Back To Normal Life!

Yay! I have officially made it through the holidays! No more parties and no more food I cannot eat!

While I enjoyed the holidays, all of the yummy food I couldn't have was no fun to look at either! I am glad I am back to somewhat normal life in the eating department. I do have one day of traveling I have to get through this week as I will be traveling to southern Utah for a funeral.

After this week, though, life should be completely normal again. I am glad too, because I can stay on the strait and narrow with my eating habits. Sunday wasn't a good a day for me as I ate something on Saturday that did not agree with me and I spent all day Sunday recovering from food poisoning.

Yesterday was a little better, but I was still recovering so I ate a little bit more than I normally do. But today I have been good. I am hoping to try some more recipes this week as well. I will continue to share. Have a great week everyone!

Day 16: Late Night Dinner Sucks!

So my evening last night did no go according to plan. I was going to go home, make dinner, and then do a little shopping, but that is not what happened.

My boyfriend wasn't feeling well yesterday so I went and took him some nasal spray and a hug per his request after work. I spent a couple of hours with him, and then I returned home and was hungry. I really didn't want to make dinner, so I meandered over to Burger King. It's really hard to order food at fast food establishments when they hardly have anything you can eat. I managed, though and ordered the tendergrill chicken sandwich (which looks twice the size on the menu than it really is, btw). And I had it with lettuce only and my water.

I would really like to be able to order whatever I want some days when I go out to eat but I don't. Today our company brought in Wendys for their cafe here and I have been watching people walk by with their food and today I realized I don't eat very much apparently. I have seen both men and women walking by with two or three burgers or more. Even when I was eating whatever I never ordered more than one burger at any restaurant because I always felt that was more than sufficient. But what do I know?

Today I am hoping to get some groceries for dinner and get the rest of my Christmas shopping done as well. So this way I won't be tempted by all of the gazillion fast food places I live near. Within less than a half a mile I live by a Wendys, a McDonalds, a Burger Kind, a Taco Bell, a Subway, and about three other Mexican places and two other sandwich shops as well. See why it is so easy to just go and get dinner instead of make it?

Well, I have only five days to go and for the most part I feel like I have done well. Yes I have slipped a little bit, but there hasn't been a day where I have completely blown it, so I am thinking that overall I have been successful.

Where Most Recipes Come From

I wanted to point everyone's attention to the Widget I just added to my blog. It is from Rachael Ray's website for her magazine, "Everyday With Rachael Ray." I am an avid reader of her magazine and get most of my recipes from her magazine. I have added this particular widget because it highlights the particular section of her magazine and website I pull my recipes from. In her magazine every month, she has an insert that has 7 days worth of dinner recipes in it. This insert even has a shopping list you can take with you to the store, so I take the list and get everything I need in one trip! With this widget, you can look up all of the different Weekly Dinners they have featured over the years! Happy eating!

Meat On A Stick! Does it Get Much Better?

After much deliberation and thought I have finally decided what I am going to blog on for the time being. I don't have a husband and I don't have kids, so I can't really blog about my family. And my personal life isn't usually that exciting enough to blog about -- at least in my opinion. I have decided to start a food blog. Now, this is not a recipe blog -- there are enough of those. This is a blog about my personal experience with trying a new recipe and then eating it and what my thoughts are on it.

I have been in food rut as of late, and so I decided to try some new recipes. Last night I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients for seven recipes I decided to try. All of these recipes come from November 2010's "Everyday With Rachael Ray." So, these are not my own recipes, but these are my own attempts at them.

My first recipe I tried is called Beef Kebabs With Roasted Green Beans and Almonds. This recipe is basically meatballs on sticks, but it is tasty! This is a good recipe for kids. The green beans in this recipe are fresh, so they have to be prepped by breaking off the ends. This would be a good chore for kids, because it will allow them to learn how to prep a food they may only be familiar with in canned form. Fresh green beans are much tastier than canned! These green beans are very tasty too because of the almonds. The almonds are all nice and toasty and give a little extra crunch to the green beans! Yumness! I think kids would also like this recipe because meat tastes better on a stick, and it is very kid friendly that way. Easy to eat! There is fresh parsley in this recipe as well, but dried parsley could easily be substituted. The recipe calls for finely chopped garlic. Chopping garlic, in my opinion, takes a day and a half, so I recommend pressing the garlic. I also think pressing the garlic brings out the flavor more as well.

I had to change a few things. First of all, I don't have a grill -- indoor or out, so I had to use a skillet. Even with my biggest skillet, my skewers were still too long for the pan, so I cut them in half. Works well. If you do use a skillet, make sure you use a little olive oil so the meat doesn't stick.

The recipe called for squeezing lemon juice on the kebabs after they were cooked and a little on the green beans. I tried it both ways. I personally liked everything better without the lemon juice, but if you are one that likes things a little tart, this is a nice addition.

The nice thing about this recipe is that it has provided me three meals. The dinner I just ate, lunch for tomorrow, and a future dinner (Green beans and beef freeze well and thaw well.) This recipe technically serves four, but if you are one person (like me) or just a couple, I would still make the full recipe so you do have leftovers.

So this is my first culinary adventure! Here's to many more culinary adventures!

Green Beans:



Beef Kebabs: