Bring on the Soup

I love soup year round but as it starts getting cooler, I want it almost every day. One of my favorite cold weather meals is tomato soup and grilled cheese. This is what Samantha and I made for dinner on Friday night. Normally we cook together on Thursdays, but she was out of school on Friday so we had a sleepover and then spent the day together. I have been taking pictures of her cooking with me for the past year or so. I have decided to make her a scrapbook for Christmas with the pictures and I will include the recipes as a keepsake for her. Doesn't she look perfectly at ease at the stove with her hand on her hip? I just love that photo of her. She still isn't quite tall enough to stand without a stool to boost her up but she is getting there. If she isn't using a knife or working at the stove she will not use the stool, but as a matter of safety when she is working with something sharp or hot she does. New thing she learned: why it is important and how to heat cream before adding it to simmering soup. She has tempered eggs before but this was the first time we have added cream like this.

The recipe I used for this soup is found here. The only thing I changed was the fact that I used a quart jar of canned tomatoes from my Dad's garden and to smooth out the tomatoes I used and immersion blender before adding the cream. This was an easy recipe to make and simple enough so that I know there will be no more canned tomato soup at my house!

This was the final plate. When we cooked her mother's birthday dinner back in September, she asked what kind of dinner it was. I wasn't sure what she meant so I answered a birthday dinner. She said no, it is a fancy dinner? The reason she wanted to know was that she wanted to use my china and a full table setting laid out with cloth napkins, ,silverware and the good glasses! Ever since then since she knows where the cloth napkins and napkin rings are she sets the table for every meal she eats with us! I do use my china often, especially on Sundays. She also discovered that I have lots of dishes to choose from so we have been having fun actually "plating" our dishes too. We are both having fun doing this too and I am using all my dishes a little more often.

I think she was happy with her end result! That soup was delicious and will be made here very often.

Friday's Bento

this is the bento lunch that I made for Samantha and myself today. In the top tier is a salad with mushrooms, cucumbers and tomatoes and the little clear container on the side is some dressing that I made last night. The bottom tier is some hummus in the little purple container, sprinkled with green onions, some mini pitas and a ham/turkey/pepperjack roll and some grapes on the little bee picks. On the side is a container with pumpkin seeds and the top is a banana smoothie. Samantha hasn't seen the new tiffin boxes or the bees yet so she will be surprised.

I LOVE World Market stores but there isn't one very close by me so when I am near one I have to stop by and do some shopping. The tiffin boxes are from my last trip a week or so ago. Of course those aren't the only things I bought, but the only bento related stuff. We have a local cake decorating supply store that I have recently discovered and when I was in there I picked up a bunch of cupcake pics, including these adorable bees.

I have noticed that when I go to school to eat with her, I am the only adult that is not carrying a fast food bag. On Fridays there are lots of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles eating in the cafeteria and I am the only one that doesn't bring fast food. Knowing how kids don't necessarily like to stand out as different, I asked Samantha how she felt about that and she let me know that she definitely prefers the bentos. She did let me know if I didn't have time to make a bento that take out sushi would be okay. We have been doing the bento thing every other Friday or so since last school year. I think it is interesting that so many of her classmates are fascinated with the food that I pack. One little boy in particular always comes and takes a look and says "you are so lucky" every week. Samantha has always eaten a wide variety of foods, ever since she was a tiny thing. Green onions have always been one of her favorite things. When she was two or three and would see us pull out green onions to go with dinner she would get so excited! that's why the hummus has green onions on top as well as blended into the hummus.

Want to see lots more cool bentos? I have linked my post to "What's for Lunch Wednesday". Lots of great bento ideas to be found there!

Ravioli

I have been playing with the idea of adopting a more vegetarian diet. I don't think omitting meat from my diet will be a problem, but totally giving up dairy would be! I do love cheese, I don't eat it all the time and I don't eat tons of it when I do, but I don't want to give it up completely. So, in talking with Kip about going meatless or vegetarian or whatever, he doesn't want to totally give up meat and I don't want to feel like I am always just eating side dishes. I do make a few meatless dishes already and I decided if I could come up with things that feel like a main meal and are meatless that we could go meatless several times a week.

I am a pretty good cook, love to find new recipes so I am always experimenting in the kitchen. Sometimes they flop and aren't things that will make it to a repeating status. Sometimes I know my socks off and this ravioli was one of those things. This was delicious. I made a simple tomato sauce using fresh tomatoes, onions, fresh basil and garlic all from the CSA. For the filling in my ravioli, I sauteed some spinach and mushrooms and then chopped that up. I added some cottage cheese (no ricotta on hand) and the used wonton wrappers for the ravioli. Definite repeat and they are meatless.

Friday's Bento

This is the Bento that I made for Samantha yesterday. In addition to this she had a cookie and a small container of kale chips. She loves kale chips and she had asked if we could make some when she was at the house on Thursday and she told me she wanted some for lunch the next day too. I had the bento done, photo taken and was getting ready to leave when I remembered she wanted kale chips.

The top tier has some little whole wheat pita rounds and some baked tofu cut into umbrella shapes since it was a rainy day. The side container contains some hummus for the pita bread. There are also some sliced grape tomatoes in there. The second tier has some grapes, raspberries, pineapple and star fruit along with some colby-jack umbrellas.

One of the kids in her class was celebrating a birthday and had brought cupcakes to share with the class. I rarely bring dessert other than fruit or a smoothie, mostly because she would rather have the other stuff. I told her it must be her lucky day since she was getting two desserts. She corrected me that she actually had three desserts: the cookie, the cupcake and the kale chips. She must really like those kale chips to consider them a dessert!

A Happy Girl

I just had to share these pictures of Samantha. Tomorrow is her Mom's birthday so we were cooking her a birthday dinner tonight. I took Jenna shopping and she picked out the gifts and Samantha and I cooked dinner and dessert. We had chicken pockets, rice with veggies and a salad and creme brulee for dessert. This is Samantha with my torch caramelizing sugar for the first time. She was giddy with excitement that she was going to get to use the torch by herself, and I think you can see that in her face. She loves to cook so she was my little sous-chef tonight. She has gotten pretty good at slicing veggies, separating eggs and now caramelizing sugar! This was a more complicated dessert than we normally make but it was a lot of fun!

Friday's Bento

School is back in session and that means bento lunches on a more regular basis. I forgot to take a photo of the actual bento so this one will have to do. We had some rice balls, shrimp and crab sticks in the bottom tier and and carrots, tomatoes and baby bell cheese in the top tier with a small fruit salad of kiwi, strawberries and raspberries in the little puppy container. Over the summer I ordered us some new bento supplies to surprise her with so this was the first time Samantha saw the orange bento box and the new lunch box. After she opened everything and spread it out she said "This is paradise!". I know she loves these so it makes it more than worth my time to spend the extra time to make these for her.

Mission Accomplished

I did it. I set some fitness goals at the beginning of the year as a part of my journey to a healthier life. One goal was to get off of blood pressure medication and the other was to participate in a 5K. I have been working on achieving this goal for quite a while. I knew I wasn't ready to run the full course, but I knew I could run part and walk part. The local Y was having a 5K Run/Walk and I decided I was ready to give it a go. Saturday was the big day. For some reason I was more than a little nervous. I am not sure why, I have been practicing this same distance for a while and improving my time. I knew I could do it. I think it may have been the fact that even though I have lost over 40 pounds I was still the biggest person there. Also when I got there, there were all these runners that looked a lot more prepared than I felt. Kip gave me a little pep talk and reminded me that I had been preparing for this and could do it.

I do most of my training indoors, either on a treadmill or an indoor track. Even though the race was at 8:00 am, it was already hot. That slowed me down a little. The Y had set up water stations at a couple of points on the course. On TV when you see people running races they run past those stations, grab a water and never slow down. I know myself a little too well to even attempt that, I know how clumsy I am! So that slowed me down a little too. I really wanted to finish in under an hour and even with those factors that slowed me down a little, I had a time of 55:21. Other than finishing in under an hour, I had no other time goals that I was trying to beat. I have been doing that same distance quicker than that most days, but all things considered, I was very happy. Next one, I will just try and beat that time.

See that smile on my face? That is the smile of a person that set a goal, worked hard and achieved it! It is the smile of a person that no longer sees herself as broken and weak. The smile of someone that knew she was strong enough to do this. The smile of someone that was looking into the face of someone that believed in her as she crossed that line. I think Kip's smile was a big as my own. He know how hard I have worked and wanted this. Having him there meant more to me than I can describe. I am proud of myself for what I did, but to be acknowledged by someone that knew what a struggle it was to get to this point meant a lot.

I am sure you tell in this picture how much I am leaning to one side. I do that when I get tired and the more tired I get the more I lean. That is the main reason that I use a cane on occasion. I was tired at the end of this and it showed. But I was happy that I had done it and that I had finished. This was a very big deal to me for several reasons. A little more than a year ago I wouldn't have been able to make it to the end of the parking lot without a cane and on this day I did the full 3.1 miles with nothing but my determination and the backing of my training. I knew I was strong enough to do this.

Grilled Pizza

We decided to buy a grill while they were on sale for the Fourth of July. I have had gas grills in the past but have never cooked on a charcoal grill. I knew that the flavors could be better cooking this way so my vote was for charcoal and that is also what Kip preferred so that is that we ended up with. A decision that neither one of us has regretted either. We have grilled most of our meals since getting it too. I have been seeing lots of grilled pizzas in magazines and online so when I got fresh basil in my CSA basket I knew I wanted to try making a classic Margherita pizza. I made a pizza crust the way I normally do, rolled it out and then threw it on the grill. I was surprised at how quickly it cooked. But man oh man that was the best my pizza crust has ever tasted. With all fresh ingredients this pizza was simply delicious and will definitely be a repeat!

Two more days until the 5K!!

Back from Vacation

We had a nice long weekend trip to Indianapolis and just returned. It was an interesting time trying to incorporate my new healthier lifestyle choices while on the road. I did preplan some meals and snacks. While that meant that I had to take a long a cooler of food it did help me stay on track. Normally during the 5 hour car trip we make a couple of stops at convenience stores for snacks and drinks and bathroom breaks. I had packed snacks for both of us so we were good there. What I found really interesting was that even though we both had healthier snacks with us neither of us even snacked that much. I had made a bag of trail mix and we both ate some and then Kip said he was full and asked me to move the bag so he wouldn't be just mindlessly snacking. I realized I was satisfied too so I put the bag away. I always read in the car so in the past I would do lots and lots of mindless eating.

I also took along my toaster and some bread and yogurt for our breakfasts. I know the hotel where we stay has breakfast available, and even though there is usually "wheat" bread to make toast, I didn't know if it would be whole wheat or not. Plus I know that I have a huge weakness for breakfast pastries and I knew they would be there too. Since we ate in the room it gave us some extra lounging time and I wasn't tempted by the honey buns! Since we were on vacation, I did eat some nice dinners. Dinners that were above my normal calorie range but I didn't go crazy and just order with abandon either. I also didn't feel the need to eat everything on my plate either. I stopped when I was full.

We did do a lot of walking but I didn't not get in any solid exercise time. But that's okay. It was nice because I have built up my endurance and the walking that we did was pleasant. In the past that wasn't always something that I would have enjoyed doing very much of. I wasn't out of breath or even slowing down as we were walking. I know my body is stronger, and getting stronger as time goes by.

I did have a slight weight gain of 1.2 pounds. Honestly I was expecting that number to be a little higher just because I wasn't cooking most of my food so I couldn't control the extras like that amount of salt or butter. It's okay. I don't feel like I "failed" my healthy lifestyle change or anything. I had fun while we were gone.

Lots and Lots of veggies

One of my favorite things to eat and cook right now is Chicken Fajitas. Samantha and Jenna were eating dinner over here the other night and Samantha was very excited that I had peppers in three different colors. She had to have samples of each of them and then more samples to determine which one she liked better. I think the yellow ones got her top vote! I also added chicken, some fajita seasoning and some lime juice to the mix and the served them with whole wheat tortillas, rice and sliced kiwi.

I am still doing good on my weight loss journey. I am now down about 44 pounds total. Exercise is going well and I have signed up to participate in my first 5K in a couple of weeks. I think I am ready for that challenge. This one was listed as a walk/run so I thought it would be a great one for my first one. I know that I can't run that entire distance yet, but I can finish.

I went shopping on Friday. All of my clothes are too big now. I do have a few things that I had saved that were too small but mostly everything is too big. It was a great shopping trip. I picked out smaller sizes of everything. And everything I tried on fit.