Sometimes Mexican

Mexican cuisines sometimes become part of our dinner menu. There is a lot of traditional Mexican dishes like enchiladas, quesadilla, fajita, chimichanga but we often have burrito, tacos or nachos at home. Those three are the easy one and quick to fix.

We prefer buy the ingredients at the store even though we have fast food restaurant nearby our house called "Taco Bell" which serves Mexican foods. Burrito and taco are so popular and they are easy to make. Burrito is served with tortilla flour while taco is served with corn shells. The store sells readymade tortilla flour and readymade taco shells. So why don't you make on your own filling? Those shells are made of corn.

Most commonly filling recipes include beans or rice, shredded cheese, lettuce and salsa sauce. You can add chicken or ground beef with mix seasoning. Sample ingredients are like pictures below

You can find the stores sell dinner set which include shells, sauce and seasoning. Easy huh!

Heat beans and cheese, add cooked seasoning chicken, put lettuce on top, wrap it with tortilla/shells and dip them with salsa sauce. That's all! 
If you like to see how they look like. click here

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Get Cool Splash!

Autumn has officially started on Friday (23rd Sept). Two days ago.The summer heat hasn't over yet but chilly weather just around the corner. Autumn (fall) is the signal of transitioning from summer into winter. Currently we have rainy days. We will be packing our summer clothes up and getting ready for colder days soon.  

We walked Babe to the beach while warmer days still left.

What at end of summer... Enjoy it while we can. How did I sometimes bitchy about hot in the summer and now I feel how grateful the heat and sunshine were. Human nature, you feel missing when it's gone.

The waves, the water temperature and the wind were so splendid on that day. 

 Robert pulled him into the water. The waves were coming and splashed against him. 

Yeay! He got salt water bath. That's what he need! He gets regular bath once in every 2 weeks but this salt water bath will reduce itchiness on his skin.

He used to love the ocean few years ago and chasing the waves was part of his activity at the beach but now he is kind of lazy. Only the birds caught his attention. Three of us  really had a great day at the end of summer.

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Sneaky Snacks

I am totally love snack foods. Love to have something crispy or cheesy or doughy or cakey or sweets. I think everybody does too. Honestly I have been snacking soda (Coke/Pepsi) potato chips, chocolate brownies and other snack foods for couples weeks ago. I know they are low nutrients and hard to get rid of it. I'd say that I've conscious effort lately to eat healthy and natural snacks such as fruits and vegetables. I tried to get some balance here. Let's see what did I do some of my snack foods:

Green grapes + Colby Monterey Jack cheese + Mesquite bbq potato chips

Broccoli + carrot + Ruffles potato chips + Sour cream

 

Am I being sneaky to my healthy snack foods?

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Grocery Shopping

Shopping for food supplies is part of household task. Basically we do grocery shopping once or twice a month. Speaking of spending money for grocery; I would say the bills are varying in a month. In fact, the healthy foods are expensive. We try change our eating habits like less carb, less sugar, stay out of white food and eat more veggies. Staying on budget and sticking on shop list are part of shopping rules. Honestly sometimes we break the rules; we would buy stuff which is not on the list.

Here are some of our thoughts:

How much does two person household spend on food?

-We plan meal on weekly menu and we make a shopping list. This way we can  shop two weeks at once.

-We mostly shop dry food at Wal-Mart for deals and go to Lowes or Food lion for veggies and fruits.

-We stick on the certain brands than generic brands.

-We buy raw food like whole grain pasta, grits, oatmeal and rice.

-We buy meat/chicken in a big package and pack in the freezer to stay longer. 

 

Do you make an effort to control on food spending?

-We rarely dine out. Cooking at home is so much less expensive.

-We always simplify our meal. Robert packs his own lunch to work.

-We clipped coupons. Definitely save 10%-20% of total cost.

-Buy in bulk or on sales or promotion.

-No fast food. No processed food. 

We at Wal-mart

Do you grow on your own food?

-Absolutely, we don’t grow our own. Too much work (water, fertilizer, keep the bugs off). It’s worth buying produce at the farmers market.

Do you simply buy what do you feel like?

-Yes, most of the time. Lately we crave for ice cream, chips and soda a lot. Hope we will reduce our bad habit soon.

I really enjoy and love shop with Robert. We can discuss while in the store and make a trip in every department and also he will carry all those shopping bags.

So how you guys do grocery shopping?

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Fun rides

I always go to the beach in very late afternoon. Around 6 pm. I love that time. I won’t get sun burn and the waves will be awesome when tide is rising. On that day the waves were really good and the water didn’t carry the dried grass like the other day. I love bodyboarding or boogie board. It is great exercise and it's fun activity during summer.

Body board is rectangular, shorter and smaller than a surfboard. Click here to see my body board. It is actually like skating or surfing where you can ride the waves with different maneuvers or style. It can be basic ride, 360, reverse or on the knee ride style. 

Generally I just do basic maneuver. I just lay flat on my belly with my hands holding the board on the front side when riding the waves. So let's see the pictures of me boogie and catching the waves. Robert was the photographer.

The waves breaking behind me and it carried me towards the beach

 I went back to surf for several times

Sometimes the powerful waves dragged me and push my board away.

He said it was like in bikini destination show on tv.

I wish I will be pro like this

The other thing to tell; Those pictures below were taken BEFORE I went for bodyboarding.

A lot of men surfing with the surf board on that day. Robert also was one of the surfers. It look so crowded in the ocean and I couldn't tell where Robert was. They all looked same in the water. After a while I saw Robert carrying his board and the other surfer dude came out of the water. 

 The other surfer dudes

 More surfers

How did they know the waves were so good on that day haha! I've never seen them before. Anyway I really had fun on that day!

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A bag of Ghirardelli

I was surprised when I received a letter (picture below) with a coupon in the mail last two weeks. I won a bag of chocolate!. It is odd when I never tend to buy Ghirardelli everytime I go to the store. Generally I think the price is unfair even for a small bag of Ghirar compare to the other brands like Lindt. So this big bag of Ghirar would challenge me whether the price suit with the taste. They have different flavour and I picked dark chocolate one.

It's worth when you enter the contest as a hobby. Actually that company offers a trip somewhere in the US as a grand prize plus giving away chocolates daily when you enter it's contest. I dream of that trip. So why not? Definitely you can't win if you don't enter.

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Weekly Recap

Here are some photos of this week to share,

A group of wild deers around the neighbourhood during summer

Babe got a new toy - Rubber bone  ( same type as previous one but different color)

Robert went surfing on labour day. Labour day is an official holiday in the USA and it's celebrated on the first Monday of September.

Strong waves and high tide in the afternoon and it swept away the dried grass on the beach. I also didn't miss chance to surf with my boogie board on that day.

Have a great weekend!

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New look for Autumn (Fall)

Boots, boots.., winter boots, fall boots, rainy boots, knee boots. I'm really obsessing with all those kind of boots but I can't afford to buy all of them at once.The good ones are really expensive. I got this one from HSN last month. Thank goodness they were on sale plus I used a gift card from Robert. Nice price! Now they are all sold out when I checked it again on the website.

OMG! I absolutely love these boots so much. The heels, round toes, brown color and fit me just well. I can't wait to wear it in the fall. I tried them on with my flannel dress,

skinny jeans.

shorter dress and leggings

I was looking for knee boots, simple and stylish..this is it.

Still summer though. It will be end soon so I put it back on the box and wear it a lot during fall (if i am still here! :P)

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My Birthday 2011

My birthday just past a few days ago ( Sat, Aug 27th) which had happened on the hurricane day. Sadly we can't go out to celebrate due to the weather condition. But we celebrated it with a bundt of coconut cake! That cake looked terrible in shape but it was so soft and absolutely delicious. I messed it up when I turned it over to the plate. We ate half of it and took a picture after that. Here it is coconut cake with vanilla cream topping.

Thanks to hubby, friends and family for wishing my birthday. 

Have a great weekend!

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Irene came and gone

What a relief! Hurricane was over! Now the weather channel busy talking about another tropical storm and other hurricane Katia on the next coming. Seriously we had a bad weather last weekend. Windy and rainy from midnight Friday till Saturday night. Not only us having terrible weather but million people on the East coast (NC to New York to Vermont) having power outages, raining all day long.

I captured some video of hurricane Irene moment and they were taken on Saturday morning.

First video. The sound of the wind freaking me out and you can see all those trees swaying back and forth.

Second video. The wind was blowing 51 mph on that day.


Fortunately there was no roof damages and no flooding in our area. Only the tree branches fell off and scatterred all over the yard.

 

I tell you there is a lot of work to do after the disaster happened. It is cleaning time!

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