New Recipes!

So I have been adding some new things to my family's meal schedule. Here is the recipes:

Breakfast Egg Biscuits

1 pound of Jimmy Dean's All Natural Pork Sausage
1/2 cup Kirkland's Real Bacon Pieces
1/2 cup cheese, shredded
1 batch of homemade biscuits (recipe below)
8-10 eggs scrambled with a touch of milk added

Homemade Biscuits
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tbl sugar
2 tbl baking powder
3 tbl Spectrum organic shortening 
1 cup milk (with 1 tea. vinegar to make more of a buttermilk biscuit if you prefer) 

Mix dry ingredients together. Cut in the shortening. If you want to sour the milk, let that sit for a few minutes while you mix the dry ingredients. Then mix in the milk until ingredients are moist. Flour the counter lightly and dump the biscuit dough onto the counter. Flatten with your hands until about 1/2" to 3/4" thickness. Cut out circles using a biscuit cutter. If just making biscuits, bake at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Directions:
For the Breakfast Egg Biscuit recipe, cook pork sausage until cooked through, then make the biscuits but do not bake. When the biscuits are cut out, lay them in the muffin tin but press the dough up the side of the tin making a well. Add in a 1 tbl of sausage, 1 tea of bacon pieces, and pinch of cheese and then top with the scrambled egg mixture. Bake at 375 degrees until egg mixture is cooked through. 

Take out of the tin while still warm. 

Homemade Sub Sandwich Dough

1 cup warm/hot water
1 1/2 tbl extra virgin olive oil
2 3/4c all purpose flour or bread flour
1/8 c organic cane sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 teaspoon yeast

1 Egg White
2 teaspoon water

Place all ingredients, in order, into bread machine. Select dough cycle. When dough cycle is done, place on lightly floured counter. Separate dough into 4-6 pieces. Roll them out to make nice logs about 3" in diameter. Place on a stoneware baking sheet. Let raise covered for 15-20 minutes in a warm area. I turn on my glass top cook stove on 5 for a few minutes, then turn off. After the dough has raised, slice tops every 2" with a sharp knife. Mix the egg white and water. Brush on the dough. Bake at 400 degrees until golden brown, 8-10 minutes. Top as desired once out of the oven. 

More Fitness Tips for Mamas

Here are a few more fitness tips that I live by for my success:

Purchase a workout video and put a copy on your iPhone or other smartphone. Then you can do workouts when you:
*Have a few moments while you're away from home and waiting
*while you're watching TV-- If you workout just in commercials while you're watching an average long show, you will get 12-16 minutes of exercise. Also just walk in place while watching is movement. I view it as a win-win: You get to watch your show and get your workout in.

Get your kids involved in your workout! I know it sounds silly, but kids will love it! My children love it when I put in a workout video and allow them to do it with me, I sometimes lead them, or it's fun to do a follow the leader type workout. Either way, YOU'RE getting active and so are the kids!

Play with your kids and use them as your resistance. I love putting kids on my shins with my knees bent and press them outward. This is great for babies and toddlers. Or if you have some bigger kids...well, you'll be ripped soon! lol

Good Luck and Get to It!

Preparing for MY New Year

I am really happy with my life right now. However, I still have a few goals...

My goal is to run the Windermere Half Marathon in under 2 hours (goal of 9:10/mile). To do that, I'm going to break my soda addiction. Which I don't have a huge addiction. However, for me to accomplish my goals, I need to set all unhealthy drinks aside to focus on feeding my body what it wants: water. 

My next change: No fast food until after the marathon. I want to train like a beast and I can't do that eating food that makes me lethargic. This might be once a week/ once every other week habbit for me right now. 

Other than that, I think I really am in a good, healthy place in my life. 

Here are other areas I would like to work on:

*Getting my kid's outside at least ONCE a day. 
*Get a regular deep cleaning schedule going (I know, hysterical, right?!?)


Ready, set, go!

Losing Weight During Motherhood

Me summer 2012

Let me pre-face this blog by saying: There is no way EVER to cheat your way to being thin. There's no pill, shake, etc to get thin. It's all hard work and eating well. Period.

When I got pregnant with my first child, I was 19 years old and 140 pounds. I spent the next 6 years either pregnant or breastfeeding. I had bad morning sickness early in the pregnancy and the late pregnancy made me immobile because of my pelvis problem. I didn't want to count calories during that period of my life because I didn't want to make myself even more miserable. 

To help me exercise moderately, we bought a treadmill after our 3rd child; even against the advice of all family members that we would regret it later. We figured, paying $70 a month for a gym membership and gas costs would end up costing more in the long run compared to just buying an $800 treadmill. Of course, finding a used one is a great idea because people by them all the time new, thinking they will use them, then don't and sell them in amazing condition. By the way, my husband and I never regretted that purchase. In fact, a friend offered us a second treadmill and we jumped on it so we can now run side by side. 

Fast forward to when I walked out of the hospital after my 4th child... At my post-partum checkup I weighed in at 200 pounds. Breastfeeding went fairly well with Rowen (my 4th child) even after my normal struggle point of 4 months. So I decided I wasn't going to limit food or exercise heavily; I wasn't going to jeopardize my milk supply. Weight loss had to weight until I was done breastfeeding. I was able to ween Rowen right at 12 months old. Then I hit it hard core. 

I had people ask me after I lost my wight why I finally decided it was a time for a change. I had to explain to them that I didn't have unhealthy habits and I have always been active, but my immobile pregnancies took a toll on me. 

The idea of losing weight was difficult because my husband runs 13 miles a day (it's his commute method) and my kids are on the smaller side, so everybody but me needed healthy, high calorie meals. My frustration: how do I make healthy high calorie food for my kids, and low calorie and fat foods for me? I came up with some great ideas that helped me on that front:

*I bought a Costco size bag of salmon fillets because they're vaccume sealed individually. I thawed those and I throw those under the broiler for a few minutes while I'm serving up my kid's dinner. 

*Then I make my own rice mixture in a 5 gallon bucket of brown basmati rice, long grain brown rice, black rice and quinoa. Then I make large batches of it then freeze individual service sizes in ziplock bags. 

*Then I got lots of fresh and frozen vegetables that I could quickly steam in the ziplock steam bags. Viola! I can make a complete separate meal for my family and make a quick healthy meal for myself. 

*Other times, I made a complete rice/meat/veggie dish and just froze the individual serving sizes. Take out and microwave for a few minutes and insta-dinner!

*Healthy soups can be made by the pot-full and freeze in canning jars. My favorites include Doc's Chili (recipe is from The Biggest Loser) and Spinach Lentil Soup

*At the beginning of the week, I made 5-7 pre-made salads with the dressing pre-measured included. Then if I was running out the door, I just slipped on in the diaper bag. 

*I tracked all my food on the app called MY FITNESS PAL. It's a free app that is AMAZING. It calculates how many calories you should eat. The best part is it uses the camera to scan the barcode off of food packages. Then you adjust the portions you ate. Let's say you buy a can of Chunky soup. Simply scan the barcode on the soup with the camera on your smartphone. The nutrition info will pop up. Say you only ate 1/2 the can, you just adjust the serving size and add it. At the end of the day you can see where you go over: fat, sugar, sodium, etc. 

Working out was hard to fit into my schedule. I had a 1 year old, 2 year old, 4 year old and a 5 year old. The treadmills saved my life. I trie at one point to go to the gym. It never failed I would get there and put my kids into child care. 15 minutes later and the workers came and got me telling me my kids were crying. Then I wasted the time and cost of gas to get there. So, doing it all at home was simple and affordable. I'm not a morning person, so my goal was to work out during nap time. My younger two would take naps and my 4 year old would have quiet time. If I couldn't get the workout in in that time, I had no excuse not to do it after my kids went to bed. 1 hour on the treadmill in addition to a 20 minute fitness video shed the pounds super fast. A lot of times I was so tired to work out, but honestly the hardest part was getting the running shoes on. My workout videos included Denise Austin, and several of the Biggest Loser workout videos. I did those in my living room. We put our computer up with a cheap sound system so we could entertain ourselves while running/walking. We would stream tv episodes while walking. Also, my recommendation is to keep the workout area super chilly (around 50 degrees). You'll be cold the first bit, but as you pore sweat 15 minutes into the workout, you won't feel chilly at all. 

Me in the summer of 2011hiking Mt. Rainier. 

Left: late Summer of 2011         Right:April 2012

My OLD snow pants

Now, I am a healthy 150 pounds. I went from a size 16 after I had Rowen to now a size 8. Amazing! In the last 6 months, I've taken in an overweight teenager and have transformed him to 60 pounds lighter by teaching him the same thing! 

I Murdered a Baby Stroller. In Cold Blood.

Christmas was wonderful for my family. The company was awesome, the kids enjoyed the day, and the food was amazing. I really need to thank the cook for a job well done. Oh wait, that's ME! 

The only thing worse than a bad Christmas, is getting the stomach flu the day after Christmas. That's what happened to me. I woke up and puked all morning long. It's always such a disappointment to have such a bad stomach bug when you have so much amazing food leftover that needs to be eaten. So, I spent that whole day in bed or kneeling in front of the toilet. Awesome. 

The next day I woke up feeling a bit better. However, it looked like the Grinch broke into our home and thew Christmas all over the house. The house was just destroyed. I put the kids and I to work cleaning their bedrooms and cleaning the basement of our house. I started tiring quickly, but I was determined to get part of my house in some order. A little bit later, I start wondering where Rowen, my two year old, went. I looked in the laundry room first and the 2 year old in me erupted! I must say, it was not a pretty sight for me. About 30 minutes prior to this moment, I had just gave the cats a full food bowl and filled up their water as well. I had come in and out of the laundry room several times and must of forgot to shut the door.

Rowen had sneaked into the laundry room and put all of the cats food into their water. This may not sound like a big deal to you, but for me.... This happens all too often. Often enough for me to get super pissed about it. I hate wasting that food. It's probably a good $2.00 worth of food now wasted. So I told my kids to stay in their room and I shut the door to the laundry room and have my 2 year old temper tantrum. I grab the only big thing in there which is a toy baby stroller and smashed it repeatedly on the unfinished wall. I raised it high over my head and smashed it again and again against a series of 2x4s. Over and over. The stroller starting buckling and the metal legs quickly broke and splintered. It felt so good!

Funny thing, Joe walked in right at the end. He just raises his eyebrows and said, "Bad day?" I nod and he leaves me to further destroy anything until I feel like my anger is avenged. 

Let me tell you: I murdered that toy baby stroller. In cold blood. It's beyond repair. I'm okay with that. It made me feel better for about 2 minutes! 

It's so ironic that I tell my kids to not get upset at things such as this, but here I go off the deep end. Not only did I go off the deep end, I ran towards it and went head first!

I'm going to claim crazy insanity red-head moment of losing my temper. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Until then, I hope Aviana doesn't come to me asking for the toy baby stroller!

Advent Calendar

Advent is here! So with Advent, brings the joy of preparing for Christmas. Two years ago, my mother in law brought over this little cardboard calendar that you could open numbered doors and inside would be one piece of chocolate. My kids loved this! However, splitting one piece of chocolate 4 ways was not working for my kids. So I scoured the internet (Hello Pintrest!) and came up with my own version. I ended up spending just above $50. 

You will need 
* 3'x4' piece of plywood
*2 1/2 yards of fabric
*quilters blocks
*ribbon
*3D Fabric Paint
*Stencil for the stocking
*staples
*hot glue with gun

This is what the end result looked like:

Merry Christmas!

My Week in review

Thanksgiving has finally come and gone. Now, everybody has their eyes on Christmas. Christmas! Just a few months ago it seemed I was ringing in 2012 and now 2013 is just around the corner. What was I doing that the year just flew by??? I remember back to when I was a kid and remembered when the days just dragged by. No longer, for sure!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, but if you shared my experiences of being sick on the day that was supposed to be special and cheerful, I feel for you! I was sick, but luckily, the brunt of it held off until around 11pm Thanksgiving night--- Just long enough for me to go score a few deals at Walmart on Thanksgiving night! I bought 2 crockpots for just under $10 each. Now I will have 3 crockpots in my household. I'm sure you're kind of like my husband wondering why in the world any mother would need 3 crockpots. Well, I make things in bulk, such as spaghetti sauce and soups and then can it. Then, I will be the one person cooking for 13 adults and 6 children at Christmas. Having the extra crockpots will take off a lot of extra stress. I can make Christmas breakfast in one, have another warming the Christmas ham up and one more for my easy crockpot mashed potatoes. See, I am completely organized!

My other scores included just a simple electric griddle that I've had my eyes on. Of course, since I was at Walmart, I got several movies for a good deal. I love to take the movies and make little "movie night" gift baskets for people for Christmas. I get a good deal and they get a sweet Christmas gift. Although, I must admit, over 3/4 of my Christmas shopping is done. 

So, looking backwards though, I've actually had a rough week leading up to Thanksgiving and had to dig a little deeper to remember I have tons to be grateful for despite my losses for this last week. 

Last Saturday, we had to put one of our cats down because she has been quite sick. The toughest part of doing that was that she was one my daughters more favorite animals. Then later that same day, an accident happened and my dogs got out and my little chihuahua, Malcolm got out also. The big dogs came back but I'm 98% certain the chihuahua got stolen off of our road. No body to find so I don't think he got hit by a car and nothing in the shelters. I am taking this really hard as he was my dog. He curled up to me, he was my running buddy, and when I was sick, he laid by my head. I have very little hope he will return so I am trying to go through the grieving process. I think it would be much easier if I knew a car had run him over by accident versus somebody stopping and putting them into his car to keep. Anyhow, I've shed a lot of tears this week. I have only been attached to one animal before, but nothing compared to what I felt for Malcolm. 

Moving on... This next week my goal is to make a home-made advent calendar for my family. I got all the supplies this last week. I spend $50, but if my idea turns out, it will be well spent for the traditions it will bring my family for years to come! Stay tuned for that!

Happy Holidays everybody! Wellness to the Sick!