Recipes: Cinnamon Muffins

Here is a great breakfast recipe.  It's really simple and I pretty much just made it up.  

Ingredients list:

2 medium eggs.
3 cups of flour.
1 cup of milk.
1 cup of sugar.
10 tablespoons of butter.
3 teaspoons of baking powder.
1 teaspoon of salt.
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg.
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.

Topping:
1 cup of melted butter.
1 cup of sugar blended with 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.

Instructions:

Grease 12 three-inch muffin pan cups.

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Beat in the eggs, salt, nutmeg and baking powder. Stir in the flour and milk alternately until mixture is just combined.

Fill muffin cups to the top.

Bake at 350F oven for about twenty minutes.

Allow to cool for a few minutes.

With each muffin, dip in the melted butter.

Roll each muffin in the cinnamon sugar blend.
(I always double dip them until I am out of cinnamon & sugar!!!)

*Makes approx. 2 dozen!

Recipes: Sweet and Sour Chicken

Served on Rice

• 1/2 cup Smucker's® Apricot Low Sugar Preserves
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon powdered ginger
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce, or to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 medium zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch slices
• 1/2 cup small mushrooms
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in 1-inch pieces
• 1 (6 oz.) package frozen pea pods, thawed
• Hot cooked rice (optional)

PREPARATION DIRECTIONS:

Sauce

1. STIR preserves, vinegar, garlic salt, ginger, soy sauce, and crushed red pepper in small bowl until well blended. Set aside.
2. HEAT oil in wok or large skillet until hot. Stir-fry zucchini and mushrooms over medium-high heat until zucchini is crisp-tender. Transfer mixture to a platter.
3. ADD butter to wok; cook chicken until tender, stirring often. Add pea pods and cooked zucchini and mushrooms; stir gently until heated, 3 to 5 minutes

Ingredients Combined

4. POUR apricot sauce over chicken and vegetables; toss gently to mix well and heat through. Serve with rice, if desired.

Army: Heading to the National Training Center

Alright everybody, so I am about to head out for the next month to Fort Irwin, California.  for those of you who own a map (or can successfully navigate google maps) will note this is a little too close to death valley for my total comfort, but oh well.

So, some fun things for you to know about my trip:
1. I have no clue why I am going.  We are supposedly doing some training, but we won't be training for our Afghanistan mission.  so... yeah.
2. I have no clue what I will be doing every day.  They say my job is to help track the battle field.  I have a limited idea as to what that will entail.
3. I may be sleeping in a tent.  And I say may because they are not sure we have tents, so it may be on the ground uncovered for all I know.
4. I found out when I leave approximately a few hours ago. And it's tomorrow...
5. I still haven't packed half of my stuff and am quite honestly avoiding it. Packing is the worst part, aside from leaving my husband for a month.

Here are a random list of things I like to pack aside from the Army issued items:

• A pillow case (i use it to keep my poncho liner in place, without wasting more space with a pillow).
• Dry shampoo (I might get 2-3 showers in the next 30 days... YIKES!)
• Homemade protein bars (I'll post the recipe sometime!)
• Jolly Ranchers (I eat them when I need to stay awake/ quick burst of energy)
• Electrolyte tablets (Flavored and caffeinated!)
• Leave on face wash (my attempt to feel like a girl)

I have some recipes I blogged awhile ago that I have scheduled while I am gone, just in case I don't get a chance to keep accessing my blog.  If I don't get a chance while I am out there, I probably won't be back on my blog for the next month or so.  

Army: Because Life Gives You Lemons...

So, if you've never been in the Army, you've probably never known what it is like to have everything about your job change drastically, with only a few words from your boss.  Now, I am not talking about job security, I am talking about the where are you going, what are you doing, and when are you doing it, etc.

In the past couple of weeks, our deployment location has changed and changed back more times than I know what to do with.  We are either going to Bagram, or Kandahar. In fact, some of us may go to Bagram and some of us may go to Kandahar.   Only in the Army...

But the more fun portion is my job change.  I used to work in current operations for our battalion.  I was involved in all of the planning craziness as our staff could barely get their heads above water.  Mostly, because any time we tried to plan into the future, our brigade would ignore our plan and throw stuff at us anyway.  When I first got to our staff section, I worked in future operations.  I hated it.  Everyone was so busy handling the current stuff that no one could give me any direction for our future ops.  I basically watched everyone else be busy and run around and had little to nothing to do myself... part of this was I hadn't proved I could handle anything yet.  But then something came up so I had to handle being in charge of our whole section while we were on a Field Training Exercise.  It was truly a trial by fire.  But after that (and then running our section for a time in garrison- our normal- environment) I was ready.  And so I told my boss I wanted to be moved to current operations and he agreed.  We were getting a new lieutenant, who is higher ranking than me, and he is about to make captain, but this was ignored and I was given the harder job because I had proved I could handle it.

Now, as my boss is getting closer to his promotion, we are starting to prepare for a new boss.  Part of this preparation has me switching jobs back to future operations.  This is because my boss' boss wants us to start focusing farther out and getting our heads above water, and part of this is because my coworker is about to make Captain and it would reflect very poorly on him to have the "easier" job.  But the problem is, I have to start everything from scratch and I am not really focused on the future.  It means I am doing both jobs in this transition, and truth be told, the other guy is doing neither.  He is a very approachable guy who likes to tease and make fun and I keep teasing him that he can't tease me about anything in our job until he actually does some work around the office.  He was tasked with an investigation when he first got to our section that had him running around for the battalion commander (all of us officers get tasked to handle various investigations for our commanders), so he was busy with that while I handled a lot of the work around the office.  The problem is, I am a self-starter and willing to ask questions and help out.

So now, I find myself tasked with everything current (finishing our Mission Readiness Exercise as well as planning and preparing for NTC) and everything future, that is, more than 30 days out, (planning casing ceremonies for 3 companies, planning all necessary training for various positions during the deployment, as well as making sure we get everything on the calendar for everything we have to do in order to deploy).  Its been a bit of a nightmare and I find myself with a very long list of things to do and plan.  And of course, in the mean time, I get to meet with my boss (my OIC, officer in charge), and his boss, (my battalion commander) on Monday morning to find out what else needs to go on my planning plate so I can start planning it.  Fun fun!

I love planning and I truly enjoy my job, even if it may seem like I don't.  I'm not trying to complain or whine; I just figured I should give some insight into my job and what I am doing.  I will try to keep updating what I am doing, where I am going and when as things change.  

Recipes: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ok, so here is an amazing recipe and perfect for fall.

I got this from my friend Jen, at church.  Supposedly, it makes 30 cookies, but I found one batch makes almost 50 if you are using normal tablespoon sized amounts.  So here it is:

Prep time: 10-20 min
Cook time: 12- 15 min

Ingredients:
   2 1/4 c. all purpose flour
   1 1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice
   1/2 t. cinnamon
   1 t. baking powder
   1/2 t. salt
   1 c (2 sticks) butter, softened
   1 c granulated sugar
   1 can (15 oz) pumpkin (Libby's is best)
   2 large eggs
   1 t. vanilla extract
   2 c. (12-oz pkg) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine flour, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl.  Beat butter and sugar in large mixer bowl until creamy.  beat in pumpkin, eggs and vanilla extract. Gradually beat in flour mixture.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Drop by rounded tablespoons onto baking sheets.

Bake for 12-15 min or until edges are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Health & Exercise: Learning to Read Your Body

So, this is an odd blog post, but it was something Kevin and I were talking about and he suggested I blog about it.

The photo that brought Vietnam into American homes.

I have always been amazed by some of the worlds most exclusive societies.  Mostly, that of devote monks.  I'm sure you've heard stories of them: those that can control their heartbeat down to almost deathly levels, those that can control their body temperature regardless of the temperature outside, those that walk on hot coals, those that can withstand any pain, etc.  The most infamous in our time would be Thich Quang Duc who set himself on fire (also called self-immolation) to protest the treatment of Buddhist's in South Vietnam by the Catholic government in the middle of a busy town square.

The amount of self-control these people have generated and the degree to which they are in tune with their bodies has always fascinated me.  The ability to manipulate the body with the mind is astounding.  Even something as simple as the placebo effect shows how much power the mind has over the body.

But I am actually starting to learn that this is far from the realm of only achievable for the extremely devote, it's for anyone. Maybe not at the "set yourself on fire in protest" level, but at the very basic one.  My bouts into massage therapy and yoga have started me on this journey without me realizing.  I'm not going to go into my reasons for needing trigger point massage since I blogged it before (see My Journey into Alternative Therapies) and I know I have blogged a couple of times about my journey into yoga (see Yoga Daily and Yoga Update), but ultimately, these two things have helped me become more in tune with my body and how it feels.  Because of the massage therapy, I am starting to be able to identify which muscles are tight and causing me problems.  I don't know these muscles by name, but i know where they are and where they go (like the muscle that is currently giving me trouble starts in the back of the leg and comes up around my hip towards my abdomen, which, by the way, is very difficult to stretch).  The yoga also helps in this.  While I am stretching, I can actually feel when my muscles aren't opening up and creating circulation properly.  My flexibility has improved, but I am still not fully able to reach each yoga position.  Yet even still, I can tell when my circulation has increased properly in certain muscles, when I need to spend more time in a position and when the stretch needs to go deeper.

I was talking to my massage therapist about this and she told me that this is actually the natural progression for those doing yoga.  (If you are doing yoga and are becoming more flexible  but you aren't more in tune with your body, you are probably doing something wrong.)  But the odd thing was what she told me next.  Parker told me that next I need to work on sending my breath to the areas where I know I need more oxygen rich blood.  Now this is still weird to me, but it is basically identifying which muscles I want to send my breath to, really considering as I breath in and then think about that breath as it enters my body and sort of push it to the area I want.

This is still really odd to me and I haven't really figured it out at all yet, if I even can, but I figured I would give another update and share how far things have come for me.   I will write another update if I manage to figure out how to really direct my breaths and hopefully then I might be able to explain it better.

Recipes: Great Chocolate Chip Cookies

This one is one of my favorites.  This is one of the few recipes I have found that turn out both slightly crunchy and chewy and moist (this is because of the mixture of white and brown sugars).  Be careful though, there is a lot of butter and are thus, very fattening but totally addictive.

Ingredients 

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips. At this point, I suggest you taste test some. (In my opinion, you should always taste test your food. It will help you know if you are doing it right, and help you identify if you've forgotten an ingredient... which I have done before)
3. Drop by tablespoon sized spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

Makes about 40- 50 cookies (depending on how much batter you eat ;-P)