A Fun Little Weekend + An Easy Weeknight Meal

Happy Monday friends! Mondays aren’t too bad for us here, because our week doesn’t start until Tuesday 🙂 Today we have a {rainy} fun day filled with chores, grocery shopping and parent/tot tumbling classes! But first sweaty workouts followed by meeting up with friends.

This past weekend was a very eventful and fun one for us. The weather was absolutely gorgeous so we started our Saturday off with a nice 3 mile run. I woke up at 6:30am on Saturday morning and the first thing I did was check the weather…Currently 57. First thought, “We need to get out and run!” Then I heard a little person next door to me clapping and singing BINGO. I could’ve laid there and listened for a little while longer, but I got us up, ready and out the door in about a half hour. Madelyn still in her pajamas and me in my running clothes 🙂

When we got back, little miss kept herself occupied with a back dated issue of Runner’s World Magazine, while I got us ready to meet up with a friend and her daughter at the zoo. It was a wonderful afternoon, followed by an effortless nap time. We will be spending as much time as we can outside this summer because fresh air followed by youtube kids lullaby station = hours of afternoon napping. Everyone wins.

Later that day, my mom came over to babysit Madelyn for us while hubs and I went out to enjoy some quality adult time. It was our first date night out since I’ve been back from my trip…the first date night since Valentine’s Day! We were long overdue. We decided to mix things up and try out a new to us restaurant called La Reve. It’s a french restaurant located in the village of Tosa and their food was amazing. A few people raved to me about how good their food was so we decided to check it out. It did not disappoint. After eating dinner at La Reve, we got a little creative and ventured over to Arte for some drinks and canvas painting. I have been to wine/painting bars a few times now, but hubs was a first timer. He was a little hesitant, but after a few beers, he was feeling artistic. We both had so much fun and agreed it was a nice way to switch up our typical date night.

Weeknights tend to be a little more chaotic and on the go around here. I try to keep our meals as quick, easy and healthy as possible and avoid eating out as much as possible during the week. Varieties of slow cooker chicken tacos are amongst a household favorite. A few nights ago I was craving sweet potatoes. I bought a whole bag of them from Trader Joe’s and needed to use them up before they went bad, so I came up with a great concoction, I had to share it with you guys. I used this recipe for rice (subbed olive oil for canola oil). It was quick, easy and delicious. Much better than any boxed “Spanish” rice I had thought of getting. Hubs peeled and cut up some sweet potatoes, bell peppers, and chicken thighs. I cooked the chicken in olive oil and seasoned it with garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper. Once that was almost done cooking, I added the sweet potatoes and lastly the bell peppers. When I had everything combined in the skillet, I added this fajita seasoning. Once everything was done cooking, I some rice in a bowl, topped it with the chicken mix and added avocado, cheese and a little bit of sour cream. It was delicious! So quick, healthy and easy. You can really add anything to the skillet mix. I think next time I would add onions, but we were all out.

I’m off to finish up {er, start}  the rest of my to-do list and work on a photo project for tomorrow’s photography class. Have a great day!

Question of the Day: What’s one of the funnest date nights you’ve ever had? What’s your go-to meal for busy weeks? 

Extremely Easy Slow Cooker Chicken

Do I have an easy slow cooker recipe for you guys. If you even want to call it that. I stumbled upon this inspiration from Lina’s blog and it has been added to our monthly rotation of week night dinners. Lina is the Chief Training Officer of The Barre Code and writes an awesome blog focused on fitness, health and wellness.

Step one-buy a whole chicken. Cut up some of your favorite vegetables that will hold up nicely in the slow cooker (carrots, parsnips, onions, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, celery).

Lay the vegetables in the bottom of the slow cooker. Season the chicken to taste. I used sea salt, black pepper, thyme, rosemary, and sage. Place the chicken on top of the veggies. Placing the chicken on top of the veggies will help keep the chicken from falling apart too much. Turn the slow cooker onto low and cook for about 8 hours.

You want the internal temperature of the leg to be 160 degrees. The cooking time will vary based on the weight of your chicken. No need to add water or broth to this. It will not burn, the vegetables and the chicken will make its own lovely broth.

When it’s done, scoop out some veggies and cut the chicken off the bone. Dish up and eat! It’s that easy.

I’ve made this now twice and both times it was delicious and satisfying. My ONLY complaint is not having crispy skin. I usually pick the skin off anyway, but I think next time I will place the chicken in the broiler for a few minutes after it’s done slow cooking. I’ll make sure to report back 🙂

It’s Friday! Hallelujah!!!! It’s been an extra long work week and I’ve been looking forward to my wine date tonight with my friend, Jen, all week. The rest of my weekend will be filled with Christmas cookie baking, birthday celebrating, and maybe some Christmas shopping (I only have 1 thing purchased!). I’m really looking forward to baking cookies this year, it will be Madelyn’s first year participating! She’s the best kind of kitchen helper 🙂

Easy Peasy Campfire Meal

When I was younger, I recall camping being a time to eat all the snacks that weren’t normally in our house. This included things like wrapped Hostess snacks, chips, and all other “unhealthy” treats. Dinners usually consisted of hot dogs, brats or burgers on the grill. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good burger or brat on a campfire, but this year I wanted to mix things up a little bit and balance out our meals between the s’mores & strawberry ice cream. Some healthy snacks I packed were grapes, strawberries, hummus & pita chips. The not so healthy: all the accoutraments for s’mores, cookies, crackers,  and Trader Joe’s Chicago mix popcorn {warning: if you purchase this, you will eat the whole bag, to say there are 4 servings in there is absurd 😉 }.

A Working Mom’s BFF

Hey guys! How’s your week going so far? Last night, I bundled myself up and headed to Barre Bee Fit’s Barre Interval class. My cousin met me there and we had our butts
handed to us. This class had two cardio intervals sandwiched between a strength segment.

I almost died…but in a good way. I love being put through the ringer when it comes to a HIIT workout. Proof of a tough cardio session:

So tonight, for dinner, the chefs of Whole Foods in Milwaukee prepared our meal for us. While I was bopping around WF’s on Sunday after drill, I came across a life-changing dish.  A pre-prepared slow cooker meal for 4.  They had an assortment to choose from.  I ended up going with the Verde Stew.

Verdict?  Not too bad.  It wasn’t out of this world, but it was good.  I felt like it was missing something but I couldn’t pinpoint what.  Everyone in our house ate it so I consider it a win.  I think if I go this route next time, I will try another variety.  I love my crockpot and plan on using it more now that it’s freezing cold here.  I have another crockpot meal planned for later this week.  I can’t begin to tell you how nice it is to have dinner all ready to eat after you’ve worked a 10 hour day.  I’m gone about 12 hours and when I come home I like to spend as much time with Madelyn as I can, so I don’t like to cook too many “Involved” meals during the week.  We like to keep things simple over here 🙂

I’m off to work on a Pinterest IRL project!  Don’t forget to enter the Erin Condren $25 giftcard giveaway!  It ends this Friday!     

Leftover Turkey Soup

Hi guys!  I’m so so grateful that I have Mondays off.  Our weekend was so jam-packed, it was nice to play catch up today-a day full of running errands, working out and cleaning.  This morning, I met up with a friend for a gym date.  I got there a little early and did 30 minutes of light cardio on the elliptical.  She met me afterward and we did a killer lower body workout.  It’s so much better doing resistance training workouts with friends!

Ravin’

Hi Friends!  We made it Wednesday 🙂

So last night, I ventured outside my comfort zone and decided to try out another cardio class at my gym, besides Zumba.

Magic Indeed.  I looked at the schedule, and found that Body Combat would be the best fit for my night.  Les Mills Body pump is actually one of my favorite strength training workouts so I was really excited to try out this workout of theirs.  When I got to the gym to sign up for class, I found that it had been replaced with Turbo Kick and that Body Combat was being offered on Wednesdays instead.  I debated on whether or not I should sign up for Turbo kick or just do some cardio and weights on my own.  Since I was already there and had left my headphones at home, I decided to just take the class.

As I walked through the door, the teacher grabbed my attendance slip and said, “grab a set of lights.”  I had assumed she meant light weights.  Oh no.  I completely heard her correctly.  Lights.  Finger lights to be exact.

As soon as I put these lights on my fingers, I knew I was in for a real treat 🙂 She welcomed everyone to class and told us what to expect.  Since it was a newer class, she told us that she wouldn’t be adding in any “turbo drills”.  Something clicked in my head and I knew that this class was going to be like my Turbo Fire DVDs.  The teacher said that if we came to the Saturday class, we could expect some turbo drills by them 😉

She turned the lights off and we used what light came in through the windows from the gym and our fun finger lights.  The class was AWESOME!  A lot of the moves/combinations were similar to what I had done with Turbo Fire, so I wasn’t completely lost, but if you are new to this class, I suggest moving up to the front in order to see better.  When I did manage to get completely lost, I just kept moving-jumping, doing kicks and punches etc.  The music kept me going and kept my energy way up.  After 45 minutes of some serious cardio, we ended with a cool down and an amazing core session.  My stomach hurts today-in a good way of course 🙂  If your gym offers a turbo kick class, I highly recommend trying it out.

Turbo Eats!

Tonight was a “let’s eat out” kind of night.  I’m proud to say that these are very rare in our house during the week.  I usually do a good job of meal planning & prep for the week.  If I don’t end up making dinner, hubs usually takes over.  But tonight we both threw in the towel.  I had to make a pit stop at target and scrounge up some things for Madelyn’s Halloween costume for school tomorrow.  We completely skipped the whole lets get dressed up for Halloween thing this year and I got a reminder at daycare on Tuesday that Thursday kids are allowed to wear costumes.  I couldn’t let her be the only kid at school without a costume, so I came up with kind of something.  Stay tuned for that.

So dinner.  I made a stop at Chipotle on my way back home because I heard rumors that they were now serving Sofritas (tofu) and I really wanted to try it.

Ahhh-mazing!  Seriously ate every single last bite of that bowl.  It has a little bit more of a kick to it than the chicken and is the most flavorful tofu I’ve ever had.  I had no idea tofu could taste like this.  I could see this becoming a regular choice for my burrito bowls 🙂

Yum!  I’m off to catch up on some reading!  I hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween!  Our neighborhood is doing trick-or-treat tomorrow, but I think we got exempt from it because we live on a semi-busy street with no sidewalks. We’ll find out tomorrow!  The little things you have to find out when moving into a new house 🙂

What’s your favorite halloween candy? I’m a Reece’s pumpkin shape girl all the way!

Pinterest IRL: Slow Cooker Lasagna

Happy Friday Eve my friends!  The week has flown by and I’m looking forward to a fun-filled weekend that lies ahead-bridesmaid dress shopping, birthdays and baby showers, oh my!

This week has been a very brisk one in Milwaukee.  A high of mid-40’s just came out of nowhere!  Dinners this week have consisted of soup and slow cooker meals.  When I was planning our meals on Sunday, I resorted to my Pinterest boards for some inspiration and decided to try out slow cooker lasagna.  It looked amazing and there wasn’t much prep work involved. WIN!

The whole preparation took a total of about 15 minutes and it made plenty so that we were able to eat some for leftovers.  Overall, I thought the recipe was very good.  I will definitely be making it again, but I think the next time around I would add more sauce.  I like saucy lasagna and I didn’t feel like this had a lot BUT I do have a bigger slow cooker than what I think the normal recipe is for.

It looks like a ton of cheese on top only because I forgot to save some meat sauce for the top layer..Oops!  Hence why I needed more sauce 🙂  Definitely not dairy free, so if anyone has a good dairy free lasagna recipe they’d like to share with me, I would greatly appreciate it!

So, I read some very exciting news tonight via Facebook!  If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know by now that barre-style workouts are my favorite toning and strengthening workout.  Well…Milwaukee is FINALLY getting a barre studio!!!!!! I feel like a little kid at Christmas 🙂 Barre Bee Fit will be opening some time soon in the Third Ward and I cannot wait.  While, I’ve never tried this particular studio (they did have one in Chicago, but I had a membership at the Bar Method), I urge everyone in the Milwaukee area to try it out! I’ve tried a few other barre classes and it really is an awesome workout.

I’m off to catch up with some other blogs, have a great weekend!

PAIRDD

I want to preface this post by stating, that I do not have celiac disease nor do I avoid gluten as a weight-loss technique.  I am aware of the seriousness of people having to be gluten-free.  I  simply try to eliminate it (along with dairy) from my diet as best as possible because my body is much happier 🙂  Sometimes I’m successful, and other times I’m caught at a moment of weakness.

A few weeks ago, I received a Facebook invite to check out Pairdd.  Pairdd is a home delivery service that will deliver fresh, gluten-free ingredients to your door for you to prepare a meal.  You simply go onto their website, pick a recipe from a gluten-free blogger that sounds tasty to you, order and expect delivery in about a week.  Unfortunately, it’s only available to people currently living in Wisconsin.

Last week, I decided to try it out and chose a recipe from my friend, Sarah, at Celiac in the City.  With the weather making a nice transition from tank tops & shorts to skinny jeans and boots, I thought it was the perfect time to make my first batch of chili for the year.  What really sold me about this recipe wasn’t the chili but it was the parmesan biscuits that served as a side.  I’ve never made gluten-free biscuits so I was really excited about these.

My Pairdd box was sitting in the driveway when I arrived home on Tuesday and I couldn’t wait to get cooking!

Everything came packed on ice and included all of the ingredients needed to make Italian chili and parmesan biscuits except milk, salt and pepper.  When you order your meal online, the website does inform you of the ingredients you’ll need to have already available in your kitchen.

I love that everything was already measured out and chopped up.  And most importantly, I didn’t have to peel garlic!!!!  A HUGE plus for me because of all the things to peel, I find garlic to be the WORST!  I did have to chop up some onion and green pepper, but that I didn’t mind so much.

Along with the package comes the list ingredients and the recipe to make the meal.  So now I have a yummy new recipe to add to my collection.

The directions were super easy to follow and I liked that the box included a picture of the completed meal so that I knew what to expect.  The Italian chili was some of the best chili I’ve ever had!  Normally, I either make sweet potato and black bean chili or Italian Chili with pasta but this was perfect because it contained meat but didn’t have the heaviness that the pasta adds to chili.  It made enough to feed two very hungry adults and a baby x 3 meals.  Madelyn loved it as well 🙂  The biscuits were AMAZING and we ended up making 9 decent sized biscuits.

The whole meal cost us $15 because we used a coupon code from Sarah.  Normally, the price would’ve been $30 which I still didn’t think was bad for all the ingredients plus delivery.

We will definitely be ordering from Pairdd again!  And thanks to Sarah for preparing an AWESOME meal for us!

What’s your favorite thing to get delivered? I’m really loving groceries via Peapod, especially on drill weekends!

52 Cards

Today I reached day 17 of #100daysofworkouts.  I’ve been doing pretty good with this.  Even if I don’t “workout” per se, I count my time doing yard work and running errands all day long as movement-the ultimate goal is to just keep moving.

I was watching The Biggest Loser about a month or so ago and I saw Bob the trainer give his team a last chance workout in which they dealt out a stack of playing cards.  Each suite was an exercise and the number determined how many of each exercise they would do.  This looked like a great way to work up a sweat without having any equipment.  As long as you have a deck of cards, this workout can be done anywhere.

When we do this at work we try to mix it up to keep from getting bored.  But pretty much it goes something like this: Hearts=Cardio (BURPEES!) Diamonds=Push ups or an arm workout (today we did tricep dips), Spades=Abs (in/out with our feet) Clubs=legs (squats today).  We used to do it so that 2 would equal two push ups, but we realized that was kind of a waste, so now we’ve decided that anything under 5, we add 10 to it.  So instead of two push ups, we do 12.  So much more challenging and effective.  I love this workout because you never know the hand you get dealt.  There was a time when we did 14 burpees, flipped another card and had to do 12 more.  Ass kicker!

For dinner tonight I make baked marinated salmon served with a kale salad.

I marinaded the salmon in teriyaki sauce, red chili sauce, fresh garlic, fresh ginger, and juice from one orange.  I placed it in a tupperware container, shook it up and let it sit all day until I came home and baked it.  It was, in my opinion, the best salmon I’ve ever made.

For the kale, I mixed a bunch of bite sized pieces with 1/4 cup olive oil, sea salt, pepper, pine nuts, lemon juice from 1 lemon, lemon zest, parmesan cheese and cranberries.  Sooo good!  Normally when I make kale, I sautee it very lightly in a pan with olive oil, garlic and lemon but I prefer it not cooked-it taste a lot better that way.

People at work ask me why I eat kale over spinach and my response is, “Because it’s healthier!”  Here’s a link that goes a little bit more in depth about the benefits of eating kale.

So, I did something pretty crazy last night.  I signed up for my first 1/2 marathon post Madelyn!  I sat there and stared at the screen thinking, “Do I do this? Do I not?”  I’ve ran 3 1/2 marathons before this, so I’m not sure why I was so hesitant about this one.  So I did it anyway and I’ll be following an 8 week training program to a Tee.  I figure, it will help pass time while I’m away on my deployment and my goal is to beat my 1/2 marathon time of 2:25 which I feel is pretty doable.  Training starts in just a few weeks!  Until then, I’m focusing a lot on strength training in hopes of staying injury free.  I will be running the Rock N Sole Summerfest half marathon and I’m so pumped to run across the Hoan Bridge.

Any plans for a summer race or event? Hubs keeps talking about Tough mudder and other obstacle course races.  Tough Mudder is one that I won’t do, but I’m more than happy to donate money to the wounded warrior project without having to be electrocuted 🙂

This aint no Noodles

Tuesdays are always a rough day for me.  It’s my equivalent to what most people’s Mondays are, but instead of coming off of a two day weekend, I’m returning from a three day weekend (I know I shouldn’t be complaining).  Our weekend was jam packed with house stuff and deployment returns, so I couldn’t get to the grocery store until after work today.  

I had my list in hand and bopped around TJ’s, rounding up this week’s dinner and something super easy & delicious for tonight.  Had we still been in our apartment in Oak Creek, I would’ve had hubs pick up dinner somewhere but since moving into our new house, it feels like I’m cheating on my new & fabulous kitchen when we eat out.  So, in efforts to save time, Hubs and I tag team-ed dinner and cooked up something pretty awesome.

 

Hubs cut up two chicken breasts into bite size pieces and I cooked them over the stove in a mushroom and sage olive oil, rosemary, fresh garlic, sea salt and garlic powder.  After the chicken was brown, I moved it into a different bowl and in the same pan I cooked one sliced zucchini, chopped tomato, 1/2 sliced sweet onion, a small can of sliced black olives, and sliced mushrooms.  I added in a bit more olive oil and sage.  Once the veggies were almost done, I mixed the chicken back in and let it cook for a few more minutes.  Meanwhile, I had a pot of brown rice penne pasta boiling.  Mix the pasta and veggies together and top with feta cheese and you have yourself a meal.  Within a half hour, a delicious dinner was served.  It’s always nice (and MUCH appreciated) when hubs helps out in the kitchen.

Now that I’m completely done nursing Madelyn (more on that in her monthly post), I feel like I can completely devote myself to eating more consciously and focus on getting to my preferred goal weight.  For the first 6 months of her life, I was more concerned about producing enough food for her and less about shedding the “baby weight”.  At 7 1/2 months postpartum, I am about where I was pre-baby.  For me, the last 10 lbs. (out of 34) came off extremely slow.  I ate really healthy for the most part, but I noticed that when I tried to cut calories my milk supply dropped so I more so used Weight Watchers and Myfitnesspal as a guide to make sure I wasn’t eating too little or that I wasn’t going overboard.  Now that I’m only nourishing myself, I can be a little bit more strict with my diet and amp up the activity just a little bit more.  

I had planned to run outside when I got to work this morning, but mother nature put the kabosh on those plans.  So I took my workout to the treadmill.  Because we’re a Guard base, we don’t have a big, Active Duty type gym.  Our “gym” consists of two treadmills, two bikes and an elliptical along with various weight machines.  I got lucky and was able to get on a treadmill right away.  In order to beat the boredom of the ‘mill, I did a variety of things: Steady running, sprints, hills, etc.  It helped pass time and I burned a lot of calories!  Win win. 

 After my ADD-type run, I hit the mat for some ab work: Sit ups, planks, side planks, bicycles, wall sits and stretching.  I finally feel back to my old self again as far as workouts go.  I actually feel like I have gotten a little faster and my endurance has improved since having a baby.  Maybe working out with that baby bump had something to do with it?  I’m not sure, but it feels great to be back at it and motivated.