Los Penasquitos Canyon

Last weekend Frank's cousin Ricky came down from Pendelton for the night. He was bringing some stuff to store at our place while he's in Afghanistan for 6 months. Sunday it was 87 at our place so I knew I didn't want to spend the day roasting inside.
Instead we headed up to Torrey Pines State Reserve, but when we got there we found out it's $10 to park {NOT HAPPENING!} and no dogs aloud anywhere at the park. I was pretty upset about this since the site I found all the trails on never said anything about no pets. Thankfully I brought along the note pad that has all the trails I want to check out. Los Penasquitos to the rescue!
We hadn't plan to be out/walking for a long period of time, just enough to get the dogs excerise as well as us. So when we got to Los Penasquitos and started walking... we weren't completly prepaired. I had the camelbak full so we had enough water, but we didn't plan for food.
Once we started walking this couple asked if we knew how far the waterfall was. Of course we didn't but we wanted to see it. 3 miles later...
We finally made it! It wasn't much of anything but the dogs LOVED walking around in the water to cool off. The hardest part of the whole thing was the walk back. We all started getting hungry, but it of course hit me the hardest. 3 miles of walking when hungry=NOT GOOD! I had to hold onto Frank the whole way back so I wouldn't slow down and fall over.
Once we got to the last mile we were all ready to just go as fast as possible to get it over ha.
All in all it was a great day and I can't wait to do it again!!{with food of course}.

Tonight for dinner... a VERY late dinner... I made Chicken, Mushroom, Broccoli and Rice Casserole, minus the chicken since I didn't have any left for Frank. Now that Frank is on mid-check i'm trying to get used to moving my own schedule around so I don't wake him during the day while he's sleeping. So when he woke up at 4:00 I made him chicken and pasta for  "breakfast" ha. I ate some of the pasta and wasn't hungry till around 7:00, then I realized WOOPS! forgot about dinner. Thankfully the casserole was easy to make... when you do it right. Even though I dried it out, it was still pretty good :]
I didn't take a picture since by the time it was done it was 8:00 and I was extrememly tired and my feet were killing me. Which ment....
Time to sit on the couch for the rest of the night!!!

Oh My New Favs!!!

This morning for breakfast we made Banana-Cinnamon Pancakes! The recipe was originally for waffles, but our waffle iron is horrible and the waffles turned out like crap. So I wanted to try again with pancakes. They were so unbelievably good : ) These are for sure my new favorite pancakes.

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup buckwheat flour {I used wheat germ since I don't have buckwheat}

1/4 cup ground flaxseed

2 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cup fat-free milk {or in my case soy milk}

3 tablespoons butter, melted

2 large eggs {I used egg beaters instead of egg whites, and it was still good}

1 large ripe banana, mashed

cooking spray

Directions

Lightly spoon flours into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flours, flaxseed, and next 4 ingredients (through salt) in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Combine milk, butter, and eggs, stirring with a whisk; add milk mixture to flour mixture, stirring until blended. Fold in mashed bananas. Preheat waffle iron {or in are case the griddle} coat with cooking spray. Cook however you're making them. You will totally enjoy them!

Last night for dinner I tried a new dish, I made baked potato soup {even though it was 85 yesterday ha}. OH MY OH MY I'M IN LOVE!! It was so fantasic I can't wait to have more of it for lunch. My picture isn't as good as the one from For the Love of cooking, but it was still so good. Oh and if you pair it with buttered potato bread it tastes just like a mashed potato sandwhich. Have any of you ever done that during Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner? That was like the highlight of my holiday dinners ha. I never was a fan of gravy so i'd put my mashed potatoes in the middle of my roll and devour it.. yum : ) You seriously have to check out this baked potato soup recipe.

Cesar and daddy get an amazing gift

Frank and I are huge fans of Cesar Millan 'The Dog Whisperer', we have used many of his tips with Molly and Ellie ((ohh how they really do help!)). We used to only be able to watch his show at our friends Erik and Haysel's back in Virginia since we don't have cable. But I realized about a month ago I could watch some of his shows on hulu.com. While searching around I found this.. so sweet and touching!!

Black Bean and Butternut Burritos

Tonight I ventured out and made butternut squash for the first time. I found it at Seasonal Recipes... along with a bunch of yummy desserts!! I was worried about how these were going to turn out while I was making them because the tortillas I used were sucky and kept falling apart. I started freaking out a little because we only have enough food for every night till payday, and we have no money to go out to eat [[it sucks being poor]].
I decided to go sit on the couch browsing the blog world to relax. It worked cause when the burritos were ready I tried them for the heck of it.. and ta da they were great! Frank LOVED them, I thought he was being sarcastic but he really did enjoy them. yay!
There is no picture tonight since they came out looking like poo!

Pretty day

I took all these pictures yesterday on our morning walk with Mikey and Willow and the rest were taken on our afternoon walk with Frank....

HELLO WILLOW!!!

Stupid camera, the "U" shaped object in the top left is because the camera ia broken.

MT.Helix

The rest of these are from our afternoon walk....

BREATH.BREATH.BREATH!!

YAY I MADE IT!! ha Frank runs the hills, and I try to walk up them as fast as possible. I do try to run a little bit, but I don't make it very far.

They decided to go walk down this road while they were waiting for me.. Molly looks so cute : )

WATER!!! ha I'm loving having the camelbak, I just wish the straps were cushiony. The one I have is just a standard military issued camelbak so I think it's suppose to be worn over the uniform.. not quite sure.

And off they go up another hill....

And again waiting for me ha. I love this picture of Ellie, she closed her eyes just as I took the picture.

So pretty..

I made him stop for a picture <3

UUUMMMMM they smelled so good!!

Looking out towards Spring Valley

After a good walk that wears them out, they don't want water... they want ICE CUBES!! It's there new favorite thing.

Last night for dinner I made our favorite.. lettuce wraps! I tried egg drop soup for a second time in hopes of getting it right. This time I made sure to use eggs instead of just egg whites.. and that was the problem. Woohoo it was so good. I filled up on the lettuce wraps fast so Frank ended up eating both our bowls of soup. I'd say he liked it ha. If you'd like, you can check out the recipe here from 'all recipes'.

What a day

This morning during mine and the dogs morning walk, I thought the day was going to be a crappy one. I half rolled my right ankle while walking and was worried it wouldn't turn out good later in the day. My ankle still hurts when I bend it ((from when I sprained it last month)) but thankfully after soaking it and leaving it up for a little while I was good to go!
I have a ripe banana that I need to use ((I have two but one is for the banana cinnamon pancakes I want to make later)) so I was looking through For The Love of Cooking to see if I could find a recipe that calls for only one banana. Well I had no such luck. I did however find these Lemon Blueberry Muffins! In this recipe she puts raw sugar cane on the top before baking them, but it seemed to me like there was already way too much sugar so I left it out. Frank's favorite muffins are blueberry muffins so I was hoping he would like these with the lemon.. they turned out pretty good! He had like 5 when he came home ha. Not the best thing since he didn't even work out after work today. Enjoy the muffins =]

Last week we decided to move the living room furniture around to see if we could find something we liked better. The way we had it before the couch was infront of the side window that the sun hits. In the summer it was killer sitting on the couch because the sun made it so much worse. We never opened that window because of that, so last week we were hoping to find something better. We tried moving the couch infront of the back door, but I hated that because you can't see what the dogs are doing on the patio. And there was next to no room left in the living room. So yesterday we tried yet another set up. We now have the couch on the wall with the small window so the dogs can look out the window ((it's long)) and we can open the curtains to let more light in. We really like this way and having the widow open makes the room seem so much bigger. I love it; Molly and Ellie love it more I think. They are big into laying in the sun as much as possible so they are taking advantage of having access to the window.

I think this is my favorite!

Last night my mom booked a ticket to come down to San Diego for Thanksgiving! I guess she had been thinking about taking a short vacation but was looking more towards the end of December. My dad doesn't want to fly down so it's going to be just her. Oh well his loss =] She has been looking into flying out of Bellingham because it's cheaper but the flights leaving after Christmas were $100 more than if she came down for Thanksgiving. She also compared how much she'd be saving if she left out of SeaTac and I think she said she's saving like $130??! Next time Frank and I go home we'll for sure be looking into flying into Bellingham. I'm excited for her to come down cause I can't wait to show her around, and there are so many things we haven't even gotten around to seeing yet that I plan to concure while she's here. Fun times!
Tonight after Frank came home we took the dogs over to Harry Griffen Park in La Mesa to see if we could find the dog park there. We did finally find it, it was in the back of the park we never just went far enough back to find it. We hated it. The ground of the dog area was sand, nasty. We had to give the dogs bathes when we got home because they were covered in dirty sand. ick. We did find that they have trails there so we took the dogs for a run/walk before it got dark. I think we'll stick to taking the dogs to the dog park in Clairmont, we like that park.
Hope everyone is watching The Biggest Loser!!

Sesame Noodles and Fruit Muffins

For quite some time i've been wanting to make these Banana, Blueberry and Raspberry Muffins but I was always missing something. I finally decided that I was going to make them this week but couldn't find any fresh blueberries, then I realized they must not be in season? Either way I made them today and they still turned out pretty darn good! The blueberries would have been the perfect touch for the middle of the muffins, but they were still tasty. Frank decided to make a nice little display out of them for a picture... as to the milk. It's definintley not mine.

Yumm!!

Tonight's dinner was Sesame Noodles with Broccoli that I found at CookingLight.com. I loved making this because there was very little to clean up and it was super easy to make. At the last minute I decided to use all the spaghetti noodles instead of just half, that way Frank had lots of leftovers. In the future i'll add an extra tablespoon and such to the sauce so it makes more. It was still really good though. I wasn't sure what to pair it with since I was saving the lettuce for the wraps tomorrow, so I decided to make some garlic toast. We do our own garlic toast that I think is much better compared to the store bought kind. I preheat the oven to about 300 degrees, butter it up then put some garlic salt on them and bake until I want to take then out. umm good!

The good and the bad

Today was a good day for food! For an afternoon snack I made two different cresent rolls that I found at For the love of cooking. The first ones I made were peanut butter and caramel. The recipe she used is with chocolate chips, but since I didn't have any I just put a little caramel in with the peanut butter. I loved them, Frank didn't care for these ones much.. I want more now that i'm typing this! ha You can go here to check out the recipe.

The second ones I made were cinnamon and sugar. These are the ones Frank really liked, I didn't care much for them but that was because I used to much of the cinnamon and sugar and not enough butter.

For dinner tonight I made a veggie quiche! This is yet another great find I found at For the love of cooking, man I love that site ha. I added some broccoli to the quiche since to me broccoli goes great in a quiche. I loved that this was a potato crust, it made the dish so much better. If you like quiche or are a fan of veggies you should really check out the recipe here. Frank even liked this!! yay =]

A walk like no other!!!

I've been wanting to find another way to go on our walks to make it harder and more intense. Well we found it! The other route we go is all hill with a few flat areas, then one big down hill. This new route is way more hills.. bigger hills! Hardly any flat areas, and then the same big downhill. You'd think by the time we got to the downhill it'd be a piece of cake. NO WAY!! ha I was so dead tired and exhausted I could barely breath. It's been beautiful since we've had a nice Santa Ana come through so it's been in the mid 80's.. which made for a great walk =] Next time I want to remember to take the camera since there was some pretty awesome views at the top of the hill.
Instead this is me after the walk, you can't tell how red my face really is!! ha

We sprayed the dogs down with water at the car wash area of our complex when we got back.((We had water for us and them on the walk, but we all needed to be cooled down!)) Unfortunately after being sprayed with water Ellie tripped while we were walking back to our apartment, and Frank didn't realize it since she was behind him so she got drug through the dirt. So we put both dogs in a cold bath when we got home. We threw Molly in with Ellie just for the heck of it.

Molly wouldn't look at the camera =[ Ellie being a pretty little lady ha

After our walks I always give them ice cubes, they go crazy over them ha. I should try to get some pictures of that as well next time...

YYAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!

Today we paid off our personal loan.. only a few more loans and credit cards to go! ha Our personal loan was costing us the most ((besides our car loan)) each month and had the highest interest rate, so we have been trying VERY hard to get this paid off fast. AND WE FINALLY DID IT!! YAYAYA This is us excited about saving $137.98 a month!!

Working out!

I've been going on my morning walks now for a few days, my friend Mikey who lives at our complex goes with us along with her puppy Willow! Since the walks are getting too easy for me and my back hasn't been hurting I figured I was good to try the gym. The base gym's aren't close to us so I'm not sure when I'll be able to go next, but I will continue my walks and adding more to it. So the gym... it was amazing to get back after 6 MONTHS!! Anyone who is a gym addict, not being able to work out for 6 months is killer! Over the last month in a half I have been going crazy wanting to get back into the gym, but my back was still hurting so it wasn't possible. I was so excited today ha. I didn't do much, just ran for 5 minutes, did a few crunches ((on the machine of course! my tailbone can't take the floor)), did some arms and that was it. My back was kinda starting to hurt after that so I decided to stop after 40 minutes. I was fine with that though, and I can't wait till I can get back in the gym again. Oh and Nick that certain base gym I went to lets you bring guests, you just have to pay $3.00. I'm not sure about the other base gyms though, I'm hoping to check them out.

Catching up

I haven't been able to update this in a while because we have a virus on our computer. We've tried everything, but are going to have to take the computer in to get fixed by the pros... ugh. Anyways today I had nothing to do and was about to sit down to continue one of our many Friends marathons. I really didn't feel like sitting on my butt for half the day, so I got up the courage to take the dogs for a walk. We live on a busy road and I don't feel comfortable walking on it. Well, I realized that we can go for walks without having to walk on the busy road. There is a really nice neighborhood with very nice houses just above us, so we walk through there wishing of what we can have one day ha!
Now for the food ha I know some people are waiting for this part. Tonight for dinner I made myself spinach manicotti and grilled chicken with mustard-tarragon sauce. Frank loved it!! I tried the sauce and it was pretty good. In the sauce she calls for sugar, but I decided to leave it out I didn't think Frank needed sugar with his dinner. You can check out the recipe here... http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/search/label/Chicken


I've been wanting to try a healthy cheesecake. I found a few recipes in the south beach diet cookbook. Well the other day I finally made the dessert.... and it's something that should stay unhealthy! It wasn't very good at all. I ended up just throwing the whole thing away. Sad times. Now I want to try making a good-unhealthy cheesecake. I have something saved for the week of Halloween =]
I found this recipe bow tie pasta with cherry tomatoes, capers and basil at cookinglight.com. I left out the cherry tomatoes since Frank doesn't like tomatoes and I don't care for cherry tomatoes, and I left out the capers since I didn't have any. This would have been really good if we left out the red pepper... or used just a dash, because it was hot!!! Neither of us could eat it. I really want to try it again since it had potential. It was also super easy and hardly any dirty dishes to make it, I like that part! You can check out the recipe here... http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=222291

MMMHHHHH this was good!! I love cooking for the seasons, and even though it's in the low 70's here I still wanted to make a chowder. I found this corn and potato chowder here... http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1142037. So good!!

South Beach

Last month I checked out the 'South Beach diet recipe book' from the library so I could get some new ideas. We've gotten really lucky and have found some very good meals from the book. Tonight I tried the Sweet Potato Salad and Broiled Salmon with creamy lemon sauce. They both turned out yummy =} Frank even liked them!

Sweet Potato Salad

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds Sweet Potatoes

1 large apple, peeled, cored and cubed

1 large rib celery chopped

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

Directions

Place the sweet potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook for 30 minutes, or until tender. Drain and cool. Peel and cut into cubes. In a large bowl, combine the sweet potatoes, apple and celery. In a small bowl, whisk together the orange juice, oil, vinegar and sugar. Pour the mixture over the potato mixture and toss to coat.

Broiled Salmon with Creamy Lemon Sauce

Ingredients
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons capers
1 teaspoon lemon-pepper seasoning
1/2 cup fat-free sour cream
1 1/2 pounds salmon fillet
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Heat oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Reduce heat to low. Stir in the lemon juice, capers, and lemon-pepper and cook for 5 minutes. Add sour cream and for 5 minutes, or until heated through. Meanwhile, place the salmon on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the fish is just opaque. Serve with the sauce.

Banana Bread

I haven't made Banana Bread in years, so when i decided that I was going to make a loaf I wanted one that was simply amazing! And this one definitely was. I found the recipe at 'For the love of cooking'. I should have read the first paragraph she wrote about making this, because she said that the loaf turned out small and that she would have to double the ingredients next time. Well I didn't read that part and was a little sad the loaf was small ha. I only let myself have two small slices... oh the temptation is hard! It's so good =} I'm sending it off with Frank tomorrow for the guys at his shop to enjoy... they love my baking!! ha It makes me feel special. I wanted to make another loaf to take to my upstairs neighbor, but I only have 1 banana left and it's for the banana cinnamon pancakes I'm making.


Ingredients
1 cup of flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
a dash of salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a loaf pan. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl and mix thoroughly, set aside.
2 ripe bananas
1 egg
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup walnut pieces [[I left out]]
Directions
In another bowl mash bananas, egg, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, melted butter and vanilla together and mix thoroughly. Slowly add dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix well. Once batter is well combine add walnuts and stir [[if using]]. Pour ingredients into prepared loaf pan. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool a few minutes before cutting. Serve while it's warm with butter. Enjoy!... and you will =]

So Sweet...

I saw this story on the Yahoo homepage... The picture pretty much speaks for itself...

Four-year old Paige didn't want to say goodbye to her daddy before he was shipped off to Iraq.

A family photo that shows a little girl beside her father and his fellow soldiers in uniform as they prepare to go to war has resonated well beyond the tight knit Bennethum clan.

Four-year-old Paige Bennethum really, really didn't want her daddy to go to Iraq.

So much so, that when Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum lined up in formation at his deployment this july, she couldn't let go.

No one had the heart to pull her away.

The commanding officer allowed Paige to say goodbye as her dad prepared to ship off from Fort Dix.

Paige's mom Abby captured the moment on her camera and her aunt passed the image along to a Berks County, Pa. newspaper.

"I've had stranger's looking me up online, sending me messages that they are touched by it... offering alot of  support," Abby Bennethum told NBCPhiladelphia.

The picture took on a life of its own online this week. Abby say's that suddenly, people were knocking on her door. "Literlly overnight, there's all these people that just want to do anything they can," she says. Though she says her husband hasn't seen any stories about his family yet, he expects to.

For her part, Paige still remembers how she felt that day in July. Looking at that picture of herself- her dad now overseas- Paige remembers, "I didn't want to let go of him."

She calls the work  he does transporting supplies across the Iraqi border, "just nice."

But that doens't change her feelings.

"I just miss my daddy right now," she says.

Sgt. Bennethum, 30, is expected home next July. Until then, Paige plans to help her mom take care of her little sister and a new baby that's on the way.