When the pantry is bare . . .

The fam was out of the town this weekend. We actually left on Thursday morning so I didn't even grocery shop last week. So when we returned home (extremely tired) last night I was already thinking about what I was going to make for dinner on Monday. I was able to wrangle up some lunch options for the family, but when I looked in the refrigerator, I didn't see much. We have no fresh fruit and only 1 russet potato. Yikes!!! So I looked in the pantry. Not much there, but I did see a great go to meal that would be perfect - Crockpot Spaghetti. It's such an easy recipe and I almost always have the ingredients on hand.

Ingredients

2 jars pasta sauce (preferrably ones that are on the runny side)

2 chicken breasts - can be frozen (I know, what's a vegetarian doing putting meat in there, well Adam would kill me if I didn't, it's easy to pick out though for me)

1 lb. pasta

Directions

Place one jar of pasta sauce in the crockpot.

Put whole chicken breasts in next.

Pour 2nd jar over chicken breasts.

Turn crockpot on low for 8 hours.

Cook pasta according to directions on stovetop.

While cooking pasta, remove lid of crockpot, break chicken breasts into large pieces with spoon, and turn on high (keep lid off during this time).

Place pasta on plate and top with as much sauce as you want.

That's it! It's that easy! I will probably look for some veggies in the freezer and steam them and add them to my spaghetti instead of eating the chicken.

This will be an easy meal for me tonight so I can work on finishing laundry and getting the house back in order (all before The Bachelorette comes on). :)

Happy Monday!

What to do with all those blueberries

Well I knew with almost 16 cups of blueberries that we wouldn't be able to finish them before they turned, so I put about 8 cups in the freezer. I read about freezing berries, and it's very simple. All you have to do is wash them, place them on a cookie sheet on one layer, and then put them in the freezer. Then when they freeze, they won't all be clumped together. Then you can transfer them into a storage bag.


I also made some muffins. I tweaked a couple of different recipes and came up with my own (recipe below). I did double the amount of blueberries though, so I knew they would be yummy! Here is my dough after I mixed in the blueberries.

Going into the oven (350).

My muffins cooling - look at all those blueberries.

Jaime's Blueberry Muffin recipe

Ingredients

1.25 c flour
.75 c ww flour
.5 c sugar
2t baking soda
.25t salt
.5 c light sour cream
.25 c canola oil
.25 c 1% milk
1t vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 c blueberries

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.
Spray muffin tin.
Combine flour through salt in large bowl and whisk.
Make well in middle.
Combine sour cream through eggs in well. Incorporate flour with whisk.
Spoon in blueberries.
Place in tin.
Cook for 20-25 minutes.

Each muffin has:
167 calories
6.5g fat
1.6g saturated fat
30mg chol
239mg sodium
24.4g carbs
1.0g fiber
9.3g sugar
3.2g protein

I did notice that my muffins were not as moist as I like them, so if do this again with another batch of blueberries, I will probably substitute the oil for either 1/3 cup applesauce or 1/3 cup nonfat plain yogurt. That would reduce the calories down to 135 and the fat down to around 2 grams.

Blueberry Picking

I found a U-Pick blueberry farm that has organic blueberries for $7.00/gallon and it's not too far away. They are DJ's U-Pick Blueberries. We had such a good time that we are going back tomorrow. Here are some pictures from our first visit.

They have a few goats too. Hope loved seeing the goats and she even got to feed one. She was so brave!

Hope has our bucket and we are ready to do some picking. Here she is putting more blueberries into our bucket. She was very good at picking the blueberries. Once she showed her which ones to pick, she was an ace!

Look at those cute little hands. She was so excited about it. Of course that only lasted a few minutes and then she wanted to just run around.

More blueberry picking for Hope.

Carrying our gallon bucket and looking for a new bush to pick at.

Me with our gallon of organic blueberries. Yum!!!

Once I got home, I gave them a good wash, but here they are right before. Now that's a lot of blueberries!

Hope did really well on her first trip to the blueberry farm. Of course, she got a little tired, and the owners kept telling us we could eat them off the bush. Unfortunately, once we showed Hope she could eat the blueberries off the bush, she stopped picking and putting in the bucket. She only picked and ate. :)

I will have to get some pictures up so you can see what all I have made with my blueberries.

Anniversary Present

One of the things we always wanted as a treadmill (well I could have gone for an elliptical, but I digress). Adam doesn't like running much and prefers to get on a treadmill, put the speed to where he wants it, and then just forgot it. Well in our old house, there was just no room for a treadmill. It was something we said we'd get in our new house. Well, we have moved, and as our anniversary present to each other, we bought the treadmill. I did some research and Sole and Nordic Track got the best reviews for home treadmills. I was leaning towards the Sole, until we were at Sears buying our range when we saw a bunch of Nordic Track treadmills on sale. Well, the one we bought is being discontinued (Nordic Track Elite zi), so we got a steal of a deal on it. It is a little more of a treadmill than we had planned on, but still spent less than we had planned. We did get a pretty nice display, 60 inch length (instead of the 55), and has many other bells and whistles.

So yesterday, when Hope when down for her nap, I christened the treadmill with a quick run and it felt so good. It was very smooth, comfortable on my knees and feet, and very enjoyable. It is a little noisy, but I think that is probably true for most treadmills.

I am very excited to have our new gift in the house and working!

First milkshake

Adam and I have done a really good job at giving Hope wholesome, nutritious foods, especially ones without added sugar. She eats plain yogurt, doesn't drink juice, etc. On her first birthday, she didn't even like the cake I made her. It wasn't until last Thanksgiving that we gave her a brownie sundae, that she developed her love for ice cream. The brownie part was ok for her, but it was the ice cream she loved (her mother's favorite). Since then, I have allowed her to have some ice cream with me every couple of weeks. Well in our recent trip to White Water, we decided to stay there as long as possible, then leave and get lunch on the road back. Neither Adam nor I are big on fast food in general, but at least Sonic has veggie options for me (and they have ice cream). When we got there, they were advertising, Buy 1 milkshake, get 1 free. So Adam and I each got a mikshake. I let Hope try mine (chocolate) and she loved it. She was sucking it down faster than I could get it. So we had to capture the moment on film.


She was in heaven! She loves using straws as spoons and this shake was so thick that it worked!

Big bite! It was a warm day and the shake was some very refreshing.

Since Hope's first milkshake, she has now become a connoisseur of milkshakes. On our recent business trip, Hope tried my grandmother's strawberry milkshake as well as my chocolate malt at Johnny Rockets. She loves her ice cream (as does her mommy).

Happy Anniversary

6 years and still going strong! Here is the first picture of us as husband and wife.


This was the picture we used for our Christmas card, 6 months after we were married.

I loved our cake. Not only did it look pretty, but it tasted really good too (sour cream pound cake with cream cheese icing). Yum!!!

A nice collage our photographer did for us. He did a wonderful job.

We spent the first part of the day at White Water for a friend's 30th birthday. She has a child 10 days older than Hope and is currently pregnant #2. So it was great to have a bunch of young children all together at White Water. Hope had a blast.

That evening Adam found a restaurant we hadn't been to before but came highly recommended. It was amazing! The restaurant is Mediterrean and our meals were awesome!

I had a traditional Greek shrimp dinner and it was honestly one of the best meals I had ever had. The shrimp were sweet and the feta and olives just made it divine. We also had a sampler appetizer that was very good as well.

So good job to hubby for finding this restaurant. We are definitely going back (if we can get a sitter for the little one).

Racing and possibly a new kind of racing

I know, I know, it has been so long since I have blogged. But in all honesty, I haven't had much time and we are having major issues with our internet in our new house (still doesn't work after working for just 2 days). I also traveled for a week for work but I will update you on how well Hope did as well as some good pictures and cute stories of her. We had a blast together!

Well Sunday was the annual AJC Peachtree Road Race (10k) and Adam and I were up at 5:40am on the holiday to get ready for the race. It is the largest 10k race in the world with over 55,000 participants and it typically sells out within 6 hours. This is the 5th year Adam and I have done it. Because there are so many runners, they have groups that start at different times. The first year we did it, we were in the second to last group (group 8) and we didn't start until 8:45am (the race starts at 7:30am). But after ran that year, we learned that if you run another race within the year, you can submit your time and get in the earlier groups. I found a fast 10k race later that year and I in group 1B the next year. Since then, we have both submitted times with our registration and have benefited from starting in the early groups. It's nice!!! This year my time was not up to par, but given the fact that we have sold a house, bought a house, packed a house, fixed up a house and moved into a new house, I felt ok with my time. I was about 2.5 minutes slower than last year (my PR for the course), but I couldn't combine too much. I did also travel all last week, so I was not very rested.

Typically, the race mails you your number, but this year it cost an extra $5 per number to have it mailed. They wanted you to go to the Expo to get your number. So Saturday morning, we got up and went down to the Expo. I was totally fine with that because I like going to the Expo's and checking things out. I spotted some shirts from One More Mile, and had been eyeing them for a while at other expo's. Because of my hard week, Adam bought me one. It says "I run like a girl. Try to keep up." I love it!!!

Well also at the expo, I came across Ragnar Relays. I thought it was a triathalon relay race (which I am interested in doing), but this is all running. We stopped and spoke with the guy about it. He was telling us about one of the relays. It's a team of 12 people and you run 185 miles from Miami to Key West in January. Each runner runs 3 times. How awesome does that sound!!! I have already downloaded the race bible and am starting to construct my team. It sounds really fun and what a view. I will keep you posted on this one.