Goals for 2015

We're 1 week into the new year, and I'm proud to say that I've been sticking to my goals. What are my goals you ask?

1. Get at least 30 minutes of aerobic activity per day
2. Eat 3 meals per day
3. Drink Shakeology for at least 1 meal per day
4. Cook a healthy dinner at least 4 nights per week
5. Track my activity, food, water, and sleep with my fitbit everyday

These are measurable, challenging, but attainable goals. I would ideally love to lose 50lbs, but I don't want to box myself into a corner. I am going to stick to my exercise and food goals and hopefully weight loss will follow. In addition to these hard fast goals, I have some that I'm not ready to put in a quantifiable structure. Such as,

1. Eat more fruits and veggies
- I had a lot of success with Weight Watchers because I could eat as many fruits and veggies as I wanted. But I'm going to be honest here, I don't like fresh fruit. I've never been a fruit eater. I don't think fresh juicy strawberries are delicious. Watermelon is not refreshing. But I love juice! So to increase my fruit and veg intake, I'm going to try and sneak them in. For example, I plan on drinking a fruit and veg smoothie after dinner as a dessert. I've stretched my ground beef with carrots, onions, and celery (more on this later).

2. Eat whole foods
- Over the past year I've been cutting out processed foods. Does that mean I'm never going to eat a prepackaged meal ever again? No, that's unrealistic. But I'm going to try my best to cook things from scratch. Not only is it more economical, it's healthier. Example? I'm going to make my own whole wheat bread. I'm also planning on making my own yogurt!

3. Blog more
- Putting my meal plans out there for the world to see keeps me accountable. I need accountability. I want to not be embarrassed about what I eat and my weight anymore. So my plan is to blog my meal plan for the week on Monday, and then post a recipe and how the week went on Friday.

4. Practice Frugality
- I've gotten into a bad habit of buying things to buy things. My goal is to only buy something that I truly need, will improve my quality of life, or something that after a week I've decided I cannot live without. A vlogger I follow on YouTube (LaVitaDiMeg) is frequently recommending things, such as a beautiful floral and gold tumbler from Starbucks. I wanted this tumbler so bad, because it was pretty. But I decided that I didn't need it because I already have 3 tumblers that I use on a regular basis. I was still thinking about it weeks later, so I looked into purchasing one, but they were completely sold out everywhere. Turns out I didn't need it, I just wanted it. And I'm not upset that I didn't get to buy one.

Do you have any new year's resolutions that you are going to follow this year? Let's work together on keeping each other accountable!

I Lost 2014

As my first post of 2015, I would like to apologize for not blogging AT ALL in the past year. Personally, it was a really crappy year and I'm looking forward to this year. I've got a lot of goals to accomplish!

Want a recap of 2014? Well my crappy year really started 12/24/13. That's the day the sickness set in, which by the second week of January had developed into full blown pneumonia. About a week after the diagnosis, Faith got really sick. We ended up having to put her to sleep. Turns out she had a cancerous tumor on essentially every organ in her abdomen. The poor thing starting getting sick around dinner time and could barely breath 24 hours later. I guess it was a blessing that she didn't suffer for very long.

The whole experience at the animal hospital was very surreal. A day before Faith got sick, a German shepherd police dog named Rocco was stabbed in the line of duty. Fate would have it that Faith and Rocco were bunked next to each other at the hospital. While I was visiting my sick dog, I broke down crying and felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see a police officer, visiting his sick partner, also crying. As fate would have it, Rocco passed away that night, about 20 minutes before Faith. So when we came to say goodbye to Faith, we were met on the way by 2 full miles of police cruisers with their lights on, parked on the highway to honor Rocco. As Faith took her last breath, there was a full band of bagpipers playing Amazing Grace. Not many dogs get to go to heaven with a full honor guard and while being serenaded by bagpipes. It was absolutely devastating to lose Faith, but it was comforting to know that she was going to heaven with such a great guard dog by her side. It was a night that Ethan and I will never ever forget.

After burying my poor doggy, I really started having a bad time. I was working straight nightshift, I was eating poorly, sleeping poorly, and spending all my free time trying to catch up on sleep. It got so bad that I couldn't sleep in the same bed as my husband, because we spent so few nights together. I didn't want to leave the house because that meant I had to put effort into my appearance. I ignored my friends, making up all sorts of excuses not to go out. And you better believe that I had no energy to exercise!

So by October I decided that I needed to make some changes to take better care of myself. The first step was leaving my job. It wasn't a choice that I took lightly, I loved my job. But I needed to love my health, marriage, family, and friends more. So I quit right before Thanksgiving, which was great because I needed every spare minute to prepare for the 12 family members that stayed in my house for the holiday! Talk about a full house. After that Ethan and I went to NYC for my birthday and had a great time eating pizza and riding the trains. We went to Coney Island and the 9/11 memorial on my birthday. It was really cool being at the ocean in December. I had only ever seen the ocean in the summer. It was also really awesome, but incredibly sad to be at the memorial on my birthday. Someone places a flower in the name slot of every person killed on their birthday. It was really moving to see the dozen or so white roses scattered around the memorial, and to know that those people should have all been celebrating like me.

A week later hubs and I left for Cancun, Mexico! I got sick with the stomach flu one day before we left. Who gets sick before they go to Mexico? We spent one night in downtown Cancun, taking in an authentic Cancun experience. We went to a market and had authentic Mexican street food and saw a local Christmas program. We were literally the only tourists there. There was a sweet woman who made me the best empanadas that I will probably ever eat. I was still feeling sick and just wanted to eat some bread. Well she made some dough, filled it with oaxaca cheese (similar to fresh mozzarella crossed with string cheese), and fried it. So yummy, and literally the only thing I could keep down. That woman is my Cancun hero! The next day we took a cab 2 hours south to our resort in Tulum. We spent the next week enjoying our oceanfront suite, the sea, our private jacuzzi, and of course all the delicious sea food! I ate fresh Mahi Mahi for lunch everyday. The fish was caught off the coast of the resort, filleted, then grilled right in front of you. It doesn't get much more fresh than that.

Christmas was eventful, but since the events involve a private family thing, I'm not going to put it on the Internet. But it was nice to spend the time with my family and not have to worry about work. And again, I was sick. However, this year I had time to take care of myself and I can proudly say that I am healthy!

Oh yeah....WE GOT A PUPPY! After Faith passed I was really hesitant to get another dog, especially a corgi. When I decided that I was ready for another dog and corgi, I discovered that it was really really hard to find a corgi pup. One day in August I got an alert that said "we have a female corgi pup, are you interested?" From the first time I saw her picture, I knew she was my dog. So Internet, meet Penny!

Penny, Ethan, and I are looking forward to having a great year. We hope that 2015 brings you all that you want too! Happy New Year!

Bad diet = bad skin

No weight loss this week. I'm not surprised because of this weekend's pretty damn close to binge eating. This week's plan is to really focus back on the fruits and veggies and cook some healthy meals. 

So side effects, other than no weight loss, of my poor diet this week has been some super dry skin. My face is coming off in chunks. Not really, but it is really flaky and gross. All the salt and grease has me retaining fluid. So while I'm trying to get rehydrated by drinking more water, I'm getting really bloated too. More incentive for a healthy lifestyle!

Have you ever noticed how being dehydrated affects your skin? How do you get it back in shape?

Chicken Meatballs and Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce

This week I decided to do all of the cooking in one day! It was refreshing to know that I didn't have to cook every night of the week. I can't wait to get my deep freezer so I can prep meals in advance and actually have a place to store them.

On the menu this week:
Bucatini with chicken meatballs
Chicken meatball subs
Beef Barley Soup
Ree Drummond's Banana Bread Bundt Cake

I started off my marathon cooking session with the tomato sauce that is going to be used for the bucatini and subs. Marcella Hazan was an Italian chef and cookbook author. Her focus was on simple, authentic Italian recipes. Marcella passed away this past September. In her honor I decided to try her simple tomato sauce recipe. It only has 3 ingredients. It was either going to be awesome, or very disappointing. In the end the sauce was pretty mediocre.

Tomato sauce
28oz can Italian whole tomatoes, undrained
1 onion, cut in halfa
5 Tbsp butter

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add can of tomatoes and onion halves. Add a pinch of salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, mash any large tomatoes with the back of your spoon. Discard your onion before tossing with pasta.

Voila! Doesn't get more simple than that. I just want to throw out there that I love tomatoes. The promise of this sauce is the clear tomato flavor. Well that is definitely a true statement. I found the sauce to be very acidic and I missed the traditional flavors of layered herbs and garlic. It was also a bit runny for my taste. While I wouldn't make it again, it was definitely worth making once!

Tummy Aches

I did not make the best diet choices this weekend. We had company this weekend, and we had to take them out to all the best Pittsburgh restaurants. Obvi. I ate a lot of cheese and grease, and now my tummy hurts. Obvi.

It's a shame that Primanti's kielbasa and cheese, little donuts, movie popcorn, Hofbrauhaus pretzels and beer cheese and German sausage is so bad for you, BECAUSE IT TASTES SO GOOD. 

In the words of Jennifer Lawrence, "I can name a lot of things that taste better than skinny feels."

Almost 10

Just a quick update cuz I'm at work and shouldn't be writing a blog post! I'm 0.8lbs away from losing my first 10lbs. It's taken me about 6 weeks, that's about 1 and 1/2 lbs per week. I'm subtracting the week I was on vacation, since I didn't actively diet that week.

This is the song I'm listening to right now, thinking that I'm pretty much a badass (and that I really need a pedicure!!)

Oktoberfest....Or Halloween?

September and October were two very busy months! I missed a third of October while I was traveling. This week I felt like I had to make up for lost time by indulging in all things Oktoberfest.

We had dinner at this wonderful little family restaurant called Hoover's. They specialize in traditional German food and every October they host an Oktoberfest buffet. They have red cabbage and regular sauerkraut, sauerbraten (a vinegary beef dish), hot German potato salad, knockwurst, traditional bratwurst, kartoffelpfannkuchen (potato pancakes), spatzle, and a whole mess of other delicious things. Of course I had one of everything, and topped my meal off with a slice of homemade German chocolate cake. This is one of the hubs and my yearly traditions. Usually we manage to go more than once!

Halloween was Thursday. I spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen making treats for my family! On the menu was beer bread, Oktoberfest stew, and gooey eyeball cookies. My parents only live two roads down from our house, and it's where I grew up. But we never get any trick or treaters! Our road doesn't have any street lights, and the houses are more spread out. So my parents were just as excited as we were to pass out candy! Unfortunately, it was really windy and it started raining an hour before trick or treat started, so we didn't get that many kids. Oh well, because dinner was delicious!

Oktoberfest Stew

1 Tbsp olive oil

14oz package of Kielbasa (beef or turkey), cut into slices

2 medium yellow onions, cut into slices

1/2 head of small cabbage, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp whole caraway seeds

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 cup Oktoberfest beer (lager)

2 medium Russet potatoes, peeled and diced

2 1/2 cups hot chicken stock

1 1/2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (or more for taste)

I used this artisinal kielbasa (pronounced keel-boss-ee), mostly because it looked delicious, and also because my husband begged for it like a kid in the candy store.

In a frying pan I added the kielbasa and cooked it til both sides had a nice brown going on. I removed the sausage, and added the olive oil to that same pan and caramelized my onions.

I transferred my onions to my stock pot and added my sliced cabbage. I let the cabbage cook down until it was soft and had no bite left to it. Think halushki or sauerkraut consistency. I then added the spices, including the caraway seeds. A little bit goes a long way with those, btw. Then add your beer. I used Yuengling, but any lager will do. I let the beer come to a simmer, then added in my diced potatoes. I then poured my hot stock on top. You want to heat your stock before you add it so it doesn't drastically drop the heat of your pan. 

Let your mixture come to a boil, then reduce the heat to a low simmer. Cover your soup at this point and allow it to simmer for 45 minutes. You want your potatoes to be nice and soft. At this point you can add in your apple cider vinegar. Now I know that my dad doesn't care much for vinegar. So I skipped this step, but let everyone add about a teaspoon to their bowl before we ate. I think it adds to the soup and shouldn't be left out!

Our first Halloween in our new house!

Of course Faith had to dress up!