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Last week I mentioned squoodles + meat sauce being my favorite meal of the week- my friend Maggie brought me squash from her mom's garden so I made it out of those, something about knowing my own friend picked the squash out of her garden made the squoodles taste so much better!

Servings: 4
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

  • 3 large squashes (squash? squashi?) (FREE from your bff's garden)
  • 1 lb lean ground turkey ($3.50)
  • 1/2 onion, chopped ($.50)
  • 1/2 green pepper, chopped ($.50)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup mushrooms, diced ($1.00)
  • 1 jar clean pasta sauce (I get mine at Trader Joe's for $1.89)
  • 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
  • 1 tablespoon parsley
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Season the ground turkey with the Italian seasoning and parsley. Brown the meat over medium-high heat. Once the meat is almost browned, add the green pepper and onion to the pan. Stir constantly over the medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes, add the jar of sauce and garlic. Cook for an addition 5-7 minutes over medium heat.

While the sauce is cooking, slice the squashes long-way into thin strips, then chop those thin strips into about 4 long skinny strips like this:

Toss the squoodles with the olive oil, salt and pepper then microwave for 2 minutes or until tender.

Once the meat sauce is done cooking, top your squoodles with it and enjoy! We also sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top and enjoyed with 2 buck chuck. Life is good!

This weekend was the first time I was at home with no major plans, visitors, weddings, etc in over 2 months!! It was so great! Friday I had a half day at work and stayed hungover until 10 pm so spent some quality time with Olivia and Elliot and the rest of the SVU crew.

Saturday we went to my friends' wedding brunch. They got married a few weeks ago in Seattle but we couldn't go because Harrison was the best man in another wedding so I was so glad we got to celebrate with them! 




Harrison and I grabbed lunch at Ted's Bulletin where we had- wait for this- homemade bacon and peanut butter poptarts. Liiiiikeee whaaaat



Then we did a little bar hopping for a friends' bday and I tried all kinds of new beers, my favorite being the 312 Urban Wheat.


I bopped over to Bethesda to meet up with other friends for the World Cup and we turned it into an all-night affair ending with karaoke, always a good night.

Sunday I did some massive cleaning and planted some herbs to grow myself (after asking above-mentioned Maggie 10,000 questions):


Andi had a play date with a neighbor named Ruby and they were adorable as usual- Andi clearly loves the camera, look how she is looking at it! That's my little diva!





And that was it! This week I am SUPER PUMPED because it's one of my college BFF's bachelorette parties in CHARLESTON!! I'm flying out Thursday afternoon and cannot freaking waaaiiiittt!

Linking up today with Biana, Leeann, Kimberlee

Clean Spaghetti = Squoodles + Meat Sauce and a weekend recap

Monday, July 14, 2014

Oh hey yall! Remember me? I used to blog here until Wedding/Binge Drinking Tour 2014 took its toll and I slept for a few days then hopped on a plane for ATL for my college BFF's wedding. If you followed on Instagram you saw how awesome and beautiful this wedding was, but just in case you don't I'll photo dump below haaa.

I gotta confess, I have been eating about as dirty and eating can get. And not exercising. But I guess a cool thing about being this age is that when I realized my clothes fit differently there was no meltdown or anything, I was like "welp that's what happens, I've pulled it together once I can pull it together again!"

So here I am trying to pull it together. This is the squasta with homemade pesto:


Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 20 mins (for the sausages)
Servings: 3

Ingredients:
  • 2 Squashes (squashi? squash?) ($3.00), sliced into "squoodles" with the mandolin or knife
  • 4 clean chicken sausages (I use Al Fresco from Wal Mart) ($5.00)
  • 1 cup mushrooms, sliced ($1.50)
  • 2 large tomatoes, diced ($2.00)
  • 1/2 onion, sliced ($.50)
For the pesto:
  • 2 cups fresh basil 
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup pine nuts
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/3 cup fresh parmesan
Cook your squoodles. Cook the sausage as according to the package (I grilled mine) and slice into bite size pieces. Saute the onion slices for about 5 minutes, then add in the mushrooms for another 3 minutes. The mushroom/onion concoction with tomatoes and sausage.

Combine all the ingredients for the pesto in a blender or food processor. I use the $20 Oster 6706 6-Cup Plastic Jar 10-Speed Blender from Amazon and blend until saucey.

Toss all the ingredients together and enjoy!

And now for my weekend photo dump:

Before I left for ATL I went to an ON POINT happy hour at 14K! Look at all this delicious food! I had DUCK TACOS. YES.


Said bye to Andi and hit the road (skies?) for ATL!!


The first night we went to Sweetwater Brewery where you pay $10 for 6 beers. SAY WHAT? I loovvvve the 420 and the summer blueberry beer (Nadine help me out- what is that called? I know you know!)

The best man sported this all weekend:


Rehearsal dined at Wahoo Grill in Decatur (YUM) and I died over this groom's cake. Can I have Andi as a wedding topper for my cake?


Hair appointments started at 7:30. We are so fortunate that the groom's mom lives right by the church in a beautiful condo:


We took pix at Piedmont Park and could not have asked for a more beautiful day! This is the only picture I could find from the photoshoot (the groom got all his groomsmen matching undies that have a zipper pocket for a flask):


I successfully did my own hair thanks to this youtube tutorial (any other curly haired people out there HATE getting their hair done because they always straighten it and it frizzes out in 5 minutes?):



The reception was held at the Trolley Barn in Decatur. Beautiful.


And we rode around the city for a few hours in a trolley with the wedding party. It was a blast and I want to figure out how to do something like this at my wedding!


So tell me: how do you get back on track after you've fallen waaayyyy off track?

I'm baaackkk with Pesto Squoodles & Weekend Recapsss!

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Happy Monday! Big surprise this week- I'm on top of my game enough to have a post out on Monday!


We had friends over for dinner the other night and Harrison and I came up with this awesomely crispy chicken parm. I've never been a big chicken parm person but this was good, and we were able to throw it together pretty quickly.

Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 30 mins
Servings: 4

Ingredients:
  • 1.5 lbs chicken breasts, thawed (we flattened our's out with a meat tenderizer then sliced each one into about 9 strips) ($6.00)
  • 3 eggs, whisked ($.50)
  • 1/2 cup corn starch  ($.40)
  • 2/3 cup ground flaxseed (PS I found ground flaxseed at Trader Joe's for the best price)
  • 1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning 
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 2 medium sized squashes, sliced into strips with a Mandolin  
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil 
  • Salt & pepper to taste
  • 2 cups of your choice of spaghetti sauce (I use garlic & basil sauce from Trader Joe's)
  • 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Set up your stations: 1 medium sized bowl with the corn starch, 1 medium bowl with the eggs, 1 medium bowl with the ground flaxseed mixed with the Italian seasoning and garlic powder, and a non-stick baking sheet.

Dip each chicken strip into the corn starch, then the egg, then the flaxseed/seasoning mix, then set on the baking sheet. Do this for all the chicken strips. Bake for 25 minutes. While chicken is baking, cook the squoodles . After 25 minutes, remove from the oven and glob 3 spoonfuls of the sauce onto each chicken strip, then sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on top. Put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Top the squoodles with the chicken. We served it with my friend Allie's caprese salad and it. was. banginnnn.


So on to  the weekend recap. If you read this blog you may or may not have picked up on the fact that I am nerd alert central: I get my rocks off crunching numbers in Excel, making charts and graphs, learning new statistical methods, reading studies, and all things NPR. So when I found out that you can go on TOURS OF NPR'S HEADQUARTERS I booked that immediately. We did it Friday and OMG:



When you're listening to Morning Edition and other national NPR programs, this is where the producers sit:


We got to sit in the actual sound studios, put on headphones, play with microphones, nerd out big time. Fun fact: NPR listeners on the West Coast hear the best quality shows because of the 3 hour delay- producers can go back and fix little things they don't like by the time it airs in California, but here on the East Coast we have a mere 3 minute delay so there's not that kind of time. Crazy huh? Or is that just me?


We hit up the Building Museum to see the giant human maze  and I had a panic attack just looking at it:



That evening we went to Jazz in the Garden, then tried out a new restaurant rooftop called 1905 for a friend's bday (def recommend- food menu looked good and great beer and cocktail options):


Saturday I went on a Boomerang Tubing Tour (we decided to do a redneck theme for our party) for a friend's bday we loaded a coach bus with booze and food and rode 2 hours to the Shenandoah valley..beautiful and so fun!


Nothing says redneck like temporary tats and lime-a-ritas. I don't even want to talk about how hard I scrubbed my arm to get my tats off before church the next morning...


Sunday we hit up a new DC brewery called Right Proper Brewing Company and they had this super funky mural that I am obsessed with:



Linking up today with Biana- come play!


Clean Crispy Chicken Parm w/Squoodles + Weekend Recap

Monday, August 18, 2014

Another start of the week, another weekend filled with too much fun and/or relaxation to prep my meals. This means another meal plan of meals that will require 20ish minutes of prep per day made with only ingredients found at Trader Joe's because that is around the corner from my work and I can go there on my lunch break to pick up groceries.

Sidenote: am I the only one who finds it 100000 x more difficult to stay healthy in the spring/summer? The nice weather makes it very hard for me to do anything besides sitting outside sipping a summer cocktail (exercise and meal prep fall to the 49th priority on my warm weather priority list). Actually, I know the answer to that question and the answer is I AM CORRECT. I know this from my extremely scientific and valid study of grocery store crowds. Winter = packed on Sunday afternoons, spring/summer = lines winding through every aisle on Monday after work. Now that I think about it, the Trader Joe's checkout guy last week definitely validated my findings. He also said he wanted to start a blog about the weirdest combinations of things he sees people buy at Trader Joe's. Yes PLEASE.

Anyway- here's my slacker meal plan for the week:



Now let's talk about that time I didn't do any meal prepping so threw together item of food living in my fridge (would we call this salad?) and it turned out to be so fabulous that I ate it every single day and will continue to eat again this week. Here's a little collage and here are some of the recipes:


I made a big batch of this paleo friendly garlic dijon dressing and topped each salad with it. I could probably just drink that for lunch every day and be happy.


Salad #1

  • Handful spinach, chopped
  • Handful kale, chopped
  • 1/2 zucchini, chopped
  • handful blueberries, chopped
  • 1/8 white onion, diced
  • Handful fresh green beans, chopped
  • 1 slice Trader Joe's deli turkey

Salad #2

  • Handful spinach, chopped
  • Handful grapes, halved
  • 1 cup cooked squoodles (left over from dinner last week. Used the wrong setting on the spiralizer and they turned out beautiful!)
  • 2 slices red onion, diced
  • 1/4 avocado, cubed
  • 1 slice Trader Joe's deli turkey
Salad #3
  • Handful spinach/kale mix, chopped
  • Leftover paleo "fried" chicken (recipe for this coming soon I promise)
  • Handful cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1 slice of bacon, ripped up (bitted? what do you even call that?)
  • 1/4 avocado, cubed

Salad #4

  • Handful chopped spinach/kale mix
  • Handful strawberries, halved
  • Handful blueberries
  • 2 slices red onion, diced
  • 1/4 avocado, cubed
  • Handful green beans, chopped
  • 1 slice Trader Joe's deli turkey


What is your favorite salad to eat? 

 OH and how could I almost forget? A very happy anniversary to Kimye, and a huge thanks to mom of the year Kris for posting this video which makes me feel a LOT better about my awkward first dance.

That time I ate salad every day for 2 weeks + slacker paleo meal plan

Tuesday, May 26, 2015


So like I said yesterday, we only ate crockpot meals for about 2 weeks straight so that's all I've got right now. And if you don't own a crockpot get yourself one- mine came from Goodwill but Amazon has decent ones for under $30 too. 

PS does anyone else out there use Amazon Prime? It has changed my life! Every little thing in our house (light switch covers, outlet covers (which are usually expensive because we have to get baby-proofed ones because Andi licks outlets..I just), cabinet handles) came from there, and I've discovered ordering things like chia seeds and protein powder and other groceries that are harder to find at regular stores. And it all comes the next day! Like what?? I ordered a rug from Target and got an e-mail 3 days later that it had shipped but my take 48 hours for my shipping info to be available. My mind was blown because I forgot things take more than overnight to ship. So I'm spoiled.


Anway onto the recipe. The crowd I made this for was incredibly skeptical. That crowd being Harrison and my friend Leslie. Harrison is skeptical about anything that I say is clean even though he eats my clean meals every day, but old habits die hard I guess. Leslie was super skeptical about these squash noodles I made, but you know what? Everyone had seconds. Lindsay for the win, as usual.

Servings: 5
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 4 hours in the crockpot on high

Ingredients

  • 1 lb lean ground turkey ($3.50)
  • 1/2 onion, diced finely ($.50)
  • 1/2 bell pepper, diced finely ($.50)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced (but we LOVE garlic so you can go easier if you're not such a fan)
  • 1 cup of oat flower (I put old fashioned oats in the blender until they were a flour-like consistency)
  • 1 jar clean tomato sauce, divided (I use Italian Spaghetti sauce from Trader Joe's- no sugar or other badness) ($2.50)
  • 1/4 cup oats
  • 2 Tablespoons Italian seasoning
  • 1 Tablespoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 Tablespoon onion powder
Mix all the ingredients EXCEPT the tomato sauce togheter (sidenote: if using your hands and removing your engagement ring to do so, put your engagement ring somewhere that you'll remember to avoid 3 minutes of sheer panic) and form into balls. Mine were about 4" around. Spray the crockpot with non-stick spray, put the balls in, pour half the jar of sauce in the crockpot and cook for 4 hours on high. I also threw in a few slices of onion and pepper.



For the squoodles (squash noodles): 2 squashes. Squashes? Squash? Sqashi? It all sounds wrong.

Anway, using a mandolin slice the squash lengthwise, then slice each slice into thin noodle-like slices. Toss them with olive oil or cocounut oil and salt and pepper and throw 'em on a plate like this:


And microwave for 2 mins. HA. That's it. So easy!

What is your favorite crockpot meal?


Linking up today at Delicious Dish Tuesday, Turn It Up Tuesday, 


Clean Eating Crockpot Meatballs with Sqash Noodles

Tuesday, June 3, 2014



As I mentioned earlier, I am dabbling in the world of pasta for the first time in my life - and yes, I have gone almost 30 years without ever cooking or enjoying pasta (every time I mention this people act like I'm saying I murdered someone) so there's a bit of a learning curve here. Not posted: pasta fails from last week  /:


This one was too easy, we both liked it, and we had leftovers for days. I never considered cooking with fresh ginger until I tried out Blue Apron (for a week) and now I want to add it to everything! I love the flavor the ginger adds! What else can I cook with ginger? Suggestions please!

Servings: 4
Cook Time: 20 mins
Prep Time: 5 mins



Ingredients
  • 6 oz organic pasta, rice noodles, or squoodles (whatever you prefer, I used the organic pasta from Wal-Mart) $2
  • 1 container Trader Joe's Asian Stir Fry Veggies ($4)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced 
  • 1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
  • 1 handful cashews, chopped ($.50)
  • 2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce (Paleo DIY)
  • Lime juice of 1/2 lime 
  • 2 teaspoon olive oil/coconut oil/cooking fat of choice
  • Salt & pepper

Cook the pasta. While pasta is cooking, coat a large frying pan with olive oil or cooking fat of your choice and heat. Add in the vegetables and garlic, season with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat, stirring, for about 5 minutes. Add in the ginger and cashews and cook another 3-5 minutes.

Once the pasta is ready add it to the pan. Add the soy sauce and lime juice and continue to cook over medium heat, covered for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Annnd that's it!

Meatless Monday Ginger Soy Veggie Stir Fry

Monday, February 15, 2016

I'm back from the best week ever! Recap of our wedding and Cancun honeymoon and photodumps coming soon, as well as zillions of posts on all the things I've learned along the way. Thankfully we seem to have brought the warmth back with us from Cancun, and today, I'm trying to get it togetha meal wise (no room service here! What a drag!).

I thought we would do paleo pre-wedding and probably give up afterwards, but Harrison and I both feel SO much better eating this way so we're sticking to it! Here's the food for the tiny bit of the week I have:

Breakfast for the week

  • Green Smoothies
  • New Breakfast Casserole (recipe coming soon, after taste test haha)


Lunch for the week

 Crockpot Chicken & Okra from Healthy Seasonal Recipes


Dinners:

Snacks:
  • Almonds
  • Roasted beets
  • Sugar snap peas
Dessert
Almond Flour Brownies (GAME CHANGERS. MAKE THESE NOW)


And for now I leave you with a few pix from the wedding and beyond:
(yes, we made cardboard cutouts of our dogs and Kim K ugly crying face)


Best bridesmaid snapchat:



Sneak Peak from the photographer (yes. epic snow. everywhere. in March):



Ultimate Selfie:


Annnd I have zero pictures from the honeymoon because I did not turn my phone on once (confession: I checked my email every morning to make sure the dogs were ok. #CrazyDogLady), but I have plenty of GoPro footage coming soon!

PS I got a juicer off our registry! Any suggestions?? Besides fresh juice for mimosas of course..

I'm baaack! Paleo Meals for the week + A few wedding pix

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

It's FRIDAY! We MADE IT! Your's truly went to a free open bar last night that included all the alcohol you can drink with no food so is driving the strugglebus this morning. I'm too old for this. Today's post is all my favorite things besides open bars. Linking up with Amanda!

Favorite news of the week:


Because who doesn't love hot dads. And Ryan Gosling. And Eva Mendes. And beautiful people making beautiful babies. Or are their babies going to come out ugly? You know how two impossibly beautiful people tend to create ugly children? Is that just me?


 Favorite Instagram pic:



Favorite soccer player to watch on Sunday:

Hi yes hi

Favorite dog video:

Dogs are dumb and I just love everything about them.



Favorite "Tim Howard Could Have Saved":

I don't know why but this kills me every time I see it. Every. Time.

PS: Did you know Tim Howard has nudey pix out? I thought only women were expected to release nudey pix when they get famous, but I was wrong and thank you sweet baby Jesus for that. Google it, you'll be glad you did. Trust me. Really, ladies, trust me.  



Favorite Teen Mom Moment:

Not just one moment, but a whole compilation of Babs moments. Thank you, MTV.



Favorite inspiration:




Favorite mind-blowing fact that changes EVERYTHING:
Yoga Jones from OITNB is the VOICE OF PATTY MAYONAISE? What the what? Other mind blowing OITNB facts here.
Favorite Meal of the week:


My friend Maggie brought me squash from her mom's garden so we had squoodles and some delicious meat sauce (recipe coming soon). Note Harrison's awkward hands in the corner.



Favorite Andi selfie: 

"Pensive"


New favorite thing to say:





Friday Favorites

Friday, July 11, 2014

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