Every 26 days I feel down and out and kind of blue.  I get really frustrated and overwhelmed with life and I get all sad and morose.  Today was that day.  I hate day 26.  So does my husband.  I went for a walk this afternoon though and I’ve been in a better mood since then.  Thank goodness!

Lucy dancing around with my underwear on her head helped too:

Don’t worry-it was clean!

For lunch I made a big salad with the leftovers from Friday night.  A bed of spinach with steak, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, quinoa, pear, and goat cheese.  Dressed with Annie’s Goddess dressing with some balsamic.

After lunch I went to Trader’s to shop for the week.  I normally go to Whole Foods but I knew that I wanted pizza tonight and I didn’t feel like making my own dough.  Trader’s has great dough so I decided to do my shopping there. I hate that all the produce and meat is from so far away.  Their products are too.  I ended up spending about $60 MORE than I normally spend at Whole Foods and it was for food that left a HUGE carbon footprint.  If that’s not a fail, I don’t know what is.  I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and I ate an entire Trader Joe’s dark chocolate bar.  A smaller 290 calorie one but still.  I woofed it down before I could take it’s picture.

Before my walk I had some yogurt with Galaxy Granola-love this stuff!

After my walk I normally eat a Larabar but decided to skip it because of the chocolate mishap 🙂

When we got home, I made pizza. Vegan for me.

A more traditional pepperoni (turkey), cheese, pepper, and mushroom for Shaun and Lu:

I ate this:

Plus one more piece.  It was really good.

While I was preparing it Lu munched on garbanzo beans (she LOVED those), peppers, and tomatoes.  At dinner, she didn’t like the mushrooms or pepperoni but liked everything else.  After dinner I gave her her first Oreo.  We have some leftover from Shaun’s Oreo Pie at Thanksgiving and this book I’m reading says to not make any food taboo.  So I gave her an Oreo. She HATED it.  She took one bite, spit it out and asked for her normal cookie.  Which is so healthy many say it’s not a cookie 😉 No refined sugars, all organic, no milk or soy, and whole wheat.  We’ll see if this sticks.

Before bed every night we spell her name to her.  It’s on her wall and we say “L-U-C-Y Lucy!” We do it 2-3 times before she gets rocked.  Tonight she was saying “SUE SEE!” when we were saying Lucy. 

I’ve been craving pizza but I HATE fake cheese.  I had a thought today to try mushed up beans instead of cheese-it turned out really well.

Ingredients:

–Whole Wheat Dough
-Can of drained garbanzo beans, rinsed
-10-15 leaves of basil
-2 tsp Braggs Amino
-2 tsp olive oil
-pizza sauce
-whatever toppings you desire-I did eggplant, orange peppers, mushrooms, and capers

Instructions: 

-Place garbanzo beans, basil, Braggs, and olive oil in a food processor and process until smooth.

-Roll out pizza dough, cover with sauce, and place quarter size dollops of the garbanzo mixture on top of the sauce.

-Cover with rest of veggies.

-Bake at 450* for 10-15 minutes or until crust is done and veggies are crisp tender.

-Enjoy! 

Makes 10 slices.

This totally satisfied my craving for pizza.  The bean mixture didn’t taste like cheese nor did it have the consistency BUT it was damn good! I give it 3.5 stars 🙂

To tell the truth, I don’t feel like this week went so hot.  I was very tempted to just skip this check-in BUT that’s not what this is about, right?  There are good weeks and bad weeks.  So let’s see.

1. Stop putting myself down.  Treat me like I would want others to treat Lucy. This has been going well.

2. Eat something green every day. Check!

3. Eat 2 servings of fruit every day. Check!

4. Completely cut out dairy. Check!

5. Get back on my bike. Not yet.

6. Do something only for me 1 hour each week. Not so much.

7. Do something with Shaun that doesn’t include me sitting on the computer and him on the XBox or us watching TV for 1 hour each week. Not just the 2 of us this week.

8. Dress nicely, including putting on make-up, at least 3 times a week. Check!

9. Clean out Lucy’s drawers. Nope.

10. Clean out and organize the filing cabinet. Nope.

11. Complete Lucy’s birth book. Nope.

12. Become a faster walker. If you can speed train for running, you can sure as hell do it for walking.  I went on 2 walks this weekend and both were markedly faster.

13. Send out thank you notes in a more timely fashion and to everyone that deserves one. I’m caught up to Christmas now.  I need to get my Christmas ones out and then I’ll be golden. Yes I had some from before Christmas.

14. Feed myself healthy food and exercise, trust myself. I could have done better this week.

15. Save my personal money for a new wardrobe. The phone kind of derailed this one.  I’m down to about $300. Not bad-not great.

16. Be on top of my budget and update Quicken every 2 weeks. I need to do this by tomorrow.

17. Severely limit my computer and phone time when I’m with Lucy.  On weekdays, I should never use them when she’s awake and on weekends, I should use them sparingly when she’s awake. Check!

18. Get the bird out 4 times a week. Twice this week.

19. To appease my husband, never let the gas tank get below 1/2 a tank. Check!

20. Improve on my photography. Still working on it.

And, the original 10 in 2010:

1. Take time out every day to simply enjoy my daughter. Check!

2. Try not to look too far forward or lament the past.  Check!

3. Drink more water-at least 70 ounces per day. Check!

4. Use my juicer A LOT. I only used it twice this week, I’d like to step that up this week.

5. Go to the gym more often than not. Check!

6. Eat healthfully-don’t put anything in my mouth that I wouldn’t feed Lucy. This one is so similar to 14 from above now that I’m changing it to: Floss EVERY day.

8. Run to the top of Waterdog Lake Road, while pushing Lucy, without stopping and back. Check! Walked it today-nice and fast.

9. Post at least 365 times in 2010.  I can post 3 times a day or skip a day but I want my average to be 1 post per day. Working on it.

10. Fold my laundry by Sunday night. Big fail.  I did 2 weeks worth of laundry today 🙁

How’s it going for you?  We’re at the end of January now, are your resolutions sticking with you?

Growing up my Dad always made a big breakfast on either Saturday or Sunday or we’d go get donuts and chocolate milk.  Some of my best childhood memories are from those mornings helping my Dad cook or eagerly awaiting the biscuits and gravy (among other things) to be done.  It’s a tradition that I want to carry on with Lucy. 

This morning was my morning to get up early with Lu-we trade off.  She woke up around 7:30 and we headed straight to the kitchen to make pancakes. 

Lu even helped out-she stirred the batter. 🙂

When they started cooking, I had to put her down-much to her chagrin.

Life is really hard, isn’t it?

No worries, she perked right up when she got to eat them.

BED HEAD!

She decided that Bear needed to eat too.

Lu out ate Mommy today.  She was HONGRY.  She had half a pear and 4 pancakes!

I had 3 pancakes with some PB and syrup.

Just the right amount 🙂

Let’s rewind to last night, shall we?  We had some killer margaritas. Salt for Shaun.

On the rocks, no salt, for me.

Josh and Parish made us chicken and veggies over rice.

It was delish!

After dinner, we headed to our house to put Lu down and to play some games. We stopped off and got some Yogurtouille on the way and got some unpictured frozen yogurt-non-dairy lemon with fresh strawberries, graham cracker dust, and raspberry syrup for me, chocolate yogurt with fresh strawberries and chocolate sauce for Shaun.  We finished off the night playing Bananagrams.  We had a GREAT night 🙂

I just got up from a Family Nap.  Shaun and Lu are still sleeping.  We haven’t had a Family Nap in months. It was pretty glorious 🙂

The day started with some juice:

Apple, Beet, Carrot, Lemon, and Ginger

Lu decided she loved it:

You can see the juice all the way up on her forehead:

A circle of juice:

I also had some toast that I shared with Lu.  There’s nothing better than sourdough toast.  I put some Earth Balance vegan spread on it:

It was such a nice day (after having MANY not nice days) that we decided to walk to a local museum.  On the way we stopped and got Shaun breakfast (a blueberry muffin and a chocolate muffin) and got Lu a banana.  This may or may not have snuck into our bag.  If it did? I had half.

My phone takes pretty good pictures, eh?

We walked to the Coyote Point Museum-it’s an Environmental Museum that Shaun took Lu to last weekend.  They liked it so much that they wanted to take me.  We got a membership so we’ll be going back!

Out front is a Inka Biospheric System.

It uses solar power, plants, and water to run this fish tank.

The plants naturally clean the water!

Lu LOVED the magnet gears.

They also had a water bottle wall that she thought was pretty cool.

She’s pretty shy around other little kids/unfamiliar situations and only wanted to play on the toys that were pretty unpopular.

We saw owls:

A badger:

Some fighting otters:

A tame hawk:

And a little sleeping fox:

We also saw frogs, snakes, a coyote, a ferret, eagles, and other interesting animals that I didn’t get a picture of.

It was COOL.  It’s about a 3.5 mile walk roundtrip and was a great way to spend our morning.

Lu was so tuckered she fell asleep in the stroller on the way home.

For lunch, I had some Mexican Pasta:

I’m Mexican Pasta’d out. I’m also over the vegan cheese I’ve been using.  I should have known not to buy it.  One of it’s selling points is that “It Melts!”.  *sigh*

Lastly, I’ve been craving sweets (donut anyone?). It seems it’s that time of the month or something.  Anyway, I had some dark chocolate:

Tonight, we’re off to our friends house for dinner.  I’m excited to be hanging out with them!

I had a nice day.  Lu let me work (no working this weekend-YAY!) and we still got to hang out and have fun.  We had a playdate later in the afternoon but before that, I had some vanilla coconut yogurt with Ezekiel cinnamon raisin cereal on top:

My Mom’s granola is WAY better.

We met up with Lucy’s friend Avi.  Lu and Avi have been hanging out since Lu was 6 weeks old.  Here they are in December 2008-she’s in the middle, he’s the one on the end with one eye closed:

Here they are today:

Wow :(  They were so active, it was hard to get a good picture. But you can tell-they’ve GROWN!

When we got home, I had a piece of toast with peanut butter, pumpkin butter, and cranberry jam.

The pumpkin butter was kind of lost 🙁

Tonight’s dinner was artichokes:

I did eat some mayo but mostly had mine with balsamic vinegar.

I also made steak, roasted brussel sprouts and mushrooms (with EVOO and balsamic) and quinoa.

I cooked the quinoa with chicken broth and that’s it-it was delish!  I gave this dinner a 5.  It was SOOO good.  Shaun gave it a 4 and said it would have been a 5 if I had made mashed potatoes and cauliflower instead of “fake rice”.  He said the “fake rice” wasn’t bad but it wasn’t as good as mashed tater and cauliflower.  I told him it was called “quinoa” and he said, “to me, it is fake rice”. “Fake rice” it is buddy.

I almost broke one of my own rules tonight!  Lu asked for some artichoke and I almost said “You won’t like this.” BUT! I stopped myself and gave her a leaf.

As you can see, she knew exactly how to eat it (she just copied us) and she LOVED it.  She ate 5 leaves.  She wanted to dip hers in balsamic vinegar (like Mommy) and I let her, expecting a sour face, but I got a “YUMMY” face and she asked for more.  My kid is a total foodie.

Last weekend, while at the Farmer’s Market, Beth commented that she hasn’t been brave enough to cook her own artichokes.  I grew up on artichokes-we always used to FIGHT over the heart and my Dad would cut it up into little slivers for us.  They’re actually quite easy to make! Beth this is for you!

1. Get some artichokes!

2. Cut the stems off.

3. Cut the tops off.

4. Rip the little leaves off the bottom:

5. Trim the tips of the leaves with scissors.

6. Put about 1.5 inches of water into a pan with a steam insert.

7. Rub artichokes with lemon, place into insert-base of artichoke down, and squeeze lemon juice over the artichokes. Then add lemons in with the artichokes.

8. Cover, bring to a boil, and then simmer for 30-45 minutes. Make sure your pan has enough water throughout (I’ve ruined a pan making artichokes with not enough water). At 30 minutes, test for doneness.  Test by trying to remove a leaf-if it comes easily, taste it-if it’s the right consistency (not tough) it’s done.  If it’s still tough, cover and check every 5 minutes until it is the right consistency. 

9. Remove from pan and let cool.

10. Enjoy! I serve mine with mayo and reduced balsamic vinegar.

Lu liked them!

*Warning-pictures of meat-raw and cooked.  If meat grosses you out, read no further.*

I cook a MEAN steak.  My secret weapon?

McCormick Montreal Steak Seasoning. I get it at Costco and use it on almost all of my grilled meats.  It does have one evil ingredient:

PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL *shudder* It’s worth it.  This stuff is amazing.  I cover the steak on all sides with the seasoning.

Meanwhile, I have a clean grill heating up, on high. Once the grill hits between 600-700 degrees, I throw the steaks on with my handy dandy temperature probe:

After about 6 minutes I flip the steak.  Then I wait for the probe to hit the desired temp (130 for medium-rare, 140 for medium, 155 for medium well, 160 for well).  If you don’t have a temperature probe total cooking times vary depending on the thickness of your meat but a good guide is: 10 minutes total cooking time for medium-rare, 15 for medium, 20 minutes for well done.  A medium-rare steak is soft, a medium steak is firm but yielding, and a well done steak (ick) will be firm.

Remove it from the grill and then let your steak rest for 5 minutes-it’ll continue to cook and will rise about 5 degrees.

I cooked Lu’s medium:

Shaun and I like ours medium-rare. YOM.

So I haven’t really eaten much today.  I’m just not hungry-make sense since yesterday was so food-erific.  Plus I’m hanging out with Lu (who is SO NOT sick) and trying to get work done.  Multi-tasking anyone?

I started the day with a bowl of cereal with Lu:

I had a meeting at 9 and she did REALLY well while I was on it-until 9:45.  I may or may not have given her some animal crackers… 🙂

We’ve been hanging out too-reading books, playing with puzzles, coloring-all that fun stuff!

This sequence of pictures CRACK ME UP.  She’s funny.

She’s putting my lens on my camera.  Isn’t she smart?  Now we’re sitting down for lunch.

Hers:

And, mine:

I’m ready for something different tonight.  Steak, brussel sprouts, artichokes and quinoa-CAN’T WAIT!

Anyone have any exciting plans for the weekend?

I got a call today that Lu had a 102* temp.  100.4 and above is considered a temperature is wee ones and that’s when daycare has you come get them.  I went to pick her up and she did have a temperature but she was acting FINE.  I couldn’t figure it out. UNTIL…I noticed the swollen gum and bit of white poking through her gum.  She’s getting her left upper eye tooth!  Poor thing. 

It doesn’t seem to be bothering her:

She’s trying to chew the necklace!

She finally got it!

I also took video of her eating Greek Casserole.  I took 9 minutes of film and edited it down to 4.  Don’t feel like you need to watch but if you want to see the mad eater in action-this is for you!

After Shaun got home from spin, we had some Mexican Pasta.  Here’s Shaun’s (yes he really ate all that sour cream):

And mine:

I have to stay home tomorrow with my “sick” kid-they can’t come in within 24 hours of having a fever.

Off to go watch something with my honey!