What do you mean I have to take out the garbage?!

Longtime readers will know that my daughter Hannah is a bit of a neat freak.  As in, if she is emptying the dishwasher and sees that I’ve put a gravy boat where the drinking glasses belong, she kinda goes ape shit on my ass.

One chore that Hannah always did was garbage and recycling.  I think in the 11 years we’ve been at our house, I’ve probably done the garbage less than 10 times.  Now that Hannah’s been gone almost a whole week, I’ve also noticed that the dishwasher isn’t emptied any more by the time I get home.  The mess I make in the kitchen scrambling to put my food together before work isn’t cleaned up anymore.  And the clothes that I invariably put in the dryer and forget about for a couple days?  Um, those aren’t folded either!  WTF?  I guess I took advantage of Hannah’s cleaning skills and over time may not have thanked her for all she did. Thanks Hannah!

Truth be told, Hannah’s neatness was apparent and a pretty young age.  She used to love washing dishes – putting yellow gloves on and an apron and standing on a foot stool in front of the sink.   And I may or may not have mentioned to her on the phone a time or two “all I have to do when I get home is clean the bathroom and mop the kitchen floor” and lo and behold – those chores would be done by the time I got home from work.  And this started at the age of 7 – I am such a mean Momma!

I really don’t know where she got it from because I was a pretty messy kid growing up.  It would look something like this.  It used to drive my Mom nuts but I told her “just keep the door shut!”

Until I eventually would get sick of it looking like that and do a clean sweep.  I think the longest I kept my room clean was a year.  And if I didn’t live with my husband, I am not sure I’d be as good a housekeeper as I am.  Having stuff around doesn’t bother me much at all.

Were you messy or a neat freak growing up?

We are back to the strawberry parfait – I shared my coconut crunch granola with my boss, so I am out again – this time I used ¼ cup of Kellogg’s Cherry Vanilla granola – with the plain yogurt this was a nice combination.  343 caloires, 3 fat, 63 carbs, 5.4 fiber and 21 protein.

My office has an outdoor patio with chairs and umbrellas and a pretty nice grill.  We grilled out quite a few times last year and today is our inaugural grill for the summer of 2012.  I ended up doing grocery shopping during my lunch hour for today.  I plan on making chicken pitas (this time with flavor!), a cucumber salad and a Greek orzo salad.  I’ll be sure to post the recipes soon.  On the way to the store I saw a garage sale sign that said “one block in!”  I was sold.  I hate following garage sale/estate sale signs that have me drive like 5 miles!

I picked up two stuffed animals for our dog Ed – .25 each, and these two new to me cookbooks – one was $1 and one was $2.  Please ignore the tea kettle in the back – it was used to fill the water reservoir in our smoker from last weekend.

When I got back, I heated up my lunch.  Two corn tortillas, 3 ounces of chicken, ¼ cup kidney beans and jalapeno tacos, ¼ cup of cilantro rice (which tastes exactly like Chipotle’s!) and some chips and salsa.   I texted a picture of my plate to my twin sister and she’s like “love the plate!”  We had an attorney quit and she left a set of those dishes – dinner plate, salad plate, coffee cup and bowl.  I quickly adopted them as my own. 😀  Lunch comes in at 474 calories, 16 fat, 6.8 fiber and 12 protein.

One thing I need to learn is to label my food that goes into our freezer or deep freeze.  Every time I wrap something up in foil and stick it in there, I’ll say to myself “I’ll remember what that is!”  Um, not so much.  So I was a little worried when I was leaving for work, reached into our freezer and pulled out what felt like a sizeable amount of meat.  Only thing was, I had no idea what it was.  Pork?  Steak?  Chicken?

It turned out to be . . . PORK!  We just had pork last night!  Oh well – the good thing is that these were fairly thick – I kept mine thick and butterflied Tony’s.  I made Parmesan orzo on the side and mixed baby spinach in mine.  Instead of using my spicy BBQ sauce, we both used this one:

My plate comes in at 414 calories, 15 fat, 39 carbs, 6.7 fiber and 29 protein.

It was delicious if I do say so myself.

So guess who my Inspirational Diet motivation is for today?  My brother Charlie!!  You can check out his latest blog post here.  He’s had three cancer treatments so far.  The last two days, he’s walked a mile each day!

He forwarded me this picture yesterday saying “I’m just like Biz!”

I am inspired by your strength to get out there and walk, even if you don’t feel like it.  And hope that as you continue on with treatment that it won’t get worse than it already is.  I love you!  That’s coming from your prettiest sister.

Make it a Great Day!