Adventures in Canning

This past weekend for the first time ever, I canned! And I actually enjoyed it!

I got two bushels of tomato's and canned them. I have 12 quart jars full of tomato's! and 3 quarts of tomato sauce that I will use for pizza or pasta.

One thing I learned in my adventure, when peeling and coring the tomato's ( I did not removed the seeds, just the core and skins) Once you carve a X into the bottom of the tomato drop it in hot water to peel the skin, this takes like 30 secs if that.

Core the tomato first before taking the skin off...its a WHOLE LOT easier than skinning and then coring because the tomato's are very very slippery, not something I had really thought of before. Core and then skinning made it a lot easier than the other way around.

Next up I think I might try to make grape jelly. Did you know that jelly is like 4 lbs of fruit and like 7 cups of sugar!! HOLY COW! That's a lot of sugar!!

In our back yard we have a 2 pear trees, 2 cherry trees and a grape vine. Our pear trees have never really produced eatable fruit, except for the groundhogs who love to eat their breakfast from my tree, but they are very bitter or totally destroyed by the bugs. So we picked them all and hubs is going to trim the tree again and hopefully next year I might have some pears to add to my list of canned goods from my own homestead.

80 Days

Why yes, I am they type of DORK who tracks her birthday!

Today while looking over my new day planner I realized that there is only a little over 3 months until my birthday and as i haven't worked out in three months my plan to be 150 by my birthday might have failed.......But then I deiced why does it have to fail, I have 3 months, there is no reason, with losing 2 lbs a week I can not make my goal.

Today during nap, I worked out and after my work out I joined another walk, The Heart Walk on Nov 10th in DC. Figured since I was too late on the color run, its better to do something than nothing, and registration was FREE! Can't beat that, and I'll be walking with my Thirty One crew, that will be lots and lots of fun, and hubby is even going to join (bc I'm making him and it's on my birthday weekend! HA!)

As my scale has been broken for some time I have no clue where I'm starting at, except for about a month ago I had my annual checkup with my midwife and I weighted 168; so we'll start there!

Wouldn't it be totally awesome if I lost that 25lbs oh dude I'd be 143, and that hasn't happened since senior year of high school!

I just don’t get it!!

I have been told by many that I am fanatically about birthing and I guess its true; just found out that 3 more people I “know” also had to deliver by cesarean.  With everyone I know that is in my age bracket (ie 20-30s) I know of ONLY 5 women who have delivered vaginally, and only TWO of us, me included have had natural labors assisted by a midwife.

I just do not get it; I am not trying to judge anyone who has had a cesarean, I would not be here if my mom did not have an emergency c-section, she had preeclampsia and we both would have died. I just don’t get why everyone women need a cesarean. I just don’t get it,  I was not there so I can’t say why all these women need them, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be all up in their grill being like “why’d you have a c-section? Was it really needed or did the epidural cause the baby’s heart to drop? Or did you hit 12 hrs and they said you weren’t progressing well and there were no other options?” Maybe some of the women did actually need them, but when I see all this healthy fit mothers needed a cesarean I just makes me question the docs.  I just don’t get why it’s such common practice and no one seems to care.




 Both of my drug free labor and delivery cost in total only $5,000 (each), we had to pay $1000 of that. I couldn’t even imagine paying part of the $30,000 they charge for the major surgery that is a cesarean. Hopefully all the women who have had to have them have better insurance than me.



I don’t understand how women do not educate themselves about labor and delivery and just go with c-section off the break. America has on the highest infant mortality rate and we have the highest cesarean rate and the LOWEST breastfeeding rate.  Am I the only person who sees something wrong with this?



My first born 2009-Water birth @ Mercy Hosp w my midwife, my husband and my mom by my side, mom took this picture





My second born 2010- @ Mercy Hosp w my midwife and husband and mom by my side again, along with my bestie!



Meatless Mayham

So for a while now, especially with me trying to get healthy and run 5k's, I have been trying to get my family to eat more veggies. Well I deiced that there is no reason why for one meal a week we could have a meatless dinner.

I of course did not discuss this with the hubby and instead just made dinner; Veggie chili & fotato pancakes (mashed cauliflower w garlic & butter & rice milk) Well the the fotato pancakes where not holding together, I make potato pancakes all the time and they usually workout fine as long as I don't fuss with them too much. That was not the case last night and instead just served mashed fotato & chili, well about one bite into the chili I see hubs starting to push all the food around in the bowl and then professes "there's no meat in here?! That's not kool, at least give me sausage or ground beef or something! I'll eat the veggies too but it can't be meatless!!"

I explained that we consume a lot of animals as a family and I'm just trying to cut back, one meal a week won't kill him. His answer to that, "god gave us animals to eat right? So why are we not eating them!"

Well so much for that, my kids ate it, Lil dude had to be bribed with fig Newman's and games but that's nothing new in the dinner department. Kat at it all!!! Love that my daughter loves to eat the way she does!!!

Yesterday was another good day in this getting healthy journey. Did my 20min zumba abs video, did Jillian Michal's Standing Abs routine - all 3 sets I might add!
Ate pretty well too and did a lot of cleaning and laundry which is a good cal burn too :~)

Only drank about about 60oz of water. Still missing about 100oz; just have to keep it up and hopefully I will reach my goal and keep it.

Didn't get to run/jog/walk like I wanted to but that has a lot to do w no sidewalks in my area and only know of the jogging tracks at school. I am going to look into racks and rec to see if there is any parks w jogging tracks around me, Hopefully I will find one. Would love to go running everyday; especially with the race right around the corner I am seriously lacking in my training.

today was a good day

Thank god, today for the most part was a good day. Yet another successful day with a weaned LK; I got laundry done and put away; kitchen cleaned AND made it to resist a ball class despite a few mishaps with LK and all the drinks ready for our Gym trip {and I was only 15 min late}

Then we spent the day at a really beautiful park with a HUGE playground, talk about cardio, keeping track of a 3 yr old and an 18m old, but man did the kids have a BLAST!! I need to find something like that close to my house along with a jogging track thats not so hilly :~) I'm also on my fourth bottle of water, that's only 80 oz for the day but Hey I figure its a start its better than nothing and WAAAYYY better than soda.

Now I just need to keep this up and not fall into my normal habits of doing great for a month and then nothing for a week or so.  Wish me luck! going to try and blog every day till race day. Race for HOPE - DC - TEAM JUST PEACHY!

I Work Ouuuutttt :~)

I have seriously got to get with it, I FINALLY got to 168, which is a big deal for me to get under 170, it just never seems to happen, and then BAM I miss the gym, tiff's class, core class, everything! Missed a whole week at the gym, didn't do anything at home other than walk ~FINALLY FOUND A DOUBLE JOGGING STROLLER!!! YAY!! Might I say it's quite terrifying to go running w 65lbs of children pulling you. So we just walked.

 And i didn't even walk everyday like I have been saying I would. UGH!

Back to 172 I go :( But no worries, I will once again get back into the groove. Only 46 days left till the Race for Hope in DC Race for HOPE - DC - TEAM JUST PEACHY I know I will be doing more. Last night I did zumba w my bestie A and then we jogged for 20min on the treadmill. So nice to have a workout buddy. I am going to possibly do Zumba again tonight but I am defiantly going to tiff's class today! I need to it's been too long and she's freaking the greatest, reminds me so much of my person trainer Joe Buabeng, the BEST personal trainer in the WORLD!!!

I had given my self a challenge to lose 5% of my body weight by race day, which isn't much when I started only 8lbs. Well I'm also really slacking on my water so I'm going to add another challenge and do the water challenge, basically it's 10oz of water per 10lbs of body weight. So basically drink your weight in water, it works great, the one week I just upped my water to 150oz a day I lost 5lbs and felt great. I need to get back on that again; Hopefully double challenging my self, race day being almost a month away, I def need to kick things up into gear. And hopefully going to keep it here for the world to see :~)

Now time for some oatmeal for breakfast