Newlywed, Newly Veg!

I hope your Sunday is treating you well! We’ve had a good morning!  The chocolate mousse for tonight needed to chill for at least two hours, so after breakfast, I got started on that (delicious) task.  Here’s a sneak peek at what’s to come:

Mmmmm…I’m really excited about this dessert!  Julia Child wasn’t messing around with this recipe!  We actually had a TON of mousse, so I put some in a bowl and we delivered it to our friends (and neighbors) Lee and Steve as a sweet Valentine’s Day surprise.  I think they were excited!

After my adventures in Mousse-land, I got a quick workout in (gotta burn some calories so that I can get my mousse on without guilt later tonight).  I picked up a new 10 minute solutions DVD yesterday at Best Buy that I was excited to try:

I really like these 10 minute solution workouts!  I already have the abs one, and it is killer! I like it that each segment is only (duh) 10 minutes, because it makes it easy to alternate cardio on the treadmill with toning/strength.  And, let me tell you, that little band really makes a difference— I did the tummy toner segment and the butt segment, and my muscles were burning!

After my workout, I had a light lunch.  After our large breakfast, I wasn’t too hungry, plus I want to be sure to save room for tonight!

Egg salad + yogurt + blueberries.

I sure have been on an egg salad kick lately, haven’t I?  Do you ever do that?  I won’t eat something for months, and then suddenly I’ll have it everyday for like a month.  Strange. 

Well, I’m going to try to get a little work done before we start on dinner.  Have a great day, everyone! 

Morning, all!  I hope your Valentine’s Day is off to a love-filled start, however you might be spending it!

We decided that a special breakfast was in order…hence the morning post! 

For our special breakfasts, we almost always make pancakes…there’s just nothing better!

We cooked up some whole wheat pancakes with this mix:

Our batter was a cup of the mix, an egg, and a half cup of almond breeze.  I didn’t add the tablespoon of oil (who needs it?) and added a tablespoon of chia seeds for extra HEART healthy omega three’s and some crunch!

We enjoyed our pancakes with fresh berries, maple syrup, and Earth Balance.  I also tried this new jam that I bought the other day, after seeing Crofter’s all over the blog world:

Super fruits jam!

It was good! Tasted kind of like raspberry jam, but without the seeds.

We pulled out our heart-shaped cookie cutter for the pancakes, but got lazy and only made one heart!  Ryan gave it to me…what a gentleman!  Here’s my breakfast plate:

Then…it was present time!

You might remember that we did our shopping at the dollar store this year.  It’s a good way to keep things fun, but cheap—I think we spent about 20 dollars total!

Ryan got me these pretty plates! Score!

I got him a “surprise bag for a boy”….it had a plastic fly and a water gun in it.  Um…score?

…and this mask…so mysterious!  Who is this man?

Somehow Baxter also ended up in costume:

Is there a problem, officer?

Ryan broke the rules and ordered me a special surprise present from the Sundance catalog that I’ve been wanting ever since Christmas:

A sock monkey hat!!!

Lol…I can’t wait to walk the dogs around the neighborhood sporting this bad boy.

Hope your Valentine’s Day is off to a great start…the weather here is capital N Nasty, so I think it’ll be another inside day for us.  I have grading and writing to do…and then a special dinner tonight!

Here’s one of my favorite “love” passages, from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.  We used it in our wedding ceremony! 

A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their freedom and development.  But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

Lovebirds:

Have a great Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Happy Valentine’s Eve!  Hope you’ve had a good Saturday—ours was good! We finally gave the house a good scrubbing.  Ugh—it disgusts me how much dog hair we have in our house! It’s seriously out of control!  But it’s all worth it when you see something like this:

Awww…so sweet!  Ella and Baxter are celebrating Valentine’s Day tomorrow, too…their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple!

After cleaning the house, we ran some errands and made our weekly run to the grocery store, where we also picked up our food for our V-day dinner tomorrow night.  I’m exited—we’re making chocolate mousse from The Art of French Cooking!

For dinner tonight, we kept it simple:

Grilled tofu with kale chips and roasted carrot “fries.”   We used our indoor grill to cook the tofu, and it worked great!

Yum!  Easy and delicious!  I sprinkled our kale chips with nutritional yeast, which made them cheesy and extra good!

Now we’re on the couch, watching Knocked Up…I love this movie!  I think it’ll be an early night for our household! 

See you tomorrow!