Satisfaction!

Upon getting married I have felt the responsibility to actually prepare meals instead of just eating a few gold fish and throwing a smoothie in the blender for dinner. Why wasn't I thinner throughout college?? Well of course that meager meal was always followed up by post meal rummaging through the pantry and fridge, a string cheese, yogurt, a few grapes. Then I would usually go out dancing for the evening and upon arrival home at 1 am follow up with a steaming glass of Pero, a few Triscuit's with cottage cheese, and some form of chocolate perhaps smothered in peanut butter. Ah yes, now the calories are adding up.

This "on the go" lifestyle was both time efficient and hassle free. However like I said, there is a twinge of guilt experienced when I expect Chris to fend for himself. So now I engage in the never ending quest for recipes. Not only must I account for the time it takes to prepare the meal but the post meal clean up, menu planning, and grocery shopping. Since I have less time now than I have had previously in my entire life I have three criteria for the perfect recipe:

1. Must be FAST to throw together

2. Must be DELICIOUS or why bother eating it

3. Must be NUTRITIOUS according to my own standards which ideally would be higher but are not. I shall outline them for you below:

• Typically steer clear of red meat especially ground beef but do eat it occasionally
• Typically don't make heavy pasta dishes
• Preferably lots of greens, veges, and fruit
• Love finding a raw recipe but I have found few that meet the DELICIOUS standard
• Try to cook 50% of dinners that are meatless every week if not more
• Avoid cooking with many processed foods

So there you go, my current food standards, judge them as you will it is beside the point of this blog post. I find it hard enough to find recipes meeting my current criteria, but when I do... SUCCESS!!! Oh the joy and satisfaction! Delicious, ridiculously fast and easy, and relatively guil

t free! I don't want my blog to turn into some type of food blog but I experienced this exact joy tonight and I feel obligated to share what may be a gem of a website. We made maple mustard dressing and threw it on a bed of mixed greens topped with sliced bosc pears, fresh blueberries, sliced almonds, and a sprinkle of feta cheese. It was BOMB! And it only took about 5 minutes to throw together with a piece of crusty bread toasted on the side. I only made a half recipe of the dressing if anyone decides to give it a try it was beyond plenty.

I have briefly glanced over the blog I stole this recipe from and it looks very promising! Ah, so satisfied. On top of that great find today I also got a 100% on my evidence based practice exam today! Considering 67% of the class got an A or A- it's not all that impressive but I was 1 out of 5 that got the perfect 100%. Again so satisfying right? All the torturous reading of scientific journal articles, pain staking thesis writing, research classes, and statistics work from grad school finally paid off :) Okay, guess it's not the first time it's paid off but lets just say it was overall a very satisfying day.

PS- Wasn't trying to make Chris look helpless and lazy. Chris always does the dishes, plans the meals, does the grocery shopping, bakes the banana bread, scrubs the floor, darns the socks, etc. Okay minus the last two but he would if I asked :)