Not going to lie, I was totally expecting a loss yesterday.  Two weeks in a row of. 2 losses, and I was telling myself “you are due!”  So I was a bit shocked about a gain of 1 pound.

I’ve tracked just as much as I had last year and I was already down almost 9 pounds last year – and I thought “did I exercise more?” but the answer to that was no because I had bronchitis – I didn’t start working out until the middle of February when I was feeling better.

Could I be eating too much of the “free stuff” – like fruit, chicken and eggs?  Who knows.  This week I plan on counting points for chicken and eggs and see if that helps the scale move.   There are worse world problems, right?! šŸ˜€

Hannah and I spent the afternoon at our neighbors house – I brought them a whole tray of food that was the product of my latest blog post for The Chopping Block.  You’ll have to wait and see until its posted on their site, but it was a delicious Brunch Board – stay tuned for that!

This is their dog Lucy – a super giant and skinny and wears a sweater pretty much all the time to keep warm.

Later Hannah and I went thrifting – I totally should have gotten this hat!

Sunday morning the kadults slept in late, so it was breakfast for one – breakfast tacos for the win?  These are my Pam sprayed crunchy tacos – I got a bit of heat for using Pam (it’s bad for you!) etc., on Instagram, but I don’t listen to that.  The FDA has approved Pam as completely safe, so I’ll continue to be eating these skinny breakfast tacos, thank you very much.

The trick with using Pam though to make these crunchy tacos, is you have to go low and slow when cooking – these may take up to 10 minutes to cook, but totally worth it.  Mine are 6 points for the three – 4 points for the tortillas, one point for the lite mozzarella, and 1 point for 1/2 cup cooked shredded potatoes.  Yum.

Hannah declared yesterday “declutter the kitchen day” and she said to me before we started, “I need your full cooperation.”  It was probably the last thing I wanted to do on my day off, but I knew she was right that I probably have too much stuff.  We started with the seasonings, and well, I threw almost half of them out because they either were expired, or didn’t smell like anything.  That section was probably 1/4 of my spices!

And the funny thing is, other than like taco seasoning, I know I shouldn’t be buying herbs in giant containers like that because they will go bad long before I use them up.

Since the kitchen was a disaster area, I decided to utilize my oven to make dinner last night.  I know probably 90% of the world was eating football food – but The Super Bowl was one of Tony’s favorite day of the year and I would spend a couple weeks beforehand figuring out our football food.  It just doesn’t feel the same without him being here  because I don’t really like football, but I would love making football food for him.

Certified Angus Beef Ā® is a great go to brand for beef – I knew this way before I became an ambassador for them this year.  They have high standards on how they produce their beef, and I’ve never had a bad piece of beef from them.

You can check out their website above – awesome recipes, tips on how big a roast to buy for a crowd, and all the different cuts of beef.

I’ve not done a beef brisket in the longest time, so decided on a cold winter night for Sunday Supper to make oven braised brisket.

Since it was just Jacob and I for dinner (Hannah had her chickenless wild rice soup) I bought a 2 pound brisket.

There really isn’t a recipe for this dish – I just seasoned the room temperature beef with salt, pepper and a rosemary pepper seasoning.  I seared it on both sides on high heat in my cast iron skillet, then added carrots (rainbow carrots from Trader Joe’s!) and baby potatoes, and placed the brisket on top of the veggies.  I added just 1/2 cup beef broth to the bottom of the pan, and baked the brisket at 275 for 3 hours.

The house smelled amazing!  I let this rest a good hour before we ate dinner.  I left the pan drippings in the pan, and stirred 1 teaspoon of cornstarch with 1/4 cup beef broth, added that to the pan and made a pan sauce over high heat.  

 

I reheated the veggies in the microwave, and let the super hot gravy warm up the beef.  This was so good!  I think cooked carrots are one of my favorite veggies – I like how the purple carrot almost turned black!

The dogs spent a majority of the day sitting in the sun on my bed yesterday.  I love this picture of the two of them.

After a few hours of working in the kitchen, I had to tell Hannah that I was about done with that project for a while.  She told me she had it from there, and I watched the half time show that I DVRd, watched This Is Us – (tissues!) and went to bed at 10:30.

I woke up this morning to a clean kitchen, and about 1/2 of my kitchen pots/pan/crock pot/mixer, etc. in the back room.  Hum.  I wonder if I’ll have those things when I get home from work today?!  #kidding #butnotreally šŸ˜›

One thing I love about my new car?  Remote starter!  I’ve never had one of those before and it is a game changer on days like today.  I think we are under a winter storm watch until tomorrow with snow beginning later this afternoon.  We’ve been really lucky the last couple years, I don’t even think we brought out the snowblower the last two years?!

Happy Monday friends – make it a great day!