Menu Monday: Garlic Roasted Potato Wedges

HELLO! Hello, hello hello.

I know, I know. I'm ALL over getting back to blogging and then...it just stops.

I HAVE A LIFE, people!  hahaha

Honestly, between school, Mr. Man being out of work (waaah!), Little Miss, and just, BLAH! I've found finding the time for ME that I want/need to get things like blogging, reading, crafting, whatever (even checking my TWITTER has gone to the wayside - it's SO SAD! hahaha) difficult to find.

Which isn't to say that I'm NOT taking time for me. I'm just, doing different things with it, maybe?  Like I painted my kitchen cabinets (white) and half the walls (I need Mr. Man to do some repairs on the other half before I can paint the rest...but the finished section looks amazing, so the whole finished kitchen is going to look FABULOUS, too).  I nixed Little Miss' playroom, moved all her toys and movies and everything to the basement which I turned into a 'family room,' and the 'play room' is now my massage treatment area!  AND in anticipation of starting my massage practice later in the year I joined Scentsy so I have full access to their amazing products - I have a warmer going in my treatment room and LOVE LOVE LOVE it (not to mention two in my living room, one in the kitchen, a scent pack in the bathroom.... my house always smells AMAZING.)  And kickboxing, of course.

Anyway, here I am today.  HOPEFULLY, as my family works out this...weird/difficult time in our lives I'll figure THIS little part of mine out and YES be here regularly.  Because I LIKE posting and rambling on about nothing.  I just have a place to dump my brain out without making my poor Mr. Man wish he could bash his head through the wall because my motor mouth won't stop running and running and running.... ;) (don't worry -he's never said that's how he feels....I just imagine that's how I'D feel sometimes if I were stuck married to me! hahaha)

So, all that blah de blah blah aside, guess what day it IS today?  That's right!  It's MENU MONDAY!

Today, I cooked for my bud, who turns a whopping FOURTEEN YEARS OLD tomorrow.  She rocks my socks, and usually crashes at our place for dinner and FHE (family home evening - we hang out as a family + extras) on Monday nights.  She loves it when we have steak because she and her mom don't get around to steak very often.   So we had steak, with fried onions, mushrooms, and green peppers, steamed cauliflower, and then these FABULOUS potatoes that my mom gave me the recipe for YEARS ago that I never got around to actually trying until sometime last year - I think I thought they were outside my skill-set...which they totally aren't.

And so, without further ado.... GARLIC ROASTED POTATO WEDGES

FRESH out of the oven - YUM!

Ingredients:
4 large red potatoes *
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 tsp fresh garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Directions
Heat oven to 425 degrees. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise, and then each half in four, lengthwise.  Place in pot and cover with water.  Bring potatoes to a boil and cook until just tender.  Drain.

Melt butter and mix with other ingredients.  Add potatoes and coat.  Put in a 13x9" pan.  Bake for 10 minutes, turn and bake another 10-15 minutes, until brown.

*I never use large or red potatoes - I'm too lazy to bother with large potatoes, so always just grab a bag of smallish potatoes, and then cut them lengthwise in quarters.  Also...I don't bother to turn them.... O:-)

THESE. ARE. SO. GOOD.  And a wonderful, natural source of carbs instead of some crazy processed whatever.  Just, you know, don't eat ALL of them yourself 'cause there's a whole whack load of butter in there....  

Okay, that's that!  Between massaging yesterday, kickboxing today, and now typing on my lap my forearms have HAD it, so I'm....going to fold some laundry... hahaha

Cheers, all!

Say hello to MENU MONDAYS! Beef Vegetable Soup

Hi ho, everyone!  Well, everyone who is kind enough to take however long it takes to read one of my long-winded blog-ramblings to visit and read the latest ramblings I have.... I don't pretend to think there are too many of you, so "everyone" is a very select group of folks...

I totally lost myself in that non-thought.  What am I here for??

OH yes.  Welcome to: MENU MONDAYS!


So, I'm pretty jazzed about this - I've been thinking, honestly, for months to start doing this and then, obviously, never did.  But then I've found it so relatively easy recently to share DAILY what I'm eating that I figure, YES! I CAN do this sometimes!  hahaha

Basically, when I eat something absolutely fabulous, I'll take a picture, post it, and share the recipe.  Sound good??  It does to me, but I'm kind of NUTS about food, so....

FIRST UP: Mom's Best Ever Beef Vegetable Soup

Not my best ever food picture, but I took it on my phone, so let's all be sufficiently impressed, yes? Fabulous.

First thing you have to know...this is really easy to make. And DELICIOUS.  And my mommy used to make it. She may still (why wouldn't you??)


Ingredients: 
1 lb ground beef
2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup thinly sliced carrots
6 cups water
3 tbsp beef bouillon, or 2 oxo cubes
1 28oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup pot barley (or pasta stars or some other such thing - I use pot barley)
2 bay leaves
2 tsp each chill powder and basil
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 7.5oz can tomato sauce
1 or 2 cups green beans (can use 2 14oz cans, a small bag of frozen, just as long as they're cut up)


Directions: 
Brown ground beef in large pot.  Drain off fat.  Add onion, celery and carrots.  Stir and cook 5 minutes.  Add remaining ingredients except green beans, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 50 minutes.  Add beans, cook until heated through.  Discard bay leaves.

This one I made up earlier in the day, simmered for the 50 minutes, and then left Mr. Man in charge of chopping up, adding, and cooking the green beans.  Soooo.....the beans were a little on the long side O:-) and a little on the crunchy side.  hahaha BUT I happen to love green beans so it was still pretty fabulous.  Just cut them up however you like them, and make sure they're heated through so they, you know, go with the soup!

Even Little Miss ate it.  Which is saying something.

Texting Dad

(image from: http://lmg.letmeget.net/blog/texting-symbols-list-facebook)

Recently, my Dad has skyrocketed himself into the twenty-first century and figured out how exactly to work the text messaging function on his phone.  It's kind of fabulous, and really cute to hear how he's been regularly texting my mom while she's been away (in Florida - horrors! hahaha). 

Anyway, to mark the occasion, I sent him a text message congratulating him on his newly acquired skillz, and we have since become text buds.

Then, a few days ago now, we got a phone call at the house.  Mr. Man picked it up, listened, and hung up before announcing that Dad had texted us to find out about Mr. Man's job prospects.

This made me smile - it's not the first time someone has accidentally selected our home number instead of cell number(s) when sending us a text message, and we always just smile and return-text from our cells. 

So I texted Dad:


You texted our house phone. :-) :-) Always makes for an interesting phone call! 

AND I got THE GREATEST RESPONSE EVER:

Sorry.  Made a mistake.  I remember phones that had a crank on the side and you placed a call by verbally telling the operator what number you wanted.  Our number at home when I was a kid was 346 ring 1 3. When the phone rang it was not always for us.  Only if there was on long ring followed by three short ones. It was called a party line. Anyone on the line could pick up and listen in.  I have come a long way but apparently have far to go. :s

BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 

Ohmigoodness, I love my Dad! 

5 AM Phone Calls

(image from: http://thetwors.blogspot.com/2011/04/sleeping-in-and-saving-environment.html)

I'm tired today.

Currently, I'm not feeling it.  Adrenaline and all that. You know how you get so tired you just can't help but function on overdrive?? That's how I feel at the moment.  But my need to overdrive is currently finished for the day - we're having family snuggle on the couch Sunday (except for Little Miss, who is mimicking Pete's skipping in the movie we're watching, Pete's Dragon.  So I'm sure the adrenaline will pass in a bit and I'll crash.....

The past few nights have not been good sleeping nights for me.  Which is honestly, really weird, because when I lay down at night, I fall asleep, and then I am OUT until Little Miss bombs me out of bed in the morning.  I would sleep until the afternoon every day if I could, I kid you not, and still be able to sleep at night. I LOVE sleeping. sigh 


Thursday night I realized how insanely busy Friday was going to be, rushing to fit everything in we needed to get done and get to my SIL's to surprise the nieces after school, so stayed up late crafting the birthday presents I wouldn't otherwise have had time to make.

Not ideal, but no BIG deal or anything.  I watched silly tv on Netflix and made oodles of earrings and necklaces for the 8-year-old dear to accessorize with now that she's got pieced ears.  It was fun!

But then Friday morning around 5 Little Miss decided she needed to come crash my sleep for some snuggles.

Fine, no big deal. I love snuggles.

Then Friday night we slept away from home, which again, I don't usually have a hard time with. When it's time for me to sleep, that is that!  I'm lucky that way, I guess.

But I stayed up a little bit late blogging about the epic fail and by the time I got to bed Mr. Man was definitely asleep.  And laying on his back.  Which for me, means a NOISY night.  MAN can he snore.

And then my nieces all wake up at like, I don't even know - some hour of the morning I've never seen before! hahaha So I didn't really sleep in yesterday either.

Okay, but LAST night.  Really.  UGH.

Mr. Man knew I was getting tired going a couple of days without ideal amounts of sleep - some people function just fine and dandy, but I'm one of these for whom a lost hour's sleep equals a disproportionately huge shift in mood, so it's usually in his best interest I'm well rested ;-) - and so insisted that we get to bed at a decent hour last night.  He made me go to bed BEFORE 11 even.  I mean, REALLY!!

But then I couldn't fall asleep!  WHAT??

I finally fell asleep sometime after 1 AM, after listening to his slow, NON-snore for EVER, and fighting the urge to get up and do ANYTHING other than lay there like a useless lump... if I'm awake I may as well be productive and DO something, right??

Anyway, I finally, eventually fell asleep.  Yay for me.

5 AM. FIVE IN THE MORNING.  Mr. Man's cell phone, out in the dining room, rings.  Mr. Man's cell phone.  Mr. Man's cell phone NEVER rings.  Not EVER.  I don't even call it.  He has this pay-as-you-go plan where texts are unlimited and phone calls are limited, so no one EVER calls him 'cause he won't answer it anyway!  hahaha Sometimes my brother forgets and calls Mr. Man's cell phone, but that's it. It NEVER rings.

It rang.  At five o'clock in the morning.

Did he hear it??

Gosh, no, of course not.

And so I lay there, having been aroused by someone ELSE'S cell phone probably having been accidentally drunk-dialed or something stupid at 5AM, with a wandering, wide-awake mind.

And then I thought, gee, you know, the only person who ever really calls Mr. Man's cell phone IS my brother.  I wonder if it was him calling.  I wonder if everything is okay.  I wonder if everyONE is okay.  I mean, why do people ever call other people at five o'clock in the morning?  Not ever for anything except to say that someone's died or something other such fabulous news.  I wonder who's DEAD?! Why didn't I run and grab the phone? Did Mom get in a plane crash coming home from Florida? Even though she's not flying home until Friday??

Wait. Wait a second. If someone's dead then whoever called will call again.  They won't call once and not get us.  When you call people at 5 in the morning you expect that they're asleep and you'll have to call again.  They'll call again.

...........

Then MY cell phone rang.

Ohmigoodness, someone IS dead!  WHO'S DEAD?!?!

I GRABBED my phone, looked at the caller ID to see: "unknown caller," and frantically pushed the button to answer the phone.

Except I pushed the wrong button.

I PUSHED THE WRONG BUTTON!!

I accidentally pushed the lower right button instead of the upper right button to answer my phone.  Now, I totally understand why I did it - my phone really doesn't ring very often either; as popular as I am people just don't call me (it's okay - I don't call anyone either. Phone chat isn't really my thing).  So I don't have oodles of practice on automatically pressing the 'answer' button. When my phone does ring I have to look at it and register which button is answer.  And in the pitch-black of 5:05 AM I hit the wrong button.

NO! NO NO NO NO NO!  Someone's DEAD and I just DIDN'T answer the phone!! OHMIGOODNESS!  PLEASE call back! Please call back!! I'm sorry! I know which button it is now! I know!  CALL ME BACK!!

I lept out of bed with my cell in my hand and raced to the living room to grab the portable off of the charger - we have a charger in the bedroom, too, and keep a phone in there for just such an occasion, but of course it's migrated to somewhere else in the house so was of now use to me this morning.

With my cell phone in one hand and the house phone in the other - obviously someone who wants to get us badly enough at 5 am to call both our cell phones will next try to rouse us with the landline, right?  Right?? - I headed back to my bedroom.  Where I proceeded to turn the ringers way down so as not to wake up Mr. Man before necessary when one of the phones inevitably rang again.   And then sat there.  One phone in each hand.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And imagined what the news was.  WHO called?  Maybe Mom was coming home early for something and the plane went down?  Maybe my dad's cold this week wasn't just a cold and he succumbed during the night??  WHO IS DEAD?!?!

And I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And WAITED.

Finally around 5:30 I put the phones down on my side table - if I heard Mr. Man's cell phone in the dining room I'd hear the land line from the other rooms and the turned-down ringer by my head.

And I lay down and waited.  Waited for the phone to ring. Waited to fall back to sleep.

Back to sleep. HA! HAHAHAHAHA!  As IF!

I was SO worked up.

No one ever called.  To the best of my knowledge all my family members are alive and well.   Mr. Man checked his phone when he got up and the only missed call was a 'blocked number,' whatever that means on his phone.

I don't know who it was, what was going on.  Was someone trying to get a hold of us to tell us something?  We were both pocket-dialed by someone, one after the other? Were we both wrong-numbered at 5 in the morning? That's happened to us before.

NO IDEA.

But, promise me something, please.

If you ever accidentally pocket-dial, wrong-number dial, or WHATEVER to someone at 5 in the morning and you don't talk to an actual person? LEAVE A MESSAGE and say  "SORRY! Wrong number!!" so that at 5:01 AM when the poor unsuspecting, used-to-be-sleeping-and-is-now-going-insane-with-worry soul can say "Oh. MORON!" and then go back to sleep!!

I'm going to go take a nap.

Detox Days 8-11 & the epic FAIL

Howdy, folks!

So, the past week has been fabulous. I've eaten great foods, lots of variety, lots of yummy things.  Eggs in the mornings, meat & veggies and snacks in the non-mornings.

And as I've gone I've even taken photos of some of my favourites so I can share them with you.

But, today, I have to confess.

And every time I have to confess, I feel like it's OKAY, because, this IS "Confessions of a Kin Major," and while I may have graduated my Kin degree and have moved on to....more school....I still make "mistakes" and have things to fess up.

So, here's what happened.

I have four nieces. They are spectacular.  And today the oldest one turned 8.  And Little Miss had a day off school today - is it PA or PD day now, I don't even know - soooo we decided to trek up to visit the family and surprise our nieces with a Happy Birthday visit and sleepover.

HUZZAH!

So after a morning kickboxing class (I got four classes in this week!  Including what Sensei G calls an "F-U Day," and yes, F & U stand for....exactly what it sounds like. hahaha The idea is that by the end of it everyone in the class should be yelling that particular expletive at him or he's not worked us hard enough... it's a brilliant workout) we ran around like mad and got ourselves organized, and out of town.  To surprise the girls getting off the school bus, play some games, craft some jewellery, make birthday dinner, and then eat said dinner.

Dinner was chicken parmesan with whole wheat spaghetti, shrimp, escargot with bread for dipping in the garlic butter, caesar salad with homemade croutons (I made them!), broccoli, & sparkling grape juice.

I did NOT eat that.  Promise.  My darling SIL kept a hunk of chicken from being smothered in cheese for me, and I didn't eat bread dipped into melted garlic butter.  I didn't eat the croutons in my salad, nor the escargot (um, ew?), and I had water to drink.

Dinner was delicious!!

Then we cleaned up, gathered gifts, and the celebratory birthday dessert started coming out of the kitchen.  Including a rousing version of "Happy Birthday To You" from everyone, of course!

So, the birthday girl, for her 'cake,' requested the following:

brownies

vanilla ice cream

whipped cream (the icky kind in a can, that tastes deliciously like whipped butter.....drool)

chocolate sauce

jujubes

Oh. My.

And for some reason, the brownie 'cake' which was decorated with jujubes, ended up right in front of myself and my other SIL at the table.  Just sitting there.

Taunting me.

..... I don't know how it happened, but all of a sudden an orange jujube found its way into my mouth....

And since the detox is kind of ruined with a jujube....it seemed a little pointless to bother keeping up with it after that point! 

Yes, those white flecks all over the table are from my liberal application of whipped cream to my, uh, mountain of dessert.

I swear it didn't look that big from where I was...nom nom nom...oh, never mind!

So... I totally caved.  I just gave in.  I WANTED brownies, ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce!  I mean, who in their right mind WOULDN'T want those things?? 

And you know what? I'm totally FINE with the fact that I ate that giant mound of dessert.  IT WAS YUMMY.  It was a special occasion.  I haven't eaten dessert since Christmas.  I AM back into the pants I busted out of over Christmas, with a little bit of wiggle room.  I went to four kickboxing classes this week instead of 'just' three. I've learned how to eat properly for MY body.  

And except for the GINORMOUS zit that's taken up residence on my face at the moment, I look fabulous. 

So, I'm good. 

Tomorrow I won't have dessert.  Or bread.  Or crepes (which is the planned breakfast - I'll think of my last delicious outing with crepes over Christmas and then whip myself up some eggs).  And in another few days or so, maybe I'll have 'earned' my next splurge/cheat.  But I'm good with today's.  

It was delicious. 

Detox Days 5, 6 & 7

Hi!

Sorry for the weekend hiatus, but I had a fabulous weekend and kind of kept away from the computer a bit.

Saturday we actually had NOTHING on. NOTHING!  It was FABULOUS. All three of us lounged around the house in our pjs until about noon, playing games, chill axing, eating breakfast.... huh - totally drawing a blank on what we ate. hahaha PROMISE I didn't cheat, though.  Okay, chatting with Mr. Man I think I had a couple of boiled eggs. Oy, how we forget such monumental moments! ;-)  Snacked on nuts, crab meat...don't remember if I grabbed any veggies....probably not, WHOOPS! Anyway, we ran some errands, cleaned the house, played some more, and then Mr. Man and I, get this....WENT ON A REAL DATE!!

I KNOW, right? CRAZY!!

We got a baby-sitter and the whole nine yards!

Dinner AND a movie!!

We went to Jack Astor's for dinner - there is ONE detox-friendly salad on the menu, and it was DELICIOUS.  AND I didn't have to make it!  And, because we were dining out and having some fun we even splurged and had SPARKLING water. hahaha  OOOOOOooo CRAZINESS!

Then we FINALLY went to see the new Sherlock Holmes flick.  I, personally, LOVE the first one, and got a big kick out of reading one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's collections near the end of last year.  I find Holmes to be just a hilariously delightful character and LOVE Robert Downey Jr in the role.  So yeah, basically it was the perfect evening.

We even TALKED over dinner.

GASP


And then Sunday I was off to class for the day!  Ate some eggs and nuts for breakfast, took some leftover spaghetti squash and sauce for lunch (it's yummy cold, too!), and then came home to a house full of family!  My in-laws trekked down for the afternoon/evening to celebrate Mr. Man's turning even OLDER, and spoiled us with a fabulous, detox-friendly meal of flank steak, asparagus, cauliflower, and a scrumptious salad (and for non-detoxers, potatoes, cheese sauce for the veggies, escargot & bread, plus black forest cake).  Another FABULOUS detoxing meal I didn't have to prepare.

See?  TOTALLY spoiled over the weekend. FABULOUS.

Today, I weighed myself, just to see where I am, post Christmas eats (for the record, it was NOT my mother's fault that I totally binged on cinnamon buns.  I did it willingly and knowingly...and even made myself a pair of elastic-waistband pj bottoms so I had pants that would grow with me as I gorged on...everything in sight! Whoever said 'nothing tastes as good as thin feels' has NOT eaten at my mother's house!) and with almost a week of detox and back to kickboxing, and I was happy to see that I'm not imagining feeling better - I'm 5 lbs down from my last weigh-in before Christmas.  Which was great to see!

Then, tonight, at kickboxing, I thought, what the heck, let's see where I'm at since last Monday night, 'cause I was weighed to start off our 'biggest loser' challenge at the club.

I'm down 5 lbs from last MONDAY.

Holy COW.

So...there are multiple reasons.

1 is definitely the detox, no question.  I feel fabulous.  And it's funny, as much as I LOVE all the stuff that's proven to be not great for me, when I'm cooking for myself now I don't WANT it, you know? I want a giant plate of veggies with some sort of meat.  Dinner tonight was a chicken breast smothered in Epicure's Italian sansel (I prefer the Red Garlic for sure) with carrots and green beans. It was DELISH.

2 is definitely...I was being visited by my, uh, monthly 'FRIEND' last Monday. hahaha And that usually, honestly, puts about 5 lbs on me each time anyway.

3 - I'm working like crazy at kickboxing. It's kicking my butt but I'm kicking back. MUAHAHAHA!

Anyway, that's the weekend re-cap.  Detox goes 'till next Monday, then I'll be reporting on Cheat Meal Tuesday (BOOyah!  ...unless I do it Wednesday 'cause I teach piano on Tuesdays and it's hard to make dinner....so if I hold off a day and do it Wednesday I can spend ages in the kitchen prepping my feast...which will totally include a giant cookie, by the way.)

Okay, I have some chillaxing to fit in before falling asleep tonight!  Happy Monday, everyone!

Oh, and check out my post on Crafty Betties today, if you're into crafty stuff - we post Mondays and Thursdays about all sorts of different things!  It's very Holly-Homemakerish, and very cool. ;)

Cheers!

Detox Day 4

Today, I was lacking.  I don't know. I got my to-do list and then some done today, but I lack....zest. hahaha  It's all good, I'm fine and dandy, I just had a bit of a meh-feeling day.

SO... we went pretty easy for food.

Boiled eggs, snap peas, and a few cashews for breakfast.

Crab meat for snack (yum!)

Leftover pork stirfry for lunch with a salad on the side - romaine lettuce, snap peas (they're so easy to prep), and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds.

Dinner we ordered pizza from the place around the corner - I had wings (they're not breaded - win!) and another nice big salad - iceberg lettuce, green peppers, onions.

I watched people eat giant cookie & ice cream, wept a little bit inside, and drank a huge glass of water. hahaha

On to the rest of my meh-feeling night! Maybe I'll fold more laundry... :-D

Cheers!