I told you this would happen...

Well as you can probably tell, school has started. So the blogging has nearly stopped. We're almost through the first week and it's going pretty well but the first week is just always crazy. Switching classrooms, people trying to get into classes and out of classes, technology not working, hunting down students that never show up. I'm so ready for everyone to just be set with their classes, their rooms, their online homework...and just do some math. My classes seem like nice groups of people. No one has stuck out as super annoying, and usually those students show themselves in the first few days.
And I did get myself to run one night this week, so I'm down to the final run of the Couch to 5k. In theory that should happen tonight...we'll see.
The freezer meals, however, are working out wonderfully. Totally have saved us this past week.

Couch to 5k - Week 8 done!

Tonight I finished week 8 of the Couch to 5k program! Three 28 minute runs in the books. For the first time tonight at the recommendation of my facebook friends, I used the CardioTrainer app on my phone during my run. According to my phone I did 2.95 miles in 28:01. My first mile was 9:14 and my second mile was 9:44. So the next 0.95 miles would have been in 9:03. The route that I run in Pekin Country Club has two big (for me) hills during mile number 2, so that's definitely what happened there. The first mile and the last mile are completely flat. I know that I'm not actually running fast...but it feels fast. Maybe it just feels fast compared to the pace that I was running 9 weeks ago. I'm definitely running faster now. I know that speed is not really the goal, but it's kind of fun to go faster :) One of my goals at the beginning of this program was to be able to do a 5k in 30 minutes. So I am definitely on pace for being able to do that. I actually signed up for a 5k this week. No backing out now... There's a 5k at the Marigold Festival on September 10th. Brad is playing in the sand volleyball tournament that day so I knew we'd be down at the festival. So I'm going to do it. And I'm going to get a t-shirt. Maybe I'll even buy some shorts that stay up for the event.

Fall Semester Freezer Load-up Continued

Well with Brad out of town, I haven't really been cooking much for just me, so I decided to do a little more prep for some things in the freezer. Lawry's marinades were on sale for $0.88, so I grabbed two bottles and one of the super six pound packs of fresh chicken and came home and turned it into four meals for later. I was able to split it into 20 chicken breast halves and did two meals worth with the Tuscan Sun-dried tomato marinade and two meals worth with the Herb and garlic marinade.
I also made some chocolate chocolate chip cookies on Sunday night, and being the only one home, did not think it was probably a good plan to have too many of those laying around, so I froze two dozen cookies for when Shom comes over for dinner. And for Brad. :)
Our little jalapeno plant has also been producing peppers like crazy. Since the tomatillos aren't ready yet, I stemmed and seeded a bunch of peppers for salsa making later.
I need to make some freezer meals with some beef as I now have three meals with pork and like ten with chicken. I guess no-beef-wednesdays have kind of turned into no-beef-everydays.

C25k - Not just jogging

I just finished Week 8 Day 2 - my second 28 minute run. And I gotta say, I'm starting to feel like a runner again. Not just someone jogging slightly faster than I can walk for short intervals, but like I'm actually out there running. And I don't feel like I'm going to die at any moment. It feels really good. My run Friday night and my run today both felt really good. Both times I did right around 2.9 miles in 28 minutes. Today felt a little harder since my route had some hills in it, but the hills are definitely good for me.
Friday was fun as I actually ran with some other people for the first time. Trisha and Natalie are working on the Couch to 5k as well and were on the last run for week 5 which is the first long run of 20 minutes. So we all did the warm up together and head off together. It was nice to have some others around and it was fun to see them conquer the first long run. And we went out for McDonald's smoothies afterwards :)

Fall Semester Freezer Load-up

Well in one week the fall semester officially kicks off with the first day of classes. But pretty much, starting tomorrow summer is officially over. This week is the "celebration of learning" which really just translates to a lot of meetings that accomplish very little and some frantic last minute preparations for the first week. I do not feel very ready for the semester just yet and I'm really banking on some time this week to get some work done...hopefully half real work and half meetings.
The first couple weeks of the semester are always a little rough as we adjust to a new schedule, so I'm trying to get my freezer loaded up with some easy meals that don't take much planning or prep. I have been doing a few things here and there over the past couple weeks and did some cooking yesterday just for the freezer. I believe I have like 9 meals or at least partial meals in there now. We have:
-Two meals of chicken and black bean burritos
-Two meals of marinated pork chops (whenever I can get Lawry's marinades pretty cheap, I freeze four pork chops and half a bottle of marinade in a tupperware...then I just have to remember to put it in the fridge the night before or in the morning and these can get thrown on the grill)
-Three meals of chicken tortilla soup
-One meal of stromboli sandwiches (Brad refers to this as "the big sandwich". As it is, I only make a half recipe and I still freeze half of it.)
-One meal of shredded chicken tacos (I used some of my recently harvested peppers in with this meat as well as the meat for the burritos)
So hopefully this will get us through the crazy period at the beginning of the semester where I have to relearn how to go to work five days a week :) That teaching five days a week stuff really wears me out!

Salsa Verde

Pretty much the whole reason that I wanted a garden was so that I could grow some salsa ingredients. I LOVE salsa verde and I find that here in central Illinois it can be pretty hard to find the fresh ingredients. The East Peoria Walmart usually has tomatillos, but sometimes they look like they've been there for a really, really long time. And I love to roast poblano peppers, but they are frequently all wrinkly at the store. So those were the two main things that I wanted to grow.
We've been getting peppers for about a month now from the garden and this week the first tomatillos were ready. Earlier this week I harvested four anaheim peppers, five jalapenos, and five tomatillos. One of the tomatillos was all buggy, but I figured with four I could make a little batch of salsa.
I was roughly going off of a recipe I've used before from my Rick Bayless cookbook, so this morning I roasted my tomatillos and garlic in the skillet. Chopped up an anaheim pepper and threw all of that in the food chopper. I added a little water, salt, and lime juice. And it was so yummy :) It had really good flavor, but really was not spicy at all, so I ended up adding one jalapeno as well. And that seems just right. It only made like a cup of salsa, but I was still pretty excited. I didn't have any fresh white onion or cilantro, but I figured I could add those later.
This salsa is great with chips and on tacos, and I thought I might try using it as a sauce on some baked chicken. In the next few weeks there are going to be a lot more tomatillos, so I'm going to try making this and freezing it. I found a recipe where they did all of the roasting whole in the oven, so I think that would make it easier for a big batch.

Taste of Peoria

Last night, Shom and I went to the Taste of Peoria. I haven't been to the Taste in probably five years...the last time I went you could still get a cookie monster from Cheddar's if that tells you something. We met up at Belcan and wandered over. We started out with one of my favorite things: crab rangoon from Thanh Linh. They are so crispy and so delicious. I could have spent all of my Taste Bucks there. We went from there to Qdoba where I got some chicken nachos and then Gracie's where Shom got a bacon wrapped pig wing. Surprisingly all of this and a bottle of soda was quite filling, so we moved onto dessert from the Cookie Shack. I got an M&M cookie and Shom got a crazy ice cream/brownie/cookie/whipped creme sundae. The weather was gorgeous so we just sad down by the river and chatted for most of the evening, saying hello to all the people Shom knew as they passed. It was pretty busy, but we got there early enough that no one had run out of anything yet. All in all a fun night...though we did liken it to that Seinfeld episode where George and Elaine are hanging out, talking about Jerry...but Shom didn't want to be George.

Michigan Vacation 7/30-8/3

Midas used to love to swim. We would go down to the creek in the woods behind our house, and as soon as there were two inches of water he would be flopped down in it trying to swim. We always talked about how fun it would be to take him to the beach, but just never got to it.
This summer we ended up not doing a "big" vacation. We had just been to St. John in January and it didn't work out to have a big trip in May like we'd done the past few years. So we did two small trips instead - a three day weekend in May to Ohio and Indiana for antiquing and a five day weekend to the dunes in Michigan. It was perfect timing right after summer school and for our anniversary and before Brad needed to go to Norway for work.
We rented a house in Michiana, Michigan which is on the Michigan side of the Indiana/Michigan state line. The neighborhood was pretty wooded and quiet and the house was about a half mile walk from the town beach at Stop 40 (named for the old Lake Shore Drive bus route). We went up on a Saturday and had a picnic lunch and then walked down to check out the beach and wander around the neighborhood. The beach had "dog hours", so we knew we had to wait until the next morning for the pups to go for their first swim. We went into New Buffalo for dinner and ate a restaurant called The Stray Dog - appropriate start to the dog vacation. The place was packed and we enjoyed some burgers and wraps, and picked up some t-shirts with the cute dog logo. We spent most of the evenings of the trip playing with the dogs and doing crossword puzzles on B's phone - that's right, we're that exciting.
The next day we spent the whole day at the beach. We took the pups down first thing in the morning and let them walk along the sand for awhile first and they just waded in a little. Then we got out Lucy's pink frisbee and she just turned into a little fish. She would chase her frisbee into the water over and over again, running up and laying on the sand in between. If no one made a move to steal the frisbee from her and throw it, she would start crying - with the frisbee still in her mouth. Sally was a bit more cautious. When she first tried swimming, she didn't use her back legs at all, just had them pulled up real tight. That first day I kept her on a leash for the most part and would get in the water and coax her to swim out to me. She loosened up and got a little braver as the week went on. Around lunch time we would take the dogs home, hose them off, and put them in their crates for naps. They were completely exhausted after a couple hours at the beach. The pups went for swims three mornings and then also went for walks on the beach two nights, so they got lots of time at the beach. Sally was so good from what I thought she would be and did great being off leash most of the time.
We tried some other local favorite restaurants - Redamak's, Stop 50 Wood Fired Pizza, Oink's Ice Cream, and Mucho Mas. The food was great everywhere. I really enjoyed Mucho Mas - it is a mexican place in LaPorte, IN that is all fresh ingredients. It's run by these two young guys from California. They had great chips and a salsa bar. All things that make me happy :)
We tried to do some antiquing and it was kind of a bust. The places in Michigan we went to just had absolutely nothing - I wasn't even tempted to buy a single thing. We went to two places in LaPorte, but one was closing just as we got there and a couple others weren't open on Tuesdays. We did get to do some shopping at the outlet mall. B and I are super power shoppers and hit like 10 stores in under 2 hours. I got a couple things at Banana Republic and we both found stuff at Puma.
By the time it was time to go home on Wednesday, the dogs were thoroughly warn out. Sally slept pretty much the entire way back. That morning as we were packing stuff up Lucy was just passed out on the kitchen floor...too tired to move.
All in all it was a really nice time. I don't know if I would stay in this same house again, not that there was anything wrong with it, it just wasn't WOW AMAZING. It would be nice to find something even a little closer to the water, though I need to plan a bit more ahead for that. With how much Lucy loved swimming, whether we go here or somewhere else, I definitely want to take her to the water again. I love seeing my girls that happy :)

Couch to 5k - Week 7 done! (Finally!)

It took a bit longer than it was supposed to, but week 7 is officially in the books! I did my last 25 minute run tonight and felt really good. It was humid but cool. This was the first time I actually got myself to go run after going to work. I've done all of my other runs first thing in the morning or on the weekend. But with school getting into full swing, I need a new plan. I have 8am classes everyday, and we all know that I am not going to be getting up early enough to run before an 8am class. So the evenings are going to have to become the new routine.
Not wanting to become roadkill on Sheridan Road, I grabbed one of Brad's reflector vests to wear. Now you may have noticed, Brad and I are not the same size. So this vest is much more Brad sized than Megan sized, but still did the job on helping me not get killed. It was like 8:15 when I headed out, so I knew that it would be pretty close to dark by the time I got back. So while the reflectors are good, perhaps I need to find something in my size for these evening outings. This is when sidewalks would be nice.
I also tried running with my phone for the first time tonight. B and I got new phones about a month ago with data and texting. So I now have pandora on my phone. So tonight I tried letting pandora pick my running tunes. It was on my jack johnson station, but put together a nice mix of jason mraz and gavin degraw which suited the run nicely.
I felt really good the whole time tonight and finally didn't feel slow like I have the past few runs. I felt like I could have gone longer, which is good because the next run moves up to 28 minutes :)

C25k - Week 7 continues...

So it's been awhile since I've posted a running update...mostly because I haven't been running :( There were 10 days between my last two runs, but I'm happy to report that I got back out there this morning and picked up where I left off. I had done day 1 of week 7 and then I didn't feel good for two days and then we left on vacation. I fully intended to run on vacation, but we ended up doing so much walking that my legs and knee were pretty sore and tired, and I just didn't think I had a run in me. So while I didn't run, I did walk like three miles a day on vacation. I guess doing something is better than doing nothing.
I was still able to run for 25 minutes without walking today despite the break from the program. So that was encouraging. I have one more 25 minute run to do and then move up to 28 minute runs. Natalie and Trisha are also working on the Couch to 5k plan and are at the end of week 5, so Nat and I were talking about doing a 5k together in September. Sounds a lot more fun than doing a 5k by myself :)

Free samples!

In the past week I have gotten a bunch of free samples in the mail. I got:
-Shout wipes
-Pen
-Honey Nut Cheerios
-Crest Toothpaste and Mouthwash
-Downy Unstopables
-Coupon for free bottle of pantene
Hooray for free things :)

Thrifty Tuesday 7/26

Well this Tuesday wasn't much cooler than last Tuesday, but my partner in crime and I headed out anyway. There were TONS of sales in Morton today...we didn't even go to all of them. There was a sale out at Ackerman Farms so we started there and I bought a little wooden scoop that is just like the ones that the sell at the St. John Spice Company. We always bring home some gifts from this little shop on vacation and there are these multi-colored wooden scoops and bowls that I could never stop looking at. I bought one for my mother-in-law last time, but never bought one for myself. Well now I have a small one for a quarter :) I also bought a neat red glass candle holder, that price tag on the bottom from when they had it at their shop says that the set of three was $70. So that makes my 75 cents look even better. Red seemed good for christmas, valentines, or fourth of july. My next big purchase was some bottled water to keep us going a little longer. There were several houses that had kids selling home made snow cones. We ended with a house that had a sale earlier in the summer as well, with dirt cheap prices. My partner in crime found a vintage christmas tray that matched another tray she had found earlier in the summer. I found a cute christmas tin in the free box. We ended there for the day, but I got sucked in by a couple sales on my way home. I only bought one thing - a grapevine wreath for 50 cents. I thought maybe I could stick some hydrangea pieces or sweet annie in it and turn it into a fun fall wreath. So $1.75 today. I'll be taking the week of next week for vacation and after that work picks up a lot, so I'm not sure how many more Thrifty Tuesdays I'll get in this summer.

C25k - Why hello there week 7

Week 7, kids...I made it to week 7! Though this is really my eight week due to a double up on week 4, I'm still pretty excited. I started the same time summer school started up, so I've made it through our whole summer sessions (after finals tomorrow).
I was really hoping that it was going to be cooler this week - it's not. I went out this morning for Week 7 Day 1 which was a 25 minute run. I did not make it as far as I did when I did a 25 minute run on Saturday, but I didn't walk. Though I really wanted to. These long runs give a lot more opportunity for your mind to mess with you. With the intervals, just about when you were wanting to walk, it was time for walking anyways. Now I know that there's no walking. I think today I did 2.4 miles in 25:20. So definitely slower today. But, I have two more 25 minute runs this week so perhaps we can get back up to the 10:00 mile pace again. Maybe I really need that Queen at the beginning of my run :)
I rewarded myself after my morning run with a nice cold breakfast smoothy. I had been reading in this blog about a chocolate peanut butter banana smoothie...but I didn't have any chocolate milk or bananas. So that wasn't going to work. So I threw some vanilla yogurt, milk, strawberries and some ice in the blender. It was pretty tasty. Though that chocolate one might be better.

Couch to 5k - Week 6 done!

Well I survived another week - and this one was pretty crazy hot! Today I did my longest run yet...26 minutes (well, 25:55). Based on my google mapping, I think I did 2.6 miles in 26 minutes. The first 1.3 miles took 12:30 and the second 1.3 miles took 13:25. It started to feel really hot the second half and there was a big uphill. I didn't get up as early as I should have, so it was a little after 8:30 before I headed out the door. So the second half I was feeling the heat and humidity. I did take my iPod for the first time today, and though it was nice of my iPod to shuffle to Queen's "We Are The Champions" just as I was starting my run :)

I Heart School Supplies

I've had a love for school supplies since I was pretty little. The two best parts of a new school year were always: 1) Riding our bikes up to Lincoln School when they would post class lists to see who your teacher was and who was in your class and 2) Going to Farm & Fleet or Kmart to buy school supplies. There is just something about that perfect set of crayons and that blank notebook. Picking out the colors for your folders and pencils. I don't know. Because I still love it - I love picking out a planner at the beginning of a new school year (even if I'm not great about using them...) and finding some fun colored pens for doing my work.
So I was excited last Sunday when they said at church that they were collecting school supplies for the elementary schools in East Peoria. The bulletin said there was more details at the information table - so I made a bee line for the info table after church. They had four different lists that you could take, so naturally I took one of each :) So today I went to Walmart (with my ads for walgreens, menards, and kroger...my pricematching doesn't stop with groceries) and bought supplies for two students. This whole deal would be even more if they would just let me take two kids to walmart so they could get the colors they want on everything :) So I got markers, colored pencils, crayons, watercolors, scissors, glue sticks, and glue for some fantastic art time at school. A basic calculator, ruler, pencils, and erasers for learning some math. Notebooks, folders, and paper to record it all. And a green pencil box to keep everything neat and tidy. I hope these kids have as much fun with it as I did :)

Book Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

I picked this up for $1 earlier this summer at a garage sale, mostly because I knew they had made a movie out of this book and I thought, well if they made a movie out of it then it must be good :) I started reading it and was super not into it at first - the beginning is kind of confusing as you are trying to figure out what is going on with all the time traveling, especially when Henry is meeting up with himself at different times. Mostly due to a lack of any other books to read, I kept going (taking a short break to read a dog book in the middle - dog book always trumps time traveling romance book). In the end it was okay - a little more sex then I like in my books, but I'm kind of spoiled by my dog books and christian romantic suspense books on that one.
After reading it, I convinced Brad to download the movie so that we could watch that. Well the book is definitely better than the movie. The movie was pretty slow with some pretty terrible acting - I think if I hadn't already known what was going on from the book it would have been kind of confusing as well. Brad watched the whole thing, though I'm pretty sure he hated it.
All in all, I'd give the book one thumb up and the movie two thumbs down. The book has some pretty sad and depressing parts, as well as being confusing at the beginning, but it is interesting both in subject matter and the way that it is written (it switches back and forth between Henry narrating and Claire narrating). The book gave you dates with years at the beginning of each new section, which the movie could have used as well. Not too bad for $1.

C25k - No more intervals

Well today was my last day of intervals in the Couch to 5k program - all long runs from here on out. This week was on day 1 did 5-8-5 minute jogs with three minute walks in between and today was two 10 minute jogs with a three minute walk in the middle. It has been really hot all week, so I've been trying to go as soon as I get up...which is only like 7:45 :) They're my days off, okay?
This morning I made it like a block further in 10 minutes then I did on Saturday for my turn around point for my 20 minute run, so that was good. And for the second 10 minutes I felt really tired and hot, but I went pretty much the same distance as the first half despite feeling so slow.
Saturday I have a 25 minute run, and then a week of 25s, a week of 28s, and a week of 30s and then the end. So I should finish on August 13th. The 5k for Wishes is at Grand Prairie on August 20th, so I'm still considering that as a cap to my Couch to 5k adventure...though I haven't actually committed to that by signing up.

Mid-Summer Garden Update

Well it has been almost two months since we got our garden in the ground, and I am deeming our first attempt at a garden a success! So far we have enjoyed spinach and lots of romaine lettuce, which has been great since we always have salad every day. We have had one jalapeno which I threw into some Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup on Tuesday (yes, that's right, it's like a 100 degrees and I'm serving soup for dinner...it seemed like it would go well with all this salad). Tonight a picked an Anaheim pepper and chopped it up and put it in with the shredded chicken in the crock pot for some chicken tacos here shortly.
There appear to be about 5 blackberries that are almost ready, which for the first year I was shocked that we had any. There are definitely some tomatillos going out there. Apparently they sent out their husk as a big puff first and then the tomatillo grows inside of there. Right now they just look like green puffs. There are maybe 8 gourds going...some green ones and some white ones in a couple different shapes. I'm pretty excited about the fall with all of the dried hydrangeas and sweet annie and fun gourds. Maybe if this teaching thing doesn't work out someday I can just have a roadside stand selling all of my home grown fun.

Thrifty Tuesday 7/19

Well it was a toasty day for standing around in people's garages. My partner in crime and I weren't really into it today with the high temps, so we were going to hit an "estate sale" at the optimist club since it is air conditioned and then go out for lunch. We went to the estate sale and really didn't see much of anything so we headed to Steak 'n' Shake for some shakes and turkey clubs. When I went to go home, I got sucked into a garage sale as I was driving past. And once I stopped at one I couldn't control myself and hit like 10 more :) It was ridiculously hot to be garage sale-ing and I definitely was dripping with sweat. But every time I left one there was another pretty close so they just kept drawing me in. I only spent 70 cents. I bought a set of replacement wicks for our tiki torches for 10 cents, a kids bible song three cd set for 50 cents (though one of the cds is missing and in its place is a women's country karaoke cd), and a neoprene water bottle holder that snaps onto your lunch box. Nothing real exciting. There was one girl about my age that had some cute clothes that were all banana republic and express, but I was having trouble focusing with sweat running down my nose, so I passed on those. Until next week...

Couch to 5k - Week 5 done!

Well I just completed week 5!! This feels like a pretty big accomplishment because at the beginning thinking about the workout for week 5 day 3 was pretty intimidating. Today was the first long run of the program - 20 minutes. I started out with my usual 5 minute walk down to country club and then started off. I went down and did the olympia fields circle and then continued down to the clubhouse and then turned around and did the same thing. It took me 9:50 to get down to the clubhouse and 9:40 to come back, so I finished out my last 30 seconds on sheridan. I google mapped my route because I have no concept of distance and it looks like I ran right about 2 miles in 20 minutes. Which my goal was to get to a 10:00 mile pace, so I'm pretty pleased with that. So I got in about 2.6 miles, with a half mile of that being walking at the beginning and end.
Five weeks down, four to go. Next week is the last week with any intervals - after that it is all just long runs. I found my iPod today and have it charging up so it should be ready to come along on the next long runs. I haven't used it much since grad school, so we'll have to see what good running tunes it has on it.

C25k - New Long Run

Well today I had a new longest run - 8 minutes of jogging, twice actually! Today was 8 min jog, 5 min walk, 8 min jog, 5 min walk. It is much, much cooler today than it was on Tuesday which helped a lot. And while 8 minutes isn't super long, it's longer than 5 min which was the previous high, so that's still something.
Saturday, however, the plan calls for a 20 minute run. I think I may have to break out the iPod for that one. When I was doing short intervals, I used all my brain power to keep track of when to switch from jogging to walking and vice versa, that my brain didn't have time for much else. But now that the intervals are getting longer, my brain needs some kind of distraction. Or a buddy...anyone want to go for a 20 minute run on Saturday? :)

French Dips - Round 2

So tonight for dinner we ate exactly the same thing that we has last night, which is pretty rare at our house. But the salad with strawberry dressing, french dips and scotacharoos were so good last night, how could you go wrong?
I decided that the part of these sandwiches that makes them so good is the melted cheese and crunchy bun from putting them under the broiler. The meat is very good, but I don't know that it is any better than the other crock put (edit: make that crock pot, I'm not sure what a crock put would do) shredded beef I have made. But I never did that extra step of putting the sandwiches open face under the broiler and melting the cheese and browning the buns. Totally makes all the difference.
And there's still some more meat in the fridge to have beef tacos tomorrow night. So my 3.5lb roast got us three meals which makes it a pretty good deal and some easy cooking for this week.

We Graduated!

Well I don't think we were the valedictorian, but we graduated! (And even got a certificate :) Sally did everything that was asked of her, except for laying down. We just are not very good at that one. She would only do it about half of the time at home and that was with a lot of treats, so I had a feeling that at class with no treats we didn't stand a chance. But she walked, sat when we halted (except once when I had to poke her bottom), did our about turn, did a sitting stay for 15 seconds, and came when called.
All but one of her puppy friends graduated, with some doing everything on the list. Only one pup didn't graduate. When Bryson was doing come when called, he ran over and drank Sally's water and then ran out into the horse arena and was just running around crazy. That wasn't part of graduation :)
The class was fun and Sally really did make some progress over the past few weeks. Now to just keep practicing to keep the crazy at bay as much as possible.

Cool Kitchen Cooking

On my off days from school I'm frequently in the mood to spend some time in the kitchen, but I really didn't want to have the oven going much this week. I'm pretty psyched about dinner tonight. We're having french dip sandwiches, salad from our garden with homemade strawberry poppy seed vinaigrette dressing, and scotcharoos. The beef has been going all day in the crockpot and smells pretty tasty. And it's a lot of beef so I'm hoping to get some tacos out of it another night this week and have some still to put in the freezer.
I came across this website "Our Best Bites" when looking at some of the linked recipes on Once A Month Mom. They had included the french dip sandwiches in their monthly freezer cooking plan. Our Best Bites seems to have a lot of good recipes - a lot of stuff that sounds like what we like to eat.
I'll post an update on how everything tastes later!

Update: Everything was fantastic! The sandwiches were really good...I think broiling the buns to give them a little crunch and melt some cheese really was the winning touch. The salad dressing went great with the fresh greens. Awesome meal :)

C25k - Steamy week 5

Well if how bad you smell is an indication of how hard you worked, man did I work hard this morning. I felt reaaallllyy slow and it is reaaallllyy hot and humid out. Apparently 8am is not an early enough start time on these central illinois july days.
But either way, I got week 5 day 1 done - three sets of jog five minutes, walk three minutes. I guess as long as I'm still jogging, it really doesn't matter what speed I'm going. I think my secret goal is that I would like to be able to run three miles in 30 minutes at the end of this, but really my more realistic goal is that I just want to run for 30 minutes.
The one down side to my Tuesday morning runs is that Tuesday is garbage day here in the neighborhood. So everyone has hot, stinky garbage sitting at the end of their driveway as I run past over and over again (I'm still just doing loops in country club). But the garbage man doesn't come until close to 10, and by then it would be REAAALLLLYY hot.

Couch to 5k - Week 4 done!

Well this one took a little longer then the first three, but week four is officially done! I did the work out once last week, then took a week off when I wasn't feeling well, and did the workout three more times this week. This week was 3 min jog, 90 sec walk, 5 min jog, 2:30 walk and then repeat all of that. So 16 minutes of jogging total. Today I ran on a treadmill for the first time in my five week battle (yes, that's right, battle). I didn't get out there this morning before church and this afternoon it was 90 degrees and humid, so I went up to my in-laws' house and ran inside on their treadmill. Running on a treadmill is definitely a different experience - though I kind of liked having a fixed pace kept for me and it was nice to find out what pace I've actually been running at. In my 30 minutes of jogging and walking I covered ~2.2 miles and my jogging pace is at about an 11 minute mile.
This next week stretches out the intervals in the first two workouts (three five minute runs on day 1 and two eight minute runs on day 2) and then ends the week with the first long run of 20 minutes. So next weekend I should make a better plan and get out there when it is nice and cool for my first long run.

Chicago Hut

We tried out a new restaurant tonight in Pekin. It is next to our pet store and Brad was eyeing the place the other night when we were buying some dog food. It is called Chicago Hut and is on Court St. in Pekin next to Food Depot and Pet Supplies "Plus". The menu is an interesting mix...gyros, chicago hot dogs, italian beef, tacos, homemade soups, salads, paninis. Pretty reasonably priced - the meals were $6-8 and include fries and a drink.
I got the italian beef sandwich meal and B got the italian combo meal, which was the italian beef with a sausage in there as well. The portions were HUGE! Giant sandwiches with melted mozzarella cheese and sweet peppers on the side and big piles of fries. The fries were fantastic - B voted them the best fries in Pekin. And the meat was great as well.
The place appears to be run by a mexican family, as dad and all the boys were working, which who knew that mexicans cooked good greek food, but whatever they're doing, they're making some good food. As my grandpa would say, "they're doin' a business".

We Grew Something Edible!

Last night we enjoyed the first fruits, or rather vegetables, of our garden labors. I harvested some spinach last night (that probably should have been harvested a bit sooner) and we enjoyed that with our dinner last night. It tasted pretty good! Brad did comment that the homegrown stuff tastes a bit more "planty" than the stuff from the store. I went ahead and harvested all of the spinach that was ready and put it in the fridge as we eat up salad pretty fast and it was pretty ready to be picked. There is romaine lettuce that will be ready here before too long as well. And one of my pepper plants has a little baby pepper on it already. And the tomatillos...oh man...we are going to have a lot of tomatillos...

"Look, she can run!"

No not me...Sally. We had week 5 of puppy class tonight. Tonight was review night, just practicing all of the things we have learned in the past four weeks. It was a small class tonight, only five "students" were there. We practiced walking in a big circle on a loose leash, working on our u-turns and about-turns, sitting down when we stop. Sally is pretty good at all of those things. We practiced stay, which we are great at, Sally is great at being frozen in place. Then laying down - we are terrible at that. And by terrible I mean she only does it if I pull her front legs out from under her. We did some figure eights and weaving in and out of other dogs. All pretty good. We ended the night with "come when called" practice off leash. We did it a couple of times just a short distance and then since we had extra time they had us go off to the far end of the arena kind of behind some bleachers so our dog couldn't see us. Sally was the last pup to go and when I got back there and called her I heard someone say "Look, she can run!". You see normally when I call Sally she just walks verrryyyy slowly over to me. Never once has she trotted or done anything close to a run. But when I got out of her sight, she was anxious to make her way over to find me. She came running around the corner with a big grin on her face :) Maybe she'll even graduate next week....maybe...

C25k - Week 4 Attempt #2

Well last week I started week 4 of the Couch to 5k plan, and after getting through the first of the three workouts, I ended up not feeling well for most of the week - definitely not well enough for running. So I didn't do workout #2 or #3. So today I started over with week 4 day 1. I could tell that I hadn't been out there in a week, but I got out there and did it before it got too hot today. Back on the horse...or something like that. I think Lucy was glad to see me get out there as it gave her a prime opportunity to steal two cookies off the counter...

Thrifty Tuesday 7/5

Well today I came home with nothing from our garage sale-ing adventures. My partner in crime only spent $0.20. It wasn't for a lack of sales, just a lack of anything I wanted to put into my home. There wasn't even anything that I was tempted with but unwilling to pay for. I guess they can't all be good weeks - and last week was pretty good. There's always next week...

Batting 0.500

Trying to use up some ingredients that I had in my pantry, I tried out two new recipes this week that I found using the ingredient search on allrecipes.com. One turned out great, the other was pretty much a flop. The flop was Pork Chops Deluxe. Now I guess I didn't really know what golden mushroom soup was, but between that and the diced tomatoes, this was really tomato-y, and we're not big tomato fans. And it was just tons of sauce. Now it all got eaten between dinner and lunch the next day, but I certainly would not make it again. The success of the week was Hashbrown Breakfast Bake. I found this by searching for a recipe that used ham, eggs, and hashbrowns. I had ham in the freezer from Easter that I wanted to use up, and Walmart had forced me into buying a dozen eggs instead of my usual half dozen (since all the half dozen ones were broken) so I had a lot of eggs without a plan. This turned out really tasty and pretty easy. I did not do the pico de gallo or sour cream on the top at the end. I had some more for lunch today and it was just as good the second day.

So 0.500 isn't too bad, and either way I made progress towards cleaning out the pantry.

Thrifty Tuesday 6/28

Well I went a little crazy today and spent a whole $4.50! Which for me garage sale-ing, is really quite a lot. I hit 15 sales today by myself as my partner in crime has VBS this week. My office-mate Christin was having a sale, so I bought some lemonade from her son Wesley for a quarter. My next quarter went for a thing of cute ribbon...white with a black flowered print. I love being able to wrap up presents with some cute ribbon. It seemed like it would be really cute with some bright colored paper. I spent two dollars on two books by a new-for-me author James Scott Bell. One of the other author's I really like, Terri Blackstock, has Bell in her list of "If you like my books you might like..." It appears he also writes Christian Romantic Suspense...my favorite genre :) Last I bought a funeral chair (wooden folding chair) for a dollar and a six gallon western stoneware crock for a dollar. The crock is not in great shape, but I thought it would be fun to use outside somehow. This guy had a bunch of crocks in different sizes, all $3 or less, but I couldn't decide if I really needed or wanted them. So one for $1 seemed like enough for today.

So all in all, some good times. I was pretty excited to find some new books as I just finished my last garage sale book, The Time Traveler's Wife, today and don't have any other books in line. If nothing else I need some vacation books!

C25k - Big Step Up for Week 4

So in week 3, the ratio of total jogging to total walking was 9 minutes to 9 minutes. This week, that stepped up to 16 minutes of jogging and 8 minutes of walking. That's a big step up! The 16 minutes was in four intervals: 3 min, 5 min, 3 min, 5 min. So 5 minutes is my new longest run :)

It felt pretty good overall today. I always feel tight that first jogging interval and feel much better the last one. I guess at the end I'm just looser and relaxed, even if I'm more tired. With all these extra minutes of jogging, I also covered more distance today. I always walk to down to Country Club as my five minute warm up and do my workout in there...less traffic, less jumping in the ditch. About a quarter mile in there is a road that makes a big loop, so I just do laps there. I had been making two laps and then heading back out to Sheridan, but today I got in three laps before heading back out. I'm not sure how long the loop is...maybe like a half mile. So I would say walking and jogging combined I'm somewhere around two and a half miles.

New Morning Routine

This summer we have kind of a weird morning routine that changes depending on the day of the week. On Mondays and Wednesday I'm up early and out the door while Brad is still in bed, and the other three days I'm usually still in bed when Brad heads out the door. Whoever gets up first is always responsible for the dogs - get them out of their crates, put their collars on, let them outside, and feed them.

So after that all occurs and person #1 leaves, Lucy has decided the next step in the routine is for her to come upstairs and get in bed with person #2. And if Lucy comes up, you know Sad Dog won't be far behind.

I'm not sure how I feel about this routine. It's not that I don't like the cuddling, I just would like to have one place in my house free of dog hair, and if I can only have one place, I want that place to be my bed. Though it is hard to turn down a snuggly puppy...

Walgreens Deals 6/26

I haven't tried to snag any deals at Walgreens in a long time. They had a few things I needed on sale this week so I thought I would work up a plan and head over. Which chatting at my parents after lunch, I made a little flow chart of how to work my transactions for the best deal...and yes, I am that kind of dork.

However, since the last time I was there, Walgreens has changed several policies. One of which effects how the Cat discount card works with the register rewards and also changing how you can use register rewards to pay for future purchases. So I had to ditch my flowchart and work a new plan...good thing I'm pretty good at math :) Though not really all that good at arithmetic :/

I did one transaction of everything that had a register reward and skipped the Cat card...three deodorants, two packages of twizzlers, and two toothbrushes for about $23. At Walmart this would have cost $26, so not a big savings, but I also got $9 in register rewards. So I got things I would have gotten for about the same prices at Walmart and then got two packages of hot dogs, a case of bottled water, hamburger buns, a bag of Lays, and two packages of peanut butter sandwich crackers for free with my register rewards.

So while not quite as good as the plan I had originally worked I still got some stuff we needed and some stuff we can use at our 4th of July party. I must say, Walgreens doesn't give me the same happiness that Aldi does :)

Couch to 5k - Week 3 done!

Well I got out there this morning before church and did my last workout of week 3. It was a gorgeous morning, I went sans dogs, and I felt great. I did ten minutes of running total split into intervals of 90 sec, 3 min, 90 sec, 4 min. The workouts next week step it up quite a bit with 16 minutes or running total in intervals of 3 min, 5 min, 3 min, 5 min. And for the first time the walking intervals are half the time of the running intervals. Most of the previous workouts the walking was equal to or longer than the jogging. So this should be good. My friend Natalie is starting the program tomorrow (right Nat?) so it will be fun to have a C25k buddy these next few weeks. The first long run comes at the end of week 5 - so in two weeks I've got a 20 minute run. One day at a time... :)

Winter project perhaps?

Natalie showed me this fun site yesterday with free plans for building a whole variety of furniture. I started out looking for chairs we could build to go with our patio table and got sidetracked with this: Farmhouse Kitchen Island

It has all the things I've been looking for in an island...some closed storage, some open storage, and space for two stools. The plans are for a 2'x5' island, which I think would be just about right for our kitchen. The plans seem pretty straight forward - I think we could handle it. And for the top we've already scoped out walnut butcher block tops. We saw one a couple months ago at Lowe's and really liked the look and found them online for pretty reasonable prices.

Maybe in the meantime I should keep working on ideas for patio chairs, seeing as though it's only June...

C25K - Working Week 3

I got in my second run for week 3 today. Normally I run on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I was subbing yesterday so I put if off until today. Now I need to run on Sunday...hmmm...maybe before church? I find it easiest to get myself to go first thing in the morning. As the day goes on, my motivation seems to decrease.

I did the first run this week by myself and today I took the dogs with. They were just so chipper this morning and seemed very ready to go do something. They did pretty good until the last interval when Lucy was really dragging. And due to some poor math on my part I think that last interval was a minute longer than it was supposed to be. It was a combination of me being tired, Lucy really dragging her paws, and what sounded like the sirens going off that caused me to forget if we were going until my watch said 15:00 or 16:00.

The workouts this week are a five minute warm-up walk and then two sets of 90 sec jog, 90 sec walk, 3 min jog, 3 min walk. So 9 minutes of running (or 10 I suppose today). This week is the first week that it actually felt like a workout. The first two weeks really came pretty easy and I wasn't very tired our out of breath at the end. After the last three minute jog, I was breathing pretty good this week.

One more time this weekend and we graduate to week 4!

Thrifty Tuesday 6/21

My mom and I finally made it out for some garage sale-ing this week. We hadn't been in a couple weeks with meetings at work and trips to Iowa. We didn't spend much but had some great finds which is always the goal :) The best finds came from a house on Johnson where a little old couple lives. We're always excited to see old people manning the garage sale. Because old people have old stuff...and we like old stuff. Mom found a milk glass mixing bowl, a crystal pitcher, a vase, and something else I can't remember now...for a grand total of $1.05. And for me a gallon jar...for $0.25. I use old jars as my canisters on the shelf in my kitchen and I have certainly paid more than a quarter for all of them. My other find was a set of four Sarasa colored pens. For those that know me well, you know I love pens. It had a pink, red, orange, and green ones. Good for grading, good for manuscript studies, and just fun in general. I paid a whole $0.75 for those. Big money.

Sally and the storm

Poor Sally is quite terrified of thunder. I had seen the forecast and knew there were strong storms expected Tuesday evening - the same night we have our park district puppy class. During dinner the storm began and Sally started to pace. Her favorite place to be in a storm is in the basement and I left the basement door open while retrieving some laundry so she was able to take shelter - behind the heating oil tank in the corner of the basement. When it was time to go to class, I went downstairs to find her, and she was all balled up in the corner crying, quite a sad sight. I tried to coax her out by calling her in my "happy" voice but was having no luck. So I brought in reinforcements, aka Lucy, who was able to convince Sally the world was not going to end. I got her leash on and off we went. It was a small class because of the weather and you could tell she was a little on edge the whole time. She still did pretty good...sitting most of the time when I told her to and doing a good job on practicing "stay". So we've learned so far walk, about turn, u turn, halt, sit, stay, and come...though I wouldn't say we've mastered any of them.

Couch to 5k - Week 2 done!

Another week completed - two weeks down! Next week the total running time stays at 9 minutes, but the intervals get longer. After a walking warm up it's two sets of 90 sec jog, 90 sec walk, 3 min jog, 3 min walk. I have a feeling 3 minutes is going to feel pretty long...but on the plus side all bones and joints are still feeling good!

Father's Day Junkin'

Today for Father's Day we went to early church and then headed with my parents to the Third Sunday Market at the Interstate Center in Bloomington. It had rained earlier in the morning, but thankfully the rain held off and we didn't get wet at all. It was pretty muddy, but nothing my crocs couldn't handle :)

We had a nice day of wandering around. I came home with just a couple of things - a Morton pottery bowl and some vintage tablecloths. The bowl matches another Morton bowl I already have in a blue spatterware/spongeware pattern. You don't see the pattern very often and it's usually really pricey, so I was pleased to find one I was willing to pay for. The tablecloths were a steal...three for $5...they have some fun patterns and I figured if nothing else maybe I could try making some cute pillows out of them. I don't actually know how to sew, so that plan may be a bit ambitious.

It was fun wandering with my parents and we ran into Brad's parents, sister and niece while we were there. Glad the rain decided to hold off :)

Couch to 5k - W2D2 with my training buddies

Well I've now made it through two of three workouts from week two of the Couch to 5K program. This week is a five minute warm-up walk and then 21 minutes of 90 seconds of jogging, two minutes of walking. Tuesday's workout was kind of cold and rainy and not really all that fun. But it got done. Today, I wasn't feeling great, but it is GORGEOUS outside, so I grabbed my training buddies and off we went.

I hadn't taken Sally and Lucy with me since the first day as they are not really all that helpful. When we're walking, Sally spends a lot of the time trying to cross over to my other side to be closer to Lucy, and when we're jogging, Lucy spends a lot of the time being dragged behind us. I must give them credit, though, that Lucy is an awesome walker, and Sally is great when we are jogging. Tuesday when I was out some of the neighbors even commented that I was missing two someones! (Perhaps I need to mix up my route a little more) But this morning I wanted some friends so off the three of us went. While they may not be great walkers and joggers, they are great distractions. The time flew by since I was spending more time encouraging Lucy to pick up her paws then thinking about how many seconds were left until I had done my 90. So we made it through. One more time on these intervals this weekend and then we bump it up again.

New Business Opportunity Anyone?

Lucy is in full shed. She seems to spend most of her life in this state. She sheds WAY more than either of our two goldens ever have. What ever is in the lucy-mutt-mix, it is something with some crazy shedding. I have a Furminator (yes, that's what it's really called) that can do some amazing things on Lucy. We could totally be in the Furminator infomercial. So I'm thinking the next step is this...http://www.amazon.com/Knitting-Dog-Hair-Better-Sweater/dp/0312152906 Really I just love the second title: "Better a sweater from a dog you know and love than a sheep you've never met"

I will make you one sweet deal on the raw material if anyone is looking for a new start-up business.

Sally the Valedictorian

Tonight's doggie class was about coming when called. We did some practice on our own just on leash and then the instructor brought each dog up one at a time to practice off leash. She stood at on end of the room and had the owner go to the other end and then call the dog. Most of the dogs ran as fast as they could to get to their owners. When it was Sally's turn, I handed her leash to the teacher and she gave the teacher some of the saddest eyes she could. I walked away and when I called her she sauntered at an incredibly slow speed over to me. She could not have walked much slower. Everyone laughed at her :) So while she did come, she was in no hurry to do so.

At the end the teacher was talking about what they would have to do to "graduate". She was explaining the different expectations for the different ages and breeds of dogs in the class. She said that she wouldn't expect the same things from a three month old puppy that she would expect from the class valedictorian Sally :) I guess we have some work to do so we don't disappoint her!

They really do exist!

For those that have been to my house and seen my kitchen, you know that I love vintage pyrex. More specifically, turquoise pyrex to go with my 1940 turquoise kitchen. I have most of the pieces that they made in the butterprint pattern as well as the snowflake pattern and use them daily. I also have a few of the bakeware pieces and have been looking for the others. These are solid turquoise in color from the mid-1950s. I have the loaf pan, the cake pan, and the casserole dish. The hunt has been on for the pie plate, the square pan, and the rectangular pan. On our antiquing trip to Ohio and Indiana, we saw TONS of pyrex and saw these pieces in several fun colors like lime and flamingo, but not the turquoise. Brad was convinced that they do not exist.

I had seen the pie plate on ebay before, so I knew it was out there somewhere, but had never even seen a picture of the other two...until tonight! I was doing some searching online and came across a site called the Corelle Corner and they had an article about what pieces were made, when they were made, and the model numbers (which prove to be very helpful when doing searches). So it seems I am looking for the 222 and 232 pans. And to prove their existence....here is the 222 square pan and here is the 232 rectangular pan in turquoise! These ones that I found online aren't for sale, I was just excited to know they exist! So the hunt continues...

ABC's & 123's...or perhaps sit, stay, come

Last week Sally and I started our K9 Kindergarten class at the Pekin Park District. It's the same class that I took Midas to four years ago. Midas graduate from Kindergarten, but he was certainly a terror at the beginning. He was barking so much the first night that I'm pretty sure no one in the class heard a thing that the instructor said. That was the first night that I used a pinch collar on Midas and without that we would have been Kindergarten drop outs.

So I knew what to expect this time having been before. Sally likes other dogs, usually more than other people, so I thought she might enjoy that aspect, though she is pretty nervous when she doesn't have Lucy there to show her what to do. It was very nice to not be the owner of the loud and obnoxious dog in the class. We practiced walking in a big circle, which she is pretty good at, though when we stop she is supposed to sit down, and we were not so good at that. We also practiced two kinds of turns - about turns and u turns. The u-turns were a bit of struggle that involved a lot of pushing with my knee. At one point one of the naughty dogs was being used by the instructor for a demonstration and he was getting yelled at a lot and Sally just turned around and faced the wall so she wouldn't have to watch :) We're just a bit sensitive. So while we weren't terrible, we also didn't really do most of the things that we were supposed to do. They told us to practice every day at home, which we've tried a few times - she is soooo not amused when I put her leash on and try to get her to walk laps in the back yard. Maybe if I gave out hot dogs as treats like the instructor did! (Though Sally wouldn't actually take the piece of hot dog from her hand...)

Couch to 5K - Week 1 Done!

In my mind, I'm a runner. The problem with this is that it has been about 9 or 10 years since I've actually run consistently. Don't get me wrong, I've tried numerous times over the past years to get back into running, but knee pain or general joint pain has always stopped my endeavor after a week or two. You see, this happened because, since I'm "a runner" I would just head out and try to run a few miles. This would seem okay at first, until my joints revolted a few days later and then I would give up.

So I'm finally ready to admit, I'm not a runner. And I'm not really even remotely in shape. So I've started on the Couch to 5K program. This is designed for people not even remotely in shape. It starts off slow and only has you work out three times a week to give your body time to recover in between and states clearly - even if you feel like you can do more, DON'T! With the goal that slowly your bones and joints will grow stronger instead of just getting injured the first week and quitting.

And Week 1 is done! Week 1's workouts were a five minute walk and then 20 minutes of alternating 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking. So all told you jog for 8 minutes. Since I'm not teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays these seemed like good opportunities to work on this and then the weekend for workout three.

So while I'm not a runner, I'm one week closer than I was before :)

Freezer Cooking - Round 1

In the summer, there are a lot of nights where it is too hot to really want to cook or we're working outside until kind of late and 7:30 is not a good time for the question "so what should we eat for dinner". So I did a first round of freezer cooking to see if I could keep us going for a couple weeks without much cooking. We've now eaten all but one of the things I froze, so I deem the first freezer cooking a success.

Meals: I only froze main dishes for dinner, as we don't really eat breakfast, we both pack lunches to take to work, and for side dishes we always eat spinach salad and I usually just make some rice or instant potatoes and pull some rolls out of the freezer.

So the dishes were:

-Cavatelli (a recipe from my mom...kind of like lasagna but with mostacciolli noodles instead)

-Two meals worth of Southwest burritos (Recipe from monesavingmom.com)

-Porkchops with garlic-lime vinaigrette (Recipe from onceamonthmom.com)

-Meat for Mexican Cheese Soup (from a Taste of Home cookbook)

-Two meals worth of Pulled pork sandwiches and pork tacos (for the tacos I just add some salsa and taco seasoning to the pulled pork)

-Brats (okay, so no skill here, I just put some brats and buns in the freezer so they were there when I wanted them)

So it was like 10 meals, plus a couple meals of leftovers. We've eaten everything except for the Mexican Cheese Soup, as it's been really hot and soup didn't sound so good. It took ~2 hours to make everything, except for shredding the pork that was still in the crockpot. It's been almost three weeks since I did my freezer cooking, and I haven't really cooked since then.

I'm ready for another round, though I think I'm going to take a week here and just do some regular cooking. I've stockpiled some things with recent price matching and my aldi coupon, so I feel like I just need to cook through some of the stuff in my pantry.

Once upon a time there was a blog...

Once upon a time there was a blog, started by someone who didn't have much to say, but thought perhaps that wouldn't matter. Well it turns out, if you feel like you don't have anything to say, you just don't say anything at all. But then there's the aspect of time. This person with not much to say didn't have any time...until now. So now despite a lack of things to say, but with a plethora of free time, I'm just going to start talking. Better watch out :)