Thursday, March 31, 2011

My family left today :(

My family left to go back to Iran today *sadface*. I wish they could be here all the time, but I know they have their own lives to get back to. It will be awesome when my cousin comes to live with my mom and sister. We had so much fun!

I also decided I am going to donate my car, it really makes my heart hurt but keeping my car in our driveway really isn’t doing anyone any good. I am going to donate it to www.carsforustroops.org, they will come to my house and pick up my car, and give me IRS tax papers. I Kelly Blue Book-ed my car and in the condition it is currently in, it is only worth around $900! Haha, my poor baby car.

Tonight after our Go-To Meal, we watched “The Wire”. Man we love this show, Sunny and Diana turned us onto it and we can’t get enough of it:

Ella was watching me type my blog tonight:

Minutes later she was curled up next to Erik on the couch, snoring, haha.

Yesterday while I was doodling around the interwebs, I went onto my friend Caroline’s blog and she had a box for Foodie Blogroll, so I looked into it and I applied to be featured on the Foodie Blogroll, and I was approved! You can see the box on the right hand side of my page! I’m pretty excited, I hope it will bring some more traffic to my blog. From that blogroll I received a comment to put my blog on Petitchef, they said they stumbled on my blog and my recipes looked good, and wanted their users to be able to enjoy them too, so I signed up!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good night! Oh I leave you with this, look at how cute they are!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Still trying to “Build a better” me

Round 3 results are in for our work challenge:

In all of Bechtel:

Steps: 41 out of 605 --> Up 7 spots

Exercise minutes: 116 out of 669 --> up 7 spots

Weight Loss: 218 out of 491 --> down 27 spots (not good)

In BSII (our group):

Steps: 8 out of 113 --> Up 1 spot

Exercise minutes: 28 out of 131 --> no change

Weight Loss: 66 out of 101 --> down 13 spots (not good)


I am really hoping to step up the competition for the last three weeks so that we can have a good shot at being #1 in Steps on BSII.


Today’s Cho-nola was Strawberry-banana flavored:


I promise I won’t repeat flavors on my blog, I will only tell you about the new flavors or new ways to use Chobani Yogurt. I plan on using the plain Chobani yogurt as a salad dressing, my blog friend Colleen uses Chobani and mixes it with jam or jelly to make a dressing for her salads sometimes, so I thought I would give it a try next week.


Here it is, my Best of Clean Eating cookbook:


I cannot wait to start making the meals in this book, they look absolutely amazing. I will be starting either this weekend or early next week. I haven’t been planning meals for the weekends because we are usually out doing things and we just grab something to eat. I think this is a horrible habit because #1 we spend unnecessary money and #2 fast food is obviously horrible for you, so I think starting this weekend I will plan meals for everyday of the week. Look for a new recipe on Friday, and if the meals are good I will put them a link to the recipes in my “Do it Again Meals” tab above.


Tonight we went to Mike’s American Grill for dinner, since it was the last night my family will be here from Iran (they leave Thursday night) *sadface*. I got the Fillet Mignon with Redskin Mashed Potatoes.. mm mm mm heaven! My day 30 picture is of my lovely family, I am going to miss my aunt, uncle and cousin,(my uncle is not in this picture though) : Well folks that is all for tonight! Hope everyone has a great day tomorrow!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I love free money

Look what I found in the mail pile this morning:

I used it to buy this:its a seat cushion for my bike, and it was free! I also got rubber cleat replacements for my cleats, because I have metal cleats in them right now and last practice I stepped on Hyojon’s foot. Yea, I don’t think that felt too good. I have a love/hate relationship with Sports Authority, because I want a lot of things in that store but I really don’t need them. For example, today I saw some awesomely lime green long socks, and I wanted to get them for our football games (I will probably end up getting them, but I wanted to wait to see what color our shirts are). And I have a sick obsession with workout clothes, I don’t know why, but I love them. Anyway, I try and stay away from Sports Authority because it is way to tempting for me to buy stuff in there.

Speaking of workout clothes, Erik and I will be starting our P90x workouts again on Monday the 4th, but it will be a modified version of P90x because we won’t want to be inside on the weekends and Yoga is too long, here is our plan for the first 4 weeks (I feel like if I put it in writing I will stick to it):

Dorsa’s Workout Schedule:

Monday- Core Synergistics

Tuesday- Plyometrics

Wednesday- Shoulders & Arm + Ab Ripper

Thursday- Kenpo X

Friday- Legs & Back + Ab Ripper

Weekends- Bike ride, Football, Softball, etc.


Erik’s Workout Schedule

Monday- Back & Biceps + Ab Ripper

Tuesday- Plyometrics

Wednesday- Shoulders & Arm + Ab Ripper

Thursday- Kenpo X

Friday- Legs & Back + Ab Ripper

Weekends- Bike ride, Football, Softball, etc.

Also starting Monday I will be making dinner’s from the “Best of Clean Eating” book I bought. I am pretty excited, we have 7 weeks until our wedding season begins, so we have to get into shape!

Daily Chobani Update

Today I had a Raspberry Chobani, and it was also delish, certainly not as good as the pomegranate or mango, but it ranks high on my list, probably fourth, behind peach.

Tonight for dinner we went over to my mom's house for some more yummy persian food, Eggplant, chicken, tomatoes and rice:

I still don't know what I want to do about my baby car... I cried all the way home tonight just thinking about donating the car and not having it in the driveway. It was a gift from my parents when I turned 16, and it means a lot to me. Maybe we will just take the cd player out and keep it, ugh I don't know. I better get to sleep before the waterworks start again. Night!

Monday, March 28, 2011

My baby car is dead....

The check engine light has been on for over a year now, and I’ve taken it in to get it checked out and was told that in order to make the check engine light go away I had to replace the engine itself, no thanks.

Yesterday I had a really hard time starting my car, and this morning while I was driving to work it had a hard time accelerating. I was scared that by the afternoon it wouldn’t work at all and I would get stuck at work! :( On my way home from work it started shaking violently every time I tried to accelerate. I said to myself if I can make it all the way home, I was done driving my baby car. I think we are going to donate it to the salvation army... does anyone know if they will take a car with the check engine light on? Kirstie says they will take it and either use the parts, scrap the metal, or fix it up and sell it. All I know is that my inspection is due in April and I need to renew my registration, so I think its a good thing it died before I spent the money to do all of that.

Daily Chobani Update

Today I tried the pineapple: Amazing! There were little chunks of pineapple on the bottom, Yum!

Dinner tonight was a yummy sandwich, which was hand-made by my uncle:

And my pictures of the day are adorable, my baby sister passed out on the couch in the basement and Ella laying limply on her bed:

Haha, I love it! Well folks that’s all for today! Hope everyone had a great day!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

I woke up to this...

Can you believe it “snowed”?! ugh, my poor little flowers, although it did melt before 9am, haha. Oh well, I am hoping spring comes back soon, I am so totally over the winter weather.

We went over to my mom’s house for brunch with my family! I made some waffles, and Erik made some eggs. My aunt, uncle and cousin had never had waffles before, and I think they liked them. We have been trying to think of different foods to make for my family to try that they have never had. After brunch we ran, not literally, back home so that I could start making dinner. We invited Erik’s family and my family over for dinner, so that his family could have a chance to meet mine. Tonight I am making Cilantro Chicken with Tomato Avocado Salsa. This recipe is a long time favorite of ours, and by long time I mean since last year, but really it is amazing. I had to do some prep work, because we heading over to the mall, and I didn’t want to feel rushed when I get home from the mall.

Well we are off, I hope everyone has a great day!
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Saturday, March 26, 2011

What do you do when you have too many eggs?

You make omelets!!!

Well technically this is only the picture of the veggies we sautéed for our omelets, but you get the general idea. Erik and I woke up this morning and looked in our fridge, which honestly has nothing in it, and realized we had way too many eggs which were going to expire soon, so we decided to make omelets. They were HUGE, yummy and kept me full until dinner, kinda, we snacked a little during the day.

After our yummy breakfast we met up with Sunny and Diana and went for a nice long bike ride. Towards the end of the ride we lost Sunny and Diana and ended up searching for them, after about 30 minutes we decided to head home, hoping that they would be there and they were! We hung around a bit before Sunny and Diana left to go to the airport to pick up Diana’s parents (Bob and Dad, as we like to call them).

Afterwards, Erik and I left to go to Peter’s house, Erik’s co-worker. Him and his wife just bought a new house and they were having a housewarming party. Their house was super cute, and we are really glad we went. Another one of Erik’s co-workers John, had given Peter an amazing pulled pork recipe, so I asked him for it, and I can’t wait to make it for one of our summer parties, I promise it will NOT disappoint. We had a great time hanging out with everyone at the party, but we had to leave early because we were going to a family friend’s house for dinner and we were late. I didn’t take pictures of dinner because it would have been really weird, considering they are not very close family friends. It was great to hang out with my family again, and my cousin Farid finally opened up a bit and starting talking to Erik about cars in English! I can’t wait until the summer when he comes back here to stay for the school year!

Anyway, I am beat, I am off to bed! I hope everyone had a great day!
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Friday, March 25, 2011

My family is amazing!

I took today off so that I could spend the day with my aunt! I woke up this morning and put Erik’s lunch together, yummy leftovers from last night, fed Ella and threw some laundry in the wash, all before 8am! Then I did my “Core Synergistics” P90x workout, and discovered that I am out of P90x shape, we plan on fully doing P90x again after my family leaves. After my workout and shower, I headed over to my mom’s house to pick up my aunt. We went to Fair Oaks and walked around for a good 4 hours, going in and out of stores, window shopping. It was awesome, I love spending time with my family. I took her into Williams and Sonoma, and we sampled a vegetable soup that the lady had just made, did you know they had full kitchens inside the store?, crazy. The soup was so amazing, and there were no special ingredients in it, but she had cooked it in a cast iron pot, which she says is the reason why it was so tasty. Apparently the cast iron pots hold in the flavors of the vegetables, who knew? I took a picture of the ingredients from their cookbook but I might have to go back there and buy the book to try other things. My mom met us at Fair Oaks for lunch around 2, and we went to Corner Bakery, one of my favorite places. I had the Pomodoro chicken sandwich. YUM!


My uncle and cousin just got back from their 3 day trip to New York, so dinner was at my mom’s house. She ordered and picked up food from “Moby Dick”. I’m not sure if you have ever eaten there but they have some delicious Kabobs.





I forgot to take a picture of dinner until the very end, so this picture is of what was left.



Okay that is all for today! I hope everyone had a great day!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Sleepy Baby!

Sorry for the back to back Ella pictures but she is too cute. This is my Day 24 picture, this was right after she got yelled at for chewing on my aunt's shoe. She never does that, I guess she thought it was her toy.

Today I tried the Pomegranate Chobani, YUM, I highly recommend it (Thanks Jamie). Also tonight for dinner my aunt made me my favorite Iranian dish, (I forgot a picture again, I am really sorry) but it was fantastic.

After dinner we watched "The Town", not a bad movie but I am glad we didn't pay to see it in the theaters. I will rarely go watch something at the theater anymore, because #1 the ticket prices are outrageous, and # 2 movies recently haven't been that great and I don't want to waste the money watching something I am going to hate. Anyway sorry about my rant about theaters.

I hope everyone has a great day! I am off tomorrow :) I have lots to do!!!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Ella is nuts!

Ok so I will try and keep my Chobani obsession under control, but I just had to tell you all that the Mango is absolutely amazing, really it is.

This is how terrible I am at taking pictures, I am sitting here during lunch writing part of this blog while eating my left over fajitas from last night and I failed to take a picture of them AGAIN! I mean really? am I that much of a fatty that I have to shovel food into my face before I can even think twice about taking a picture of it. Ugh! So yes sorry guys, I had fajitas and now they are in my belly, and you are once again picture-less.

My Day 23 picture is of Ella again. This is her in our guest bedroom. She goes in there all the time when we are downstairs and messes up the bed, we don't know why, she just does it. Today we caught her in the act, look at how guilty she looks haha.

For dinner tonight we had an Iranian dish, rice, chicken and it also had green beans in it. It is my second favorite Iranian dish (I remembered to take a picture this time).

Well that is all for today, I am off to hang out with my family :)

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

My Chobani Obsession is becoming a problem...

Well ok not really but I can’t get enough of this stuff! The worst part is that we are currently out, I had the last Chobani today, that is until lunchtime when I made a quick trip over to Giant, look at all of them, (I obviously got a Mango one!):

I can’t wait to try them, perhaps tomorrow. For dinner, we were at my mom’s house again and she made Fajitas (fabulous as usual). (note to self: start taking pictures again). I don’t know why I keep forgetting to take pictures of dinner, I guess I’ve just been really busy with my family here to think about it. Oh well, tomorrow night.

I hope everyone had a great day!

Monday, March 21, 2011

mmm...Mangos...

Apparently I am obsessed with mangos right now:

I bought this on Saturday when we went to Georgetown, it is so good. Also today for my snack I had an entire mango:

it was just what I needed, but now I am out of mangos! Must.Go.To.Store... We went to my mom’s house tonight for dinner: leg of lamb, oven roasted potatoes, and veggies. I obviously didn’t take a picture of it, so just imagine how yummy it was! After dinner, the men sat on the couch and watched videos of Ferrari’s and other super fast cars racing each other (Day 21 picture):

It was cute... Well its past my bedtime! I hope everyone had a great day! See you guys tomorrow!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Happy Persian New Year!!!

Yay the first official day of spring is here, and as always, its our Persian New Year! Day 20 picture, above, is of the traditional table we set every year for New Years.

Go here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Nowruz) for a little information about our new year!

I hope everyone has a great day, and an even better year! Now I am off to spend time with my family!
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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Springtime is the best!

As you can see from yesterday’s photo, UPS did end up delivering our rings yesterday! I was so happy, Erik and I were playing catch in the backyard when he saw the UPS truck pull up. He ran around the house and I followed him, it was awesome. My Day 18 picture from yesterday was this:

This was taken at the airport last night. We were waiting for my Aunt, Uncle and cousin to come from IRAN for the first time EVER. We were very happy to see them, but we had to wait a while for them to come out of customs, in the meantime, Erik and Ava decided to play a little Angry Birds on their phones, haha, super cute.

This morning Erik and I took Ella for a mini bike ride to see how she would react to the bike. Erik walked with Ella while I rode my bike next to them on the street, all Ella wanted to do was chase me on the bike, it was hilarious. We took one lap around our neighborhood with her, then I dropped off my bike at home and took her for a long walk. After we got back Erik and I went on our own bike ride at Wakefield. My day 19 picture is of Erik's bike before we took them out (hence why its upside down :) :

It felt so good to get out on our bikes in this nice weather. I think we are going to try and go out every Saturday morning for a bike ride.

In the afternoon, my family came over to see our house for the first time before we headed to Georgetown. It was such a beautiful day we didn’t want to be inside, so we walked around Georgetown for few hours, before going down to the waterfront for dinner. We went to Sequoia for dinner, the food was ok, but it was nice to sit near the water, and most importantly, outside with my family. Well folks that’s all for today!

Friday, March 18, 2011

I Miss you Daddy-o... *3.18.06*



Five years ago today, we lost the most amazing dad in the whole world. For those of you who knew my dad you know how wonderful he was, he has shaped me into the person I am today, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Spring is finally here! After work because the sun was still shinning I sat outside looking through my Clean Eating cookbook while I enjoyed a delish Harpoon Celtic Ale.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but last week I ordered three rings (for my mom, sister and I) in honor of my dad. It is a love knot, with my dad’s birthstone in the middle of it. Well yesterday they tried to deliver it and we obviously weren’t home, so I went today to pick them up at the UPS store. After we pick the package up, I get back in the car and open it to find that there is only one ring in the box. We drove back to the UPS store to ask them what was going on and they said that according to their records they hadn’t even shipped the other two rings yet! Seeing how my dad’s five year anniversary is tomorrow, I really wanted to have them beforehand. Ugh! So I called Overstock and they said they would ship out two new rings, but that they wouldn’t be at my house for at least 5-10 days! I am so unbelievably disappointed, words cannot even explain it.

After that fiasco we went out to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with Sean, Brandy, Hyojon, Trina and Kevin, the guy that took the picture of all of us kinda sucked so its not a really good picture, but you get the idea.

It was really great to see everyone and hang out with them, both Erik and I needed a relaxing evening, and we got it so we were happy!

My Day 17 picture, is obviously in honor of St. Patrick’s Day:

I hope everyone had a great day!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Dear Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, I love you

Today I had lunch/dessert with Jamie, we met at Mimi’s Cafe for some of their delish chocolate Mousse seen here:

at a mere 3 WW points this amazing treat is covered in strawberry sauce and topped with fresh strawberries, you MUST try it. Jamie is my sister from another mister, and pretty much knows me as well as she knows herself, really its scary how similar we are, anyway she gave me a very sweet gift:

This is my FAVORITE form of Reese’s, it makes me sad that they are so hard to find unless its around Easter. After lunch it was back to work as usual, until “tea at 3” when I took my “Fro-Cho” out of the freezer, oh man this is my second favorite form of Chobani:

It was so amazingly refreshing, I plan on eating these a lot during the summer!

Dinner tonight was Ginger-marinated Salmon, Uncle Ben’s long grain rice, and veggies:

This time I did not overcook the salmon so it was very tasty, all in all I believe this was a great food day, oh yes I failed to mention the Skinny Cow Ice cream we had for dessert (I didn’t take a picture of it though).

My Day 16 picture is of Sunny:

The siblings came over to our house tonight for dinner, and we didn’t have enough salmon for everyone, so Sunny and Diana brought some Tilapia and rice, and had a sushi thing (sorry I forgot the name of it). Sunny needed a big bowl for his dinner, so he used one of our serving dishes for his dinner bowl. Just look at how big it is! haha.

Well that is all for today folks!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

“Cho-nola”

I absolutely love waking up to the birds chirping outside our window. I didn’t have time this morning for my cereal :( so instead I had my usual, easy bfast: English muffin with cream cheese and jam. Yum! Yesterday I said I wanted to put the Ancient Grains granola in my Chobani and I did, oh man THE BEST, I am going to call it “Cho-nola”:

Tomorrow I plan on making some “FroCho”. Oh ya that’s right I said it, I am going to freeze my Chobani and make a frozen yogurt treat for the afternoon. I will let you know how that turns out.

Today for lunch I have the leftover half of my sweet potato, and a side salad with my delish Yogurt Ranch. The yogurt ranch isn’t as delish as the fatty regular ranch but I know that its better for me...


As you all know at work we have a “build a better you” challenge, and periodically I get emails with some cool information.. This is by far the coolest thing I have ever seen online: a website that allows you to map out a running/ walking route, all you do is put in your home address then map out the route you want and it will tell you how far it is and how long it should take you. OMG I am baffled, maybe I am behind the times and some of you may have already seen this but I think its amazing. I found a 2.02 mile run around my neighborhood that I can do, no guess work, aka driving the route and trying to approximate how far the route is. AH too cool!

On my drive home today all I could think about was spaghetti. I had originally set out salmon for tonight's dinner, but I had a really big craving for spaghetti, so I made it! It was fantastic.

I have two pictures for Day 15, it is of just one event, but Erik and Ella looked so cute playing outside I couldn't just put one picture up!

Well it's time to go watch Glee and Raising Hope! Have a great night everyone!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Food Detox and Day 14 photo

I won’t even talk about all the junk we ate last week, I won’t do it. I bought the “Best of Clean Eating” book, based on the magazine Kirstie introduced me to, today and it should be in on Wednesday. After last week’s junk food fest, my tummy has not been feeling well, so I decided this week is going to be a food detox week. I had my usual breakfast, honey nut cheerios, milk, banana, and a few oatmeal squares, which was as usual super yummy. Lunch today was a simple turkey sandwich and peach Chobani Yogurt. I decided to mix up the snack in my lunch today with this:


My mom and I tried a sample of this at Costco yesterday and decided to get some. I think its supposed to be a cereal, but I put it in a baggie and ate it as a snack. I really like it, I am thinking of mixing it in my Chobani tomorrow!

Dinner tonight was also simple, I used the rub from the Coconut Chicken Chili recipe, and Erik grilled the chicken. We served it with some frozen veggies and a sweet potato.



Rub

Chicken with rub


The Final product!


Yum It was a yummy and “clean” dinner.

My Day 14 photo is this:


Two things about this photo, #1 traffic was so horrible today and I was going so slow that I could take this picture (sad). #2 Bechtel finally decided to advertise the fact that they are working on the Dulles Metrorail expansion.

Okie that is all for today! Hope everyone has a good evening!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Spring is Here!- Day 13

Here are a few pictures of what we did today, well really it was a two day project, but we finished it today.

After a quick morning trip to costco with my mom, I came back to finish the front gardens I had started yesterday. While I was gone, Erik changed the spark plugs and the oil of our lawn mower! He also seeded the whole backyard, hopefully this year we will have really nice grass.

I love the spring, we have all our windows open and we are just hanging around for the rest of the day enjoying the weather!

Hope everyone has a great day!