The fun has begun...

This weekend was the official kick-off to the kitchen remodel. The beginning to a long journey to a new kitchen and an efficient place to cook, we're super excited. So far we have cleaned out all the cabinets and taken about 1/2 the cabinets out. We moved the dining room to the living room, and then we created a temporary kitchen in our dining room. Eventually the dining room will also have to be the assembly area for our new cabinets. Basically it will be getting crazy around here, and we're trying to be as prepared as possible. Here's some picture of how a temporary kitchen looks.







You might have noticed there is no stove in the temporary kitchen, and you're right. For now it is still usable in the kitchen, but once it is time for the new floors we will be down to only the microwave, toaster oven, and grill. We're going to make it work.

Before the kick-off I was cleaning out some items from the fridge and decided to take our apples and made some dried fruit for our oatmeal. I peeled and diced about seven apples that were going bad, covered them in cinnamon, then let the dehydrator do the rest of the work.





I also baked up some egg cups for Matt. Often he is crunched for time in the morning, so I mixed up some eggs and egg whites and baked them in a muffin tin with some sauteed spinach. It will make the morning quicker, and will be easier since our kitchen isn't fully functioning.

Alright off to finish the weekly laundry...

Long time, no Jen...

Well I'm back, and I don't plan to go away for a few days. Trying to get things around here either tied up or started so it's been a little crazy. Here's a little summary...

Running
I've been moving it on the treadmill. Finally hit six miles! Woo Hoo!!! I can't wait for the weather to get better! For those of you who are preparing for the Buffalo Half-Marathon with me the weekly mileage looks like this:

Monday: 3 Miles
Wednesday: 4 Miles
Friday: 3 Miles
Sunday: 7 Miles

Dehydrating
We've been putting our machine to good use with some fruits this past weekend, actually the grapes are still working on becoming raisins. We filled all nine trays with: strawberry roll-ups, mango slices, apples, blueberries, strawberry slices, red grapes and green grapes.





Everything but the raisins are done, don't they look yummy!


Road Trip
Some of you may know we are in search of a "new" car for me as my lease is coming to an end. Basically we want a used vehicle that is in like new condition, is that so much to ask? The answer is no, but if we want it then we're going to have to do some leg work, which means taking a road trip. So Saturday we headed to Ohio, just a short drive down the 90, to look at a couple cars.

The first car was a dud. When the glove box falls off when you open it, then just imagine the other hidden issues. So we didn't even bother driving it. Then we had some time to kill, so we checked with our trusty iPhone to find a local Whole Foods location. Lucky us there was one located just a short distance from the next car we wanted to look at.




If you've never been to Whole Foods, I'd highly recommend visiting one either near you or in a place you visit. We got some lunch at their fresh foods counter, does it not look yummy?

Tomato Soup with a side of fresh baked bread.


Matt's Corned Beef Panini


Jen's Grilled Veggie Panini


Then we went through the store checking out all the aisles of products, I don't know what it is but you just feel healthy when you are in the store. It must be that they try to incorporate local products into each store to give you an opportunity to support the local companies and farmers. We ended up only purchasing a loaf of amazing fresh made bread that we were served while eating lunch.

They give you a 5 cent discount when you have your own shopping bag, which is typical with some store. At Whole Foods they also give you the choice to donate that 5 cents to a local charity! We donated our 5 cents because every little bit counts, and we saved a plastic bag.

On the way out we noticed a recycling option they offer to customers for those little items not typically taken by recycling companies. For example you can deposit your yogurt containers and they will be re-purposed into plastic used for toothbrushes, cutting boards, etc. Another chance to make a difference with a small act.
The products to the left of the bin are made from the #5 plastic containers.


Lucky Find
So if you're still reading you might be wondering if we found a "like new" used vehicle. We'll we were beginning to wonder if it even existed because we had looked at quite a few cars. But since we knew exactly what vehicle we wanted it was a little easier to narrow down the field of vehicles we were looking at.

And we were able to find a vehicle that you could just tell the owner actually cared for. Do you know how hard it is to find a vehicle with maintenance records?

Here's a sneak peak with details to come later.

Can you guess what it is????

I had some time on Monday to play with the dehydrator. I used what we had in the house to create two flavors of fruit leather for snacking. We also wanted to dry some cranberries and cherries, but with Valentine's day all the red fruit was overpriced, maybe next week.

So check-out the first attempt at some fruit leather/fruit roll-ups:

Place fruit in the food processor.


Produce a nice spreadable mush, for lack of a better term.


Pineapple-banana spread on the paraflexx sheet...


Peanut butter banana with coconut and walnut...


Dehydration time, just put them in and wait...


The finished product:



Yes they taste as good as they look! It's nice, simple snack with lots of taste, but no added sugars. We hope to experiment with some more fruits next weekend, we'll have to see what we can find at the store.

We're taking requests too! If you have a good dehydrator recipe or suggestion let us know!