Workout 2- "Steal JH's moves"

I will start this by saying that I have no idea who Julianne Hough is. This workout featured a resistance band. Resistance bands are truly multifunctional workout tools and I think everyone should have one. They don't weigh anything and they are compact so you can travel with them. (I do!)

  I looked over the workout before starting and didn't have too high  hopes. One of the classes I teach is targeted mostly for active seniors. These moves we do in that class put some of the moves in this workout to shame. I completed it anyway. And at the end I added 20 crunches. And I almost broke a sweat. It's a great beginner workout. Nothing too crazy hard. But as far as giving me a total body firm up, as the article implied? Nah.

Workout 1- Self Trainer to Go- No equipment

So I found this workout in Self magazine. No equipment. The best kind. I had high hopes about this one but overall wasn't impressed.

What I found is that it was a simple, piece of cake workout. Until you get to the exercises where your hands are on the floor and feet are up on the wall. I did the workout barefoot. I found it was ALOT of weight on my hands and arms, and I struggled to get half the reps done.

I workout. Workout review Intro.

And I'm a hoarder. Of some things.

For years, I've ripped printed workouts from magazines. All kinds of magazines. Sometimes I would do them. Now that I teach several fitness classes a week, and run, and teaching a running class at our homeschool co-op, I don't do them anymore. But I still tear them out, and put them in my workout folder. Every now and then, I'll go thru looking for inspiration for some of the classes that I'm already teaching, or for when I'm going to be substitute teaching someone else's class.

I was flipping thru the folder Monday afternoon looking for some yoga inspiration. There was some good stuff in there. And some crazy stupid stuff. And a lot of the same moves repeated.

And all the workouts promised that if you do them 3x a week on non-consecutive days, you'll lose inches and pounds and you'll look like the model demoing the workout in the photos.

I thought about throwing them away. I thought I should do them at least once before they went to the recycling bin.

I decided to do one 'workout' a day, weeding out the crap.

So I'm going to find a link to each workout, hopefully and post it. And give you my 'professional' opinion.

Homemade Salad Dressing- 2 dressings in one!

  Friday night, a friend posted a picture for a very yummy looking salad. I read the recipe and was going to make it. But it called for bacon. I have bacon. But it's frozen and I didn't want to thaw it, cook it etc. That's just too much work. So I skipped the bacon. Also the base for the dressing was mayo. So I made up my own version of the dressing.
 The salad recipe called for kale, stawberries & avocado. I did kale, dandelion greens, a couple of peppermint & lemon balm leaves & some lemon sorrel. Plus the strawberries and some avocado slices.
  For my dressing, I started with plain fat free greek yogurt. I added some fresh lemon juice & poppy seeds. It had a very sour flavor as you can imagine plain yogurt & lemon juice would. I added a little honey. So that's what we used on our 'strawberry & grass' salad as my hubby called it. (I'm gonna add my hubby wasn't a fan of it, and neither was my 10 yr old daughter.)
  So today, decided to have a salad for lunch. I looked at the bottles of dressing in my fridge and remembered that I had dressing leftover. I got it out, opened it and it had a slight hint of oniony smell (the bowl I'd put it in is my designated onion bowl, but it was the only bowl in the drainer when I went to make my dressing Saturday.) So I went with it and added some minced onion to the dressing. (Let me add, I LOVE onions.) And a dash or 2 or 3 of chili powder.
  It still has the sweetness of the honey, but it balances well with the chili. If you were hoping for exact amounts, just eyeball it and use your judgement. I made a small batch, just one cup of yogurt.
  Enjoy!

Real Food! Poptarts

  I never was crazy about poptarts as a kid. I didn't even get the 'real' ones anyway- I got 'Toast'ums'. My hubby likes the brown sugar & cinnamon flavored ones. They have to be THE Poptart brand. That was fine, I could always find them on sale, usually had coupons, and would stock up.
  But then I guess last summer is when it happened. My brother was here alot. He likes poptarts (because I honestly don't think mom buys them for him at all!) They were his food of preference. My kids wanted them everytime he ate them. I'd rather have him eat my junk than healthy food anyway, and everyone left my hubby's brown sugar & cinnamon ones alone.
  Then I fell into this baking everything from scratch frenzy. I'm getting comfortable replacing our families baked staples (ok, whole wheat bread) so I decided to look for a poptart recipe.
 There are MANY!  They all were essentially the same. I solicited recipes and advice from my domestic oriented friends on Facebook.
   I finally decided on this recipe from the '100 Days of Real Food' blog. Seemed simple enough.
   I embarked on this baking adventure in the middle of the night- after I'd put the 2 little kids down, took a shower, got all the ingredients set out for some marathon baking. It's mid-August. The last thing I want to do is fire up the oven, but if I'm going to, I'm going to bake several things.
  The poptarts required the most work, so I left those for last.
  Since I linked the recipe, I'm not going to post it here. It will force you to go to the other blog and maybe you'll find something else you like there.
  So the recipe called for using a food processor with the dough blade. I happen to have a fp that my grandma didn't want anymore. It had one blade- one side for slicing, 1 for shredding. I first started out with my hand mixer with just 1 paddle. Mixing dry flour and cold diced butter wasn't working with the mixer, so I switched to the fp, and it made mush of my butter, so I switched back to mixing bowl. It was working, slowly but surely. I finally got frustrated and dumped all the remaining 1 1/2 sticks of butter into the bowl and microwaving it to melt it. I mixed it from there. It seemed a little dry so I added some tap water til I got a good doughy ball. (That was my only real straying from the recipe- It's not that I can't follow directions- if I can find a short cut or eliminate some steps, I will.)
   My floured surface was my kitchen table, and I used white flour for thats. I rolled and cut and spooned homemade blueberry jam onto the dough. Used a spatula to scrape it up & transfer it to my baking pan. I didn't have parchment paper, so I used a silicone baking mat on a cookie sheet.
   I ended up with 7 pastries total, all different sizes. I baked for around 20 minutes, then turned the oven off and let them sit in the oven while I worked on putting together my first baking project from that baking marathon.
  I tried one last night, but I was so full and so tired of looking at all the baked goodies so I went to bed. They were delightful this AM.
  I was very pleased with the texture of my crust too. It was flaky, but not too crumby. Not something I would want to eat as a breakfast meal- maybe to go with my coffee.
    The moment of truth was when we were talking about poptarts this morning, and my 3 yr old said she wanted one, I presented her with one. She looked at it carefully, took a bite and said "BLECH! Not that poptart. I want a white one."
  The baby eyed them carefully before taking a bite. She ate them. But she usually eats anything we give her, except for cherry tomatoes.
   My hubby ate half of one. He didn't rave about it. But he also didn't tell me what he usually thinks of my cooking :-)
  My 9 yr old refuses to try them for some reason. So it's all good. More for me. These baking experiments won't be doing my waist or hips any good, I can tell already.
  So was it cost efficient? Probably. I used homemade jam from blueberries that I picked myself for free off of our neighbors bush (they invited me... I didn't just sneak over to the fence and reach thru and pick them haha!) I buy butter in bulk at the club store. I have my own chickens, so I have my own eggs. I could have done without the salt. Next time I will omit the salt anyway. Cost of electricity. These could probably be easily baked in a solar-oven. If you omit the egg wash, you wouldn't have to worry about them getting 'done' enough. Although they wouldn't be good if they weren't done.
  The only problem, with any baking project is the time to roll out, cut, etc. And the clean up. Will I make them again? Probably. Not every week though. 
  Are you going to give them a shot? Let me know how that goes for you! In the meantime, I might look at some different recipes and give those a shot.

 

What to do with all the tomatoes??

  Tomatoes. You either love them or hate them. I'm of the former, as well as my husband. Our oldest daughter sometimes likes them. Our unruly 3 year old does not like them. The baby doesn't care.

 Last year, we bought 19 various heirloom tomato plants. We ended up with a nasty tomato disease- never did completely figure out if it was 'Early Blight' or something else. However, we ended up with quite a good amount of tomatoes. I ate alot of salads, gave alot away, and ended up canning 3 pints of them.

 For the in-experienced homegrown/homemade foodie, 3 pints doesn't seem like alot. When I pulled out the Ball Blue Book today, it said to start with about 10 lbs of tomatoes, and the final product would yield about 3 pints. I'd forgotten this fact, while I was covered with tomatoes.

 This year we were a bit more conservative with our tomato plants. We tried almost unsucessfully to start our own plants from seeds- we ended up with 1 cherry tomato plant that's survived. (Ironically, my mom had a couple of volunteer cherry tomato plants come up, and is essentially what led me to today's tomato project.)  We've had enough tomatoes to satisfy our needs.
 
But then my mom unloaded two huge bowls of cherry tomatoes on us. Some quick research indicated there are many many ways to preserve them. Many people suggested just freezing them. Some dehydrating, then freezing. Dehydrating, then packing in oil. Dehydrating, then grinding.

I have frozen them before. And I still might do that, if there is a surplus later. I originally thought of making salsa, since we had some very hot peppers also in our garden. But I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, and plus, I just didn't feel like doing all that.

I decided to do a basic tomato sauce, then we could use it for soup or spaghetti or whatever. But I really really didn't want to strain out the seeds. Seemed too wasteful. Plus today is just a day where I didn't want more steps than necessary.
 
I started with a pot of boiling water, and a bowl of ice water. I blanched all of the 'good' tomatoes, whether they were from our garden or moms.

 In a larger pot, I heated some cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, chopped up some garlic, 3 onions from the garden slightly bigger than golf balls. I also added a green pepper of some sort from mom's garden, and a 'Cajun Bell' from ours. Then I started peeling the tomatoes. Wasn't hard work, but it was tedious, since I was using small tomatoes (since that's what we had). I eventually went ahead and cut the bad spots off of the other random tomatoes from our garden and moms, and peeled them and chopped them into the pot.

All tomatoes finally peeled!

Final product after the stick blender to chop it all up. Added a few sprigs of rosemary. I love rosemary.

I later tried this over some leftover whole wheat pasta with some fresh spinach. I wont say it's the best sauce I've ever had, but I think I did pretty good for making my own sauce from scratch with ingredients I grew myself (except for the garlic & olive oil).

Have you ever made tomato sauce from scratch? How did it work out? If you have a recipe, please share it in the comments below!

The Bed Time Basket

  I have *almost* revolutionized the bedtime routine at our house. Almost. Bedtime is the most hectic time of day for us, when it should be the least hectic.
  At least 1 evening a week, we are away from the house until nearly 7:30. And then we still have to eat dinner.(More about that in another post).
   I have friends who put their little ones to bed WAY before this, when the sun is still very much shining. That works for them, so that's fine. I think it's more natural to go to sleep with the sun and get up with the sun.
  So in keeping things routine, we don't eat dinner until later. Then after dinner turns into a rush of baths, cleaning the kitchen and getting the little ones wound down & to sleep. Then getting lunches packed for the next day, coffee pot ready to brew etc.
  Inevitably, I have to solicit help from the hubby or my older daughter. Whether they clean the kitchen or get the littles cleaned up, it seems like it all falls back on me to get everything done at night. They usually elect to bathe the littles, often my oldest daughter putting the baby in the bath with herself, and my hubby taking care of the unruly 3 yr old.
  There was always the question from them, 'Where are the little kids pajamas?' I always had those laid out either on my vanity or bed. They never could seem to find them, so they would leave a naked wet kid running around while they went in search of pj's. That led to more chaos. Then there was the question of 'what diaper am I supposed to put on her?' Again not rocket science, as the big one has 3 distinct night time only diapers, and the baby has 4 distinct night time specific diapers. Which led to half dressed kids running around. More chaos.
  In my recent house purging, I was able to clear out a drawer in my vanity, to put the kids pjs, night diapers & clothes for next day in. This worked for awhile. Thru a combo of my oldest daughter not liking the clothes I picked out for the little kids, my 3 yr old not liking what ANYONE picked out for her, and the baby playing in the drawer, the drawer lost it's steam.
  After some re-organizing in the toy room, I came up with an empty basket. At first I was just going to use this empty basket to collect misplaced items thru the day. Then it ended up being a catch all in the living room. I don't like catch alls, because it's still misplaced stuff.  I was using it as laundry basket for the littles room, thinking it was small enough for the 3 yr old to handle and she likes to put up her own clothes. Light bulb went off in my head. Let her use it to pick her own clothes out the night before & put them in the basket.
   So the Bed Time Basket was born. Invented. Whatever. The bedtime basket contains 1 each per child- pair of socks, underwear (or diaper suitable for next morning-thicker one for going out- thinner for staying home), entire outfit, nighttime diaper, pjs, items needed for sleep (3 yr old has a 'silkie cloth' she holds when sucking her thumb- trying to get baby to get attached to stuffed dog as she's not a thumbsucker). The most recent addition was having the 3 yr old pick out earlier in the day the bedtime story she wanted, which ended the 10 minute "I want this one. No. Not that one. I want, um, no... that one! Yes that one. No..."

The unruly 3 yr old with the Bed Time Basket

  There is never any question about where/what now. The Bed Time Basket ends all disputes & confusion about diapers, clothes, all things Bed Time & getting dressed in the mornings. I'm seriously thinking of instituting a Bed Time Basket for EVERYONE. (At least the hubby to cut down on the morning noise as he goes in & out of the closet. )