Ho Hum Monday

MAJOR headache today!!  So much for my motivation...  I stayed hopped up on Advil all day and it just barely kept me going.  I did manage to get a little painting done though (remember, the painting project I talked about here and here).  This is truly the room from hell when it comes to painting!  It seems to never end.  I wish I had kept track of how many hours I've spent on that thing, and I'm STILL not done! 

I forgot to share this picture with you in my Spring Break Recap post...we passed this place on our way out of Austin in route to Brenham.

 

Matt said he wanted some "Pho King noodles"!  (Ha!!  Think about it...)

Not a very exciting Monday, but I DO have a few foodie things to share.  First, for my snack today I ate two of these really yummy cookies I made this weekend.

Just your basic chocolate chip cookie recipe except that I substituted coconut oil for the butter/shortening.  I also added a little bit of oatmeal to make a more dense cookie and added walnuts to the last batch for me.  My daughter is severely allergic to nuts, but I love them - go figure.  I was a little scared with the coconut oil substitution, but I soon figured out they would turn out okay based on the kids begging to eat the dough!  They couldn't leave it alone!  Actually, neither could I!  The cookies were FABULOUS!!  Matt didn't care for them because he said he could taste the coconut, but the kids and I loved them so much that we canceled out his vote.  Hee hee!

I kind of cheated for dinner tonight.  I very rarely buy pre-made meals, but the other day I went grocery shopping at Sprouts (my new favorite place!) and they had a pre-made meatloaf in their meat department.  The price wasn't bad at all, not much more than you would pay for the ground beef alone, and when I looked at the ingredients they were all familiar to me so I decided to give it a try.  All I had to do was bake it for 40 minutes so it was a really easy dinner.  During that 40 minutes I made a new side dish - cornbread pancakes.  I don't know why I've never done this before because they were a hit with everyone.  I used the recipe on the Jiffy box.

The meatloaf was really good too!  I will buy that again for sure.  Here is my dinner plate - I threw a few Brussels sprouts in the oven with the meatloaf even though no one else eats them.

I'm going to finish my Chai tea now and then off to bed!

Salsa Fresca

I think I have introduced you to Roger before...well, this is him begging for a banana while I prepared my oatmeal for breakfast:

Roger LOVES bananas!  They are probably his favorite food and I think he loves them even more than popcorn.  I don't know how he does it, but he can be in a totally different room (even upstairs) and if we break open the peel of a banana he comes running! 

I'm really, really trying to fight this cold and I feel like I may be losing.  Today my sore throat was mostly gone but it was replaced by a stuffy nose and headache and then general body aches by late afternoon.  I needed to take it easy tonight so this cold doesn't turn into something more.  We have some spring break plans for the kids later this week so I can't get sick!  Motivation will have to go on hold for a while as I rest...

But before I can rest...there is dinner to be made.  Obviously I didn't want to spend too much time in the kitchen so I threw together some tacos.  You won't believe how simple they were and how AWESOME they tasted!  Tortillas, jack cheese, hamburger, but the star of the show was the salsa fresca.

Grape tomatoes, red onion, cilantro, corn, avocado, lime, and salt.

This stuff was OFF THE HOOK!  It really made the tacos fabulous!  Here was the soft taco I made with a whole wheat tortilla:

I piled on the salsa fresca, right?  Well, I went back TWO times to get more!  I will be making this one again. 

Happy Birthday!

We had a little celebration last night, but today is actually Matt's birthday.  Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband!

 

For his birthday dinner tonight, we had one of his favorite dishes - Mussels in Saffron White Wine Sauce.  He's a seafood lover, so he usually requests some sort of seafood.  Here's how it all started...

 

...and here's how it ended up...

While I prepared dinner tonight, I was admiring how pretty my veggie drawer looks after a couple of trips to the store this weekend.  It's so nice and colorful, I just had to take a picture!

For the past few months, I've been trying really hard to incorporate more vegetables into our meals.  There are very few vegetables that Matt will eat (and actually enjoy) and the kids aren't much better, so I'm trying to get creative (read: sneaky).  

Hopefully you'll be seeing more of these beauties later in the week!  I can't wait to dig into them!

Did you know it's National Procrastination Week?  Cool!  That means I can procrastinate all week and not feel guilty?  :)  Well, I would say I started off pretty good then because I really didn't do anything productive other than work and make dinner.  I also had a really bad headache all day, so I wasn't extremely motivated to do much else.  There's always tomorrow, right? 

Getting Things Done!

Today was all about Getting Things Done!  It could have gone downhill from the get-go when I almost slept right through my alarm.

After getting the kids off to school, I threw together the Mediterranean Beef Stew that would be simmering away while I worked.  That took some extra time out of my normal routine, so I had to pack up my steel cut oatmeal (SCO), which I DID remember to cook last night, to eat at work.

 

SCO with pecans, 1/2 banana and honey.  This is my usual combination with one exception - I normally use maple syrup but since I had some honey at work I subbed that instead.  Maple syrup is still my fave, but the honey was really good too.  Seriously, nothing compares to SCO!  You must try it!

I am so happy that I got so many things checked off of my to do list.  Actually, I am thrilled that I even MADE a to do list today!  And let me tell you...I was cranking through them like nobody's business!  I think the key to my motivational success today, aside from the to do list, was that I scheduled time on my calendar to get these things done.  When the reminder popped up I just went into auto-pilot mode because, believe me, if given time to think I could have easily found something else to do that was more fun!  These were boring and mundane things but necessary - like scheduling doctor and dentist appointments for my kids, grooming appointment for the dog, ordering new contact lenses, and some work related stuff.

My oatmeal filled me up this morning, so I was still not extremely hungry by 12:45 but I ate anyway.  Since my afternoon was packed with meetings I knew this may be the only chance I would get.  On the menu for lunch were leftover meatballs from last night.  Still just as good the next day!

 

I did find time to get in an afternoon snack.  Unfortunately, that didn't do anything to stop the slight headache I had coming on.  By the time I left the office it was a full fledged headache so I took some ibuprofen and waited for it to kick in.  :(

When I got home, I could smell the aroma of dinner that had been slow cooking all day.  What a weird smell!  Not a good sign.  Also not a good sign was Matt's comment which was something like, "What IS it exactly that we're having for dinner?".  We both tried it and while it wasn't inedible, it's definitely not something I will make again.  I whipped up some hummus real fast to make up for the meat that no one (except for me) wanted to eat.

 

The meat itself really wasn't bad, I just couldn't take much of the sauce.  It had a LOT of cinnamon, some balsamic vinegar, honey, tomatoes and beef broth.  I think it was the overabundance of cinnamon that threw us all for a loop.  I wondered this morning as I dumped in 2 full teaspoons, but decided to stick to the recipe and hope for the best. Hmph!

Excuse the paper plate - given the dinner flop and the headache I was trying to fight off, I just didn't feel like creating more dirty dishes to deal with!