Rainy Saturday

Today is a rainy Saturday and it is awesome. I have the sniffles but I am so hopeful it will not turn into a sinus infection because the soudafed (sp?) has been very helpful! Usually, for me at least, when it is a sinus infection the decongestant does nothing for me. Anyways, so I was bummed because I was super busy last week and didn't get to go to the gym since Monday and was so looking forward to going Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday (since next week will be busy too). However, I am enjoying lounging around in my yoga pants and carolina sweatshirt. Right now Animal Plant is on, it's really relaxing and I like learning about different breeds of dogs. It is a nice Saturday filler between football games.

I'm obsessed with dogs. Corgi's in particular. However, when the time is right for Andrew and I to finally adopt our adorable ball of fur we'll go to a shelter or try to rescue one and it'll be whatever is availible. One day however, I will get a corgi because Andrew moved us to North Dakota. It seemed fair to both of us at the time. Corgi's love the cold :) We do probs want to wait on a corgi until we have slightly older kids so it won't herd and nip a baby. It wouldn't do it to be mean but it is something to think about, it can't fight nature. So who know's what we'll actually get. I do like big dogs too. A golden retriever or a chocolate lab would be awesome.

Ok so I love food blogs and while I do not want to turn this into a food blog because I don't really create recipes but I do want to share some recipes I've made lately that have been awesome!

So, one of the first things Andrew and I made one weekend was this super easy and tasty chicken!
Of course I had pinned this recipe a while ago. It's called "Man Pleasing Chicken" I enjoyed it too as a woman.
So easy, you just take some chicken thighs and cook them in a sauce made from dijon mustard, maple syrup, and rice wine vinegar. Here's the link to the blog, but I highly recommend. I served it over rice with a side salad. Heats up well in leftovers.
http://www.wittyinthecity.com/2011/08/man-pleasing-chicken/

Last week our church (Grace Episcopal) had a unity service where they combined the morning and evening services into one service in the afternoon followed by a potluck. So, we have a kitchenaid now (thanks Meme and Papa!) and I want to use it but don't want to have baked goods a lot and also we were sad about USC loosing to UGA :( so the normal response is to make cookies, right? Well it's totes fine if you give them away which we did!
This is another pinterest recipe which I really liked because it was easy and the clean up was easy as well! I enjoy cooking but HATE cleaning up which sometimes that alone will discourage me from baking.
They were "Perfect M&M Cookies" and that they were! I like how they had both mini chocolate chips AND mini m&m's. One batch made about 2 dozen but we had enough stuff to make a second batch so we did so we could enjoy some Saturday night and soothe the sadness that football brought us. Also, as new people at church we didn't want to bring something bad...
Here's the recipe!
http://picky-palate.com/2013/04/03/how-to-make-perfect-m-and-m-cookies/

Tonight, for this rainy Saturday and football evening we are going to make a long loved recipe, white turkey chili! We FINALLY found ground turkey in the grocery stores here. Walmart has it but I really don't feel comfortable buying meat from Walmart. Coborns has the Jenny-O tubes of 1 lb ground turkey and it's not my fave but I had gotten so used to substituting turkey for beef I was so upset when Coborns didn't have it the first few weeks we were here. I was distraught. Ok that was dramatic, I was very upset. Anyways, they've had it for a while now and I just buy one every time I go and if it's not going to be used that week I'm going to freeze it. ANYWAYS, I love this white turkey chili from SkinnyTaste. SkinnyTaste is one of my favorite food blogs! It is very indepth and a lot of the recipes are complicated but the lady who writes it always calculates the Weight Watchers points of her recipes which is nice, even if you don't do Weight Watchers the number of points helps you gauge how healthy the recipe may be. Usually her recipes have a lot of flavor from the spices she uses so the first few you do may be a little expensive but once you have the basic supplies they are not as expensive. I'd say that's the only reason I don't eat off of skinny taste constantly.
I actually halved this recipe and even with it halved I only use 1lb of turkey because well, who can afford 3 lbs of ground turkey? Plus Andrew and I will have to work to eat all 7 servings of this, much less 14!
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2008/03/white-bean-turkey-chili-4-pts.html
And if you're keeping track, one cup is only 5 WW points! What a deal!
This heats up well too. I will probs have some for lunch on Monday :)

So, that's what's going on here... Next week is busy. Tuesday I'm going to Bismarck for BMSO rehearsal, Thursday I'm going to Fargo for my first SAI alumnae meeting (!!!), Friday I have BMSO but Andrew is going to come with me and we're going to get dinner and explore some (that rehearsal I only play on the last piece), then Saturday is the concert!

Here's to hoping these sniffles go away! At least before Tuesday but I'd love to go to HIIT class at the gym on Monday.

BTW, Go cocks! Beat Vandy!

ALSO if any teacher friends/vocalists have any recommendations for hot tea to soothe the throat please let me know! I get paid on Friday (finally!) and am going to place an order to Adagio and am looking for some herbal tea to keep at school/drink after school.