Loaf pan leftovers

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Thanks to a friend of a friend, I have a new method of storing leftovers and making frozen meals. A great way to use all those recipes made to serve 4, even when it’s just you and your hubby.

Here’s the idea: you make a dish (mine was goulash, or “el rancho” as we call it in my family) and instead of fitting it in your trusty 13″ X 9″ pyrex (and eating the majority of it) you split it between 2 loaf pans. Bake one and enjoy it for dinner, and put the other one in the freezer to save for another evening’s meal.

The easiest thing to use is a disposable loaf pan. But if you’re thrifty like me, I just used my regular metal loaf pans. I didn’t want to waste all my loaf pans sitting in the freezer, so I lined each one with foil, poured in the casserole, and kept it in the freezer for an hour or 2 before taking it out of the pan while it maintained it’s loaf shape. So far I’ve tried this with goulash, chicken pot pie, and lasagna roll-ups. You could probably use it with most other casserole-type dishes. Enjoy!

Lauren Haines

 

Reboot Your Life: Days 7-13

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I began the Reboot Your Life juice fast at the end of the summer and had great intentions of blogging throughout the whole thing. I guess I can blame the fact that i went back to work after summer vacation and couldn’t find the time to post.

So now I thought I would write a quick post about the remaining few days of my fast (even though it was several months ago) since I’ve received a few comments from other Reboot-ers wondering what happened.

Days 7 through about 9 were probably my best days as far as feeling healthy and motivated. At around day 10 I started getting really sick of the juices, and just all the maintenance it took (chopping vegetables before school, cleaning all the parts in my juicer, packing and cleaning out bottles). I persevered however! Days 10 – 12 were tough but I stuck with the plan.

On day 13 I felt terrible. I felt weak, sick to my stomach, tired, and just generally “yucky”. I’m not sure if maybe I got some germs from work, or maybe I had eaten something bad, or maybe my body was starting to reject all the juices. Regardless, I decided to quit the fast before the last 2 days since I just didn’t feel good. In my mind the point of the fast was to feel cleansed and energetic, and this wasn’t what I felt at all.

I didn’t finish all 15 days, but I don’t think it was a waste. It completely opened my eyes to a more vegetable-based diet, and it did help me to rethink the way I had been eating. Embarrassing as it is to admit in a public forum like this, I did gain back the weight that I lost during the fast, but I can’t blame that on the Reboot or the philosophy behind it. Fall 2011 was not easy for me and I slipped back into some bad habits.

Like many of you who are reading this, I am attempting to change my eating habits for 2012, and doing Reboot Your Life really prepared me for eating more vegetables and cutting some animal proteins from what I eat. It gave me the taste for vegetables that I never would have tried otherwise. So if you are Rebooting now, best of luck! I hope you have better success than I did, and even if you don’t, I hope you find something that works for you.

I’ll leave you readers with one recipe that I really like right now (not on the reboot plan!)

Chicken Salad with Craisins

  • 2 Cubed or torn chicken breasts
  • Handful of craisins
  • chopped or sliced almonds
  • 1 T. light mayonaisse
  • salt and pepper
  • finely chopped onions

Just mix all ingredients and eat on a sandwich or a salad (I really liked it on a spinach salad). It should last 2 to 3 meals.

Thanks for reading!
Lauren Haines

 

 

 

Reboot Your Life: the weekend (days 4-6)

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Rebooting was definitely different on the weekend. Instead of just packing my juices and taking them to work, suddenly I was faced with a fridge and pantry full of illegal foods! But I did it! Every day when I step on the scale and the number is lower than the day before, I find my motivation! As far as juices go, I didn’t really try anything new and/or exciting though.

We spent Sunday at our friends’ house with the members of our church small group and had a cookout. (Planned to be outside at Quiet Waters, but the forecast dictated that we move inside). It was great! I preemptively volunteered to bring a veggie tray, so I knew I would have something to munch on. Then I was faced with the burgers, hot dogs, chips, and banana pudding (looked so amazing!) but telling my friends about the reboot fast really helped keep me on track. It is such a blessing that my friends have been so supportive of the reboot! I have come to notice that when you’ve been doing something the same way for a long time, it makes people uncomfortable when you decide to change (especially those closest to you).

Another weekend activity was kayaking!! Jeff and I just recently acquired 2 kayaks, and we were so excited to go out on the water. There is a small beach – big enough to launch some kayaks – a block from our house. We really want to build 2 carts so we can roll the kayaks down to the beach, but this past weekend we had to carry them……bad idea! They were SO heavy and it felt like the longest block I’ve ever traveled. Jeff was fine of course, because he has a little more muscle than I do : ) It was a fun day on the water though (land was the problem), and we paddled down the Little Magothy and out to the Chesapeake Bay!

As a result of the reboot, I really am feeling better day by day. I require less sleep, and seem to have more energy throughout the day. I do feel like I’ve been very emotional though (Jeff can attest to this!). Maybe I’m just relearning how to deal with my emotions without food coming into play at all. Another reason I might be emotional is that summer has come to an end and I headed back to school today! More updates on rebooting at school coming soon! : )

Thanks for reading,
Lauren Haines 

Reboot Your Life: Days 2 & 3

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Day 2 wasn’t great. My breakfast fruit juice was still great (same as day 1) and I had another frozen banana between juices. However, my green drink was on its 3rd day and was…I can’t even sugarcoat it….gross. It was, as my friend Lauren says, a nose “plug and chug”. The “rules” say you can keep juices in the fridge for 72 hours at the most or freeze them, but I have learned that when it comes to green drinks, I need to make mine DAILY.

After plugging and chugging for lunch, and drinking plenty of water, I went to pick up my husband Jeff at work, and felt terrible. When I started the Reboot I thought I would feeI weak and lifeless (the image of Beth in Little Women comes to mind “I can be brave…like you…”) but that wasn’t it at all.  I just felt uncomfortable, bloated, and sleepy.

After getting home I went right to bed. I was hoping to wake up feeling refreshed after sleeping, but it was the kind of nap where you feel like you have been asleep for 5 minutes but then look at the clock and it has been 2.5 hours. I guess I needed the sleep, but I didn’t feel rested at all. I had a glass of carrot/apple for dinner and ate a peach before hitting the hay for real.

Today is a little better. I had a baked pear for breakfast which I’ve never had before. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times I’ve actually eaten a fresh pear…so I guess this Reboot is helping me branch out and try new things! I cut a pear in half and put it in an 8×8 pan lined with foil. In the bottom of the pan I put cinnamon and a little water, then placed the pears cut-side-down. I baked them for 20 minutes at 375°. Yum!

Here are my juices for the day:

  • Mid-morning: pear, blueberry, & lemon
  • Lunch: kale, spinach, apple, carrot, beet
  • Afternoon: carrot, apple, sweet potato
Everyone says you just have to make it through day 4, and then it’s a piece of cake (mmm….cake) so prayers and encouragement would be appreciated as I make it through today and tomorrow! On the fitness front, Jeff and I recently bought 2 kayaks and we hope to buy some life vests tonight so we can kayak this weekend!
Thanks for reading, come back soon!
Lauren Haines 

Reboot Your Life: Day 1

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My original plan was to start the Reboot fast on Saturday, but I actually began today. I had been without white flours, sugars, and dairy for almost 4 days and I just felt ready. I also wanted to get adjusted to the juicing routine before I go back to work on Monday. Plus, my best friend and her boyfriend started yesterday so I kind of want to keep on schedule with them so we can properly commiserate : )

Last night was taco night. My original plan was to have basically the insides of the taco without the shell. When I got home from nannying for the day I made a green juice (more on that later) and went out to Target with my juicing partner in crime to buy necessary rubbermaid bottles and containers. After that, I just didn’t feel the need to have tacos…you heard it here, folks! So I figured, what am I waiting for?

Reboot Day 1: Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

This morning I woke up and had leftovers from my first juice (previous post) it was still yummy as ever! I bought bananas on Sunday and they were already turning quite brown so I decided to freeze the last 2. If your bananas are ever past the ripeness that you like, I recommend freezing them (here’s how) or putting them in a smoothie instead of tossing them. So around 10am I had one of the frozen bananas for a snack. I am not only drinking juice during this Reboot. I am also incorporating fresh fruits and veggies, but trying to get 3-4 juices per day to equal about 6 “meals”.

For lunch I had my green drink. I made it last night and I have to say, it was not as good the second day…not terrible though. It consists of kale, spinach, granny smith apple, bartlett pear, carrot, and cucumber. I don’t recommend adding the spinach, I think that’s what made it taste so “planty” as Jeff says. The green drink was not as delicious as breakfast by far, but I wasn’t in agony either. It was around this time that I remembered to DRINK WATER! You are supposed to drink at least 64 oz. of water per day during this fast, so I’m trying my best to fill up my 20 oz juice container with water after I finish a juice.

I headed off to teach some afternoon piano lessons with my afternoon juice in tow. It was carrot, apple, and ginger, and it’s definitely a favorite now : ) P.S. a tiny bit of ginger goes a long way! When I got home around 6 I ate a peach, and at 8 made myself a dinner of sauteed zucchini, squash, and grape tomatoes. I…die. It was so good. Why haven’t I been eating stuff like this normally?

So at the end of my first day I am happy, feeling healthy, and not feeling hungry at all. What do you think of my first day’s meals? Too much food? Not enough? I am interested to see what everyone thinks, those who have fasted and those who have not.

Thanks for reading, come back soon!
Lauren Haines 

Reboot Your Life: Farmer’s Market, Sam’s Club, and my first juice!

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My second day on the Reboot prep week began around 10:15am with a trip to the Farmer’s Market at the Westfield mall in Annapolis. It is open on Sundays from 10am-2pm and located in the Sears parking lot. There, I bought 6 ears of corn, 5 peaches, 1 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, and 4 beets for a grand total of $11.5o. Pretty good, I thought! I was so excited that I found BEETS! I actually didn’t know what they were at first because they just looked like dirty lumps, so I asked what they were and the person at the stand informed me.

My next stop was right across the street: the Sam’s Club in Annapolis. Keep in mind that I rarely leave Sam’s with a cart of food costing less than $100 so I was not too optimistic about what their produce department could offer, but I wanted to get a sense of what produce costs at different places. My body instinctively steered my cart past the electronics and office supplies and right toward the pastas and sauces, where we usually start…wow what a change it was to cut across the store and bypass all the free samples : ) At Sam’s I purchased a bag of 10 granny smith apples, 9 bartlett pears, a large package of strawberries, 2 large bags of whole carrots, a bunch of 7 bananas, and a huge tub of organic spinach. My total was $26.33!

I had a wonderful afternoon with my mom’s side of the family celebrating my Grandma’s 80th birthday! We went to Cafe Normandie in downtown Annapolis. It was a really great place to eat. I stuck to my plan for the most part…I stuck with water to drink and then ordered a phenomenal dish of salmon with blueberries in a beurre blanc sauce with veggies on the side. Aside from the (small) piece of baguette I enjoyed before the entree, I was faithful to my reboot prep. Oh wait….and then I got home and had a piece of birthday cake (which I warned you about yesterday!). Well hey, my grandma only turns 80 once, right?

My first juice! Carrot/Apple/Beet/Strawberry juice

Meeting up for the birthday lunch also allowed my parents to bring me their juicer!! I am SOOO excited to have a juicer to use and really see if I will be able to do this thing. My first juice consisted of 2 apples, 3 carrots, about 6 strawberries, and one beet. It made almost 6 cups of juice! I was amazed at how much it made, and I even mixed in some water in hopes to stretch it a little longer. It is so good! I just made the carrot/apple/strawberry part first. I was intimidated by those beets! I read that you should peel the beets first, because the peel is the bitter part. So I tried it, and it wasn’t bad at all!! It didn’t add any bitterness, and gave my juice a lovely ruby red color. Bon appetit/Bottoms up!

Thanks for reading, come back soon!
Lauren Haines

Reboot Your Life: Prep Week

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After watching the documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead” I was inspired to begin the “Reboot” diet/fast with 2 good friends of mine. I recommend watching the film if you have Netflix Watch Instantly.

So “Reboot Your Life”, site here, is a diet of only fresh fruits and vegetables for 15 days. You can do a combination of juicing and eating. However in the documentary Joe Cross (the creator) drank only juiced fruits and vegetables for 60 days.

Fruit Juices

I am going to begin the Entry program on Saturday, August 20th, so the website recommended that I begin prepping for the reboot one week prior to that date.

This includes:

  • Saying “goodbye” to processed junk foods, white flours, sugar/desserts, fried food, fast food, processed meats, alcohol and begin to wean yourself off caffeine.
  • Say “hello” to salads, soups, smoothies with a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains, nuts, seeds, natural nut butters, beans and legumes.
  • Gradually decrease poultry during the week and if you eat red meat choose only lean and don’t eat this past day 3 of the preparation week. By last day of the week, your protein should come from solely plant sources such as beans, nuts, legumes (for example, black beans, hummus, chick peas, lentils, edamame)
  • Transitioning off dairy: by the end of the week (day 5) all dairy should be out of your diet to prepare for the Reboot.

So today I started my journey by going to the farmer’s market in Severna Park and getting 2 pounds of kale, a zucchini, and a cucumber. I already had apples, plums, tomatoes, broccoli, and some frozen veggies on hand. Day 1 has been pretty weird. The hardest rule for me has been cutting out white flours and sugars. I don’t usually eat fried food or fast food, but missing out on sugars and dairy will be tough! I can still have dairy for 4 more days though, so I’m cutting back slowly. And I’m allowing myself to have a piece of my grandma’s birthday cake tomorrow as an exception–and my last hurrah!

Not exactly feeling a difference yet, but I’m hoping that soon I will be able to post about how this quick stint as a vegan has made small but permanent changes in my tastes and attitudes toward a plant-based diet. Hopefully I will be a faithful blogger for the next couple weeks so you can keep track!

Thanks for reading, come back soon!
Lauren Haines

Summer desserts: Orange Pineapple Cream Cake and Peach Blueberry Cobbler

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I made 2 desserts for a family picnic at Jeff’s uncle’s house yesterday. They are both summer favorites in our family! Here are the recipes below:

Orange Pineapple Cream Cake
This recipe is from Nanny (my dad’s mom). I’m sure she found it in a magazine or something. It has become a family favorite in the last couple years. Keep it cold, and it’s sure to be a light and refreshing dessert for summer! You can make it in a long rectangular cake pan, or 2 round pans with icing between layers (shown below).

Orange Pineapple Cream Cake

Orange Pineapple Cream Cake

Cake:
1 box yellow cake mix
1/2 c. vegetable oil
4 eggs
11 oz. can mandarin oranges (with juice…I drained it and then I had to add extra water)

Icing:
1 package instant vanilla pudding mix
1 lb. 4 oz. can crushed pineapple (drain some of the juice if possible)
8 oz. cool whip
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Mix the cake ingredients until smooth (in a mixer if you like, I usually just use a whisk or spatula). Bake in greased cake pan (or 2 round pans) at 325˚ for 25-30 minutes until golden. Cool completely before icing. Tip: if you are using round cake pans, they will round at the top when baking. Use a serrated knife to make the bottom layer flat and level before topping with icing and the 2nd layer of cake.

While the cake is baking, fold the icing ingredients together in a large bowl and keep in the refrigerator until ready to ice the cake. When the cakes are cool, put icing between layers, on the top, and around the sides (just on top if you are baking in a rectangular cake pan). It will look kind of lumpy, but it will taste perfect! Keep the whole cake in the fridge until ready to serve. Enjoy!!


Peach Blueberry Cobbler
The recipe comes from Beulah Heintzelman, who I never met, but she was my great-grandmother (my dad’s dad’s mom). This cobbler originally only had peaches, but Nanny added blueberries. You can make it either way, depending on what fruit is in season, or what you have on hand.

Peach Blueberry Cobbler

Peach Blueberry Cobbler

Fruit:
2 fresh peaches or 1 can sliced peaches (if using canned peaches, slice them in half length-wise to make the slices thinner)
1 c. blueberries
3/4 c. sugar

Cobbler:
1/2 c. butter or margarine, melted
1 c. flour
3/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
dash cinnamon
3/4 c. milk

Mix the fruit and 3/4 c. sugar, and set aside. Pour melted butter into an 8″ square baking pan, sprayed with cooking spray. In a bowl, combine the “cobbler” ingredients and blend just until ingredients are combined. Pour the cobbler mix over butter in the pan. Top with fruit and bake at 375˚ for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown.

Thanks for reading, come back soon!

Lauren Haines

Buying Our First Home: Part 2-House Hunting

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I love to shop…and as far as I was concerned, this was the ultimate shopping trip.

House-hunting Online
We started by “shopping” for homes online, just like I normally shop for anything else. Before hooking up with a realtor, we used www.redfin.com or www.homes.com, but Stephanie (our realtor, mentioned in the last post) told us that the best site to use is www.homesdatabase.com. Take a look at the homes and the specifications carefully before visiting so you know what to look for. For example, find out ahead of time if there’s only one bathroom, or no AC, or if it’s in a bad neighborhood. This way, you won’t get wrapped up in the bells and whistles of new carpeting and upscale decor, only to find later that the cellar is full of water damage (or something similarly upsetting).

My mortgage expertise has a longstanding reputation of…hmm…2 weeks. But in my opinion, the internet has completely changed the house hunting process. Within one day of telling Stephanie our personal preferences, she sent us an email with 26 listings that were in our price range and in the area that we wanted to live in. Plus, every listing had at least 2 photos (some, up to 30 images). I just can’t imagine looking for a home without the help of the world wide web. (Interesting…9 months ago I said the same thing about planning a wedding).

Narrowing it Down
After considering all the listings, we emailed our realtor 6 addresses of homes that we wanted to tour. She called the sellers’ agents and set up times for us to see the homes. The adventure begins!!

Some of the homes were really lovely. Some were not. At some places we stayed 20+ minutes, thinking of how we would arrange our furniture, and picturing summer evenings on the deck. Then at other houses, we walked in, became overwhelmed with the smell of mold, and swiftly turned around. I guess house hunting is like a box of chocolates….

Finding “the one”
We saw our new home for the first time on our first day out. Here are some reasons why we considered it. It is located in Cape St. Claire (a great neighborhood close to where Jeff grew up). It has 2 levels (split foyer) and the main level is very open, which we liked because we can watch TV, cook in the kitchen, hang out in the living/dining room, all without yelling around walls…more “together” time! It has space for an eat-in kitchen and a dining room, a deck, and a large basement (part finished, part unfinished). Oh! and the laundry room is right next to the bedrooms! (I hope others out there appreciate how awesome that is).

We saw it on a Sunday, and all week as we were touring other homes, we kept coming back to it in our minds, thinking that it could really be the perfect place for us. That Friday, we asked to see the place again. It was definitely a blessing that we saw it that night because the next day, we put an offer on it, and it was accepted!

More to come…thanks for reading, come back soon!

Lauren Haines

Buying Our First Home: Part 1-Getting Started

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There is no doubt about it, this year has been a bundle of life changes for the Haines family. Getting married, moving, then moving again (after the first place flooded), Jeff getting promoted, Netcordia merging with Infoblox in California, me getting a brand new job, and now we bought a house! What’s next–a baby?? whoa! let’s not get crazy….

To be fair, buying a house was not a spur-of-the-moment decision at all. Ever since I began dating Jeff, I knew owning a home was important to him. I have never met anyone who likes to do yardwork so much! Some weekends he will just say “I wish we had a lawn to mow.” Really? That was one of my favorite things about living in an apartment! But I totally agree that I would rather be putting our money toward owning a home rather than throwing our money away on rent every month. And I’m so excited to PAINT! I’ve never gotten to paint walls in any of my apartments! And believe me, if you see the walls in our new house, you’ll see that painting is a MUST.

Even before we were married, we have been saving up for a house. We weren’t sure if it would happen this year or next year, but the generous wedding gifts from our friends and family (combined with some masterful bargain shopping) made it possible for us to start house-hunting this summer.

What we did:
Step-by-step for those of you who are looking to buy a home too!

Our first step was contacting our friends Stephanie and James. They are one of the couples in our church small group bible study and, fortunately for us, very talented real estate agents! Stephanie set us up with a mortgage broker who took our financial information over the phone, ran a credit report for both of us, and issued a pre-approval letter via email. This letter told us how much we were pre-approved to spend on a home (but that figure was not necessarily what we could afford!).

Next, we met with Stephanie and James to talk about what features we wanted in our home. Since living in Millersville has proved to be a little too far from Annapolis for us, we narrowed our search to the Arnold, Cape St. Claire, and Edgewater areas. We wanted 2-3 bedrooms, and at least 1.5 baths. We were not afraid of a fixer-upper, but did not want to consider a place that had structural issues or mold (Jeff is allergic).

The next day, Stephanie went on her super duper realtor database and emailed us about 45 listings of places that met our criteria. I will save the “house hunting” portion of our saga for next time, since this post is already getting a little long. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about our journey to homeownership or if you want more info about the people we are working with.

Thanks for reading, come back soon!

Lauren Haines