It's All Good!

It's been a while! We have been busy, but most of all we have been enjoying this wonderful fall season and pampering ourselves. Hubby and I had gotten into a wonderful habit of creating new dishes together on the weekends, so I had lots to blog about, but we haven't done that in a while... until tonight actually, but more on that later.

So what has been going on since my last post? Not a whole lot. The most exciting thing that has been going on is enjoying being newlyweds. We got some awesome news on the 14th last month that the long legal battle with my hubby and our former employer had ended. They had started the lawsuit back in May when he left the company to work for a competitor, and then after a motion to dismiss the parties decided to explore a settlement. Hubby said he is very happy and that it could not have gone any better, so we of course went out to celebrate. Since then we have pretty much been thrown back into newlywed bliss and celebrating ever since! For the first time since November 2010, just 3 weeks after our wedding and the week after we returned from our honeymoon, we are both employed, not trying to leave our jobs, there is no pending lawsuit, and we are very happy and content with our lives. It was a long 10 months, but it is finally over, and we are so much happier now on the other side!

What else...? We met with our photographers to get all of our pictures and go over our final selections for the photo album. There has been so much going on since we got back from our honeymoon, that we never really got around to it until recently. It will be another 2-3 months until it is ready, but until then I have been going through the pictures and getting my favorite ones and posting them online. Here is a teaser!


As part of us enjoying our new, relaxing, newlywed bliss (again), we have been doing some fun date nights. We went to see the re-release of Lion King, and I got to see my first movie in 3D. It was really good, and definitely worth the extra price of the 3D ticket. Neither of us saw it in the theater as a kid, so it was great to be able to see one of my favorite Disney movies in the theater!

We also went to the Grand Opening Night at the OKC Philharmonic. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Pearl's Oyster Bar and then watch/listened to performances of Wagner's Lohengrin: Prelude to Act III (my favorite piece of the concert), Liszt's Les Preludes (also a wonderful piece), Turina's Danzas Fantasticas (a piece that sounded part romantic and part contemporary that I didn't like so much), and Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto performed by violinist James Ehnes. James Ehnes played Tchaikovsky so delicately and precisely. I never used to be a fan of violin concertos, but have really started to enjoy them more in the last two years. Tchaikovsky is probably my favorite composer, so naturally I really enjoyed the performance. The Philharmonic sounded the best they have sounded in years. The last few years have been good, but not great. This past concert sounded much more rehearsed, the orchestra was together more, and they just sounded excellent. We have season tickets again this year, and I'm really looking forward to the remaining concerts if the first one was any indication to their new sound.

Speaking of orchestra, after a year break from playing, I have returned to the OU Civic Orchestra. I didn't join Fall 2010 because I was too busy trying to finalize our wedding, and would also have to miss about 4 rehearsals. That wasn't fair to the orchestra, and I don't think I could have handled anything else on my "to-do list" last fall. In Spring 2011 I was unemployed and trying to save every penny we had, so that was part of the reason for not joining. Even though hubby encouraged me to join, I was on round 4 of 5 of interviews for a big company in downtown OKC. If I had gotten the job, I would have had to drop out as I would not be back in Norman in time for rehearsal. If I didn't get the job, I still didn't know if my new job would have a schedule that would accommodate it. But I am employed now in a nice 8-5 job, so I have once again joined. We are performing Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 (New World Symphony) and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"). I'm very happy to be playing again. Hubby has been spending money on paint ball stuff, so I decided I deserved some new strings, new chin rest pad, new metronome, and a pickup tuner that clips onto my instrument and plugs into my tuner so I can tune in noisy places (it will be very handy trying to keep the new strings in tune through rehearsal). Everything came in the mail last week, and I am one happy musician!

Hubby got really into football the last two weekends in September and I didn't feel like trying new recipes alone, so we didn't do anything fancy. There hasn't been a whole lot to post food wise from the last 4 weeks. Instead we have been enjoying the season. Last year at this time, we were getting ready for our wedding and were very stressed. We were too busy to stop and enjoy the season. We didn't get to do any of the stuff we normally do this time of year: going to a pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins, decorating for fall, decorating for Halloween, baking yummy pumpkin things, laying in bed enjoying the cool weather, and eating way too much. This year, we have done almost everything on that list! We were going to knock off the pumpkin patch on that list this weekend, but our patch is flooded.

For those of you who don't know, Oklahoma has been going through a horrible drought. All of our small ponds are completely dried up and have weeds growing them, and the larger ones are very low. Wildfires have been a big problem, and the summer heat was unbearable. We broke all kinds of records. This weekend however, we are getting some much needed rain. It started around 3:30 PM yesterday, and it pretty much has not stopped. As I'm writing this, we have had 3.80" since the event started. Once the rain started, the temperature held around 61F until today around 4:00 PM when the temperature started dropping again. It dropped to around 57F at about 7:30 PM and it's been hovering there ever since. The rain has been so refreshing. There has been lots of flooding, but we need the rain so bad that no one is complaining.

So that's about all that's been going on. Last week we finally got back to making dinners at home and trying to get back on the diet. Then this weekend, we used the cooler, cloudy weather to stay in and created some new dishes. I'll report on those in another post. We had a wonderful weekend together in true fall fashion. We slept with the windows open listening to the light rain last night, slept in this morning, and ate a late breakfast together. Hubby has gotten into coffee, so he filled the house with the wonderful aroma of coffee while we ate. I don't like the taste, but I sure do like the smell! We actually got hubby a french press and a hand crank coffee grinder (any decent electric one is really expensive!) last weekend and he is thrilled with the new addition to the kitchen that's just for him. After breakfast we went to see Moneyball, which was one of the best movies we have seen this year. Then we came back and cooked up a new meal. While Hubs was watching the Green Bay Packers game I baked up a yummy fall treat and caught up with my blog.

Well, I think we are all caught up. I'll try and post more soon. Off to bed to start a new work week.

A Relaxing Labor Day

Happy Labor Day!

Usually we have a cookout of sorts and either go to someone's house or have people over. Since things haven been so crazy lately and we are just now regaining control of time and still trying to catch our breaths, we decided to keep Labor Day quiet and relaxing.

A Much anticipated cold front came through yesterday dropping temperatures by about 15 degrees or more. We have had 60 days this summer where the temperature has been 100F or greater. It's been ridiculous. All kinds of records have been broken. The Norman Station at the Oklahoma Mesonet broke it's all time record high twice this summer, two days back to back. It ended up getting to 110F on August 2nd, 2011. Oklahoma broke the record for hottest July with an average temperature of 89.1F. Oklahoma ranked 2nd, only behind Texas, for the hottest summer on record. A bunch of cities broke records for number of days above 100F. It's been awful. So this cold front that came through dropping high temperatures into the 80's is very nice!

We are taking full advantage of this nice weather! We are dog sitting for the next week for a friend of ours, so we took our new doggie friend on a walk last night. It was gorgeous out and my husband enjoyed getting out of the house and just casually walking around our neighborhood talking. It was extremely relaxing and gave us a new way to connect. We came home and relaxed for a little while and it was so nice out we decided to sleep with the windows open. We got to sleep in this morning and woke up cuddling in a cool 70F room under our big down comforter. Newlywed bliss! It doesn't get much better than that!

To keep with our relaxing day, we decided to go see Our Idiot Brother mid afternoon since we were planning something new for dinner. This is going to sound weird, but before the movie started I was sent into a euphoric state because the big red curtains over the screen were illuminated with dark colors of orange, yellow and red, which were the colors of our wedding. Looking at the curtains for 20 minutes sitting next to my husband brought back so many great memories and feelings from our wedding. And with the cold front, it was like I was surrounded by fall, one of my favorite seasons! So the movie... it was good, not great, but a nice couple of hours out on a mid-afternoon date. We came home and started getting things ready for dinner!

Grilled Boneless Chicken Breasts with Lemon Vinaigrette:

This ended up being a really quick, easy, low point, and very good recipe! We have been buying the smaller chicken breasts at Sam's Club that are supposed to average 5oz so that it's easier to eat smaller portions than with the regular chicken breasts that can weight as much as a pound a piece! I'm also hoping that these smaller breasts have less hormones in them as well, but I can't seem to find an answer to that.

The recipe calls for 4-6oz breasts (1 1/2 lbs). We like having left overs, and I can easily fit 5oz of cooked chicken breast into my Weight Watchers plan, so we made 6 of our smaller breasts which came out to 2 lbs. They were each rubbed with some olive oil, and then seasoned with a mixture of coriander, sat, and pepper. Even though we added 33% more chicken, we didn't alter the recipe in any other way.

My husband who has become great at the grill threw these on a split fire where only one burner was on and the chicken was placed on the cooler side to cook slower. Right before the chicken was done it was moved to the hotter side of the grill to finish cooking and brown it. This resulted in ultra juicy chicken!

The Lemon Vinaigrette was a simple mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, Dijon mustard and sugar. Alone we were not impressed as it had a very herb-y flavor. But when drizzled over the chicken, the flavor of the Dijon mustard came through in combination with the seasonings on the chicken. I had a generous portion of 5.25oz of chicken with 2 teaspoons (which was plenty!) of the Lemon Vinaigrette for only 7 WW points. We served it with steamed haricot vert (French green beans), and steamed red potatoes. It was a very filling and delicious dinner.

And for dessert? You guessed it... more Greek Yogurt!


Chobani Greek Yogurt - Strawberry:

This was much better than the Yoplait Strawberry Greek Yogurt I had on Saturday! Unlike the Yoplait brand, this one had real strawberry chunks in it, was not too sweet, and had a more natural consistency of the fruit. I do have to make a note though about the color as I wrote horrible things about the color of Yoplait's Strawberry Geek Yogurt. Chobani's Strawberries also had an off color. They too were darker and had a bit of a brown tint to them. It was not nearly as bad as Yoplait's, but after some reading, this is the normal color for strawberries when they are not in their whole fruit form anymore. This made sense after thinking about it more as you get the same problem with Strawberry cakes when you try and make them with fresh berries. So I guess I can't hold the color of the strawberries against Yoplait anymore. But it doesn't change the fact that appearance aside, Chobani's Strawberry was much better!

This flavor ranks 4th for me in the Chobani flavor lineup: Lemon, Peach/Blueberry, Strawberry, Chery, Vanilla. Fage's Blueberry falls between the Lemon and Peach flavors by Chobani. I will be sticking mostly to Chobani, but I do plan to try some of the other Fage flavors.

Off to the duck pond to take our doggie friend on a more eventful walk and an opportunity to feed the ducks and geese... something I love doing!