Making the Cut

So, yet again, I have somehow let my sister talk me into doing yet another physically exhausting challenge. Her and her sister in laws are all going to do the Jillian Michael's "Making the Cut" workout- it's a 30 day workout plan that is guaranteed to make you cut and tone if you follow the program. But, as her sister in laws live out out of state, Megan wanted someone close by to suffer, I mean do this, with her. So of course I agreed. But my motives aren't purely selfless- I want to be tone and drop a few pounds, so I am committing to do this 30 day workout with her.

Today was day #1. Megan got to my house at 6 am to start our program before work. Let me just say that the fact that we both got up this early to work out is an accomplishment in itself. When she texted me at 5:50 am to tell me that she was on her way over, I instantly regretted agreeing to start this early. But at that point, what could I do. So, when she arrived, we began the program by taking our measurements: bust, waist, hips, thighs, arms. I won't list what these measurements were, but I will say that for as different our bodies are built, we have almost the exact same measurements in every single area. Isn't that crazy? We also had to take our "before" pictures, but there is no way I'm posting those on here. Maybe I will after 30 days, if we are ripped up and awesome :-)

We followed (or tried to follow, to the best of our ability) the day 1 workout. Let me just say, THAT JILLIAN MICHAELS IS CRAZY! Wow. Talk about an intense workout. We almost made it through all the exercises. I told Megan that we should just try to do the best we can do, and hopefully we will just continue to get stronger as the days go by, and we will be able to do better in the following workouts. I can see that this program really will work, if we stick to it. Diet is also a big factor, so I am going to try to quit eating my face off all the time and really watch the amount of food that I eat. I feel that I eat pretty healthy already, but portion size is a big factor. So, as long as I watch that, I think I will be ok. But I will of course include my post-workout breakfast I made for myself today (like I would make a blog post about something that didn't include food!)

Since I was feeling healthy and motivated, I made basil and banana pepper scrambled eggs, with a diced tomato on the side. Everything except the eggs are home grown. Yesterday I picked my first red, ripe tomato, so I had to give it a try today. It was so good! I'm also growing the banana peppers, along with jalapeños, green peppers, blueberries, basil, rosemary, oregano, mint, and sage. Fresh herbs make every dish better, and these scrambled eggs were fabulous!

Thanks Megan, for motivating me to eat better and work out. I can't wait to see our results in 30 days!

CSA

We are splitting a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) with my sister and brother in law this year. We've been getting farm fresh produce for 3 weeks now. Megan picks up the produce every Wednesday- we get a huge shipment of whatever seasonal varieties the farmers have grown.

The first week, Scott and I were in Florida, and missed the first shipment. Megan and Ben were so sweet though and brought over our produce and stocked our fridge with it while we were gone, so when we got back it was all here waiting for us!

The first week, our shipment contained:

lettuce, mesculin, kale, radishes, havarti cheese, hen of the woods mushrooms, strawberries, lamb, and fresh milk.

Since the 4 of us are splitting the order, Megan and Ben ordered the milk, and we ordered the lamb. Megan doesn't like "uncommon meats" (her words), and I don't like milk that much, so we got to pick and choose those aspects of our order. Here are some dishes that I made from our super fresh delivery:

Salad with spinach, lettuce, mesculin, strawberries, feta cheese, walnuts, and a homemade vinaigrette.

Hen of the Woods mushrooms. I sautéed these in butter, garlic, and grated Parmesan cheese on them. They actually weren't that good- they tasted bitter, and some were really soggy while others were really rubbery. I'm not too excited that these are the types of mushrooms in the CSA. Maybe I just need a new way to prepare them....

The next week's shipment came with this:

turnip greens, green garlic scapes (these were a weird garlic/onion root vegetable, but smelled too much like onions for any of us to cook because we all hate onions!), strawberries, mesculin, broccoli, bok choy, kale, and dill.

See that weird rooty vegetable with the gigantic green stalk, second to left in the picture? That's the garlic scape. I gave them to an onion loving friend of mine, and she said they were definitely a cross between a green onion and garlic, but tasted more oniony than garlicy. Yuck!

I grilled some of the lamb chops from the shipment from the week before, and made a fresh basil/mint pesto sauce. It was FABULOUS, if I do say so myself!

I made a spinach and mesculin salad with Parmesan cheese, and a homemade basil pesto vinaigrette. I also made kale greens which I cooked in chicken broth, white wine vinegar, and turkey bacon. They were so good! I've always been a big fan of soft, vinegary kale greens. There only 2 vegetables that absolutely must be prepared country style (aka soggy and salty), kale greens being #1, and green beans being #2. My grandma used to grow kale greens in her garden and then slow cook them in a pressure cooker until they were soft and delicious. Her and my grandpa moved from the house with the garden when I was 12, so I've been craving them ever since! Mmm, mmm!

My in-laws also have a garden, and have been bringing us fresh broccoli. Since I've had an abundant amount of broccoli, I decided to try to replicate my favorite dish from Yankee Noodle, which is called Firecracker Chicken. I sautéed the broccoli in sesame oil and garlic, and made an Asian hot sauce (red curry paste, soy sauce, honey, red chili flakes, sriracha hot sauce, ginger, tumeric, and garlic powder). I made a box of Udon noodles, baked a chicken and then cut it up into pieces, and added all of it into the broccoli mixture. I also added chopped walnuts, and then poured the Asian hot sauce mixture into the pot, and let it all sauté for about 10 minutes. It turned out to be surprisingly good!

The picture doesn't really do it justice, but the dish turned out to be creamy and noodley (I LOVE Udon noodles! So chewy!), with a good combo of spiciness and sweetness.

This CSA experience so far has turned out to be really fun! I love to try new recipes and eat fresh produce. More to come on tonights shipment in a new post- I've had enough for one night!

Till next time!

I'm Baaaaack!

I'm sure by now that I've lost a few of my Blog readers due to my lack of updates. So, I'm going to try to lure you all back, one post at a time. Here's one that has taken me 6 months to create....

I've taken pictures of my back yard during each season so we can see how ever changing nature is.

Here are some pictures from Winter. Brrr! I'm so glad this season is over!

Next are pictures I took in March. The tiny buds are just appearing on the tree branches....

And now we come to my 2nd favorite time of year... Summer!

Mmm... I love these pictures. They just look warm and sunny!

Happy Summer!