As you all know, I do what I can to live a healthy lifestyle…but I do not believe in depriving myself. For me, satisfaction from food does not always come from the taste itself but the texture.

So, if I am looking for something that is full, rich, and smooth for a side dish to my salmon, I will likely turn to mashed potatoes. Recently, you may remember, I gave mashed cauliflower a second attempt and loved every bite of it. It was not necessarily as thick as mashed potatoes, but it worked and it worked well. Plus, I really do love the taste of cauliflower, and, let’s be real, everything tastes good with milk, butter and garlic. Also, I eat a ton of vegetables and I am always looking for new recipes and ways to cook them.

Which leads to my latest endeavor: coarsely mashed carrot and rutabaga. This past December I tried mashed turnips at a friend’s dinner party and loved them so much that I left with a whole container of it. I never attempted to make them myself, but the other day I came across this recipe for mashed rutabaga and carrots, and decided it was time for me to make them. And, the coolest part about it is the only utensil I need is my peeler no blender necessary! That means cleanup should be relatively easy.

Stay tuned for an update on how it turns out!

Some people like having roommates, other people (like me) are very happy people living alone and not having to worry about other peoples’ feelings where we live. Obviously, I will explain.

I’ve had roommates. I have had roommates I didn’t know and became friends (and then fought with and then became friends again…you can imagine the cycle). I have also had roommates who were friends first. Honestly I lived with 3 of my friends (pre-roommates) and I am still friends with 2 of them. I think that’s a pretty good record. But, I hate doing things on other peoples’ time. I love living alone.

I love cleaning up dishes whenever I want. I love that when my apartment is dirty and/or messy it is my fault and I don’t have to see someone else’s mess in my living space. I love not having to share a bathroom, and I love that no matter what, the TV is always on, on the channel I want to watch. This may sound selfish…until I hear what my friend had to go through with his roommates, and it made me happy to overpay in rent in order to live alone.

The other week my friend and I went grocery shopping together. My friend has 2 roommates (and to be fair, they really do get along almost all of the time). While we were in the store he picked up some laundry detergent. He and his 2 roommates live together, but everything (food, drinks, laundry detergent, cleaning products, etc.) is purchased separately (yes, there are 3 milks in the fridge at a time). My friend does mostly everything when it comes to chores in the house (taking out trash, putting dishes in the dishwasher, running the dishwasher, emptying the dishwasher, cleaning, etc) and he’ll never complain saying “I knew what I signed up for when we moved in together, no point in getting mad.” He also cooks all the time, so he always is at the store and always has his fair share of food in the fridge. The other day he called me and asked “When did I buy that laundry detergent?” I told him definitely less than a month ago and he should still have a good amount left considering he doesn’t do his laundry more than once a week. It was gone! Poor guy couldn’t do his laundry because one of his roommates (or both…who knows) used it up! I felt sorry. Then yesterday I was there for a few minutes and I overheard his roommate ask him about plastic food containers that he recently bought, and he couldn’t find them because they were his and not for anyone else to use.

I absolutely appreciate the good things that come with having a roommate. But, I am not sure “discussions” over Tupperware containers are worth the fun of living with a friend. If I can’t find my containers, I know who took them…ME! And I likely threw them away because I am notorious for that (which is why my mom and dad still won’t let me take any of theirs back home with me).

This weekend was a great time to spend outside. The weather was absolutely perfect, especially for DC. On Saturday we had a BBQ, and there was not a better day to have to spend outside grilling. This was a BBQ specifically for Peter to celebrate his birthday

For just about every BBQ that Peter has at his house, he and his friend make man burgers. These are not your regular burgers made bigger…these are serious, unhealthy, meat filled burgers. Peter has different recipes for these burgers, but recently he has been tackling what he calls the “American Burger.” This is a burger he has officially tried making twice, and the second time, this weekend, was much more a success than the first time around. Essentially, the American Burger is about 1/2 pound ground beef with bread crumbs, whiskey, and BBQ sauce, a weave of about 5 pieces of bacon, macaroni and cheese, all covered in beef gravy served on a kaiser roll (because no other roll is large enough). The difference between this week’s burger and the last American Burger attempt was the macaroni and cheese.

The first round he used Kraft macaroni and cheese (you know…the blue box). It worked, but not the way he wanted. This time around he made macaroni and cheese from scratch and baked it in the oven. This way, when the mac and cheese went on the burger it held together much better – and clearly that is very important when eating a ridiculous “man” burger.

These manly recipes are fun for him…so for his birthday I had purchased a “Man Recipe” book so he could brainstorm more crazy recipes to eat massive amounts of food. The first time I ever saw Peter make one of these burgers, he wrapped bacon around a mini sausage patty and put it inside the ground beef before grilling. This didn’t turn out too well, the burgers started to fall apart. So, aside from the recipe book, maybe Peter should consider investing in the Fill n’ Grill Burger Maker for the next time he wants to stuff his 1/2 pound burger with whatever meats and unhealthy foods he comes up with next.

I hate to complain, but I have to just get it out. This weekend was a great weekend. I spent time with my family, hung out, baked, relaxed, went to the USA vs. Jamaica World Cup soccer game, ate great food, and had a pretty nice weekend all around. My complaint: a HUGE pain in my back.

On Saturday night, after dinner, I got out of the car and it felt like I had a gigantic knot in my back. We tried rubbing it out, but not only was there not enough strength to get rid of it, I was feeling sick from the pressure. I decided the best thing to do was to leave it alone. I could handle losing a little bit of sleep as long as the pain went away the next day. No such luck. I woke up on Sunday morning after a restless night of back pain to even more pain. It felt as if the knot grew from brussel sprout size to racquetball size. I didn’t have a choice though – I had a jam-packed day and had to push through. I thought for sure walking around in the warm weather would certainly soften up the lump in my shoulder blade. No. We tried rubbing it out again, but it simply wasn’t working. Since I am not a girl who is used to being injured or having any kind of pain, I continued to believe it would just go away, not realizing that a Copper Pain Patch might be just what I needed to feel better. Nonetheless, I went to sleep on Sunday night and woke up Monday morning in an unbelievable amount of pain in my back. The pressure was so unbearable the pain was making me not feel good and it traveled up my muscle into my neck and gave me a headache. But, I cannot call out of work over such minuscule issues – so I went in – in pain (probably not the most intelligent decision). All I have to say to the rest of this story is, “thank goodness for the mothers in this world! I would be nothing without you, moms.”

My mom suggested I skip the gym. While I hated the suggestion, I decided better safe than sorry and I could always go later at night if I was up for it. My friend Joana at work is a mom. She suggested taking a pain reliever. I never think to take medicine! So, I took some medicine after I ate breakfast, and in about an hour I started to feel better – not perfect but better. Throughout the day I continued to take medicine. By the time I got home at night the knot was still there and I could feel it a lot, but it wasn’t causing me nearly as much pain (and at the very least the headache went away).

I made the decision, all on my own, to skip the gym even at night. I know my gym partner is counting on me for our circuit training today during lunch and I do not want to let her down.

It’s June. It’s a great time to get that grill out and grill everything. Everything tastes better on the grill – meat, vegetables, bread, fish…everything. It all tastes great until the grill gets dirty because it’s not cleaned after usage. The Grill Daddy will help eliminate that problem.

Grilling is great, fun and delicious. The worst part is cleaning the grill. Grill Daddy makes cleaning the grill easy. Clean any grill surface with Grill Daddy including grates. A clean grill by Grill Daddy will make food taste much better.

There is now no need to sacrifice the fun of grilling because of the cleanup. The leave the grilling great food to you, and the cleanup to Grill Daddy.

Up and coming in June there are so many events. There are three birthdays and of course Father’s Day. My dad doesn’t care much for “Hallmark holidays” such as Father’s Day, but since his birthday is always right around the corner, we lump them together and celebrate Father’s Day with his birthday – trickery my children. He doesn’t care much for his birthday either, but the rest of us in the family love to celebrate each others’ birthdays so he just goes with it.

Birthdays around holidays must be made a big deal of. I have a twin brother, and our birthday is right by Chanukkah and Christmas. So, growing up not only did we have to share our birthdays with each other, we had to share it with the most popular gift-giving holidays of the year. It gets worse! My mom’s birthday is just 7 days after. I always felt sorry for us, until I met my college roommate. Her birthday is always right around the corner from Father’s Day. Sometimes her birthday falls on Father’s Day. So on the day that we are supposed to celebrate her, she and her siblings and her mom are supposed to celebrate her dad. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Since I know firsthand what it feels like to be slightly left behind on the one day that is supposed to be “yours” I always tried to make her birthday special for her. As it turns out, my boyfriend’s birthday is just one week after hers! Talk about some serious celebration!

So, believe it or not, it gets even more complicated this year. This year is my dad’s big 6-0! I know, I know, we are all too young for my dad to be 60 – time flies! Sadly, for me and my brother, my dad and mom will be in Utah on his actual birthday. No, this is not a vacation, they are travelling there for my dad’s work, but I hear it’s a beautiful place, so it should be a pretty amazing birthday for him – does anyone know if there are any fun, hip, cool, places for dinner and drinks that my folks can go to in order to celebrate? Anyway, my brother and I were slightly bummed out about this situation that is totally out of anyone’s control. So, we came up with a plan that is…okay…not great, but good enough for what we have to work with. Mom and dad are going down to VA to my brother’s place. Then we will all go out to dinner…like I said, good enough…at least we will get to see him and give him presents.

So, here is the schedule of events: tomorrow is Carole’s birthday, Saturday is dinner with the family for dad’s birthday, Sunday is breakfast for Father’s Day, next Wednesday is Peter’s birthday. Ahhh! So much going on – so little time, and I still need to do shopping. Most of all for my dad – what do you get the man whose favorite toy is his BMW? I cannot afford to buy him a new one. He’s already stolen my stair stepper from me when I moved, and while he loves when I go shopping for him, I just cannot see a tie and a shirt being good enough for his 60th birthday!

Anyway, you can see I am busy, so I need to go do some online shopping and overnight shipping.

It is finally Friday! Isn’t it funny how the short weeks that begin on a Tuesday always seem to pass by so slowly? Work is so crazy, but it’s funny how one night, just 3 hours (and getting out of work at 5:30 instead of 9:00) can make a world of a difference.

Yesterday I had a goal: leave work at 5:30 on the dot. No questions, no saying “yes” to the “Alissa, can you just do this real fast before you go?” because “real fast” never means “30 seconds or less.” I meant to get into the office early, but I slept late…so late I didn’t even have time to put make-up on my face (girls have to make the worst decisions when we should have left the apartment 5 minutes before: blow dry my hair or put on make-up). Anyway, I was still motivated to get out the door at 5:30, so I worked through lunch to get in the extra hour – best decision ever! For the first time in 3 weeks I finally felt relaxed three hours after I left the office. I took a walk with a friend, made a simple veggie burger for dinner, was lazy and put all dishes, pots and pans in the dishwasher (mom, don’t yell at me, I promise I won’t do it if I ever own expensive pots and pans…or a wok), cleaned up my apartment, tried on a pair of shoes my mom shipped me and they FIT (thanks mom!), went for a walk to get frozen yogurt with rainbow jimmies (sprinkles…whatever) and finally I felt amazing! I am not sure if it was the clean apartment, the fact that I actually ate dinner 2 hours before I was used to even getting home from work, the fact that I could walk for a sweet treat and not be completely exhausted, or the fact that the perfect shoes fit my feet…but whatever it was, I was finally feeling better. My mom called as I sat down at my computer to catch up on my favorite blogs and eat my frozen yogurt, but she wanted to share in my shoe excitement with me.

Maybe I am feeling grounded again because I have fun, relaxing things planned for the weekend. My friend out in Virginia owes me breakfast, so I am cashing in and I cannot wait to spend some quality time with him. I am going to relax at the pool with some other friends, and shopping with the girl who says “It’s not spending money if you use your Victoria’s Secret credit card.”

Have a great weekend. Talk to you on Monday!

Welcome back from a great long weekend. I hope you didn’t have to work or spend too much time doing things that weren’t number one on your list. Long weekends, like Memorial Day weekend, are meant for family, friends, and fun. Mine was quite relaxing with a little fun fit in.

The most fun parts about Memorial Day weekend for me this past weekend were the BBQs. There were two that I went to, and they were perfect: fun, friends, good food, beer, and believe it or not a Slip ‘n Slide. Saturday’s BBQ was focused around a soccer game that was on TV, so the majority of the time was spent inside, and only the actual grilling was done outside. This was perfectly fine by me! While I love BBQs and hanging out outside, here, in DC it is like 95 degrees and humid.

After a lazy Monday of Memorial Day weekend full of reading, laying low, and taking an early afternoon walk, it was time for BBQ number two. This BBQ started earlier in the day, but we were okay to wait until later. This evening BBQ was a lot of fun. There were a good amount of people, and the backyard was huge. The temperature was again about 95 degrees even after the sun went down and the humidity was making the air really thick. As we were sitting around and talking, one of the conversations was what we wanted to do in this heat. I said I wish we were allowed to run through the fountains around the city. Someone said they wanted a Slip ‘n Slide, and someone responded with “I have one here. I bought it today for $6.00.” I WISH I had a change of clothes! I wanted to play on it too. Next time, I am bringing spare clothing. While the host had tiki torches burning, it still wasn’t enough to keep the mosquitoes from biting our legs. I wound up going home with 6 bug bites on my legs.

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend. Hope yours was great too!