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Tonight I'm headed to Disneyland to run the half marathon on Sunday.
I'll be back Monday night. I won't be posting while I'm gone. But I'm sure I'll be Instagramming, Facebooking, and Twittering (or tweeting...whatever).
I did just learn that Joey Fatone is running this weekend...I wish I had known this in advance, as I would have made a shirt that said "bye, bye, bye" on the back.
Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!
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I found this super easy recipe for salmon cakes and I made it the other night. They were pretty darn good...and easy!
The only thing I did differently was use fresh salmon that I baked and cooled instead of canned salmon.
I whipped up some homemade pesto to put on pasta to round out the meal...also easy and delicious!
One more day of work today, then I'm off to LA for some half marathoning. I'm super excited, and terribly nervous...
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Just a heads up that things around here will be changing a bit. The biggest thing to note is that if you have www.marthaflorence.com bookmarked, you will soon see a completely different page when you go there.
If you don't want to go through the extra step...just bookmark the blog at www.marthaflorence.typepad.com.
All the links on the homepage should work. Please let me know if you have any trouble with any of the links (there is a possiblility that some of the links to posts will not work, I'm trying to prevent that, but we shall see)
UPDATE 8/27 @ 9pm: Post links are working just fine, but image links are not. I'm in the process of manually updating those, so that may take some time. On the homepage, the blog and shop links both work. The about link is not active yet. Within the shop, the "add to cart" option is working from the homepage, and two of the product pages. Two of the product pages are still inactive. Thank you for your patience!!
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A couple of weeks ago I ordered a noodler from Amazon. Several friends of mine purchased the same one (officially called a spiralizer, but I like noodler better) and said it was great, so in my constant effort to find ways to eat fewer processed foods (like pasta), I got one…and I love it!
So far I have made zucchini noodle spaghetti, which was delicious, and then this week I made sweet potato noodles. They are my favorite so far!
I spiralized three small yams, which fed us dinner and one serving of leftovers.
Sweet Potato Noodles with Sausage & Tomato Sauce
2-4 medium sweet potatoes
1 onion thinly sliced
1/2 lb italian sausage
1 can diced tomatoes
1/4 cup white wine
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil (or fat of choice)
salt, pepper, and basil to taste
Parmesan cheese
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and cook until they start to brown. Reduce heat and let onions caramelize for 10-15 more minutes. While onions are cooking, spiralize your sweet potatoes and set aside.
Once onions are mostly cooked, crumble sausage into pan. Brown sausage until it is no longer pink (you can mix it with the onions, or keep them on separate sides of the pan). Add tomatoes, white wine, balsamic, and seasoning. Mix and cook for a few minutes.
Add sweet potato noodles to pan and stir until coated with sauce. Let noodles cook in sauce until they are the texture of al dente spaghetti (about 5 minutes).
Top with parmesan cheese and enjoy!
I think the key to making veggie noodles work is making a sauce that has enough liquid to soak into the noodles. I have not tried these with a traditional spaghetti sauce yet, but I would imagine that "cooking" the noodles in that type of sauce won't work. I'm not sure if dunking them in boiling water for a minute or two would be the best route, or if there is a better option.
For now, I'll stick to less saucy sauces that I can cook my noodles in!
Here is a link to the Paderno World Cuisine tri-blade vegetable slicer (this is the exact spiralizer I have).
disclaimer: I am an amazon affiliate. If you shop through the links in this post, I do receive a small comission on purchases made. However these are my honest opinions and I was not paid to talk about this product.
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Right now I have four trips planned between now and the end of November! I think this will be an all time high for me for number of miles traveled in three months.
Disneyland - Aug 31 - Sept 2 (4,684 mi): Heading down to LA for Labor day weekend to run the Disneyland Half Marathon with Amanda. It's going to be a fast and furious trip...but oh so much fun!
Morro Bay, CA -Sept 13 - Sept 22 (4,704 mi): A few months ago my dad asked if I would be interested in taking a trip to Morro Bay with him since he had a companion ticket that needed to be used up. I'm not one to pass up a travel opportunity...so of course I'm going! The bonus part of this trip is that my dear friend Margaret is coming down from Portland for the weekend to hang out! Yay!!
Cape Cod & Vermont - Oct 14 - Oct 23 (7,998 mi): We were invited by John's dad to join them in Cape Cod for a week this fall. Due to me trying to cut down on the number of paid vacation days (I'm trying to save up for something big), we suggested that we plan a Wednesday to a Wednesday, but that wasn't possible. So John and I are heading down on a Tuesday, staying on the Cape with them until Saturday, and then spending another few days in Vermont to round out our week.
Maui - Nov 16 - Nov 27 (5,596 mi): I have been wanting to go back to Maui since we first went there a couple of years ago. So, thanks to the magic of the companion ticket (I love you Alaska Airlines!) we will be starting our winter off with some sun and sand!
Total miles: 22,982
I know I'm going to have to put up with a lot of crap from people at work (they all think all I do is go on vacation...which is not entirely true), but it's going to be completely worth it!
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I mentioned recently that I am attempting to have more tangible photos around. I take a lot of photos and I don't like that they all live in my computer or on my phone. After seeing this photo book, I decided that I wanted to do something similar with all my Instagram photos from 2012.
Sometime during the middle of the year last year, I started working on my book. I uploaded my photos from my phone to my computer, then I uploaded them to the blurb website. There's an autofill option if you want the website to do all the work, but I wanted to have my photos in a specific order with specific templates for each page (either full page or a grid of four photos). I chose a 7x7 book with a hardcover.
As each subsequent month passed, I uploaded the photos from that month and added them to the layout. It was a fun way to go through all the random photos I take. I also started noticing trends...I take a lot of photos of my dog, and food.
Due to the low resolution of the Instagram photos, I kept getting a warning that my photos were not high quality enough to use in full page spreads. But I didn't really care and went with it anyway. Some of the larger photos came out a little grainy, but it's hardly noticeable.
Once I got the book in the mail, I started adding handwritten text where it seemed appropriate. Even though it has taken me a ridiculously long time to finish this book, I'm really happy with it!
I used a Pigma Micron pen to write on the pages. It's the perfect pen for the job because it dries quickly and doesn't smudge. Being a lefty, such things are important to me.
This was a super simple and relatively inexpensive way to get photos into my hands. My Instagram photos often are some of my favorites because they are mostly of normal everyday life, in 10 years I'll look at this and marvel at what my life used to be like!
fyi - I used an affiliate link to blurb.com website in this post. Use the link and the code BLURBBOOK15 to save 15% on your order.
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A couple of weeks ago I picked up Tell The Wolves I'm Home** by Carol Rifka Brunt, from Costco. I read on a blog (I don't remember which one) that someone was reading and enjoying it. I've been having a hard time getting into a book lately (hence the reason I'm reading four at once), so I thought I'd give it a shot.
Turns out it was a good chance to take. I blew through the first half pretty quickly (I had six days off work to do nothing but sit around and eat bon bons and read), then I slowed down. It did get a little slow in the middle, but the ending was totally worth the wait.
This book set in 1987 and is about a girl, June, her uncle who dies of AIDS, and the unlikely friendship she creates after his death.
The one thing that really bothered me about this book was the way everyone felt about AIDS. June's family insisted that her uncle's partner should go to jail because he murdered Finn (the uncle) by giving him AIDS. I realize that in 1987 that's how it was. Very different from the way people understand the disease today. But it still bothered me.
I'm not sure what's next on my list to read. I can't decide if I should keep plugging away at one of the books I'm not really in to, or start something new.
And I'm always open to recommendations!
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Last night we had salmon for dinner. I didn't plan well enough to have an actual recipe picked out, but I knew we were eating fish. When I got home from work, I needed a quick and easy way to cook the fish, so I cooked it in butter (because everything is better cooked in butter, right?).
Heat oven to 450°F. In an oven safe pan, heat 2-4 Tbsp of butter, until melted. Add 1 tsp (or more) of lime juice, place salmon flesh side down and place in oven for about 5 minutes. Flip and cook another 3-6 minutes until done.
That's it! Super easy and tasty. I sprinkled my fish with salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic powder before putting it in the pan, but you can use whatever combination of spices suits your fancy.
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I have a shop where I sell handmade items, and a health blog where I talk about real food and nutrition
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