Adam Lambert Rocks!!

Ok ok, so we are a bunch of nerds but we watch American Idol every week. The best by far (and IMHO the best ever on the show) is Adam Lambert. He is in a total different league than everyone else. He has a crazy false setto and amazing control over his voice. This week Adam sang "Mad World" by Gary Jules. The judges ran out of time and Simon was the only one to say anything. He stood up and gave him the very first standing O on the show. Everyone that watches Idol is talking about him. I was listening to the Christian rock station on the radio and even the DJ was talking about him. Here is the video of his performance:

Miss Penny, Princess PUNK!

I don't know what has gotten into Penny this evening but she has been a nonstop brat since we got home! Allen walked her the same as he always does, but tonight she has had some extra energy. She'd better start behaving or she's gonna get an attitude adjustment for sure!

I cooked a recipe called "easy cola chicken" well, it was easy, but definately not a keeper. The chicken wasn't gross, but there are MANY other ways we both would prefer our chicken and what a waste of calories. The coke was supposed to make the chicken juicy and add flavor, but as far as we could tell, it just added calories. BLEH! But I did serve it with asparagus simmered in orange juice, another idea from allrecipes.com. Sounded strange, but even Allen agrees it was a good combination. Odd...but good!

Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means only two more days until we head to Sturgeon! YEAH! :)

Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-Cola-Chicken/Detail.aspx?prop31=7

Two Hits and A Miss, Oh and Jedi Penny!

"JEDI PENNY"

The Force is with her!

Well, my cooking adventures from allrecipes.com continues! Saturday night was "treat" meal night, which means it was definately not low fat, but absolutely delicious. I can honestly say I was suprised at how good it turned out! Allen LOVED it! Grandma Downing, you will love the name of it, "Iowa Pork Steaks". Served it with garlic mashed potatoes and balsamic glazed carrots. Next time I make it, I won't put as much salt, but other than that, A++ recipe.

Second hit, Lemon Lift Ice Tea. Over the winter last year , Allen and I purchased a TON of flavored teas that we enjoyed hot. I decided while cleaning on Sunday to make a pitcher of our favorite hot tea, Lemon Lift as iced tea. It's definately by far the most amazing ice tea I've ever had and NO SUGAR!

So, the miss, BBQ Beef Burgers. Bleh. Yeah, they tasted ok, but they definately weren't worth the trouble. Seriously, it's just sloppy joes. It's a good recipe to have on hand if you ever really have a craving for sloppy joes and don't have any Manwich on hand, otherwise, it was a waste of time. I served them with seasoned oven-baked sweet potatoes fried and those were GOOD!

This Saturday Penny made her first trip to South Park and went on a walk with two other male dogs, Jessica and Alex's Butch, and Jim and Amy's dog AJ. She was outnumbered being the only female, lol; but I was really proud of her. It was a really nice time. We got to meet alot of other dogs along the way. She LOVED it, and she was pretty pooped afterwards.

Oh and Grandma and Popop finally got to see the new place. Of course boxes are still everywhere and we're not settled yet, but we will be soon! :)

Hope you all had a great weekend!
Recipes
Iowa Pork Steaks: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Iowa-Pork-Steak/Detail.aspx
Balsamic Glazed Carrots:http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Balsamic-Glazed-Carrots/Detail.aspx
Seasoned Sweet Potatoes:http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ts-Sweet-Potato-Fries/Detail.aspx?prop31=3
BBQ Ground Beef: (I didn't make patties. Just cooked it loose.) http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ground-Beef-Bar-b-que/Detail.aspx?prop31=4

Sour Cream Noodle Bake...ehhh..

So tonight I tried my first recipe from Allrecipes.com. I tried the Sour Cream Noodle Bake. (Recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sour-Cream-Noodle-Bake/Detail.aspx?prop31=1) I made a few adjustment. We used whole grain pasta instead of egg noodles, garlic instead of garlic salt, white onions instead of green onions, used fat free sour cream, and low fat cottage cheese instead of the fatty stuff. Oh, and I added a little bit of cayenne pepper. LOL! Typing it all out like that, with all of those changes, I guess I didn't really use an Allrecipe recipe, I used an Amber/Allrecipe recipe! It was just ok. Nothing spectacular. Just so so. I give it 3 stars. It probably would have been 4 and 1/2 stars if I would have made it with all the fatty ingredients it called for. Allen and I are making a commitment with our new move to have new diets. NO, we are not fad-dieting, we are just going to be making smarter food choices, substituting the good stuff in for the bad stuff as much as we can and watching our portion sizes, a little less meat, a lot more veggies. (Which is almost necessary regardless of whether we want to or not with the price of meat!) On our grocery trip we purchased a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, instead of chips and cookies. We are going to start eating breakfast and not going to take the processed meat sandwhiches for lunch anymore.

LOL! As I am typing this, Allen just told me a funny story. We took lunches today that consisted of a piece of string cheese, one half of a celery stalk w/ 1/3 less fat cream cheese, one half of celery stalk w/ peanut butter and raisins on it, grapes, strawberries, and an apple. All in our nifty little divided food containers we bought at Wal-Mart last night. Allen said that the maintenance man at work saw what Allen was eating for lunch today and asked him if his wife put him up to eating that. Allen responded by saying , "Well, we both want to do it, but it was her idea." and the man said, "What I would have done was thrown it in the trash and bought me some Hardee's. " LOL! Cracks me up!

Well, today was Friday, but it sure doesn't mean much when you have to work on Saturday. I don't have to work Saturdays very often, but Allen gets stuck with them alot. Ho-hum.

Our bathroom has a toilet made for toddlers! LOL!

So, here are two pics of our tiny bathroom. It is definately a TINY bathroom, with a tiny toilet, but it's clean and cute. We are going to buy a wire shelf to put on the wall outside the bathroom soon for all of our towels. We have to find the right one first.

Today, Allen applied for a part time cashier position at Aldi's. They were advertising in the paper $11/hr, which is pretty good. If Allen were to get hired, he would keep his other job too. Can you believe this? They were taking applications from 9 am to 5 pm today. Allen got there right at 12:30p.m. The guy at Aldi's told him they had already accepted 130 applications! CAN YOU IMAGINE! 130 applications for a part time position, in the first 3 1/2 hours!!!! That is how rediculous the job market is around here. I'm not going to talk about it right now, or this would end up being a VERY depressing post. I'll save it for some other rainy day.

Hope everyone has had a great week. Tomorrow is Friday, YAY! :)

Little Penny Dog

I'm sitting here thinking about how little Penny was as a small puppy. She is still a puppy but she looks like a full grown dog now. I thought I would share some videos that we have of her when she was tiny.

Where have all the batteries gone?

Don't you hate it when you need some new batteries, but all the ones you had we stolen by your little brother!!!!!! (Oh yes, Caleb! We know what happened to the batteries! LOL!) But seriously, we need to just suck it and buy a decent supply of the suckers because it seems like everytime we need some they are gone.

So, most of you guys reading this won't care very much about this, but I'm really excited about this website. http://www.allrecipes.com/ is a FANTASTIC website to get recipes. It gives you all different kinds of ways to search for recipes, you can tell if other people have liked the recipes, and if they made any type of substitutions of any kind. I used the website to create our meal plan for the next week. I think I will probably be sharing how the recipes work out , here on our blog.

Not much else to share right now. Except I was wrong about not having to work this weekend. It is actually a divisional Saturday, so I do have to go to work. Bleh. Of course, Allen will be at work too, so we'll both be making that money!