Mid-February Faves

 

It's Friday again!  This week, although a bit drab weather wise, really flew by.  I'm here to share FIVE of the blessings that top my list...Susanne from this blog is our host and she calls our blessings the FAVE FIVE.  Do you have five things from your week that made you say, Thank You, God or made you smile? 

Pancake Combo: 2 blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup
2 scrambled eggs, 2 slices turkey bacon, coffee, water

• VALENTINE'S DAY:  Dave asked me what I wanted to do on Valentine's Day and I chose breakfast out at International House of Pancakes, aka I-Hop in the town to the north of us.  We had a huge breakfast of carbs and protein.  The pancakes were delicious, the scrambled eggs were ok, and the turkey bacon was ick. (i only ate a half slice...I think because I'm so used to tempah "bacon" now, I just didn't care for the turkey bacon.  I stopped eating pork products in 2015). After breakfast we ran a quick errand and then took my car through the car wash.I hadn't washed my car all winter as it's been too cold. We were so full we didn't eat for the rest of the day other than some fruit and cheese as an afternoon snack.  We watched a rom com on Disney + which was a fun storyline but sadly too raunchy with the language. So we made hot fudge sundaes with oat milk mocha fudge ice cream, mint chocolate chip coconut milk ice cream, hot fudge, blueberries, walnuts, cherries and Dave added Cool Whip to his. That was our dinner. We totally splurged on junk food but hey....at least there was no animal fat! 😃  I'm thankful we had a fun Valentine's Day and I'm thankful we don't usually eat like that! 

image courtesy of B*ston Gl*be online
Alisa Liu, American who took Gold for first time since 2002!

• WOMEN'S FIGURE SKATING:  For a few days this past week, I had time to watch the live performances of the women's short program and free skate, as well as the pairs skate.  I feel like the Asian skating athletes are doing now for the Olympics what the Russians did back about 20 years ago.  My ballerina daughter and I always preferred the more ballet-esque Russian figure skaters to the American ones.But... I was thrilled to see that our American girl made Gold and that my two fave Japanese skaters took the silver and bronze. I'm thankful we can watch the Olympics on television and that I was able to see it "live" since I was free those afternoons. 

Meatless Monday 

healthy version Taco Casserole

• DELICIOUS DINNER:  Mondays are almost always meatless for my husband and I for dinner. He works from home on Mondays and Fridays and he had come downstairs asking what I was making for dinner. I think he was hoping it wasn't yet another tofu grain bowl 😏.  It wasn't!  I had discovered a recipe from my friend Deb's blog and decided to tweak it to make it more plant-based friendly.  The original recipe calls for ground beef (I haven't had beef since 2014) and 2 cups of cheese.  I tweaked it to be plant-based "beef" (Beyond Meat), chopped red, green and yellow peppers plus the onions and diced tomatoes.  And I only used one cup of shredded cheddar and made the recipe a bit smaller in an 11x9 inch pan so that I wasn't using an entire bag of Fritos. I chopped scallions for a topping and had them in a side bowl as I wasn't sure if Dave would want them for his top. I was thankful I had all the ingredients on hand to whip up this amazing easy casserole dinner.  Paired with a tossed salad it was perfect and look at all the leftovers we have for Friday evening's meal!

• OUTDOOR WALKS/PILATES/POWER FOODS:  I had two days this week of really good Pilates workouts followed by power walks on the town park bike path before mid-day. I'm not a huge lunch person, meaning I usually just grab fruit, cheese or hummus and maybe whole grain crackers or a piece of Naan.  But most days this week, I had hummus on naan with fresh veggies, a mandarin orange and some cheese.  I'm trying to wean myself off from eating cheese and it's hard!  It's the only dairy I eat and I'd like to just stop like youngest girl did but I'm rather addicted to it.  At any rate, I just had 2 slices so that's a plus! I'm thankful for good, healthy habits and for a good pilates program I finally found on You Tube! 

• LUNCH DATE:  My friend C and I finally had time to do lunch together. I hadn't seen her in 2 years! I had her over and we did chicken salad on a croissant plus fruit salad.  She brought some delicious mini muffins she made that were all plant-based and made with bananas, cocoa, honey.  No flour or sugar.  They were delicious.  We each had one and saved one for Dave. I was so thankful we could finally get together, get caught up and share our prayer needs and what God was doing in our families, etc. We were so busy chatting that we didn't even have our phones out to take pics! 

That wraps up some faves for the past week.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!