Banana Oatmeal Cookies, Broken Glass and NOT Tasting Like Chicken!

March!  The month where hopefully our weather here in NW Pennsylvania will begin to shift?  A few days ago, I had been planning to make a favorite soup recipe.  I just couldn't bring myself to make more soup!  So I mixed up some chicken salad instead!  The base included plenty of freshly-squeezed lemon juice... deep down, I really do not like chicken.  At all.  I prefer to eat chicken that does not taste like chicken!  Lemon juice is one way to re-flavor the chicken.  A bonus was that with the zippy lemon aroma and flavor, we suddenly felt a bit closer to spring or (even summer?) around here!  

I am also gearing up for a personal shift.  After five months of settling into clean eating while thoroughly enjoying my "Chalean Extreme" workouts, I am about to begin the recently-released "21 Day Fix".  There has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding this program and many are curious!  The "challenge pack" pictured here includes the workout DVD's, color-coded portion planning containers, one month of Shakeology, a cookbook and a few other handy tools!  My package arrived on Thursday and I snapped this photo.  We have been enthusiastically exploring the contents these past few days.  Time to move past my current plateau and continue to progress on this journey! 

While assembling our weekly meal plan earlier today (2nd time EVER to do this!), I began to incorporate the color-coding basics of the 21 Day Fix eating plan.  I was surprised by a couple of things right from the start!  I was eating essentially nothing from the "orange" group!  And too much from the "blue" group.  I was thankful to have a quiet hour in the middle of this afternoon so that I could make this jump without my attention going in too many other directions!  The challenge group for the 21 Day Fix kicks off on March 10th.  I am eager to get the ball rolling here and begin to put the pieces together! 

With a 7 year old, an almost 5 year old, a husband, a dog and a cat here in our household, you never know what may come up in the next few minutes.  This week has been especially eventful in the "spill" department.  Yesterday we cleaned up FIVE varying water accidents that occurred throughout the house. I would still take all of that over the bathroom light globe that was rather innocently shattered earlier in the week.  Talk about needing to fix things!  I would say that us moms are all too familiar with fixing a dozen or more things each day!  Is it any wonder that our own wellness often ends up at the bottom of the list?  This is where the support of FB-based challenge groups, top-notch home workouts and realistic "clean" recipes have made all the difference for me!

We tried out a new recipe last night.  It was a HUGE hit!  My husband came home and thought that we were baking banana bread.  I daresay that these cookies tasted even better than any banana bread that I have ever made.  And they were SO simple.  And quite healthy!  In fact, the recipe comes from the new 21 Day Fix collection.  As a side note, you could take one of your "yellow" portions and replace it with two of these cookies up to three times each week.  The cookies pictured here are actually a bit on the small side.  The batch is supposed to me made into 16 cookies.  I wound up with 23 cookies.  Anyways, here is the recipe:

Banana Oatmeal Cookies
1 Cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
2 tsp. Ground Cinnamon 
1/4 tsp. Sea Salt
2 Ripe Medium Bananas (mashed)                                              
1/4 Cup Raisins
1/4 Cup Chopped Raw Walnuts
Combine dry ingredients.  Mix in mashed bananas.  Add raisins and nuts.  Mix well.  Drop by heaping Tbsp. onto prepared baking sheet (you may need non-stick spray?  I bake on stoneware and do not use anything on that surface); flatten cookies with a spatula prior to baking.  Bake at 350 for 13-15 minutes or until firm. 

There has been a pivotal line of thought that has come back to me many times these past couple of months.  I had read this statement in a book awhile back and it has shaped my days.  "Do what only you can do."  What does that look like for each one of us?  Something entirely different, of course!  At times it may feel as though even the list that "only you can do" is longer than the amount of time you have been given to work with any given day!  

Psalm 119:37 is a frequent prayer of mine ~ "Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word."

We had done a few updates on our main level last winter.  I had come across this wall text and it captured what I hope will become be the anthem of our household.  I find myself pausing to reflect here from time to time and wonder what the coming days will bring?  In the meantime, I return to my prayer from Psalm 119!