2012!!!

I'm baaaaaack! The craziness of the holiday season is FINALLY over, so I will hopefully start getting back on track with a lot of the things that fell by the wayside in October through December. This post is going to help with a couple of those things. 1) It's a post on my blog for the first time in close to forever. 2) It's going to help me plan out my meals to make sure I don't spend unnecessary money and calories on eating out.

I decided to go majorly cliche with my 2012 resolutions. My friends took me on my very first hike a few weeks ago and I loved it! I decided one of my resolutions this year would be to do one hike per month.



Makapu'u Lighthouse Hike 12/26/11

 I am also NOT going to eat any fast food whatsoever this entire year. I will also be going to the gym 4-5 days per week. That one should be easy enough because I did that the majority of 2011 besides my two weeks of pneumonia and when I got kidney stones. Let's hope no ailments prevent me this year!

Jon and I have also committed to planning out and cooking our meals ahead of time. I am going to continue cooking and eating foods I love, just cut down on portions and increase our veggies intake.

So, I decided I would make my first pot of homemade chicken stock. I know you're probably sick of me declaring my love for Costco's rotisserie chickens, but I can't help it. For $5, you get 3 lbs worth of chicken, which can be turned into so many meals. This time, I picked up 2 of those bad larry's. I used the drippings to make homemade gravy. I have the chicken meat saved for a soup, some chicken soft tacos and chicken salad for sandwiches. Then I took the carcasses (worst word ever by the way) and am doctoring up some chicken stock. That's $10 worth of awesomeness if you ask me.

So here's what I used to make the homemade chicken stock. It's really one of those "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" recipes so don't be scare to increase or decrease with your favorite flavors.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and wish you all a happy and healthy 2012!

Chicken stock

2 3 lb chicken carcasses
7-8 carrots, not peeled, cut into large chunks
5-6 celery, cut into large chunks, including leaves
1 1/2 large onion, cut into large chunks
1 head garlic, chopped
1 cup coarsely chopped fresh parsley
2 tsp whole peppercorns
2 tsp salt
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried dill weed

Fill a 16 qt stockpot with 7-8 quarts of water. Add all ingredients, cover and bring to boil. Once boiling, uncover, reduce heat to medium and allow to simmer for 3-4 hours. Strain the stock and chill overnight in refrigerator. Remove surface fat. Use immediately or freeze for up to 3 months.

Day 18- My Future Wedding

OK! So I've had an incredibly busy week so I haven't had much time to blog. Here's a couple previews of my upcoming wedding.

Jon and I have decided on October of 2012 for the wedding. This will give our family and friends from the east coast an opportunity to save up some money to fly out and spend some time with us in paradise. We are also pretty set on having our wedding at Waimea Valley. If any of you ever make a trip out to Hawaii, Waimea Valley should definitely be on your list of places to see. Here's some pictures of Waimea.

I have two ideas in terms of color scheme for the wedding. One idea is to do silver and sea green. However since the wedding is in the fall I was also thinking it might me nice to do a fall color scheme, like reds, oranges, etc. Then where they have the wedding ceremony, instead of doing flowers on the ground I could do some fall colored leaves on the ground. I don't know, still working that out.

One thing I need to convince my wonderful fiance is that I should make our wedding cake. I really would like to make it because the average cost of a wedding cake is $543. That's ridiculous. I could make my own for like $50. I'd rather be able to put more money into an open bar, or extra food for my guests at the reception. We'll see if I win the argument. :)

We know we want to have a traditional Hawaiian musician or band during the cocktail hour but then a DJ for the reception.

We still have a couple years before the wedding, so I'll try to keep you guys updated as pieces start falling together. For now, this is what we've started discussing and settling on. Jon and I are both incredibly indecisive so who knows what's going to happen! :)