Cauliflower and Chicken Sausage Stirfry!

Good morning ya’ll! Well, I have survived the first 2 days of the week. Monday was rough, but each day I can feel myself getting back into a groove and I am happy about that.

I got an order of Shakeology in when I got home yesterday, which made my day! I love delivery day!

I wanted to come and share another recipe with you real quick this morning! Sometimes Troy and I like to make random things from stuff in the fridge/freezer and most of the time it always turns out super yummy! This is definitely one of those times, I mean we were basically licking our bowls afterwards.

Cauliflower & Chicken Sausage Stirfry

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
• 1 package of chicken sausage (we used chicken and apple sausage)
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons of minced garlic
• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons honey
• Siracha
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Sautee onion and garlic in pan with olive oil until translucent and fragrant.
2. Add cauliflower, salt and pepper.
3. Cook covered for about 8-10 minutes, or until cauliflower is tender, but not soft.
4. Remove cauliflower, onions, and garlic from pan.
5. Dice up sausage into disks, and throw into the pan with a little more olive oil.
6. Cook for another 6-8 minutes, or until cooked through.
7. Throw the cauliflower mixture back into the pan.
8. Add soy sauce, honey, and a couple squeezes of siracha (if you like a little spice, like us).
9. Serve it up over some whole grain rice!

You could easily sub out the cauliflower for broccoli, or add snow peas (yum!). And if you aren’t into chicken and apple sausage, use kielbasa, or even just chicken breast would be yummy! Enjoy!

XoXo

Whhhyyyy is it Monday?!?

This is exactly how I felt last night after dinner. That eminent feeling of having to go back to work just rained down on me. I didn’t really do much over my 11 day break accept to relax and regroup, and get ready to have an amazing 2016! Which by the way, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I did not make any “resolutions” for this year accept to keep on loving and living. That is my resolution for this year and it is one that I am going to work really hard to keep all year long, no matter what might be thrown my way.

So, let me just let you in on what I did on my break just to get this work week started (can you tell that I am slightly reminiscing?)….

This picture pretty much sums up my time off. I spent a lot of time relaxing, catching up on Netflix shows, cuddling, etc. I did get all my Christmas decorations put away and I did some deep cleaning on my house and some other non fun things that just needed to be done. I did get to spend time with my family a lot on my break, which was the best part. I sent this picture to a couple of my friends at around 9:30 on New Year’s Even night, as you can tell, it was a wild and crazy night.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most was having all the time to cook breakfast for myself (like avocado toast and eggs, or this frittata) every morning and to make some yummy dinners also, like this paleo butternut squash soup.

I did enjoy some awesome workouts while I was off, which was another thing that I enjoyed; not having to either get up super early to workout before work or come home after working 8.5 hours and driving 2.5 hours and workout. I feel like I am going to drag through this week as my body gets used to my normal routine again, thank you Lord for coffee.

The last thing I wanted to share with you guys was a little home decorating that I did while I was off (I promise I did do some things other than laying on the couch). The inside of our house is still a work in progress as we slowly transition from furniture and decorations we had in our much smaller and differently designed duplex to our new house. I changed up our hall bathroom by putting up a new curtain, getting a new rug, and hanging some new pictures. I am so in love with how it all turned out! I purchased some pretty knick knacks to occupy the shelves that overlook our living room too (HomeGoods for the win!) and lastly we hung up our gallery photo wall (finally!) in the living room.

I’ll let you know tomorrow if I survive through today, please pray for me. Have a great week!

XoXo

Sun Dried Tomato & Mushroom Frittata!

Good morning party people!! It is Wednesday, and sorry that I have been a like MIA sine Saturday. I am off this whole week so I am trying to disconnect a little and just enjoy my time off as much as I can.

Today, I wanted to come chat with you guys about this delicioussss frittata that I whipped up yesterday morning for myself for breakfast. So here we go!

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1/3 cup chopped red pepper
• 1 cup chopped mushrooms
• 1/2 cup sun dried tomatos
• 10 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• Salt and Pepper
• 1/2 cup cheddar cheese

Directions:

-Chop onion, red pepper, mushrooms and set aside.

-Whisk together eggs, milk, salt and pepper.

-Add onion, red pepper, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes.

-Spray a pie dish with baking spray, and dump the egg mixture in.

-Top with cheese.

-Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until the egg mixture doesn’t jiggle when shaken.

I enjoyed my piece of frittata with some turkey sausage patties and an orange, along with my coffee, of course. Frittata’s are a great make ahead breakfast meal, as well. Troy and I will be able to eat on this for the rest of the week for a healthy, nutritious, breakfast! Enjoy!

XoXo

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas ya’ll!! I hope everyone had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! I wanted to come by real quick this morning to share with you guys about our Christmas. I didn’t take very many pictures of the festivities because my phone wasn’t even on me much this year. I really wanted to just put my phone away and enjoy my family, so that is what I did.

On Christmas Eve Troy and I started our morning bright and early with plans of making 4 stops to see everyone. We stopped at my Nannie’s house around 9 in the morning to help her do some last minute cooking/organizing for her Christmas Eve dinner that she always has for my Mom’s side of the family. Since Troy and I knew we wouldn’t be there that night we wanted to make sure we saw her for at least a little while.

After leaving Nannies, we headed back to Gloucester to go to my Grannys for lunch. We enjoyed all the normal Christmas lunch food before opening presents and spending time with family.

After leaving there, we headed to Troy’s parents house to open gifts with them since Troy worked on Christmas Day. Troy was very surprised with his pressure washer and my favorite gift was the Olivia Pope wine glasses; OK they came from Craft and Barrel but they are the actual glasses that Olivia uses in Scandal and I have had my eye on them forever. I can’t wait to use them while watching Scandal!

Finally, we went to Troy’s Aunt’s house for Christmas Eve dinner and had fun eating and playing the Chinese Christmas game. I ended up with a super cute candle holder and Troy ended up with a giant Christmas coffee mug and a gift card.

Christmas Day was super relaxed. Troy had to work Christmas Day, so I spent the day over at my parents house. Normally, my Mom has a crowd of people at her house for Christmas Day lunch but this year it was just the 4 of us. We ate WAY too much food, opened gifts, watched a movie, and just hung out like the old days. It was really nice.

There was a pattern with my gifts this year, let’s see if you can guess it…

Pioneer Woman!!! You guys know that I love her and a lot of the presents that I asked for this year came from her new line. I got more Pioneer Woman things that are not shown, too. I can’t wait to break these boys out in our new kitchen!

Lastly, I came home last night and got my new tufted ottoman out that Troys Mom and Dad gave me. You can also see that Coop is enjoying one of his presents, his new blanket!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

XoXo

Cookies, Leggings, and Pump!

Hiya!!! It’s Christmas week! EEEEKKKK!! I love Christmas and I am super excited because once I leave work on Wednesday, I will not be returning until January 4th! Merry Christmas to me!!

This past weekend was filled with baking cookies, eating cookies (oops), lots of cuddling, and catching up on me time.

Cooper knows that Saturday mornings are ALWAYS used for Food Network watching and cuddling in bed. Seriously, he knows! I snapped this picture before we got out day going. As I told you guys on Saturday, this weekend was Troy’s first weekend back at work and I think Cooper took it upon himself to comfort his Mom and make sure I wasn’t too lonely. ❤

Once we got up, I made it out to get some groceries and baking supplies. On the list to make was Christmas toffee (crack) to take to the neighbors, peppermint shortbread cookies for the cookie party I attended Saturday night, and crockpot spicy bbq kielbasa also for the party.

I made 2 batches of this toffee, one to take around to the neighbors, and one to take to the Christmas party/have for Troy to take to work this week. If you guys have never had this, you are missing it. It is so easy and SO delicious! Here is the recipe that I used.

I packaged up the toffee into little Christmas chinese food containers and Cooper and I walked around the neighborhood, passing it out. I love doing the small things during this time of the year that make a difference in peoples day.

Next on my list was these peppermint shortbread cookies! These little babies melt in your mouth and I will definitely be using this basic recipe and playing around with the flavors and ingredients in the future.

Lastly, I threw some spicy bbq kielbasa into the crockpot to take to the party. It was a hit and I have plans on making it for one of our 4 (yes, 4) stops on Christmas Eve.

For some reason this Christmas season I have gotten into wearing some very festive outfits. I wore a Rudolph dress to my Mom’s Christmas party (blog post here!) and then yesterday I wore some crazy fun Christmas leggings to a friend’s cookie party!

I mean seriously, how FUN are these leggings!?!?! I love them, and it pays to wear stretchy, elasticy (is that a word??) pants to a cookie party.

I came home with a container of delicious assorted cookies. I mean it is Christmas so I have no shame digging into these boys this week.

Our friends also surprised me with a very thoughtful gift! They painted a plate, made an ornament, and included some beer bread mix, a beer and a small pan to cook it in. It was very thoughtful and we love it! Thank you Rachel, Steve, Aiden, and Carter!!

Sunday started off with more cuddle time. I posted the below picture on Instagram because it was too cute not to share. You know you have short legs when your butt makes a heart.

After our morning cuddles were over (do you see a pattern there?) I got up and completed Les Milles Pump! I love having this workout program at my disposal because I can go up to my workout room and get in some good body weight exercises and sweat my butt off! I snapped a picture of the sweat drops on our hardwood floor. I think I may need to invest in one of those matt thingys, anyone have any that they love and would suggest??

Well, that catches us up on this past weekend! I hope to come chat with you guys a couple times this week about all the festivities! Have a great Christmas week!

XoXo

Some Random Things

Hi Ya’ll!! It’s Saturday! This Saturday is bittersweet for me. I was so happy the weekend finally came because this week at work has been exhausting for me, but I was also sad all week knowing once Saturday came my husband would go back to his normal job and I would go back to being a FireFighter’s wife. If you don’t know what that entails, let me enlighten you. That means you learn to do everything by yourself, you don’t cook real meals (I mean who spends hours on dinner just for yourself), and you don’t ever have plans together…because well you are basically a single married woman. Sigh….

Onto a different, less depressing topic, haha. Last night we celebrated Troy passing his Paramedic school (and I mourned the end of his beard) at Bonefish! It was super yummy, as always. I enjoyed salmon with herb pesto, mashed sweet potatoes, and spinach. Troy enjoyed Arctic charr with bacon and blue cheese, mac and cheese, and broccoli.

I have posted a lot, previously, on the blog about the 21 Day Fix Extreme program (you can find all the posts under the Beachbody Programs tab on the top of the blog!) and even though I am not doing the program right now, I tend to go back to the workouts from time to time when I want a really good workout that will make me sweat. That is what I did on Thursday. After a long day at work, I decided a good workout was just what I needed, so I completed the Dirty 30 workout. This one uses weights to work all parts of your body. I completed the workout for the first time on our new 65″ TV we got on Black Friday. Autumn and I have even more of a love-hate relationship on my giant TV, as I stare at her perfect abs while I’m jumping around like a loon.

Don’t judge the room. We still haven’t gotten much furniture up in the bonus room since we moved in. The TV was highest priority, furniture will come, haha.

The last thing I wanted to chat with you guys about real quick this morning is the reason I have been kind of MIA recently and why I haven’t been posting all the normal workout things like I was doing earlier in the year. Because of certain health issues in the past few months, I have been working out less, usually only 3 days a week. I went from 6 or 7 days a week to 3 days a week and at first it was hard for me to accept that making that change may actually be good for my body, but my Doctor insisted. So far, it has made a difference in my health and for right now I am trying to focus on being happy. Fitness is a huge part of what makes me, me now so doing this has been an adjustment. I can tell a difference in my body and somedays that overtakes my emotions. Other days, I can accept it knowing that I am doing what my body needs me to do.

I wanted to share this with you guys because I wanted to make sure you all know that working out 7 days a week and eating perfect every single day isn’t always doable and it may not always be the BEST thing for you and your body. We all have to find some balance in life, enjoy ourselves, and make sure that you keep the bigger picture in mind. I hope to be able to increase my workouts again in the future, but for now I am going to listen to the person with the PhD and keep it at 3 days a week. I would love to hear from you all if you have had any similar struggles!

I hope you guys have an amazing weekend!! I will be attending another cookie exchange tonight that I am super excited about, wait until you guys see what I wear!

XoXo

Celebration in Lights!

Gooooood Wednesday morning! It’s hump day!! I hope everyone’s week is going great! Today I am sharing some pictures from another great Christmas filled evening we had last night!

First, Cooper and I enjoyed a long walk outside in the amazing 65 degree weather (I love it!) and got to see a beautiful sunset over the Ware River.

Once Troy got home and we ate dinner, we went out on our annual tradition of getting Peppermint Mocha’s from Starbucks and driving through Newport News Park to see the Celebration in Lights! Every year the city of Newport News puts up these beautiful lights that you drive through. They are gorgeous and we all love seeing them every year (Coop included!).

I love traditions during the holidays. Doing things with my little family is what makes them so special each year.

 

 

XoXo

Steps & Sweat!

Ugh….that is how I feel today. For some reason Tuesdays are just bleh to me. The worst day of the week, I don’t know why, they just are. We ended up not going to Christmas Town yesterday, so we are hoping to go on Wednesday! Tonight we have a Starbucks and Celebration of Lights (in Newport News park) date. It has become a tradition in our house to drive through the lights with Starbucks in hand every single year, and I love it!

Last night I completed Insanity: Max 30 The Cardio Challenge..and boy was it exactly that, a challenge. I have never done another workout that makes me sweat and work as hard as Max 30. In just 30 minutes I am always drenched and dripping sweat. Yesterday I decided a white tank top was a grand idea to wear during my workout and it pretty much turned into a wet t-shirt competition by the time I was done. There was so much sweat you could pretty much see through my shirt. Insane is a fitting word for this program!

Ever since I got my Fitbit back in October for my birthday, I have mini competitions with myself based off of steps, sleep, floors, etc. Well since I have started my week out great with my steps I have decided to challenge myself to exceed my 10,000 step goal all 7 days of this week. I think I can do it!

It is amazing to me how on weekend days when I just clean, piddle around the house, etc is when I get my most steps. A run always helps get my steps too, because it adds a good 4500-5000 steps to my day; half my total right there!

Monday ended up being great too simply because I did so much jumping and moving around during my Max 30 workout. That plus taking the dog for a 1 mile walk afterwards, made sure I got my 10,000 early in the evening. Evey step after that was just icing on the cake.

I love my FitBit because it keeps me active and allows me to compete with myself. I would highly recommend one of these contraptions to anyone! I will make sure to let you guys know if I hit my step goal every single day this week. I have a feeling there may be some late evening sprints upstairs with Cooper to get those steps some days, but whatever works!

Have a great Tuesday!

XoXo

Christmas-y Weekend Recap!

Good morning! It is Monday yet again, but I am feeling pretty good today because we may (emphasis on the may) be going to Christmas Town at Busch Gardens tonight after work if Troy gets home in time, so that has given me a little extra positivity to get through this Monday.

We had a fun weekend filled with Christmas related things, so lets recap real quick!

On Friday night we spent a super romantic night together. We had eggs, sausage, and toast for dinner (I mean what a gourmet romantic dinner for two) at home, then ventured out to get Starbucks and ride around as a family of 3 (Cooper was included, of course) and check out some neighborhood Christmas lights in Gloucester. This house was definitely the best we saw all night! I know that may not seem like an ideal Friday night to a lot of people, but for us it is perfect. ❤

On Saturday, we got up and finished up our shopping. You know those days when you wake up and feel pretty good about yourself and you put on your skinny jeans and instantly think. “shit, I look good!”? Well, I had one of those mornings Saturday morning and I like to enjoy those moments that don’t happen very often. I live for days like that!

Taking a selfie to mark this occasion was necessary, duh!

Saturday night was also the Gloucester Volunteer Fire & Rescue Christmas party! They had awesome food and it was a good time. Our favorite party was the photo booth..

Sunday was filled with sleeping in (and cuddling), cleaning, and Troy and his dad also sealed our aggregate driveway!

I completed a 3 mile run with Cooper and some upper body weights before buying some groceries, cleaning the house, and rounding out the night watching football.

I posted the black and white picture below of Cooper on my Facebook and Instagram last night because he is too cute not to share. He laid like that on the couch watching me clean for 2 hours. Clearly begging for attention.

I just love that little dog. We topped off a good weekend with some egg nog. I know everyone doesn’t like egg nog, but I happen to love it. I only buy one small thing of it one time a year and I enjoy it, as fattening and glorious as it is. I decided having it in my Lenox martini glasses kind of classed it up 🙂

I hope you guys have a great week!

XoXo

Top 5 Posts of November 2015!

Good morning everyone!!

Since I took a little hiatus from blogging in November, I wanted to still do a top posts blog, but this month I will be sharing the top 5 overall posts looked at in November over here on Passion 4 Peanut Butter. Normally I pick the top 5 posts that were actually published this month, but this time there are some from even back in July! I hope you guys have fun revisiting these!

1. Broccoli and Chicken Mac and Cheese|Fixate Series.

This is definitely one of my favorite recipes from the Fixate cookbook and clearly loads of people like it because it is always the overall top post each month since I posted it back in July. In November, it had over 500 hits alone! If you missed it, check it out now!

2. What I Ate Wednesday|#2

The What I Ate Wednesday series is one of my new favorites and I hope to pick it back up soon! This blog post featured 2 fixate recipes, turkey chili and muffins!

3. What I Ate Wednesday|#1

I was not surprised to see another What I Ate Wednesday post make it into the top 5 for this month. This one features the turkey sloppy joe recipe from the Fixate cookbook!

4. Chocolate Chip Cookies|Fixate Series

OK, there appears to be a pattern here with the top posts. All Fixate cookbook recipes! Looks like I need to share some more! This chocolate cookie recipe is healthy but not lacking on yummy cookie flavor!

5. My Favorites from Trader Joes!

YAY! I am so happy that you guys enjoyed this post! This was probably one of my favorites to put together for you guys. I absolutely love Trader Joes and I hope you guys found some new things you liked too from this list

Have a great hump day!

XoXo