I’m still playing with my new cookbook. I wasn’t that crazy about the last dish I made, but this recipe for mini meat loaves was off the chain. ( Or insert whatever the new slang is these days. ) They were super simple to make plus minimal cleanup which is also a plus. The only thing I did differently, was I baked mine in a mini bundt pan. Which is a little bit bigger than a cupcake pan, with only 6 cups. So they came out really cute. Here is the recipe, I hope you try it and if you do, tell me what you thought about it.
Mini Meat Loaves
1 lb ground beef
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 slices bread, cubed
1 egg, beaten
1 (10 3/4oz) can Vegetable Soup ( I used Campbells Vegetarion Vegetable)
Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Shape into 6 oval loaves,
Place on an ungreased rimmed baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.
*** I did spray my pan with non stick cooking spray just to be safe
Our X-box went kaput a couple weeks ago, not that we play it, but it was an excellent DVD player. So we’ve been using DVD player from our room, that isn’t that great. It gives the green screen of death every couple of movies. So we decided it was time to go get a new one. I left this task up to Wes since he’s the gadget guru. So off to Best Buy he went last night and this is what he came home with.
Yep, that is a Play Station 3 and Guitar Hero. I couldn’t help but laugh, I just thougt it was the funniest thing. I asked, ” Where is the DVD player?” To which he responded, ” It’s a Blue Ray player!” That is multi-tasking at its finest. I have to admit, I had a blast playing Guitar Hero last night. Though not at first when I was getting booed off stage, but I eventually got the hang of it. Wes fell asleep on the couch and I played career mode for about 2 hours. The fingers on my left hand were frozen in a crippled arthritic position. But I unlocked some cool new songs, my favorite so far is Black Magic Woman by Santana. But I am pretty sure it was Barracuda that I was playing in my sleep last night. I really really want to go play right now, but Wes says I have to clean the house first, lol.
UPS came by and delivered my Valentines Day present today. I know what your thinking, flowers? Candy? Human size stuffed animal? Not in this house, if you want to show that someone special how much you care, get them something special from American Muscle.
Someone must love me a lot!
Roush Hood Scoop
CDC Side window louvers
Ducktail Spoiler
Now, they don’t match now, but they will soon. For my birthday present, Wes is getting them painted to match my car. As well as window tint and custom racing stripes. Fingers crossed that this will be done by my birthday, which is in about 2 weeks
No not a thumb, a TOY. Can you believe that? An actual toy that I didn’t have to send in 3 UPC labels and $5.95, then wait 4-6 weeks for. Go figure. I’m trying to remember the last thing I got out of a cereal box when I was a kid. I do remember the days when I picked my cereal based on the toy and not taste, but I can’t think of one single toy. What about you? What was the coolest thing you got out of a cereal box?
This month at S.O.S. we talked about Sarah. These last few weeks have been a time of stretching for me. I am not a public speaker, I do enjoy hiding in the background. So even though there were only 3 other people at the meeting this month, sharing this was not an easy task, it was way outside of my comfort zone. But I’m glad I did it, because, even though I missed half my points and stumbled through the rest, the time I spent researching and the intimate prayer sessions were priceless. So, incase you missed it or just couldn’t understand my babbling and stuttering here are the highlights.
Sarah
The Original Desperate Housewife
I don’t know about you, but most times when I’m reading through my bible, I have a hard time envisioning the characters of the bible as real people. Especially the women, I often think of them as these graceful, prestigious women who had it all together, making bread with one hand, while tending chores with the other, a water pitcher on her head and a baby on her hip, all while maintaining herself in a pleasing manner to her husband. ( All without electricity or Paul Mitchell hair products)
For Example, take Sarah, from the surface I might see her as this perfect, beautiful, kind, preachers wife, who lead the choir and organized the church picnics. But if we take a deeper look at Sarah, we also see that she was impatient, temperamental, conniving, cruel, pouty , jealous and a bit of a whiner. Not that any of us could be that way right? Basically, she was a typical everyday housewife.
As far as a biblical account goes, Sarah’s story doesn’t really begin till she is 65, but there are some things in her story that can give us a sense of her earlier years.
* Sarah’s birth name, Sarai, means, ” My Princess”. By that fact alone, I think we can determine that she was adored by her parents, maybe even a little spoiled. When Sarah was 90, God changed her name to Sarah which means, “Princess”. By removing the possessive pronoun. “my”, the Lord was taking way the limiting aspect of her name since she was to be ancestor to many nations.
* We also know that Sarah, was beautiful. There are several accounts in the bible that tell of her striking beauty. She was favored everywhere she went because of her looks. Even in her old age of 65, Abraham was afraid that other men would kill him to take Sarah as their own wife.
Since the time Sarah and Abraham were married, Sarah desired nothing more than to have a child, but she was barren. This consumed her, she spent years in frustration and depression. Now, Sarah had a lot going for her, she had her looks and her health, she and Abraham were very wealthy and she was adored by her husband. She was obsessed with this thing that she could not have, and through her desperation, she cooked up her own little plan.
Obviously, this was not a good idea. Abraham did conceive a child through her maidservant Hagar, but it didn’t take long for things to go South. It was Sarah’s idea, she convinced him to go through with it, it went awry and she tells him it’s his fault.
Now, I’m not trying to paint a bad picture of Sarah, she wasn’t a bad person. Scripture actually commends her for her faithfulness and steadfastness. Peter even refers to her as how a wife should submit to her husband. Bottom line, she was just human. She had moments of weakness and some temper tantrums here and there, but what woman hasn’t? She was also humble, faithful, and meek and she sincerely loved her husband and God.
I think there were a lot more to Sarah’s emotional distress than just wanting to have a child. I think that Sarah was under an enormous amount of pressure and was heavily burdened, maybe she even felt guilty. God had promised Abraham, many children.
This was Abraham’s destiny, his promise and she played a crucial role. She had to feel like she was holding him back.
God promised Sarah a child and at the age of 90, she gave birth to a son and named him Isaac, which means, “laughter” or ” He Laughs”, saying, God has made me laugh and all who hear will laugh with me. For all the years, she spent stressed and frustrated, she always held on to the promise that was made to her.
Is there something you are holding on to? A Promise? A prayer yet to be answered? Do you struggle with giving it completely over to God or are you like me and reserve a little to worry about? Give it all to God, trust in his promises, He wants to take that burden away.
Last nights tennis lesson didn’t go as well as expected. In fact, I think I am a worse player now than I was before the lesson. Maybe it is just the realization that I had been doing it all wrong this whole time. But the fact still remains that now that I have, “Proper Form”, I can’t hit the ball. Or at least I can’t hit the ball where I want it, I sailed plenty over fence. I knew I had developed some bad habits from teaching myself how to play, but this proper form is really awkward and uncomfortable. We do have 3 more weeks of lessons, so maybe a little more practice is just what I need. But, I’m not getting my hopes up too much, our instructor isn’t very hopeful either. Amber asked him how we did for our first lesson, and he just laughed. Oh well, I guess I can’t be awesome at everything.
I don’t have much to post about. Been a pretty uneventful weekend. I’ve been sick with a sinus infection I guess. But it was a beautiful weekend, so I actually got out and took some pictured with my new camera, that I had to have for the color accent feature. Enjoy…
Kayla looking all grown up with her new shoes
Kayla in her new coat that Aunt D made her. I love this pic, it’s very Jackie O
Enjoying the nice weather in her swing
She should have good leg muscles from triking in the grass
Ok, so I really wanted to post more often this year, but sometimes it’s hard to some up with stuff to talk about. Like I am so sure you want to hear about how many times Kayla said the words, “Bite”, and “Uh Oh”. Or that I lost my cell phone 2 days ago and found it under the couch today. Look there was a blog post, haha.
Seriously, I think I may have a problem. I haven’t gotten anythign done since last Friday becasue I have been caught up in a book. No that is not a typo. I know it sounds a little ironic, the girl who always hated to read, blah blah blah. I started reading Twilight last Friday and it was SO good. I finished it last night and rushed out today to buy book 2, “New Moon”. I actually found one theater still playing the movie, so I am going to try to go see the movie this weekend. So if you dont’ hear from me anymore this week, I’m probably hiding somewhere with my face in my new book.
It’s been my quest to shed some excess layers, not just my new years resolution this year, but the last several. I have a love /hate relationship with the gym. I’ll go 4-5 times a week for a couple weeks, overly pumped, hitting all the machines, track and pool. Then I get really frustrated and don’t go at all for a couple weeks. Not really sure what my deal is, but after 2 years of this and not losing a pound, obviously this is not working.
So, I finally broke down and bought a Heart Rate Monitor. It’s something I thought I didn’t need for a long time, and now that I have one, it may turn out to be true, but for now, I’m really excited about it. Here is how I justify my purchase. It’s supposedly common knowledge that to lose weight, it’s calories in, calories out. You have to burn more calories than you eat. I can read the nutrition labels all day long and track every morsle of food, but at the end of the day,I have no clue how many calories I burned. This is supposed to be the answer to all my woes. I went with the Polar F6 becasue so many people on Sparkpeople recommended it.
So today was my first day to take it to the gym. It has this one particular function ( that I can’t figure out how to turn off), that beeps when you are working out and not in your target heart rate zone. So I did an hour on the elliptical first. Whenever I slowed down and my HR dropped below 130, it beeped, urging me to speed up I guess. It mostly did the same thing in the weight room, but I had my iPod going, so I couldn’t really hear it. I don’t think it was loud enough to bother other people, I hope not anyway. Then lastly, I went ran the track and it started beeping again, but this time it was because I was over my target HR. But despite the beeping, I was happy to know that I burned 1000 calories at the gym this morning. I’ve kept it on most of the day since and it reads that I have burned an additional 8oo calories. So, I am hoping it is accurate. I’m hoping to loose these extra layers by June. Wes and I are going back to Huntington Beach, CA and I want to take surfing lessons. ( I also hope to not be rescued by the coast guard again) Then in October, I have a really pretty dress to wear for my BFF Annette’s wedding. I’m also hoping that putting this in black and white and displaying it out to the world will also be incentive enough to keep it up.
