Tag Archives: food

Doing More Cooking (or Maybe It Does Save Time)

Posted on February 12, 2016 | Comments Off on Doing More Cooking (or Maybe It Does Save Time)

I think we’ve all seen tons of articles that talk about how cooking from home is so much better than getting take out, delivery, or going out to eat. Obviously, it is cheaper (unless you are making something really elaborate or with a ton of ingredients). But there are also dozens of articles that I’ve seen over the years saying that it’s much faster to make your own dinner than it takes for a delivery person to get to your house.

Cooking has always felt like an event to me. Maybe it’s because I live alone and cooking for one person isn’t always that fun. But it’s never felt like part of the routine or natural in my day. I’m really working on fixing this because I was doing great cooking all my own meals while I was on the cleanse a year ago. It’s been really tough for me to get back into really cooking but it’s an effort that I’m working on right now.

After making my chicken dish on Monday, I was feeling a bit better about cooking again. It was my first big cooking thing in a long time and it did feel great to cook again. And since there were leftovers, I knew I’d have some home cooked meals for a few more meals.

I had ever intention of eating the leftover chicken for dinner the next night, but I ended up eating it for lunch and then feeling very uninspired to make dinner that night. I’m not happy I did this, but I ordered delivery food. While the delivery food tastes good while I’m eating it, I know my body doesn’t love it. I feel a bit sluggish after eating and I know that it is a big factor in my weight gain.

I don’t know why I ordered the food. Obviously I needed dinner, but I didn’t need to order food. It’s almost like an impulse or reflex that I didn’t think about until after the fact. I need to work on being in the moment or more aware when I do this, because I know that I could have done without the delivery food.

From the time I placed my order for food until the time I was eating was just over an hour. And the next day I was determined to prove to myself that I can do much better for myself in an hour with food that I had in the house.

The next day, after getting home from my workout and showering, I cooked myself some dinner. It wasn’t anything fancy. I cut up some zucchini and an onion and cooked those in one pan until the zucchini was brown and the onions were soft. And in another pan (yes, it was a 2 pan dinner!), I cooked a frozen turkey burger that I had in the freezer from Trader Joes. I started the veggies first and then the turkey burger and by some miracle they were basically done at the exact same time.

I have to admit that not only was it healthy and tasted great, it looked pretty nice too.

Home Cooking

I sat down and ate my dinner and then started working on the dishes. There were a lot of dishes to do (knives, 2 pans, cooking utensils, a cutting board, the plate and fork I used to eat) so that took me a while to clean and figure out how to fit everything into the drying rack since I don’t have a dishwasher at my house. By the time that I was done cleaning, I felt like it had been a big production to cook and clean. But I looked at the clock and it hadn’t even been an hour from the time I started cooking until the time I was done with all the cleanup.

I know it shouldn’t have surprised me, but I was pretty shocked. I figured that obviously cooking is faster than waiting on delivery since you can easily cook in under and hour and most deliveries seem to be an hour. But I wasn’t expecting it to be faster to cook, eat, and clean in the time I wait for the delivery guy.

I’m not going to say that I will never order delivery food again. That would be a total lie. I know I’ll order it again because it is delicious and there is nothing wrong with an occasional treat. But I need to work on making it a treat and not a habit. And now I know that the most important thing for me is to make sure my house is stocked with foods that are easy to put together. I’d love to make awesome meals all the time, but when I’m tired and lazy I just need something that is easy to make and will be healthy and fill me up.

I’m sure that at some point it may be possible that I will “forget” this lesson and go back into my bad habits. I’m hoping that won’t be true, but I’ve learned that setbacks are a part of life and I can’t let those get me down. I need to be able to have my setback and then get right back to the regular game plan right away. And I’ve proved to myself that I can do that.

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Posted in Food, Fun Stuff, Health

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Honey Dijon Chicken (or An Easy Sheet Pan Dinner)

Posted on February 10, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve been seriously slacking on cooking lately. I was doing so great doing bulk cooking and then cooking less often last year. But this year cooking just wasn’t something I felt like doing. I haven’t just been eating freezer meals or delivery, but my cooking was limited to making turkey burgers or something really easy to throw together. And I knew that I needed to get myself back into the cooking game because while I don’t know if I want to cook every night, I do want to eat more home cooked meals.

So the other day I was browsing through Buzzfeed (it’s something I do between customers at one day job after I’m done doing the other day job), and I saw a recipe that looked good to me. So I decided to test it out, and I’m actually super happy with how it tasted! It wasn’t perfect, but the chicken was super juicy and the flavorings were really awesome. So here it is!

Honey Dijon Chicken With Potatoes and Carrots

Honey Dijon Chicken

What you need:

  • 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 2 breasts)
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
  • 3 medium red bliss potatoes (about ½ lb), roughly chopped
  • 2 medium carrots (about ½ lb), peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1 Tbsp. canola oil, divided
  • 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary, thyme, or sage leaves, divided
  • 1 tsp honey
  • 1 tsp Dijon mustard

And here’s what to do:

  • Remove the chicken breasts from the fridge, dry them with paper towels, and season them with salt and pepper.
  • Preheat the oven to 425°F.
  • Place the potatoes and carrots on a large sheet pan and toss them with ½ tablespoon canola oil, ½ tablespoon chopped herbs, a pinch of salt, and some freshly ground pepper.
  • In a large mixing bowl, stir together the remaining canola oil, the honey, mustard, the remaining chopped herbs, a big pinch of kosher salt, and some freshly ground pepper. Dry the chicken breasts again with paper towels. Add the chicken breasts to the bowl and toss everything together to coat. Place the chicken on the sheet pan with the vegetables, spreading everything out.

Before the oven

  • Roast in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through with no pink in the middle. A thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast should read 165°F.
  • Let everything rest at room temperature for 5 to 10 minutes, then serve.

Cooked meal

I used more chicken than the recipe asked for (I couldn’t find just 1 lb of chicken breasts at the store), so I decided to do more carrots and potatoes than it asked for as well. And the carrots at my store weren’t looking so great, so I used baby carrots instead. If I was doing this over, I’d cut the baby carrots in half (they were very crisp) and I’d cut the potatoes a bit smaller too. But nothing was tasting raw or not cooked, so I was happy. The only other modification I might do in the future is to change the herbs in it or add garlic since I love garlic so much.

I turned my cooking into 3 servings. I had the first serving on Monday night when I cooked it and then put the other 2 servings into storage containers in my fridge. I know that sometimes leftovers don’t heat up that nicely, but I ate this again yesterday for lunch and it was still just as good as the night before (and I was shocked that the chicken was still juicy and not dry at all).

The fact that this came out so nicely the first time I made it really made me feel great and made me remember how much pride I feel when I cook something from scratch. It’s not easy to do all the time, but I really do want to make more of an effort in the future. And now that I’m feeling more confident in my cooking abilities again, I think I’ll be ok with trying new recipes again (I’m always nervous that I’ll spend a ton of money on ingredients and then the food gets ruined or tastes bad).

I highly recommend this recipe (thanks again Buzzfeed!). It’s a nice meal to make for yourself, but it also looks impressive if you are making it for other people as well. This is definitely going to be saved in my collection of favorite recipes!

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A Major Cleanup (or Saying Goodbye To The Old Me)

Posted on January 14, 2016 | 1 comment

A long time ago, I wrote about how I was having issues getting rid of my old clothes. Every single thing in those under bed storage bags had sentimental value to me. There were dresses that I loved, the perfect jeans that I found and bought in every color (it’s not easy finding jeans), and fun clothes that I got as gifts over the years.

I’ve always figured that if I got down to those sizes again, I’ll pull the clothes out of the bag and wear them again. But that post about not getting rid of my clothes was over 3 years ago. I’ve been holding on to those clothes for over 6 years. I don’t have a ton of storage space, but since they were kept under my bed I didn’t think too much about it.

But the other day I just got fed up. I don’t need to keep reminders of who I was when I was at my skinniest. So I took an afternoon, opened up the bags, and started sorting things out.

There were some things that I knew I wouldn’t get rid of. Those included my high school prom dress, my absolute favorite pair of jeans from my skinniest (but only one pair), 2 designer dresses that I got at a discount store and had tailored to fit, and a workout jacket that I love. But almost everything else in those bags I felt could go. I don’t care about a lot of the shirts and sweaters I had been storing. I don’t need to have jeans in every size. So many things aren’t really in fashion right now. And it’s not just that. When I lose weight, I might lose it in a different way so even if I got down to that size again I wouldn’t necessarily fit into those pieces.

After going through my under bed storage and closet (I had a couple of things in there that I didn’t need to keep), I moved on to my entry closet where I keep coats, shoes, and purses. I wasn’t going to get rid of any shoes (I had done that lately and while I have more shoes than some, I don’t have a ton). I got rid of some hoodies that I got at old day jobs and a jacket that I got on clearance but never really loved.

And I seriously had too many purses. I pulled out some of the fancier ones and I have friends who are going to trade me or buy them from me. But I had a lot of purses that I got at a cheap store to wear with a particular outfit and never used the purse again. Or they were so small that they weren’t really ever used because I couldn’t put my phone in there. Like the clothes, there were some purses that were kept for pure sentimental value. I have one designer purse that my grandma gave to me after she heard me say how much I’d love to own one one day (she had the purse and never used it). But I probably pulled 10 purses out of my closet to donate.

In the end, I had 4 very full bags of clothes and purses to donate to people who could really use and need them.

Clothes Donations

It felt so good to get all that stuff out of my house. I don’t miss them at all and things feel less cluttered than they did before. And I’ve rediscovered some clothes and purses that I had forgotten about because they were buried under all the other stuff.

After getting rid of all those clothes and purses, I also felt inspired to work on clearing out my fridge, freezer, and pantry. I’ve bought food that I felt that I should eat. I had some frozen fish, different veggie patties, and other quick meal things. I never ate any of them because they don’t taste good to me. There’s no need for me to keep healthy food in my house that I don’t eat. So a friend of mine took the perishable food from me and I donated the non-perishable stuff. I didn’t replace it with unhealthy things, but I wanted my healthy choices to make me happy and not make me feel guilty that I should eat them. My healthy options don’t have to match everyone else’s.

I probably spent a good chunk of my afternoon and evening cleaning out things from my house, but it feels so amazing now that it’s done. My clothes are only things that I wear now and make me happy. And my fridge and freezer doesn’t make me feel horrible when I’m looking for something to eat and nothing seems good to me. I’m making my house make me happy, and it’s working and I feel the results from that already.

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My Christmas Eve and Christmas (or A Late Night Target Run)

Posted on December 29, 2015 | Comments Off on My Christmas Eve and Christmas (or A Late Night Target Run)

My Christmas plans were pretty low-key this year. I was going to have some friends over to watch movies and we were going to order Chinese food. Nothing too special, but I was looking forward to a fun and relaxing day at home with some fun company.

On Christmas Eve, I enjoyed a workout in the morning and then really didn’t have much as far as plans go for the rest of the day. I went to the grocery store (where it was insanely crowded!) and then spent the afternoon reading and watching some stuff on Hulu and Netflix.

Then just after dinnertime when I was watching a show on tv, my tv died. I’m not sure what happened. All I know is one second it worked and the next the screen was black. I could turn the tv on and off, but the screen stayed black. I couldn’t get the menu to come up or the input to change (so it wasn’t a reception issue). I looked up what I could online and nothing looked good to me. It seems like one of the graphics cards inside of my tv might have broken but I wasn’t going to spend money trying to find out.

So at 10pm on Christmas Eve, I headed to Target prepared to deal with all the last minute Christmas shoppers. I picked Target because they were pretty much the only ones open that late and they had a tv that would work for me in stock (and I needed a working tv for the movie day the next day).

To my surprise, Target was emptier than I’ve ever seen it. I’d guess that maybe there were under 10 shoppers in the entire store. So it was pretty easy for me to get to the electronics section and get a new tv.

Target

Not only was the store empty, but the tv was about 30% off! I wasn’t expecting that at all based on the prices online so that was a nice surprise. I used the money that I had leftover from paying my 2014 taxes to buy the tv (it wasn’t an expense I planned for or really had in my budget). That money was originally going to go toward another acting class, but maybe after I pay my 2015 taxes I’ll have leftover money to do that.

I spend the rest of my Christmas Eve night getting the new tv set up and the old tv out of the living room. It’s a much bigger tv than I’m used to, but I think it looks nice.

New TV

On Christmas, I started my day by baking some cookies to bring to all of my neighbors. They are super easy meringue cookies and they are very fast to get together (they just take a long time to bake).

Christmas Cookies

Then it was time for the traditional movie and Chinese food day. It was perfect and lazy and exactly what I wanted to do.

The last thing I had to do after Christmas that related to my last minute tv purchase was to get rid of the old tv. Obviously since it was broken I couldn’t sell it or donate it. So I had to go to the e-waste disposal site in LAX to get rid of it. It isn’t super close to me, but the drive has a pretty awesome view so I can’t complain.

Ocean View

While I would have rather not had to get a new tv suddenly, it really did work out well for me. I’m sure that any other day I would have been at Target anytime soon it would have been very crowded. And I doubt that the discount I got on the tv would have lasted much longer (I think it might have been a deal leading up to Christmas). So if my tv had to break randomly, it was a pretty ideal circumstance for me and now I have a nice big tv for all my future movie days/nights at my house.

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Posted in Celebrations, Fun Stuff, Shopping

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Thanksgiving Meal Prep (or Hopefully Everything Tastes Great)

Posted on November 24, 2015 | Comments Off on Thanksgiving Meal Prep (or Hopefully Everything Tastes Great)

Soon, I’ll be heading down to San Diego to be with my family for Thanksgiving. It’s probably going to be a long drive (a combination of holiday and rush hour traffic), but I’ve got lots of podcasts to keep me company while I’m making the drive.

My mom is making pretty much everything for Thanksgiving this year (technically my family is hosting it at the house we are renting in San Diego), but I really wanted to help out. I know that my mom works hard to get everything done, so if I can do a little of that work for her I know that she’ll have some extra time to be with everyone.

I first offered to make the feta, pine nut, sun-dried tomato dip that I made last year. I know that it’s a pretty easy recipe and that everyone seemed to like it when I made it last year (although I personally think that my mom makes it better than I could ever do). I also said that I’d make the blueberry banana bread since everyone likes that too and it can be breakfast for a couple of days. Then I thought about what else I could make in advance that my family might like. And I decided to make the black bean dip that I love for veggies. I’ve personally been adding salsa to the dip to make it a bit spicy, but it’s doesn’t last as long that way (maybe it’s too watery?) so I made it the normal way.

The only time I’d have before driving down to make all the food was on Sunday, so I made that my cooking day (even though only one thing actually has to be cooked). The first thing I got done was the blueberry banana bread since I figured I could do the dips while it was in the oven. It’s simple enough to make and within about 10 minutes I had that recipe done and in the oven to bake.

Next I worked on the black bean dip. Again, it’s super easy to put it together. I think the most time consuming task was to drain and rinse the beans. I got that done and in a disposable Tupperware container to bring with me.

Then I ran into a big of a snafu. I only have one food processor bowl and both of the dips needed to be made in the food processor. I had washed the bowls for the bread and the food processor after finishing the bean dip, but I used my kitchen towels to dry the bowls (not sure why I did that but I did). So I couldn’t really dry my food processor. So I took a break while that dried and then about an hour later got started on the feta dip.

I’m hoping that the feta dip turned out ok. It seemed more difficult than last year to make. The food processor didn’t want to process it. I had to start and stop several times and try to mash things down myself. I finally got it to look the way I feel it should look (it’s a bit smoother than I like it to be), and it seemed to taste ok to me. It has a few days for the flavors to meld together. Hopefully it just gets better with time.

I know that making 3 things for Thanksgiving is much less than most people have to make. But for someone who has been struggling to make more things from scratch, making 3 things from scratch in one day is a lot! But I think that it all looks pretty good to me!

Thanksgiving Food

Hopefully when my family gets to eat them that they enjoy them! I’ll have to let you all know how it goes when I do my Thanksgiving recaps next week!

The next few days of posts will be written before Thanksgiving, so they won’t totally be Thanksgiving related. But I want to share with you all what I’m thankful for this year, the gift that I had made for my mom that she will be getting tonight, and what my mom, dad, and I worked on to give to everyone in my family this year for Thanksgiving.

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Baby Steps Back To Cooking (or My Check In Kicked My Butt Into Gear)

Posted on November 6, 2015 | Comments Off on Baby Steps Back To Cooking (or My Check In Kicked My Butt Into Gear)

I recently did a check in with myself on how I’m doing for my goals for the year. I’m actually pretty proud of myself on how well I’m doing on my goals and that I may get pretty much all of them checked off by the end of the year.

But the one goal where I would have to give myself a failing grade would be cooking more often for myself. I got into the groove of cooking for a while, but the novelty of it wore off (yes, it felt like a novelty and not a requirement) and I got lazy again. I haven’t been eating take out or at a restaurant all the time, but I’ve definitely been taking advantage of frozen meals and easy things.

I feel like cooking for myself on a regular basis is going to be a battle for the long run. Part of the problem is my eating disorder. I can forget to eat and then when I get hungry I’m starving and want something to eat now. I don’t want to have to spend time cooking something.

I really should be on an eating schedule and set alarms to remember to eat at the right times. But my schedule can be a bit crazy so sometimes it’s not possible to eat when I want to. There are days at my day job where I’m on back to back customer calls and chats for a couple of hours. Sometimes, I don’t get a real break the entire shift. I can usually run and grab a protein bar or banana to eat, but microwaving food sometimes takes too long and my food might sit in the microwave for an hour after cooking before I can eat it.

The one meal that is easiest for me to control is breakfast. With the exceptions of Mondays (when I’m doing a workout at 7:30am because of my class), I always have at least an hour after waking up before I have to work. That’s more than enough time for me to make some sort of breakfast for myself. I’m still usually preparing something that requires minimum effort (avocado toast, peanut butter on toast, fruit, or ricotta cheese and honey), but it’s still better than other options that are out there.

With lunch on workdays always being something tough for me, I’m moving my focus on to dinner. While it’s not easy to cook after getting home from an afternoon workout (when I’m starving when I get home and need to eat pretty quickly), there are still plenty of evenings or afternoons that I can bulk cook or just make something that will have leftovers for a day or two.

I need to get back into the habit of doing that. Every time I say that, something is weird in my schedule that makes me say that I’ll start next week. Next week then has issues in it too. And it’s an endless cycle. I’m taking the baby steps into cooking dinner at home. I’m trying to get things at the store that make things easy to prepare. It’s not the cheapest option, but it’s still cheaper than eating outside of my house. And if the leap from where I’ve been to cooking is too big, these smaller steps can help bridge the gap.

I’m still working through this and like I said that it’s an ongoing battle. I hate that this is something that comes so easily to so many people and it’s so tough with me. But hopefully I can start transitioning back into cooking so that next year I can be closer to the goal that I set for myself this year.

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Bulu Box (or Testing Out A Subscription Box)

Posted on August 26, 2015 | 1 comment

I haven’t really been a part of the subscription boxes bandwagon yet. I did have my subscription to Gwynnie Bee, but that was a little bit different from what subscription boxes are like. So many of my friends do subscribe to these boxes, and they all seem to love it. But for me, the financial issue has always come up. I don’t want to pay $30 a month if I’m not gonna like everything that’s in the box.

But I was recently given the opportunity to test out Bulu Box. Bulu Box is a subscription service for health products. You can get things like vitamins, supplements, and other things to help you live a healthy life. Since I’m working on my health and fitness so hard, I really wanted to see what products were out there that could support me in my journey.

Bulu Box

What I love about Bulu Box is the price. I think this is the cheapest subscription box out there. It’s only $10 a month and you typically get between 4-5 sample products in each box. I think that most other subscription boxes are in the $30 range.

In my sample box, I got six different products (one of these products was a bonus product). I received a protein powder, a fueling formula, a fiber supplement, an anti-itch cream, a snack bar, and a toothbrush. Unfortunately for me, some of these products I knew I wasn’t going to use. I’m very particular with protein powders so I was a little cautious to try this one. It’s made with cricket protein, but I found it to be pretty yummy! I just am not sure if I will use it regularly since I don’t normally do protein drinks (I think it’s a mental block after doing the RFO diet for so long). And I wasn’t able to try the fueling formula because of some of the ingredients in it, but my other friends who have tried it have enjoyed it.

Samples

I did love the anti-itch cream. I used it on a recent sunburn and it did such a great job helping the itch and sting of a sunburn go away. I also tried it on a spider bite that I got the other day and felt that it did the trick for that as well. I think that I’m totally going to get that in the full size and have it in my medicine cabinet for future sunburns, bug bites, and scratches.

Even though some of these products in the sample box are for things that I’m not gonna be able to use, I did love the idea of what they included in the box. There was a great variety and if you aren’t as picky as me I’m sure that you’ll love all the products! And if there is a sample that you love, you can purchased them in the full-size on their online shop. If you’re a subscriber for Bulu Box, you have the opportunity take a survey about the samples in your box and get rewards points that can be used toward the full-size products. That is something that seems great to me.

And I was given a promo code to share with all of you! If you would like to try Bulu Box for yourself, I can get you 50% off a 3 month subscription. You just need to enter the promo code SWEATPINK to get your discount!

Have any of you tried Bulu Box or another subscription box service in the past that you’ve loved? I’d love to hear your stories since I’m a subscription box newbie!

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Continuing The Birthday Fun (or Pie and Makeup)

Posted on August 13, 2015 | Comments Off on Continuing The Birthday Fun (or Pie and Makeup)

Even though my birthday had ended, I wasn’t ready to end the celebrating quite yet. I had a couple of other birthday deals I wanted to take advantage of, so I did some of them on Monday (my day off from the day job).

First on the birthday agenda was Marie Callendars for birthday pie. This has been a tradition for a while because they send you a coupon for $5 off an entree plus a free slice of pie. So I went with my friend Emily to the location that we like the most.

I hadn’t seen Emily in a while. Our schedules just haven’t been matching up and we haven’t been attending the same events lately. So it was awesome to get to see her and hear about all the adventures she’s been on lately. She’s got a new gig as a writer for the LA Kings (she’s a super fan) so that was really fun to hear about.

Emily and I both got some yummy food, but we were both saving plenty of room for the pie!

Birthday Pie

We got the chocolate satin pie (which we get every time) and the lemon cream cheese pie. They were both delicious but I was so full after eating!

I had something that I had to attend that evening in the same area as where we got lunch, so I decided to try to stick around there for the afternoon instead of going home. I went through my birthday deals that I had left, and decided to go over to Sephora for my free birthday gift!

I also picked up a few other things while I was there (I had a few things I needed but hadn’t had a chance to go to a Sephora location recently), but I was most excited for the freebie!

Birthday Sephora Gift

I don’t usually wear lipstick because I’m a lip balm addict (I use Natural Ice as my balm of choice), and if I wear lipstick I can’t put on more lip balm. But I’ve also been saying that I’d love to have a great red lipstick to wear for special occasions. So this freebie was perfect! I haven’t had a chance to wear it yet, but I’m sure I will soon. I’m not very good about putting on makeup, but I think that I can do lipstick ok (unlike eyeliner).

After my Sephora run, I had to get to my evening event so I wasn’t able to do any more of the birthday deals on my list. I don’t think I’m going to do them all this year. But there are maybe 1 or 2 more that I know that I want to take advantage of before the month (and the deals are over).

I know I’ve said this every year, but I love how I can just extend my birthday to be the entire month!

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Birthday Twin Dinner (or Zero Dollar Bill)

Posted on August 11, 2015 | 1 comment

As I have done for the past couple of birthdays, I joined my birthday twin Joanna at Truxton’s for our completely free birthday meal. We actually did our birthday dinner before our birthdays this year. It worked out well with our schedules, so we went for it.

Truxtons

Usually, the birthday promo is good for one free entrée and one free dessert per person. You don’t have to order anything outside of the free food to get the deal (which is unique and what makes it my favorite birthday deal), so Joanna and I have always gotten an entrée and dessert each and ended up with a zero dollar bill. But this year, they changed their promo. This time you would get $20 of free food per person. This could include entrees, desserts, appetizers, or even drinks. And there was no minimum purchase so we knew that a 100% free bill was possible still. So between the two of us, we had $40 to spend and endless options from the menu.

I had thought long and hard about what I was going to order before going to Truxton’s, but I was still undecided because I wanted to make sure that Joanna and I got a 100% free meal. We had to figure out how much we could each spend on each part of the meal. We did some calculations and figured out exactly what we would have after we figured out the appetizer and dessert we were going to split (yes, those had to be figured out first). And since my entrée was cheaper than what I was able to “spend”, Joanna got some of my extra money for her entrée. I was actually very happy with our food choices. Normally we get the 2 free desserts, but we never need both. But to be able to get an appetizer made me pretty happy.

As always the food was fabulous. We got monkey bread as our appetizer, I got the chicken dinner that I had last year as my entrée, and we got the apple tart for dessert (which we’ve actually never gotten before over the years).

Free Monkey Bread Free Entrees Free Dessert

We had a bit of a snafu when we got our bill at first. It showed that we had a bill for a couple of dollars. After figuring out that we were charged for one incorrect entrée, we got a new bill which showed that we have continued our tradition of a zero dollar bill at Truxton’s. Even though our bill was nothing, we still like to leave a big tip. The waitress we had this year was actually the same waitress that we had last year, and she remembered us as the 100% free birthday girls. The tip that we ended up leaving equal about 50% of what the bill would have been, so I think that’s pretty good.

Zero Dollar Bill

Joanna and I joked about how we need to figure out how to make this work and include drinks as part of our free $40 and Truxton’s money. It may involve not getting much food, but free drinks sounds pretty awesome. We’ve got an entire year before we have our free birthday meal again, and I’m sure will have it figured out by then. Then again, Truxton’s may change their birthday club within the next year and then we’ll have to figure it out all over again.

This was the perfect way to kick off my birthday celebrations (as always there were multiple celebrations). And tomorrow I will share with you all the fun that I had on my actual birthday!

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Needing To Get Back Into The Kitchen (or Can I Blame The Heat?)

Posted on August 6, 2015 | Comments Off on Needing To Get Back Into The Kitchen (or Can I Blame The Heat?)

I’ve gotten pretty bad about making my own meals lately. Part of it is because of the heat, part of it has been a laziness thing (I’m embarrassed to admit that). The heat doesn’t look like it will be getting much better anytime soon, so I do need to look up some alternative solutions. I know that eating frozen and already prepared meals is not the answer.

So many of the things I know how to cook do require either the stove or the oven, so I know I don’t want to do those. I’m not a big salad person, but I’m trying to remember some of the salads that I liked to make during the cleanse so I can make those for my meals. I’m also looking at some alternative kitchen gadgets that can help me make healthy meals without having to use any heat appliances.

I recently purchased a spiralizer, which can help me turn vegetables like zucchini and carrots into pasta-like strips. This is very new purchase so I have not had a chance to use it yet. But it didn’t come with a free cookbook and I’m starting to get excited about some of the recipes inside there.

I’ve also been looking at some free cookbook downloads. I don’t have the money to spend on cookbooks right now, so these downloaded cookbooks are really great option for me. I’ve found quite a few of them and I’m keeping them on my computer desktop instead of printing them (maybe I’ll print one or two recipes, but I don’t want to print the entire book).

Cookbook Downloads

I think part of the reason I haven’t been cooking for a while is I feel like I’ve lost some of my inspiration I had in the kitchen. I enjoyed cooking when I was doing it. But now that I’ve stopped, it feels hard to start up again. It’s like workouts. When I was in a groove before, everything was fine. But when I took a break, I always found it very difficult to get back to a regular workout schedule. This may be one of the reasons I’m so scared to do fewer than three workouts a week at Orangetheory. I don’t want to lose the momentum that I’ve worked so hard to get.

Even with the heat making me lazy, I’m still trying to make the best choices that I can even with using frozen foods. I’m not getting the usual low-calorie frozen foods I used to get. There are so many chemicals and things I don’t want to eat in those. I’m focusing on the all-natural frozen foods that I can get at the grocery store (I like Amy’s), mainly those that have ingredients that I can pronounce. That seems to be a guideline that many health websites seem to use for which frozen meals are ok to have.

The one thing that I haven’t slipped back into doing is getting delivery food as often as I have in the past. There are those rare times that I realize that I haven’t eaten in a while, my fridge is a bit empty, and I need to get some dinner. And I don’t want to go to the grocery store with at empty stomach because then I will buy everything I see. In those circumstances, it’s almost safer for me to get delivery food than it is for me to go to the grocery store. But those situations are becoming less and less frequent because I’m getting better about going to the grocery store on the regular and finding things that are good choices to keep in my house.

I hate using the heat as an excuse, but that really does feel like the thing that is the setback for me. I want to believe that when it cools down, I’m going to get back into my routine of cooking at home. But I also know that it’s possible to get into the habit of not cooking at home again. That’s what I’m trying to prevent now.

Hopefully I can break out of my cooking rut (again) and get back on track with preparing my own food and eating as healthy as I can.

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