What’s Poppin’
Posted: 01/05/2018
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Happy New Year, friends! I hope your holidays were full of joy, rest and relaxation. I took a much needed week “off” to spend some time with my family. Of course, I sprinkled in a little work (life as an entrepreneur!), but I tried to really just focus on spending a lot of time with my family enjoying the holidays. I also wanted to give my team the week off between Christmas and New Years and I have a hard time functioning without them so it was all around the right thing to do.
Despite the “time off,” I absolutely loved reading your comments and your emails as you made my recipes. These always bring a huge smile to my face and they mean the world to me!
During the break, we celebrated N’s 5th birthday, had multiple Christmas celebrations, and snuck away for a mini vacation with my parents and my sister and her family. We tried to get some things done around the house as well, but you know how that goes. We did move N from the toddler bed into a FULL size bed and now I want to cry every night when I tuck his little body into the huge bed. Why do they grow up so quickly?!
We never do much on New Years Eve, but Ben’s birthday is on New Years Day so we celebrated that with family. The guys watched football and the ladies and the kids played games. It was a nice relaxing day, just the way Ben likes things.
I’m starting a new Whole30 on the 8th…woohoo! Wish me luck! I’m armed with a couple new books – I picked up this one and this one. If you want to join my (very laid-back) Whole30 support group, click here.
Now that the new year is upon us, let’s all jump up on that bandwagon, shall we? If you never fell off, great job! I’m pretty happy with how much I worked out in 2017 and I can’t wait to continue my healthy habits into 2018. And there’s always room for improvement! In this installment of What’s Poppin’, I’ll share some of my favorite things to instill healthy habits. Equipment, recipes, kitchen tools, and more!
A few of my favorite workout things:
- Core Sliders – I love using these to amp up a workout!
- Resistance Loops – I love these little suckers. They look innocent but they’re super versatile and perfectly capable of kicking your booty.
- Water Bottle – Ben makes fun of me, but this water bottle never leaves my side.
A few of my favorite kitchen tools:
- Misto – great for a little spritz of oil before roasting vegetables or on a salad!
- Instant Pot – I know I talk about it ALL THE TIME but I really truly love my Instant Pot. Healthy essentials that I make weekly in it are boiled eggs and shredded chicken.
- Mini Colander – I use mine almost every day! Great for washing berries or small amounts of vegetables.
- 100% Real – I was sent this book from the publisher and I absolutely love the style of cooking in this book. Hooray for real food!
A few of my favorite healthy recipes for meal prepping: (Side note: This was tough since so many of my recipes are perfect for this!)
- Sweet Potatoes in the Instant Pot – silky creamy potatoes every time!
- Instant Pot Boiled Eggs – THE BEST. They peel perfectly every time!
- Healthy Banana Pancakes – I love to freeze these for my kids to eat all week!
- Oven Roasted Sweet Potatoes – with a southwestern twist!
- Salad Dressing! I love this carrot vinaigrette or my personal favorite, honey mustard vinaigrette.
Comment that’s making me grin: As always, I LOVE getting your comments, they make this whole food blog thing so much more fun for me! Kelly made my Chicken Parmesan Stuffed Portobellos, and said, “This recipe will now become one of the staples that I will prepare for guests. It was really easy to make and my boyfriend loved it!”
As always, let me know if you have any recipe requests! I’m excited for 2018 and planning to bring you lots of great recipes, but if you have anything specific you want to see, I’d love to hear from you!
