Zucchini Noodles and Meatballs

Apologies in advance for the pictures in this post. Photography is NOT one of my strengths but these are probably worse than usual. Then again, how great can pictures of a kitchen appliance and vegetable ribbons really be? If your answer is “way better than those!” I know, kindly keep it to yourself please and thank you.

On top of being a bad photographer, I have also not been a very good blogger lately. Life has been insanely busy and I just haven’t had the time to devote to sitting down and writing a post. This makes me sad because I really enjoy writing this little blog. In my perfect world the day would be a few hours longer (and I would have a little more energy, a lot more crafting prowess, a never ending supply of perfectly ripe avocados AND be a professional photographer). But alas, there are only 24 hours in a day which means life often takes precedence. Sometimes I guess you have to be a bad blogger to be a good wife/friend/employee/puppy-mommy Smile.

So, I won’t beat myself up about it, and instead I’ll just vow to try to devote more time to my blog when I can, but not at the expense of all the fun (and some not so fun) life things I’ve been doing lately…like planning a baby shower and wedding shower for sweet friends, furniture shopping (yay), playing with my favorite furball, and working on some very exciting and fulfilling personal projects (more on those laterWinking smile).

Renly
Favorite Furball

So remember these meatballs from last week? They have become a staple at my house during this busy time. Making diverse, healthy dinners for Robert and I is a priority for me. Since time is so limited, I am typically a mono-eater during both breakfast and lunch during the week. Yes, that is a real word. I read it in a food (or maybe fitness?) magazine years ago and it stuck with me at the time because it reminded me so much of Robert. A mono eater eats the same thing (or same type of food) regularly with little to no variation. Before I started packing his lunches for him, Robert would eat the exact same sub from Subway, every.single.day. for lunch. When we were dating I thought this was the most bizarre habit around, how could you go into a restaurant every day and never want to try something different? I mean he literally ate the exact same sub with the exact same toppings EVERY DAY! Ham, American cheese, black olives and spinach with mustard, oil and vinegar. I think those ingredients will be engraved onto my brain until the day I die. His excuse was always that he was so busy during the work day and had so little time for lunch, that it was just easier and faster to order the same thing. Robert’s mono-eating became kind of a running joke between us and our friends but if I’m being totally honest, I have to take back all the fun I poked at him, because either he’s rubbed off on me or I’ve turned into a major creature of habit in my old age because the mono-eater club now officially has it’s second member.

Zoodles and Meatballs

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Slow Saturday Breakfast: Easy Cheesy Shortcut(s) Breakfast Casserole

Merry Christmas week! Is that a thing? Like a birthday week? If it isn’t then it should be because Christmas is a lot more fun than your birthday.

Christmas tree
Our tiny Christmas tree, space was tight this year!

 

I am officially on  Christmas break and let me tell you it is just as glorious at 27 as it was at 17, or 7 for that matter. I think I still believed in Santa at 7 so maybe that was slightly more fun. I KNOW I didn’t appreciate the power of sleeping in and naps at 7 though so on second thought, it’s just as good now.

Now that Christmas break has  begun, I’m finally getting into the Christmas spirit. It’s been a little tough this year for several reasons. For one thing, I’ve been sick and it’s been unseasonably warm and rainy…not ideal Christmas wellness or weather. For another (and this is probably the main reason) this is the first Christmas ever that I won’t have spent with my family. My mom tearfully reminded me of this on the phone a few days ago, that she won’t have either of her girls for Christmas this year Sad smile FYI moms, reminders of this sort are not terribly helpful in cheering your children who are far away for the holidays. Since our families do not live in the same place, Robert and I navigated new married people territory this year and had to choose holidays. My family got Thanksgiving, his family gets Christmas and next year we swap. For those who haven’t crossed that bridge yet, as easy as you think it will be, even if you’re a holiday grinch, it isn’t. Every family has their own unique traditions and holiday quirks and no matter how wonderful the traditions you step into (or start anew) are, they still aren’t yours. I adore my in-laws, and I’m really excited to experience their Christmas (especially because my niece and nephew still believe in Santa!) but I know part of me will still be nostalgic for the holidays of my past. I KNOW this is part of life and growing up yada yada, but if your WHOLE family lives in the same place, count yourself lucky! I will get to see my parents on Tuesday as they plan to stop through Hilton Head on their way to see my sweet grandparents, so that is a definite plus!

Ingredients
Cheese not pictured because…early

 

Looking forward to all the festivities of this coming week, and enjoying all the fun we had this weekend has finally put me in the spirit! Not only was Friday my last day of work for two weeks, but my grandparents surprised Robert and I with an overnight visit on Friday evening! They drove over ten hours round trip to literally just have dinner and spend the night with us, did I mention they are the best? We took them to dinner, drove around to see Christmas lights and then came home to give them their Christmas gift and enjoy a piece of my favorite cake that my sweet nana made.  An entire cake is pretty much the last thing I need right now with all the other holiday goodies I’ve been consuming but the fact she that she baked it and brought it just for me pretty much melts my heart.

My grandparent’s left around noon on Saturday and Robert and I quickly tidied the house and ran errands before his family holiday party. His mother’s side of the family gets together each year on the weekend before Christmas to enjoy dinner and a White Elephant gift exchange. It’s always a great time and this year was no exception! Robert’s cousin and her husband spent the night with us and Sunday morning we all reconvened once again for breakfast to see everyone off. I was tasked with providing the breakfast casserole, an oldie but always a goodie.

eggs Egg Pour

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Lighter Creamy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup

Happy Weekend! Let me preface this post by stating that any obvious typos can be attributed to my fingers having gone completely numb. Robert and I are going on Day 4 of no heat and it has been dipping down into the high 30’s around here. Brrr. After the first missed appointment, the maintenance man finally showed up last night and was unable to find the issue. He wisely advised that we “bundle up and cuddle close” to make it through the night and promised to come back today. Considering Robert and I had a real argument last night about who got to sleep next to Renly the live heater, we better hope he follows through!

Soup Veggies Wild Rice

There are really only a few food items that will suffice for dinner when you are residing in an igloo. Hot, plentiful and warm-you-up-from-the-inside-out are my personal criteria and soup fits the bill. I love soup of all kinds. It’s versatile, healthy, can be made out of literally almost anything you have on hand and most of the time fairly inexpensive. This particular soup recipe came from my mother who clipped it from the weekend section of the local paper. I have since adapted it slightly and made it many times over for friends, family and batch lunches. It is delicious, re-heats perfectly and unlike some soups, filling enough to be a meal on it’s own, even for Robert! If you are really hungry or feeding a crowd, a gooey grilled cheese or crusty bread to dip would be the perfect accompaniment.

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Slow Saturday Breakfast: Quinoa Flour Pancakes with Cinnamon Sautéed Bananas

Yum. It’s Sunday and I just ate a delicious egg sandwich, but just typing that title already has my mouth watering from the mere thought of yesterday morning. My love affair with breakfast on the weekends is all encompassing, but it’s hard to dispute that Saturday was made for pancakes. Pancakes scream, “It’s the weekend! Eat me in your pajamas and then go do something FUN! I’m practically dessert…for breakfast!”.

 pancake batter Batter 2

I remember not caring much for pancakes as a child (I know, I was clearly disturbed). I’m not sure what my problem was, but I do know that one fine day in graduate school, I got a craving for whole wheat banana pancakes, which in turn led to me eating them for dinner every night for a month and never looking back. You can do things like that when you are in school. You can also do things like that when you don’t have a meat loving husband who also must be fed nightly. Robert used to play tennis on Tuesday evenings and then go out for wings with the guys afterwards. What did I do with the night off from cooking? If you guessed ate pancakes for dinner and watched trash television you would be 100% correct. Breakfast for dinner and reality television will always hold a special place in my heart.

 Flipped

Over the years my love for whole wheat pancakes has evolved into a mission to turn pancakes into a still delicious, much healthier version of themselves. This has led to me experimenting with all sorts of non-traditional pancake ingredients like cottage cheese, applesauce and even spinach. The great thing about pancakes is that they are pretty hard to screw up. You can mix a lot of weird (read: healthy) things into your batter and they will still taste pretty great…and in the event that they don’t there is this wonderful thing called maple syrup that can save almost any bad pancake.

 Finished pancakes

My most recent foray into griddled breakfast territory has been quinoa flour. I went on a savory quinoa dish bender a while back and then got suddenly very sick of it. I went from quinoa lover to quinoa hater and was left with an expensive bag of it sitting forlornly in my pantry. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, but the thought of eating it again in the near future made me gag. Then one day, while perusing food blogs I came across a recipe for quinoa energy bars. Not only were they sweet rather than savory, but they used uncooked quinoa. These were the opposite of everything that caused me to tire of quinoa the first go round, so I decided to give them a go. They were scrumptious, and filling and made me totally retract my hatred of quinoa. Thank you quinoa energy bars.

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Planning (& Protein Pancakes)

Hi! It’s been a busy week around here. I had last Tuesday off from work which I initially hated but ended up LOVING. A long weekend is great but a mid-week day off increases my productivity exponentially! Errands are a lot more fun when they aren’t taking up your weekend. On my day off I slept in (marginally), took Renly for a run (exercise!), made myself pancakes (healthy pancakes but that still counts), went to vote (America!), shopped for a few early Christmas gifts (HoHoHo), prepped dinner early (so nice) AND baked and individually bagged 168 cookies (you read that right, 168). Like I said, busy!

 A and A

Why would I bake and bag 168 cookies you may ask? Why for wedding welcome bags of course! Two of my sweet friends tied the knot yesterday! Having just been a bride this past June I KNOW how much it takes to pull off a wedding (unless you have an unlimited budget to hire someone to do it all for you…I DON’T know what that is like but I can imagine it’s pretty great and stress-free). I made the mistake of trying to do way too much myself before the big day. So my advice to future brides is the same as I gave my friends…delegate, delegate, delegate. When people ask if they can help, take them up on it! You shouldn’t be baking 168 cookies the week of your wedding, let your friends do it! I was more than happy to help with this task and I’m so glad they let me so that they could move on to more important things, like soaking in all those fun last moments of engagement before it get’s really real! Eeeek, just thinking about that excitement makes me nostalgic for my own wedding. And before you roll your eyes at me, I’m STILL a newlywed so I’m allowed to be sappy and romantic when I reminisce ( I hope I always am Smile). Their wedding was absolutely perfect, beautiful and FUN, congratulations Addison and Andy! And since it was in Hilton Head Robert and I got to host some of our college friends who were attending, always a blast!

Entrance
The Bride’s Grand Entrance…. so cool!

 

Another thing I did during this busy week falls under the category of Laurin’s Top 5 Favorite Things Ever To Do In Life: Plan. Confession: I am not one of the rare breed known as a “spontaneous person”. I like a schedule, I like to know what the day/week/month holds and I REALLY love lists.  For years I have tried to fight my Type A-ness and work on “flying by the seat of my pants” but I.just.can’t.do.it. I was born a planner and I will always be a planner. Time to admit it and embrace it, as my best friend Anna says, “Type A’s make the world go round!”. I may not be the friend you call at the last-minute for a trip to the beach, but I am that friend that if given notice will happily show up to the beach with a fully stocked beach bag, drinks and homemade snacks Smile

 

So what was I planning? Well my favorite thing to plan…a trip! I have been itching to go somewhere and Robert has some time off between Christmas and New Years so we are going to California! Neither of us have ever been and California has long been on our list of places we would like to travel to in the US. Other front-runners on that list are Chicago and Texas. Chicago seemed way too cold to do in December and my parents love San Antonio so Texas might be a trip we save to do with them, so California it is!

 Planning
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