Meal Plan 1.27.13

Okay, so I know this is late. I haven't made the time to come and post for the last couple of days, but I want to keep doing this, both for myself and for others who may want/need it.

Let's quickly review last week:

Sunday: We are having Slow cooker curried beef short ribs with greens and rice for sure! CHECK!

Meatless Monday: Eggplant and pasta delight (I only used half the eggplant I bought, so I don't want it to go to waste) CHECK!

Tuesday: Chris' choice, he said it is Taco Tuesday! CHECK!

Wine Wednesday: Smoked pork chops and cauliflower "faux"-tato mash, and wine! CHECK!

Thursday: Thai curry shrimp chicken with rice and sauteed snow peas CHECK!

Over the weekend my friend Kelsey came to visit (more on that later) and so we didn't have specific plans for food. Friday: Steak, potato, salad. Saturday: Dinner out. Sunday: Pizza in. 

Overall I did AWESOME with sticking to my meal plan last week. 

Workouts for the week:

Sunday: Yoga - no

Monday: Yoga - yes!

Tuesday: Swim - no

Wednesday: Yoga or Walk - yoga yes!

Thursday: Swim - 2.7 mile walk yes!

Friday: Yoga or Walk - no

Saturday: Walk - yes! hike in the snow. 

Sunday: Walk - no

Not too shabby!

What's on the menu for this week:

Meatless Monday: Portobello mushroom and red pepper quinoa salad

Tuesday: Trader Joe's Lime Chicken Burgers on thin buns with salad

Wednesday: Thai Chicken Salad w/peanut dressing

Thursday: Cod with broccoli and salad

Friday: Pork Chop, sweet potato wedges and green veg or salad (depends on what is left in the fridge)

Saturday: wing it

SUPERBOWL SUNDAY: I think I'm making a chili and some snacks for the day. 

Workouts

Sunday -none

Monday -none

Tuesday -none

Wednesday - Yoga

Thursday - Walk/swim

Friday -Walk/swim

Saturday -Walk/swim

Sunday -yoga

Alright...that's the plan! Did you do your meal planning this week? How's it going? Are you sticking with it?

Plate Share

Happy Sunday Friends!

You all know (or probably do, if you have been reading for a while) that I have a passion for food, and for supporting organizations that help to feed the hungry. I have done a few things over the years to promote awareness about hunger in this country, given some speeches at school, written about it on my blog, and just generally tried to raise awareness.

Katie Levans of Sweet Tater Blog (and former Bachelor contestant!) is one of my favorite bloggers. She is at Charlotte Small Business Start Up this weekend trying to get her amazingly brilliant (and oh so simple) start up idea off the ground.

Katie's idea is called Plate Share. 

The jist of Plate Share is simple and powerful. It is basically a "round-up" concept. When you go out to dinner and your bill is $37.65 for dinner you use your Plate Share app on your smart phone to round-up the total to $38. The difference gets donated to Feeding America (one of my favorite food for the hunger charities which I have featured on the blog before). Done. 

You can also do the same with your groceries. Grocery bill comes to $107.32? Use the app and round up to $108. Your change helps feed hungry families. 

From Katie: (click the link to read Katie's full post, it is passionate and powerful)

It’s simple: Give change. Make change.

And what if every time you did this you snapped a picture of your plate and shared it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram (#plateshare) and encouraged them to do the same? And they did the same and told their friends? Who then did the same and told their friends?

If we all work together, a little bit goes a long way.

Consider this:

• $1 contributes 7 pounds of food to Feeding America (formerly Second Harvest)
• If my 3,000 Twitter followers all joined Plate Share and donated an average $12/mo x 12 months = $432,000
• $432K is the equivalent of 3 million pounds of food
• The average person consumes 2,500 pounds of food annually
• Together, we could feed 1,200 people for one year

Here is how YOU can help Katie make her dream come true!

How You Can Help

If you believe in the Plate Share concept and want to see it come to life, here’s what you can do to draw attention:

Twitter

• Follow @plateshare on Twitter
• When you dine out, take a picture of your plate and tweet: “Hey @startupwkndCLT, this plate could help #endhunger. Support @sweettaterblog & the @plateshare project so I can donate $x.xx!” [Fill in the x's with the amount of change it would take to round your bill to the nearest dollar.]
• When you buy groceries, take a picture of your receipt and tweet: “Hey @startupwkndCLT, my groceries could help #endhunger. Support @sweettaterblog & the @plateshare project so I can donate $x.xx!” [Fill in the x's with the amount of change it would take to round your bill to the nearest dollar.]
• Tweet: “I believe in the @plateshare project. Support @sweettaterblog at @startupwkndCLT to help #endhunger”
• Tweet: “Give change, make change. Support @sweettaterblog and the @plateshare project at @startupwkndCLT to help #endhunger”
• Share the “Give Change, Make Change” photo below

Instagram

• When you dine out, take a picture of your plate and add the caption: “Hey #startupwkndCLT, this plate could help #endhunger. Support @sweettaterblog & the @plateshare project so I can donate $x.xx! #plateshare” [Fill in the x's with the amount of change it would take to round your bill to the nearest dollar.]
• Share the “Give Change, Make Change” photo below

Facebook

• Like Plate Share on Facebook HERE
• Share a link to this post and/or www.plateshare.org
• Share your #plateshare Instagrams and TwitPics to your timeline
• Post the “Give Change, Make Change” picture below to your timeline

Bloggers

• Link to this post from your blog and encourage others to do the same
• Tweet the living hell out of all of this
• Post this to your blog’s Facebook page
• Follow @plateshare on Twitter

Important Info

• Website: www.plateshare.org
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/plateshare
• Twitter: @plateshare, @sweettaterblog (Katie Levans, Founder),@startupwkndCLT (where I’m pitching this weekend)
• Hashtags: #plateshare, #endhunger, #CLT, #CLTfood
• Instagram: sweettaterblog (no plateshare instagram yet…)
• 10-second summary: Plate share is a social food photo-sharing smart phone application that empowers each and every one of us to make charitable giving second nature by rounding your restaurant bill to the nearest dollar and donating the change to feed the hungry.

THANK YOU

So, when you see me tweeting or Facebooking with the hash tag #plateshare you will know what it is all about. If you have a spot in your heart for making sure people get enough food to eat and are a someone who loves to tweet and Facebook, I encourage you to check out Plate Share for yourself.

Kitchen Tour

Recently my friend Christy (who lives in another state and has never been to my house) asked me to post more pictures of my kitchen. This was in response to some other online videos where bloggers give you a "behind the scenes" peek into their kitchen or fridge to see what it is really like. Christy also asked if I would post pictures of what it is like when I'm cooking.

Well, I'm happy to oblige! I have taken a number of pictures over various days and times. Some of the pictures aren't the best (as usual) but you will get the idea. Let's start with a basic, clean photo and go from there, shall we?

And remember, you can always click individual photos and they will open in a larger window for better viewing.

Okay, so there's the layout, and a mostly clean kitchen. Here is a closer view of my "work area."

Sink and dishwasher on the right, counter space, and then stove/oven to the left, with the fridge just to the left of that. It isn't THE most flow-functional but I have had way worse. I once had a kitchen where the fridge was in another room entirely.

Now, let's move on to what it looks like when I'm prepping dinner and no one did the dishes before hand, which in my opinion is not cool. I like to start with a nice clean kitchen and mess it up, but we are being real here and sometimes that just doesn't happen. Sometimes the kitchen is a mess and dinner still needs to be made.

I do want to note that I make sure the area I am working in is clean before I start. I am not chopping veggies on a dirty counter. Yes, there are dirty dishes next to where I'm chopping in these photo's but the area I'm actually working in is clean.

More:

As you can see in the picture above, dinner is almost done and while the last of it has been cooking (when it hasn't needed my hands on attention) I have already begun to clean up the rest of the kitchen and my dinner mess. 

Damn cats....she was just sitting there nicely on the chair watching riiiiight up until I went to take this picture.

Here is meal prep on a different night. The kitchen was cleaner before I started this time.

And after:

A big ole sink o dirty dishes. Super!!

So that is what it looks like when I'm working. To finish off the tour, I thought I'd share with you what the inside of some of my cupboards look like.

There you have it! A behind the scenes tour of my clean and messy and mostly clean again kitchen, plus what's lurking behind the cupboard doors.

Are you a messy cook or a clean cook? I am a little of both. I make a huge mess and always am using the wrong size bowl or pot (just like my Grandma!) but I also do a pretty good job (normally) of making sure the kitchen is clean before I cook, and cleaning up as I go. It just depends on the meal, how familiar I am with it, and how much hands on time it needs.

One of Those Days

Yesterday was one of "those" days.

There was no real reason for it, but I just woke up and immediately felt...not my best. 

My neck is still causing my grief (I say my neck but according to the chiro and massage therapist it is more my right trapezoid, pecs and something in my shoulder blade) which makes doing darn near anything minimally uncomfortable to down right painful. 

I weighed myself (bad idea bad idea...I was already in a cranky mood) and felt really disgusted with myself. (My clothes are still fitting just fine, so it is possible that I am creating some muscle with some of the exercise) . But lets be real: the point is to lose some weight not gain weight, so any number on a scale that is bigger than the last number on the scale can play lots of mental mind games. 

Then I looked for a job. 

Mill worker, granite fabricator, maintenance technician, sales, CNA, retail, and RANCH Worker, Animal and Hay. This is just a snip of the unemployment department's job listing, but all the other job listing sites offer us a similar mix of truck driver, medical field, sales and industrial. This was extra disheartening to me yesterday, because, I was already in a negative mindset. 

I debated going to the gym. Monday is yoga day, and I thought I could probably do that without causing more injury to my neck/shoulder, but I didn't really want to and what if I did hurt it more? Every little movement hurts as it is! 

I thought long and hard about going, or not going. And I pulled from my memory banks sayings like the ones above. You will never regret a workout. You know you always feel better after a workout, always. Just two weeks ago your yoga class changed your whole day. JUST GO. 

So before I could change my mind or talk myself out of it, I threw my clothes on and got out the door. Because it's true: getting out the door is always the hardest part. 

Yoga was pretty good. It wasn't earth shattering, but I went, I was careful with the poses and didn't push myself too hard. I got a nice compliment from my instructor on warrior two pose. 

(source)

There is always thing to work on in yoga, to focus on. Keeping the front shin/calf straight and leaning into that front hip, keeping the hips aligned are all part of what the focus of warrior two is (among other things). 

After yoga, I headed home for a quick shower and then to the chiro for another massage and adjustment. I had a new massage therapist. She had really great energy for me yesterday. She is also a yogi, so we were able to incorporate some of the common language of yoga to help discuss stretches I should do, breathing I should do to help with the massage, and she also has a similar mindset to my typical mindset. She was half counselor/half massage therapist. It was really helpful for me to hear someone else saying to me the things that I often say to myself and to others. 

See, the universe really does know what we need, even when we aren't necessarily in the right frame of mind. 

My chiropractor also gave me a little pep talk and told me to quit being so damn hard on myself. I love that about her. 

I often suffer from an all or nothing mentality, and this neck/shoulder pain thing is, well painful, but that pain can also cause stress (stress can make the pain worse, too), but also it is a mental thing because I am trying so hard to stay motivated to keep my activity up, to focus on being active to be healthy and to lose weight, that this pain issue makes me so frustrated! I feel like a big roadblock has been thrown up in my path and that just as I am mentally in a good place to be active and start doing it, then BOOM, physical issues that want to stop me. 

And then I think of something like this:

(source)

Oh, Randy Pausch...you are so right on. 

Did the rest of my day turn around and become amazing? No. Not really. But I was no longer in a mental fight with myself. I DID go to yoga, I did take care of myself, I did eat healthy. 

Today, I am still in pain and I have a day of homework ahead of me.

But I am not in the same place I was yesterday, mentally. Some days we just have those days and it is so helpful to have friends and care providers that can give us a virtual slap and tell us to snap out of it. 

I'm not sure if this post made any sense, but I guess the bottom line is that we all have days like "those" despite our best efforts to be positive and to think positive, and that it is okay to have those days. It is also really great that the people I have in my life understand me and have a similar belief system and are able to tell me the things I already know, because sometimes it helps to have someone else say it. 

Thankfully, today is a new day and I am going to let go of yesterday. 

Weekly Meal & Workout Plan 1.20.13

Eggplant and Pasta Delight with Green Salad

First let's recap how we did last week on the food and exercise front and then I'll share the meal plan for this week! 

Sunday: Actually, I don't know. Chris wanted to grill something and bought a variety of stuff at the store, so I'm not sure what he is making. - Uhm, nope. Chris ended up being really tired after his middle of the night work call, so I made dinner and it was nothing healthy. I made a chili-mac mix. Yes. It was easy, from a box and can, though I did spice it up with some extras like red beans and feta. It was very tasty, just not super healthy. 

Meatless Monday: Vegetarian Jumbalaya with sauteed mixed greens (Trader Joe's!) - A total winner! But I forgot I was serving the greens and made a salad instead. Still good!

School Night Tuesday: Chris' choice - He ended up making an amazingly good seafood soup. Thank you! 

Wine Wednesday: Eggplant and pasta with salad and wine - check! 

Thursday: Thai red curry shrimp with rice and sauteed snap peas - I switched out this meal for Saturday's and we had Korean Noodle Salad instead. Totally delish!

Friday: Homemade flatbread pizza (mozzarella, spinach, mushrooms, pesto) - Hmm..nope! I had friends over and we had hawaiian food takeout (teriyaki chicken, kahlua pork, yakisoba noodle, rice, macaroni salad)

Saturday: Korean noodle chicken salad - Chris decided to smoke a brisket, so we had that instead, with salad. 

Sunday: Slow cooker curried beef short ribs with greens and rice - this is getting ready to go in the slow cooker when I am done with this post! 

Well you can see we didn't follow along 100%, but that is totally okay. Having the meals planned is a huge help to me, and having the food in the house to make all these meals is a huge help in avoiding pizza takeout or fast food. Last Sunday's dinner wasn't the best, but sometimes ya just gotta roll with it. 

How did I do with my workouts? Honestly, only ok. You may know that I have an "issue" with my neck/shoulder muscles. Well, Monday I woke up with a headache. I went to the gym anyway and did a short run and some yoga. By the time I was done with the Yoga I had a screaming headache. I got home, took some advil, ate, rested and went to the chiropractor. She gave me orders for NO running/jumping/weights for at least a few days. Yoga and swimming were ok. 

Workouts for the week:

Monday: Run/Yoga Brick - Check!

Tuesday: Swim - Check! ~30 minutes/750 yards.

Wednesday: Yoga or X-train - no. I was still in pain so had a massage and another chiro adjustment.

Thursday: Run - no...rest for my neck.

Friday: Swim - I did a 20 minute Firm Express cardio/sculpt workout at home. I tried to take it easy, used light weights, did lots of stretching both during and after the workout. 

Saturday: X-train - OH...hell no. My neck was so pissed off from that workout yesterday! It was obviously too soon. I couldn't hardly turn my head. I spent most of the day laying down, went in the hot tub twice, took advil, Chris gave me a massage, I massaged it myself...ugh! 

Sunday: Run - hahahaha...a run is not happening today. If it warms up at all I might go for a walk, but otherwise I will be doing some yoga in the living room to try and continue stretching out my neck. 

Okay, so a minor setback with my neck. I am trying to take care of it, will go back and get another massage this week, and likely will keep all of my activity this week loooooow impact. 

Here's the plan for this week then: 

Meals (tentative nights)

Sunday: We are having Slow cooker curried beef short ribs with greens and rice for sure!

Meatless Monday: Eggplant and pasta delight (I only used half the eggplant I bought, so I don't want it to go to waste)

Tuesday: Chris' choice, he said it is Taco Tuesday! 

Wine Wednesday: Smoked pork chops and cauliflower "faux"-tato mash, and wine!

Thursday: Thai curry shrimp with rice and sauteed snow peas

Friday/Saturday/Sunday meals are a little up in the air. My bestie is coming to visit and we have some tentative plans for the weekend so I'm not sure how meals are going to stack up. If our plans work out Chris will make dinner one night and it will probably be steak and potatoes. I plan to make a beef tagine with butternut squash one night. But all of that is kind of up in the air at this point. So for the weekend we have a "tentative" plan, but will also be open to winging it and going with the flow. 

Workouts for the week:

Sunday: Yoga

Monday: Yoga

Tuesday: Swim

Wednesday: Yoga or Walk

Thursday: Swim

Friday: Yoga or Walk

Saturday: Walk

Sunday: Walk

The name of the game is to stay active, but keep it low impact to prevent more difficulties with my neck. 

Alrighty! Have you meal planned for your week? I keep saying it, but it is a key to a healthy lifestyle for me. No, every week and meal isn't perfect or follow the plan exactly, but I know that my eating would be worse if there was no plan. 

What's on your menu for the week?? 

Compliments

I read a sad story today and it has been on my mind ever since. I am prompted to write this because of that story.

A 17 year old girl was performing (singing) at a concert. She did a great job, but one of the adults in the front row of the concert kept making faces (as if she *wasn't* doing a great job). The girl, with fragile self-esteem at age 17, now feels she did a terrible job and is embarrassed and upset.

I'm sure we all have stories like this in our lives. We tend to focus on the  negatives we hear or perceive about ourselves and not the positives.

I would like us all to take a moment to think about a compliment or a positive thing we have been told, heard about ourselves or feel toward ourselves.

Let's try to minimize and ignore the negative thoughts and actions of others toward us. As Don Miguel Ruiz says "nothing anyone ever does or says is about you." ~ The Four Agreements.

I would really love to have some of the people who pop in and read this blog share one thing, one compliment, one positive thought, one happy feeling. Maybe even encourage others to come here and share a thought or compliment.

Let's try to drown out all the negative and not-true things we have heard or told ourselves and replace them with positives.

Here are a couple of things I have been told over the years:

• I make cooking look easy.
• I have the most well-stocked kitchen.
• I have beautiful eye lashes. 
• I am so sweet/kind/caring. 
• I am an excellent cook.
• I make people feel welcome in my home. 

These are just a few of the nice and complimentary things people have said about or to me. There are more, but I want to hear yours.

Share with me a compliment, or something positive, someone has said about you or told you. 

Please don't try to justify or minimize or reason the compliment; just share with me! We are all beautiful and wonderful people in one way or another. We all have unique talents or things that others admire us for. Let us take a moment to focus on those positive and good things and work to ignore and quiet those less than positive and complimentary voices in our heads.

Portions

I have written about portion sized before, HERE. And I include a nice graphic that shows that a cup is about the size of a baseball and that half a cup is about the size of a computer mouse and 3 oz is about the size of a deck of cards. While I think that is somewhat helpful, I think it is more helpful to actually SEE real portion sizes versus what we often use as a portion.

I know I am the queen of "eyeballing" portion sizes and often I am WAY off. Not only am I way off, but my portion sizes tend to increase over time. Our eyeballs can easily deceive us.

The best way to monitor portion sizes is literally to weigh and measure your food. What a pain, right? Not really. It doesn't take much time (though it does add a few extra dishes) and the big payoff is you actually KNOW how many calories you are consuming. For weight loss or even maintenance, knowing how many calories are in a bowl of cereal or a serving of yogurt can be the difference between gaining and losing.

Yesterday, for example, I made myself a granola-yogurt-rice milk-blackberry breakfast mess. Before I started I pulled everything out and looked at the serving sizes and calories on the side of the boxes. Here is something I found interesting: the serving size for the yogurt (plain-low fat) was 1 cup. The serving size for the granola was 3/4 of a cup.

I measured out 3/4 of a cup of granola and realized that I didn't want anywhere near as much yogurt as a full serving of 1 cup. I measured out less than 3/4 cup (I used the same measuring cup) and it was really still more that what I needed. The rice milk was the same way. A serving was a half cup, but I only wanted a splash to help soften the granola. I measured out a half a cup to see how much it really was, and then poured into my bowl the amount I wanted. Turned out I really only had less than a 1/4 cup of rice milk on my cereal.

So here is my point: if I would have just used the measurements on the serving size I would have had more calories than I really needed and more food than I actually wanted. By paying attention I managed to avoid nearly 200 (!!) calories in my breakfast. For someone that is only 5'4" tall and for weight loss should only be consuming about 1300-1500 calories per day, an extra 200 calories per meal is A LOT.

So here are some pictures of ACTUAL portions of ACTUAL food.

Fill a standard size shot glass with nuts and you have a ounce serving. 

Measure out your cereal and milk based on the serving size on the box. 

This is what a serving size of cereal looks like in my regular bowl.

Turns out I don't use a serving of rice milk for my cereal...I use about a half a serving. Good to know!

Here is where it can get really interesting. In the photo below is an "average" size pre-frozen chicken breast with rib meat. I purchased this from Trader Joe's in the frozen section in a bag. I weighed and measured several pieces. One was over 8.5 ounces, but most were in the 7 ounce range. 

A serving size portion of meat should be about 3 (!!) ounces. Which means, if you grab a chicken breast from the frozen bag, or even fresh from the packs in your grocery meat section, cook it up and serve it to yourself, you are very likely getting at least TWICE the portion recommended. 

And, if you are watching calories, they add up quickly in things like meats, nuts and grains! The above picture is a 5 ounce piece of chicken breast. The picture below is actually a perfect 3 ounces of chicken breast. 

Compare the size of my hand to the appropriate portion size.  

Now look at the difference between what comes in the package and the appropriate portion size again. Look how much of the plate (regular size dinner plate) this piece takes up compared to the one above. 

And what does it really mean calorie wise? 

It means an extra 110 calories in your meal! 

An extra 110 calories when you are trying to monitor your calories and lose weight, every day, adds up to 770 calories per week. To lose a pound of fat you need to reduce your calories by 3500 per week over your baseline metabolic calorie need. So you can see how easy it is for a little extra here or there to add up and prevent you from losing weight, or worse, how easy it is to cause weight gain! 

I will be talking more about this in the coming days and weeks, but for now, just think about it. Pay a little more attention. How much creamer are you *really* putting in your coffee? Is it really a tablespoon or are you adding a 1/4 cup or more? All those splashes, dashes, and smidges add up over time.

Do you eyeball your portions?

The Friday Five 1.18.13

1. What I'm Reading

"A deeply personal literary memoir that explores what it means to live an authentic life in an increasingly detached and self-conscious world.

Incited by the feeling that the essence of the modern world is buried beneath the distractions of hype and melodrama, cultural critic Richard Todd began a personal search for authenticity, that elusive quality we often seek but seldom find. In The Thing Itself, Todd attempts to discover for himself a new way of thinking by asking the simple question: What is true in ourselves and the world around us?

With an exquisite eye for detail and an inquisitive spirit, Todd launches into an involving and elegantly crafted investigation of what makes an authentically lived life. As he focuses on an array of exchanges with people, objects, places, and ideas?from the banal to the emotionally poignant?Todd shows us that there?s a great distance between what we can touch, feel, and see, and what interactions mean in our lives. Mining a rich and multifaceted store of modern philosophy and personal experiences, he inches closer to seeing himself and the world through a clearer set of eyes.

Engaging and readable, The Thing Itself offers unexpected insights into the very human search for meaning in our lives." ~ Via Amazon

It sounds really good, right? 

Oh no. No. No. No. 

Pretentious. Boring. Lacking in any sort of thematic cohesion. I have read over half and I am just done. Blech. 

2. What I'm Watching

I knew nothing about this film when I decided to watch it except that it had Helen Mirren in it and I love her. This film is a fictional account of the days following the death of Princess Diana and how the House of Windsor, specifically Queen Elizabeth, reacts and has to "modernize" her behavior to suit the mood of the people. It is a poignant film, brilliantly sprinkled with actual news footage of the time. There is footage of the thousands of flowers in front of Buckingham Palace and real interviews, even real news imagery from the funeral. I really enjoyed this film for its own sake, but also for the reminder of who Diana was. 

Also, I finally saw The Bourne Legacy. I liked about 98% of it. The last 20 minutes or so of the ridiculous and annoying chase scene was too dumb for me. I also think there could have been a bit more depth to some of the story, but I do think they did a good job of tying this film in with the other Bourne movies. Chris thinks it was dumb and wants to know where Matt Damon was. 

3. What I'm Listening To

Uhm...still nothing interesting. I haven't yet figured out Spotify. I have been listening to my Lady Gaga Pandora station while working out on the treadmill. 

4. What I'm Eating

As you know, I've been meal planning, and doing a really good job of following the plan! This is a big plate of salad with a small portion of eggplant pasta (so good, so easy!)

This one is Korean Noodle Salad, again SO easy, SO good! Basically: chop up a carrot, green onion and some mushrooms, put them in a big salad bowl. Add bean sprouts to bowl. Boil some thin pasta (I used Spelt Angel Hair) and dice and cook some chicken. Drain the pasta and add it and the chicken to the veggies. Take minced garlic, 2-3 teaspoons each (or more depending on how much you make) of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and sesame oil and mix in a small bowl or measuring cup. Pour over chicken mixture and toss everything together. Serve!! Of course, you can mix the veggies up to whatever you have or like, but this is a pretty tasty and very quick to put together dinner. 

5. What I'm Looking Forward To:

My bestie is coming to visit next weekend!! YAY! Look out S. Oregon! Haha!

That's my five for this week! I need to go work out, get ready run a bunch of errands and then enjoy the rest of the day with some lovely ladies watching some more of the Harry Potter movies. I have never read the books or seen the movies. We made it through the first three the last time, so I assume we will get through another two or three this time...which still leaves more to go! Crazy!

What is your five this week?