Buddha Bowl

One of my favorite no recipe, recipes is Buddha Bowls. Basically a Buddha Bowl is a meal comprised of a whole bunch of ingredients thrown together with a sauce added.  If you look on Pinterest, you will find a whole lot of recipes for them, which you can of course follow, but they are really easy to make with whatever you have on hand.  This makes them great for now, when so many are eating out of their pantry.

I think that traditionally Buddha Bowls were vegetarian, but I have added chicken to mine in the past.  Traditionally, they are also served cold, but for this one, I did heat my rice, onion, and mushrooms.

The other great thing about these are that they can be meal prepped.  I stored the ingredients in different containers depending on whether they were going to be reheated or not.  The week that I made these ones, I also didn't feel like making my own sauce, so I used a store bought one.  If you want to try your hand at making one, my favorite Buddha bowl sauce is this one by Davida over at The Healthy Maven.

If you want to recreate the bowl that I made, I sauteed a sweet onion and some Baby Bella mushrooms and roasted some frozen broccoli.  I added them to some brown rice and this is what I reheated each day.  The rest of the bowl was some baby spinach, diced cucumbers,  and matchstick carrots.  Finally I added a soft boiled egg.

Celebrating My Birthday During Quarantine

Normally, when our birthdays roll around, Jim and I take the day off, go out to eat for each meal, spend the day out somewhere, and basically have a grand time out and about.  This year was supposed to be more of the same for my birthday, with a planned trip to a area outside of Cleveland to do some shopping.  Then came COVID-19, and everything shut down.

So we improvised.  We still ate out for breakfast, we just picked it up from the restaurant and ate at home.

A veggie filled omelet, toast, bacon and lightly dressed mixed greens

We still went out, at least for a drive.  We were still isolating, just in our car and not our house.  We even packed a lunch and ate it in the car.  We decided to follow the Ohio River through a bunch of towns and then came home via farm country.  It was an amazing drive, with a lot of scenery. 

Some cows that we saw while driving through the countryside

Dinner was again brought home.  The nice part though was that I was able to get Thai food and Jim was able to get barbecue. 

Fresh Summer Rolls and Pad Ka Prao (Spicy Basil)

Brisket and macaroni and cheese

So all in all a great day.  Yes, we had to improvise, and it wasn't what we had originally planned.  But we rolled with it and had a great time.

It has been a while

I can't believe that it has been over two years since I've posted.  Actually, yes I can.  I've thought about it a lot, but for whatever reason, just felt completely paralyzed at the thought of sitting down to write.  In the time since I've posted, I have started a new job, we completely remodeled our house, and now we're dealing with a pandemic.

So far we seem to be dealing pretty well with the stay at home order.  For us, because of our jobs, it has only been a little over a week since we've been working from home.  Basically, when our governor issued the stay-at-home order.  We've quickly developed a routine to our days.  We've made staying active a priority.  We've also continued to get up and get ready each day like we would have had we gone into work.   I've made a point to get dressed in real clothes - even if they are jeans - and to do my makeup.  For me there is just something about doing my hair and makeup and wearing something cute to elevate my mood.

Sunrise on our morning walk

One nice thing is that instead of getting in our car to drive to work, we are able to take a walk through our neighborhood before we start work.

So, back to the blog.  I think that right now my goal is to post at least once a week.   I'll post about what I'm cooking and eating, what my workouts are looking like.  And, for now, how we're coping with social distancing.  Hopefully I can keep it up and you find posts that you enjoy reading.

Until next time

~Michelle

Cleaning out my makeup

When we started the bathroom renovation, we went through all of the cabinets in the bathroom and I ended up dumping some stuff on (and around) my makeup table, which was already in desperate need of an overhaul.  There were a number of things that I didn't wear anymore, and didn't see myself wearing in the future.  I also had samples pretty much everywhere.

Stuff from the bathroom

This doesn't look bad, but I was struggling to find stuff in the holder on the right

Samples and my new packet of wipes (I use them on my fingers)

A very messy drawer

Oh my word do I have a lot of mascaras and they were everywhere

This weekend I went through everything, got rid of a lot of things, and reorganized everything else.  Now I can easily find things, and I even have all of my samples grouped together by type.  I did discover that I have a lot of mascaras.  One of these days, I should do a comparison.  I just have to remember to take pictures of me wearing the different ones.

This is the finished product.

Most things are out of the drawer, and it pretty much now just holds some combs, my wipes, the towel that I lay on the table as I'm getting ready and the makeup bag that I take to work.  The hair products that I'm not currently using are tucked behind the mirror and all of the nail polish removers are together.  I even managed to fit all of the mascara in a drawer.

So, am I the only one that collects mascara?  What's your favorite?  How do you organize your makeup?

Bathroom Renovation

There is nothing as exciting or as terrifying as embarking on a major home renovation.  Last week, we embarked on a bathroom renovation and the planning stages of a kitchen renovation.

We live in a 1950s ranch, it's not huge, we have three bedrooms and one bathroom on the main level, and we have a 3/4 bath in the finished basement (it has a shower stall, no tub).  Needless to say, having the bathroom torn apart has caused major disruptions.  However, it was a project that definitely needed to be done.

Here are some before pictures

It's a very small bathroom

A very old, very worn, tub and tub surround

I was so glad to see the orange tile go

At the end of day one, everything was torn out, we discovered the original linoleum, and the new tub was in the bathroom, though standing up right.

Everything is torn out 

Original linoleum

The new tub

It's still going to be at least another week and a half, to two weeks until everything is finished, and I can't wait.

What I'm Eating Lately: Beef Stew

Happy Monday!  Today is the day that we finally get the remodel started on our house.  Te contractor should be here soon to demo the bathroom and we're meeting with the designer at 1 to begin work on the kitchen.  Since we have no clue what the next 2 to 3 weeks is going to bring, and just how dirty our house is going to get, I wanted to have a warm, comforting meal yesterday for dinner.

I love beef stew - when it's made sans tomatoes.  I especially hate beef stew that is made with vegetable juice cocktail, and it hates me back :)  So we created a recipe that was easy, and had no tomatoes.  I also don't like overly fatty stew, so we make sure to use a lean cut of meat.  Yesterday we used some sort of round, it was marked as lean stew meat, and we could easily see that there wasn't much fat on it.

First we tossed the beef cubes in some seasoned flour and browned them in a bit of olive oil.  Towards the end, we added in some chunks of sweet onion.


Once everything was nice and browned we added the broth and the seasonings, brought everything to a boil and then turned down the heat to a simmer, covered it, and let it simmer for an hour.  Now, I have to mention our secret ingredient to the stew.  To give the stew a bit more depth of flavor, we added cumin to it.  It didn't give it heat, just a smoky, earthiness, that we really like.

Once the hour was up we added the carrots and potatoes and then a slurry of cornstarch and water.  We actually ended up doing that twice, I think because our meat to broth ratio was a bit high on the broth side.  After it came back up to a boil, we turned down the heat and simmered it, uncovered for 30 minutes.

Beef Stew
1 pound lean stew meat
2 tablespoon flour seasoned with salt and pepper
1 medium sweet onion, chunked
2 teaspoons minced garlic (I'm lazy and buy the pre-minced kind)
4 cups low sodium beef broth
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 pound of carrots chunked
6 small to medium red potatoes cut in half

What I'm Eating Lately: No Time To Cook

Most weekends I cook up a recipe of some sort to bring as my lunch for the upcoming week.  It helps to ensure that, one, I'm not buying lunch every day, and two, that I'm eating something healthful.  Unfortunately, some weekends, I'm just too busy to spend much time in the kitchen.  The first weekend of January was one of those.  Sometimes when that happens, I'll just buy enough cans of soup to last me the week (I've been reaching for the Progresso Light Soup a lot lately), but that weekend, I really wanted to cook.

Organic Sprouted Thai Red Curry Rice

On a trip to Whole Foods a while back, I had picked up this rice side dish, and then never made it.  It turned out to be the perfect thing to cook up for lunch for the week.  Even though it simmered for something like 30 minutes, it wasn't something that I had to watch, so once it started simmering, I was able to start on my next project, which was undecorating from Christmas.

Once it was cooked, I divided it up into four bowls and topped with some frozen veggies that I had cooked up.  It turned out to be quite a nice, quick lunch.  The only issue, was that I really didn't have a good protein to top it with.  If  do this again, I will add either mushrooms, or shred some chicken to have with it.

I also forgot to take a picture of the finished dish - sorry.


So what is your go to quick lunch to pack?