Chocolate Milk

I love chocolate milk.  Really love it.  It is one of my all time favorite beverages and when it comes to chocolate milk I am an Ovaltine girl through and through. If i don't have Ovaltine I make do with the chocolate syrup kind but it just isn't as delicious.
I was craving some chocolate milk earlier and didn't have either the beloved Ovaltine or the mediocre chocolate syrup.  Instead of going without I found a recipe online and then adapted it for myself.  It is pretty darn good and a whole lot cheaper than buying Ovaltine or chocolate syrup and I'm sure it's got to be a little bit healthier without all of the preservatives and high fructose corn syrup and such. It doesn't quite have that malt-y taste that Ovaltine has but i'm sure I could had some malt powder that I have had lying around for a while and it would be just as great.

My recipe for Chocolate Milk

1/8 c. water
2 tsp. cocoa powder
2 Tbs. sugar
1 3/4 c. cold milk

In your glass mix the water, cocoa powder, and sugar.  Place in microwave for 30 seconds and stir until the sugar and cocoa completely mixed in.  Add the milk, stir again, and ENJOY!!

I can't explain how exciting this discovery is.  My cravings for chocolate milk do not have to be satisfied only when I splurge and buy Ovaltine!  I'm not completely sure if this is a good thing or not.

Success!

Eric and I decided too save our money and our sanity and have a Valentine's dinner at home.  I have had the menu planned for about a month when we first decided not to go out for Valentine's day and I have been nervous about it since.  Everything that I made was experimental and I was nervous that the food wouldn't turn out.  I found all of the recipes on allrecipes.com by looking for the highest rated recipe for the type of food I wanted to make. 

We had a Spinach Pomegranate Salad that was pretty good.  Eric gave it a rating of 8 out of 10.  I think I would have given it a 6.  I really prefer the spinach salad that my aunt posted here.  But overall it was good. 

I made these really great mashed potatoes too.  I wasn't too worried about making these potatoes, how can you go wrong with about 5 cloves of garlic? They were delicious and I get to have leftovers!

The thing I was the most worried about was the salmon.  The last time I attempted to make fish, (note the word attempted) it didn't quite turn out right.  That was about three years ago.  I've been terrified of making fish ever since.  Like I might always fail at it.  But Eric loves fish and I found a recipe that all the comments said was a no fail.  So I gave it a try.  I was nervous about it until after Eric took his first bite.  (I make him take the first bite to see if I should even try it.  Kind of like my own personal food taste, just in case it has been poisoned or something)  He loved it so I tried it and it was great! The recipe really was no fail and it was so easy, with ingredients I already had on hand. 

Here is a picture of our meal on the plate, because it looks better than seeing the salmon in the pan it was baked in. 

I decided to bring in our little patio table and chairs from the porch and set up in the living room.  The kitchen was too covered in dishes I was going to have to wash and I didn't want our Valentine's dinner to be ho-hum at the dinner table like usual.  (sorry about the blurry picture, I was trying to take a picture in a semi-dark room and keep Nim away from the food.)

As you can also see, we were classy and drank bottled rootbeer. 


We finished off the meal with a mousse.  I had no idea that a mousse was such a complicated process.  It wasn't hard but I did have to dirty a few more dishes than I really wanted to.  The mousse turned out great as well and was fluffy and light but very rich. 

Eric really enjoyed all of the food.  Even the salad, which surprised me, he's not a vegetable type guy. I am definitely keeping all of these recipes and will cook them all again because they tasted great and were really easy to make!

One last picture of what I have to look forward to....

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Wishful Thinking

I came down with another cold. So much for 30 days straight of working out.  Maybe I'm just a wuss.

That ice cream is looking better and better.

Exercise Update

My little 30 day exercise routine should be coming to a close next week.  Buuuut, I've only done the exercises for about 2 weeks all combined.  There are very good reasons for this.  I have not just been lazy. 

About a week after I started exercising, I came down with a cold.  A really bad cold.  I even missed two days of work that week for this cold!  I got better and started the exercises again.  After about 4 days I came down with strep throat! I really regretted staying home from work the week before and there was no way I was going to exercises with strep throat.  Maybe I was being lazy but I felt pretty crappy.  It was the worst strep I've ever had.  After my mom made sure that I was taking antibiotics and not just ibuprofen for the pain I got better pretty quickly.  Again I started the exercises.  After another few days I started to cough really badly, I think the inversion and terrible air quality had something to do with it.  So again I missed a few days of exercises.  I picked back up yesterday with my exercises and I feel pretty good. 

Even though I did not make it through every day of working out I did notice some changes.  First and foremost... I gained 4 pounds.  I was justifiably upset, I had kept my diet the same and had been doing these workouts.  However, I am keeping myself upbeat by reminding myself that muscle weighs more than fat or rather that it is denser than fat and I know that I have lost some fat because I was careful to measure myself before I started exercising.  I have lost about a half inch all around and that is really exciting to me.  I also joined a website, myfitnesspal.com, because it keeps track of the calories that you eat and the exercises you do and so far it has been pretty helpful, letting me know how many more calories I have for each day. 

So I'm going to say that my 30 days began yesterday.  Hopefully I don't come down with another random sickness to hold me back.