New Location!!!!

I finally had enough time to switch the blog today.  I ended up purchasing a domain name, because it was cheap and it should be much easier to remember.  The new link is www.smalltownhealthyliving.com

I'm still undecided about transferring all my previous content, so if you're looking for a recipe or something I've done in the past, it will still be on this blogger page.  For now.  Maybe this weekend I'll get around to it.

Until then, enjoy the new blog!

Chopped!

As I'm typing up this post, there's an episode of Chopped on in the background.  I just love that show.  Some of the ingredients are just ridiculous though, and I haven't even heard of some of them.  I would not do well.

The only notable meal yesterday was my buffalo chicken wrap.  Spinach tortilla with chicken, celery, cheese, buffalo sauce and spinach.

Today I started the day off with a toasted Sandwich Thin, with peanut butter and banana.

For lunch I cooked up a chicken that had been sitting in our freezer forever.  It was finally thawed out so I drizzled it with some olive oil, and rubbed it with a mixture of chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, oregano and salt and pepper.  I stuffed it with chunks of celery and onion and popped it in the onion for 1 hour at 425 degrees.  I did put a light glaze after 40 minutes of honey, soy sauce and some ginger.

I was super hungry and in a hurry, so I just had a little chunk before leaving for work- it was mighty tasty.  Hubby sure liked it too.

I had a busy afternoon and then it was off to exercise class.  Had a good workout, and then an awesome compliment.  One of the gals came up to me afterwards and said "thank you so much for teaching this class, I just want to tell you that I really enjoy it".  That made my day.  I feel so guilty leaving Tyler to go teach class (also play volleyball on Mondays- another guilt trip), so comments like that help.  I also know that I'm working out to keep myself healthy, so I can be there for Tyler in the long run.  I lecture women every day about taking care of themselves and putting themselves first so they can take care of their family- guess I need to remember my own advice.

Thank goodness I have such a great husband who understands and doesn't mind extra parenting duties on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Doesn't hurt that I'm the one getting up at 5 am with Tyler though.

=)  Love you honey!

Quick weekend

Yesterday morning we worked in the office for the first time in about a month.  It always seems like the weekend flies by when we work.  

Before I forget, here's a picture of Thursday night's wings and broccoli

I started Friday morning off with an old fav, cut up apples covered by strawberry Chobani and sunflower seeds.

Lunch was leftover chili

And after a busy day we just made some quick chicken fajitas for supper.

Whole grain tortilla, mixed greens, plain Chobani, cheese and somewhere under all that is chicken and veggies

Like I said, Saturday morning we worked in the office.  My sister-in-law Katy and her son Beau came up so she could get an adjustment.  For lunch we walked down to the Coffee Den, where I got a spicy chicken wrap with veggies on the side and a chai tea latte.  I was so hungry, forgot to take a picture.  

That night we decided to clean out our freezer and use up some fish that my dad gave us.  I just dipped it in some egg and breaded it with a flour-like mixture that I have on hand for fish (also from Dad).  For a side dish, I decided to use our new slicer and make potato "chips"- more like coins.  Used baking potatoes and a sweet potato.

So apparently the blade on those things is sharp.  I was just thinking in my head, "Gee, I better be careful and not get going too fast".  

I spared you the blood shot and covered it with a bandaid

Whoops.

I was a little more careful after that.

For dessert I got out the ice cream maker again.  This time I wanted to make a frozen yogurt, and use up some strawberries that had been sitting in the deep freeze forever.  I looked at a couple recipes and here's what I came up with.

2 cups frozen strawberries

3 cups plain Chobani Greek yogurt

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

I just threw it in a blender, then poured it into the ice cream maker.  Since the yogurt was 0% fat, it was a little gummy, but tasted good.  I think next time I will experiment with the sugar, and use some sort of substitute to make it even healthier.  

Today started off with a light breakfast prepared by the hubby- 2 eggs and a piece of whole wheat toast with a small glass of OJ.  

I pretty much just snacked the rest of the day.  Hubby and I took turns going to the gym and then he had basketball most of the afternoon, so I never had any time to make the roasted chicken that I planned on making.  It's hard to be productive when Tyler is attached to your hip.  He's being really clingy lately, a big momma's boy.  Makes me happy to know he loves me, but hard to do anything.  I did manage to do laundry, dishes and some other little chores.

Speaking of the gym, I had an awesome workout today.  Here's the rundown:

15 minutes run on the treadmill- 6.5

15 squats with barbell press

12 seated rows

12 pulldowns

10 lunges with lateral raise- each leg

12 straight-leg deadlifts

10 cable rhomboid pulls

Repeated all the strength moves

10 minutes ab and back strength

4 minutes Tabata on a spin bike- 20 sec all out, 10 sec rest

5 minutes stretching

It felt glorious.  

I'll leave you with some pictures of the cousins.  Hope you had a nice, peaceful weekend like me.  

Spring is here??

I don't know how high the temperature got today, but when we were out on our walk, it was 54 degrees according to one of the banks.  Unbelievable.

We decided to get out and get some fresh air today, and bring Tyler along with us.  We dug out the stroller and went for a little stroll around town.  Stopped at the Coffee Den to get a mocha frappe [have to support the local businesses ;)] and then got a couple groceries at Fareway.

Pretty weird sight to see... walking down the sidewalk with the Christmas decor still up, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt.

I didn't really feel like downloading the one picture I took on my good camera, so I'll save it for the next post.  Meals haven't been too exciting, just salads and sandwiches, same as the last couple days.  Of course tonight the Hubby couldn't resist getting out the grill, and grilled up some chicken wings and drummies.  I had some of those with some steamed broccoli after my workout class.

Nothing too much going on here, except a little visit to the ear, nose and throat doctor yesterday for Tyler.  At his 9 month check-up, he still had a bunch of wax in his ears.  The NP tried to flush it out but couldn't, so she set us up an appointment with an ENT doctor to remove the wax.  She was afraid if we didn't clear it out that he would have speech development problems because he couldn't hear clearly.

So yesterday we picked up Tyler from daycare over the lunch hour and took him in.  We were there for less than five minutes.  Got right in, the doctor was awesome and scraped out his ears in no time.  We had to hold Tyler down which wasn't fun, but he was fine once it was all over.  The doctor said he just has tiny ear canals.  Ear drums and everything else looks great though.

I didn't get to see how much junk they took out, but apparently it was quite a bit, and must have been affecting his speech.  Now we can't get him to shut up.  Bababa daddada daa daaaaa

It's pretty cute.  He is also able to play catch with Hubby, if I can figure out videos, I'll post that sometime.

Happy Friday... hope everyone is coming along well with their 2012 goals!

No more caucus

Boo hoo.  So sad the caucus is over.  No more endless commercials, no more recorded messages calling our office, no more politicians at Pizza Ranch.  Whatever shall we do?!  ;)

Don't really feel like turning this blog into a political one, so I'll just complain a little and be done.  Although if you didn't catch any of the Republican debates, too bad, because they were pretty entertaining.

I'll just stick to my food.  I've been getting into the salads again, which feels good.  Yesterday for lunch I had a spinach salad with turkey, feta, and sliced almonds, with a balsamic vinaigrette on top.

Supper was kind of a fish and chips night- potato-crusted cod sandwiches and tater tots.  I basically wanted to get rid of a couple things in our freezer.  The cod was from Fareway, just had to bake it.  Tater tots have been in there for probably a year, so guess it was time to get rid of those.

I made a little homemade tartar sauce to go on the sandwiches.  If you buy tartar sauce, don't bother because it is super easy to make.  Just a dollop of Light Miracle Whip, spoonful of dill relish, tiny bit of spicy mustard and a sprinkle of dill weed.  Sometimes I'll add some lemon juice as well.

I just had a couple of the tots, because I also had some roasted cauliflower.  I cut up a head of cauliflower, put it in a plastic ziplock with some garlic grapeseed oil and some seasoning (Roasted Veggie seasoning that our office manager gave us for Christmas).  I dumped it on a shallow baking sheet and roasted at 425 degrees for about 20-25 minutes.  I like it a little crispy.  It was incredible.  Note to self, roast more veggies!

I had a couple strawberries leftover from my fruit salsa, so what goes better with them than French toast?  Since I was up early this morning with Tyler, I used 5 pieces of Earth Grains' Wheat Berry bread, dipped it in a mixture of 2 eggs, approximately 1 T vanilla, little bit of milk and some cinnamon.  Sorry about the lack of measurements, I just mix it up until it looks good.

Slap it on the griddle and enjoy with strawberries and a sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Lunch was another chicken-Swiss-bbq sandwich.  Yum.

Finally got home after workout class and grocery store, and had a buffalo chicken salad.  I picked up some premade buffalo chicken pieces from Fareway- precooked so all I had to do was heat it up.  Along with spinach, celery, carrot, feta and the chicken.  I did sprinkle a tiny bit of ranch dressing to soup it up.

I also added some hemp hearts to my salad.  Yeah, I don't really know too much about them.  I get a lot of samples sent to me in the mail, and the other day we got a huge package of these things.  I thought I'd give it whirl and add a little to my salad.  Hopefully my digestive system doesn't crash overnight.  We'll see.

That's all for now, catch up with you on Thursday.

Happy New Year!

Whether we like it or not, 2012 is here.  I just can't believe how fast the last year went.  Our lives changed so much this past year, with the addition of Tyler.  He is so much fun and he makes us smile every single day.  So blessed.

This weekend also went by fast.  We were very busy on Friday, so we just had left-over pasta on Friday night and went to bed way early.  Saturday morning I took off to Cedar Rapids to return a couple things and do a little shopping.  Before I left, I had myself a nice, hot, gluten-free breakfast.

I cooked up the remainder of this:

It's basically a hot cereal, that is somewhat like oatmeal I guess?  It's hard to describe.  Tastes good and it's gluten-free.  I sprinkled some cinnamon and slivered almonds on it and drizzled some honey over the top.

I was very close to stopping for something to eat in CR, but didn't give in because I knew we were going to eat a ton later.  We didn't want to do much for NYE, since we've been traveling so much lately, so we just went over to our friends' house- thanks Doug and Erica- in the afternoon and then left early so we could put Tyler to bed.  We had lots of yummy food.

My contribution was a fruit salsa, which was easy.  I just chopped up 2 Granny Smith apples, 1/2 container of strawberries, 2 kiwis and an orange, then sprinkled with a little lemon and lime juice.

I bought these delicious cinnamon and sugar pita chips to go with it.

I also tried a new recipe, Buffalo Chicken Rolls.  I usually make a Buffalo Chicken Dip, which is amazing, but kind of high on the calories.  These are much healthier, but they turned out just ok.  Had to get some Ranch dressing to dip them in, which kind of eliminates the whole point of making them.

I pretty much followed the recipe, but used mozzarella cheese instead, and cut up strips of celery to use instead of slaw.  Should have used more sauce and the bleu cheese.

They made some pulled pork and cheesy potatoes, which were soooooooo good.  Here's my plate, I had about 3 more plates after this.  Erica made some cherry cheesecake brownies for dessert so of course I had a couple of those.

That brings us to today.  I'll go over my 2012 goals here in a minute, but a quick overview of the meals first.

Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal with blueberries, almonds and honey

Sandwich Thin with Swiss cheese, left-over chicken, bbq sauce- threw in toaster oven until cheese melted and topped with spinach

An Omaha steak (sirloin I believe) that Hubby got for Christmas- by the way, he got a ton of steak, so look for more of that.  Added some steamed broccoli and a baked potato on the side.  I ate half my steak and shared with Hubby.

Oh, and I got out the ice cream maker today!! My first attempt was a BIG success.  I made a pineapple sorbet, and had to restrain myself from eating the entire container.  All I did was cut and core a pineapple, chop it up in my food processor with 2 T of lemon juice, then put it in the ice cream maker.  It was the perfect consistency, and it didn't even need any extra sugar.

I spent the first day of the new year doing a little cleaning, working out and watching some movies.  3 things I don't do nearly enough.  I finally got to see Water for Elephants, which I wanted to see ever since I finished the book.  As usual, the book was way better.  Not a fan of Robert Pattinson's acting, but I guess the movie stuck with the book for the most part.  Tonight we watched Bridesmaids finally.  It was funny but definitely not as pee-my-pants funny as everyone said.  Maybe I was just too tired.

Ok, goal time.  Not resolutions- no vague "I want to eat healthier" or "I want to lose weight".  These have to be measurable.  That's one thing that's been drilled in my head since chiropractic school.  Nothing too dramatic or anything, but it's a good starting point.  I'd still like to add a major challenge this year, like my triathlon last year, but I don't really know what I want to do yet.

1.  Go to the gym at least 2 times a week.  I teach my exercise class 2 times a week, so if I can go to the gym 2 more times, that will be 4 workouts a week, and with my schedule, that is good enough for me.

2.  Try a new recipe 4 times a month.  I didn't say once a week, because I'm sure there are some weeks when we won't feel like experimenting.

3.  Drink more water- at least 64 ounces a day.  I plan on getting out the Nalgene bottle and make sure I drink two of them a day.

4.  Read 1 new book a month

5.  Yoga- 2 times a month

6.  Do a cleanse/detox program.  We sell these at our office and I usually try to do one a year, but last year I was pregnant and nursing, and you aren't supposed to do a cleanse under those conditions.  So as soon as I'm done pumping, I will nail down a date.


Those are the goals for now, written down for all to see.  Let's see if I can do a recap every month to see if I accomplished them.  Never too late, get a pen and paper and write down your personal goals for the new year!

We have a hoarder

That's what hubby told me after picking up Tyler from daycare last night.  When he walked in, he couldn't see Tyler, and the lady was just pointed to the sink area behind him.  He turned around and there was Tyler, playing underneath the sink.  Apparently this is his new play area at daycare.  He likes to haul all his toys there and play under the pipes.  And the lady said now other kids are starting to do that.  What a gomer.

He does like to haul his toys all over, we find little toys underneath the couches and chair.  Today he took the remote control and carried it all the way to our bedroom and put it in one of the clothes hampers.  

At least he's a cute little hoarder

We've had a pretty crazy week at the office this week, lots of people getting in because of the stress of Christmas.  Probably a good thing we haven't had any snow, because we wouldn't be able to fit everyone in from hurting their backs shoveling!

We did make it to the grocery store on Tuesday to stock up on some goodies.  

On Tuesday night we decided to use up some broccoli that had been sitting in the fridge, so I baked some chicken chunks with some Cookie's seasoning and some quick alfredo noodles (yes, the crappy packaged kind that has waaay too much sodium).  I steamed the broccoli and threw it all together.

For Wednesday's lunch, we had some left-over chicken to use up.  I made a taco salad, using chicken, spinach, black beans, salsa, Mexican cheese, and plain Chobani.  I had just a little bit of the Christmas Mission tortilla chips left, so I crunched them up and sprinkled them on.  Hubby made a chicken and black bean quesadilla, and wanted me to take a picture of it because he was so proud.  

Last night was a dilemma, because we had a pound and a half of lean hamburger to use up.  We were going to make burgers on the grill, but we were both exhausted after work and didn't want to go into the cold.  We got out the good ol' cast iron skillet instead.  Hubby made some burgers on the skillet with our grill press.  They ended up drying out a little, because we pressed a lot of the grease out of them in an attempt to make them healthier.  We topped it with Swiss cheese, spinach, ketchup and mustard.

Before the spinach, ketchup and mustard

Today was kind of a weird day.  I woke up early with Tyler, who has been doing great by the way, sleeping through the night until 6 am.  Unfortunately 6 am is early for me.  I stayed up with him until about 7:30 and then going to lay down for awhile.  I think I woke back up around 10?  Yikes.   

I had a piece of cinnamon raisin Ezekial toast and was going to have some yogurt, but it smelled really funky, so I ended up throwing it out.  When I got hungry a little bit later, I worked on a bag of delicious chex mix that my grandma gave us for Christmas.  

Lunch was at about 1, and I just made up a small salad because I wasn't too hungry.  Spinach, turkey, celery, feta cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.  

After an intense workout class- lots of cardio and lots of abs- we enjoyed a pasta bake that I had prepared earlier in the day.  My hubby loves lasagna, but I hate the work that goes into it.  I know it's not that bad but I found a way to make it way easier.  

I boiled up a box and a half of whole wheat pasta (I had half a box of rotini and a box of penne) for 8 minutes or so.  At the same time, I browned one pound of hot Jimmy Dean sausage with one green pepper and half an onion.  I drained both of those then threw them together in the big pot and added two cans of Heart Healthy spaghetti sauce.  In a separate bowl, combine one egg, a container of lowfat cottage cheese, 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, 2 cups mozzarella cheese.  In a 9x13 pan, dump half the pasta mixture and spread the cheese mixture on top.  Top off with the remaining pasta mixture and sprinkle some more mozzarella cheese on top.  Super easy.  

350 degree oven- 30 minutes with aluminum foil covering the pan, then remove the foil for 20 more minutes.  

Here's what you get!

This dish ought to give us at least 4 meals, hopefully more.

I'll be back sometime this weekend with some goals for 2012... where the heck has this year gone...