A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads. Christmas - New Year's Edition. Meal Plan: lots of parties.
This week is a contender for the best week of my life. For the first time ever, I got to take the entire week between Christmas and New Year's off (just working about an hour a day). The stepsons and stepdog were here everyday and it was our first Christmas Morning together. It's been too cold to go out so we've had the ultimate staycation.
Breakfasts:
Omelets (some with just cheese and hot sauce, others with mushrooms, spinach, garlic, and sundried tomatoes)
Egg and cheese quesadillas with salsa and hot sauce.
Santa gave me a Fuego Box for Christmas, so I've been sampling like crazy.
M: Bibimbap bowl from Trader Joe's (yum, but I definitely want to make my own).
T, W, H, F: Shrimp Curry Bowls via the Lean Green Bean. Love, love, love this recipe. The only thing I do differently is to start by cooking the shrimp for a few minutes, remove them, continue cooking the rest, let it simmer, and add them back at the last minute. I just can't imagine that they'd be any good if cooked for 20 minutes with everything else. What I love so much about this recipe is that it uses both zoodles AND pasta. I'm not a low carb girl but I'm also not a heavy pasta girl and this is the perfect balance of both worlds.
S & Su: leftover pizza from Friday night.
Dinners:
M: Christmas! We hosted. The menu (everyone prepped at home and baked or reheated at our house):
- Honeybaked Ham and spinach artichoke dip from sister in law #3
- Rib Roast from my hunky husband. The one who claims continuously that he doesn't cook. He picked out a 3# roast, covered it with salt the day before, and still claiming that he had no idea what he was doing, started it off in a hot oven and then baked it at 350° for a few hours. It was the best thing ever. I whipped up a last minute au jus to drizzle over it.
- Cheesy potato casserole and rice pilaf from sis in law #4.
- Vegan lasagna, roasted carrots, and salad from my rents.
- Texas Roadhouse Rolls from yours truly.
- Everyone brought a bottle of wine and desserts.
I mentioned my Christmas Baking list last week, here's what everyone thought.
Eggnog Fudge: I'm obsessed with it and my coworkers love it, my family is less into it.
Frosted sugar cookies: yum. My cookie cutters were all in bad shape, so I got rid of most of them when I moved. Stars were the only Christmas related shape that I had. I need to work on my cookie frosting skills.
Peppermint Mocca Cookies: I stand by my decision to cut back on the mocca part. The only thing I will do differently next time is to get dipping chocolate instead of melting chocolate chips, since the white chocolate coating was a little thick for the cookies.
Mint Chocolate Brownies: Stepson #2 deemed them "creeper cookies" in honor of Minecraft. They're good, I'll definitely make them again, but at the same time I'm glad I only made a half recipe.
Oreo Balls: definitely the winner of the bunch. My comments: oof, there is nothing greasier than crushed oreo cookies mixed with cream cheese. As with the peppermint mocca cookies, I'll get dipping chocolate next time. I speared each ball with a toothpick, dipped it, and then dabbed a bit of chocolate over the toothpick hole.
My favorites from the family's treats: rice kripsy treats and Christmas Crack (saltine cracker toffee). It's not my fault that someone put the Christmas Crack platter in front of me at the table.
T: leftover ham and roast with mac and cheese.
W: out on the town with friends, good beer and a hamburger
H: Chipotle and margaritas on the couch.
F: Stepson #2 had a sleepover, so the boys got takeout pizza and I made my own. And even though we had so many Christmas treats, the occasion called for cupcakes. This is our go-to cupcake recipe, though we almost never make just a single batch (other changes: I use powdered buttermilk and omit the vanilla bean). We doubled it and everyone got to frost their own cupcakes.
S: Christmas #2 now that sister in law #1 and her family are in town. They brought lasagna, sister in law #3 brought salad, we provided garlic bread (we only got two loaves for 19 people, what were we thinking), and everyone brought treats.
Tonight: everyone is coming back to our house for New Years. We're still planing the menu.
Meal prep: I need to make more breakfast burritos, we'll wing the rest with leftovers and our freezer stash.
Other:
Workouts: I'm so glad that my work cardio challenge is over! No more "junk" workouts just to get miles.
- Workout high: for the first time ever, I was able to do 400's at 6.0.
- Workout low: I worked out last Sunday, and it wore me out for Mon & Tues workouts. As much as I'd like to do more lifting, I need two rest days a week. My lifting workout this week was this one (just one round).
- Other: a daytime walk everyday with stepdog. We normally walk her as a family at night, but it was just too cold this week.
Watching (from the treadmill): Call the Midwife
Watching (from the couch): Classic movie throwdown!
- Daughters Courageous. Not familiar? Let me bring you up to speed real quick. It's a spinoff of the Four Daughters series. Four Daughters is about...wait for it...four daughters who live with their widowed father and get married (three of them marry good guys, one marries a bad guy). It's pukey sweet saccharine and I love whoever came up with the idea to give it this dark spinoff. It's the same cast, but this time the Dad is a Bad Dad who abandoned his family and comes back twenty years later just as his ex-wife is about to remarry and his daughters are picking their guys (and yes, three pick good guys and one picks a bad guy).
- The Maltese Falcon. Oh yes, the one and only. I've been meaning to rewatch it for a while. Towards the end of the day on Thursday, I needed something to watch while I folded laundry, so I popped it in. My husband happened along while the opening credits were rolling and brought the boys along to watch. I didn't think they would be into it, but they got hooked right away (they especially loved "the fat man"). They had to leave half way through to go to their mom's house, so hubs and I took a break to get Chipotle. And after it was over, we binged five episodes of Jean Claude van Johnson. Just one episode to go and it's killing us to wait for the last but there are little people in the house.
Reading: The Secret Keeper by
Kate Morton. Since we've been off our regular schedule, there wasn't much time for reading this week.
The other big project this weekend:
Your turn:
- New Years plans?
- New Years Resolutions? I'm thinking on mine, I'd write about them but I have a puzzle to finish.
- What are you cooking this week?
- What are you reading and watching?
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