Fiber maxxing

 Minnie and I running errands in our athleisure on Saturday. We went to our old Kroger (next to our current Target and our future IKEA) to get the stuff to make more cookie dough for the freezer and a roasted tomato pasta sauce.

Which? THE EASIEST WAY EVER to make pasta sauce. I just roughly chopped 2-ish pounds of tomatoes and one giant onion plus 6 garlic cloves, covered them in olive oil, vinegar, and Italian seasoning (plus fennel seed), cooked them at 400 for 40 minutes, and threw the whole pan in the blender with a handful of fresh basil.

We served it with rotini (I had whole wheat) and turkey sausage, plus an arugula and beet salad. The kids also had French bread and butter. Delish!

Other easy aback-to-school food wins? Cookie dough from the freezer, take and bake pizzas (Hyvee pizzas are fine, but the kids like Whole Foods the best), and Whole Foods prepared family meals-- sometimes all at once,

Cooper actually LLOVES the salmon, green beans, and sweet potato meal, and I like that all I have to do is put in in the oven, and we both also can eat it for lunch the next day. (only $30!!)

Please enjoy this photo of Minnie leaving school on the first day and just imagine my delight at seeing her like that. With a bag of laminated sight words her teacher asked me to cut out at home-- which is exactly the kind of work I love to do. Bonus-- Minnie got to read all the sight words (which she can, flawlessly. I hope she shows her teacher those skills. Last year, she acted really shy and was afraid to show her stuff, and her teacher was FLOORED at conferences when I asked Minnie to pick a rando book off the shelf and read it to me. Minnie scores really high on assessments but does not always perform at that level in the classroom...)

It's getting dark so early, you guys. We can barely make it to the park after dinner before the sun goes down. Also it is frog (toad?) season in our neighborhood, and they jump constantly over the sidewalk at might which is gross. Sometimes they land on my feet, and sometimes we step on them. It is very old testament plague-y.

Also! Minnie is staying up until 8, which really cuts into my couch time. Cooper is in bed before 10, but Dorothy stays up with me to take the dog out closer to 10:30-- she's the new Jack. SPEAKING OF JACK. YOU GUYS. HE IS PLEDGING HIS UNCLE JON'S FRATERNITY and just absolutely LOVING HIS LIFE in college. We get to see him this weekend, and I cannot even wait. 

He and Ben jog on campus-- how cute is that?

Annabel misses Dorothy so much you guys. Minnie and I coukd not find her anywhere the other afternoon on our way to pick Dorothy and Cooper up (TWO DIFFERENT SCHOOLS. TWO DIFFERENT DISMISSAL TIMES. WE ARE FIGURING IT OUT). She was definitely hiding:

I only have 9 weeks of a calorie deficit left to go!  This first week was fine. I stopped eating sweets, except for sometimes (depending on my saturated fat intake for the day) 2 pieces of dark chocolate. The only supremely shitty thing about that is that when I am done with my calorie deficit, I still need to watch my cholesterol, so I probably won't be adding regular  consumption of sweets back in even though I will be eating more overall.  I am an ice cream every day kind of lady, so that really does suck. Some swaps were easy-- skim milk instead of chocolate full fat Fairlife in my coffee, plain nonfat Greek yogurt instead of flavored Chobani, cheese as an occasional ingredient or add-on, not as a meal (lol this is a WI problem). I am also looking at the WEEK not each day, so next weekend, for example, we are going to Pekin, and I will FOR SURE be getting a cookie dough arctic swirl at my hometown ice cream shop. So, this means I will probably NOT be eating chocolate the other days of the week, and I will probably trim my overall calories from 1550 to closer to 1400 Monday-Thursday knowing there will be Cubs game food (going to Chicago "on the way" and Peoria food and just generally restaurant food (definitely harder to track).

If you need me, Il'l be here fiber maxxing.