Well, first off I want to give a shout out to my girls Krys, Mandy, and Stacia!! These are three close girlfriends of mine from my old online home (a fitness site) and I am so happy that they have found their way to my blog. Don't worry - none of them are the watermelon dress friend 😉 And I honestly don't diss on her color choice and do think it can be pretty with her wedding plan...I just don't think it will be a friendly color to a watermelon belly. But, then again, NO bridesmaid dress is going to be! 😉

But moving on. Today I am actually going to post about FOOD! Now, you may notice that I do not post my meals every day and sometimes not even a single mention of a meal for a week. The reason why I don't do this is because feeling the need to document everything I eat with a photo is unnecessary and detrimental to me. Some people enjoy it, but I can get way too caught up in it too fast. I prefer to eat what I enjoy as long as it is all part of a healthy, balanced, moderate diet. I have spent way too much time analyzing everything I eat and allowing it to put me back into a bad relationship with food, so documenting it all is not good for me. I'm at a good place with my lifestyle and plan to stay that way. Plus, I prefer my blog to reflect the many aspects of who I am, not simply what I do in the kitchen. And I only get about 10 minutes to eat at any given time with a one year old at my feet, checking me out like this:

peekaboo!

I will, however, post reviews of things I tried and enjoyed and recipes I experiment with. Today I decided to go for a yummy sounding recipe that the awesome Danica posted on her blog last week. Kung Pao Chicken. It sounded and looked oh so good. And it uses the appliance for people who don't cook crock pot! Perfecto! Or however you would say that in Chinese. Anyhoo...it went like this...

Cut up 1 lb chicken breasts into chunks and place in slow cooker.

cubed chicken breast

Mix together hoisin sauce, soy sauce, cooking sherry, ketchup, ginger, red pepper flakes, hot sauce.

sauce

Pour over and coat chicken in slow cooker. Cook on low 6 hours. Gotta love being able to go shopping for a few new workout clothes, play, read a book, and go to the gym while dinner is cooking 😉 I hit up TJMaxx and picked up a few workout tops and two sets of capris, all for $60!

new gear

So, I got to look cute while doing the following workout:

• 10 min elliptical warmup = 1.14 miles
• walking lunge + db pullover
• wide stance bb squat + incline bb bench press
• upright bb row + bb bicep curl
• 20 min treadmill = 4.0 speed, 5.0-7.5 incline

Back to the recipe. About 45 mins before serving, chop up your choice veggies.

celery, onion, green pepper, yellow pepper, broccoli

Mix water and cornstarch. Throw in the water/cornstarch mixture and veggies for the final 30 minutes of cook time. Let simmer and get thick and yummy.

served up

The TASTE of this was really good....but I was even able to screw this one up. I cooked it too long and the chicken was too dry. So, if you keep an eye on your cooking times I know it would be awesome! You can find the full recipe HERE.

To make up for the lackluster meal, my sister and I have been getting in some quality goofy time.

me and the baby sis

We decided to sort through some boxes of old books my parents brought over to salvage any that might suit Makenzie. It was very nostalgic. Can you tell I was an 80's baby by my elementary school reading?

Rainbow Brite, Glow Worm, My Little Pony, Bernstein Bears, Dr Suess

And we found this old joke book for children. Holy cow!!! There must have been a lot less of filtering what kids say and protecting kids back in our time. Here are some of the jokes we found while reading and laughing hysterically...

Ouch, Why did you drop that hot towel on my face? -- What? Did you want me to burn my fingers?

What do you get if you cross a pig and a hobo?? -- A filthy beggar!

Your name should be Lawn? -- Why? -- Because I would like to mow you down!

Nice, huh? Quality stuff for us kiddos! Another good one was "You're just like scrambled eggs! -- Why? -- Because you get beaten often!" WOW! At least it provided some good laughs to think that we used to be entertained by this when we were under the age of 10. 🙂

Okay, time to watch The Biggest Loser! Have a great night!

• Anyone else still watching The Biggest Loser out there? I still enjoy the show, but I really wish that the producers would stop trying to get the oldest and biggest contestants. I much preferred when the contestants needed to improve their health and lose weight, but I could SEE the results throughout the show by visible increased fitness and health and better body composition through the show. I understand the larger contestants are in need of the help, but I don't think how strenuous the expectations of the show are is suitable to them. It's not as enjoyable to see contestants who aren't really able to do anything and at the end of the season still have such a long way to go. They either need to extend the length of time contestants are at the ranch, or not have it be the biggest people they can find.
• Do you blog ALL of your meals? Just some of your meals? Or very rarely focus on your meals like I do? If you do blog your meals most of the time, does it ever wear you out or cause any negative thoughts/feelings/stress on your approach to food or what you're eating? Do you ever feel guilty for eating something or not eating something?
• What's a childhood joke you remember? Or what things were you into as a child?

How was everyone's weekend? Did you do anything fun for Superbowl Sunday? Like I mentioned in yesterday's post, we went to my friend Nikki's new apartment. Her and her fiance moved in together about 2 months ago and decided to have people over for the Superbowl to see the apartment and also to celebrate their new engagement. It was a pretty fun time. I was happy to see her...even if she told me I would be wearing a watermelon colored dress for her September wedding. Oh, good gracious! I can only imagine how that is going to look, especially considering by that time I might actually have a watermelon belly filling out the watermelon colored dress. 😉

I didn't end up eating too many of the goodies at the game last night, because none of them were really all that delicious. I had one small cookie, like 4 or 5 buffalo bites (they were literally one small bite a piece), and 3 or4 little tortilla scoop bites of a black bean salsa. Makenzie enjoyed the black bean salsa....and a few licks of the icing from a cookie.

Don't worry - this is her normal favorite food. 😉

her beloved na-na

Also, this weekend I finished a book. All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown.

This book started off much better than it ended. The story is about a mom and her two daughters and how they are each struggling in their own way after the father left them. It starts off where you are very sympathetic to the characters, but then things just keep going downhill and the book sadly turns frustrating and then suddenly ends with no real answers, good or bad, for how each of their issues are going to be resolved. I don't think I would recommend it.

Today was simply running a few errands (bank, post office) and then I have 1.5 hours of tutoring to do in just a bit. So I gotta get going. Happy Monday!

PS - I refused to join a sorority. At that time I had a mindset of I wasn't going to pay money to make friends. I had to put myself through school, so I had to save every penny and found ways to party on my own. 😉