Holiday Wrap-up

We hope you all had great Christmas & New Year celebrations. We spent Christmas with both families and had a quiet night at home for New Years.  I also celebrated my 30th birthday 2 weeks before Christmas.  Turning 30 felt great!  I feel very relaxed and content with life.  It's now my last day of winter break (sniff) and I'm mostly rejuvenated and ready to get back to work AND working out.  I've missed the gym at school. 

A few weeks before Christmas, Hannah and I made plans to do our favorite Christmas tradition- make cookies! 
Hannah and I had quite the assembly line going.  How cute is she?

Mikey's only cookie request was for us to make his dad's shortbread.  It was my first time making it and it turned out awesome:

I get nostalgic whenever I make a cookie from my childhood.  Our neighbor, Ceil made these melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies every year for our family:

Mikey and I managed to sneak in a visit to Ceil in November:

Can you believe she is 92?  She is sharp as a whistle and currently recovering from a fall this summer.

Lastly, Hannah and I made a huge batch of my favorite holiday cookie:

It was fun to share all of these cookies with our co-workers, families and friends.
Have I mentioned that I love having Hannah in Duluth?!

 The day after we returned home from our Christmas travels, I came down with a vicious cold.  I had planned to do some house projects over winter break but this cold had other plans.  I've spent the past week hunkering down with a box of Kleenex within arms reach at ALL times.  With the assistance of Nyquil, I've been sleeping 11 hours every night.  All of that sleep seems to be helping as I am getting better, but I have done very little around the house which feels a bit frustrating. 
There is nothing I crave more when I have a cold than citrus. So, I looked up a flu-fighting smoothie recipe and they have been wonderful.

The key step: Freeze the orange slices, half an avocado and a banana:

 It tastes like an orange creamsicle.  It's a keeper! 

 I also made one with frozen grapefruit slices.  It required some extra sweetener (I used honey) to balance the tartness. 
I guess I haven't been totally useless while being sick.  I've had the crock pot cooking up something every day.  I found a great recipe for Lentil Sloppy Joes:

Mikey and I are making a stronger effort to eat more meat-less meals.  So we stocked up on dried beans from the bulk bins at Whole Foods.  Cooks Illustrated magazine recommends placing a strip of Kombu (seawood) in a pot of beans to help with ahem, gasiness and to enhance the flavor of the beans.  So, I cooked up garbanzo and pinto beans (separately) via this method.  It took about 3 hours on High in the crockpot for each batch:

 I also cooked up a huge pot of black beans on the stove top while the crockpot was cooking away:

 The stove top method worked great as a humidifier for the house- perfect for winter! Ha!

Of the two methods, I actually preferred the crock pot because the beans cooked slower and I could keep better tabs on when the beans were done cooking. 

Between making smoothies every day and making  meals, I also did a shit ton on dishes.  Le sigh.

We froze a bunch of beans, lentil joe's and mexican rice for meals in the coming weeks.  Hooray for quick, easy, nutritious meals.
If you are wondering what Mikey has been up to while I've been cooking beans and sniffling/coughing at home, he's been busy at work.  Tonight we have his work's holiday party. 

Keeping up with her parents is hard work for the canine princess: