One Recipe, Two ways & Our Apartment

My dinner is cooking in the oven right now and it smells oh, so yummy. I am in a happy mood right now because I just watched this video about teaching and it made me feel inspired. I feel slightly more healthy today because I ate a salad for lunch and worked out briefly after I got home from school. (I am forgetting about the cookies I ate at our faculty meeting) Speaking of our faculty meeting...I was just reminded today how thankful I am to work in the school division I do. Our division is about kids and what's best for them and that makes me so proud to be a part of it. And- it's fall; it may be 80 degrees outside, but its still fall and the leaves are so beautiful. Sometimes I am not thrilled about living in such a rural area (I mean, a girl's gotta shop) but fall here is beautiful. Tomorrow I get to go to my class at the Y which makes me happy, 1. because I haven't been in 2 weeks and 2. because I have a new workout shirt to wear, woo hoo.

Tonight I'm making a casserole that I found from a Mahatma rice ad in Cooking Light. I've made it before and it's definitely worth making again. The only downside to the recipe is that it does take an hour to bake. That is why I'm still currently waiting to eat...I started a bit late on dinner tonight. The first time I made this recipe I used chicken, tonight I'm using pork.

Here's what you'll need for the recipe (this serves 8-10, but it can easily be cut in half, I did it tonight): 2 tbs evoo, 2 cloves of garlic, minced, 1 onion, diced, 2 tbs basil (fresh or dried, use less if you're using dried), 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, 1 8oz can tomato sauce, 4 cups of chicken broth (pref. low sodium), 2 cups Mahatma brown rice, 2 lb grilled chicken breasts OR grilled pork chops, 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper, 1/2 cup of shredded parmesan cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 400. Heat the evoo in a medium-sized skillet. Cook the onion & garlic until cooked through.

2. To the onions, add the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, chicken broth, basil, salt, pepper, and rice. Bring to a simmer.

3. Cut the chicken or pork into same size "chunks". Add it the bottom of an 8x13 baking dish. Add the onion mixture on top, stir together. Cook for 60 minutes covered with foil.

4. Take the casserole out of the oven, stir in the parmesan and cook for 5 more minutes, uncovered.

Over the past month Kenneth and I have been working to make our apartment a little more cozy. We've just been adding a few touches here and there and make things come together more. I feel that's what you do when you have a place of your own- add things little by little over time. We've bought a few new accessories for various rooms, I've found some items to decorate with at family member's houses, and we've painted. Here's a look into our ever-evolving apartment!

In our bedroom, we got a new rug and bench.

 Above & Below: our office newly painted, re-arranged, and new curtains I made.

 My ever-changing frame wall.

 our living room with some new pillows & paint from last fall

part of our living room...that's one of my Graney's old hat boxes

Husband and I had a great weekend. We spent the night at The Babcock House, which is where we had our wedding reception. It was the first time we had ever spent the night there so it was so fun. We had a wonderful dinner and breakfast there. Then, we just spent time in Appomattox browsing the shops and on our way home we stopped by a local winery. So fun! Well my dinner is now finally ready so I'm off to eat! Enjoy your Monday!