Packing Breakfasts and Lunches, Earth Fare Win

I know I have been away for a few days.  To be perfectly honest, I just haven’t had much blog-worthy activity.  It’s been pretty ho-hum here at the Confessions house.  So I thought I would just show you a couple of pics, just to show you what I’ve been up to.

Made an excellent batch of Easy Chili on Saturday which led to several lunches and snacks this week…

I like to serve chili over noodles—whole wheat noodles.  But I also like to eat my chili with baked tortilla chips, like a salsa.  Either way… yum. 

So. On to the breakfast and lunch packing.  I have to be at work pretty early.  I also drop off my little girl on the way.  That means that I have to be out the door in the morning pretty early.  That means that I don’t have time to make breakfast and eat at home.  So I pack it and take it with me.  I like to take items like:

• oatmeal
• fruit (see fruit find below!)
• ham and cheese slices
• grits (instant individual packets)

I made an awesome breakfast discovery that I want to share with you: Del Monte Fruit Naturals!

(click for source)

I bought the red grapefruit cups the other day just on a whim and I LOVE them.  It is seriously like biting into the juiciest, freshest grapefruit ever.  These are a lifesaver for breakfast.  I just throw them in my lunch bag and I have a healthy breakfast without all of the mess and cutting that grapefruit sometimes involves.  They also make cups of blueberries (hello cereal topping!), peaches, mixed berries, and mixed fruit!  I plan to try them all.

On to lunch…

I’ve been enjoying Potpourri Platters for lunches lately. 

These are the best kinds of lunches.  A little bit of everything.  Some of the things I like to throw in are (the goodies vary from day to day):

• hummus (topped with tomatoes and/or feta cheese and/or cucumber)
• pita rounds or pita chips
• olives
• turkey slices
• clementine oranges (gotta enjoy them while they are in season!)
• string cheese
• almonds (I make my own mini packs of these.  I buy them in the bulk bins at Earth Fare and then count them out into small portions.  I just grab one of my premeasured portions and throw it in my lunch bag!)

Having ingredients like these on hand really has helped me to get through Eat-In Month.  It has helped me avoid spending extra money on lunches this month, and of course I can eat healthier when I am prepared.

Now, on another note, check out this haul of groceries from Earth Fare that I got for just $15!

I got an awesome coupon via text this morning (Click here to find out how to get coupons texted to you from EF) and I couldn’t wait to use it!  (If you get this coupon, hurry—it expires on Friday!)

I got:

• veggie burgers
• bananas
• cheese puffs (like cheetos but a little healthier)
• pesto
• grapefruit
• 2 Chobani yogurts
• 3 healthy Ramen Noodle packs
• tri-color quinoa (from the bulk bin)
• almonds (bulk bin)
• banana chips (bulk bin)

I love shopping the bulk bins.  It’s fun to pick out something new to try each time.  And I love being able to decide how much I want to buy of a product.

Wow.  What a boring post.  Listing my lunch ingredients?  My grocery list? Oh my goodness.  I better cook something fast so I have a better post next time!

Birthday Wings

TGIF!  I don’t know about you all, but this week was a little hard.  After being off of work for over 2 weeks, it was hard to go back for a full week.  Friday was a welcome sight!

On Wednesday, the Confessions Hubby celebrated his birthday.  Please don’t tell him I told all of you that he is 37.  I like to tease him because no matter how old I get… he’ll always be older!  He he!  Poor Hubby had his birthday on one of our busiest nights of the week: Wednesday.  We usually have dinner at church and then Sadie has kids’ activities afterwards.  Unfortunately for Ryan, the menu was soup.  Now, this was great news for me—I LOVE soup, especially on a really cold day, which it was.  But the hubby… not so much of a fan.  He was a good sport and ate the soup on his birthday. 

And then I made the poor guy go on a 2+ mile run/walk in the 30 degree weather with me while Sadie was in her church class. 

Love that iMapMyFitness App!  Have you tried it yet?  I also LOVE when the weather is cold.  It is my favorite walk/run weather.  Weird, I know.  But I love a cold run.  It helps me go further.  I wish we’d had more time to run another mile or two.

But I did reward him with cake!

 

I wanted to make it myself but there was just no time this week.  So thank you Harris Teeter for the lovely red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.  (I realize this is a slight cheat for Eat-In Month, but it just couldn’t be helped.  Oops!)  The 9-point slice I ate was worth it.

So… fast forward to Friday night.  I promised the hubby that I would make up for his soup meal on Friday with chicken wings!  I don’t fry mine.  I usually like to marinate them and bake them.  Tonight I made two varieties: hot and barbecue.  I marinated the hot wings in Frank’s Cayenne Pepper Sauce (the BEST wing sauce in my opinion) and more of this homemade BBQ sauce.

Bake at 400 for about 20-25 minutes and they are ready!

Mmmmmm… wings!  Perfect! 

Happy birthday, honey!  Hope those wings made up for your birthday soup dinner!  :)  Mwah!

Apps for Techies and Leftovers Reinvented!

Today was a hard day, friends.  Since December 13, I have been sleeping in until 8:00 or later.  It’s been nice.  Sleep, get up, drink coffee, catch up on the DVR episodes… but today it was back to reality!  Yes, school started back again and it was hard to drag myself out of bed at 5:45 a.m.  Did any of you start back to work today after a holiday vacation?  How was your day?

One thing that kept me going was knowing that I had leftovers and a way to reinvent them tonight, PLUS a free afternoon/evening to do whatever I wanted!

I have two apps to tell you about today that I think are awesome.  If you are currently exercising or trying to lose weight, I thought these might be helpful to you!

Now, I am an iPhone user, after many years of owning a Blackberry.  As a BB user, I would always get frustrated when the cool apps weren’t available to me.  So I am going to apologize in advance to any of you who can’t access these apps.  I don’t know if they are available on the Android or Blackberry (or other) Markets.  These are definitely available to you iPhone users, though!

1. iMapMyFITNESS

I am absolutely loving this app!  This is great to have if you are a runner or a walker.  My favorite thing is the “record workout” feature.  When I go out for a walk, I tell it to record my workout.  It finds my location via GPS and then tracks my walk.  I can see a map of the streets and it records my route, how fast I am going, how much time has elapsed, and more!

At the end, you can view a summary of your workout and save it for another time.  This is helpful when you are walking different routes in your neighborhood and you get home and you think, “Wonder how far I went?”

By the way, it also allows you to pause and resume a workout.  Today, I walked about 1 1/4 miles, and then needed to make a stop at the grocery store.  I paused my workout when I entered the store and resumed it when I left!

It was a little awkward to walk with this bag, but it was a great afternoon for a walk/run!

2.  Weight Watchers Bar Code Scanner

This is for any of you out there who are WW members.  If you are a paying member of WW (pay for monthly pass, online membership, or e-tools) then you can download this app and use it for free.  You can scan the bar codes of the foods you have at home (or while you are grocery shopping).  Within seconds, you get the product information with the points values! 

Plus, everything you scan is saved in your history, so if you need to record that food option more than once, you’ve got it!  Almost everything in my pantry (with the exception of private brands—such as Harris Teeter brands) was in the database!  So cool and convenient!

Now, on to the leftovers. (If you are just joining me, I am participating in Eat-In Month during January, so you’ll be seeing a lot more cooking and cost-effective meals this month!)

You may remember my pork shoulder roast from yesterday that I slow-cooked all day.  Well, seeing as how we are only a family of 3, we didn’t finish all of it yesterday!  But… I have found that we (i.e. the husband) are not great at eating our leftovers.  So I started thinking about a way to reinvent the leftover pork into a new meal.  Suddenly, it came to me: barbecue on rolls! 

The only problem?  We had no BBQ sauce in the house.  I started wondering… I bet it wouldn’t be difficult to make my own BBQ Sauce.  After a little searching, I came across this recipe on www.allrecipes.com.  It had great reviews, and we had almost all the ingredients on hand, so I gave it a whirl.

The verdict?  Delicious!  Hubby and I both agree completely that this was better than any store-bought sauce we could have bought!  I threw the leftover pork+sauce in the crock pot, turned it to HIGH, and in just a few hours, we had sweet and tangy BBQ Pork!

We served it up on hot dog buns.  Somehow we always have extra because Sadie always opts to have hers sans bun, so this was an easy way to use up the buns and not spend extra money.

I ate mine open-faced with peas and leftover collards.  :)

YUM!  If you’ve never made your own BBQ Sauce, you should give this one a try!

I like to think about cost effectiveness.  This pork roast cost $9 (on sale—score!).  We still have leftovers, so I figure there were 3 meals from that meat.  That’s $3 a meal.  The steamed peas were under $1 (also on sale) and the BBQ Sauce cost about $0.75 for the amount I made.  The buns and collards were leftover, so I count them as free.  That’s a meal for a family of 3 for under $5.  Sweet!

If you want to read more about how I grocery shop, click here to view my post on how to spend less on groceries.

Let’s Get It Started…

New Year’s Day makes me think of this song:

So, let’s get it started, shall we?  Welcome, 2012!

 

How did you celebrate the new year?  We rang in the new year with friends.  Our friends Kevin and Alice hosted a Bunco New Year’s Eve party.  I had never played Bunco before, but I was reassured that it was, in fact, very easy. 

 

Turns out it IS easy.  My luck was not great—I won $10 for the most losses.  So… unlucky… but also lucky! :)

Of course the traditional midnight toast followed.

The night was lots of fun, even though I was reminded that I am not as young as I once was.  But it was fun pretending.

I pretty much slept through breakfast, so I started with lunch.

  

This is what I am calling a “Hummus Bowl” and it may be my new favorite lunch.  It’s pretty simple.  I put 2 Tbsp. of Hummus in a bowl and then threw in stuff on top (tomatoes, cucumbers, feta), and ate it with these Pita Rounds.  Very tasty.  And so pretty.

 

I had to conserve my cooking energy because I was planning a big dinner with the traditional NYD eats: pork, collards, black-eyed peas, and cornbread. 

Everything turned out so delicious.  I slow-cooked pork shoulder until it literally fell off the bone.

 

See?  It literally fell off.

The black-eyed peas simmered while I worked on my collard greens.  I used this recipe last year for Kickin Collard Greens and it was amazing so I went with it again.  I have had collards different places, but I am telling you… this is the BEST recipe I have ever tasted.  If you are scared to try cooking greens, try this recipe.  The flavor is delicious, due to onion, garlic, bacon, and red pepper!  Plus, I used my own homemade chicken stock!  (Proud moment for me!)

 

Two hours of cooking=20 minutes of actual eating and lots of dishwashing.  But that’s ok.  And according to tradition , we’ll have luck and money this year.  Works for me!

By the way, have I mentioned that Ryan and I are trying to participate in Eat-In Month again this year?  My friend Diana hosts this challenge each year.  We made it through about 2-3 weeks last year and then we (I) caved.  We’re hoping to make it through the month this year.  (We do make a few exceptions—dinner at church each Wednesday, and Sadie’s got a birthday this month, so that may be an exception, too.)  Would you like to join in?  It’s a great way to start the year with saving money and eating healthier after the holidays.

Happy New Year to ALL of you!  I look forward to a new year of blogging, cooking, dancing, and snapping photos!

2011 Superlatives

Remember your senior year in high school when everyone voted on the Senior Superlatives?  Some were a great honor (“Best Smile,” “Most Friendly,” or “Most Likely to Succeed”) while others were embarrassing (“Biggest Flirt”).  I never got a Senior Superlative.  I wonder what mine would have been if I had gotten one?

Another year has come and gone, and like most of you out there, I’m thinking back over the year.  This year was filled with both happy and sad moments, and a lot has changed since I posted my year-in-review last New Year’s Eve.  I don’t like to dwell on the past, but I do want to acknowledge some of the superlatives from this year. 

Most Mysterious Post:

“Out of My Hands”

When I published this post, all sorts of people were asking me, “What’s going on???”  Many people thought it was job-related… and it was!  Just not related to my full-time job!  Last January I made the decision to audition and join the Instructor Team with Queen City DanceOut.  Since then, my life has changed.  I’ve danced on a lot of stages in front of a lot of people since then and even performed in a parade.  And I have met some amazing people, too!  That’s the best part!

 

Most Emotional Post:

This one’s a tie between “A Different Kind of Valentine’s Day”

and “Special Blessings.”

If you’ve been reading for some time, then you know this year was extra tough, as we lost two of my grandparents this spring.  We have missed both of them so much this year, and it was hard to lose them so close together.  But their memories live on and we know the two of them are together in Heaven.

 

Funniest Post:

“A Sisterly Guide to Running Your First 5K”

This has probably gotten the most laughs this year.  It’s my honest look at how I got ready to run my first 5K. 

 

Most Popular Recipe:

“Dixie-Style Dining: Mimi’s Christmas Breakfast”

This is the easiest brunch/breakfast casserole you’ll ever make.  But it’s sooooo tasty.  I shared this in September and it it has been my most popular recipe EVER.  It was crazy popular on Pinterest.  Have you tried it yet?  If not, make it for your New Year’s Day breakfast!

 

Favorite New Recipe (for me):

Chicken Divan (my grandmother’s recipe)

Even though it wasn’t really a difficult recipe to make, this was one of my favorite recipes that I made this year.  It’s so hearty and warm.  I need to make this again soon! 

Biggest Celebration:

That’s easy: “I Do: Cheers to the Happy Couple”

It was so wonderful to end the year with such a fabulous family celebration.  My sister Adrienne got married to Paul in Greenville, a week before Christmas this year.  I am so happy for them!

Other things I have loved about 2011:

• countless Zumba classes
• sushi
• 90210 reruns on the Soap Network
• my new Canon Rebel camera
• Pitbull songs
• fun times with friends and family
• celebrating 10 years of marriage

So there you have it… a little tiny look at 2011 in the Confessions House.  I want to thank all of you for reading.  When I started this blog in 2010, I never could have predicted how much I would love keeping up with it.  It’s a lot of work and sometimes the husband wants to throw my computer out the window because I spend so much time on it, but he put up with me anyway!  (Thanks, husband!!!)

I am so excited to begin a new year.  Here are some goals I am hoping to accomplish this year:

• do more running and run an 8K this spring (I hope!)
• do more yoga and weight training
• keep cooking my way through my grandmother’s recipe box
• do a better job with keeping our house clean and organized and free of clutter

What are your year-end celebrations?  What are you hoping to do in 2012?

(photo from New Year’s Eve 2010)

Happy New Year, friends!!!

Lessons from Christmas 2011

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families.  The Confessions family just returned from a four-night stay with my parents and we just had a wonderful time.  I thought since I have been away for a few days that I would give a quick little recap.

Lesson number one… I think my child might just be the cutest thing I have ever seen in a Santa hat.  I know… I am biased. 

Lesson number two… my family knows how to do it right on Christmas Eve.  This tradition of pigging out enjoying goodies after church on Christmas Eve started way back since before I can remember.  Every Christmas Eve, we prepared all sorts of goodies to eat.  The menu varied from year-to-year, as we got older and were able to help, but some of the items were staples and reappeared each year: deviled eggs, summer sausage and cheese, my dad’s famous onion dip, shrimp, and veggies.

Lesson three… we are completely blessed.  Santa was very generous and we all received very special and generous gifts.  We are blessed beyond belief.

Lesson four… even when you haven’t seen your high school friends in three+ years, it’s like no time has passed.  The conversation didn’t miss a beat.

Lesson five… even if the doctor says, “This cough medicine is REALLY strong.  So please only use it at night."  That may not actually be accurate.  (Is it sad that I was so excited about my cough syrup with codeine?  So disappointed.  It didn’t help at all!)

Lesson six… after such fun and excitement, sometimes you have to come home to a super-easy dinner: meatball subs and homemade “fries.”  Oops. I just realized that we are missing a veg.  Well, we’ll try again tomorrow.

(Excuse the lack of photos.  I was feeling so bad that I just didn’t do a good job taking them.  Thankfully I am on the road to recovery now!)

Holiday Brunch

Happy holidays!  I hope all of you are enjoying time with your family and friends this week!  I am lucky to have 2 full weeks away from work each year.  Usually we host a holiday party to get together with all our friends, but this year with all the craziness of the wedding, we decided to forego it for a year.  Instead, I decided it would be fun to have a girls’ brunch. 

Unfortunately not everyone is lucky to be off of work, but some of my teacher friends + Kati enjoyed a fun brunch together on Thursday morning!

What’s a brunch without mimosas? :)

There was no shortage of food… we had ham rolls (made by Angie but not pictured)…

baked apple french toast (made by Mandy)…

Mimi’s Christmas Breakfast made by yours truly (click for recipe)…

 

and a delicious cheese ball and fruit! 

Everything was delicious and we all left stuffed!

It was lots of fun catching up with one another and having a leisurely breakfast!  It was also fun to see Kati one last time before her baby girl decides to make an appearance. 

She’ll be joining the world any day now and I can’t wait to meet her!