Success

Last night the "chips" and dip idea was a success!  YES.  Thanks Kamilee for the fantastic idea!

The Guacamole recipe that I followed was this:

                                                                                 2 ripe avocados

1/2 red onion, minced

2 tablespoons cilantro leaves, finely chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon salt

dash of black pepper

Put in food processor or blender......

Then I mixed it with Cade's homemade spicy salsa.

YUMMM.

Lightly buttered the sandwich thins put in the oven under broil.....waited for them to be brown and super crisp.  Then dipped them in the guacamole.  Surprised how good it turned out.  It's probably not the healthiest recipe still, but hey, I'm going with it.

I made corn bread yesterday also and that wasn't bad either.  This was the recipe:

1 tablespoon butter
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tablespoon honey
4 tablespoons melted butter, more for the baking dish

Preheat oven to 350°F and butter an 8-inch-square baking pan. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cornmeal in a bowl. Set aside. In a small bowl, whisk buttermilk with eggs and honey. Whisk in melted butter. Mix wet ingredients with the dry until just combined. Pour batter into the pan. Bake 30 minutes until golden.

 And my smoothies look something like this:

Kale

Ta Da!

 

And today I don't think I'll be trying to do anything too impressive.  I'll probably just cook some zucchini and broccoli.  

So happy that things worked out yesterday though! 

Money on the Mind...cramps too.

Does anyone else do this?... Your day can be alright but as soon as you hit the pillow you are wide awake with reflections of the day, goals for the next day, future plans and goals, wants and wonders..  I have this problem probably 5 out of 7 nights.  Ha.  I am always wondering what I can be doing in my life and I mean how I can contribute financially.  Cade will have a great job working for his Dad when we move back to Boise (FOUR MONTHS.....you better believe I'm keeping count) but I still worry that it won't be enough. Key word being worry.  We all know that today you rarely see stay at home moms, it's just not as simple as it use to be.  Or can it be?

Caution: These thoughts pooring out of my head are not said with the intent of hurting Cade's ego.  (He's use to my worries anyways).  Cade's a pretty dang awesome provider.  Working full-time and going to school part-time while I can only get 25 hours a week at my job.  Boo.  (But then again I really can't handle more than that, retail is awful and is about to make me more crazy than I already am).

So I know that Cade's job will be able to pay the bills, I just worry that is all.  You know?  I say that in the least harmful way as possible.  Please, no one take this the wrong way.
I mean everyone hopes to live comfortably beyond just paying bills.  Everyone wants to be able to dress nice, take vacations, afford a few nice things here and there.  My point is that I wonder if in the future there is a way that I can contribute to living comfortably after the bills.  Or will we be paying the bills and living from paycheck to paycheck while I am at home with the babies.  (And I do want to stay home with the babies.  Pretty bad.  Baby, baby, baby, I want a baby.)
Or maybe it just comes down to this: I am my Dad's daughter.  That's what it is.  Mister Creative-High Stress-Inventive-Go get em-Passionate Business Guy.  Go big or go home money making mentality?   He owned a very successful Mortgage Company and a beautiful, with lots of potential, Salon not long ago.  The salon started up when the mortgage company was doing really well, so the mortgage companys success was what fed the salon.  It was like night and day when the economy hit though.  The salon hung on for as long as it could after the mortgage company went bankrupt.  Tough times for a lot of years.  My Dad is on to bigger and better things with Take Shape for Life now though and it's actually been a relief to see the salon end.

Anyways...we have this itch (...maybe I shouldn't talk for him too but I have to assume this is where it comes from and this is what I've observed from him), constant wondering in the back of our minds of what we can be doing more, what could be the next best thing, how to make more money...  I think it could be a good thing, but my thoughts never lead to brilliant ideas or plans of execution...just empty wants and wonders.  I don't know that I want to own a business such as a store or restaurant, etc..  I've seen a different side than maybe you have of opening a business.  Long hours in a day, debt collectors at our front door because Dad couldn't make payments he thought he would have no problem making..  I just have no desire to take that risk or road.

I want to write a book.  I want to write a childrens book.  From my understanding though, it's a pretty hard thing to make money from childrens books- if you can even get it published.  I use to love writing when I was young but now, I guess I struggle with..."Somebody will have to read this", and that ends that project.  And have you seen the way I end sentences, start them, dot dot dot everywhere.  I could use some english classes.  Don't judge me. :)

I wonder if I have any sort of skill that I can make money from on the side.  ....Nothing comes to mind at this point in my life though.

Yes, I should go to college, I know.  I just don't see myself working a full-time office job when I have young children, which will probably last over a good decade, or not....I don't know. :) We'll cross that bridge when it comes.  Soo...go to school for a year, have babies, go back to school ten years later, get a job?  Or go to school for a year, have babies and fit school in over the course of ten years then jump into the work force?  I guess that works.  For whatever reason something is holding me back from taking that road.  I think I really want to do something with business though and so I don't know what is holding me back from that idea.  Maybe I'm afraid it won't be what I hoped it would.  I did attend some college earlier this summer at Davis Applied Technology College.  Ok, I went twice.  It was not what I hoped for.  My biggest frustration was that the teacher and the office staff were not on the same page.  They didn't know what the other person meant or expected which lead to the office staff being frustrated with me (cashier lady is mean and I don't like her) and charging me $90 extra.  Other reasons too..it just wasn't what I wanted to put my money into.  I'm willing to give it another try eventually though, just not there. 

Dear diary & sincerely, me.

Those are the thoughts going on in my mind.  If you made it to the end of that.  No, you can not have those few minutes of your life back, I'm sorry, but it's not too late to leave now. :)

Is it socially acceptable to blog about your "time of the week"?  Hahaha.  Cause I'm about to!  Holy Moly.

Lots of bananas: CHECK.

Two Excederin: CHECK.

Almost pass out in the shower: CHECK.

Blanket: CHECK.

Ugly hair from being too lazy and nervous of passing out to dry it: CHECK.

Nap time: CHECK maybe.

MOMMY: .....

Too Much Information: CHECK.
Wittle Cutsie Poopsie Puppy, Kyah Pyah, cuddled up next to me: CHECK

Finally a few minutes of no pain: ....Aw nice, CHECK.

Thank goodness no work today.  This is the second time that I've hurt so bad that I felt near passing out.  The first time was in High School and that was a close one.  I was glad that I made it to a seat before I blacked out, that could have been embarrassing.  I remember the nurse was mad at me because when I went into her office she couldn't help me for awhile, so I went to my locker, called my mom from my cell phone, went back to the nurse and was told that I shouldn't have done that because, I can't remember why..  And, ohhh!  Now I know why my weekend was so rough: Small dosage of happy pills + Storm before the Calm = Off weekend.  I wouldn't really call this part calm though.  Anyways.....

TODAY I plan on making guacamole.  Hm.... I think Kami gave me the idea.  I'm going to toast my whole wheat sandwich thins in the oven and cut them up and use that for my tortilla chip.  Make sense?  We'll seee.  I could really use a break through recipe in the food department about now.  My patience is shot.  I'm still with it though and probably won't quit.  Just hoping I'll be able to perfect it at some point.
TIP: Kale in your healthy fruit smoothie.  Hidden veggies.  Thanks green smoothie girly, that's brilliant.

Ok.  I am sorry if you read this whole thing.  It's a wee bit therapeutic for me though, gotta admit.

Oh and P.S. Why can't a black man be conservative without being called a traitor?  GAAAASH.  I am annoyed about this.  

   

Family, Fun times, Bad times & A super feel good movie! What a week!

One of Sandra's Beautiful Bridals

Wednesday night my sister Kami and her family came and stayed with us for the weekend.  The purpose for their visit was so that Kami could take wedding pictures of our cousin Sandra but it was a nice mini vaca for them also.

We had a lot of fun with them though!  We took the kids Thursday night and went to the Halloween store.  Landon wanted EVERYTHING he laid eyes on and Riley was just content, taking it all in I guess.  I was a little nervous someone would have nightmares that night, but wasn't a problem.  

Aunt Bunny and the boys

Riley loves Cade :)

Kami doin what she does

Thanks for playin Roger/Kami fam!

So, with trying to be healthier, it wasn't so bad since Kami has been healthier as well.  She introduced me to chai seeds.  (....Those will take getting use to.)  As well as other things.  We did splurge a few times, but not near as bad as past splurging.  I'm hoping to get back into it again now.

Last night we made the only whole wheat "Tortillas" I can make.  It was actually my crepe recipe.  Works though!

1 Cup (Whole Wheat) Flour

1/4 teaspoon salt (sea salt)

3 Large Eggs

1 1/3 Cups Milk

2 Tablespoon Vegtable Oil

1 Tablespoon melted butter

It hurts!

And on the first crepe....wrapped my finger around the metal part on the pan and...bad burn.  I tried some home remedies...the best was my finger against a potato.  The night went downhill from there...

The show must go on!

Black bean and corn enchiladas

Homemade enchilada sauce

Processed cheese :)

 The enchiladas could have turned out better.  Our black beans were crunchy..(I must not know how to prepare black beans) but I think the recipe still has potential.  I don't know.  Not worth the painful burn though.

So it's been a hard weekend.  (Not any problems with the Seamons family being in town) but for whatever reason I've been just off in other ways.  At work Wednesday, Friday and Saturday I just did every mistake that was possible.  I have been extremely irritable.  Angry with people in general from work to stupid politics, haha.  Then yesterday it started with the burn, then I couldn't find ANY printer paper I needed to do something for my calling...just totally annoyed and my attitude was awful. I took care of things and eventually calmed down.
Then we watched "17 Miracles" for the first time.  It totally turned my night around.  I expected it would be a bit of a guilt trip for me having had such a bad attitude earlier but still wanted to watch it.  It touched me so much seeing and remembering all that the Saints endured traveling to Zion.  I don't think I would have been able to go through what they went through.  I thought about my "tough" week and it just didn't compare with the trials that were experienced in this movie.  I thought about how easy I have it, how blessed I am and it made me feel sad for not having a better attitude through my trials or for lacking faith in my day to day activities.  I wondered what I am doing in my life that has as much purpose as these people had in theirs.  I hate crying in movies, haha, but I bawled the last half hour to hour. What touched me the most was seeing the tender mercies of our Heavenly Father, I got chills in several scenes. It was so good and such a spiritual movie.  Such a good reminder of why we are here on this earth and what our responsibilities are.  I feel so grateful for these Saints who had so much purpose in their lives and faith and were so strong.  I'm grateful to be apart of such an amazing church.           

I just found instructions about how to replace table sugar with honey.  Excited to try it out.  Here I come zucchini bread! :)

Replace 1 teaspoon / 5 ml of white sugar with a quarter teaspoon / 1 ml of honey. Alternatively, BBC Food suggests that it is easier to replace one quantity of honey for each one and one quarter quantities of sugar. The ratio should be 4:5 ^[2]

• Honey has quite a strong flavour of its own - be careful substituting it in recipes where it might dominate the overall flavour. Fruit is susceptible to being overwhelmed by the flavour of honey.
• A cup of honey contains 1/4 cup of water; this means that you should cut down on liquids by the same amount.^[3]
• Lower the oven temperature by 25ºF when substituting honey, to prevent overbrowning.^[4]
• Honey is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs moisture. This ability means that cakes should turn out to be more moist when using honey in place of sugar.^[5]

DAY Four

Yesterday:
-Smoothie,
-Sandwich,
-Sauted veggies (peppers, onions, spaghetti squash.....) in a
(oops) store bought flour tortilla.  I tried making my own whole wheat flour tortilla's but no success (of course). :) So I used what I had.  It wasn't bad for being filled with just veggies.  Mom, you have got to be so blown away that my meals can consist of just veggies.  Did you ever think you would see the day?  I MISS CHEETOS.  CHOCOLATE.  DOUGHNUTS.  ...What?  I never even had an obsession for doughnuts, but I miss them.
-Cade wants to buy raw milk (sick.....but I might just give it a try).
-Skipped taking my crazy pill.
-Asked Cade if he wanted to go to In-N-Out, he said no.  Gosh, he's such a food nazi! :) Totally kidding. But you'd seriously think this was all his idea.  Haha.

Ok, so today, practically the same story...except that I attempted to make a chili.  Did it work out, I think you can guess that correct answer on that one.  It wasn't too bad but I wonder if it could taste any better.  Shoot, I am sure not a very convincing person if you are thinking about getting healthy.  Be patient, I have high hopes this will all turn around in the taste department.
-Cade still wants to go buy raw milk.  (Haha, he actually literally told me that as I was typing that last sentence and as he's reading Elder Widtsoe's book).
-I took half of half of my crazy pill because winging is a crazy weird feeling and I don't like it.  So little by little I'm trying to wing from my crazy pills.
-I feel good.  I don't feel bloated (TMI?) which is always nice and is embarrassingly a usual occurance.  I have no complaints.  ..Haven't had any headaches for the past few days and haven't experienced any fatigue.  So all is good in the feeling good part of this experiment.
-Cade just informed me that one perk might be that he won't lose his hair.  Huh.  Interesting.  We found a positive for him!

So that's the events of Day 3&4..

P.S. Our saving money efforts are paying off WELL!  Our power bill went from $99-$53 and our cell phone bill went from $166-$78.  Awesome.
 

Day two.

A SUCCESSFUL use of almond milk this morning.  Ok, it was smoothie, but that's alright.  :)  I made the almond milk, and then put it in the blender with two apples, two bananas and frozen strawberries.  Ok, I don't know what the rule is on banana's not being in season and use of fozen fruits.   I don't care though.  I had to make it taste decent.  And it did.  So, that's nice.  That was breakfast with an egg.
Lunch was my favorite meal so far.  A peanut butter and honey sandwich.  Haha.  I have my organic peanut butter, made with nothing but peanuts...what?  That's crazy!  It taste funny at first bite but it grows on ya and like I said, it with honey and my sandwich thins is my favorite meal since yesterday (and I liked it before I went crazy healthy, so that's sayin something). 

Then for dinner I got creative.  NEVER works for me.  I always think that I'm going to make some amazing new recipe or meal idea.  It always turns out sad.  Today I cooked some squash spaghetti (is that what it's called?)  Then I used a recipe I found off the internet for a tomato like sauce.  It had peanut butter in it, I ignored that thinking it would be alright.  So I poured my tomato sauce on top of the spaghetti squash and again sprinkled with goat cheese.  HOPING it would be like lasagna with a twist.  Make sense?  Probably not.  It did to me.  Put it in the oven...  Didn't turn out well at all.  All I could smell as I was trying to eat it was peanut butter.  Sick.  Ok.  Scratch that idea for in the future.  And more researching....that's been day two!  I probably won't blog about day three unless something seriously successful happens.  And hopefully it will.
Ok, and why am I doing this?  I am a big believer in natural remedies.  I think that if I put the right things into my body things will improve on their own.  My biggest thing is....I want to get off of my anxiety prescription and if eating right is all it takes, than I can keep at this.  It only makes sense that processed foods or foods high in chemicals and such can take a toll on a persons health physically as well as mentally.  So that's the truth to why I am trying so hard.  Now, as for Cade....I have no idea why he's still on the wagon.  Haha. :)        






Almond milk

Soak almonds for 8 hours

1 cup of almonds= 4 cups of water in blender

Blend.  Strain for smooth texture.

The first recipe I tried had a little more to it but forget that idea.

DAY ONE.......ugh.

Day one has been frustrating.  Will there be a day two?  Haha.  I really don't know what I am doing.  I wanted to be really strict with this and do it 100% but I don't think that I can.  At least not right now when I know so little.  The book I'm reading has me confused about a lot....  SO.  I am just going to do my best.  Until I really understand more what I want/should be doing I'm just going to stick to what I had originally talked to my sister about, a simple whole foods diet to the best that I can.
This is what I have a grip on.  It is important to eat what is in season.  I agree with that.  I'll try my best with that.  Yesterday we had a lot of fun shopping at farmers markets and at a sweet old lady's "booth" on the side of the road.  We were proud of the low cost and good picks!
Way less meat.  We can do that.
Refined and processed stuff is out.
Cow milk less.

So this morning we made Almond Milk.......yuck.  I don't want to give up on the idea yet but I definitely need a new recipe or idea.  I am just planning to experiment with this idea.  ..With our unsuccessful almond milk we had eggs that we bought from locals.
Lunch was an apple. Haha.  All I could come up with as I was struggling with confusion.
Dinner was a salad-- romaine lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, spinach, hard boiled eggs, sprinkled with shredded goat milk cheese. And then we made our own ranch out of cashews, olive oil, dill, parsley, garlic clove, etc.....  It wasn't bad.  Eh.  Kinda funky though.  
Gosh, I feel like such a hippie.
Hopefully I can get a better hang of what I am trying to achieve and see the benefits though.  Stay tuned....if you don't think I'm a complete weirdo.     

Ok so about last post.  I am still learning little by little what it takes to make the changes that I want to in my diet.  I think tomorrow before I go to work, Cade and I are going to check out some health food stores and/or green house markets...?  I don't know where we go shopping but hopefully I'll have it figured out by tomorrow. Ha.  And if I feel confident enough then we'll start Sunday maybe.

And at first this started out trying to understand what a whole food diet was or what this "Green Smoothie Girl" was doing.  After talking to my cousin Julie though, and understanding what her family does, I am still basically doing the same thing..just a little bit different.  (Except the cows milk part.  That I got from green girl and makes sense to my lactose self).
Right now I am reading a book that she recommended and that is, The Word of Wisdom: A Modern Interpretation by Elder Widtsoe.
If you don't understand what the Word of Wisdom has to do with this than just like I did, you should go read D&C Section 89 again.  And look that book up at Deseret Book. 
I thought that all there really was to the Word of Wisdom was: Don't drink alcohol, don't use tabacco, don't drink coffee and tea....kind of a thing.  But there's a lot more do's that no one (myself included) really pays attention to.  It's interesting.
Now, don't get your panties in a wad.  I'm not trying to be controversial; or a self righteous, rub it in your face, know it all. I'm just learning more about the Word of Wisdom how I believe it was intended and trying to apply it to my life.  I feel like living the way I am living right now isn't bad; I also feel like though, that I could be blessed more physically as well as spiritually by making a few changes.  I would copy and paste Julie's email if I felt like that was ok....she said it all perfectly though and her family has seen many blessings from living this way.        

P.S. Cade is totally on board with this.  I would just like to put that out there.  He is just as much for this as I am.  I feel like since Cade is so easy going it might look like I'm just "running the show"&"no ifs, ands, or buts about it".  I promise though, we've discussed this, thought about it, researched some, and are both looking forward to the changes we are about to make.  Or try our best to make. :)