Week Ahead’s Meal Plan #1

Happy Sunday!  We’re one day closer to Thanksgiving! 🙂 (I’m suuuuuuuper excited for it.. Kait, not so much.)

We’re hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year.  Since I was little, it has always been my dream to be able to cook the Thanksgiving meal.  Dreams do come true, kids!

I thought I’d share with you my meal plan for the upcoming week.  Since we only really grocery shop once a month, I typically meal plan a month in advance.

Most of the weeknight meals are crockpot meals.  With it getting darker earlier, I find myself not wanting to cook when I get home from work.  I’ve taken to my crockpot to do the work for me in these cases.

Sunday- Chicken parm with asparagus and stuffing
Monday- Turkey chili with rice
Tuesday- Leftover chili with rice
Wednesday- BBQ chicken sandwiches
Thursday- Italian marinated chicken breast
Friday- Sweet & sour chicken with pineapple
Saturday- Eating out

Wednesday’s and Thursday’s dinners are the only crockpot dinners this week.  And as you can see, we eat a lottttttt of chicken.  It’s simple and cheap!

I try to schedule in days that we will go out to eat so that we’re less likely to deviate from the meal plan.  And it gives us something to look forward to!  It doesn’t always work out though. Oh well.

Also, the meal plan is not set in stone.  I think that’s gotta be Kait’s mantra.  Sometimes I get so stuck on “ugh we’re having this or that tonight and I don’t feel like it.”  It’s really just a guideline to stay on track with meals.

Along with our dinner meal plan, I like to have a rough idea of some breakfast and lunches we’ll have during the week.  I take Sunday nights (right before dinner) to prep these for the week.

This week, breakfasts will be yogurt and granola or overnight oats.  Lunches are ham sandwiches, potato salad, energy bites, and a piece of fruit or crackers.

A tip if you prep your sandwiches a week in advance: put the condiment between the meat and the cheese so it doesn’t touch the bread.  With the condiment never touching my bread, I find that my bread doesn’t get soggy on me.  Also, we toast all the bread for our sandwiches because we keep our bread frozen.  It helps keep the bread firmer in the fridge as well.

Do you meal plan?  What helps you the most when planning your meals for the week?

Have a great week this week! 🙂

xoxo,

How Cooking Saves Me

Within the last month or so, I have slowly started to feel like myself again.  I am back in therapy, albeit extremely expensive, and have returned myself to being a slave of the kitchen yet again.  But I don’t mind.

Though I still feel like I cry a whole lot more than I should, I am feeling a little better.  The biggest stress in my life is still my job.  I can’t get around the fact that I hate it.  Like, completely loathe it.  I’ve been struggling with if it’s the career field (healthcare) that I’m getting fed up with or the company I’m working for.  Either way, I’ve got this constant idea in the back of my mind that I am not doing what I was born to do.  I love helping people, so so much.  But what if I wasn’t put on this earth for it?  What if there is a career out there that would suit me so much more that I am overlooking?  And I fear that career is one in culinary that I just don’t know how to get to.

Either way, I have been back in my kitchen and cooking a whole lot more.  I got myself back in with making a one-pot-pasta-and-veggie dish.  Very simple, very quick.  But as I was chopping all the veggies up, I felt the anxiety of the day slowly start to flow out of my fingertips and down through the knife.  My frustrations and worries became energized in the chopping and butchering of these poor veggies.  But it felt good.  So good.

After really realizing how good the kitchen felt again, I have been on a kick to cook good food.  That, and we’re so broke, so eating out isn’t really an option right now.  The second feel-good food I can remember making is flatbread pizzas.  They’re a staple and total comfort food in our house.  And they can be easily made kid-friendly or gourmet, whichever pleases your palette.  It’s one of those foods where you can get as creative as you like.  And ours ended up being little pizzas with some cherry tomatoes, arugula, and a poached egg.  Delicious.

After that, I felt like I was really getting my game back.  I had a conversation about that exact dinner with a coworker who thought that was the most creative recipe she’d heard of.  Surprising to me because it seemed like the simplest comfort food option for us to make on a time crunch.  I didn’t make it to be creative, I made it to be quick and easy.  Nonetheless, the conversation evolved into how cooking doesn’t come naturally to everyone.  As I struggled to explain how to cook a simple crockpot recipe to someone who asked me how the crockpot knew when the food was done to turn itself off, I realized that this was something that really resonated with me.  I could talk and explain and teach cooking for hours.  So how come I’m not?  I really don’t know.  I really, really don’t know.

I’ve adventured more with some recipes.  Made two batches of homemade pasta sauce with about 5 pounds of farm fresh tomatoes.  Time consuming, but the end product is so worth it.  I roasted the tomatoes, blended them up with some of our home grown herbs, and simmered a marrow bone into the sauce for about an hour.  That’s cooking.  That’s the cooking I love.  Simple ingredients, a whole day over a hot stove, and the most delicious end product.  You can just see the joy on people’s faces when they taste this food that you have poured your heart into and it’s a good feeling.

Cooking has really been my saving grace.  I don’t know where it will take me, or if it will ever take me out of my cramped little kitchen, but it’s always there for me.  It knows just how to make my shitty day, and turn it into a successful adventure.  Hell, I sit here eating leftover Dijon-herb potato salad from last’s nights dinner as I type this.  It was what I woke up thinking about.  I woke up with cooking on my mind.  And it’s the best feeling.

xoxo,

Engagement Story!!

So, today’s post is going to be a little bit different.  I’ve had a couple people tell me they wanna hear this story, and I really just want to write it down.  So here it is — my engagement story.  I really just want it down so that I remember all the cute little details while it’s fresh in my mind and I can look back on it in forty, fifty years and remember it.

The weekend started out with us going up to Portland, Maine for an autism related tattoo for Kait.  We fell in love with Portland this past summer when we went up for a quick weekend vacation.  We also got tattoos while we were up there and absolutely loved the shop!  Here’s the post on it.  And here’s the link to the shop.  It’s called Lucky’s and he is wonderful.  He is sarcastic and charming, just how you want your tattoo artist to be.  And also hella good at what he does!

Anyway, we made an appointment for her to get that since April is Autism Awareness month and he was having a special for it.  I thought nothing of the many, many times Kait mentioned that after lunch, she wanted to go sit on the pier and look at the water.  If you’ve ever been to Portland, you know that no matter where you are on Commercial St, you can see and smell the water.  But hey, I figured we could go do something she wanted to do for a few minutes so that I could coax her into shopping with me for a few hours. 😉

We got to Portland, got her tattoo and then grabbed lunch.  We were dyyyyyying for some oysters but it apparently wasn’t the right season for them.  We each got lobster rolls and some very good Portland brewed beer at Andy’s.  Across the street from Andy’s is the Beer Cellar.  Oh. My. God.  It’s the best place ever!  Buy a whole six pack or mix and match!!  (We mixed and matched!)

Then we went and sat on the pier.  I had decided that we’d put more change in the meter for the parking spot, sit on the pier for a few, then shop and head home since it’s a three hour drive home.  We got down to the end of the pier and sat on the concrete by the water looking out at all the waterfront apartments.  Kait doesn’t usually like PDA so the fact that I was practically sitting on her lap made me wonder.  Still, I had no idea.

We took a million and one selfies and even started a video.  She started getting all nostalgic, talking about how exactly one year ago to that day, we stood outside of a bar in my hometown, in the freezing cold, and she chickened out on kissing me.  Then, she said that she didn’t want to chicken out this time and put a ring in front of me.

“Will you marry me?”  I was in shock.  I had waited for this for so long, with the notion that she was waiting until this coming October.  (We’ve always said we’d get married in October 2016 so her “plan” was to propose a year before, no sooner.)

All I could say was “No way, are you serious?”  Great response, Alison.  She told me that I wasn’t allowed to turn around and face her until I said yes.  So of course I did!

I was in so much shock, I was shaking.  The ring is gorgeous; more than I could have ever imagined I wanted.  It was the perfect proposal.  So completely us.  So special.

But it wasn’t over.  She informed me that we weren’t going home that night.  She got us a hotel about an hour South and dinner reservations at a very fancy place.  She even packed a bag without me knowing!

I have never been surprised before.  I know what is going on at all times.  It’s just who I am.  But she got me.  I had no freaking idea.

The hotel was beautiful; dinner was beyond amazing.  (There was a pianist playing the whole time!)

And then, I turned it all around on her.  A week later, on her way home from softball, she received this text:

And then came home to this:

Not nearly as wonderful as her proposal, but I got to have my moment and she got hers.  And so, October 2016, I will be giving up my last name forever.  And marrying my best friend and the most beautiful girl I have ever met.

xoxo,

Good News & a Review!

So, this post is going to be just a bundle of good news.  The way I said that in my head was very sarcastic, but I couldn’t be more serious.

Which good news do you want first!?

Let’s start with this — I’m engaged!! 🙂  Yep, Kait proposed.  I couldn’t be more excited!  She popped the question while we were up in Maine.  If you wanna hear the whole proposal story, let me know and I can do a post on it! 🙂

Second good news?  I’ve got an awesome spice subscription service to tell you about!  The company is called Raw Spice Bar.  They’re a company who specializes in small batch, gourmet spices.  The subscription service is $6/month and delivers 3-5 spice blends monthly.  Each month has a theme and as far as I have seen, they’re sending out spices from different countries.

I received April’s spice box and the theme was Japanese spices.  Kind of funny timing as Kait’s brother was just stationed over in Japan.  The box (or more so, envelope) came with three spices and three recipe cards to go along with the spices.  It also came with a great description card that told you some of the origin of the spices.

Let me say, the packaging is adorable!  I was sold right there.  The quality of the paper and the packets was so much higher than I expected for the price point.  While I know the paper quality isn’t really the highest on the priority list, it really gave me a great first impression.

I think the concept of this is awesome.  I have since subscribed to the service.  The one downfall I found is that with this box, there were two spicy blends and a dessert-type blend.  Neither Kait nor I are fans of anything spicy.  The spice packet that I used was very good, but thankfully it didn’t come with a lot so it was very sparse on my three pieces of fish.

One thing that I totally nerded out over was that the packets have ziplocks to keep the spices fresh if you don’t use all of it!  I was worried about how I would save some of the spice without having to throw it out.  Again, I used all of the one spice I tried because there really wasn’t a whole lot in the packet.

I’m excited to make the mochi recipe with the matcha packet.  We’re probably going to pass the other spice packet on to Kait’s parents.

All in all, I think this subscription is very unique.  I think this is a great, affordable subscription service that can help people get out of their food rut without adding on tons of calories and processed crap.  I have subscribed to it and look forward to the different themes each month.  These new spices will go great with the farm share we’re going to be participating in!

xoxo,

Disclaimer: I was sent this box for review purposes.  All opinions expressed are 100% honest and all my own.

Surprise Recipe!!

Hi guys!  I know I said that I’d have a recipe up for next week but — surprise!!

I’ve had a crazy last couple of weeks.  Work has been crazy, I started and finished a book in three days, and the weekends have just been go, go, go for us.  I haven’t had much time to sit and think let alone try new recipes.  My blog kind of took a back burner, which is a crappy feeling.  But, hey, that’s life I guess.

So, I have been pretty darn good about posting a recipe weekly.  With things getting crazier and the weather getting nicer, I don’t know if I will continue to post weekly.  It might become bi-weekly, but I won’t stop posting!  Promise!!

So, here’s a pretty special recipe post for you.  It’s kind of a two-in-one.  Also, I am eating these as I write this.  Anyone up for some flatbread pizzas from scratch? 🙂

So first we gotta make this flatbread.  Let me tell you — it’s insanely easy!  I take all the ingredients – flour, baking powder, salt, oil, milk, and hot water – and mix them all together.  There you have it… flatbread dough!  I roll them out on a floured surface so they don’t stick.  The size you make them is totally up to you!  Sometimes I cut the dough into eighths so I have smaller pizzas and sometimes, like tonight, I cut it into two.  Then, you wanna fry the flatbreads in a dry pan.  I use a cast iron pan, but a regular nonstick pan will work too.  The key is that the pan is dry.

I let one side cook until it starts to bubble.  You’ll know what I mean when you make these.  Then I flip it over.  Normally, I’d let it cook until it’s a little crispy.  But for these pizzas, I want the dough to stiffen up but still be underdone since it’ll finish in the oven.

Don’t mind the egg that got everywhere… my apartment is not level at all!!

Now here’s the fun part.  Once I’ve got my flatbreads done, I take my preheated pizza stone out of my oven and slap them on there.  I preheat my oven to about 475 with the stone inside.  Once it is preheated, I let the stone sit in there for about 15-25 minutes to make sure it gets nice and hot.

To my flatbreads I add a little minced garlic and oil.  Then the mozzarella.  Then the toppings.  These toppings can be whatever you want them to be!  Personally, I enjoy a good breakfast pizza anytime of the day.  We crack a couple eggs onto the cheesed up flatbread and add some bacon or prosciutto and some green onions.  (For the other one tonight, we used some sunburst tomatoes, bacon, and green onion.)  Seriously, anything will be delicious on these!

After I’ve got them topped, I put them back into my oven for about 5-8 minutes depending on the doneness you desire.  Personally, I like to make sure my crust gets nice and crispy.  After I take them out, I add a heaping handful of fresh arugula to them.  It doesn’t matter what the hell is on that pizza…. it will ALWAYS taste better with arugula.

And voila!  Simple, homemade flatbread pizzas.  And these are delicious for breakfast as well.  We actually started making these as a breakfast food!

Below is the recipe for the flatbread.  As for the pizza, it’s not really a recipe as it is a concept and technique.  These would be delicious with pizza sauce and pepperoni, or some ham and pineapple.  They’re so so customizable!!  Please pleaseeeeeee make this recipe your own!

This recipe below is an image, so just right click and save it or print it!

Let me know if you try these!  And please comment below if there’s a type of recipe you’d like to see.  Also, keep a look out for an awesome spice subscription service that I am going to be reviewing next week!

xoxo,

So sorry!

Hi guys!  Sorry for the lack of posting lately.  My posting schedule kind of got away from me.

I am still creating plenty of great recipes and even have an awesome spice subscription service to review for you!  Regular posting and recipes will continue next week.  It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for me!

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

xoxo,

Mini Rant: Substituting

Here’s something that’s been on my mind lately:

I read a lot of food blogs.  Like, A LOT.  And when I’m looking for a recipe for something specific, I tend to go with ones that are posted on blogs rather than the database websites.  The thing that bothers me, though, is when the recipe developer/blogger stresses that these recipes shouldn’t be deviated from, no ingredients should be substituted.

In a way, I understand.  It takes a lot of effort to write and develop a great recipe.  It’s a lot of hard work.  And when you write a recipe and are finally happy with the taste and everything, you’re proud of it.  I get it.

Buuuuut.. the fun in cooking is experimenting.  Very rarely do I ever follow a recipe exactly as it says.  A lot of it is because I don’t always have all the ingredients on hand.  Another part is that I just don’t like one of the ingredients.  So rather than ignore an entire recipe because I don’t like one or two ingredients, I substitute.

Mind you, baked goods recipes are a hell of a lot more difficult to substitute in.  But I still do it.

Here on @heart, I want you to substitute!  Are the recipes I develop and post delicious exactly as they are?  Absolutely!  But if you a) don’t have an ingredient I list or b) don’t like an ingredient I list of even c) think the recipe would taste better with the addition of an ingredient, then please do that!!  I look at my recipes as a means to learn a technique.  The general tsos recipe?  Total technique.  That recipe would be so so good with so many different sauces.  The sausage?  Technique.  There are so many great ingredients that would make that sausage even better than it already is.

So please, experiment with my recipes.  And let me know if you do and it is incredibly delicious!  I’d love to try some variations!  I’m not saying that you have to substitute, but I also don’t want to condone it.  I work really hard to write recipes that are simple and delicious, but I want them to also be fun.

Okay, so, my rant is over now.  Thank you for reading my blog.  I feel so thankful for all of you who read this and like my posts.

xoxo,

Recipe: Pork Sausage!

What is better than homemade sausage for breakfast on Sunday morning?  The answer is nothing.  Nothing is better.  Okay, well maybe eggs benedict with that homemade sausage is better… but that’s beside the point.

One morning I was wrestling through our mess of a closet to find the bread machine.  We’ve got one of those closets in our spare room that houses all the not-usually-used-but-can’t-get-rid-of items.  Like my bread machine, and George Foreman grill, and apparently all my kitchen aid attachments.

I completely forgot that the kitchen aid my grandfather gave me even came with attachments.  I just know that it has the most amazing dough hook ever.  So I found the box of attachments and yelled to Kait, “hey! did you know we have a grinder?”  She was over the moon.  Like, I didn’t know this was something she wanted.  Her first thought?  Homemade sausage.  Hell.  Yes.

(Here’s the link to the attachment if you have a kitchen aid and you’re interested.)

I had errands to run so she grabbed what she thought would be good in sausage.  This is something we had never made before.  Never even thought of making, really.

But this is so good.  We’ve now made two batches and have started handing them out to friends and family.  We don’t have a casing attachment for the kitchen aid, but we found a pretty awesome way to have the sausage keep their link shape without any casing.  All the props for this go to Kait.  She thought up this awesome combo, and I am just advertising it for her.

Disclaimer: this makes the best flatbread eggs benedict you will ever taste in your life.  THE BEST.

So this recipe pretty much goes like this:

Chop up all ingredients.  Let rest in a big bowl in the fridge for an hour.  The flavors will combine and seep into the nice juicy pork butt.

Put the ingredients through the grinder.

Roll into link shapes to your desired size.  Wrap in plastic wrap and boil for 5 minutes.

Cool and fry up for breakfast.

That’s all there is to it.  It’s a little time consuming, but so worth it.  I usually boil mine in batches of five.  But there’s nothing saying you can’t get a gigantic pot and boil them all at once.

This recipe usually makes about 25 links for us.  We make them decently sized as well.

This recipe below is an image, so just right click and save it or print it!

I hope you love this recipe as much as we do!  Let me know if you want the eggs benedict recipe that goes with this! 🙂  Also, please feel free to change up the ingredients in the sausage as you please.  The best part about this is being creative and tailoring it to your taste.  Like spicy?  Replace the Italian pepper with some jalepeno.  This recipe is delicious as is but is also a great base recipe for the technique!

xoxo,

What I’ve Been Up To: March

It’s safe to say that I feel like I spent the majority of March sick.  I have never felt so horrible in my entire 23 years on this little round planet.  And I’m still not completely over it… though I am happy to have my voice back.  Seven whole days without a voice!!  Ugh.

Anyways, March was pretty uneventful.  I mean, my life isn’t very eventful to begin with.  But March was particularly dull.  Great way to start out a ‘what I’ve been up to’ post, eh?

I did a lot of cooking this month.  A lot of recipe testing.  If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that, though.  I also took a lot of cat pictures.  Like, a lot.

But the end of March signaled half way through my first term of the school year!  Yay!  I feel so accomplished.  It’s a lot harder to go back to school when you’ve been out for a little while.  I didn’t want to admit that, but it’s true.  I mean, I’ve only been out of high school about 5 years (I’m a baby, I know) and out of postsecondary school for three.  But these classes are proving to be tough.

I was talking to Kait about it yesterday and I finally feel like I know my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to academics.  All throughout high school I was the smart girl.  I got straight A’s, I never skipped class, and I did all the homework and assigned reading.  I always thought I would breeze through college.  Nope.  I gave up on it quickly.  I mean, I had more reasons than just that it was tough for me — like not liking my major and wanting to just be in the “real world” already.

I guess I didn’t want to admit that my classes were tough.  A lot tougher than high school.  I have learned that I am no good at analyzing anything.  The history class I am taking right now, I am almost completely lost.  Kait gave me some pointers on the paper I’m writing for it that didn’t even come to mind for me.  But stick me in a science class, and I’m fine.  Biology was easy for me.  A&P was easy for me.  History and Lit… not so much.  And to think, I’m an English major!  Well, creative writing major.  So I get to write the things and make other people analyze them 😉

We did  a lot of cooking this month.  I found some of my kitchen aid attachments in the closet and realized we had a grinder.  So, we made homemade sausage!  It was so much fun and so incredibly good.  I love making things that seem difficult from scratch.  I will definitely be posting our recipe soon.  And we also learned how to make them into links and have them keep shape without casing! Ahh!

Aside from school and food, not much went on.  We bought a lot of books, took my sister on a college tour, and drank a few new beers.  What exciting lives we lead.

One thing I have been wondering is: are you guys happy with the recipes I’ve been posting?  Is there something in particular that you’d like to know how to make?  I feel like my recipes are pretty simple and straight forward, but please please let me know if they need work.  I can think they’re easy but I’ve also made them upwards of 10+ times.

Happy April!  Spring has sprung!
xoxo,

Link Love

My original plan for Saturdays was to blog about some food related news and give my thoughts on it.  As I’ve been going along, reading different articles related to food and fitness, I realize I have lots of opinions on these articles (most of which being “Oh! I love this!”) and that I don’t know if I could do a whole post on just one.  So, here’s a list of links that I’ve been loving this week.  This just feels fairer to me, you, and all the awesome articles floating around the internet.

This bar serves delicacies from cans to people willing to pay.  Here in America, canned food is seen as cheap and unhealthy.  It’s so difficult to wrap our minds around how canned foods can be delicacies and expensive.  This article is beautifully written and really shows how different cultures are from one another.

This article lists the seven foods that help make workouts more effective.  Among them are whole eggs, green tea, and basil — three foods I happen to love and eat in abundance.  I try to have some green tea everyday!  I knew it was good for keeping colds away and jump starting the metabolism, but I didn’t know it was a good tool for weight loss.  Tastes great and helps with fitness goals – score!

Kait and I did this yoga video the other day, introducing Kait to the practice.  It is a beginner’s video but it is a great workout!  Usually I stick with slow, more meditating yoga routines, but this proved to help open and clear my mind just as well!  You know it’s a great workout when you can feel it the next day.  I’m antsy just thinking about doing it again.

Finally, this podcast has been really inspiring to me.  This isn’t something I usually talk about with people; I keep my faith pretty private.  Also, I have just recently been getting more in touch with my God.  Regardless of your faith, this podcast really touches on keeping hope in times of need.  Also, I have totally been getting into podcasts lately!

Let me know what you’ve been reading/listening to lately!  I’d love to know!

xoxo,