Let's Talk Zucchini (Recipes!)

I was super mature 6 years ago..

 Back when I was a recent high school graduate ( ok, really somewhere between the ages of 18-20) my lovely friend Kate brought me the most enormous Zucchinis from her father's garden. We tasked ourselves with using every bit of that zucchini before it went bad. I was so tired of this vegetable by the time we went through all the massive ones her dad passed along to us. We made about 10 loaves of bread, and enough fried zucchini to satisfy an elephant!

Kate and I with the newest batch o zuchs!

However...this was many years ago (at least 5!), and when word was surfacing that these things had been grown in a certain lady's dad's garden, I wanted to get my hands on them. Katie my lady knows me well, and delivered the goods promptly. I'm pretty sure this years harvest is wayy larger than the ones from years back, but I'll let you see the evidence and be the judge of that...

Zucchini that is as big as my cat!

So here I am, faced with the dilemma of what to do with all this zuc once again. It isn't a terrible problem to have, but it is a situation. The invention of Pinterest has been the best thing to happen since the last time I got these huge mama jammas! SO MANY RECIPES. So far I have made a healthy bread, and Zucchini yachts. Today we're going to talk about the Yachts!

Normally these bad boys would be called zucchini boats, but due to the situation of my large veggie, I thought it appropriate to rename them yachts (I don't want to down play their enormous-ness!). They are super easy to make and are pretty dang yummy too. Let's get to the recipe:

Zucchini Yachts (or boats for those of you that have to buy them at the store)

What you'll need:
Zucchini
1lb Ground Turkey
1 Onion
1-2 cloves Garlic
1TBS Italian Seasoning
Salt and Pepper
Optional:
Multi color peppers 
Cheese
  
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
2. Cut your Zuchs lengthwise and scoop out the middle so you can put all the good stuff in the middle!
3. Spray them with olive oil and place them in a baking dish. Place them in the oven and bake until a fork easily goes in
4. Time to prep the insides. 
5. Place ground turkey, chopped onions, garlic, and whatever other ingredients you want to add in. I used some red, yellow, and orange peppers that I needed to use up.
6. Season with Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper.
7. Cook meat until done
8. Once zucchini is almost all the way cooked, scoop turkey mix into zucchini, and sprinkle with cheese
9. Place back in oven and bake for 15-20 minutes
10. ENJOY!!

More recipes to follow. Feel free to post links to any zucchini recipes you know!

Happy weekend, y'all!

ELIMINATION (diet)

The title sounds pretty intense, right?

A couple of months ago I started seeing a nutritionist because I found out that my insurance charges me exactly ZERO dollars to see one as often as I'd like. I love when I discover things I can do to better myself that cost me nothing. These days it becomes harder and harder to find, but I digress..

When we first met I discussed the fact that I never really lose/gain weight, portions were fuzzy to me, and some sort of food allergy had to be going on because sometimes I feel SO uncomfortable after eating. We met once a week for a few weeks. She put me on a 5 meals (or mini meals) a day plan. I was told to make sure at every meal/snack to include protein. I was also to cut out any starchy foods after lunch time. At first this was kind of a hassle, but I started to meal plan and pack lunches and snacks with me to take to work. After about a month of following this plan, my nutritionist dropped the new plan on me.

THE ELIMINATION DIET.

Sounds scary, but it wasn't all that bad when I started looking into it. Although I did cry a little on the inside when I was told that I wouldn't be able to drink coffee or alcohol. That's usually how my day begins and ends. With coffee then wine :-) For three weeks you cut out a bunch of foods and then slowly re-introduce them into your diet to see how you react to them. This is supposed to be one of the best ways to determine food allergies. Even more so than allergy tests. I'm not usually a diet kind of person, but I think the fact that this is short term and has helpful results made me willing to give it a try. I really hope to see some results whether it be weight loss or pin pointing food allergies.

Have you ever heard of the elimination diet or tried it yourself?

San Francisco Part Two

Once we arrived back to San Fran from wine country we set out like true tourists and hit most all the spots that we had on our agenda. We checked into our cute little hotel, Hotel Mark Twain, dumped our stuff off and made the trek to Chinatown. The three of us were beyond excited to start exploring and then we hit the hills. THE HILLS!!!

Seattle has some hills, believe me, but San Fran has hills that are so steep you feel like you might fall backwards when you walk up them. The San Franciscans are smart though and walk on their toes when climbing one of the many monster mini mountains. I took notes. None the less we still walked 99% of our adventures and only cabbed it when absolutely necessary.

 

Before returning our sweet convertible we stopped at a look out spot (1,5.) on the other side of the water from the city. When we finished with our food in Chinatown the three of us walked all the way to the worlds crookedest (their term, not mine :-) street: Lombard street (2,3). I don't know why anyone would want to actually drive down it. You're barely moving the entire time on a street jam packed with other cars and pedestrians. No thanks. We continued our walk because it was all down hill once we got to Lombard street. Might as well go down when you just hoofed it up a huge hill! I couldn't believe how much there was to look at. Including the gorgeous trees and flowers (4).

 Our hours long walk (1) led us to our next stop: Fisherman's Wharf. It was such a gorgeous sunny day, but wayy too cold for my liking on the water (4). We stopped at Ghiradelli (2,3) and had a delicious coffee with free chocolates. That place was PACKED, and I hate being in a place that is almost to capacity so we got the heck outta there and kept moving down the wharf. We did some trinket shopping and went into an empty looking wine bistro and drank and ate shrimp cocktails and bread :-)

 

Recognize the house in picture 5? I hope you do or else maybe we shouldn't be friends..This was absolutely a HUGE  highlight of my trip! Who didn't watch Full House growing up?! I can remember being a kid and my mom telling me that I better take my bath at that exact moment or I was going to miss watching Full House. Needless to say, I was in that bathtub before she could finish her sentence! Is it ridiculous that I still watch it when it comes on Nick at Nite?  Fun fact: we ran into a guy when we were taking pictures and he told us that the owners just put that gate up at the bottom of the stairs the week prior. One look at #Fullhousehouse on instagram and I knew why. People are all up on those stairs and standing at the front door taking pictures. Get serious people, let's have some respect. I think people forget that it's actually someones house. Which by the way, the house would NEVER fit the Full house layout in it. This place looks wayy tiny compared to how it looks in the show. I would love to know what the actual inside looks like. You can also see that the street (3) doesn't really seem fitting either. 

We also managed to make it over to the Mission District after we visited the Tanner's. We stopped in to La Cumbre (2) for burritos and beer. If you're a Man Vs. Food fan, then you'll remember that this was one of Adam's stops. It was really well priced and delicious. The burrito also came with chips that you could dip into all sorts of salsas that were at the salsa bar.

Overall it was a great trip. We got some nasty cold and rainy weather the last two days we were there so that deterred us from making it out to Alcatraz, but other than that we pretty much accomplished all we set out to do. We did so much walking, but I noticed after the fact that I was so occupied with all the sights around us that I didn't realize that we had walked two hours straight. The architecture is so different than Seattle, and the hills and city skyline also provided a welcome distraction. I think from the whole trip though, wine country was my favorite part. I'm in a city all the time so heading out to Mendocino county and slowing down was a great break from the norm.

A long weekend in San Francisco

Since last weekend was a long one, my friend Kitty (nickname, obvs) suggested that we go down to San Francisco for it a few months back. I hadn't been to San Fran since I was in middle school, and I like having trips to look forward to during this deployment so I thought it would be the perfect getaway. My friend L (who visited Seattle in December) expressed interest in going to San Fran, so I invited her to join us.

Us three ladies on the evening of our arrival to San Francisco

 We flew down on Friday evening, and hopped in this bad boy the next morning and cruised up to wine country to get our vino on.

Cruising up the 101 in a convertible Mustang is the way to do it, folks. There was some really good sights, and the driving was nice and easy once you get out of the hub bub of San Francisco, but not before passing over the massive Golden Gate Bridge. It's one of those landmarks that seems way bigger than you would imagine.

Our ending destination was Hopland, CA. This small town used to be known for it's cultivation of hops for beer. However, a natural mold started spreading among the hops and it wiped them all out. The town ended up just throwing in the towel on the hop growing and switched to wine. The 101 goes right through the little town and it is FULL of tasting rooms and lots of wineries are sprinkled near by as well. I drink a decent amount of wine, specifically red, and this small little town has some of the BEST wine I have ever tasted. On top of the deliciousness of the wine-it's SUPER cheap to purchase bottles. I think the most I paid for a bottle was under $20.

All our wine bottles purchased

My little brother lives in Northern California so he met up with us for wine 'drankin. He hasn't done wine tasting since he moved to California so I was glad he was able to join us. The little broski and I have gotten closer in the last few years so I had a really good time hanging out with him. I believe we made it to four tasting rooms which all (but one) gave free tastings. They were not stingy one bit either! You were always able to try all the wines you were interested in. I think the great part about Mendocino county is that it isn't as well known as Napa or Sonoma Valley is. Therefore you get less people, and better pricing on wine. I definitely could have spent another day or two there checking out all the wineries near by.

After all the wine, we grabbed some delicious pizza and Italian food, fireside, at a restaurant located just steps from where we had been hanging out for the past few hours. We had an early night. Drinking wine all afternoon is always so tiring so we made our way back to the hotel. It was decided that we would get up the next morning, grab breakfast in town, have a champagne tasting, and then drive back south to San Francisco.

 Next up is part two of San Francisco weekend...

The Pinspiration Project: CAKE IN A JAR

Hello! How about this new blog design?! What do you think? I am really digging it! It is more appealing and put together than that whole "blog design" (I use quotes because let's face it, that wasn't a blog design) I attempted to use a few months back. Like I said previously, Fortune Favors the Brave has a slammin good deal on blog design. She did this whole thing, along with some buttons, for $20! I told her what I wanted and she created it. Even when I complained that the title font color wasn't "minty" enough, she said no problem and fixed it until it was juuuust right. Check her out!

Moving along..





I started thinking about KC's birthday a couple of weeks ago, because I needed to figure out what to send him for his birthday in Afghanistan. KC hates when you mention his birthday. I haven't been able to figure out why, but it's just something he's not stoked on. Doesn't mean I'm not going to be stoked on it :-) Last year we went to this wonderful restaurant in Seattle called The Purple Cafe . They have a great atmosphere. Dark and modern with an amazing spiral staircase that wraps around a circular wine cellar. We had a great bottle of red wine, and yummy food. I made KC a cake and we had that when we got home from dinner. He never had a birthday cake baked for him. I couldn't even believe it. He was so excited for the one I baked up. We even turned down free birthday dessert at Purple so that we could enjoy my Martha Stewart cake.
When I got to thinking about what to send him this year, I knew I wanted it to be cake. For his whole team. I had NO idea how I would even accomplish this though. You can't just send a cake to Afghanistan and expect it to be edible by the time it arrives two weeks later. I scoured the internet and of course Pinterest saved the day. CAKE IN A JAR.

After the cakes were baked and cooled

 

This is a SUPER easy baking project to take on. No complicated cake recipe. 
1.You literally take a box cake (of your choosing) preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2.Whip it up according to the instructions (a few eggs, some oil),
3.Pour the batter into your mason jars to fill them up about half full.
4.Slide your jars into the oven and leave them there for 30-35 minutes until a tooth pick (you may want to use a wood skewer stick like I did) comes out clean.
When your cakes are almost done boil up some water and throw your mason jar lids in the boiling water. As the cakes are completed, take one jar out at a time and place a lid on it, then screw the outer ring on.When the cakes are all cooled off the lid shouldn't flex when you put pressure on it with your finger. That's when you know it's sealed and good to go!

This is the cake in a jar 1.5 weeks after it was baked and sealed. I wanted to do a test run before I sent a dozen or so jars to Afghanistan. I would feel horrible if they were all gross and moldy when they opened them! I taste tested them and they were pretty good. A little dry at first, but when you get in deeper it gets better. Especially when you put frosting on them. Definitely military care package approved. I'll get the official seal of approval in a couple weeks (fingers crossed) when they reach the soldiers.

Clean Eating: 1st week is in the books!

And the verdict is: I'm really liking it!

I kept a food journal for the entire week to record everything thing that I shoved in my mouth, and that keeps some level of accountability because I hate the thought of having to write down something unhealthy when the majority of what I have eaten is healthy. It's almost like a math equation. Healthy + Healthy=AMAZING. Healthy+Crap=CRAP.
Here's a little highlight of what I ate this week:

Salmon with a honey dijon glaze and lentils. Honey Dijon and salmon is one of the yummiest things EVER.

Homemade pico & kale chips!

"Summer" wraps: Chicken, apples, grapes, honey, and almond butter

I think I did pretty good! There was a few things I ate this week that aren't pictured here, but these are some of the highlights. I went shopping last Sunday and purchased all the items necessary for the entire week. It cost me around $50 for an entire week's worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinners. However, today when I went to the store it cost me $89 for this weeks food. I think that it's probabley because this time I paid a little bit more attention to the products I was buying.

The whole point of clean eating is to actually eat clean. This means eating things that have no preservatives, hormones, additives, ect. For things that are packaged, the rule is 5 or less ingredients on the box. I've been reading up on clean eating here and there, and that knowledge has made my shopping choices change just in the past week of reading. I purchased free range, organic chicken today as opposed to the regular chicken I usually purchase. The meat alone threw my bill way off today. In the two weeks that I've started shopping clean I've realized some things I want to work on.

• Write a meal plan for each week prior to starting the week (I'll do up my plan on Sundays)
• Write my shopping list down in an organized way by breaking it up by area: Dairy, Produce, ect
• CHECK INGREDIENTS!! Don't just believe that something is clean because it states it has no preservatives
• Read ads from different grocery stores to get the best deals 

I don't want to spend a lot of time planning, buying, and cooking my meals. I have a short attention span and I'm a busy girl with my job so I am determined to keep it that way. I'll tell you one thing: having done all the work on Sunday and reaping the benefits all week is SO awesome. 

I also did cardio five times this week and lifted three days. Next week I'm shooting for four to five cardio days, and four lift days.

I'm also constantly on the hunt for easy and delicious clean eating recipes. Shout it out if you got some or know of some good blogs that have 'em!

Thoughts for 2013

 Happy New Year!

I'm not one to make resolutions usually, but for some reason the resolution bug has hit me this year. I think the fact that KC won't be home until close to the middle of 2013 has something to do with it and I have always had the plan of keeping myself busy while he is away. A resolution to focus on is a good distraction. Also, I am now a year into my career, and that too has shown me where I'm at and what I want to improve. I've had a year to acclimate myself to being a big kid with a big kid job. Although I think my "resolutions" (I think goals is a better term) are nothing too major, and are few, they have a potential of making big results.

My first goal to work to this year is eat better! I tend to eat out a lot, and go eat whatever feels good at that moment. I'm lucky in the fact that this hasn't turned me into a huge, overweight gal. However, who knows how long til that changes?! With this goal I toyed with the idea of wondering what I defined as "eating better". I looked at possibly doing a Paleo diet, but then realized that is a little too extreme for me. I came across The Clean Eating Diet. I really like this idea. My skin has been a nightmare and a half lately and I'm sure it has something to do with my diet. I used to never ever (not even in high school!) get acne or breakouts. To start getting them when you're in your mid twenties is embarrassing. Clean eating seems like a good step towards a healthier me. Along with eating clean I have decided that for starters I will eat clean during the week and allow myself to have a little bit more lax of food choices on the weekends. Eventually I want to make it only 1 day a week to cheat. I came across the blog 100 Days of Real Food Blog . This blog has some great tips, tricks and recipes for those trying to eat clean. Check it out!

 Second on my list is exercising on a more consistent basis. I want to incorporate weight lifting into the schedule and not just cardio which is what I have mainly been doing. I've never been good at figuring out my own weight lifting workout, but while perusing pinterest one day I saw this pin of a girl who had a killer bod. She was featured on BodyBuilding.com as a female transformation story. Most of the time I see these girls talking about how they lost all this weight and I just don't relate to them. They're usually short and have had multiple babies and that's why they're overweight. Not this girl.

She is my same height and was around the same weight as me. Although I do think she looked chubbier than I do ha! When I began looking at her workout routine and meal choices I thought it looked very doable. So I'm going to try it out and see what happens.

 

   

      2013 Reading Challenge
   

       

         
       

     

        Sarah has
             read 1 book toward a goal of 24 books.
     

     

       

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        1 of 24 (4%)
     

       

          view books
       

 

   

My last resolution for 2013 is to read two books a month. When you're a college student you have no time to read, or energy to read books for pleasure because you're so tired from reading textbooks all day long. Now that college is a thing of my past I will read more. I love reading so why not give myself a challenge. I hooked up with GoodReads to track my progress. This is another great website you should check out. You can keep track of all your books ever read, what you want to read, take the 2013 challenge, see what your friends are reading, and write reviews. Plus, it feels pretty dang good to see the ticker on your challenge go up when you finish reading another book. Any good book suggestions are welcome. I'm still building up my 'To Read' shelf on the website for this years twenty four books needed to accomplish my goal.