Wade's work has some ridiculous perks. I mean, aside from 50 hour work weeks and meetings that stretch into eternity.
No...actual perks. Like 2 weeks paternity leave (I know! Apparently, this is pretty standard quo in places not named Utah), and 100% covered insurance (again, I know! This is SUCH a blessing after how much we shelled out for our miscarriage in 2011. I realize how ridiculous it is, in today's economy, to have a health plan that will cover everything. 100%. No co-pays. No deductibles. A modest premium deducted from the paycheck.) and lastly, a ridiculous reimbursement on health and exercise.
Sidenote: hey, let's count how many times I can write ridiculous in one post!
Wade's company will reimburse-to a certain dollar amount--the employee for exercise equipment and race entry fees and gym memberships and we were stupid and didn't take advantage of it last year. So this year, we cashed in and got a new treadmill.
I have gone on the record before about my hatred for the treadmill. It's a terrible torture machine. No matter how hard I try, I can never get above 45 minutes on it. I know people who have run double digit mileage on a treadmill. I just can't. I've tried everything to get my head out of the game enough to just run, but it's too hard.
But there are times when a treadmill comes in handy. Like all of winter for Wade, who doesn't run in the cold nor the snow, or when you oversleep and you still want to get in a workout for the day without the hassle of finding babysitters or waiting until nighttime when you're tired and less likely to do it.
The one we've been using for 7 years was okay. We got it off the classifieds and it's fit the bill. But, Wade has an unnaturally long gait and the deck was a little short so he always looked like he was going to fly off. Also, it wasn't the best one made for running, so it's had it's issues.
However, this new one is a feat of engineering. It has a touchscreen that connects to the Wifi and lets you read the news and play around on Facebook and whatever else you want. It can go to a ridiculous incline-15% and also down to a -3%. There's a wireless heart rate monitor. The best part though is that you can map out any route you want on Google Maps and download it to the machine and then it will show you a street view of where it's at (in sunlight with no snow on the ground!) and then the machine will actually change incline to match the route.
People, this is HUGE! I can now download my race courses into the treadmill and run the course beforehand without actually driving there.
This newest machine will join the basement brigade of a punching bag, bike trainer, captain's chair (pull ups and abdominal work) and a full weight bench, making our own little gym. All I need is one of those endless pools and I'd be set.
Oh, and maybe some motivation to actually try out the new treadmill. Seems like I can't seem to talk myself into doing anything other then stare at it in wonderment. Wade used it and he said it was really cool, and I watched for about 5 minutes. That still counts, right?
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
What's For Dinner Wednesday: Lemon Chicken
Lemon Chicken
Source: foodnetwork.com
1 1/2 pounds chicken cut into chunks
1/4 C all purpose flour
Coarse salt
2 T vegetable oil
1 T white or rice wine vinegar
1/2 C chicken broth or stock
8 ounces (1 C) prepared lemon curd--according to the comment section on the website this made it too sweet, so I cut it down to 1/2 C
1/4 C hot water
1 lemon, zested
2 scallions, thinly sliced or 20 blades fresh chives, finely chopped (omitted)
Lemon Curd
5 egg yolks
1 C sugar
4 lemons zested and juiced
1 stick butter, cut into pats and chille
Add enough water to a medium saucepan to come about 1-inch up the side. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, combine egg yolks and sugar in a medium size metal bowl and whisk until smooth, about 1 minute. Measure citrus juice and if needed, add enough cold water to reach 1/3 cup. Add juice and zest to egg mixture and whisk smooth. Once water reaches a simmer, reduce heat to low and place bowl on top of saucepan. (Bowl should be large enough to fit on top of saucepan without touching the water.) Whisk until thickened, approximately 8 minutes, or until mixture is light yellow and coats the back of a spoon. Remove promptly from heat and stir in butter a piece at a time, allowing each addition to melt before adding the next. Remove to a clean container and cover by laying a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.
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1. Coat the chicken lightly in flour, seasoned with a little salt. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Stir fry chicken until golden, 3 or 4 minutes. Remove chicken from pan and return pan to heat. Reduce heat to medium.
2. Add a splash of vinegar to the pan and let it evaporate. Add stock or broth to the pan and scrape up and drippings with a whisk. Thin curd by stirring in a little hot water. Add curd to broth and whisk to combine. Add chicken back to the pan and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes to thicken sauce and finish cooking chicken pieces through.
3. Remove the pan from the heat, add the scallions or chives and zest, and toss chicken well to combine zest and scallions or chives evenly throughout the sauce.
This turned out to be really good. I served it on top of rice and it tasted just right. Not too sweet. Overall, the recipe took about an hour to make, so not as super quick as I thought, but a lot of it was the preparation of the lemon curd. Lemon curd can be bought at the store, but I wanted to be all Betty Crocker-like and make it myself. Definitely a keeper.
Source: foodnetwork.com
1 1/2 pounds chicken cut into chunks
1/4 C all purpose flour
Coarse salt
2 T vegetable oil
1 T white or rice wine vinegar
1/2 C chicken broth or stock
8 ounces (1 C) prepared lemon curd--according to the comment section on the website this made it too sweet, so I cut it down to 1/2 C
1/4 C hot water
1 lemon, zested
2 scallions, thinly sliced or 20 blades fresh chives, finely chopped (omitted)
Lemon Curd
5 egg yolks
1 C sugar
4 lemons zested and juiced
1 stick butter, cut into pats and chille
Add enough water to a medium saucepan to come about 1-inch up the side. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, combine egg yolks and sugar in a medium size metal bowl and whisk until smooth, about 1 minute. Measure citrus juice and if needed, add enough cold water to reach 1/3 cup. Add juice and zest to egg mixture and whisk smooth. Once water reaches a simmer, reduce heat to low and place bowl on top of saucepan. (Bowl should be large enough to fit on top of saucepan without touching the water.) Whisk until thickened, approximately 8 minutes, or until mixture is light yellow and coats the back of a spoon. Remove promptly from heat and stir in butter a piece at a time, allowing each addition to melt before adding the next. Remove to a clean container and cover by laying a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the curd. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Coat the chicken lightly in flour, seasoned with a little salt. Heat a large skillet over high heat. Stir fry chicken until golden, 3 or 4 minutes. Remove chicken from pan and return pan to heat. Reduce heat to medium.
2. Add a splash of vinegar to the pan and let it evaporate. Add stock or broth to the pan and scrape up and drippings with a whisk. Thin curd by stirring in a little hot water. Add curd to broth and whisk to combine. Add chicken back to the pan and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes to thicken sauce and finish cooking chicken pieces through.
3. Remove the pan from the heat, add the scallions or chives and zest, and toss chicken well to combine zest and scallions or chives evenly throughout the sauce.
This turned out to be really good. I served it on top of rice and it tasted just right. Not too sweet. Overall, the recipe took about an hour to make, so not as super quick as I thought, but a lot of it was the preparation of the lemon curd. Lemon curd can be bought at the store, but I wanted to be all Betty Crocker-like and make it myself. Definitely a keeper.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Happy Valentines Day
I am the rare person who loves Valentine's Day. I know lots of people hate it simply because it' a consumer's holiday. I get that. I get that there's really no need for a day in which you show love to someone you should be showing love to all year long.
But I still love it. Aside from an excuse to eat more candy, Valentine's Day has morphed into Wade's Holiday. He LOVES this holiday. Every year he tries to outdo last year's present. And the presents are outrageous. No one gets presents like these for this dinky of a holiday. I'm not sure that I could pinpoint a Valentine's present in the last 5 years that has been something I "needed" but when I opened it, it was something you were going to have to pry from my cold dead hands if you wanted it back.
Which makes me love it more. It's just some arbitrary day in February in which I get a really cool present and he inevitably gets a not so cool present because he got a kick-butt one for Christmas.
And because I'm a lame gift giver.
This year, though, we ran into a snafu. I knew from my stealth observation skills that my Valentine's present was already hidden inside the house, but I also love the look that Wade gets when I open a present that is a complete surprise, so I didn't take advantage of the long days I'm alone in the house to go looking for the present. I was perfectly content in waiting until Valentine's to get it.
In addition to my cunning observation skills, I am also quite talented in procrastination and so it wasn't until yesterday that I started looking for Wade's gift. I found a few shirts and a sweater because we had recently cleaned out our closet and realized that he looks slightly homeless with his current wardrobe and so I picked them up as a good Valentine's present. Also, we were in desperate need of pillows for our bed, so I picked up two of those. It would look funny if we didn't have matching pillows, right?
Then I picked out a little something for the kids and hightailed it home before A. got back from preschool. I had about 10 seconds before the girl became permanently attached to my side like she does every day (Oiy! I need to write a post about that!) so I threw all the presents in the back of a closet in the basement that we never, ever use, figuring that the chances of Wade opening the closet in the next 16 hours was slim.
Then I went about my day. A friend came over and we were working on a project. I was looking for a cord in one of the storage closets, but never came across it, and we went back to working on the project. No harm done.
Wade came home from work and went downstairs while I finished making dinner. A few minutes went by and he sheepishly came into the kitchen.
"I found my Valentine presents."
"What?" I stood agape. What were the chances he would open the seldom used closet THAT DAY?
"I went to check on your present and saw that you had been in the storage area and I thought maybe you had found it, so I was moving it to a new hiding place, and there were my presents."
So, then, what are the chances that in a 3000 square foot house with 5 bedrooms and a host of closets that you would both hide your Valentine presents in the EXACT SAME SPOT?
We ended up just finishing out Valentines a day early. And he didn't disappoint again. Chalk up another Valentine's Day win for Wade.
And a rehaul of Wade's work wardrobe disguised as a gift for me.
(I mean if you don't count the treadmill we just bought as Wade's gift. Which I totally do. But this testament to the wonders of machines will have it's own blog post as soon as it arrives and we try it out. Because this thing is AWESOME! And may sway my vote from anti-treadmill-except-for-in-the-case-of-nuclear-war to pro-treadmill-because-sometimes-it'd-be-nice-not-to-have-to-run-in-negative-degrees.)
He is getting a baby too. But I'm holding out for his birthday and our anniversary to give him that. I wonder if I can keep that a little more secret than this holiday's presents. :)
(The super-grammar Nazi in me would go and see if it's Valentine's Day or Valentine Day or Valentines Day and change all occurrences in this post, but I'm almost 6 months pregnant, I bowled a 170 today, and my kids are practically sitting on my lap begging for attention, so I think I have all three well represented here and have the bases covered.)
But I still love it. Aside from an excuse to eat more candy, Valentine's Day has morphed into Wade's Holiday. He LOVES this holiday. Every year he tries to outdo last year's present. And the presents are outrageous. No one gets presents like these for this dinky of a holiday. I'm not sure that I could pinpoint a Valentine's present in the last 5 years that has been something I "needed" but when I opened it, it was something you were going to have to pry from my cold dead hands if you wanted it back.
Which makes me love it more. It's just some arbitrary day in February in which I get a really cool present and he inevitably gets a not so cool present because he got a kick-butt one for Christmas.
And because I'm a lame gift giver.
This year, though, we ran into a snafu. I knew from my stealth observation skills that my Valentine's present was already hidden inside the house, but I also love the look that Wade gets when I open a present that is a complete surprise, so I didn't take advantage of the long days I'm alone in the house to go looking for the present. I was perfectly content in waiting until Valentine's to get it.
In addition to my cunning observation skills, I am also quite talented in procrastination and so it wasn't until yesterday that I started looking for Wade's gift. I found a few shirts and a sweater because we had recently cleaned out our closet and realized that he looks slightly homeless with his current wardrobe and so I picked them up as a good Valentine's present. Also, we were in desperate need of pillows for our bed, so I picked up two of those. It would look funny if we didn't have matching pillows, right?
Then I picked out a little something for the kids and hightailed it home before A. got back from preschool. I had about 10 seconds before the girl became permanently attached to my side like she does every day (Oiy! I need to write a post about that!) so I threw all the presents in the back of a closet in the basement that we never, ever use, figuring that the chances of Wade opening the closet in the next 16 hours was slim.
Then I went about my day. A friend came over and we were working on a project. I was looking for a cord in one of the storage closets, but never came across it, and we went back to working on the project. No harm done.
Wade came home from work and went downstairs while I finished making dinner. A few minutes went by and he sheepishly came into the kitchen.
"I found my Valentine presents."
"What?" I stood agape. What were the chances he would open the seldom used closet THAT DAY?
"I went to check on your present and saw that you had been in the storage area and I thought maybe you had found it, so I was moving it to a new hiding place, and there were my presents."
So, then, what are the chances that in a 3000 square foot house with 5 bedrooms and a host of closets that you would both hide your Valentine presents in the EXACT SAME SPOT?
We ended up just finishing out Valentines a day early. And he didn't disappoint again. Chalk up another Valentine's Day win for Wade.
And a rehaul of Wade's work wardrobe disguised as a gift for me.
(I mean if you don't count the treadmill we just bought as Wade's gift. Which I totally do. But this testament to the wonders of machines will have it's own blog post as soon as it arrives and we try it out. Because this thing is AWESOME! And may sway my vote from anti-treadmill-except-for-in-the-case-of-nuclear-war to pro-treadmill-because-sometimes-it'd-be-nice-not-to-have-to-run-in-negative-degrees.)
He is getting a baby too. But I'm holding out for his birthday and our anniversary to give him that. I wonder if I can keep that a little more secret than this holiday's presents. :)
(The super-grammar Nazi in me would go and see if it's Valentine's Day or Valentine Day or Valentines Day and change all occurrences in this post, but I'm almost 6 months pregnant, I bowled a 170 today, and my kids are practically sitting on my lap begging for attention, so I think I have all three well represented here and have the bases covered.)
Sunday, February 3, 2013
New Years Resolution Update
It's now February and so far I've been doing really good on my resolutions. The biggest one this year is getting organized. I bought my organizing book and really set out to conquer this. The first thing the book had me do was actually sit down and try to assess why I'm so disorganized. There were some journal entries that helped me see where I was getting derailed. Then it laid out a plan of attack. With some of my own common sense, I have a good system going.
One of the biggest hindrances in getting organized is that, in my head, it was something that should happen after everything else was done. After the dishes were done and the house was clean. And by the time I got around to doing it, I was too tired to make much of a dent.
This month, I've been concentrating on keeping the surface of the house clean. This means that for 31 days, I didn't go to bed until the house was picked up. It's only surface cleaned--don't open any closets or look too closely at anything--but the clutter is picked up. The dishes are in the dishwasher or waiting to go in in the morning. Laundry is kept up, more or less. Shoes are put away. This has helped in keeping my anxiety at bay. I don't lay in bed and look at the clutter around me and get depressed at how I can't keep on top.
After I felt like I had a good handle on that, I started in on the first room in my book--the kitchen. If you've been in my kitchen in the last, at least, four years, you know that this area was in desperate need of reorganizing. The pantry has been out of control for a few years now. So, I went and bought storage containers and cleaned it out. I can't even begin to tell you what a relief it is to open the doors and see exactly what I have on hand.
Then I had a minor breakdown with the Tupperware cupboard and now there is no more Tupperware cupboard. I threw it all way except for a few of the really, really good pieces. It was such a relief when I took the bag(s) out to the recycling can.
Today, I cleaned out the refrigerator, the freezer and the rest of the cupboards. I got rid of the old pans that are flaking off and some of the appliances that I never, ever use. The hardest part of cleaning out the kitchen was throwing so much away. I just had to let it go though.
The room to organize for February is my bedroom. This shouldn't be so bad since I did do a total makeover in June. But you'd be surprised. I'm really excited to clean out my closet and to finally hang curtains and pictures and complete the makeover.
The biggest thing I've taken from this is HOW MUCH TIME IS SPENT CLEANING! I keep thinking that eventually it will only take just a few minutes a day, but it's not coming to fruition yet. In the past, this would drive me nuts. But, I'm trying to get past that and just doing it because tomorrow, there'd be twice as much. But still!!! I listen to podcasts and they keep me entertained. And, now, when I take a few hours and do something I want to do, I don't feel guilty because the house is a mess or the laundry isn't done.
As for my other resolutions, I have been doing more writing, but only here. I haven't missed a week yet on What's For Dinner Wednesday, so that's a plus. I don't really have any desire to write anything else right now--there's a lot going on that I would rather focus on. I haven't really read anything so great that I want to highlight it here, but maybe that will change here soon.
I've also just been doing my thing and not letting others dictate my time. That's been kind of nice. I've been teaching myself how to build a website from the ground up--even if there are many programs out there that will do it for you. I'm focusing a lot on my swimming in hopes that I can bounce back after childbirth into my annual sprint tri in August. Just doing my thing and being happy about what gets done--and what doesn't.
Hope everyone else is still plodding on with their resolutions.
One of the biggest hindrances in getting organized is that, in my head, it was something that should happen after everything else was done. After the dishes were done and the house was clean. And by the time I got around to doing it, I was too tired to make much of a dent.
This month, I've been concentrating on keeping the surface of the house clean. This means that for 31 days, I didn't go to bed until the house was picked up. It's only surface cleaned--don't open any closets or look too closely at anything--but the clutter is picked up. The dishes are in the dishwasher or waiting to go in in the morning. Laundry is kept up, more or less. Shoes are put away. This has helped in keeping my anxiety at bay. I don't lay in bed and look at the clutter around me and get depressed at how I can't keep on top.
After I felt like I had a good handle on that, I started in on the first room in my book--the kitchen. If you've been in my kitchen in the last, at least, four years, you know that this area was in desperate need of reorganizing. The pantry has been out of control for a few years now. So, I went and bought storage containers and cleaned it out. I can't even begin to tell you what a relief it is to open the doors and see exactly what I have on hand.
Then I had a minor breakdown with the Tupperware cupboard and now there is no more Tupperware cupboard. I threw it all way except for a few of the really, really good pieces. It was such a relief when I took the bag(s) out to the recycling can.
Today, I cleaned out the refrigerator, the freezer and the rest of the cupboards. I got rid of the old pans that are flaking off and some of the appliances that I never, ever use. The hardest part of cleaning out the kitchen was throwing so much away. I just had to let it go though.
The room to organize for February is my bedroom. This shouldn't be so bad since I did do a total makeover in June. But you'd be surprised. I'm really excited to clean out my closet and to finally hang curtains and pictures and complete the makeover.
The biggest thing I've taken from this is HOW MUCH TIME IS SPENT CLEANING! I keep thinking that eventually it will only take just a few minutes a day, but it's not coming to fruition yet. In the past, this would drive me nuts. But, I'm trying to get past that and just doing it because tomorrow, there'd be twice as much. But still!!! I listen to podcasts and they keep me entertained. And, now, when I take a few hours and do something I want to do, I don't feel guilty because the house is a mess or the laundry isn't done.
As for my other resolutions, I have been doing more writing, but only here. I haven't missed a week yet on What's For Dinner Wednesday, so that's a plus. I don't really have any desire to write anything else right now--there's a lot going on that I would rather focus on. I haven't really read anything so great that I want to highlight it here, but maybe that will change here soon.
I've also just been doing my thing and not letting others dictate my time. That's been kind of nice. I've been teaching myself how to build a website from the ground up--even if there are many programs out there that will do it for you. I'm focusing a lot on my swimming in hopes that I can bounce back after childbirth into my annual sprint tri in August. Just doing my thing and being happy about what gets done--and what doesn't.
Hope everyone else is still plodding on with their resolutions.
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