Tried a new recipe tonight!

So, I'm bored with the limited amount of dinner recipes I have in my brain arsenal. I can pull off a handful of things, but, most of them run in the same "dinner families," as I'll call them, so I can't use many of them in a week.

For example, tacos and enchiladas. Both easy. Both yummy. Both Mexican/TexMex in flavor, so you really don't want both in one week.

Parmesan chicken, pesto chicken, spaghetti. All kinda Italian-y. Don't want them all in one week.

Brandon doesn't like pork chops, which sucks. I really liked the pork chops I used to make, thanks to a really cool person at church submitting the recipe to the church cook book. Its SO easy and you only really get one big pan dirty. Maybe a bowl or two, but thats it! Veggies, meat, sauce, all one pan. Love it. But Brandon does not. Grr.

So, on the way to the store today I got on his iPhone and looked up some stuff on mobile.foodnetwork.com. I found this (from the non-mobile site) Spicy City Chicken. Now, do not trust its prep time and such. Its like not right lol. But, I'll give you the low down.

First, I loved it. If you like chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce, this stuff is up your alley. A little bit of spice (or more, depending on how heavy your hand is with some of the ingredients) mixed with a nice sweet flavor.

Side note: we used regular yellow onions instead of shallots because, well, thats what we could find, we're not going to a specialty store for this. And we didn't get the scallions because the Produce guy in Kroger was doing something that took more than 5 minutes in the exact spot where the scallions were, so we decided to just ignore them. Oh, and we used only chicken breasts without skin, cause thats how we roll.

Other alterations Brandon made. He chopped up the cilantro and tossed it in the pan. And I really don't think he strained the sauce after he pureed it, but I liked it that way. It was probably thicker and had more fullness to it. But I bet it worked better because he chopped the cilantro.

What I REALLY want to do is make that sauce, put some chicken and mild cheese in some corn tortillas and smother them with the sauce. It would be a different kind of enchilada but a good one!

So, the thing says prep time 20 min and cook time 1 hour. Flip that. Prep time 1 hour cook time 20 min. The sauce really is the thing that takes the longest. So if making the sauce is part of prep, then its 1 hour of prep time. If making the sauce is cooking it, then its 1 hour cooking it. Broiling or grilling the chicken is dumb fast. Like 12 minutes maybe. We broiled it. We dragged it out a bit cause I had the chicken ready and Brandon was still working on the sauce. It was a partnership to make diner tonight. :)

Oh, and what was funny was the smells. It smelled a lot like the goat curry from Jamaica, especially since it was green in color, just like the goat curry. But its flavor was more like the sweet and spicy tomatillo flavors, which I LOVE along with cilantro. Yum.

We liked it. Thought I'd share. It makes plenty, too. I'm looking forward to left overs.

Crossfit

So, we did it. We went and participated in our first Crossfit work out. Of course they went easy on us the first day, and John, they guy who runs the one in Richardson we are going to, is really nice. He said we'll probably go a little easy for a couple weeks til we get the hang of it, know how our bodies respond to Crossfit, and learn all the techniques.

Today we did this:

Warm Up:
400 meter jog
PVC pipe stretches

Work-Out:
400 meters row
50 squats
40 sit ups
30 push ups
20 box jumps (you don't actually have to jump, but its like a 2 foot box you get up on 20 times)
10 pull ups (with the lovely help of the most awesomest rubber band thingy)

Cool Down:
Stretches, walking it off

I think I completed mine in 18min and some odd seconds and Brandon did his in like 19 minutes and some odd seconds. I have better strength in my lower body than he does, so I think, and thats why I think I beat him by a minute.

I couldn't tell you what everyone else's work out was cause I don't know all the exercises, but I know they were supposed to run 400meters, then do the same distance running backwards, then come in and basically do a combined situp, toss a huge ball, received the huge ball from your buddy, do the situp, toss, repeat, as well as other things.

http://www.crossfit.com

Thats the master website.

But why not try to do as much as we can? Why just go slowly to "see how your body responds?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis

That link there takes you to the condition that some olympic athletes have caused by pushing themselves too hard doing Crossfit lol. Awesome, huh?

Anyways, going back tomorrow. Just promised I'd say something about it after my first day.

We're moved!!!

And, oh my God, I'm never doing that again. In College Station I lived in a dorm you basically moved most of your crap out of every Christmas and moved completely out every summer for THREE years, then I lived in an apartment, moved to another apartment, then moved to another apartment, and all of that was WAY easier than this experience has been.

Granted, I did have help and this was just Brandon and I, and this apartment had been lived in for 12 years with left overs from them moving from a house to an apartment, but oh my God. His mom had basically packed up her room and we had the movers move her. She took care of most of the unpacking of her apartment. But what was left was in sane. Its why we took a week off of work to do it all.

But, our accomplishments are:

Here is the attic, finally completely empty (this attic was stuffed to the brim before our efforts):

After cleaning this bitch out I came out with a total of 6, I think, itchy bug bites that looked creepily like chigger bites, but they were mostly on my torso, which so isn't the common place to find chigger bites.

This is what the living room looked like with all the attic mess in it:

We managed to sort everything, get it all labed with store at his mom's, store at my parent's, garage sale, or throw away. Throughout the entire thing I think we took at least 9 pick-up truck beds FULL of trash to the poor little dumpster at the apartement complex. Oh, and we learned that if in a fight between Brandon's head and a light bulb on the attic ceiling, that Brandon will win. (no worried, only the light bulb was hurt in the incident and wonderful Mr. Vacuum took care of the mess).

We filled up my grandma's garage for the garage sale. Literally. There was no where to walk through all the boxes and crap we took to the garage sale. Not everything sold, but we did unload a good amount of stuff. We put one furniture piece on the side of the road with a lovely sign that says, "Please take me." Come to think of it, I should check in with my grandma to see if its gone yet.

We also finally managed to get rid of the fish tank. We got it up on Craigslist kinda late and basically said you can have everything for x price (super duper cheap, especially for everything) if you just come and get it and we don't have to move it at all. Well, our emails got neglected in trying to finish cleaning out the apartment, cause we were working up til 5pm on Sunday and the key needed to be in the drop box by 9am Monday morning. So, we ended up having to break it down and start taking it downstairs. We were just gonna leave it by the dumpster and let the Craigslist peoples know where we left it, when I said screw it, I'm calling the guy that emailed us the most and asked us the most questions. Catch is, we already knew he couldn't come pick it up cause he was at work til 6 and, well, we wanted to raid on World of Warcraft at 7pm.

So I talk to him, and he asks questions, and gets to the point, "What are you really saying is the bottom line?" I tell him, "Look, we're just trying to find someone to take this thing other than Mr. Dumpster in the back of the apartment. We have somewhere we want to be at 7, so we're going to leave it sitting outside. Its free, cause no one will be here to take any money, ya know?" He laughed and said, "Well, then there is nothing to think about is there?"

His poor wife. Since they lived nearby, she apparently called a friend to bring her friend's car to come and try to get the pieces (cause the original plan was he was gonna have his wife walk over and sit with the fish tank equipment until he got off work, which totally would've sucked for her). She and her friend had no idea what they were getting in to, but I'm glad it went to them. They desperately needed the tank right then cause a guy from his "fish forums" (which totally meant to me he was a super hobbyist, which makes me feel better) gave them an 8 inch turtle for his 3 year old and he needed a bigger tank to hold the turtle in, which is why our tank was perfect for him immediately.

So, that unloaded, we left the cleaned apartment happy to be done. We raided, and Brandon died. To prove he died, I have the picture.

Yep. Thats him sleeping with Bella! She was on the bed first so he scooted in with her. He's totally sleeping on my side in this picture!!!! So when I went to bed, I had to move him and the dog, who ended up sleeping with us all night.

So, we're done. And we're happy about it. We've decided we never want to own a 2 story house. We never want to move his effing TV again, and if we ever buy a new one, we're not getting one that weighs 150 effing pounds, and especially not keeping it upstairs if it does. I think we'll think twice about hobbys that involve heavy, bulky equipment. And be more inclined to throw crap away (even though I can't bring myself to toss my Nursing school books yet.)

I'm sure my next blog entry will be about this new fitness thing we're going to start, but I'm not going to say anything til we've paid our money and went to our first class deal.