This week was the 6th and final week of the first Revolt Set. Holy cow. I made it 6 weeks. At times I thought it got easier and at times it was still extremely challenging. I’m glad that I participated in this Revolt and I’m ready for the next 6 weeks. Hopefully it gets easier… wanna place any bets as to if it does or not?
My only complaint is I HATE squats :). haha. And you do a lot of them, but it sure works out your butt and your legs so I guess in the end it is worth it. I don’t have a bench so I’ve been using my love seat for the bench… that’s been interesting :). And I still have yet to get my husband to blow up my balance work out ball thingy… so I improvise :). I don’t have a medicine ball but I use my free weights and it all works the same. See minor changes but you can’t really tell or see a difference :).
So the great part is you can do it right in your home with what you have, and very minimal equipment required.
I need to weigh and measure myself, but not today. Maybe tomorrow or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday… lol :). Just not today! Why? Because it’s the evening now and I’m not going to see the evening weight gain :). I want to use morning measurements!! 🙂
For a while now hubby has been talking about wanting French Onion Soup. After we came home from eating at Red Onion he started talking about it again, so I went on the hunt for a good French Onion Soup. This may not be as good as the stuff we had at Red Onion but it sure is tasty!
For the Caramelized Onions:
5 Tablespoons of unsalted butter
2 1/2 lbs onions, peeled, halfed and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
1 tsp sugar
Slice your onion in long strips.
Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed stock pot. Add onions and sprinkle with the sugar. The pot will be fairly full, but don’t worry the onions will cook down quite a bit.
Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking, stirring frequently, unti onions have turned deep brown, 30-40 minutes more. (if the onions are sticking to the bottom or aren’t browning evenly, stir in a tbsp of water. adjust the heat if they are cooking too quickly.)
For the Soup:
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
7 cups beef stock
3 tbsp Brandy
1/2 cup dry white wine
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
Sprinkle the flour over the onions and stir to combine. Cook the flour for a couple minutes then add the wine and Brandy. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook 2 minutes, then stir in your beef stock. Partially cover the pot and cook until the flavors have mixed together, about 20-25 minutes. Season with Salt & pepper.
For the Croutons:
1/2 Baguette, cut into 16 rounds
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
6 oz Gruyere cheese (~4 cups)
Heat the broiler. Spread the bread slices on a baking sheet and broil, turning once, until lightly toasted. Watch carefully so you don’t burn the toast. Pull out of the oven and brush both sides with melted butter.
Bringing it together:
Divide the soup among 8 oven proof bowls. Float 2 croutons on top of each and sprinkle with 1/4 cup cheese. Broil until cheese is melted and browned in spots.
I like Apples but the green ones really are my favorite.
I had a dream about Bananas on Wednesday night last week, no joke. My mom bought 50 of them and I was helping her eat them. (Remember that was a dream, she really didn’t buy 50 Bananas. I wasn’t even at my mom’s house the day before or anything… just totally random)
Earl & Pokey keep claiming they’re going to get me a Cat because I always take their kitty’s picture and talk to the kitty. I’m really not a huge cat person, but I like theirs and I really don’t want a house cat.
I have 3 Dogs that I absolutely love, but I claim all 4 of my parents dogs as mine still, technically one is, but he lives there.
Every morning that my husband leaves the house and I’m not going with him, we have a run down of the same things I say to him along with a kiss.
My hair is kind of a Mousy brownish color. So I add highlights to give it a little dimension.
My middle Name is actually Nicole, but that is the name I go by. Just for your information, don’t name your kids a first, middle name and then call them by their middle. It creates mass chaos for the rest of their life! (I love you mom and dad!)
I used self tanning spray in high school and actually turned a strip of my leg Orange.
I’ve decided I should quit drinking water because water makes you Pee. At least my kidneys are working but I get tired of always walking to the bathroom (tmi I’m sure, also consequently “Water makes you pee” is a line I used on a first date with a guy. Yeah we ended up friends but still he wanted to date me after that line)
I have made 2 Quilts in my life surprisingly enough. I still have one and it hangs on my wall at home for which hubby gets a lot of grief about…
A few years ago I had a Pyrenees named Rolex because she was in fact, A Watch Dog. yuck yuck yuck, but that’s the truth.
Somewhere with You by Kenny Chesney is one of my favorite songs he sings. It also helped me find the rattle in my car speakers.
My first name starts with a T, therefore why the blog address, TNICOLEJ but I really think I should change it. I’m just not sure to what…
I have 3 Umbrellas and have misplaced every. single. one. of them. Not such a good thing to do when it is rainy season, but sometimes I walk in the rain hoping not to scare it away!
I am Very tired still… not sure if I’m not getting enough sleep or if this time change is still affecting me.
This is the last Week of the first 6 WeekWorkout of Revolt Now Fitness and I’m still enjoying it. It challenges me which is good and sometimes I have to modify just a bit, but hubby says he can tell a difference. That’s good, right? I still can’t see anything.
I had an Xray one time and they asked me about 6 times if I was pregnant. My answer every time was obviously no but I was getting annoyed.
I’ve started saying Yes to things that normally I might have said no to, trying to come out of my shell and experience new things. I would say it’s working! (i.e. scuba diving, parasailing, shooting hand guns, bows & arrows, etc and no I may not have said no, I’m just also getting the opportunities, which is a definite plus to helping say yes!)
I guess until I have my own kid someday, I’ll never get into the Zoo for free on Mother’s Day because Tbug gets to spend time with her mommy. Oh well, someday, maybe. Hey Earl, I’m stealing borrowing one of your kids!
Welcome Thursday! You’re one day closer to the weekend! And even though you are probably my least favorite day of the week, I’m still happy to see you. Can we be friends?
So Tuesday night hubby and I were able to make it up to The Shack again for dinner. It cracks me up because this theme was the same as Sunday Night Dinner…. Mexican. Good thing I like Mexican food! Although the cool thing is, usually there are different things so it’s all good, right? Right.
Tuesday morning just before I rolled out of bed, holding on to every last second I could under the covers I checked facebook to see what I missed over night. Come on, admit it, we find out some pretty interesting stuff on facebook, like whose kid just took a poop. But in all honesty I’ve found out cool things like which green house is having a plant sale, or who has the best garage sales going on, etc. So it’s not all bad!
Anyway I got on there and saw a comment from my SIL
Yeehaw!! Nothin like cuttin onions and jalapenos at 5 in the mornin to get the sinuses etc all opened up!!! Wooooo I’m awake now!!!
Caught my attention so I asked what she was making. She said it was Mexican night at the Shack and were we coming. Well we didn’t know the theme and so I talked to hubby and we decided that yes in deed we were going to go.
When we got up there, Liss was making homemade Tortilla shells. She said she lost her original recipe so tried this one. She said this wasn’t it, but holy yum were they good! IMO and that’s the one that matters in this post, right? 🙂
And her coozie she didn’t want to lose.
And I don’t know what to say here…. 🙂
Note to hubby: don’t smart off at the girl holding the flour there hunny… especially when she’s your sister! She’s not afraid to throw it at you.
Fresh made chips like this beat the store bought stuff ANY day of the week!
I told Dick if this made its way to my yard, I wouldn’t complain one bit :).
Sour cream, tomatoes & cheese for your Taco’s.
Chili Verde with Pork Tenderloin. This is what Liss was working on at 5am. It was worth it!
Bean Burrito’s. Not sure who made these, but sorry I didn’t try them. I don’t like beans though… I know…. 🙁
Taco Chicken… YUM! Memaw did good here!
Cas brought Carrot Cake
Memaw brought cookie bar thingy’s.
It was such a nice night. The high on Tuesday was 78ish. The low was to be in the 50s. The high for Wednesday was 48. Does that tell you something? We all sat outside and enjoyed the warm weather while it lasted!
And we even had a cute puppy to play with!!
Next weeks theme…. Asian! Wonder what that’ll bring about!
It’s kind of become a ritual to eat dinner with Pokey & Earl and the kiddo’s at some point throughout the week, along with Sunday Night Dinner. So one night Earl came up with what she called Meatloaf Wellington. Holy YUM! Go out, get the stuff and make this… like NOW 🙂
1 can (4 ounces) mushrooms, drained, rinsed and finely chopped (or use 1 cup chopped fresh mushrooms) 1/2 onion, diced 1 tablespoon butter Pastry dough 4 slices leftover, cold meatloaf (use your favorite Meatloaf recipe) 1 cup mashed potatoes
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a baking dish or sheet with non-stick cooking spray.
Finely chopped fresh mushrooms (if using canned drain and rinse mushrooms then finely chop), diced onions; saute in butter over medium heat for 5 minutes. Season with a pinch of salt and ground black pepper.
Unroll pastry dough and cut into quarters.
Place one slice meatloaf in center of each piece of dough.
Divide mashed potatoes evenly over each slice of meatloaf.
Divide mushroom/onion mixture evenly over mashed potatoes.
Stretch dough to fit up and over filling, sealing top well.
Brush with egg wash (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water), if desired. (Gives a better finished looking product)
You just never know what Sunday Night Dinner is going to bring you to be honest!
Sunday afternoon late (but before SND time) hubby said he was headed out to shoot with JT and Pokey and whoever else happened to be shooting at the time. I stayed at the house and worked on a blog post trying to get it up but oh no the internet was being retarded and I got annoyed so I headed on over too.
When I got there, the boys were still out playing with their toys. (I use that word loosely because guns ARE DEFINITELY NOT toys, just so we’re clear.) I wandered down to where they were and crawled up in the bed of the truck and watched for a bit. They asked if I wanted to shoot, but I really wanted a nap so I sat on the tool box and got the bejeesus scared out of me every time one of them would fire something. Note to self, don’t go down there if you’re tired.
Around 5:30 or so I shot (haha) Earl a text to see if they were ready for dinner or not. She said a few were running late but yeah for the most part so the boys cleaned up and headed up to the house. I left them to cleaning and went on up to see if A or Earl needed any help.
CH brought Guacamole (or as hubby calls it “guac and moldy”), Diver girl brought Chicken Rice & beans. We had sour cream, black olives, cheese and lettuce. I recently cleaned out my cabinets and had a few cute pieces to get rid of so I brought them over to Earl. She told me I needed to give her one more. ha! Sadly there were no more so we had to get the cheese out of the original package. Oh well.
The meat for the Tacos had potatoes in it. This was all kind of new and different to the rest of us but A said she had a real Mexican teach her to make it this way. Very interesting!! Very good but at times I had to convince myself they weren’t beans. lol.
A fried up the tortillas even. I never got one, sadly. By the time my plate was empty, I was full.
Hubby and I made Mexican Cheese Soup. We doubled the batch so it wasn’t nearly as good in our opinion but everyone seemed to like it. Sometimes I guess you just shouldn’t double things :).
It was such a nice day on Sunday that we all wound up going back outside. Somehow Bows came up so out they came and practice commenced.
Recently TB bought himself a Crossbow so hubby had to try it out and of course TB did.
Pokey got Mean M’s bow out for A to shoot. Yes, that is in fact a pink camo bow! How sweet!
I started asking questions so then they asked if I’d ever shot a bow. Well, no was my answer so I got a lesson. I tried with Mean M’s but wound up going with Earl’s bow instead. I think Pokey laughed at me a few times because of the noises I was making every time I’d pull the bow out 🙂
Left are A’s, right are mine. Not bad for my first time, right?
Then Diver Girl started asking if she could shoot. Said she’d always wanted to shoot so I tried to give her my bow (remember my=Earl’s in this instance) but they told me I had to shoot some more so A gave her Mean M’s.
Left is DiverGirl’s, right is mine.
Hubby and I got fits because we both wound up over at Pokey & Earl’s in the same shirt. We have a few matching shirts and this was not planned, it just happened. We really didn’t pay attention to each other getting dressed apparently.
And you may be wondering what we’re all doing. TB and I both lost an arrow over in the neighbors field so we were searching for them. Neither were found either.
And no picture, but it isn’t a fun Sunday Night Dinner unless someone rips their pants right? I caught my leg on the barbed wire fence and now have a cute hole in the leg of my pants. Score 🙂
One thing about my Tbug and my husband, they humor me, a lot. When I get some crazy idea in my head I want to try and make something, because I never have, they go along with it. Our most recent challenge… making Homemade Mozzarella. It’s pretty sweet we made our own cheese. I’m not real sure it tastes like Mozzarella, but the original recipe had a Pesto sauce on top of it, so that might be the difference.
1 1/2 teaspoons citric acid powder dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water. Available here.
1 gallon whole milk- Also- do not, under any circumstances, use ultra-pasteurized milk for this cheese.
1/4 teaspoon regular strength rennet dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water (or 1/8 teaspoon double strength rennet OR 1/4 tablet vegetable rennet, crushed and dissolved in the 1/4 cup water.) Available here
1 teaspoon cheese salt, optional (cheese salt is just any salt that is not iodized or flavored.)
Pour the gallon of milk into a large stainless steel or other non-reactive stockpot. Sprinkle the citric acid over the top and stir in gently. Heat milk to 88°F. Don’t panic when the milk starts to curdle. That’s the idea!
Saturday morning hubby went turkey hunting with Pokey & TB. When they finished up, they left it open ended that they might go back out in the afternoon, especially since youth season is only 2 days. So late Saturday afternoon hubs asked Earl if Pokey and TB were going back out. Instead though, she said that they were going to Church and wondered if we wanted to go with them.
Church… on Saturday…. Sure, why not?!?! So we met up at A’s house and all headed to Church. And might I add, quite an interesting topic the preacher preached on.
Afterwards, we made plans to meet back up at Earl & Pokey’s house because we were going to go Coon Hunting. I may or may not have even used the comment, “I’m going to get my Redneck on.”
And Poor Cara Jo might have even questioned our sanity.
TB loaded up Smoke while Pokey, Earl and the other kiddo’s ate dinner and then we all headed out.
Once we got where we were going, btw don’t ask me :)… Pokey put the tracking collar on Smoke and turned him lose. Then we stood around in the dark listening to the frogs croak.
Eventually we heard Smoke howling like he was on the trail of one. Supposedly they told me that if he’s on the trail he barks and then silence, barks, silence, etc. Once he has it treed it just carries on. Now the tracking collar has a GPS Unit on it so it makes it easy to track him down.
Sure enough, he had one treed. So then we decided to head back to the truck and scout out another place. Coon’s aren’t in season right now, so this is practice to keep the dogs on top of their game.
Earl and Zebra girl doing their impressions of a Racoon.
When we got to the next stop, Pokey turned Smoke lose but he refused to go into the woods. At the previous place we heard a “cat” cry (cat as in a bob cat or mountain lion or something huge) and they think that’s why Smoke refused to go in the woods.
Then hubby and Pokey got to noticing the different paw/hoof prints in the mud and figured there was a big “cat” somewhere.
The paw print we found was approx 4 inches in diameter which means it was a big kitty.
So everyone turned their lights on and started looking through the mud prints trying to see what different animals we could spot that had been through this particular field.
Not bad for a night. We at least got one treed!
Then we went back to the house and hubby had broke out one of those glow in the dark sticks, you know the ones people wear as necklaces and bracelets, where you bend them and they glow. But this was a huge one. Earl mentioned that she saw on Pinterest where you could add those to bubbles and have glow in the dark bubbles, so of course we had to try it out!
Not sure if you can really tell or not, but there is a bubble and it was glowing blue. Plus the wand was glowing and the bubbles were glowing inside the jar.
That is seriously looking into the jar. And all these photos were taken with my iPhone. Imagine if I’d have had my big girl camera!
Then they poured some of it on a piece of machinery Pokey & Earl had in their yard and lit it up.
Well of course after they did that and saw that it would work, the next logical thing to do would be to go lay in the road and trace a body print, right? Right!
And while you’re at it, write your name too… sure why not.
And this was the outline on Sunday, still showed up on the road. We’d sure like to know if people saw this and what they really thought!
Who says you have to spend a lot of money to have fun?!?!
In a groggy state, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that sound was. I halfway stirred and rolled over when the phone rang again.
Riiiiinnnnnngggggg…
Finally, I woke up enough to realize it was the telephone.
“Honey, phone,” hoping he’d grab the phone since it was on his side of the bed.
Riiiiinnnnnnngggggg…
“Honey! Phone.” As I kicked at his side of the bed only to find thin air.
I pushed myself up to a half-sitting position looking for hubs only to realize he wasn’t there; he went turkey hunting with TB and Pokey. (Youth Season).
Riiiinnnnngggg…
Crap, where’s the phone? Then the answering machine picked up. (Yes, we still have a home phone, I know that is kind of unheard of these days…)
Dad, “Baby on the ground. You better get up and head this direction.”
