My friend Christina, who I met through blogging, moved back to her home state of North Carolina. She used to blog at Dinner at Christina’s, but has moved on and happily I can follow her on Facebook. Check out her and her husband’s Christmas card this year!
She said her husband grew out the mustache/goatee especially for this photo. I love it! You are crazy Christina! And yes, those are their pets. 
Tony and I both only ate half of our Christmas eve dinner, that left two halves of baked potatoes and two good size pieces of steak. I took one of those leftovers and made a scrambled egg, zucchini, steak mixture, stuffed it inside the potato skin, stopped with a slice of Swiss cheese, then put it under the broiler at work. On the side – fruit of Florida tangerines and blackberries.
The blackberries, while huge, were a bit on the tart side – or maybe they tasted tart because the tangerine was so sweet? I ended up eat the tangerine first, then sprinkling some Splenda over the blackberries.
I thought I might swim at lunch, but there were a bunch of day campers in the pool, so it was onto plan B – intervals on the treadmill. I am loving the HIIT app on my phone – I don’t have to pay attention to anything but the whistle to either run or walk. I did 7 reps of 3 minutes running, 2 minutes walking, with my fastest 3 minute run at 6.0 mph.
I never really meal plan during a holiday week – I buy groceries for the big meal, but don’t feel its necessary to buy more food for the week. I grabbed what I thought was roasted red pepper soup. I heated it up, and at first glance I was like “Yes, it’s soup!” Sadly, upon tasting it, it was pasta sauce – my first bite had a fennel seed in it! As much as I tried to will myself that it was tomato soup, it wasn’t happening.
So I ate my “dessert” first – Florida grapefruit drizzled with just a bit of honey – so juicy and delicious!
I thought maybe I could order food from across the street, but only one slight problem with that. I’d already taken my insulin for what I thought I was going to eat – if I don’t meet food with the insulin, the insulin works too fast and my blood sugar sinks like a stone.
I borrowed a Lean Cuisine from my boss. One word. Ick.
The package sounded good – but that toasted coconut made the dish overly sweet – I had to add some sriracha to balance out the sweetness. The package directions said to cook for 5 minutes, let stand 1 minute, stir, and let stand another minute.
Yep, I somehow burned some of the rice (who knew you could burn a frozen dinner in the microwave?!) and one piece of chicken was still frozen! I managed to eat half of this, but it was enough food so my blood sugar was fine.
I defrosted a “meatloaf” mix for dinner, not really knowing what to do with it – I could make tacos, or burgers, or meatloaf, or Salisbury steak. Salisbury steak won!
Here is another delightful florescent photo from my kitchen. I should really become a professional photographer – ha!
I love brown gravy packages – my store sells them 2 for $1 on sale, so I stock up. Each 1/4 cup serving is only 20 calories!
I wish I could work only 2 days every week! Hopefully today will go by fast, then it’s another four day weekend – woop!
Do any of you have any plans for New Years Eve? Do you stay home and have a special meal – go over to friends houses? Tony and I stay put – too many crazies on the road. 
I do have a couple mini projects I’d like to get done over the long weekend. One is cleaning my desk in the basement – it’s awful – it’s probably piled a foot and a half high of old papers, magazines, etc. I need to shred a bunch of stuff I don’t need anymore. Do I really need our ComEd bill from 2007? I don’t think so!
Alright, off to get ready for work – make it a great day!
I am planning a tacky Christmas party and would love to frame that hilarious picture to use with my decorations. May I have permission to print and frame it? Thanks Christina for the fantastic belly laugh this morning!
On the one hand, this is not news.The temperature has been wihitn the normal bands of past experience and there is no evidence here (in isolation) of any change in the climate.On the other hand, this is quite interesting and it is probably a many sigma event, if you assume that the trend in the temperature has been rising at say 0.7 or o.8 degrees celsius per 100 years and that the consensus expectation is that this rise is now beginning to accelerate, due to the steadily increasing rate of human CO2 emissions.But then, apart from UHI, the temperature at many individual locations in Australia has also not been rising for up to the last 150 years.Strange that!
haha Thank you for the feature, Beth!! I’m glad you get our odd sense of humor. I’m sure half of our family opened the cards and were confused by us.
Glad you’re enjoying the week Biz! I we’re having a special nye… Way away from home!
Okay, weird. What? I leave for a few weeks [months? who’s counting] I come back and your blog is so different. Don’t do that to Skippy – she doesn’t like change. heehee
I have missed the heck out of you – and can assure you I think of you everyday with all my snowmen smiling around me, especially the special ones from you. And yes, the framed print is back in the bathroom. giggle I get a lot of compliments on that btw – people are impressed that I actually decorate the powder room too. HA! It’s all thanks to you.
I have pages and pages to catch up on your blog – so forgive me if I am a bit behind. I hope you, Tony and Hannah are doing well. I am anxious to hear all about school from your girlie. I bet she is doing gangbusters! 🙂 And I hope you had as loving and special a Christmas as the three of you so richly deserve. And glad we were all [including your brother!!!!] here to enjoy it.
Love you sweetie. Say hi to the gang for me. And tell Christina that pic is PRICELESS. Wish I had thought of something so clever. giggle The pets and the poncho SELL IT! heehee
Christina has inspired me, I wonder what awkwardness I can come up with? LOL! Her card is greatness. You crack me up with all the times you’ve defrosted something, not knowing exactly what it might be! Yous gotsta start labeling, chica! And well done on the burnt frozen dinner, you are now a master! haha! I actually like your fluorescent photo so I obviously should never be a photo judge.
We usually stay home! Crack open a bottle of bubbly and enjoy bringing in the New Year!
so where they actually going for the Awkward family photo thing or did it just happen that way? lol
I spent a good deal of the past year shredding things like bill receipts from years ago and then finally just decided to burn the lot in the fire pit! haha I made a promise to myself to shred as soon as the the bills receipts are a year old. They say you can get rid of them once the check clears and they are paid…but um…ya, like that is ever going to happen…lol I think if I hit the pile once every few months I’ll be doing good.
I really like to stay home on NYE and have finger foods and maybe pizza. We’ve been invited to a party this year, and I’m not really wanting to go…because like you said…too many crazies on the road! Happy New Year Biz!!
Today was pretty much the first time I’ve ever gone food shopping without a list! I felt out of control 😉 I think I bought good food for the week though. That Christmas card is HILARIOUS. Bummer about the “soup”
I wondered where Christina went! I thought she feel off the face of the earth. I should follow her on facebook too….and you as well! Send me her and your info please:)
I think the more you cook, the less able you are to eat frozen food. And that’s bizarre that the rice burned – I know you needed to get something in you quickly, but blech. You deserve better than that.
We are staying in on New Year’s Eve – we don’t enjoy crazy drunken crowds, and like you, stay off the roads, too.
Glow Bull Worming has already deyetosrd most of the annual winter crop of fruits and vegetables throughout most of FL, with the possible exception of strawberries. (The farmers turn on their sprinklers to give the berries a nice coating of ice to keep them at a balmy 32F, at least for a few hours, unless the wind is blowing too hard or the freeze lasts too long.) If your area usually gets its winter produce from FL, be prepared for your fruit, vegetable and orange juice prices to skyrocket in the next few weeks. Orange juice prices have already hit their 3-year high mark and we’re only a week into winter .It would be interesting to have one of WUWT’s statisticians do a little research on the state’s historical temperature data and tell us Floridians if we should be getting ready to move to Hudson’s Bay for surfing or start building ski lifts on the sides of our infamous gypsum stacks. 😉
No plans this year 🙁 We usually have people over and do games etc. Me and the hubby have messed up schedules due to the holidays so it will be a quiet night.
Your friend’s card is cute… a little odd…but that is what makes it cute. I am all about different and unique.
New Year’s we usually go to a friend’s house. The last couple of years, it was the neighbor’s…only have to cross the street. We celebrate the ball dropping in NYC.
This year we are going to a different friend’s house. Before kids, we’d always do Christmas here and NYE there. But after our kids hit school, we stopped. Our vacation schedules now line up with the school schedule, so they are usually traveling at Christmas. This year they aren’t though!
We’re planning on staying home for New Year’s, and I’m going to cook a nice dinner. We’re thinking some bison filet along with a few side dishes, and a bottle of great wine. 🙂
Really good idea for the breakfast twice-baked potatoes.
I don’t know what my resolutions are going to be. Yet.