Clean Start to 2013!

The new year just started and I am already very excited about the different plans, projects and events coming up. I am about to start my last semester at Mary Baldwin College and I cannot wait to have my diploma in hand. Over the summer, my husband and I are planning a trip to Quebec. It will have been two years for me and a first time on Canadian soil for my other half. Throughout the year, we also plan to do a lot of fix-up around the house, including a few closets to paint, and a bunch of stuff to get rid of, either through Goodwill or Craigslist, to clear up our living quarters. We started most of this in 2012 but we are really looking forward to more progress and some more things checked off our to-do list in 2013.

In terms of healthy lifestyle, we’re also hoping to make some good changes. I want to get back to working out on a very regular basis, which I did for a big part of last year but then slacked off when school got too stressful and holiday food seemed more appealing than the treadmill. For our brain health, we are hoping to spend a lot less time watching TV in the evenings and a lot more time reading. I always forget how much I love to read until I do it again! 🙂 Based on my husband’s suggestion, we are also considering giving the Paleo diet a try. I love pasta, beans and coffee too much to make this a 100% life change but we figured we could still get a lot of good out of a softer version of it. Trying to stick to a healthier diet is not only going to push me to try new recipes (yay!) but it will also encourage our other goal: getting out of our eating-out/ordering habit. I can’t lie, we have a weak spot for restaurants (and Charlottesville has soooo many good and varied ones!) and we need to change that. There was some progress in the past year (we ate more meals at home than out, which was serious progress to us!) but there is plenty more room for improvement.

We are trying our very best to stick not only to a budget, but also to smarter food choices. Today for lunch, I had a poached egg, spinach and tomato, on a slice of honey oatmeal toast (homemade loaf!). I planned to take a picture but it got pretty messy, too quickly to bother taking a picture. It was delicious though, and I will probably have the same thing again tomorrow! 🙂

My husband didn’t really want dinner (just some snacks) so I made something I knew he wouldn’t like anyway. I cooked a portabella mushroom, as if it was a steak (with a tiny bit of teriyaki marinade) and also cooked some bell peppers (red and green), onions, and frozen corn. It was a surprisingly satisfying meal! I sure love mushrooms and it’s such a shame that my husband hates them…more for me, I guess! 🙂

Portabella mushroom on a bed of bell peppers, corn and onions.

On a completely different note, a few weeks ago, I forgot to mention the gift I received through the Reddit Secret Santa exchange! My match looked up my blog and got me the perfect cooking/hosting package! I already started using several elements from the box for our holiday party, and the truffle sea salt and rosemary were fabulous on the (baked) sweet potato fries I made a few days ago! You can check out the full description of her generous gift, and a bunch of pictures, right here.

Baked sweet potato fries, seasoned with truffle sea salt and rosemary.

Now these plans for the new year are all fun and games but we need to see if we can stick to them! It might be the usual resolution season but I really do hope that we’ll stick to our guns all year long.