Cooking for two was scary for me about four years ago.  Maybe scary is the wrong word.  It’s hard to boil down my “if I make this casserole it’ll go bad before we finish it, but I don’t want to cut down the recipe because then I’ll have to do math” feeling into one word.

I would make dishes in my 9×13 pyrex pan and we would eat through about half of it before it would start giving us the stink-eye.  We’d have to pitch it (but not before letting it sit in the fridge long enough to start a small militia group with the cottage cheese and old lunch meat).

Finally I wised up and started taking leftovers for lunch rather than a sandwich (a-doooooyyy).  Community reference anyone?  (Bring it back!!!!)

The main part of our dinners are generally of the pasta/rice/noodle variety and I don’t like having pasta for lunch then more pasta for dinner.  I like to lighten up my lunch with handfuls of spinach.

I enjoy using baby spinach because I feel so awesomely healthy and proud of myself when I fill an entire tupperware with it before adding leftovers.  It’s always nice to stroke the ego a little bit whilst making my noon-time meal.

I add so much spinach because it wilts down to next to nothing once you nuke it in the microwave.  I end up going through a big thing of spinach each week. “You are an amazingly strong woman,” cooed her ego, “you remind me of Popeye.”

After I stock up on spinach I cut a slab/spoon a gob of leftovers into the dish.

Check out that topper cheese! It’s so thick it should be in a Nicki Minaj video.

Nom, nom, nom.  Spinach, zucchini, mushroom, pesto lasagna on top of spinach. It’s so deliciously healthy (save for the Nicki Minaj cheese)!  I should trademark the idea of spinachy leftovers!

Easy, ego, easy.

]]> http://whitskitchen.com/2012/01/13/leftovers-its-a-quandary-a-quandary/feed/ 1 whitneydargle IMG_0859 IMG_0858 IMG_0860 IMG_0861 http://whitskitchen.com/2012/01/12/eat-this-not-that/ http://whitskitchen.com/2012/01/12/eat-this-not-that/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:25:38 +0000 whitskitchen http://whitskitchen.com/?p=1478 Continue reading →]]> Brrrrring, brrrrrring.  It’s reality on the phone.  It wants you to know that sometimes you bring this for your snacks:

And sometimes you eat this instead.

Happy birthday, Makayla, indeed.

I am the devil on your shoulder telling you that this is okay.  As proven by My Strange Addiction, you can eat anything in moderation.(Did you click the link? This next joke will only make sense if you did, so just go ahead and click it). Maybe moderation was the wrong word.

My point is that one day will not ruin you.  This is not a diet, dear friends; this is your life, have a cupcake.

]]> http://whitskitchen.com/2012/01/12/eat-this-not-that/feed/ 0 whitneydargle IMG_0831 IMG_0845 http://whitskitchen.com/2012/01/12/morning-rou-time-management/ http://whitskitchen.com/2012/01/12/morning-rou-time-management/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:15:29 +0000 whitskitchen http://whitskitchen.com/?p=1464 Continue reading →]]> Do you like my “pun”? I turned “routine” into “rou-time”.  I’m also getting paid for each quotation mark I use.

I have learned to save time in the morning by doing a couple of different things.  Saving time allows me to sleep in just a little bit later, sit a little longer on the couch with my coffee, or mack on my man before he brushes his teeth.  We’re still saying “mack”, right?  Some things I do to save time include but are not limited to:

1. Using the “delay brew” option on the coffee maker.

2. “Eating” a liquid breakfast on the run.

3. Not drying my hair.

4. Taking showers at night (you might say, “ew”, I might say, “you can leave!”)

5. Wearing basically the same thing everyday.

This post will cover only the first two things; coffee and breakfast.

I save time in the morning by setting up the coffee maker the night before.

I choose the perfect blend.  Ahh, there it is.  I spoon four perfect tablespoons into the coffee maker.

Damn, the tablespoon knocked into the maker on the first try.  Most of the coffee falls into the tiny crevices of the coffee maker.  Those hard to reach coffee bean pieces are already starting an army of mold!

The rest of the grounds falls to the floor where Phyn is all too eager to lick them up.  I sure hope he lives through this.

Coffee is all cleaned up.  Was I on scoop number one or two?  I think I’ll have some tortilla chips to tide me over while I make this coffee and dinner.

You’re kidding me right? Man down! Tortilla in the coffee.

Finally ready to push the delay brew.

I swear it is all worth it to save 3 minutes in the morning.

Morning minute saver number 2.  Sip yo’ b-fast.  Smoothies people! It’s a movement!  Here’s what I’ve been into lately:

Appl-nan-berry-al-butter smoothies.

You need all this. Go get it.

Chop up your apple fairly small (it helps with the blending).

Throw your apple, strawberries, ice, hemp milk (or whatever milk you have, I like hemp because it makes me feel so laid back, mon!), and aloe vera juice in the blender and blend.  I add the aloe vera juice because it helps a lot with soothing tummy troubles; if you have no troubles it’s a good preventative

Throw in half a banana (eat the other half at work), a huge thing of almond butter, a ridiculous amount of spinach, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.  Blend that shizz up.

Boom. Breakfast.  Eat it on the road in your blender bottle or sip it daintily with a straw whilst you peruse pinterest.  Although, pinterest will probably only make you late.

I normally don’t suggest you make the dishes from Whitney’s Kitchen but this one turned out really well!  I suggest you make it right away!

I’m a dinosaur. Rawr.

I chose to clean the coffee maker with it.  To be fair, coffee maker cleaner is suspiciously specific as a product and I’m lazy.

So I filled up the tank with white vinegar and pressed the “clean” button.  A half hour later our kitchen reeked of hot vinegar but our coffee maker was clean.  I ran a bunch of water through on the “clean” cycle afterward in the hopes of cleaning out any latent vinegar.  I thought I had gotten all of it out.  This morning’s cup of coffee begged to differ.

Check out those curds!  Milk and vinegar-laced coffee are not friends.  The coffee also smelled like a dead rat.

I made another pot (which was only 27% better than the first) and drank it along with this delightful b-fast:

Arnold sandwich thins with almond butter, raw honey, and strawberries.  I hadn’t had strawberries in fo-eva.  They completed me.

Get ready for some Whitney’s Kitchen show action coming soon.  I filmed TWO episodes tonight! BOOM!  You’re welcome, Earth.

Yum coffee.  I once tried to give it up.  It ruined my month.

From breakfast I moved on to some left over pad thai; which there is no picture of. Lo siento.

Then I ate this:

The epicness that is the Culver’s Concrete Mixer.  Choco custard, M&Ms, and pecans.  The people at Culver’s will remind you that pecans are $1 extra.  Pay them immediately and thank me later.

Last night we went to a movie premiere for the independent film The Lot.  It was about cannibalism. Yum. Afterward we all went out to eat.  I got a delicious pasta dish full of feta, sun dried tomatoes, spinach, and kalamata olives.  Kellen thought it smelled like New York City in August; it was scent we revisited tonight for dinner.

I bulked it up with baby spinach.

Adding spinach is such an easy way to stretch a meal!  I use it in my lunches nearly every day.  After dinner I had the rest of this:

Now that the custard is out of the house I’m ready to finish watching I Love You Man.  And I love all of you for reading this bloggity.

1. New blog name and website.  Pretty soon you’ll be able to get all of Whitney’s Kitchen videos AND the awesomeness that was/is Whitney’s Blogtastic Blog at whitskitchen.com. Don’t click it just yet though, it’s still cooking. IT WORKS! YOU CAN CLICK IT NOW!

2. We bought a new house.  It’s pretty awesome.  You’ll see many more pictures on the blog, especially of the kitchen.  Here are some of the rooms.

The Kitchen

The Finished Basement

Living Room

Now when I’m describing my life you can imagine me lounging in these rooms; because most of what I do is lounging-related.

3. Finally, I will be adding videos from Whitney’s Kitchen up here as I make things.  So sometimes I will post pics of what I make and eat and other times I will just post a ridiculous cooking show to show you how to do it.  Spoiler alert: None of the things on Whitney’s Kitchen the show are ever good; don’t make them.  Here’s a little rerun for you. Apocalypse Tea:

And thus ends my list of changes for the year 2012.  I hope we all live through it.

But I’ve done something this year that I dreamed about doing when I was still in college.  Make a notebook full of lessons and the materials I’d need to teach those lessons for an entire year, thus making all of the following years much easier to manage.  Of course, if you’re a teacher you know that you will never do the exact same thing each year — but these notebooks should give me a pretty good outline.

ACK! Tons of disorganized papers!  Don’t get upset, there’s a plan.

Get a notebook and label it “yearly plans”.  OR you might want to label it something else to ward off people stealing your precious notebooks.  ”Photos Of My Knee Surgery” should work.

Copy your plans for that week and put it in the sleeve.  Label it “Week ___”.

Behind your plans put all the materials you will need for that week.  Including any team plans you might have (these will be very handy when you look back next year and see “Leprechaun writing” in bold print written across three days.  Simply look up your more detailed team plans and see what, in fact your are writing about).

All the materials you have gathered for the week need to be put in a bin.  I like to put mine in the order in which I will use them.  So that when I finish the last thing on Wednesday, Thursday’s morning work is on the top of my pile.

I used to think it was good enough simply to have my things copied and in a big pile.  I would grab them when the time came.  Having them done is not good enough — having them in order saves me tons of hassle.  I can’t believe it took me 5 years to learn that.

Your bin is done.  Put it somewhere out of the way, but close to where you sit.  You want to be able to grab things as you need them.

Now you are totally finished for next week AND have copies made for half of the week after next. Try to control your guilt as you walk away from school before the sun sets.

You’re welcomo!

These photos were all taken with my iPhone.  You’re going to hate the quality.

I’ve started making juice each morning.  Kellen drinks his and I mix mine with handfuls of spinach and frozen berries in the blender.  Here is how it goes down:

I pick and choose from a massive fruit/veg stash the things that strike my fancy for that day.  It’s fun to announce to Kellen each morning what this morning’s juice is made from.

This morning’s juice had:

• 1 kiwi
• 3 stalks of celery
• 3 apples
• 3 oranges
• 3 carrots
• 1 pear

I make juice for two so if you’re mate doesn’t dig mounds of fruit that early you can just halve the amount.

Put the whole lot through your juicer.

This week I found a tropical frozen mix of mango, strawberry and banana at Whole Foods.  I mix about 5 pieces of whatever frozen fruit/berry mix I have on hand with 2-3 cups (2 heavy handfuls) of spinach and half the juice.

What’s green, red, and goes 70 mph — I frog in a blender! Har Har.  I know. That was in poor taste.

Put the whole thing in a glass and drink up.

I sometimes get hungry if I only drink a green monster for breakfast so I also ate a blueberry waffle with almond butter and a coffee with soy milk.

If you are still skeptical about this juice QUIT!  It is a miracle.  I have literally had half of my class out sick in the past two weeks with all sorts of illnesses and I have dodged every one.

Here’s the sweat to prove it:

My run for today was 5 miles with 3 by [2:00, 2:30].  I went one mile out then started the workout. I had a little more than one mile for my cool down.  I was happy with my average pace of 10:09.