Five Ingredients or Less Living

I am going to post today about things I did yesterday because I work the next two days and won't post anything because there is no time and not much to say about work except it pays the bills.

So I told you about the blog the gracious pantry and how I had been reading her posts and recipes.  Her goal is to not eat anything that has more than five ingredients in it.  She is striving for clean food and has reworked many recipes to decrease the chemicals and unnatural ingredients in them.  I love the website!  Tracy and I have made a committment to try to do this :)  You should have seen us yesterday at the grocery!  Reading labels and putting stuff back on the shelf because it had too many ingredients and ingredients we couldn't pronounce! Tiffany (the gracious pantry lady) would have been proud of us!

Our first cooking endeavor with five ingredients or less was "Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes A Day."  We made bread and it was awesome!  Whole wheat flour, small amount of white flour, vital wheat gluten, water, salt and yeast...that is six!  Oh well guess the flours can count as one!  Mix them up in a 5 quart container, let it stand at room temperature for 2 hours, then to the fridge for 2 hours and you are ready to cook some delicious healthy bread!  Tracy molded the loaf, let it rise for 90 minutes and then you are ready to cook!  You preheat your oven @ 450 degress for 30 minutes with a cooking stone in the oven along with a large cookie pan.  After the preheat time you put the bread on the stone (using parchment paper between the bread and stone) and pour one cup of hot tap water in to the cookie pan.  Cooking with steam is soooo exciting and leads to a wonderful crust and dense but not too dense bread!  Bake for 30 minutes and here you go!

 Healthy Bread In 5 Minutes A Day!

Do not be intimidated in any way!  I have tried to make bread over the years and have had a few successes and many more failures but despite how good it was I always wondered if it was worth the effort...kneading, flour messes, proofing, yeast failure, rising, etc.  This is another world.  Once you mix up your dough mixture which makes enough for 3-4 loaves you are done.  Anytime you want fresh bread, cut off a grapefruit-sized ball of dough, form it, let it rise and cook!  The dough lasts up to 14 days in the fridge and as time passes will develop even more characteristics of a sourdough bread.  I just can't say enough about how easy this is and how wonderful the bread is.  The book I bought yesterday has dozens of additional recipes and I can't wait to make carrot bread and oat-date bread!  Tracy is looking forward to rye bread!  We held a piece of our favorite store-bought bread up to the homemade bread and the store-bought looked weak, limp, and unappetizing!  Don't think I will ever eat store-bought again plus it cost nearly $4 a loaf and the homemade is about $0.40 a loaf!

I took another grapefruit-sized ball of dough and Tracy roll it out to make a pizza crust.  I topped it with homemade pizza sauce, mushrooms, green peppers, and onions (Oh yeah, those turkey pepperonis I used had more than five ingredients but were low fat and not greasy) Cooked the pizza at 500 degrees (no steam pan this time) and here are the unbelievable results!

Seriously some of the best pizza I ever ate!  We figured it cost about $3-4 to make and was completely natural except for the turkey pepperonis which I pick off anyway :)

My next clean eating challenge was fixing my lunch today! Food at work is an ordeal to begin with because anything I pack must be portable and I have to have a few things that will fit in my pocket because they won't let us eat at our desks and often we get no breaks.  Sooooo, yes, I put things in my pocket and slip around and eat them because 13-14 hours without eating and working your butt off is very difficult!  Lots of my old standbys are "no-nos" now because of the ingredient list.  Here is the lunch I packed for tonight and everything there has less than six ingredients:

Baked Lay's, carrots and cucumbers, Natural JIF on homemade bread, Back to Nature Chocolate Chip cookies, Triscuits and natural Cheddar cheese, and homemade pizza!  Except for the pizza I think I can sneak and eat any of it on the run! LOL

The gracious pantry website has dozens of 5 ingredient recipes and when I am off again I am going to try some of them out!  I know we won't always eat clean but every time we do will be awesome and hopefully someday almost all of our eating will be clean AND delicious!  Love and prayers to my followers, it is time for bed for me because night shift is calling me back after five lovely days off.  EXTRA special reward this week:  the girls are coming, the girls are coming!  We are going to make pizza with them and will be sure to video for youtube so everyone can enjoy!! 

P.S. 30 Day Photography Challenge

I forgot to mention I am doing the 30 day photography challenge that is presented on pinterest.  Since I don't think my mom (one of my three followers) does pinterest I am going to post those photos on here every day for her.  Miranda and Tracy, sorry for the double exposure!

The challenge gives you a different photography assignment every day for 30 days.  I started yesterday (day 1) and the assignment was a self portrait and today's assignment was "what you wore today."  Here is a link to my board on pinterest since I can't get the picture to post except sideways!!  Aarrrgh!

http://pinterest.com/lreneet/30-day-photo-challenge/

I am excited about the challenge although I have looked ahead and I am not even sure what some of them mean LOL Bokeh, anyone?? Guess that's why they call it a challenge!

What A Difference A Day Makes!

My charge nurse called me at home tonight and apologized for not being able to talk about the schedule yesterday and did her magic and now I am off to go to the wedding with Tracy!  Well I think I am :) So far so good and I am thrilled.  Thank You, Lord!

What an eventful day we had today.  I got up at 6AM and walked the greenway and it was miserable.  Now I usually enjoy walking every minute and even when I am walking hard I am enjoying it immensely.  Not today!  Although I got up and out early it was miserably hot and humid from the very first step.  Walking up those last few hills was awful because the sun had come up enough to cook me!  I have decided I will exercise inside until summer is over because it just makes me sick to walk in this heat and humidity.

My nemesis the sun and the humidity gave me a heat index of 93 degrees at 7AM! 

On the other hand, I did get some sun just as I had planned because I came up with a clever little plan.  Typically unless I am in water I don't lay out in the sun in the hottest months of July or August.  Again it is just too hot and also I have absolutely no attention span.  Once I have laid or sat there for a few minutes, I start squirming and watching the clock and I just can't do it for long.  But today I turned the water hose on and got to looking at the spray attachment and saw where you could set it on mist and lock it.  So I did and set it down on the ground, pointed up toward me, and it was awesome!  I was under a constant mist of cool water and really could never tell it was even hot outside!  So I got some sunshine and made some Vitamin D and felt soooo good today.

Then Tracy and I took off for Nashville.  I tell you living here in White House is the very best of all worlds.  We have country living with a big city just a few miles down the road.  Nikki mentioned the farmer's market to us yesterday and I had to check it out!  I also decided to try to eat better and found an awesome blog called thegraciouspantry.com and an excellent video on how to make no-knead yeast bread so I decided after the farmer's market we would go to Whole Foods Market and check it out!  We had a wonderful day!

The Farmer's Market was superb but very hot so we grabbed purple hull peas and peaches and left for Whole Foods Market

 This place is wonderful but natural and organic equals small packages and expensive apparently!

We got the Vital Wheat Gluten we needed for the bread and ran!

Next we headed to Books A Million because I wanted the bread book I had found online.  One thing I hate about BAM is the fact that they never can find a book I ask for and sure enough the lady looked up the book  and said, "We have one copy, let's go find it..."  And I'm thinking, "Sure, let's!"  She looks and looks and finally offers to order the book and I decline.  Now I have to admit there must be hundreds of books in the cooking section, divided further in to healthy cooking, cooking for people with certain medical problems, plain cooking, Southern cooking, fancy cooking, weight loss cooking, and on and on.  But the sections are in such disarray and as always she could not find it anywhere.  She goes back to her register, apologizing profusely and I am upset and scouring the books, thinking it must be here somewhere but what if someone like me has picked it up and changed their minds and laid it down near the romance novels!??! (Miranda knows I am bad about this and yells at me for it!)  So just as I am ready to give up, Tracy says, "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes A Day...is this it!"  It was!  Hooray!  So I got the book:

Mission Accomplished at BAM!  Thanks, baby!

Then we headed home and started supper with our wonderful foods.  We shelled purple hull peas and cooked them, we had corn from our neighbor which we steamed, Tracy made a skillet of Mexican cornbread and I made peach cobbler!  Awesome, awesome, awesome!

Look at that awful oven!  No, don't! Sorry! :( Focus on the cornbread!

 

Grandpa, this is what's for supper!

What a day and what a meal!  After supper, Tracy mixed the five ingredients for the bread and here it is already rising and looking good:

I will let you know in future posts how it goes and we are excited to have homemade bread in many varieties every day!

Next I did Pilates and I guess the combination of the yummy meal and getting up so early wore me out! Tracy came in to the room and I had fallen asleep on the Pilates machine!  LOL  I wish he had gotten a picture of that!  I finished the workout and then I got a text picture from Miranda of Tobey.

Looks like she had a good supper too or then again maybe not! :)

Has she been in our bread dough?!

A wonderful end to a beautiful day! Love, love, love!

Life (Nursing) Is So Unfair

Just got home from a ride on the bike, which served as a way to blow away all the bad MOJO in my head and the anger I felt before the ride.  It doesn't look like I am going to get off next month to go with Tracy to his friend's wedding despite being told I would be off AND I have to work that day PLUS the day I traded with another co-worker to be off, which is not even my weekend and the co-worker still gets her Sunday OFF!  I am irate and sick of nursing and all the sacrifice it requires.  Yeeeesssss, I am blessed to have a good job and I appreciate that I am physically and mentally able to work BUT I am tired of always having to give up life for work.  Holidays, weekends, special occasions, family time, all sacrificed on the altar of  "this is a hospital and we are open around the clock and on and on...."  So some motorcycle therapy blew all that anger out of my head and I feel better but still could cry because I so wanted to go with him. :(  Gonna try to get some sun tomorrow and make some Vitamin D and hopefully that will raise my spirits.


Nikki came to see us today and we went out to eat Mexican and then showed her around the area.  That took about 10 minutes LOL but we had a good time and enjoyed being with her.  Went for a job interview where she works on Friday but don't think they can (or are willing to) afford me :) But it was a good experience and will continue on the job hunt for something closer because I am sick of driving 80 miles round trip every time I work and I am sick of almost mandatory overtime and disappointing promises.

I was happy there on my first day....now, not so much!

I am just gonna keep praying and hoping something will happen to change the inevitable.  God is the expert at making ways where there are none :)

I Am So Over Summer

OK every year around this time I begin to hate summer and long for fall...this year is no different!  Maybe I hang in there for summer until my birthday is over and then enough is enough! LOL Whatever, I am finished with the summer heat, humidity, mugginess, heat indices, sweat and misery.  I know we have several more months to go and so I will continue to whine until autumn bursts forth on the scene and then I will cheer!

Speaking of my birthday, it was wonderful! Tracy and I went to Nashville and had a blast!  We went to Printer's Alley and listened to karaoke music which was terribly wonderful, like karaoke music always is!  I painted a star and it was glued to the ceiling for posterity's sake and we will go back next year and see if it is still there!  Here are some pics from the night:

 My delicious supper at the divey greasy spoon we chose to eat at! YUM!

My 2nd favorite building (Sears Tower is #1)

The awesome neon lights of Broadway!

Me at almost 51...YAY! I made it another year!

 And there is my "51" star!

Getting older is surreal.  Granddaddy Haynes once told me in his 80's that he still felt like the same young man he was in his teens and I thought at the time that was a strange statement.  I thought back then, in my youth, that when I got older, I would feel older and think older, and surely act old.  But he was right!  I am still the same person inside, although that does not apply to my body!  I still have similar thoughts and dreams and hopes that I had way back when and really am just a girl in an aging body.  

I wrote a poem last year and called it "A Two Horse Farm" which was written about the hopes and dreams Tracy and I share for our future.

"A Two Horse Farm"

We live on a two horse farm

Where all the little animals

Are protected from harm.

A strong, stocky work horse

For Daddy,

A fleet footed palomino

For me, and

A plucky little pony

For all the kids to ride

With the feisty bearded goats

Running along beside.

Big headed toms and

Slender little girl cats

Laze in the sun

After playful little spats.

Nearby the dogs are 

Waiting for a run

Because roaming the farm

With their 

Daddy is so much fun.

Ducks and a goose or two

Swim down in the lake,

Full of lily pads and fishies

And oh no, the occasional

Slithery snake.

Squirrels, racoons, wild

Birds of a feather

Have spread the word

Wide and far
That here is the farm

Where peace and food are.
A place where children run wild
And swing, touching their
Feet to the sky,

And can yell without shushing
As their spirits skip high.
Where everyone's full of joy and
Belonging, not a soul in
Danger of harm
Nothing but love
Blankets the land
On our two horse farm.

 

 A few weeks ago I made Tracy a decopague box to express the poem:

A barn, crops...

A little tractor and some farm animals... even a rooster!

The secret surprise inside is the two horses!

 

I am 51 years old and that is so hard to believe! But I am still dreaming and hoping and believing that the two horse farm awaits us as memorialized by the poem and the box :)  Who knows?  Maybe I have another 51 years ahead of me!

 

Remedies for the Embattled Body

Well last night will go down in my nursing history book!  I spent the first half of my shift constantly cleaning up a patient with some serious diarrhea (sorry to anyone who is faint hearted about body fluids but such is my life!)  I spent the second half wrestling with a confused man who needed staples in his head laceration  (to those who assisted me in this endeavor, thanks, guys, it was a real bonding experience!) 

It all started out innocently enough...the man needed staples because of a fall which left him with a head injury.  He seemed docile enough but looks can be deceiving.  As the stapling began he changed his mind and decided he wanted out!  Now he couldn't really help his actions but the results were the same.  He wore us out!  Check out my pinch marks:

 Ouch! and right in the soft underside of my upper arm!  Oh my gosh, it hurts!  And I twisted my knee trying to "reason" with him so I can barely bend my knee today!

What can I say?  My job can deteriorate into madness very quickly!  One minute we were all singing "When The Saints Go Marching In," with this seemingly meek fellow and the next minute we were in a giant struggle!  Oh crazy ERs!  Yes, I did choose to go back to the madhouse but only for the extra days off!  I need them to recuperate! LOL

So now I am off for four days and I definitely needed some shopping therapy to make things all better :)  Tracy humored me and  first took me to Madison so I could check out JoAnn's which Miranda had me all curious about!  It was everything she said it was (except I could not find an embroidery project I liked but that is for later) so I got the things I needed for a decoupage project.  OK so now you know so material for a future post!

 Future project materials!  Well I actually started on it tonight :)

After Jo Ann's we were off to Hobby Lobby which was conveniently just across the street!  Now isn't that just meant to be!  There I found the embroidery kit I wanted and got to pick out all the pretty threads.  I am going to make Tracy's mom a table runner to go on top of her bedside table at the nursing home.  I was all jazzed about that and started on it too!  

 My latest embroidery project!

My life is such a jumble of sick people and peaceful home time, up to my elbows in poop and then up to my elbows in colorful threads and paints, feeling like I might lose my mind and feeling like all is right in the world. Go figure and when you figure it out, let me know because I don't have a clue! LOL 

Ended this day in Nashville for some Sephoratherapy!  I got an email from them saying to stop by and pick up my "Beauty Insider" birthday gift soooo I did!  How nice!  Happy Birthday to me just a little bit early :)

 SWEET!  Philosophy's Vanilla Birthday Cake body wash!  YUMMY!

 

4th of July From Tennessee

WOW! What a 4th of July we had!  It was almost a giant disappointment but our celebration turned out to be the greatest EVER!!  We got up yesterday around 12NOON and all week I had been hearing about Nashville's firework plans.  The rumors said that Nashville spent $6 million dollars on fireworks...WOW!  All afternoon I kept thinking about that and since I just LOVE fireworks that was pretty exciting!  But I kept thinking of the traffic and thinking "Fireworks are fireworks..."

We went to Barren River Park last year on 4th of July and we had a good time but since we have moved back to Tennessee, the park was further away.  We talked about going back there anyway and then I got to looking online to see what was closer.  White House had their celebration on Saturday (I worked) but then I saw Gallatin was having their fireworks last night and it was so much closer.  So Gallatin it was!

We left out for Gallatin on the bike around  7PM.  It is only about 18 miles to Gallatin from our house and the fireworks started at 830PM. The weather was wonderful for a ride on the bike.  The sun was low in the sky and the temps were in the high 70's and we took a beautiful country backroad to Gallatin.  We arrived around  745PM and the crowd was large.  They had a carnival set up next to the Civic Center and the crowds were still milling around there so there was plenty of room to spread out our blanket and wait for the big show.  We talked and played some Words with Friends, watched the crowd and of course, I was sooooo excited, I could hardly wait.

Then the big disappointment...we started noticing other people getting up and packing up their stuff and leaving the area.  Then a bicycle cop rode up to us and asked if we had heard the news!  The fireworks were cancelled! The truck that was delivering them had never showed up! Oh my gosh, I could have cried but instead I got mad and decided I would just go home!  We walked back to the bike and Tracy suggested we go on to Barren River but by this time it was after 8PM and that celebration started at 830PM.   We were 50 miles away!  Again I was pretty mad by now and acting like the only child I am. LOL  Let's just go home!  So we took off down the road and Tracy said "You wanna go to Nashville?"  Hmmmmm...we were only about 30 minutes from Nashville and I had no idea what time the fireworks started or even where to go but YES!!  Let's go!  The weather was beautiful and we would enjoy a nice bike ride even if we never made it to the fireworks.  Surely we would see some fireworks along the way!

When we arrived in Nashville there were fireworks all around us as we rode in to town.  It was beautiful!  We rode up to the area around the state capital building and there was an area that looked out over the city and there were fireworks going off all across the horizon.  I was thrilled!  But then we noticed dozens of people walking fast in another direction and so we hopped back on the bike and headed that way.  By now we were in downtown Nashville and the traffic was awful!  We sat at a light for 10-15 minutes and I told Tracy "It's all good, I have seen some fireworks and had a wonderful ride on the bike, let's just go home..."  I am not sure how but we ended up on a large bridge and cars were parked on both sides with only two lanes down the middle open.  People had gotten out of their cars and were lined up on the bridge...we were on the bike and how convenient!  Tracy pulled the bike in between two cars and we hopped right out on to the bridge.  We walked a short distance to an open space and checked it out.

It looked promising!  By now it was a little after nine and these people had obviously gathered for some reason.  Down on the river below the bridge there were lots of boats, floating and waiting...we could hear the symphony off in the distance and the view of the downtown was just beautiful.  THEN the fireworks began!!  We had made it there, absolutely unplanned, completely unexpectedly and it was AWESOME!  I cant explain it, I laughed, I cried, I was soooo excited!  My first big city 4th of July celebration!  Words cant explain it and video can't really show it either but here is the grand finale!

Well there you have it!  It was the video times a million!! What a wonderful, surprising celebration!  And no stress or hassle, we just rode up and had the time of our life!