Asian Salad, Diet Failures, Homeschooling and Great Advice

Just some random updates...

1. I don't know how many licks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop for the same reason I don't know how many pounds you can lose on cycle 1 of the 17 Day Diet. It's called lack of will power. Add that to a little laziness, and you would have my diet dilemma. I made it through about 2 days of exercise and about 5 days without chocolate... and about 10 without carbs and red meat... and then all bets were off. I lost 8 lbs. and then gained back 2. I think I am hovering at about 7lbs total... and I may or may not be removing ALL of my clothing to get that number. I'll let you know how much that plate full of chocolate cake affected my average tomorrow.

The good thing about this diet is that it has really helped me to eat healthier. I eat a LOT of veggies. I cook a lot of things from scratch - including chicken broth, chicken soup, gourmet salads, baked veggies like asparagus and cauliflower... and we generally eat healthier than we ever have and eat less processed stuff than probably 95% of Americans. We also have decreased our sugar intake by about 90%. The image of 150 lbs of white sugar in my garage was enough to really spur me on towards making changes. 150 lbs is how much the average American puts away in a year (.5 lbs per day). Our eating out budget has gone down substantially, too - and we are eating at healthier places like Jason's Deli, Chipotle, and local Greek food places when we eat out. It almost makes up for the intense amount of produce we have been purchasing.



2. Because I love you, I'll share my amazing recipe for Asian Salad. I'm going to merge my food blog in here when I find a designer who will work for free. Until then, I'm cooking lots of great foods and taking photos. Getting ready for the day when I have free time to blog about it all...

Asian Chicken Salad with pan-fried Rotisserie Chicken

(all ingredients are to taste - I don't measure)
red cabbage
green cabbage
shredded/grated carrot
chopped/julienned jalapeno
cilantro
chopped leeks
chopped/shredded bok choy
chopped celery (with or without leaves)
bean sprouts
chopped broccoli
chicken topping (pan fried rotisserie - pulled white meat fried in butter and garlic with pepper and garlic salt)
home made sesame dressing (soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, lime juice, brown sugar, toasted sesame seeds, sesame oil, olive oil, dash hot sauce)

Oh, my dear it is wonderful... and the leftover chicken bones and dark meat made a wonderful broth for my chicken and rice soup (photo above). My kids said it was the best chicken soup with rice they had ever eaten. Eat your heart out Campbells. No more MSG for us. I've been freezing chicken broth off of our once-a-week rotisserie chickens for about a year now. I think we should probably invest in a rotisserie oven.



As for teaching my kids?

3. We are entering week 4 of homeschool next week and so far we've managed to get 4 days of school done each week - which is great - considering last year... all year long. If you spread that out, school will take about 45 weeks to complete. That's if we actually do 4 days each week... and we really have to have a day off each week just for the sheer volume of laundry and housework we have keeping up with our little dudes. Sometimes we make up history and reading assignments on Saturdays, too. There are fun projects like computer illustration, free-time reading, sporadic book reviews, and kid-blogging on weekends, too. Life is all about learning. I'm feeling so much better about 'school' this year. It is a huge relief to me. So are these book cases - even if they aren't fully functional yet. It's all a work in progress.

I'm finding the joy. It feels like a long awaited healing of my soul.



4. While I've been busy finding joy, the baby has been busy learning how to get his little busy grabbing hands a lot farther - a lot faster. My 6 month old is completely mobile now: crawling, pulling up, cruising, using two fingers to pick up and ingest small objects... you know the drill. This makes life very interesting and busier than ever. Good thing he's cute. He looks like my husband would if you shot him with a shrink ray and took off about 39.5 years worth of him. His smile melts me... both the big guy, and the little guy (and the two other dudes that live here). Morgan and I are outnumbered by all these good lookin' fellas.



5. I wrote something over at the Homeschool Post this past week. It's great advice. Most of my best articles are just me giving myself great advice that's really difficult to follow. Working on following it and needed to hear it again (it is an old article I wrote for Heart of the Matter a few years back that I updated). Good advice never grows old.

You can also link your field trips up over there this week. Don't miss out!

Thanks for stopping in and sharing my crazy homeschool journey. I hope you have a super homeschool week!