Tag: Spaghetti Squash

Friday Catch-Up: Lots of different pictures!

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TGIF! This week flew by for me, but I think that is because I had Monday off. Whatever the case, I’ll take it! While I was looking through my pictures on the train ride home from the gym (no service=try to do whatever I can to keep myself busy, aka looking through my pictures), I realized that I took pictures of all sorts of things this week! So, grab a cup of coffee (or glass of wine), relax and bear with me as this post is long could go all sorts of different ways!

Eats

I planned ahead on Tuesday night and packed myself a nice, little, deconstructed taco lunch for Wednesday. I was able to eat outside, which made lunch even more enjoyable!

042Spanish rice, beans, corn, chicken, yellow peppers, onions, salsa and cheese. Perfection.

I put this together while I was making a Spaghetti Squash Casserole (recipe to come- SO good). It’s always the best time for me to get a healthy lunch together when I am already cooking in the kitchen. Since it was really cold on Tuesday, I was happy to have these babies to keep my toes warm:

039I got these for my birthday and totally made fun of them, but I’ll be honest, I kinda love them now!

Here’s a little teaser for the recipe I will post soon

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Exercises

I caught up on my April Arms Challenge workouts that I missed from Tuesday and needed to do on Wednesday.

005Wednesday’s workout was preacher curls and plank holds and I decided to do the plank holds on the stability ball. Wow! It’s amazing what a simple change up to an ordinary “staple” move can do… my core has been SO tight ever since. Love that:)

Taught a great double on Thursday, even though it was quite the whirlwind in trying to get there.

010I look somewhat put together here, but let me tell you, I was the definition of a hott mess when I first entered the gym. Let me break it down for you…

  1. I left work at my normal time on Thursdays (4:30) to have enough time to walk to the T (about 5 minutes), get on a T, go the 5 stops to Central Square and get there by 5ish (usually).
  2. I was all excited when I walked down the stairs and saw a T waiting for me- awesome! It’s the best when that happens.
  3. My first thoughts: Why the heck is it so freaking hot on this train? Don’t they have air conditioning? Why aren’t we moving yet?
  4. Turns out, there was a medical emergency and we had to stand by. I thought of walking to another T stop, but I realized that if my train wasn’t moving, no other ones were moving. Great. It’s was now 5pm.
  5. I decided to try and get a cab. The traffic in the city was miserably bad and there were no cabs. Even better.
  6. I finally got a cab and said “please take me to central square as FAST as you can”. Luckily, I had an awesome cab driver who drove so crazy, but there was still the problem of incredible masses of traffic.
  7. I realized that if I made it on time, I wouldn’t have enough time to change AND be on time… that left me with no other choice but to change into my gym clothes IN the cab. Let me tell you, putting on tight Lulu in a small space and sweating while you’re doing it is not easy. Just sayin’.
  8. I called the gym and said I was going to be late, but it didn’t look like I’d be that late- awesome!
  9. We got onto Mass. Ave and the traffic was back and there were flashing lights ahead. I realized that I was close enough where I could run and still make it on time. Mind you, I had 3 bags on me- they call me the Bag Lady at work.
  10. I paid the $24 for the cab, got out and SPRINTED (well, as fast as I could with multiple, heavy bags on me) to the gym and made it only 1 minute late. How’s THAT for a crazy race to the gym?!

012I can’t tell you how happy I was when I walked through the door of my apartment tonight. I have a serious love/hate relationship with PT, that’s for darn sure.

Other random pictures from my phone

Snuggles with Charlie

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Coffee in my favorite mug

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Spring is definitely in the air

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I won a giveaway!

My good friend, Rachel, hosted a giveaway last week and I was so, SO hoping I’d win since I LOVE jojo jewelry. Check out Rachel’s blog post for all the details, but let me show you what I picked!

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015Rachel got us beautiful diamond blings for her wedding and I wear them ALL the time. All of the Shapleigh girls were also in Sara’s wedding, and she got us a pair of bling earrings from jojo, too. I chose to get gold metal since the other 2 pair I have are silver. I’m absolutely in love with the pair that I chose! Definitely go on over to her site and check out all the bling she has to offer. You won’t regret it:)

Oh, and when I was perusing the Bling, I stumbled upon the jojo Kitsch hair ties and decided to get a package, too. Whoops!

016Well, I think that about sums it up! Thanks for sticking with me if you made it this far:)

Your turn: What’s the best part of your week so far? Any crazy things happen to you? Do you have any jojo earrings or jewelry?

Spinach & Goat Cheese Chicken Meatballs

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Hi! I’m not sure about you, but getting up on the first Monday after the “spring ahead” daylight savings is just not that fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra daylight at the end of the day, but the first couple of mornings are always hard to adjust to.

Last night I made a delicious dinner, but before I get to that, I have to share how stinkin’ cute my parents are.  It cracks me up because they are SO into my blog, and even though I laugh when they talk about it, it really means the world to me that they take time every day to check it out and that they support me in this. Anyway! My sister was home (so jealous) and I knew my parents were going to cook a favorite meal of hers. As I started on my own dinner, I got the following texts

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I asked for the recipe, but mom said “no no no. This is not a healthy meal for your blog”, so I just have to go by pictures… Looks pretty freaking good to me! Like I’ve said before, mom really does make the best chicken parm!

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Onto my dinner…

I was looking through my phone the other day and I saw a picture of a chicken meatball dinner that I made a while back.  As soon as I saw that picture, I knew that I was in the mood to make a similar meal tonight.  I have to admit something to you, though… I totally suck at creating recipes. I hate measuring things out when I am making the recipe up as I go along (heck, I don’t even like to measure when I bake, but I know that I have to), so I tried to eyeball and estimate how much of everything I was putting into the meal. Hopefully you’re a similar “ad-lib” cooker!

Spinach & Goat Cheese Chicken Meatballs (served atop spaghetti squash & sautéed veggies)

Ingredients:

For the meatballs-

  • 1/2 lb. ground chicken (my sister is making chicken burgers tomorrow, so I saved her 1/2 of the package)
  • 1 egg white
  • 2-3 tbsp. bread crumbs
  • 2-3 tbsp crumbled goat cheese
  • 1/2 cup wilted spinach
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp basil
  • dash of salt & pepper
  • 1 small spaghetti squash

For the sautéed veggies-

  • 1/4 cup sliced onion
  • 1/4 cup sliced green pepper
  • 1/8 cup summer squash
  • salt, pepper & garlic
  • 1 tsp EVOO

Directions

  1. Pre-heat oven to 400*. Cut open, de-seed and boil spaghetti squash. Same way that I explained before. This one was so small that it only took about 10-12 minutes to cook.

0252. Mix Meatball ingredients together in a small bowl and use your hands to form small, golf ball sized meatballs. Place on a greased pan (or pizza stone, in my case) and bake for about 20ish minutes (or until they are fully cooked).

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3. While the meatballs are in the oven and the spaghetti squash is cooking, cut up your veggies and saute them until everything else is cooked. I cut mine extra thin tonight so that helped to speed up the cooking process.

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Once the squash is finished, remove from the water and shred some of it into a bowl. Top with veggies, sauce, and meatballs.

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Mmmm! I will say that the meatballs needed a little extra seasoning from what I originally did, so I accounted for that when I was estimating amounts above. The flavor with the goat cheese and spinach, though, was on point! I liked adding the sautéed veggies as they helped to beef up the spaghetti squash.

It’s worth noting that I baked some butternut squash to have on the side as well (holy veggie filled meal!). Nothing fancy, I just cut it up, used some spray Pam, salt & pepper and garlic seasoning and baked at 400* for about 30 minutes.

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I used BBQ sauce as my “dipping” sauce of choice (I LOVE sauces. If I could have a meal with 10 different accompanying sauces, I’d be so happy)… wasn’t sure how that would work out, but I actually loved the combo!

Questions for you: Are you a sauce person? Fan of spaghetti squash and chicken meatballs? Takes a little getting used to, but I’m totally hooked now!