healthy living...

Remember last week when I told you that we were changing our lifestyle by eating more organic foods, etc. Well, it’s only been almost 2 weeks and I feel better than I have in a long time! I have so much more energy and I find myself daily wanting to make small changes to improve other eating/exercising habits. Take for instance last night, we had dinner and I’m a sweets girl. I love to have something sweet after I eat. In the last few months, I’ve gone from buying 2 boxes of 100 calorie packs every week to maybe buying 1 boxes a month! Literally, the last few months I’ve been slowing changing my eating habits but more so over the last few weeks. So after dinner, I asked Kaz if he wanted a chocolate chip cookie. With our food order, we got 4 containers of organic chocolate chip cookie dough and it is delicious! He said no he didn’t really want one, so instead of baking 1 for me, I ate a grapefruit! 

I’ve also been drinking a glass of carrot juice everyday for almost 10 days now and it really makes such a difference. Annie Rice has had a full sippy cup everyday now for 10 days and it makes me so happy! She LOVES it, although I don’t always love her diaper:)!

Kaz’s favorite dinner that I make is chicken casserole. It’s always been his favorite meal! I normally put in chicken, cream of chicken, chicken broth, and cover the top with ritz crackers soaked in butter. We eat that over pasta. The other night I decided to make it and made a few small changes that is healthier for us and tasted JUST AS GOOD! Instead of chicken broth, I added zucchini and added plain ritz crackers instead of soaking them in butter, over organic whole wheat pasta instead of plain pasta! I’m really seeing day by day how little changes make big differences. We also made a really big decision over the weekend...REMEMBER HOW I SAID I HAD NO DESIRE TO GIVE UP SODA! I’m going to be pretty honest here and tell you how bad my soda addiction has been. We would literally go through 4-6 2 litters a week! I would drink coke zero all day, every day from breakfast until I went to bed. The more I thought about my statement last week about not giving it up, the more I was convicted that Annie Rice sees me drink soda all day and I make her drink water. That’s not really the best example for me to be setting so Kaz and I made a deal. We decided to NOT BUY soda in our house ANYMORE! We have given ourselves 1 out a week BUT ONLY over the weekend IF we go out to dinner. We can’t bring it home, so it has to be if we go out to lunch or dinner on the WEEKEND! I actually was dreading doing this because I just knew my headaches would be awful but I have to say the Lord has honored our decision because I’ve had 1 headache that was yesterday and it maybe lasted 15 minutes. I’m on day 5 of no soda, just water and a little apple juice in my smoothie:) 

I’ve made a couple really good recipes lately that are very yummy! Here are 2 from this week that our family loved:)

Mexican Rice Bake

2 boneless skinless chicken cooked

3-4 cups of cooked brown rice[I use the rice in the bag so mine came out to be a little over 3 cups]

1/2 bag of frozen corn

1 cup of salsa

1 cup of plain greek yogurt[I used vanilla because we didn’t have plain and I couldn’t taste a difference]

1/2 cup of cheese

1 can of drained black beans

Mix it all together[make sure the chicken and rice are cooked, the corn is frozen]. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes! We ate it with tortilla chips! Very yummy!

Chicken Casserole

2 boneless skinless chicken breast cooked. Cut in cubs

2 regular cans of 99% fat free cream of chicken

1 zucchini cut in tiny cubs

Bake for 20 minutes at 350

Take it out and cover the top with crumbled ritz crackers[I used reduced fat]

Bake for 10 more minutes

Serve over pasta!