Have I mentioned I’m totally digging these Week In Review posts? Not only do I get to write in bullet points, but I get to highlight what I did do versus what still needs to be done. So without any more blather and hopefully no blubber, let’s get listing (I’ve got goose bumps).
Over the course of the past seven days, beginning on Monday and running through Sunday, I managed to do the following:
- Wrote and published three blog posts. (Side note: I have no idea why I haven’t been including blog posts on prior Week in Reviews because these babies take time and effort, dammit!)
- Worked an obscene amount of hours at the real job. Like I have bags under my eyes obscene. Don’t feel too badly for me though because I’m off work today (hence the late publication of this post) and have a one hour massage scheduled for this afternoon (Come to mama!).
- Celebrated the Hubby’s birthday, sadly not with a trip to Mexico, but the next best thing: authentic Mexican food and margaritas. Over the course of two sittings, I dined on veggie burritos and rice and beans.
- I managed to complete three fitness classes: Spinning, Mixed Martial Arts, and Pilates (appearing in the order they were taken, which trumps alpha today) and did an at home leg and ab workout. There is no truth to the rumor the ab workout completely crushed me.
- Shopped for a new fireplace facade. Say good-bye to brassy brass and hello to a mighty fine charcoal finish. The new facade will actually take weeks to arrive, so salutations will have to be suspended for a bit, which is cool because patience is totally my strong suit (snort). I figured it’d be out of line to bellow Veruca Salt style, “I want it now Daddy!, ” and really weird since I was with the Hubby and not my pops.
- Finished not one, but two People magazines. It’s good to know I’m getting caught up on my intellectual reading, and perhaps even more important, I learned to loosen the OCD a wee bit and didn’t read every single article, even the ones I have no interest in, from start to finish. Score one for sanity.
- Hosted a Super Bowl party, which is pretty ironic since I only learned who was playing in it mere days ago. Now as a result of said Super Bowl party, I did a little baking, some cooking, a dash of dicing and bit of mixing, which I shall happily list out for you below. Talk about exciting; we’re breaking into subset lists now.
1.) Peanut Butter Swirl and Chocolate Fudge Brownies. I found them on Pinterest and minimally adapted them to suit my needs. I used Greek yogurt, subbed some of the sugar with Erythritol, which sounds scary, but is actually a natural, almost zero calorie sweetener (an oxymoron, yes). I also added some non-dairy mini-chocolate chips because do you really need a reason to add more chocolate? I think not. They were ooey-gooey good and flourless.
2.) Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie made with oats and garbanzo beans because I am shady like that. Have no worries, my friends didn’t even notice and who knows, maybe I even helped them with their digestion. Cackle, cackle.
3.) Veggie Platter to rival all veggie platters with a homemade Onion Dip. I actually made two dips, but one didn’t turn out as expected, so thankfully I had a backup plan. Side bar: I can’t believe I have a rogue piece of celery in my picture, all touching up on the dip bowl, getting inappropriate. Crap, how did I miss that?!
4.) Cheesy artichoke spread, which was a “healthified” version and tasted like it. Blech. Artichoke dip fail. I won’t even share the picture because it makes it look better than it actually was, and I don’t agree with the false advertising (ignoring the obvious cookie pie reference above).
5) Ginormous fruit bowl because no party at my house is complete without a big old fruit bowl, and you know what made me the happiest? The veggie platter and the fruit bowl went like hot cakes, except they are both significantly healthier than hot cakes. Well unless you make Heather’s hot cakes. They’re in a whole different ball park.
- I learned how to operate the snow blower and as a result snow blowed our entire driveway. There’s a variety of reasons it was high time for me to learn, but the main one is you should always be able to take care of yourself. I am fiercely independent and a big believer of knowing how to do things on your own, so this weekend the Hubby taught me how to operate this mammoth of a machine, and it was a total blast. Literally, you get blasted in the face with snow, but I still had a great time and even made snow angels when I was all done.
Sometimes the snow sucks, and sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches (not literally this time, because if somebody is throwing punches, you should duck).
Snow angels seems like an appropriate ending to today’s post, and I’m pretty sure that’s all I did, so it’s time to wrap it up, in an awkward and abrupt fashion. Sorry, I’m just not feeling a smooth and fancy finish to today’s blog. Peace out.
What did you get done in the past seven days? Do you know how to operate a snow blower? Do you sneak healthy snacks onto your friends, and don’t tell them?
I want those brownies. And that plate of Mexican goodness. Mostly that plate of cheese-coated-Mexican-yum. Because I always like savory (and Mexi-savory) over sweet, but I won’t say no to chocolate and PB. I can’t use a snow-blower, but I can make a mean snow angel. If it would only snow enough here to make one…
I love Mexican and I don’t care how bad it is for me. Alright, I do care, but I don’t eat it often enough to concern myself with it.
A mean snow angel, huh? I wonder how you bring out their emotions. I bet you’d find a way.
So glad you made my Skinny Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies. I should try adding more chocolate chips next time.
Glad you loved them! That veggie platter is gorgeous. Love all the bright colors!
This was my first time making them, and I have to say they were delicious. Thanks for creating and sharing your recipe. I had a great time with it.
oh. my. god. I need those brownies in my stomach right this second.
Yeah you really kind of do. They were fabulous. Melt in your mouth type thing.
Didn’t they tell you in Food Blogging 101 that celery always pushes the envelope?
I don’t blow snow.
Wait. What I meant was that I am a shoveler. We had a bit of snow in the DC area a few years back . . . you may have heard of Snowmaggeddon? Yeah, my spouse deployed a couple of days before that. During those blizzards and the frigid temps in between them, I shoveled at least 2 hours a day every day for 10 days straight. Not a single twinge of my back. I won’t say that I LOVE to shovel snow, because that would be weird, but I will say I don’t blow snow.
Which still sounds odd.
Hey, nice fruit plate!
I haven’t gotten to that section in My Food Blogger for Dummies book, but I should have suspected. The celery is always up to shady business.
Shoveling snow is one of the greatest exercises, and you did it two hours a day for ten days straight. Now that’s impressive, you non-snow blower.
Hooray bullet points!
I have no idea how to operate a snow blower but luckily we live in a town house and they take care of the snow. Those brownies look amazing! I would love to dig into a batch. I got some cooking and baking down this weekend but nearly as much as I need to before heading out of town on Friday. Oh well! At least we made it for free yogurt today : )
How can you say No to free yogurt. You really can’t.
I, like you, almost always have something going on.
Boxing, blog posts, restaurant reviews, dinner with friends, full time job. In fact, I don’t know the last time I had a day where I didn’t have to do anything!
Those fudge brownies look spectacular.
A day of total nothingness would be ideal for me; like a dream come true. And boxing, you badass, you!
I LOVE how you got all your friends to eat your healthy version of a delicious treat and they had no idea! I wish I had my baking skills down to that, but still need a bit of work
I love fruit bowls! Since I have been traveling so much, fruit bowls have become a staple as I know exactly what is inside whereas everything else remains a mystery…
Snow blower..YOU GO GIRL! Love + Shine CourtStar
They still have no idea, and I think I’ll keep it that way. Ignorance is bliss, right?!
Yeah fruit on the road is always a good thing because you actually know what you’re getting. Everything else is suspect.
That is an impressive list! In my opinion, Mexican food and margaritas are a good way to celebrate almost anything. Also, those brownies look amazing! I had the snow blower out this week as well – gotta love winter in northeast Ohio!
You can’t go wrong with Mexican food and margaritas. Well unless you drink one too many margaritas and then a whole of wrong can happen.
Are you a fellow snow blower too? Yeah! It’s shockingly fun, yes?
Those brownies (from Pinterest) are a show stopper! As soon as I saw them I stopped on the page and almost drooled! LOL… They look fantastic!
Thanks lovely! The recipe is from Pinterest, but the picture was all mine.
Ha! Noticing that piece of celery is only something the most OCD of OCD-ers would notice…like me! Course, I probably would have missed it had you not called it to my attention…now it’s making my eye twitch! Lol
Hell to the yeah girl! Get down with your mad blowing skills! Um…err…I mean SNOW BLOWING!!! Oh wow…awwwwwwwkward!
I always get giddy when the fruits and veggies get cleaned out of a line up of other things that most definitely does NOT qualify as heathy. I took some hummus and veggies to work a few weeks ago (where almost everyone lives off chips and cookies) and it only lasted like 2 hours! I think they almost licked the hummus pot clean! Haha!
I brought hummus to work and half the people were scared to eat it. No joke, but it absolutely makes me giddy when healthy food gets eaten. It makes me crazy that so many people equate healthy with sad or boring food. Dammit, it’s simply not true.
That piece of celery still troubles me every time I see the picture. I can’t believe I didn’t catch it when I was snapping away with the camera. Then again, I was still cooking and trying to photograph all the food before I had a houseful of people. It might be weird trying to explain that.
Haha! Seriously, I can’t tell you HOW many times I’ve been editing pics and noticed a stray ingredient somewhere in the frame…if I can’t crop it out, it drives me NUTS! And yeah…I may or may not have remade a recipe JUST so that I could redo the pics! My perfectionism always seems to get the best of me! :-/
And you know, my parents have that EXACT mentality…they won’t even give new foods a chance! I brought a thing of hummus over for Christmas and was surprised as hell when my mom tried it, but then she said it was just “ok”. My dad is the worst though…I swear, if it’s green, he won’t touch it with a ten foot pole!