercise!).   

She will sell over 1,000 boxes of cookies and that takes a lot of work!

It also means my house looks like this!  And will for the next month. 

Oddly enough, eating them is not a problem!  I can have some, and Thin Mints are my favorite, but eating the whole box is not a temptation for me.  Thank goodness!

Not only am I a cookie mom though, I am the cookie manager for the whole troop!  So last night that meant picking up and sorting out all the boxes are large and active troop is selling, for the individual families to pick up.

Tonight we will have our first chance of the season to accost people at the grocery store and pressure them into buying cookies!!   Yes, we have cookie booths scheduled!

Tomorrow, however, in the midst of all these cookies, we will be packing up and heading out to camp in an alligator infested area.   Fun!   It is though…I love camping!

At least the crazy Florida icy weather has thawed and the weather will be comfortable.

I know…this is a weight loss blog and you want some weight loss info don’t you! 

I have some VERY EXCITING news on that forefront…but I have a lunch to pack, a breakfast to make, and a child to get to school, so another post my friends….

My First Little Bloggie Award!

And it is a happy one too!  Actually a Happy 101!

Jessie passed this sweet award to me…and what I am supposed to do with it is to share on my blog ten things that make me happy!  And I am supposed to do one of them today.  That is the easy part!

Then I get to pass it on to ten other bloggers…and spread some happiness! 

So…Ten Things That Make Me Happy are:

1. Spending time with my kids.  They are the JOY of my life!
2. Sleeping in.   I can’t do this Monday through Thursday when I am getting all that JOY up and out of the house!  (Sometimes that can be a little less than joyful too)
3. Getting my box of produce on Monday!  I love seeing all the fresh colorful produce…and figuring out what to do with it!
4. Chocolate.  I don’t think I have to explain this one.
5. My Husband.  He can be a major PITA!  And he has turned out to be worse than the kids with all of these new veggies.  But I love him and love being with him.
6. Blogging.  This has gotten to be a major addiction.  My head is always thinking of everything in a possible post format!
7. This gorgeous cold weather.  Sometimes I think I was born on the wrong side of the country…I can’t get enough of these cool temperatures. 
8. My beautiful animals.  No, not the kids…the furry ones!  Even the reptilian turtley kind without fur.  Except when it is late and none of the kids are home and I have to feed ALL of them.  Then I am not so happy!
9. Watching the scale go down.   It has been so exciting….every pound feels like a major victory.
10. My website.   Besides the blog, I also have a website, Your-Camping-Guidebook.com, born out of my love for nature and camping, which I also love working on and hope to grow into a successful business.

Today I got to enjoy #1, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, and #10! 

Tomorrow I will get to really enjoy #2!!!!!!!!

Thanks Jessie!  That was fun thinking about that list.

Now I am happy to pass it on to some of my Losing To Win buddies who were such a great inspiration in the last competition:

Karilynn

Ellura

Moi

Elise

Traci

Andrea

And I know I am short some bloggers!  But I will add to the list tomorrow.

For now I am tired, so I am going to have a piece of dark chocolate and go to bed so I can sleep in!

The Dalai Lama and a Blog Meetup!

What a fun day I have had so far!

First, I knew I was going to be chaperoning FabPreteen’s art class field trip today…and I knew it was going to be to an art museum, but I didn’t remember which one and had no clue what we were going to be seeing!

I just love to go on my daughter’s field trips…while she still lets me!!!!!

So when she told me last night it was going to be at the art museum on the FIU campus I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to meet Meredith from Pursuing Balance and hoped I could catch her at this last minute! 

I sent her my phone number, crossed my fingers, and was really excited when she called me this morning!  We chatted for a little but, and then set up a time to meet when she got to the campus.

So off I went to FIU, following the big yellow bus! We were headed to the one year old Frost Museum of Art…the building was really beautiful inside!   When we got there we had a personal tour guide who was an art teacher…she told us about the exhibit that was there, a traveling exhibit from about 40 different artists and their perception of the Dalai Lama.

But before she took us around the exhibit, she explained to the kids about the Dalai Lama, his beliefs, and about Tibet, and also about Buddha and some of his history and beliefs.

       This was a beautiful concept that will travel all over the world with the exhibit….the golden thread stood for peace, and if you wanted to align yourself with this concept you pulled an arms length of thread off the end and added it to the pile.  The pile will travel with the exhibit….and the thread is continuous…you don’t break it off, just pull it down and add it!

  This beautiful sand sculpture, a mandela was painstakingly constructed over four days by Tibetan monks in a ritual! 

These pictures, especially with my little point  and shoot, don’t do it any justice at all…the colors are brilliant!   In some of the places the borders are even raised!  This is stunning!!! We saw it just in time too!!!  This beautiful intricate sand painting is made to be destroyed, to represent life’s impermanence.  

The dismantling ceremony, another intricate ritual, will be held tonight and the painting is going to be destroyed.  The sand will be collected in a vase and carried to a waterway and poured into the water so the mandala’s energy message of health will be carried throughout our city!

I don’t know why, but this incredible work of art really held a fascination  for me!

Next it was on to lunch!

And at the food court is where Meredith and I met up! 

We have never met in person before!  She is beautiful!!!!   Tiny, a bundle of pep and energy, and a smile almost as big as she is!  Her healthy lifestyle really shows.

We didn’t have a lot of time….half an hour?   Or maybe we had longer than I thought and it just passed quickly!!!   

She had an appointment and I had to get back to the bus with the kids! 

I gabbed so much I never even ate my lunch! 

I had bought some Tofurky and was trying it for the first time in a sandwich.

So I ate it in the car on the way back to school.  No pictures because the camera ended up with the art teacher on the bus!

Now we are back home, I have collected all the kids, and the kids actually want to go see that dismantling ceremony so we are headed back to the  museum shortly.

My Very “Producive” Week In Review

Ugh..that was  bad, wasn’t it!  Sorry!!

Here I was going to blog about how I  used my produce box all week…and then I pulled a disappearing act.

This week I went into overdrive and became overwhelmed….and it just didn’t happen.  By evening I was tired and just couldn’t summon the energy and creativity to blog.

But the food part and pictures did happen  so I can put together a quick recap! 

Monday:

All fruits and veggies from my produce co-op except the carrots, (organic from Costco:

Homemade coleslaw, Asian style vinegar based dressing

  

I dragged this thing out…it is at least 18 years old and I haven’t used it probably in 10 years…but it worked!

     

Roasted tater chips…sweet and russet!

   

Final dinner was a huge helping of the coleslaw to fill me up, the homemade potato chips, and a Boca Burger on an Arnold Sandwich thin with totally processed American cheese, and organic onion and sliced cucumbers.

      

Dessert was yummy mango…not quite ripe enough though so it was a little tart.  These two were chunked and shared between the four mango lovers.   Mangos are not on FabHubs approved fruit list!

  

Tuesday:

Oatmeal with almond milk, leftover mango, cinnamon, and almond butter.  I had been craving this!  Obviously only the mango came  from my delivery!

A snack of local Florida mandarins…I didn’t even know we grew mandarins in Florida!  We loved these…a lot more than the blood oranges that came last week.

  

Lunch was a tempeh wrap.  I have never tried tempeh before!  It was really good and is a definite repeat.  I put it on a flatout wrap with some more sliced cukes,  green leaf lettuce, and grape tomatoes.  I rounded it off with a large helping of my Asian style  coleslaw…very healthy, low in fat and very filling!

    

Sorry for blurry picture!

Dinner….

While looking  for a recipe to use my collard greens, somehow I found this perfect recipe!

Perfect because oddly enough…I pretty much had all of the ingredients for it!  I had bought  the Field Roast vegetarian sausage when we went  camping a few weeks ago with the Boy Scout troop…but because they ended up having some vegetarian MRIs  I never used it and it was at the point where it really needed to be used…or else!  It wasn’t apple sage…it was Italian…but I didn’t care, it still fit the bill!

     

From the produce box I pulled into service some garlic, red bell pepper, red onion, and collard greens.  We were out of whole wheat pasta so I just used what we had on hand.

          

Dessert!  Dark organic Green and Black chocolate and organic raspberries.

 

Wednesday:

Around here, week was getting crazier so pictures are sparser!

For breakfast I mixed Fage 0% Greek yogurt with the last of the razzies, some bananas, some Granola To Go (about 1/4 cup sprinkled), 1/2 TBS almond butter, and a drizzle of Agave nectar.   Yummy…but I did miss my oatmeal!

For dinner I wanted to use up the  broccoli before it went bad, some more potatoes (I have a major back up of those right now and need to use them!) and the eggplants.

I ended up roasting the eggplants over charcoal to make  baba ghanoush…I took pictures of the process but they seem to have left!

So I have:

   

I snacked on this with some of Mary’s organic crackers that I received from Oh She Glows Angela in the box of fabulous goodies I won from her!

OMG!  I am in heaven with these crackers…they are so crisp and crunchy and flavorful  and I immediately read the package to find out if they are Canadian only or American because I want to buy more of them!  I was hugely relieved to see they are made in California!  I will be hunting these down in Whole Foods!

  

For dinner we had the baked potato which I smothered topped with a little in light sour cream and cheddar cheese (I know!)   The lemon was for the broccoli! 

And to my complete horror,  I am having a complete brain blank here and have no idea what that other stuff is that I put on my plate that I am sure made my husband give me “the look” that I get when I serve my no meat meals!  I will have to show the picture to FabTeen and ask him…he will remember for me!  Thank goodness for kids!

(HA!  Update here and I didn’t even need the kid for it!  After squinting hard at the photo for a while, I remembered all by myself!  They are homemade bean burgers…which were not the best I have made but they were palatable.  And yes…I definitely, absolutely got the look!)

Thursday:

Thursday I finally broke out the kabocha squash.   I have received two of these in my boxes and have yet to use them!

If it weren’t for Heather, who eats these fanatically when she is not eating almond butter, I would have never known what to do with it! 

It is something I never would have bought…it looks ornamental!  But because I have been “hearing” about this for weeks, when it showed up in my box I was pretty excited!  (Yes, I know…excited about a squash, pretty pathetic!)

Hmm…I had some more “done” photos of these but they must be hanging out with those missing pix of the eggplants on charcoal!

At any rate…I am in LOVE with this squash!  It is so sweet and yummy and I loved it prepared this way and it totally reminds me of something else I have eaten…boniato maybe?  Although the skin is different…..don’t think so…but I don’t know!  I ate it skin and all.  I loved the crunchy skin on  the sweet, soft flesh…it was so perfect. 

We had dinner:

A salad I threw together with more veggies on their last legs, begging to be eaten, a nekkid Boca Burger, the last of the broccoli sprinkled with a little parmesan…and the Kabocha!

And I kept going back for more and more and more and more kabocha.

and we watched Survivor, and then CSI, and then I hit the kabocha bowl again!

   

I have one more kabocha to enjoy…and  then I need to hunt some down!  After I thank Heather of course!

Friday:

Was a day of complete lunacy where I had one activity after another from the moment I woke up until I  got home after 9 p.m.  Bake sale, Girl Scout activity, picking up kids, driving kids….it was nonstop!

No pictures!  Dinner was 1 slice cheese pizza and a bottle of water at the Girl Scout activity!

Saturday:

The madness continued!  Girl Scout caroling at a local nursing home, then a memorial BBQ (didn’t eat anything there) then a big family Hanukkah dinner!  Didn’t get in until well after 1 a.m.!   (Geez!  When did that become late?  Probably after the second child!)

Still no pictures!

I  passed on the brisket (which upset my sister terribly!!!) and filled my plate with salad,  also avocado salad, and delicious homemade latkes!

Sunday:

Finally!  FabHubs wanted more latkes and since we have a ton of potatoes to use up that is what we had at breakfast! 

Camera was still sleeping though!  And the day was another one on the run…so no pix at breakfast!

Off to yet another Girl Scout activity!  FabPreteen ate pizza…I waited for dinner though.

Dinner was another avocado salad with avocado and red onion from  the box, tossed in balsamic with a little S&P.  Very simple but very good!

  

More tossed salad, again to use up veggies before I get my  refill  tomorrow!

Brown rice:

And a coconut/peanut tofu stirfry!  I had some green onions that were starting to go mushy and they fit  the bill perfectly in here! First time I have ever pressed  and pan fried tofu…it was good…not great but good.  Need to tweak the seasonings here…..(soy sauce, peanut butter, garlic, coconut)

      

And that is my week in review!  I did a great job using up my fruits and veggies from this week…and  even most of what I had piled up in the fridge from previous weeks!

Still left from last week and before are two mangos, two bananas, 2 lemons, 1 kiwi, salad, 3 zukes, more collards, a bunch of fresh spinach, some fresh herbs (I seem to have trouble using these up!), white taters, yams, and a kabocha! 

Sounds like a lot but relatively speaking it is not and will be easy to use!

The fridge actually looks kind of empty and ready to receive tomorrow's delivery.

The clock just struck midnight and I am off to bed!  Another busy busy day tomorrow.