Pan Seared Anything

My favorite thing to make lately is pan seared anything. Mostly because it is super easy, but another reason is I love the flavor! First, I preheat my oven to 450 degrees. I take the meat and lubricate it in Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Then I sprinkle on some salt and pepper. The next part varies depending on the type of meat I am making, but it is completely up to your own personal tastes. There are so many different combinations you could use and lots of other spices as well! Have fun with it!

 

Anyway, the last spice I sprinkle on is always one of McCormick’s Grill Mates Seasonings. I LOVE their spice combinations!! They taste great and they flavor things really well. The Garlic and Onion seasoning is my go to spice for chicken. This is also great to add to the water you cook your potatoes in for mashed potatoes. The potatoes absorb the flavor and you get these really great, subtle garlic-and-onion-flavored mashed potatoes. I love it because then I don’t feel the need to add tons of butter or gravy to my mashed potatoes, so I can keep them as healthy as possible. For steak, I use the Montreal Steak seasoning and for pork I always grab the Barbeque seasoning. I am not usually a big fan of barbeque because it is messy and the flavor is a little overwhelming and detracts from the taste of the meat. However, with this seasoning, I don’t have either one of those problems. If you have used these spices you should definitely check them out, as well as some of the other combinations made by McCormick’s.

 

Anyway, after you season the meat on both sides, you cook it in a preheated skillet on medium high heat. You will have to transfer this skillet to the oven in a minute, so make sure it is an oven compatible. I use a cast iron skillet. Cook the meat for about 2-3 minutes on each side until it is browned and then put the skillet into the preheated oven. I usually cook it for about 10- 15 minutes, turning it over every 5 minutes until the meat is fully cooked.

 

The best part about this is the calories. The only calories added to that of the meat are the 120 from the EVOO and 16 from the pepper. Although, if you use the Montreal Steak Seasoning, add 5 calories as well.

 

Great flavor, easy and low calories. Can’t be any better than that!

 

New Job…and One Step Closer to my Dreams

This week I am unemployed. I previously worked at a shelter for children who had been removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect. However, that was a part time job in which I could only 999 hours a year (roughly 20 hours a week). It was great when I was going through school and 20 hours a week was all I could handle with classes, internships and studying. So, I used all my 999 hours (even though I don’t roll until June) and said my goodbyes. I began applying for jobs in the Northeast United States back in January. I was hoping that by March 15^th I would be on my to starting my new life, but I am not. It has been hard because I don’t live in the area, but saving up enough money to move on 20 hours a week is not an easy task.

 

A few weeks ago, I was getting scared. What would I do with no money? I had started this plan and now it was getting to the end I wasn’t where I wanted to be. On a whim, I applied for a local job working with kids in head start programs to de-escalate aggressive behavior problems. Last Thursday, I was offered the job! Earlier this week, I went and got all my pre-employment drug tests/TB tests etc out of the way and I start on the 28^th. Not only do I get to use my degree, but I will have health benefits and I will be able to replenish my savings account (which I took a lot of money out of to pay off my $2200 last semester of grad school).

 

I am still going to apply for jobs in the Northeast, but now I can apply for the jobs I want, instead of anything that will get me a position. I will have therapy experience, which will give me that much more of a leg up. I will live my dream of moving away, it just might take a few more months to get everything positioned right. More importantly, this experience is teaching me to be patient and not to expect instant gratification.

 

Gardening, The Healthy Alternative

In an attempt to be healthier, we have planted our very own garden in the backyard. Our garden is cholk-full of fresh vegetables and fruit like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, peas, red potatoes, white potatoes, onions, lettuce, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, corn, green beans, cucumbers, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Our summers are always full of delicious, preservative and chemical free vegetables and fruits. Once you taste them, it is hard to switch back.

We grow a lot more than we can eat in one summer, so a lot of our vegetables get frozen, canned, stored or given away to neighbors and co-workers. We make homemade spaghetti sauces, pickles, canned peaches (which we get from Porters. We aren’t ambitious enough to grow those ourselves) and frozen corn, green beans and peas. Everything else, we eat faster than we can grow it! It has become quite the family project from planting to picking. We grow a lot of our stuff from seed. It is started inside in our grow room/laundry room and then transplanted outside.

When they are done growing, we can pick some lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and spinach, clean it and make a salad for lunch or pick some corn, peas or green beans for dinner.

Not only is it healthier, it is also cheaper. We buy packages of seeds for about $0.99 each and those typically last for about 3 years. We make our own fertilizer and soon we will have a rain bin so we can reuse rainwater instead of having to use it out of the tap. So far this year, we have spent $8, minus the cost of water, and it will feed us for about three months.

I will warn you, in the beginning it is a lot more expensive because you have to build the garden, get gardening tools and, in our case, buy lots and lots of dirt because our yard was full of clay. There are also materials for fertilizers, etc. However, after a couple of years, it is so worth it! Moreover, if you have kids, it is a perfect activity to do as a family that gets everyone up and outside.

If you ever have the chance or the desire to plant your own garden, I suggest you do it. Nothing tastes better than fresh fruits and vegetables!

The 100 Books List

One of my goals was to make a list of 100 books that I wanted to read and read them in the next couple years. At first, developing this list was easy. There was this running list in my head of classic British novels (probably my favorite genre) that I had always wanted to read and books on my bookshelf I had never finished; I had just never made the time. This was actually part of the reason I decided on that goal in the first place. Why 100 you ask? That number has no significance except I was watching A Walk To Remember at the time I wrote the goals list and she was “reading all the books on Mr. Rothman’s list of 100 contemporary American authors”, a list that does not actually exist. I know, I checked.

So, after I wrote down the classic British novels and the books on my bookshelf and only had about 30 books, I started to freak out a little bit. I looked online for lists and upon discovering the one form A Walk To Remember didn’t exist, I checked out a few websites where people voted on the books they loved the best. However, the voting websites just had different versions of Twilight and Harry Potter listed about 12 times each, so that wasn’t very helpful. Next I stumbled onto Times’ list of the 100 best books of all time. That got me about 15 more books added to my list. We were cruising now!

Then, a friend of mine introduced me to Good Reads. I spent HOURS on this site looking at different books and completing my list. I am pretty happy with it! If I didn’t have six of the books already, then I don’t know where I would have started. I want to read them all right now! So, without further ado….the list.

The List of 100 (in no particular order):

• Alice In Wonderland  by Lewis Carroll (currently reading)
• Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (currently reading)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• Me Talk Pretty one Day by David Sedaris
• On Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Brave New World by Aklous Huxley
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
• East of Eden by John Stenbeck
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Emma by Jane Austen
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chboksy
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
• The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The World According to Garp by John Irving
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Sound and the Fury by William Falkner
• A Little Princess by Fances Hodgson Burnett
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Sait-Exupery
• The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Dead Until Dark Charlaine Harris
• Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
• Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
• Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
• Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
• All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
• From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
• Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris
• Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
• If There Be Thorns by V.C. Andrews
• Seeds of Yesterday by V.C. Andrews
• Garden of Shadows by V.C. Andrews
• The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
• The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
• The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice
• Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice
• The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice
• Merrick by Anne Rice
• Blood and Gold by Anne Rice
• Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice
• Blood Canticle by Anne Rice
• The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter
• Heist Society by Ally Carter
• Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• Persuassion by Jane Austen
• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

So, there it is! I already started with the two e-books I had.  Next week, I am going to head down to my local library and get my library card renewed…apparently it doesn’t work anymore.

Electric Knives

We are just going to pretend that I posted this last night, okay??

I am going to make this short and sweet. I love electric knives. Whether you are trimming the fat off of meat, cutting chicken into chunks for chicken nuggets (or the low sodium, baked, not fried, sesame chicken I am currently making) or cutting a fresh pineapple, they work wonders! Hell, you can even use them to cut a turkey at Thanksgiving! So many things to do with one, so little time.

How I survived without one for all these years is beyond me.

Developing A Habit

They say it takes 21 days to make a habit and that is what I want, habits. The sad thing is, I need to make the things that I used to do every day, things normal people do everyday into habits. Here is why. In grad school, sleep, work and school became more important than anything. Showering went from an every day activity to every other day, and then only during the week. Brushing my teeth went from a twice a day thing to whenever I remembered thing. Flossing became a thing of the past, so did make-up and doing my hair. Ponytails became my friend. Eating healthy was traded in for a stop at the local fast food place in between jobs, internships and class. It is all very gross, I am aware.

In order to turn these things back into habits, I have made a list of all the things I want to do during the day that I had stopped doing previously. I am doing pretty well on most of those little habits I want to develop. I have put on make-up every day for two whole weeks…AND I have curled my hair every morning for almost a week. GO ME!

I’m eating healthier again and feeling better about myself because I don’t feel gross and disgusting all the time. I still have a long ways to go but I am learning to develop better, healthier habits. I mentioned before that I joined SparkPeople.com. Well, I also have been learning how to develop healthy hair and skin. I have started to treat my hair to decrease breakage and increase strength because of the heat that gets applied to it. I have also started to put lotion on every night before bed to make my skin healthier.

I also started on my list of 101 things in 1001 days. Well, I started on that list back in September when I started the other blog, but since it only had one post and I wanted to be able to manage them both under one account, I moved that one post to this new blog and updated my 101 things in 1001 days to reflect the things I had accomplished.

Back in October of 2010 I went through everything I owned, including the stuff in boxes in the attic and picked out the things I needed to keep and the things I could toss or sell. We had a garage sale for three weeks straight! I made almost $200! And I got ride of some of the clothes that are too big, or don’t fit me or I haven’t worn in years. This is good for me. I am kind of a clothes hog. Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money, so I never really had more clothes than I needed for one week. When I got to high school and my parents were making more money, I started to get more clothes. I had never really owned more than one pair of pants before, so I guess I just didn’t want to give them up. I find I still do that. Hold on to things until they wear out or someone forces me to throw them away because I am afraid I will go back to those days of only have five shirts and a pair of pants. This was my first step beyond breaking that habit. Once I FINALLY move, I will probably go through it all again.

In October I also visited New York City. I went there for a job interview, and I was only really there for an afternoon, but it was pretty damn awesome. When I walked out of Penn Station and stepped onto the streets of New York City it was like a dream come true. I was in awe of how tall everything was and for a minute I felt the weight of just how small I was in comparison to the world. Living in the midwest, you hear the stereotypes of rude people and overcrowdedness. In the six hours I spent there, none of that seemed true at all. The buildings were tall, yes, but everything seemed to fit there and there seemed to be so much space. Everyone was very nice. I had a nice conversation in Subway with two people I had never met about the homeless in the city. It was a fun experience and I can’t wait to go back and do all those touristy things people normally do their first time in NYC.

Earlier this week, I did something else pretty major. I payed off my last semester of school. It was a $2000 bill and only working part time it was hard to get the money together. I did though, and I paid them, in full. I was very proud of myself! Next stop, pay off my credit cards and then no more debt! (Other than my student loans that I will be paying off until I die).

I have done a few small things, like back up my music library and gave a copy to my mom (she has been begging me for YEARS), start a personal blog and subscribe to a Word of the Day Newsletter. Well, actually, I downloaded a Word of the Day Application on my iPhone, but whatever.

I have also started a few goals that haven’t been completed yet. I got a savings account back in December! Of course, it is much smaller now than it was a few months ago since I payed off my school. I have worn make-up every day for two weeks. Part of the reason I never wore make up before was I hated the way it felt on my skin. And it always looked flaky and gross, but Maybelline just came out with their Fit Me Foundations. Love, love, LOVE this make-up. Not only does it fit my skin tone (which is super hard to do because I am ridiculously pale) but it doesn’t feel heavy or flaky. The same week I got my awesome new make-up, I took a trip to my local health food store. I hate taking pills because when they hit my tongue I can taste the medicine and it makes me gag. So, I asked about alternatives at the health food store. We discussed liquid vitamins and capsule vitamins. I decided to try capsules first because liquid is so ridiculously expensive and poor me can’t really afford it right now, but so far they seem to be working okay. I still gag every once in awhile, but it isn’t on every single vitamin.

I have done some other things too that I am slowly completing. I bought re-usable bags to take the grocery store (I just have to remember them when I leave the house). I am paying my bills on time and not waiting until the last minute to send in the checks for credit card payments. I wrote out a morning routine (again, I just have to learn to stick to it!) and I made a list of TV shows I wanted to catch up on. Right now, I am watching Being Erica. It is a Canadian show they air on SoapNet. I saw the commercials all the time when I was catching up on The O.C. and I got curious. It is pretty cool. Other TV shows I am going to eventually catch up on are Supernatural, Dexter, Castle (I still haven’t seen the first few episodes of the first season), Bones, House, and The Tudors.

I am also working on the “Do an activity outside once a week for a month” goal. My parents have a garden in their back yard and they plant all kinds of fruits and vegetables, then can or freeze them to eat throughout the year. This year, I am helping and even growing a few things of my own! In the next week, I am also going to start my walking goals. A mile a day will keep the pounds away!

Where I Am Now

My life is in a place of in betweens. In July of 2010 I graduated with my Master’s Degree in Social Work. I was confronted with this vast future where I was no longer a student and had to be a grown up for the first time in my life. The end of one chapter of my life and the beginning of the next. I craved a change. I am 25 years old, not tied down and looking for a “grown up job” as my current boss jokingly refers to it. I figured now would be the best time in the world to do the one thing I have always wanted to do, move to the Northeast. So, I began looking for jobs online and applying. It is probably the scariest and most exciting thing I have ever done.

I am also trying to develop a healthier lifestyle. A little over three years ago I was told I am Borderline Insulin Resistant, which basically means I have an increased chance of developing diabetes when I am older. If you add on the fact that my grandmother is a full on diabetic, you can see how it might be cause for concern for me. I have been attempting to get my diet and exercise under control ever since. I have tried Atkins, Low Carb, and a Low Fat diet but with all of those I found myself failing more than I succeeded. Then I found SparkPeople. I have only been on it for a short while but I am learning how to build a healthy lifestyle, not just go on a diet. It gives me a place to track my nutrition, fitness and water consumption while helping me track my goals and provides support. I have also been able to turn other people onto the site!

I also want to change things about how I live my life. I want to be more open to relationships, be more spontaneous, and do many of the things I have always wanted to do. For a full list of these goals, go here.

So, that is where I am now. I hope whoever reads this enjoys the ride as much I hope I do.