So busy!

I have been so busy! I've been doing some very random things this past weekend but I'm trying to remember to get pictures of everything so I can write it down. Josh was home all weekend which I LOVE so we had plenty of time to hang together!

Friday night we cooked up some delicious pancakes. Not regular pancakes - savory griddle cakes! I mixed up milk, egg, baking powder and flour like regular pancakes, but then I added cayenne pepper, bacon, sauteed red onions and garlic. I would have added corn but my boyfriend seems to think he is allergic to corn even though he has absolutely no reaction to it. The pancakes were really good with maple syrup - the sweet and savory combination was perfect!

Pancake up close, Josh manning the griddle, and our finished dinner! 

(p.s. that chicken on the plate is just chicken I cooked in a pan and then made a balsamic vinegar+orange marmalade sauce to go over it. Super easy and really good!)

I've been eating the same thing for breakfast for the past 2 weeks and loving it. Chobani has crazy flavors of yogurt like blood orange, mango, pomegranate and lemon. I don't really like sweet things in the morning so this is perfect. I mix in a handful of Bear Naked granola - I like this one because it only has 140 calories in each 1/4 cup compared to a lot of dense granolas that have 200+ calories. Also, between the yogurt and the granola, I'm getting about 20 grams of protein! Keeps me nice and full until lunch.

This is what I had for lunch today - it is my go-to quick lunch sandwich. 1 can of chicken mixed with a spoonful of plain greek yogurt seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic makes really good quick chicken salad. I put it on a whole wheat mini pita from Harris Teeter with lettuce and tomato and I was done making lunch in about 3 minutes!

The other cool thing we did this weekend besides cook and eat lots of good food is....we made our own laundry detergent! I have been wanting to do this for a while - there are a ton of recipes out there! My scientist friend Brian warned me against actually mixing and melting chemicals in my house - probably not the best idea. So instead of liquid detergent, we made powder. After comparing a few recipes, I realized we only need 3 main ingredients:

Borax and washing soda - both found in the laundry detergent aisle of Harris Teeter - the borax was about $5 and the washing soda was about $3. The third ingredient is Fels Naptha laundry soap - I bought 2 bricks for $1.99 each. 

(forgot to take a picture haha)

So, we are up to $12 total. The hardest part was grating the Fels Naptha soap. Here is Josh working away:

It looked like a ton of yellow cheese! Then, we just combined the Borax and washing soda with the gratings in a big bucket, and we were done! Most recipes online add fabric softener for scent - we will probably do this but wanted to see how clean it got our clothes first, with just the basic washing ingredients.

 

We washed a big load of workout clothes and dirty socks, and everything came out nice and clean! This recipe yielded a TON of laundry detergent, so I think my $12 will go a lot farther than buying the big $15-$20 boxes of Tide.

This is my cute boyfriend holding my friend Whitney's adorable wiener dog. I love it!