Breakfast Rut

I get into a breakfast rut way to often, I get stuck on eating the same thing day after day and eventually get so burnt out I don't want anything to do with it anymore. The one that lasted the longest was 1/4 bear naked granola, 1/2 cup fat free yogurt, and blue berries and or strawberries. I ate that every morning for over a year, sometimes throwing egg whites or something else in the mix. I still don't have an appetite when I try to eat that breakfast anymore. I get stuck with eggs too, egg whites scrambled with some veggies, or over easy egg on a slice of bread with ham, etc. I get stuck.

So I go out searching for alternatives, I found a good list today that has a long list of easy to prepare items. Since the list is long enough it should help me keep some variety, as long as I don't get stuck on one of these items.

Breakfast Ideas:
25 Easy Breakfast Ideas for the Bleary Eyed!

Listmania

List making, something I love to do. I've tried apps on my phone, and while I have many lists on there. I always eventually go back to some paper versions too. Phone reminders and lists are great for alarms, like the one that reminds me weekly when I'm allowed to water the lawn with sprinklers (due to drought restrictions). But for everyday to do lists, I get in the bad habit of just closing the reminder. Or seeing it too late and feeling bad that I forgot to x, y, or z.

So paper lists, reminders, are awesome. I was reading my reader and came across this post: Sunday Planning it has an awesome resource for different free printables to help with daily chores/reminders, meal planning, blogging, and cleaning. There is a good variety, I haven't picked my favorites yet. But wanted to share.

Enjoy the weekend!!!

Blessings

Things that make me feel blessed this week:

• new travel coffee mug
• label maker
• post it notes that make me smile
• meals out with old friends

Always:

• family
• friends
• home
• food on the table

Green Thumb, who would have thought.

I've never had a green thumb, I always joked it was brown as all plants I ever tried to keep alive, let alone help them to thrive...didn't make it. Moving provided me with a large over grown backyard, which has a few plants that were obviously placed on purpose, not necessarily natural to the area. Didn't realize what they were till we got some much needed rain, and discovered we had a crepe myrtle in the backyard. Which was exciting as it had been discussed to put a new one out there. The other plants are still unknown, for now. :-)

Anyways, once the rain helped I began hose watering every few days as we are in a Stage 2 drought here in San Antonio. So the Crepe myrtle has began to flourish, it's pretty awesome as it has some great pink blooms. So here are a few photo's of it's progression.

The front yard needs some work, I just need to figure out what to do with it, as it has plants that are pretty drought resistant, but I have just never learned how to care for these things. The back yard has 2 rose bushes also that are all out of control with no blooms. Not sure if I can "save them" or if it would be best to pull them out and start over with something new. It's all a learning process but I'm enjoying gardening much more than I could have anticipated. To making things pretty and grow. :-)

Beer can chicken and other endeavors

So now that the kitchen is all unpacked, I've gotten back into cooking once again. Menu planning and all. So I'm going to make a "catch all" post for all the things I didn't get to blogging about. I probably tweeted about them, but that's not even a guarantee.

Waffles

So I'll start with my first attempt at making waffles. I'd had the waffle iron for a few years, but kept it in storage as it was too big for my old kitchen. Just used a box mix as it was my first attempt I didn't want to get to creative and wanted to learn how the iron worked.

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

Next up was my mom's spaghetti sauce recipe. I'd made this before but it had been a few years, as it just seemed like too much work. I typically opted for pre-made jarred sauce. But it was SOOO worth having the homemade sauce, and I didn't even let it simmer as long as I should have, but I waited too long to make dinner and just simmered a little longer than the minimum 30 minutes (while everything else was finishing up). Paired it with some whole wheat noodles, and garlic crescent rolls.

Next cooking adventure was Beer Can Chicken, this is something I'd heard about but had never tried. I had forgotten about it until I got a "Cooking with Beer" cookbook. Scanning through for ideas came across two recipes for beer can chicken, I mostly followed one with some help from this website also. As once looking into indirect cooking on the grill realized that would be more involved that I wanted to get. So I made it in the oven. Got the man to help with the chicken, but it turned out awesome. Super juicy and moist, and not beer flavored at all. :)

So that's a few of my cooking adventures recently in my new kitchen.