Our New Life and Baking Bread

It has been a long time since I've blogged, but in my defense I've been very busy! Mike and I got married :), moved into our own apartment, and now I start school on Monday! Everything has changed a lot, but I love our new life!

Something about our new life that I have enjoyed the most is having our own kitchen. We've been making tasty dinners, cookies, chocolate pudding, and now I've started learning how to bake my own bread! So far it's working out really well (I'm baking it tonight, so I'll let you know how it turns out!). I made a starter for sourdough bread (my favorite) and if all goes well I should be able to keep it going and have fresh baked bread all the time! Did I mention I love having my own kitchen?

-Mrs. Casey :)

Oops, I haven't been blogging!

I have been completely forgetting to blog on here! Sorry about that! Let's see, what have I been up to? Well, eating delicious Chinese food for dinner. That's pretty exciting! Lol I will post something more substantial later, but until then don't forget to check my Twitter because I update that daily! :)

-EM

Yum!

I love leftovers! :) Is that weird? I always think to myself when people say they hate leftovers that they must not be making very good food! It's so nice for your stomach and your wallet when you make something that you actually want to eat it all week! This past week we made our own delicious version of Olive Garden's Zuppa Tuscana potato soup. It has lots of potatoes, Italian sausage, bacon, and spinach, is perfectly spicy, and so good when served with biscuits and salad! Needless to say, we definitely couldn't wait to eat our leftovers! :)

Running Update

I'm running almost daily now and I must say I'm addicted! The excitement I feel as I mentally prepare myself for hours before I run, the doubt in my mind when my feet first hit the ground, and then the pride and disbelief I feel when I reach my "finish line" is incredible! There really isn't anything like the high you feel after you've pushed your hardest and once again achieved what you thought was impossible! I'm still a beginner though and have a long way to go before I will think of myself as "a runner".

So far my best distance is 2.15 miles in about 26 minutes, which I'm pretty excited about! Back when I couldn't even run a full mile yet I thought it would take me months to be able to run 2 miles! And best of all I didn't feel like I was dying afterwards, which means I know I can do better!

Although the place Mike and I go to run is very hilly, I do love that it is in a very natural setting. Smelling flowers and hearing birds while you run is wonderful! And just yesterday a baby deer darted out of the woods and came up beside me and ran with me! It was so close I could have touched it! After it realized I was a person and not it's mother it ran back into the woods and I stopped running just long enough to snap a picture of it's white backside sticking out of the trees. :)

The weather has been cold the last couple days, so I'm hoping it warms up so I can try to beat my best distance. It's very hard to run very long when you can't feel your legs! I'll keep you updated!

-EM

Grocery Shopping and a Healthy Recipe

Since we were not home during our very busy week (blog post about it coming soon!), most of the produce we bought last time we went grocery shopping went bad and we had to clean out our fridge. We hate wasting money on unused food, so when we made a quick trip to the store tonight we decided to buy only what we need for a few days and what we can take with us to my sister's house since this week will probably see us running around again.

  While we stood in line with our purchases I looked down at our cart and the sight made me very proud! It was filled with a variety of fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grain bread and tortillas, yogurt, low-fat cottage cheese, and other healthy foods. When we made the decision to eat healthier last year, I had concerns about whether we would be able to actually do it or not. After all, I have never been a big fan of fruits or veggies and Mike wasn't sure he wanted a vegetarian heavy diet, but looking into our cart tonight made me realize that we can eat healthy and I'm so happy we actually do now! All of our breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and even snacks are healthy! We drink lots of water, I've found all kinds of delicious vegetables and fruits to eat, and Mike has embraced our mostly vegetarian diet (in fact, tonight the only meat we bought was ground turkey, which is much healthier than all of the ground beef we used to eat!). And best of all we are happy and we eat well! Very well in my opinion :)

Here is a recipe for one of our favorite meals (and what we ate for dinner tonight!):

Veggie Tacos with Roasted Red Potatoes

Ingredients:

• Whole Grain Tortillas
• 1 Bell Pepper
• 1 Onion
• 1 Can Black Beans
• 1 Avocado
• Salsa
• Sour Cream
• Cheese
• 5 Small Red Potatoes
• Olive Oil
• Parsley
• Garlic Powder
• Chilli Powder
• Paprika
• Cumin
• Salt & Pepper

Directions:

First you will want to preheat the oven to 400 degrees for the roasted potatoes. Wash them, cut them into bite size pieces, coat them in olive oil, salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of garlic powder, and then bake them for around 45 minutes. While those are cooking you can chop the bell pepper and onion. Then you can either roast them in the oven until they just start to brown or sauté them in a bit of olive oil for about 5 minutes like we do. The black beans (or any kind of bean you like!) can be heated up on the stove with a few dashes of chilli powder, garlic powder, paprika, and cumin added to them for flavor. When everything is about ready, put your tortillas in the oven with the potatoes for a few minutes to crisp up and then start assembling your taco. We like sour cream, cheese, and salsa on ours and adding some fresh avocado and cilantro on top makes the tacos taste even more amazing! Of course you can make these your own by adding your favorite veggies. I bet zucchini, squash, and rice with some Feta cheese on top would be great in them instead of pepper and onions! The most important thing for us is that they are fresh, healthy and vegetarian. :)

-EM

Busy, Busy Week

Just a short post to let you all know that I haven't forgotten about my blog! This week has been crazy and full of excitement and stress, which I will tell you all about soon, but for now I will just leave you with a picture of Mike and a little friend we made at the zoo! :)

-EM

Maybe Dreams Really Do Come True?

As you may or may not know (depending on who is reading this), I will be going back to school this August to finally get my bachelors degree. I've been out of school for a while and am a bit nervous about going back, but also very excited. At the age of nine or ten I began watching Steve and Terri Irwin's television shows and documentaries and I was instantly bitten by the wildlife conservation bug. I couldn't get enough of learning about or being around animals. I still can't. The only really consistent part of my life has been my passion for animals and conservation and I've always wanted to go to school to become a wildlife conservationist. Unfortunately, as usually is the case with childhood dreams, my life took a different route and it didn't look like it was in the cards for me. I was disappointed, but looking back on it I believe it actually worked out for the better because in the mean time I've also developed a passion for environmentalism which pairs perfectly with conservation. I had almost given up on the idea of going back to school, but thankfully things in our life have changed a bit and earlier this year we made the decision for me to finally get my degree. I wasn't sure I was capable of getting a science degree and had several ideas of what I could do instead, but Mike convinced me that nothing was worth going to school for if it wasn't what I really wanted to do. And he was right. I just couldn't be happy knowing I let the opportunity to achieve my dream get away. So I applied, waited an agonizing couple weeks for the "congratulations! you've been accepted" letter, and then finally got to meet with an advisor to sign up for classes. That was a bit of a pain at first (since my associates degree is in English and not Biology there are some required classes I have to take first and a math class I had to test into), but thankfully it is straightened out now and I'm all registered for the fall semester! I will be majoring in Organismal Biology and Public Outreach and minoring in Environmental Studies. I'm so excited about the classes I get to take (animal physiology, ecology, climate change, etc.) and can't wait to start the semester and be even closer to graduating and finally achieving my childhood dream of being a wildlife conservationist! After that I can start making my other childhood dream come true--moving to Australia! lol I'll keep you updated on how things are progressing! :)

-EM