Today's Special: Nov. 1-7th

Holy crap it's November! Here's the menu for this week...

Sunday: Chinese Pork & Vegetable Hot Pot- New Recipe

Monday: Steak & Blue Cheese Pizza- New Recipe

Tuesday: Spinach & Four Cheese Manicotti (or Stuffed Shells)- Uses the leftover spaghetti sauce from last week. I use giant shells instead of manicotti because they're much easier to work with.

Wednesday: Sauerkraut Chowder - Try this I swear it's really good!

Thursday: Leftovers

Weekend: Shrimp Chicken and Andouille Jambalaya

Dry Cleaners

Is it just me or is the dry cleaners a little scary? I mean you go in there with what I would assume are some of your best clothes. You drop them off in a lump amidst the piles of other clothes and then leave, possibly to never see them again.

Who even knows how dry cleaning works anyway? They probably just scrape any chunky bits off with a fingernail, spray the rest of the item with Febreze, steam press and wha la... Dry cleaned!

And the whole atmosphere of the dry cleaners is a little creepy. I mean, there's all these clothes hanging up, covered in bags and they fill the entire place. They kind of remind me of that scene in one of the Freddy Krueger movies where the bloody dead chick drags herself down the school hall in a body bag. Gross.

Today's Special: Oct. 25-31st

First of all I just wanted to mention that a lot of the new recipes I tried last week were awesome. They were all healthy, but also some of the best recipes I've tried for a while. And I don't mean they were good healthy tasting... I mean really good as in "tastes like regular awesome food" good. Also, so incredibly easy to make. Those Summer Vegetable Crepes rocked and the Vegetarian Reubens were also surprisingly really really good. Oh! That Gnocchi almost made me pass out! So so good. I must have just had a really lucky week with the new recipes. It takes a lot for something to make it into my "regular recipe rotation" but I'm telling you, all 3 of those recipes are in. The Chilaquiles Casserole was just ok.... good, but didn't rock my world like the other stuff did. I highly recommend browsing the CookingLight.com and especially the EatingWell.com websites. I've found tons of new recipes from there and have not been disappointed.

Onto this week.. (Santa Maria Tri-Tip Roast & gyro meat from Snider's Family Meats)

Sunday: Santa Maria Tri-Tip Roast with Mashed Potatoes and Steamed Veggies

Monday: Gyros with Tzatziki Sauce

Tuesday: Salmon Chowder

Wednesday:  Jo Mama's World Famous Spaghetti

Thursday: Leftovers

Weekend: Bean & Cheese Enchiladas

Sexyterra is Mine!

You guys are never gonna believe this juicy new bit of information...

I'm a car owner! Yup that's right. Last night using my bonus from work, Seth and I finally paid off Sexyterra (the Nissan Xterra for all the laypeople). In all my years of driving, I've never had a car that didn't have a payment attached to it. It feels awesome! Paying off things is so much fun.

Oh and don't you worry. I made sure I spent some of my bonus money on something other than bills. We needed some new sheets so I found these babies (the "seaglass" ones) on Overstock.com. 1500 thread count?! I had no idea they went that high. The ones we have now are 1200 and they've lasted forever, so I figure these new sheets are a sound investment. Right? Plus they're so cute.

And on one other completely unrelated note... I do my hair nice everyday. Today I threw my hair into a ponytail. Not two seconds after I walked into the building this lady exclaimed how 'adorable' my hair was. WTF?! The 2 times I've actually worn my hair in a ponytail to work I've gotten compliments on how cute it is.  I'm never doing my hair ever again. In fact, I think I'm going to start wearing baggy sweatpants, grubby oversized stained t-shirts, and fuzzy bunny slippers. Because they're way more adorable than my regular clothes.

Today's Special: Oct. 18-24th

Sunday: Garden Tomato and Basil Pesto Pizza- New Recipe. Really good and super easy. Also, I got a great tip recently on how to get good tasting tomatoes from the grocery store. Buy the smaller varieties (i.e. cherry or grape tomatoes) because they let those kinds ripen more before they're picked. They are a bit more expensive and they don't last near as long, but they taste much better. Also, don't store tomatoes in the fridge, it kills their flavor.

Monday: Vegetarian Reubens with Russian Dressing -New Recipe

Tuesday: Summer Vegetable Crepes- New Recipe

Wednesday: Linguine with Basil Pesto Sauce (Uses leftover pesto from pizza on Sunday)

Thursday: Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter -New Recipe

Weekend: Chilaquiles Casserole -New Recipe

Hidden Talents

When I was a kid I had a hidden talent. This talent didn't come in handy very often and wasn't necessarily particularly useful, but it was a talent nonetheless.

I had the natural ability to spot a 7-eleven. Anywhere. Sure came in handy when I needed a Slurpee.

Don't hide your talents under a bushel. Let them shine.

Punk Ins

I'm really beginning to like Seth's Fridays off. Two weeks ago I was surprised by some kayaks. This weekend it was pumpkins! He went and picked out a couple of pumpkins for us to carve, so I thought I'd show you the results. Of course he picked out a really good big one for me. He knows me too well.

This one is mine...

This is Seth's... his looks cool with the lights off.

Gracie was watching us set up the pumpkins