Long Weekend

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I hope everyone had a good holiday and hopefully a long weekend! If you work retail, my thanks goes out to you. I did that for a long time and I even though I liked the time and a half working on holidays, it was still stressful.

We had a pretty good long weekend. I worked from home Wednesday so it was even longer! And our new bed was delivered! In our old house, the master was so small we couldn’t get a bigger bed but our new master is absurdly huge, so it made sense to finally get the king bed we’ve always wanted. We bought the bed and mattress Veteran’s Day weekend on a great sale.

We love it! It’s so nice and now it’s big enough for Stevie to sleep in the middle. LOL

Thanksgiving was nice. Low key. Slept in. Went to the gym. I stayed on the keto diet until the Thanksgiving dinner and then splurged. It was great to have my favorite carbs (stuffing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie) but honestly I felt gross. Stuffed and bloated from carbs!

I made sourdough bread and it turned out ok. It LOOKED perfect. It didn’t rise overnight like I wanted it to. I’m not sure what happened.

Logan had a good Thanksgiving, even though all he ate was a roll and pumpkin pie. LOL


Friday I went to the gym and did a little black Friday shopping in the afternoon and then we went to the community Tree Lighting Ceremony.

It was a quick visit and then we went home because Logan started to throw a tantrum. 3.5 is not a fun age. I tell you. I often wonder where my sweet baby went to. I am told that 4 is much better. I am counting down the days until that happens. We had some rough moments over the weekend with Mr. Defiant Toddler. But overall it was a nice break.

Saturday afternoon Michael and I dropped the little terrorist off at the grandparents house and met some friends at Montinore Vineyards for a wine tasting (and to pick up our long overdue wines!).

I love their wines! And it was so nice to see friends and catch up. Unfortunately it felt rushed. We only had about 90 minutes or so and then we had to go pick up the kiddo.

Sunday I went swimming. We decorated the house with the Christmas decorations (no tree yet). Logan helped me wrap some presents–that was hilarious!!!!!

I am seriously debating getting a fake tree. I have been anti-fake tree for a long time but dammit…I am sick of cleaning up pine needles! I vacuum them up for MONTHS after the holiday. So maybe….it’s time. We’ll see.

November Keto Part 1

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I was super disappointed about quitting the Mediterranean diet. I mean, I had planned on doing some kind of keto-Mediterranean-low carb-carb cycling type schedule but it was clear I need to just hunker down and get back at it.

At the very least, keto kept me from GAINING weight… (This is an interesting article about keto.)

I sat down and worked out a meal schedule for the next three months or so. A lot of it is tried and true recipes we’ve done before on keto, some are new. Some are “simple” dinners that are just easy to do. Like burgers (no bun) with a veggie. Not much different than what we usually do.

I wanted to share some of the recipes. It wasn’t 100%, sometimes I switched days depending on what my mood was, or what I got at the grocery store. But this is basically what we did:

Low Carb Big Mac in a Bowl: One of my favorite keto recipes! It’s really good!

Cowboy Butter Chicken with Zoodles: It was just ok. It had some good spicy flavor but the chicken itself was rather boring and we both though it needed some crumbled goat cheese or something on top.

Chicken and Broccoli Casserole with Cream Cheese and Mozzarella : SUPER delicious! Definitely put it under the broiler at the end! We will make this recipe again. And it would be easy to do variations–like make it Greek or Mexican.

Coconut Curry Chicken: Really good! I liked this curry recipe a lot. It was simple, easy, and pretty quick. I put it on top of Trader Joe’s cauliflower “mashed potatoes”. Delicious!

Keto Asian Beef Salad: This was delicious! We both really liked the recipe. When I make it again, I will use less sesame oil in the dressing mixture because the flavor was a bit overpowering. I’d probably do 1/2 sesame oil and 1/2 olive oil. I also added some sriracha to the dressing and it was great!

Creamy Spinach Artichoke Chicken: delicious! Super super good. Michael said it was the best recipe I’ve ever made.

A lot of the recipes I tried this month were delicious and I’d definitely make them again.