Lentil, Cannelloni and Quinoa Soup

Word out on the street has it that some of our Cleanse Challenge peeps are running out of ideas for things to eat. Not to worry. You’ve come to the right post.

Having done The Cleanse, as Sara and I call it, now three times, I have lots of ideas for you. If you’re still stuck, contact me for more help!

NOTE: For the Cedar Valley yocals: you can find the products mentioned below at Hy-Vee, Roots Market and Super Target.

1. Beans and legumes
   This is the very foundation of a vegan lifestyle – and they’re so easy to find and use in practically any meal. My personal favorites are: edamame, black beans, lentils, garbanzo beans (chickpeas) and cannelloni beans. I buy canned beans because they’re cooked and ready to go – with the exception of edamame, which I buy frozen. An easy meal is to make a bean burrito using Amy’s refried black beans rolled up in a corn tortilla and topped with fresh guacamole and salsa! I have a great recipe for Sloppy Joesthat will fill up even the huskiest of vegans.

2. Soups
   Veggie soups are a fantastic and filling meal option on the cleanse. Here are some of my personal favorite recipes: Cheesy Cauliflower, Coconut Curry Soup, Lentil Stew, Spicy Peanut Soup and
   Chili.
3. Stir fries
   Stir fry, served with brown rice and/or a gluten-free noodle (like soba) make a wonderful dinner option. Or, go nuts and serve it with quinoa, affectionately known at my house as “curly rice.” On top of that, you can serve your stir fry with my special awesome peanut sauce, which is also cleanse-friendly. TIP: go easy on the oil and stir fry very lightly – don’t overcook the veggies or you’ll cook the nutrients right out of ‘em.
4. Nuts and nut butters
   Although raw nuts are best, you can eat literally any kind of nut on the cleanse. Even better, peanut butter makes the list! If you want to truly go crazy, try experimenting with different nut butters like almond, hazelnut and cashew. Yum! For the Cedar Valley yocals: you can find all sorts of nut butters at Super Target, Roots Market and Hy-Vee.
5.  Salads
   Get creative with your salad fixings and make sure you use a vegan dressing. Lemon juice works nicely if you’re super hard-core on your cleanse, otherwise, I love any of the Annie’s Natural vegan dressings.
6. Hummus
   Hummus is a cleanse-friendly dip and spread that you can use in a variety of ways. For a snack, you can slather it on top of a brown rice cake. Whip up a batch and serve it with Nut Thins crackers and fresh veggies. Or, use it to make your very own nori roll.
7. Carob and chocolate
   Life sucks without chocolate, no getting around that. So don’t even try. I keep an organic dark chocolatewith no-dairy on hand at all times. Plus, I stock a carob and spirulina treat I found at Roots Market that is 100% cleanse-friendly. I have a hard time keeping my daughter out of it!
   

   Carob and Spirulina Squares from Roots Market

8. Gluten-free crackers, etc.
   I love all of the wonderful gluten-free snacks we have available to us these days! Some of my favorites include: Nut Thins, Rice Chips and Pop Corners.
9. Roasted and grilled veggies
   You can roast or grill veggies to your heart’s content, and they can be very flavorful. You can even throw garbanzo beans in with your veggies for added protein.
10. Chips and salsa
    Sara and I have deemed these cleanse-friendly. You can easily go out to a Mexican restaurant and indulge in these, plus a huge plate of veggie fajitas, just top with lots more salsa and guac.
11. Smoothies
    There are some really delicious vegan smoothie recipes out there — blend one up and you’ll feel like you’re really indulging, I promise.
12. Dried fruit
    Dried fruit has a higher natural sugar content and gives you a nice little sugar fix when you need it. If you want a sugar high, try eating a dried fig! 

In theory, I’m a big fan of the “Anything for 30 days” concept.  Of course I can do anything for thirty days.  Well, except cut out coffee, or sugar, or meatormilkorcheeseorchocolate.  Make it easy on me, I’m thinking.  Give me something I already do, for instance go to the gym, or stop eating wheat, or perhaps not going to the bar every night.  I’d kick ass at those.

Finally, Mariah proposed a writing challenge I thought I could handle, and we threw around ideas that would be doable and settled on three chapters.  I’ve written columns on deadline in the past.  Piece-o-cake, I’m thinking.  Uh, huh.  Sure.

I was so enthusiastic about this challenge I started early.  By the time March 1^st rolled around I had close to 1,000 words.  Of course, I’m used to writing things in 1,000 word spurts and then editing them down to eight or nine hundred so they’ll fit into a newspaper column and people won’t get too bored to read me, so that was easy.  Then life started getting in the way.

Way too much life.  I have a problem with taking on several things at once, and consequently have decided that multi-tasking is a farce perpetuated on us by the corporate mentality spawned in the 1980’s.  At any given moment I might have ten ideas floating around in my head, but I am not a multi-tasker.  I’m a multi-doer—but nothing ever really gets finished.  I was a great Gen X slacker.

I glommed onto that 1990’s lifestyle with earnest, right down to the flannel, Dr. Martens and Nirvana.  Most of my friends were still thinking money was the answer, but the rebel in me was leisurely working in a convenience store for $6 an hour and deluding myself into thinking I was getting by.  That didn’t last long though and I soon found myself needing more, eventually getting to the place where I am now, with no focus, too many low paying jobs at once and not enough time to fulfill my dreams.

That’s my excuse anyway.

On March 7^th I opened up word, read what I’d written and changed two simple sentences of my previous brilliant work to a single compound sentence—-then closed it and went to the gym.  On March 8^th, I thought really hard about the second “chapter” (I write non-fiction, mostly essays, so I’m not sure what to call what I write) while I was on the way to the gym.  On March 12^th, realizing that the month was almost half over and I still only had about 1,000 words, give or take a few from my previous brief edit, I thought I should sit at the computer and stare at the screen until I’d written something.  Instead I ended up playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook and then went to the gym.  There’s a pattern here, in case you hadn’t noticed.  As I mentioned, I’d have done really well on a “go to the gym every day for 30 days to avoid the rest of your life” challenge.  I’d be a star!

But, the challenge beckoned, so at some point between mid-month and the 27^th, I managed to write another 1,000 words.  I’m not sure I liked what I wrote, because I haven’t even gone back to look at it, but I decided that wasn’t the point.  The point was to get something down.  I also managed to write the beginning to a third “chapter” in my head one day while on the elliptical trainer and have since typed it out, but that was about 200 more words tops.  On the 27^th, after doing some Googling, I decided I would serve myself better if I started writing agent queries instead, so I put that on my whiteboard to-do list and went to the gym.

I’m getting pretty fit.  Thank you, “Anything for 30 days”.

Harper in Miami. This picture has nothing to do with anything.

First let’s back up to Week 2: Abs of my month of minis. It went well, I completed all 2000 situps in a timely fashion – like 10pm of the last night. Ha! I had to do 600 that day b/c I had forgotten the day before. Rough. 300 situps a day is really not that bad though. It seems like a lot in theory, but it really doesn’t take long. I did my situps in blocks of 100 broken down into blocks of 20. So if I decided to do crunches I would do 20 and go from there – either continuing with another 20 crunches or switching to leg lifts – until I reached 100. I mixed it up. After a set of 100 I would take a break. I generally did all 300 situps within a half hour. My husband was a little pushy with this challenge – he said I should do at least 50% as military situps. I, of course, did not take that advice and didn’t do any military situps. Those are hard.

You should try an ab challenge – come up with whatever guidelines you want. You could do 10,000 in a month or 2000 in a week or 700 in a week. Anything. A challenge that you can do while watching TV, is a good one

Week 3: No Eating Out
This week also went well. It was really only tough on Wednesday at lunch time. Right, Mariah? It was the saddest Thai Wednesday that ever existed. But, we got past it and I hope to indulge tomorrow evening. The rules for this challenge were a little grey. I went out for ice cream once – I thought that was fine because I wouldn’t describe getting ice cream as going out to eat. Would you? I also didn’t count movie theater popcorn. I also went out for dinner / drinks one night with a group. I had a late lunch at home and packed granola bars to get me through the evening. I figured the drinks (and the olives in them) didn’t count as a meal either. And then someone at the table talked me into trying some of their food because, they reasoned, they ordered it not me. I love that kind of logic. Speaking of what constitutes a meal – is soup a meal? It CAN be. There’s a great Seinfeld scene discussing soup as a meal (episode 93, The Soup).

Jerry: So he just gets soup. He wants to save the meal. So now I got to do it all over again.
Elaine: What kind of soup did he get?
Jerry: I don’t know? Consomm or something.
Elaine: Consomm, hmm.
Jerry: What?
Elaine: Well, that’s not really a meal Jerry. I mean if he had gotten Chicken Gumbo, or Matzah Ball, or Mushroom Barley. Then I would agree with you. Those are very hardy soups.
Jerry: Elaine you’re missing the whole point.
Elaine: What?
Jerry: The meal is the act of sitting down with him. It doesn’t matter what you get, as long as he’s sitting in that restaurant, its a meal.
Elaine: Was it a cup or a bowl?
Jerry: You see — ah, uh …
Elaine: I’m just curious.
Jerry: A bowl, ok?
Elaine: Did he crumble any crackers in it?
(Jerry blows out a breath)
Elaine: (reiterating the question) Did he crumble, any crackers in it?
Jerry: As a mater of fact, he did.
Elaine: Oh, well. Crackers in a bowl. That — That could be a meal.
Jerry: It’s like I’m talking to my Aunt Sylvia here.

If you are a Seinfeld fan you will right away recall the scene and the discussion about Kenny Bania and the Armani suit. I can relate just about anything to Seinfeld or Sex and the City.

This is the closest she gets. Unless food is involved.

Week 4: Bella!
My week of Bella started yesterday – 15 minutes of dedicated time every day. We went on a nice walk last night about 7pm – Harper and Adam came too. Harper tagging along on a walk is a little controversial, I think, when it comes to Bella’s feelings. Bella has a lot of mixed emotions when it comes to the baby. I would not say they are good friends. At least Bella doesn’t think they are. Her favorite time of her whole day is at about 7:30 pm when Harper goes to bed. Then she gets us all to herself. You know what, I take that back. Her first favorite time of day is about 6pm when Harper is eating dinner and dropping food or feeding it straight to Bella while giggling. This smorgasbord is Harper’s only shining quality.

Bella is not at all aggressive towards Harper. She just ignores her. Bella acts like Harper doesn’t exist. She’s so passive aggressive. Harper, on the other hand, says “Bye Be-ya, Bye”. All while smiling and waving at Bella. I can just see the hurt on her face when Bella doesn’t do so much as even wave. Really, Bella, the least you could do is wave to your sister. That’s all she wants.

Anyway, after all the rambling, where was I? So, yes, Bella and I are in store for a good week together – with or without the baby.

Week one of March of Minis is done and I think it is my favorite challenge so far. I have been so productive! The house looks better! It’s Spring! Yesterday was a big day on the organizing front – I did my closet. It is so wonderful to go in there now. I removed 5 bags of clothes – one of them a garbage bag full. I haven’t gotten rid of a significant amount of clothes in years. It’s a wonder I didn’t find my hypercolor shirt in there. Man, I loved that shirt. Sigh.

Anyway, yes, closet is clean. I love it. So, that made 5 items done. After the closet we took a break for some outdoor activities and then late afternoon I cleaned and organized our coat closet. I don’t think I have cleaned in there since the day we moved in. It looks lovely. After that I did our bookshelves. They were really not that bad, but I had been wanting to do it for awhile. Odds and ends end up getting deposited on a shelf as we walk past. Some books I have read needed to move on to grace someone else with their presence. If you look closely you can see the Hunger Games trilogy. Who is excited for that upcoming movie? Me me! I was once Katniss for Halloween.

The total list of things I organized are (in order): The pantry, the fridge, 3 kitchen utensil drawers, towels, my closet, coat closet and the bookshelves. Seriously, this was my favorite challenge. I may have to expand it to a full month at some point. The one thing that we still really need to get to is the garage – a good reason to do this again. That space is very very messy.

Now on to abs! I was leaning towards doing 1400 situps for the week which would average me 200 a day. Plenty challenging I thought. But, my husband talked me into going for a cool 2000. (Hmm, I wonder if that is so he can escape to the basement to play more video games since I will be busy doing situps.)

The rules are….there are no rules. At least for me – you can do whatever you want. Just an average of 285.7 situps of some kind a day. Crunches, military situps, leg lifts, bicycles, oblique crunches, etc. Whatever. I added an ab tracking widget on the right to keep track of my progress. Check back for updates!

Join me for this mini challenge. It’s only seven days of 285.7 ab exercises OR one day of 2000. Either way.

Who’s with me?

Poised to do some damage.

I started off my first mini week challenge to organize by making a list. I wanted a nice big list of all my ideas so I could pick the best ones (and in some cases, the easiest). Top of my list should have been our tupperware, but alas, that is Harper’s favorite play area. The organization would last about 10 minutes. So there are three items on this list that need the most organizing, no wait, make that four. Since I started on a Sunday and had more time I decided to tackle a big one. Our pantry. At one point (before us) our pantry was a bathroom that was attached to our second bedroom. It is now a little room accessible through our dining room. We discovered it was an old bathroom when we were tiling. Our whole house was carpeted when we bought it. That includes the dining room, most of the kitchen and the two bathrooms (well three if you count the pantry, which we don’t). It was lovely.

Mess on the left. Clean on the right.

Anyway, it turns out that old bathrooms make fantastic pantries. I’ve never lived in a house with a pantry before and now I’m smitten. I will always want one in any future house. We store all kinds of stuff in ours: food, of course, but also large seldom used pans and appliances, dog food. etc. The pantry is also a catch-all for crap.  For a while now it’s been on our weekend to-do lists, but it hasn’t happened. When I decided to organize for my first week of minis, my husband immediately jumped all over that.

“Oh, you should do our pantry. And since it’s YOUR challenge, not mine, I probably should just let you do it by yourself.” So, the minute Harper went down for her nap he scrambled into our basement to play a video game and I was left to the pantry by my lonesome. In all fairness though, he is right. It is my challenge this month, not his.

I tackled the pantry and it looked much much better afterward. I vowed not to wait another 1 1/2 years before the next time.

I decided to keep going and moved on to our fridge – a much smaller project.  Our fridge, inevitably, gets messy easily. But, it is a quick organizational and cleaning project that does not take much time. Two down, five to go.

Later that afternoon I decided to attempt one more organizational project, this one was quick and painless too, like the fridge. I organized 4 drawers in our kitchen – three used for utensils and our towel drawer. They looked much better after – all neat and organized.

I have only done the three items and it is Thursday already. I plan to do one tonight (our bookshelf), it shouldn’t be too bad. Then for the last BIG one I am going to do my closet on Saturday. OMG, that is going to take awhile. Last, but not least, I am going to go through our file cabinet drawer and organize that. I am really loving and hating this challenge. One thing I love is getting something out of the pantry. It is so sparkly clean in there!

How about you? Do you have anything that needs organizing?

I still need to get the details out about my ab workout for next week – coming soon!

Perhaps the next big movie idea is in YOUR head waiting to get out.

Finally! A challenge that doesn’t involve giving up chocolate or pizza, getting up at 5:30 a.m. or doing 100 squats.

This challenge is for all of you poor souls out there who, like me, have novels, screenplays, poems, short stories and/or manifestos floating around (or locked up) in your head. And can’t seem to ever let them out.

The challenge? Simply start writing.

For my own personal Scribes of March challenge, I’m committing to writing three chapters (with a minimum of 10 pages each) of something in 30 days. My friend, Susie, an artist with an all-you-can-eat buffet of ideas floating around in her head at any given time, is joining me. I believe she’s already started her project.

I’ll admit, this challenge is way scarier to me than giving up sugar, carbs, coffee and good beer for three weeks. It’s going to be more painful than tearing myself out of bed at 5 a.m. It’s going to take more will power than watching the whole family wolf down an entire jalapeno and cheese pizza whilst I nibble sedately on my hummus wrap.

Why?

I’ve wanted to be “a writer” since I started learning how to write at the ripe old age of five. As it turned out, I do a lot of writing for a living. But it’s not the same thing.

I haven’t written anything big.

For years, I wouldn’t admit this to myself.

“But you’ve written screenplays,” I would tell myself. “Produced your own short film. Published a book of family recipes. Run a blog.”

All worthy pursuits, yes. But they don’t achieve the real dream I’ve kept locked in a dungeon of outright terror: writing a book.

It’s painful to have to write the above line because it’s laden with all this baggage. It’s a cliche. A pipe dream. It’ll never go anywhere and is most certainly destined for failure.

Well, screw that. It’s a process. An exercise in overcoming doubts. And an outright challenge to just write it and see what happens.

So, fellow scribes, I ask you to join me. Push beyond your fears, your “not enough time” your whatever is keeping the shit in your head locked up. Let’s just write. Together.

Next month it sounds like we are heading into another cleanse month. What fun! Maybe Mike will try for 10 hours this time?? Maybe if we do enough cleanses and we can get Mike to increase his time we could get him up to a full day! Imagine the possibilities.

Now on to March. Mariah mentioned mini challenges recently – she has done a few of them now. What a great idea. Some challenges are just too much for an entire month and sometimes it’s nice to start small and see how it goes and later expand to a full month. The options for these challenges are limitless. They can easily be customized. We have a lot of ideas for future challenges – some easy, some hard. I am going to start my first mini on Sunday, March 4th since running the challenge on the normal week days will be easier for me to track. Since March has 31 days and ends on a Saturday it works out perfectly.

Week 1 (3/4-3/10): Organize Organize Organize
First of all I must confess that I am obsessed with jeans. Wait, I thought it was thai food that she was obsessed with? Yes, that to. If I could have thai food stacked on a shelf that was always fresh and ready to be eaten, I would. But then, I wouldn’t be able to fit into my jeans for very long. I hope it never gets to the point where I must choose between them. At one point my jeans were very organized. This picture was taken right after I moved into the new closet. No longer does it look like this! So for my first mini I am going to organize 7 things in 7 days. I choose to do it this way rather than organize one thing a day because that is just too restricting during a potentially busy week. It’s easier to say 7 things in 7 days b/c then I could do 2-3 in one day and nothing the next. Works well. I’m going to try to take before & after pics of each thing I work on. A side note about jeans — I have a lot of pairs so I have a rule that I cannot get new jeans unless they are significantly different than a pair that I already have. It’s a good rule to have, but, in practice, I can justify just about anything. Oh, well, the pockets on these jeans are 1/4″ smaller. That counts as different!!

Week 2 (3/11-3/17): Abs!
I am going to focus on my abs for my second mini. I will do an ab workout every day for a week. Wait, maybe I will pick a certain number of ab exercises to do in a week rather than every day. What if I forget one day? My husband, Adam, did 10,000 situps during the month of November with two of his co-workers. Yes, 10,000! That is 300 situps a day or in his case often 600 in a day b/c he would forget or skip a day. His tailbone was only sore for the first week. Ha! Details to come on exactly what the workout will be. Stay tuned!

Week 3 (3/18-3/24): No Eating Out
This is perfect for a mini challenge, one week of not eating out is sooo much better than a full month. No thai food for more than a week is more than I can take. Does this girl ever stop talking about thai food? I know that’s what you are thinking because I am.  Last October, my husband and I did a budget challenge and that did put a serious damper on our eating out habits for the month, but it wasn’t 100% restrictive. Especially if you just played a numbers game. This challenge also works in my January cooking challenge a bit. It’s a bit budget friendly and a bit cooking friendly. No lunches, breakfasts or dinners out. Picture is from a girls weekend in Iowa City in 2008 – out to dinner and then drinks. I think we were waiting for a table at Atlas. Have you been? It’s fantastic. At least it was, haven’t been since 2008 What a fun night! It is weird to look back at pictures pre-baby. Everything is so different now for all 3 of us.

A quick Atlas side note in case you are ever in the area. I usually got the excellent Thai Chicken Satay salad. My husband and Shannon (on the right) really liked the burritos. Their favorite was the Buffalo Chicken – a burrito with mashed potatoes? Yes, please! Another favorite is their homemade Macaroni & Cheese. Looking at their menu again makes me want to plan a trip.

Week 4 (3/25-3/31): Bella
We had a baby 18 months ago and since then our dog has kind of gotten the shaft. Don’t get me wrong we are still crazy dog people – but, she is not fawned over like she once was. Poor dog. Also, it is still winter so that has something to do with it – it’s hard to get her out when it’s cold and dark and there is a baby inside. I know, excuses excuses. I saved this week until the end so we (hopefully) will have longer days and a bit warmer weather. One can dream. I will dedicate at least 15 minutes A DAY (no skipping or forgetting) to Bella. I will take her outside for a walk or run or just to play. She will be in heaven!

I’m going to TRY to post twice a week during this mini month. That is it’s own challenge – one that I am not committing to at this time.

Happy March!

Cupboard Before

Cupboard After

NOTE: We’re experimenting with the idea of also posing “7-day challenges” on the blog to shake things up a bit. Here’s one that Mariah invented out of pure necessity. Let us know if you want more 7-day challenge ideas like this!

This challenge is inspired by the classic nursery rhyme “Old Mother Hubbard.” As the rhyme goes, Old Mother Hubbard goes “to the cupboard to get her poor dog a bone, and when she came there, the cupboard was bare.”

Last week, when I was a little low on funds, I decided to try it — no shopping allowed until the cupboard was bare. Well, sort of bare.

A mini challenge, this one had a few rules and caveats. 1. We were allowed to buy a few fresh, local staples — milk, cheese and eggs from Hansen’s Dairy. 2. No going out to eat. 3. There was some fresh produce, namely apples, carrots, broccoli and salad, already in the fridge to tide us over.

First, I must tell you that my atheist/agnostic husband is secretly a Mormon. He feels best when there’s at least a six-month supply of food in our pantry. It makes him extremely uncomfortable when the cans aren’t practically falling off the shelves from lack of space. He freaks out and goes on a major shopping spree when you can start to see the back of the cupboard.

But together, we decided to make it through on what we had in the fridge, the freezer and the cupboard for a whole week. Yep. Just one measly week. No 30 days of eating Top Ramen here.

But this experiment had its ups and downs — for both of us.

Ups:

Money — I think we ended up saving about $100 in grocery costs for the week.

Time — we ate a LOT of prepared foods, which saved us on prep time and clean-up time — a big plus for Chris.

Space — we did clean out a good portion of our pantry. I even managed to make some pudding that has  been in there for a good year!

Weight — I know this sounds crazy, but I ended up gaining three pounds over the course of our Mother Hubbard week. I can only attribute this to eating a much larger amount of carbs, cheese, salt and fat than I normally would when I prepare a majority of our meals from scratch with fresh vegetables (and less cheese).

Downs:

Crap — I don’t mind eating crap, a.k.a. processed food, once in a while. But when it’s daily, it makes me feel crappy.

Wherewithall — Chris still ended up going to the store a day before the end of our challenge. We ran out of coffee and bagels. And Chris needed his store fix.

So, what did we eat? Here’s the week’s dinner menu:

Tortellini Pasta with Marinara, yes I realize this is NOT crap! It gets worse farther down the week.

Sunday: Tortellini Pasta with Marinara, Ciabatta Bread with Italian Butter, Salad

Monday: Veggie Burgers/Steak with Broccoli Mashed Potatoes and Chocolate Pudding

Tuesday: Tacos with Chips and Homemade Salsa

Wednesday: Oatmeal Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs and Tiny Tater Tots

Thursday: Quorn Chick’n Nuggets, Annie’s Mac and Cheese, Salad

Friday: Frozen Margherita Pizza (Here’s a great recipe for the homemade version!)

NOTE: We also plowed through peanut butter and jelly, rice cakes/almond butter, Triscuits, granola bars, apples and carrots for lunches/snacks)

So this month Mariah and I are embarking on an exercise challenge. 30 days to exercise for 30 units of 30 minutes. Whoa, that’s a mouthful. 30:30:30 is easier. So each time block of 30 minutes equals one unit. This is a great time for us to do this challenge because we are both doing boot camp type classes. Mariah is doing Bootless Camp at Field of Yoga on MWF mornings. I am doing RIPT at Covenant also on MWF mornings.

Mariah’s got an edge on me here though, her classes last 1 hour, mine are 45 minutes. So she earns 2 units for every class and I get 1.5. I guess I could go in early before class or stay a little later, but that’s hard in the mornings. My plan is to do my class on MWF mornings, try to go one other morning a week and then do something at least once every weekend. And I would really like to get back into a regular weekly yoga class soon at Field of Yoga!

Hopefully this challenge will get me back into more of a routine — that’s ultimately what I am after. I will definitely have to step it up a notch. MWF for 45 minutes isn’t going to get me very far. That will average me 4.5 units a week and I need to be closer to 7 or 8. Also, I’m going to Miami this month!! Yippee! I hope to fit some good runs in while I am there.

This is going to be hard to track as we go through the month — keep checking the sidebar to follow our progress.

How about you? Feel like doing an exercise challenge this month?

I wanted to address some questions that Mariah asked about my challenge so I thought I would just make it a post. She first asked me what dish did I make that I used for the main photo of my last cooking post. It is just a homemade pizza with onions, mushrooms and zucchini. I love zucchini on pizza – I know it sounds kind of weird, but it is delish. Does delish make anyone else think of Austin Power: The Spy Who Shagged Me?

“Dr Evil, several years ago, we invested in a small Seattle-based coffee company. Today, Starbucks offers premium quality coffee at affordable prices. Delish. Dr Evil, if we shift our resources away from evil empires and towards Starbucks we can increase our profits five-fold.”
“Number Two, I make the decisions here. I demand a little respect. Silence!”

1. Have you set parameters for what counts as cooking? For example, does everything have to be from scratch? Or does one item need to be from scratch? I might serve some veggie chicken nuggets with kale chips, for example, and I would count that as cooking because I turned the oven on.

   My parameters for this challenge were pretty loose. I would also count the nuggets and kale chips as cooking. I felt like if I went to the effort to buy and prep food for a  meal, then it counted. For example, I made us grilled chicken salads one night. I didn’t use the oven, but I did prepare a meal-worthy salad that was loaded with goodies, plus a homemade dressing. So, that counted. However, in my opinion, popping a frozen pizza in the oven for our dinner would not count. I did make Mariah’s kale chips as part of our last meal of January. They turned out terrific and so easy! Adam and I ate them directly from the pan while waiting for our lemon chicken to finish baking. Yum. If you haven’t tried kale, you should, it is a superfood! Here is another kale recipe on Mariah’s food blog that I would love to try.

2. What do you eat when you don’t cook? Is it mostly out to eat or leftovers?

   Yes, when I don’t cook it is usually because we have leftovers to finish. Adam abhors the thought of being wasteful and throwing out food. He will eat leftovers that I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, I have rules on how long food can be in the fridge before I will just flat out refuse to eat it. His are (at least) double my rules and in some cases triple. He was once known to eat turkey leftovers he found in our fridge one month after Thanksgiving. Umm, no. That is disgusting and for the record he got a little sick – I don’t recommend it. Where was I? Oh, yes, so leftovers are eaten frequently in our house. If there aren’t leftovers and we don’t want to cook we almost always get takeout (Thai, of course) or pizza. I also almost always keep the fridge stocked with salad fixings and will often make myself a large salad for dinner while Adam polishes off our questionable leftovers.

3. How do you plan your meals? Is it for the week? Or the weekend?

   I wish I planned my meals better. I think it could be much less time-consuming and cheaper that way. Actually, while I was pregnant Adam bought me the book, Frozen Assets: Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month. We looked through it and picked two meals to try, bought the ingredients and spent an afternoon putting them together. We put them into several sized containers so we could thaw individual sized portions, enough for two or larger servings for guests. It really turned out pretty great and I wish I would put the effort into doing that more often or even trying one of their plans and actually do it for a full month. One of these days I will. Right? Right.

   The way I planned my meals during the challenge was just haphazard – I was all over the place. I use All Recipes A LOT and have found some really good recipes there that I use again and again. I also have the all recipes app on my phone so if I have a recipe saved in my recipe box then I can just pull it up while at the grocery store to make sure I cover all the ingredients. I think doing it this way is not at all economical though. I find myself buying ingredients that we already have because I don’t know for sure and I don’t want to make another trip to the store. Especially spices. I  mean how many things of ground nutmeg can a person have or use? Apparently we need at least 3 containers at all times. Which is good because I use the ingredient maybe twice a year.

So those are some of the specifics of my January cooking challenge. If a person wanted to try something like this for their own challenge they could, of course, come up with whatever parameters they wanted. How about you? Do you plan your weekly meals? Have you ever spent a day cooking up a bunch of food to freeze for future use? What is your favorite take-out food?

My goal was 16 meals, I finished with 17. Huzzah! My husband, Adam, spent his January challenge not eating sugar. If you knew Adam you would know that he is not very fun to be around when he is off sugar. Especially around 8pm when he would have his nightly ice cream. So for my 17th meal, on January 31st, I put together his absolute favorite coffee cake to surprise him with Wednesday morning, February 1st. He was a happy boy.

Coffee Cake
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
6 tsp baking powder

Streusel mixture:
1 cup brown sugar
4 tbsp flour
4 tbsp melted butter
4 tsp cinnamon

1. Combine the butter and sugar. Add the eggs.
2. Combine all dry ingredients separately and add to the batter alternating with the milk. Add vanilla.
3. For the streusel mixture: combine all ingredients, set aside.
4. Grease a 9×13 pan. Spread a big half of the dough mixture in the pan; add the filling; spread remaining dough on top.
5. Bake at 375° for 35-45 minutes or until a toothpic comes out clean.