all we can do is keep breathing

I took a little bit of a breather this weekend. And by a breather, I mean, I didn't really do a whole lot? I guess I took a breather from my debbie downer posts.

I guess that isn't entirely true. Friday night we had grandiose plans to go to the gym, but I was tired when I got home, so we sat around and ate, instead. A viable alternative, I assure you.

Saturday morning Nate had to work, so I slept in a little -- til 10:30 or so -- and then got up and cleaned up some. And then, before I got to the real cleaning, I realized we were almost completely out of paper towels. So mostly I picked up and took out the trash. Then I made pumpkin bread, because we've had this can of pumpkin I wanted sitting it our cupboard for a while and I am always up for pumpkin flavored things. I am a firm believer that pumpkin should not just be a fall flavor -- it should be an every day flavor! It is so good and almost gone. It is also a dessert that I eat for breakfast. (me = gluttonous)

 On his way home, Nate got paper towels so we could actually clean. We swept and everything! Only thing we still can't do is mop or vacuum. But the (only) carpet is dark green, so you don't see anything on it and we can just use damp paper towels to "mop" the 6' x 3' kitchen space, so I'm not sure it will get remedied anytime soon. The place gets pretty dusty, though, so maybe we should invest in some Swiffer products, since we have a whole book of coupons =P

We finished cleaning and hung out until Nate's sister and Brent showed up, then sat around and talked for a while before deciding we should leave before it got dark. We took the bus down to Westlake, then wandered around the market for a little while before deciding we were all kind of hungry. So we hit up Noc Noc and discovered it was 80s night. Unfortunately, the music didn't start until 9PM and when it did start, it was kind of lame. The best things they played were One Night in Bangkok (which not many people know, besides me, apparently) and Walkin' on Sunshine (one of Nate's most hated songs.) There was no Bon Jovi, Journey, Whitney or anything of merit. Granted, that probably comes out later on in the night, but a little something upbeat for the five people who were dancing might have been nice, Mr. DJ.

Anywho.

Sunday was for grocery shopping! We didn't leave the house until after 12:30PM, but we didn't think it would take us that long, so we planned to go to the gym afterwards -- doncha know, we just love planning on going to the gym. Well, we wound up spending two hours at the grocery store and didn't get everything we needed. So we dropped stuff off at home and headed to the drug store/small grocery store downtown to see what they had. We wound up getting everything on our list except coffee, which we couldn't find for a decent (enough) price (for us.) We've set a budget of $75 a week for groceries and managed to only go over by about $10 on our first shopping trip. It should be noted, however, that some of the items we purchased we won't need every week (like dry goods, condiments, spices, etc.) so hopefully some weeks we'll be able to keep it well under $75. (We also didn't include household items in our $75 budget, because we can't just decided not to buy toilet paper because it doesn't fit in the budget.)

For our $85, we purchased:

• 1.5lbs brussel sprouts
• 1 zucchini
• 2lbs strawberries (on sale because they were on their "way out," so we took them home and cut out the brown spots.)
• 1 bag baby carrots
• 1 head iceburg lettuce
• 1 box pre-chopped mushrooms (I don't really understand this, but you can buy 1 box whole mushrooms for the same price. I don't think it's done by weight, so the chopped is a way better deal! In any case, we still have a couple whole mushrooms for stuffing and baking. Noms =)
• 3 roma tomatoes
• 2 kiwis
• 3 white peaches
• 2 packs of spaghetti
• 5-pack large chicken breasts
• small pack of ground beef
• one salmon steak (unfortunately atlantic farm salmon, not pacific wild, but the wild is way more expensive.)
• one gallon milk
• 8oz sour cream
• frozen edamame in the pod
• two boxes no-sugar chocolate covered almonds
• one box pistachios
• coconut water w/ mango and peach
• two loaves of bread (one wheat, one white)
• 8oz fresh cow mozzarella (from Pike Place)
• one bottle chocolate syrup
• one bottle caramel syrup
• one pack double fudge brownies
• one box margarine
• one cup yoplait (free w/ coupon!)
• one bottle strawberry jelly

It was pretty good haul. The fudge brownie mix is actually to see if it adds enough chocolatey sweetness to a smoothie to be as cost-effective as the syrup, since it costs less than two dollars. We'll see.

We also got this yesterday:

Because it does this:



It's the JosephJoseph Chop 2 Pot cutting board and it's quite possibly one of my favorite inventions. We're slowly but surely trying to replace all our kitchen things with JosephJoseph: they are both colorful and functional!

We had the mozzarella and tomatoes last night for a caprese salad before dinner. SO GOOD. The fresh mozzarella was so very very delicious. Mild, with just enough flavor. So different from store mozzarella. Also calorie-laden. Hehe. Good thing we walked around for five hours beforehand!

For dinner we had salmon in catalina with couscous, onions and spinach. Definitely one of my favorite meals. The catalina left over from cooking the salmon makes a perfect sauce for the couscous, with veggies for extra flare!

I'm so tired, because I couldn't sleep last night. My coffee helped, but I'm probably going to crash after I eat lunch. Ugh.