Shirred eggs and eggs Benedict are my two favorite egg-based breakfast foods. It is also probably one of my top 5 favorite recipes I’ve posted so far. I certainly don’t make it every day. It is a lot more time-consuming than regular bacon and eggs. But it is a delicious weekend treat! Eggs Benedict Wellness Mama …
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Last week’s meals included two vegetarian meals, my favorite salmon, a bowl of comforting butternut squash-based soup, an Instant Pot fail (oops!) and some super easy throw-together eats. Hopefully one of the below meals pops out at you if you’re looking for some dinner inspiration to add t o your weekly meal plan!
(I forgot to snap a pic on my phone other than the one I shared directly on Instagram Stories so that’s where this one was from!)
I wasn’t sure what to made for dinner on Monday night since we were low on groceries so I used some pantry staples to make a batch of baked rotini. First, I cooked up a box of rotini on the stovetop and then added jarred marinara, shredded cheese and Italian seasonings to the mix. I then poured the pasta into a baking dish, topped it with additional shredded cheese and baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes until the cheese melted. After topping it with a bit of fresh parsley, we were good to go!
This recipe was a delicious find. I love butternut squash-based soups, especially this time of year, and this recipe did not disappoint. I ended up making it in the Instant Pot and after sautéing onion, garlic and zucchini (the zucchini was my addition), I added all of the remaining ingredients and pressure cooked it on high for 15 minutes. The only other change I made was to use frozen cubed butternut squash in place of fresh to make things a little easier. I also mashed it up a bit with my spoon once it was done cooking because I prefer a thicker broth and loved the was the butternut squash almost dissolved into the broth giving it a velvety texture. The end result was a flavorful batch of soup that was perfect for a chilly fall night!
This meal was one of my favorites of the week! It was so flavorful and every aspect of this meal just worked together in a wonderful way. I paired baked maple ginger salmon (I prepped it using my maple ginger salmon marinade) with ginger sesame broccoli (aka my favorite way to prepare broccoli of all time) and a rather random grain-based side dish. For our second side, I stirred a Daily Harvest Cremini + Miso Oat Bowl into some fluffy brown rice I prepared in chicken broth and fluffed up in a bit of butter. The miso flavor from the oat bowl was amazing and I added a bit of frozen peas to the grains before serving them with our salmon and broccoli. I was just bummed there were no leftovers after this meal for me to enjoy for lunch the next day!
This meal was not my favorite of the week but I cannot fault the Instant Pot ranch chicken recipe because I veered from it quite a bit. I already had a bunch of cooked rice on hand that I made earlier in the week so I omitted the rice from the recipe and I think that’s where I went wrong. I tried to adjust the amount of liquid accordingly but ended up with some seriously soupy ranch chicken. It wasn’t the best and I definitely wouldn’t recommend modifying the recipe like I did if you try it. On the side we had brown rice and zucchini sautéed in butter and garlic salt. At least the sides were decent!
The boys were craving grilled cheese last Friday night and that sounded good to me, too, so I made a bunch of grilled cheeses for the family and served them with a side of ALDI’s Simply Nature organic lentil soup. (I added peas to the soup but that was the only way I altered it.) I think this meal wins top prize for the easiest meal of the week!
What was the best thing you ate for dinner last week?
The post Week of Weeknight Meals: October 2021 appeared first on Peanut Butter Fingers.
Via Health & Wellness http://www.rssmix.com/Today, I’m excited to have Lee Holden as a guest on the podcast. Lee has been a Qi Gong teacher for 28 years. If you aren’t familiar with Qi Gong, it’s a new tool I’ve been using for movement, stress relief, and breathing. He started practicing Qi Gong when he nearly lost his ability to …
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Via Health & Wellness http://www.rssmix.com/Our Halloween fun kicked off on Saturday morning! Well, technically our anniversary was the first thing we celebrated over the weekend.
Ryan and I celebrated our 11-year wedding anniversary on Saturday and exchanged small gifts at breakfast. Ryan is a wonderful partner and eleven years have truly flown by. Every single day I feel immense gratitude to God for our relationship and the life we’ve created together. It’s a good one and Ryan is at the core of it.
As for our Halloween fun, we didn’t waste any time getting into the Halloween spirit on Saturday. Ryan, my father-in-law and I took the boys to Birkdale Village for some trick-or-treating outside of some of the local businesses. We told the big kids to choose their costumes for the day and since they wanted to “save” their new costumes for “real Halloween,” they went digging in our costume bin an emerged as a grasshopper and a monkey!
I can never resist an opportunity to dress up, too, so I grabbed the tiger onesie I originally bought for a Las Vegas-themed party Ryan and I went to a few years ago and joined in the fun.
As for Rhett, his costume was our favorite of the day!
Rhetty Spaghetti!
Our family calls Rhett “Rhetty Spaghetti” all the time so when I had the idea to dress him up as a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, we had to find a way to make it happen.
I owe a huge thank you to my mom for taking my idea and running with it in the best way. She swears she genuinely enjoys making Halloween costumes and I’m only all the more grateful for it! She did such an amazing job with Rhett’s costume and we absolutely loved our little Rhetty Spaghetti!
As an added bonus, Rhett didn’t pick at his yarn noodles or meatballs at all and his costume seemed comfortable enough for him to walk around in all over Birkdale while one of us followed after him.
We recently coined Rhett’s favorite activity as “Adventure Baby Walks” where we let Rhett lead the way and follow him wherever his baby heart desires. Chase and Ryder get a big kick out of Adventure Baby Walks because we’ve ended up behind bushes, traipsing through dirt, crawling under low branches, etc.
In the midst of Adventure Baby Walks at Birkdale, we let the boys play outside in the grass and eat some candy before piling back into the car and heading home for lunch.
Rhett is officially down to one nap a day and once we had him settled, Ryder went into his room for some quiet time. Greg also rested a bit (he is staying with us right now due to some health concerns) and Ryan did a little yard work while Chase and I curled up on the couch to watch the first Harry Potter movie.
Chase and I finished the first Harry Potter book last week and it was so, so fun to see him get so excited to see the story unfold through the movie! We ended up splitting the movie up into two days since it’s a long one and now I want to re-watch the whole series. The books and the movies are just so good!
We spent the rest of our Saturday close to home and took the boys on a walk/bike ride before ordering pizza and calling it a night.
Our Halloween began with pancakes and Owl-oween at the Carolina Raptor Center!
We’ve been to the Raptor Center a bunch of times in the past and it’s one of our favorite local spots because of the beautiful shady trails and the large assortment of birds of prey. The center admits more than 900 birds a year and releases approximately 70 percent back into the wild which I think is pretty amazing.
Hat: Wide Brim Fedora / Jeans: Old Navy / Booties: Dansko (gifted) / Sweater: American Eagle (old)
We actually lucked into attending Owl-oween and didn’t realize the event was happening that morning until the boys were handed little bags to fill up with stickers, candy and treats around the property. Creature Man Chase especially loved the presentation involving a large Eurasian eagle owl and was absolutely captivated the whole time.
We joked at the end of our time at the Raptor Center that Rhett had the best time of all of us since he just got to wander all over the place. It blows my mind how little kids progress from not walking to never stopping within a month or two. Baby on the move!
After the Raptor Center, we headed home for some downtime. Ryan made lunch on the grill and we watched the rest of Harry Potter while Rhett napped for nearly three hours.
Once Rhett was up, we all changed into our Halloween costumes and headed off to our friends’ house for a pre-trick-or-treating Halloween party!
Chase and Ryder chose our costumes this year and we went as a family of astronauts!
One unexpected bonus of our costumes: The fluorescent orange jumpsuits made it super easy to keep track of our gang as they sprinted from house to house collecting candy. Win!
It’s so fun to see how the different ages of our kids played into how they experienced Halloween this year. Chase was all about hanigng with his friends and running as fast as he could from house to house. Ryder oscillated between trying his best to keep up with the big kids and taking little stroller breaks with me and Rhett. Ryder and Rhett got the star treatment when I’d wheel them up to the tables of candy people had set up at the bottom of their driveways!
Since Halloween was on a school night this year, we didn’t stay out too late and managed to make it home around 8 p.m. The boys loved sorting through their candy and talking about the best finds of the night. Any kind of lollipop is a current favorite with both Chase and Ryder this year which bodes well for me and Ryan who will happily take all the chocolate!
We eventually managed to get everyone out of their costumes and into bed. Once everyone was settled, I broke out my computer to get a little work done before Ryan and I both read our books in bed for a little bit before finally falling asleep.
Now it’s time to get this day started! I have a feeling I might need to wake up at least two of the three boys shortly so we don’t miss school this morning after last night’s fun!
The post Halloween 2021 appeared first on Peanut Butter Fingers.
Via Health & Wellness http://www.rssmix.com/Sugar is almost unavoidable in our modern society, but it has a huge impact on our health. That’s why many look for sugar alternatives. However, many zero-calorie and artificial sweeteners aren’t any better than sugar itself. Monk fruit extract is an alternative sweetener. It’s low in calories and may be a good choice for those …
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Via Health & Wellness http://www.rssmix.com/Generally we avoid hard tasks, putting them off while we either do easier tasks or distract ourselves. This is understandable, as a hard task might feel daunting or overwhelming, but spending our hours on urgent but easy tasks vs. difficult but important tasks is generally a costly choice.
So let’s talk for a minute about hard tasks. If we can focus on them and get them done, we can have a greater impact in a fraction the time.
The reason we tend to avoid hard tasks is usually because they are daunting — filled with uncertainty and filled with lots of sub-tasks to the point of being overwhelming. We also fear failing at them.
So what I’ve found to help are things people know but often dismiss:
These take practice. Start with the first item, and get into the practice of focusing on hard tasks in small bits. The amount of hard but important tasks you’re going to start crushing will be staggering.
The post Tackling Hard Tasks appeared first on zen habits.
Via Health & Wellness http://www.rssmix.com/Aside from Halloween, we’ll also be celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary this Saturday! And by “celebrating” I mean we’ll be spending the day as a family without any major plans on the agenda but that was what we both wanted so we’re looking forward to it. 11 years has truly flown by!
I’m sure I’ll have a weekend recap to share with you guys on the blog on Monday but, until then, I hope you have a wonderful weekend and a very Happy Halloween! Now let’s dive into this week’s roundup of Friday favs!
(Overalls: This is the ripped black pair. I sized up and was glad I did. / Shoes: Madewell / Ribbed Tank Top: An old Aerie find but the fit is similar to this $8 high-neck Target tank.)
Earlier this week, I shared a recap of Ryan’s first Half Ironman but didn’t go into much detail about the rest of our weekend in Wrightsville Beach and felt like it deserved a highlight here today! Wrightsville Beach is located east of Wilmington and is about 4 hours from our home in the Charlotte area. It’s such a charming little beach town and now that we’ve been, I cannot believe we didn’t make the drive over sooner.
We stayed in a beach townhouse off Lumina Avenue (Station One condos) and loved the walkability of the area. Aside from driving to and from the Ironman-related events, we never used our car and easily walked to restaurants, shops and the pier from our rental. I love the way the restaurants within walking distance of the beach all felt relatively unique to the area and we had a great time trying new-to-us spots. Our favorites from the weekend included Tower 7, a Baja Mexican-inspired restaurant, The Original Ice Cream Stand (the graham cracker ice cream was amazing!) and The Workshop, a local coffee, sandwich and smoothie shop! Chase would also say the Trolly Stop was a favorite since their hotdogs were “the best he ever had in the whole land.”
When we were wrapped up in race-related events, we spent most of our time at the beach and meandering along Lumina Avenue to the pier. The boys loved walking out onto Johnnie Mercers Fishing Pier mainly because it was so high above the ocean (so cool!) and there were a lot of people out fishing who happily showed the boys the Spanish mackerel they caught. To be honest, I feel like we only began to scratch the surface on Wrightsville Beach and I suppose that just means our family has to return again soon!
On Sunday, before heading back home, we promised the boys “one last morning of vacation” and drove over to Kure Beach to check out the North Carolina Fort Fisher Aquarium. The aquarium was a gem of a place and we spent two hours looking at the various marine life and playing on the outside playground.
We thought the aquarium fun ended inside and had no idea there was such an awesome playground and boardwalk outside that ended up entertaining our crew for quite a while. It was the perfect stop to get some energy out before making the four-hour drive back home.
I have to give a shout out to the Ironman community one more time! Earlier this week, I received a message on Instagram of a screenshot of a photo of our family at the finish line of Ryan’s first Half Ironman. The screenshot was of the above photo which was posted in an Ironman 70.3 North Carolina Facebook group above a caption said the man who posted the image was trying to find our family because his wife took the picture and wanted us to have it. How thoughtful is that!? I requested to join the group so I could thank them both and really appreciate having this photo to help us remember such an awesome day!
The holiday season is nearly upon us which means ALDI’s holiday candles are just beginning to trickle into their stores. As Rhett and I were grocery shopping together on Wednesday morning, I couldn’t resist throwing a few of their fall candles in my cart for our family and the boys’ teachers as a little Halloween surprise. They smell fantastic and I love the way ALDI has really stepped up their game aesthetically and makes their seasonal candles look beautiful, too!
Remember this gem from last holiday season? I’m crossing my fingers they’ll be back with the Anthropologie Volcano candle dupes again this year!
In an effort to be better at taking the time to analyze some of my analytics, a few months ago I began sharing a monthly recap in my Friday posts highlighting my top 10 blog posts and your top 10 favorite finds from the blog + Instagram. Hopefully this will also help you check out some blog posts you might have missed or help you easily locate an item I’ve mentioned in the past that got buried in blog/social media mayhem.
Here’s a peek at was you guys liked best in October 2021!
Note: This roundup does not include Things I’m Loving Friday posts.
Halloween Spider Cupcakes (Something fun to make this weekend!)
Pumpkin Spice Cake Mix Cupcakes (The easiest semi-homemade pumpkin cupcakes on the planet. Only two ingredients!)
What is one thing that made you smile this week?
The post Things I’m Loving Friday #390 appeared first on Peanut Butter Fingers.
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