New Year, New Ideas, New Beginnings

I have not really cooked a decent week day meal since August. I started a new job and had a huge learning curve thrown at me. But I am ready and excitied about starting 2015 off by getting back in our groove. We have commented to each other so much lately about how much better we both feel when we are eating healthy and clean. Time to jump back on that wagon.

I have acquired so many new cookbooks and I want to try so many new recipes ... I also renewed my membership to The Fresh 20 so I will be getting weekly recipes and shopping lists from them also. I have decided this year to document what we cook, what we really like and what we want again in a personal cookbook so I have some great go to recipes available. I am trying to figure out just how hard that will be to make it weekly/shopping friendly when all is said and done.

I also want to pursue finding or reworking recipes to make them Kosher. My son and his family are Jewish and my daughter-in-law is a very busy working Mom. I bought her the The Fresh 20 kosher subscription and she just loved it. But it is only 16 weeks and not the full year. They also don't have a new addition for 2015.

First things first. I have until January 5th before I head back to work. We are leaving to spend New Year's Eve and our Anniversary, January 1st, in Florida. We should be back the 3rd. I will start then. But still keep an open dialogue going on what we are consuming. I have lost several pounds and have several to go, so I am excitied about eating clean again and feeling the rewards from doing so.

Tonight, our leftover Lasagna from Christmas and a nice full flavored Zinfandel is "What's on the menu!"

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How To Cook Perfect Steak in the Oven

Yes, it was raining I had the steaks and I wanted to eat them. So I Googled "How to cook a great steak in the house" and came up with a wonderful site that explained it step by step. After having followed it to the letter I ended up with two awesome steaks cooked to perfection! Here is is the link ... http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-a-perfect-steak-in-the-oven-10849

 

It has been a busy wonderful summer so far. After having Gallbladder surgery and recouping for a couple weeks. I went to Florida for a week. Came home washed clothes and packed for 10 days in the Mountains with hubby and friends.

Then came home with plans to take Granddaughter off for a few days and all my grandsons but the baby camping for a few days. Well Granddaughter is booked on all my free days and grandsons are scattered so I can't seem to get them all together either! I will be going to visit baby Grandson this coming weekend with hubby. A fun time boating and playing with our youngest son and his son and if I plan it right a few hours to paint designs on the nursery wall.

So, to make a long story shorter ... I haven't really been cooking. I have cleaned my closet and drawers out yet again and painted a few pictures. I have spent hours and hours watching movies ... I love it. Hubby was gone this weekend to his Mother's so I had 56 hours straight to plant myself in front of the TV with The Hallmark Channel!

I printed out my 'The Fresh 20' meal plan, shopping list and recipes for the week and went food shopping. I love Aldi's their prices are great and I actually think they have the best vegetables other than the Farmers Market in our town. (I over slept Saturday and missed the Farmers Market.) So after buying a ton of fresh food, nothing is processed with the The Fresh 20, I am ready to get back into cooking this week. We have missed our healthy clean eating and after a couple weeks you really feel it.

If you hate trying to think of something to cook you will love The Fresh 20 program. All healthy great tasting meals at a very very good price. You only keep 20 things in your pantry, most you already have, and you only buy 20 things a week shopping. The meals work off each other to some extent but you are not eating leftovers. It tastes like we are eating at a restaurant every night and it's fast and easy. Here is the link if you'd like to check it out... http://www.thefresh20.com

I love finding new and different recipes on line also, The Fresh 20 turned me on to www.Foodie.com this week and in turn I found www.food52.com both have some great stuff and as always Pinterest!

I found this recipe on Food 52 via Foodie, Dilled, Crunchy Sweet-Corn Salad with Buttermilk Dressing, AWESOME! We had it with our perfect steak tonight, so fresh tasting, along with a baked sweet potato and fresh cantaloupe. Oh, least I forget also a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

A nice start to cooking again.

 

 

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For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down

Been feeling a quart low this past month. Doesn't help my, why do "they" always say better half, is an obituary reader. So, the story goes like this ... For about a week I was feeling light headed. Then, after I ate, to be precise, a hour or so after I ate I would just feel awlful. Nausea, dizzy, just plain icky and my chest would kind of hurt. One day after feeling sick at lunch then trying to run errands and feeling worse I came home and chilled out for a little while trying to let things ease off a bit. All the while in the back of my mind I was running the list of signs for women having heart attacks through my head.

Later that evening while preparing dinner my, 'better half', read off yet another obituary of a friend we use to work with. I still wasn't feeling well and was trying to figure out if in fact these were signs or I was just crazy ... I wanted a good sign. Well as my husband read the obit I had a couple sharp pains in my left arm and shoulder. So I took a deep breath and went into the living room and explained it might not mean anything but then again if I just kept standing in there and ignored them the next damn obituary he could be reading would be mine ... His guess was as good as mine so we went to the ER.

This is where it got more interesting then I had planned on. They actually whisk you in there like you're on fire. As I was wheeled in to the room there were three nurses standing there with all kinds of equipment and they asked me to take my shirt and bra off. My husband sat down and I stripped down from the waist up and laid down while they connected all kinds of stuff to me. A guy nurse walks in and attempts to take blood from my arm and blows a couple veins in the process and all the sudden my arm looks like the 4th of July .... But wait the fun is just about to start ... All the sudden someone asks "How much do you weigh?" ... ... ... ... There was a solid minute of total silence when I looked at my husband and back at the crowd and back at my husband. I knew this was an important question and it could be a life or death question when it came to medicine so I knew I had to answer it correctly. I also knew I was skinny when I married my husband. Over the span of 26 years I was no longer skinny and yes I knew he knew I was no longer skinny ... He on the other hand had no earthly idea how much I REALLY weighted. I took soo long that a nurse said "he isn't listening". I looked at him again silently begging him to leave the room. The guy in him didn't budge. My face turn beet red. I know it did because it felt red hot. I turned to the nurses and said "200 pounds and the earth might as well open up and swallow me right now." I didn't look at him and he didn't say anything and hasn't said anything about it since. I also comment that if I wasn't having a heart attack when I came in I was probably having one now!

Shorty after that they admit me to the hospital for observation. I sent the "better half" home to get my bath kit, medicine and underwear. Figured I would need some since I don't wear any and hospital gowns are open backed. I'm thinking they probably are not going to want me sleeping in the buff. This was another challenge for Hubby and I. I explained where the emergency underwear were kept in a drawer in a bag marked underwear or panties. The wheels of admittance move slow and we only live a mile and a half from the hospital so he was back pretty fast. We waited awhile and finally it was so late and he had to get up so early that we just decided I would call him with the room number and he could go home and get some sleep.

I guess they actually were having a busy night and had to call nurses in to work. They came and wheeled me, my bed and all my stuff to a room. I get there, switch to the new bed and settle in with new hook ups, floor nurses, etc. Good thing now is that I am wireless all my leads are strapped to me and I can freely move around.

So... I head to the bathroom to take my jeans off and put said panties on. You have to love Husbands. They try. I don't believe they pay a damn bit of attention to a thing you do, but I think, they think, they do. I have already said I don't wear underwear and neither does he and never have we done so. We keep a couple pair stashed for special occasions, doctors appointments, fancy clothes that call for them and "hospital stays". Well giving credit were credit is do he has never seen me running around the house in said underwear. And being a female, and on occasion vain, I have another set of black, white, biege spandex tummy tuck girdle thingies for dresses ... When you aren't wearing suck you thin pantyhose ... You got it ... That is what he brought for me to wear, the nice shiny tiny tummy tight beige ones. I about died in that bathroom. But really I would rather have died in there then said a damn thing to him about them tiny things not being my underwear. Like a 200 pound ass would fit comfortably in them?????

Then the cherry on the top of the whole evening. I am laying in the bed and the nurse is finishing up, it is now 4 in the morning, and I am tired, sore, cranky and my 'underwear' is cutting the circulation off to my brain, as she is fiddling with the sides of the bed she pulls them up and says "201, right?" In my head I'm thinking 201? I thought she said I was in room 312?, I still have to call my husband and give him the room number. What is she talking about? She looks at me again. "201?" I answer "201, what?" "Your weight, you weigh, 201?" "What!? The bed weighted me?" "Yes." "Oh, yeah, 201." What the heck is that. If they would have had beds like that in the ER I could have held off that second heart attack!

Part 2 is in search of your Gallbladder ...

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