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My and My Norah

Bread

      I know a girl, she can't make homemade bread to save her life. No matter what she does it always, always comes out dense and thick and never really rises well. She is not discouraged as her desire to make homemade bread for her family had not dissipated. I will get it right, oh wait, I mean she will. Nevermind, my cover is blown!

     I have struggled to make good homemade bread, I have tried several different recipes, I have replaced my yeast, several times actually, I have let the bread rise longer that needed. What never occurred to me was that I need to reform my kneading technique. I follow this cute little blog called Domessticated. I love it. She is creative and is constantly posting great ideas. Well, I was scrolling through her posts and found, How to hand knead bread dough. It has a video from Epicurious, I watched the video and a light went on in my head. I realized I need to practice my kneading technique. I am off to practice, wish me luck. Until next time.

P.S. We have not yet made the homemade marshmallows, life is just getting in the way, but they are still on the list of things to do.

Memorial Day and Sunshine

So Memorial Day almost across the nation is synonymous with sunshine right? Well, this Memorial I almost thought we would not get any. Here is the Pacific Northwest we have had a VERY cold and VERY wet spring. So cold and wet in fact that it still feels like winter a lot.....You can imagine my joy when the glorious sun came out to play for the early evening and into the night. Yes, it stays light here until about 8:30pm. But I digress. I know that it is the end of the day and I am WAY behind the power curve but I would be remiss if I did not stop a take a moment to thank all of those that have made the ultimate sacrifice for my freedom. I take my freedom very personally, freedom to me is a matter of life or death, it is not something to be taken lightly.

I Served for 6 years, I deployed to Iraq for my country I know what it takes to serve. I love all those that I served with because I had to trust them with my life. I know what it takes for a family to support a loved one who serves because my husband is still Active Duty. This life is hard, but we do it to defend our freedom and for the love of country. If you do not value your freedom and value those that sacrifice everyday so you can remain free then you are just purely un-American.

Happy Memorial Day. Thank a Veteran, visit a cemetery, hug your children.

Home Made Deliciousness

So today in church there was a lesson on food storage and making things at home more often and buying processed foods less. The gal who taught the lesson brought in some awesome home made bread, soap and marshmallows. Wait, did I just say that? Home made marshmallows? Oh yes, and they are so delicious and so worth it. So I did some looking around and found some great websites that feature marshmallows. I figure I will post some links tonight and let you look at them. Later this week we are going to try and make them at home. Oh, and some home made graham crackers. They look pretty easy and VERY delicious. Go, drool like it did and then go cook!

Smitten Kitchen Home Made Marshmallows
This Week for Dinner Home Made Marshmallows
Smitten Kitchen  Home Made Graham Crakers

Oh, by the way, can you just imagine how wonderful S'mores would be with these great home made ingredients? I am so stinkin' excited!

Thing 1 and Thing 2

I just wanted to share some pictures of my beautiful girls. I have been trying to log on all day to Blogger, but it has been having some issues. I made shepherd's pie for dinner tonight, they both loved it and it was super easy to put together. I guess you could call tonight a pantry dinner night, ha ha ha. It is late, I have peanut butter cookies to eat and some X-Files to watch, yes I know I am a huge loser!

This is Thing 1. She is beautiful. She is my gal.

I adore her eyes.

This is when she told me to leave her alone and let her play.

This is Rocket Dog, we love her.......alot.

This is Thing 2. She is the Tasmanian devil. She is a diva. We love her........alot.

I am going to print this one, die and then hang it on my wall. I am so in love with this one.

She is slowly learning that Mommy likes to take pictures.........alot.

Until next time.

Do you know how much you are eating?

I did the Fort Lewis Down and Dirty Mud Run 5K on Saturday. I ran with team "ZipFizz". Here is the picture. Take a look and then I will tell you my epiphany.

You see the three healthy looking women on the the left? They are active, healthy and maintain a good weight for their heights. Then look at me, but not to closely please? I am larger then they are, thankfully that shirt was covering my mid-section that was threatening to dunlop over the waistband of my shorts! I saw this picture shortly after the run on Saturday, and my first thought was "wow, I look so much bigger than they do" my second thought was "why is that?" I have been thinking about this a lot, all weekend in fact. I am an active individual, I love to run, swim, chase after my girls and go for walks, why am I over weight? So I decided to do a little observation of myself, and I painfully realized that I eat WAY to much food! My problem is that I have no idea what portions I should be eating. If I am controlling my portion size I can then control my calories, equaling weight-loss. Which is what I want.

I have done some research and found some pretty good information that I thought I would share. I know that I am surely not the only one struggling with this! I want to figure it out now, so I can teach my girls healthy portions and healthy eating habits. I went to Freedieting.com and found their calorie calculator. I put in my information and found out that if I want to maintain my 181 lbs (wow I just said that on the internet, help me!) I should be consuming 2,165cal. If I want weight-loss, I should be consuming 1732cal and if I want extreme weight-loss, 1448cal. Granted, going from 2,165 to 1,448 would most likely send my body into shock and probably not a good idea, I will stick with aiming for 1,732cal. With that in mind I then went to the Mayo Clinic's website and found an awesome slideshow all about portion control and gave me some great visual clues to help me with portion control. Here are some pictures to give you an idea.

This is a medium orange, the size of a tennis ball.

Chicken, Pork, Steak any meat really should be about the size of a deck of cards.

Dairy should be about the size of four to five dice. This one is hard, how do you tell that amount when the cheese is melted all over some wonderful pizza? Please tell me!

Pasta and rice should be about the size of a hockey puck, I guess this means I need to buy a hockey puck so I know what size that actually is!

Here are a few tips that will also help if you are trying to watch your portions and ultimatly your calories.

• When at a restaurant ask the Waiter for a to-go box and put half of your entree in the box, because typically restaurants serve about double what you should eat.
• If you are going to eat fast-food take it home and put it on a plate, you would be surpised and how full your plate will be!
• Then order smaller portions, I mean do we really the king size or the super king size? Come on now.
• If your super yummy evilly tempting treats are easily accessible you will eat them more often. So, out of sight out of mind right? Put the ice cream in the back of the freezer, I mean like behind soemthing. 
• When drinking that must have glass of OJ in the morning, drink it out of a tall skinny glass because you will feel like you have had more. 
• Did you know that dried fruit is 3/4 smaller that their original size? Meaning a cup of grapes equates to 1/4 cup of raisins. 

Now that I have enlightened myself on portion control I am really going to try and use it! That way I am eating better and my family is eating better. I mean, really isn't that what it is all about?

Now that you know a bit more go and test your smarts here......Pop Quiz!

Oh, this is a good one too! WebMD's Portion Control Plate