It's Future Friday! Time to make plans for next week...

Whew! A cold front just blew in here in Texas; a 20+ degree drop within minutes! And I was ready to call it an early Spring……oh well. The good news is that it should warm back up to upper 70’s by Monday; just in time for work…..yay.

What a week! It felt like it was longer than it was, and the weather was all over the place; it still is. We finally received our heavy bag and pull-up station, and I hope to have it up and ready on Saturday. I expect this will be a fun addition for Kelley and me to have for a great workout and supplement to strength training. Not to mention the stress relief it will provide!

I don’t plan on cooking that much this weekend. I want to spend more time with Kelley; the kitchen usually keeps me from doing that, and it will be a nice break. Since we don’t go out for food, I’ll just get a lot of frozen bean and veggie mixes to steam, season, and put in containers for work lunch. Oh yeah, our friend from work really liked the sample of quinoa pilaf I gave him, so I’ll make a big batch of that again so Kelley, our friend, and I can all have it one day next week.



Of course, a veggie filled frittata is pretty good and quick to make...hmmmmmm


Can you believe there are still a lot of people that don’t know of quinoa? I get so stuck in my “foodie world” that I don’t realize how behind the general population is on food. Maybe if more people shopped for their dinners as opposed to always relying on restaurants to serve them, we’d have a healthier and more informed world. I know it’s just a dream, but I’ll do my part and try to spread the good word on food to all who will listen. I enjoy sharing the quinoa with someone who never tried it before, hopefully it sticks and he will make some for his family.

Since I try to avoid packaged snack foods, I try to keep a stock of homemade healthy snacks I cooked or just in the form of cut up veggies. I need things that don’t need me to keep a close eye on, so I think I’ll make good use of the food dehydrator; I love making dehydrated okra, but maybe I’ll try beets and bananas again too.

These things were tiny after being dehydrated.  The beets made a great crunchy salad topping and the bananas were good mixed into yogurt with other cereal.

Baked overnight oats are another favorite and don’t require a lot of prep time, so I’ll make a batch or two of these.

I should be taking them out instead of taking a picture; these are perfectly brown and crispy!!

I'd like to cook a batch of scrumptious protein pancakes one morning though; Kelley really likes this and it's a great way to start the day.  Not because of food, but because I'l have a happy wife!

With crummy weather looming all weekend, it will be a great time for indoor projects. Besides cooking and setting up the punching bag station, Kelley and I are going to install hardware on all of our drawers and cabinets in the kitchen and work on other small projects as well.

Once the good weather comes back (and stays), we are going to build a nice herb garden that will house my pet box turtle, Hector. The poor guy has been hibernating in a large plastic box all winter while we lived in an apartment waiting for our house to be built. I know he’ll love it being on real land again, and we’ll have a great time putting everything together for him.

Hector's old home in the back yard of our old home.  The little basil plant took over this thing within weeks; it smelled wonderful!

There he is, Hector on the hunt for grub.  Or maybe he's just posing....

Do you ever have cut back weeks where you just do little or nothing at all to keep stress levels in check? What are some things you like to do when the weather is uninviting and you’re stuck inside?


Reminder: Check out my review of NuNaturals Stevia and enter to win some goodies from this great company. Contest ends next week on Friday, March 16, 2012.