Tilapia

Thanks everyone for the encouragement! Although it seems harder now that we have gone “public”. Why is that do you suppose?

I was thinking of posting some of our new favorite recipes and then my friend Lisa asked so here you go:

We eat fish about 3 times a week and usually just throw it on the grill, but I wanted to do something a little different and this seems to work out very well (i.e. easy)!

4 fillets of white fish (I use tilapia)
1 cup of wine (optional)
1 can of spaghetti sauce (I use Hunt’s with garlic and herbs)
½ box of cooked pasta

Simmer the fish, wine, and spaghetti sauce for about 10-15 minutes. Add the cooked pasta and simmer for another 5 minutes.
Serve with a veggie or salad and you have a meal! The kids always ask for seconds on this!
Variation: instead of spaghetti sauce, use a can of diced tomatoes with green chilies and add minute rice instead of the cooked pasta.

Feeling good!

Wow almost exactly a year!

It has been a milestone week for Rick and I, so we had to finally share! Rick has lost 50 pounds and I have lost 30.

I started last January by exercising more and joining a volleyball night at the YMCA. I had to keep exercising and stretching so that I wasn’t to sore after volleyball. Then over the summer I started running! I have never in my life been a runner so I started with ¼ mile and worked up to about 2 miles, I try to run 3-5 times a week (depending on the weather). Sometimes it is hard to drag myself outside, but a lot of the time I can’t wait to put on MY music and just go. This is truly something that I am so proud of myself for, because it is something I could never do. Sometime this year my goal is to run a 5K. Through all the exercising I lost about 15 lbs but I didn’t really change my eating habits until this past November when Rick came on board.

Rick started losing weight when we got back home after Thanksgiving, I remember him saying he was tired of always feeling stuffed. So he started by bringing salads to work and eating fruit for a snack and cutting back on his portion sizes. It has actually been easier for me to make dinners because I know how much to make. We always have a huge salad in the fridge and lots of fruit around, I have stopped buying lots of snacks like chips and granola bars and have bought more raisins and nuts that you have to shell. Rick has had amazing willpower and I am so glad he helped all of us develop better eating habits. This week he put away all of his old jeans because they were huge.

cooking

For the past few weeks I have wanted to try some recipes in a cast iron pot. My plan is that when we go camping this summer I will do most of the cooking in a cast iron pot, so I want to try some things to see how they will translate to a campfire. I bought a 5 qt. Oval dutch oven for $30 (which I am told was a good deal) it is big enough to hold a chicken but yet small enough that I don’t feel like I am feeding the five thousand. This weekend I made Mexican shredded pork that I put in pie dough and turned into empanadas (turnovers). The meat turned out so tender and flavorful, I was surprised at how good it was. I got the recipe from “Cook’s Country” magazine that a friend had given me, it starts with soaking raisins in coffee and goes from there. It is one of the most ambitious cooking projects I have done. (I usually prefer to bake, I mean you add enough sugar and anything tastes good). I was very pleased that everyone seemed to like it, and Rick said I could get a new pot anytime I wanted to. Tonight I am making a chicken with veggies in white wine sauce, it sounds good, but we will see. I usually start new recipes with the idea that we can always call for pizza, which has happened a few times. (Note: anything that calls for 2 cups of soy sauce is probably a misprint, YUCK)

facebook

Just when I get the hang of blogging I get to figure something else to procrastinate about.

I started this blog because I saw my sister in law, Karin, had a blog. Well, Rick and I now have facebooks pages thanks to the encouragment of my s-i-l. Now if she mentions something about a bridge I might have to decline.

So far things are very cool and I am having fun looking up people.

Bad puns

I love bad puns!!

There is a girl I work with and we try to outdo each other with bad puns. I tried to help her get rid of her snail infestation by telling her to "assalt" them. Then the other day as I was walking by her with the glue gun she pointed it at me and said "Stick 'em up".

Well she sent me an email yesterday and I just have to share.


CREATIVE PUNS FOR "EDUCATED MINDS"

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur ' s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to
be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a
weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his
work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope, it ' ll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

8.. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum
Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking
into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the
other, ' You stay here; I ' ll go on a head. '

14.. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ' Keep off the Grass. '

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital.
When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, ' No change
yet. '

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at
large.

20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned
veteran.

21. A backward poet writes inverse.

22. In democracy it ' s your vote that counts. In feudalism it ' s your
count that votes.

23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

Muffin?

I have read this before and think is to cute. I stole it off my friend Leanne's blog. She posted something about me the other day, check it out!

If You Give a Mom a Muffin

If you give a mom a muffin, She'll want a cup of coffee to go with it.So she'll pour herself some.The coffee will get spilled by her three year old.She'll wipe it up.Wiping the floor, she will find some dirty socks.She'll remember she has to do some laundry.When she puts the laundry in the washer,She'll trip over some snow boots and bump into the freezer.Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper for tonight.She will get out a pound of hamburger.She'll look for her cookbook. (101 Things To Make With a Pound of Hamburger.)The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.She will see the phone bill which is due tomorrow.She will look for the checkbook.The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two year old.She'll smell something funny.She'll change the two year old.While she is changing the two year old the phone will ring. (Of course!)Her five year old will answer it and hang up.She remembers that she wants to phone a friend to come over for coffee on Friday.Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.She will pour herself some.And chances are,If she has a cup of coffee,Her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

Written by Kathy Fictorie Based on If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

The family that reads together-is very quiet!!

Yesterday after the kids got home from school, we all sat down in the living room for 2 hours without tv or video games. And it was so quiet tat we were getting annoyed with the geese flying overhead and making so much honking noise. We have Jeff Kinney to thank for that! This week the latest book in the “Wimpy Kid” series was released, the boy has been waiting for this. The boy has never been a great reader of books (although, he will read any sign anywhere, I think it is an attention span thing), but this past summer I picked up a “wimpy kid” book off the Costco book table and figured we would give it a try. He loved it! It is written with little cartoon drawings and some “handwritten” text, perfect to keep the boys attention. So yesterday when I was at Costco (my favorite store), I picked up the newest book “The Last Straw”, the boy was yelling “YesYesIhavebeenwantingthisthankyouthankyouthankyou!!”
How cool is that!

As for me, I had visited the library and signed up for the book club, a neighbor and I are going to try it and see how it goes. I am not sure if it is going to be one of those clubs where the women get together and just gossip and complain (I have a therapist for that) or if we will actually talk about the book. I really enjoyed the book (yes, I already finished it), it is called “Twenty Wishes” by Debbie Macomber. I really love to read and when I get my hands on a book it goes really quick, I heard someone say they inhaled books-yeah, I know what she means. Of course I have to enjoy the book and I really like for things to have a happy ending. It is an escape when I read and I don’t like to be sad (no more Nicolas Sparks), so the only non-fiction I read is cookbooks, I love mysteries and I like the sappy romance too (I can’t believe I am admitting that). I have lots of favorite authors and I love series books, Janet Evanovich, Jeffery Deaver, Nora Roberts, Tess Gerritson, Lee Child, etc. Although I have a new favorite, Jen Lancaster, she isn’t really fiction, but she so funny that I find tears running down my face from laughing so hard. A little disclaimer, she uses some language in her books, so if you don’t like hearing the f-bomb or variations of the f-bomb then maybe you should stay away.

As far as the girl is concerned, anything she can get her hands on she will read. And she will read for hours, if I don't give her a specific place to stop she will continue reading until I find her at midnight saying "Just one more chapter?". Her favorite genre is fantasy, anything with dragons and good vs. evil. One of her favorite books is "Inkheart", it was just released as a movie so we might go see that tomorrow. We'll let you know if the movie is anything like the book.