Breakfast on-the-go!

We  had a great two day at our graduation! Honestly, both days were kind of tiring. However, we felt special and felt like we had accomplished something great! Here is a picture from our graduation!

Now, I am sure many of you like me have days when you wake up in the morning with no idea what to make for breakfast or you are so late for school or work that you don't have time to cook but you don't want to skip breakfast, the most important meal of the day :-). So, I have two quick breakfast recipes that you can make in batches and save them in your fridge or freezer for a quick grab.

Egg muffins

There are many recipes online for egg muffins. The way I made mine is that I sauteed one onion and lots of vegetables like mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, and broccoli. After they were tender, I placed them at the bottom of the muffin paper cups. On the other side, I beat some eggs with some cheese and spices and poured them on top of the vegetables. Make sure it's not all the way up to the top. Bake them until they are firm and bubbly.

Oatmeal muffins

I wanted to get a recipe with as little sugar as possible. Again, there are many recipes for oatmeal muffins but this is the one I used when I made these.

1 c rolled oats

1 c unsweetened applesauce

1/2 c milk (I used skim)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 tbsp coconut oil or butter melted

1/3 c sugar

3/4 c whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

I added 1/2 c raisins

Preheat oven to 375

In a medium bowl mic: oatmeal, applesauce, milk, egg, vanilla, butter, and sugar. Set aside.

In large bowl whisk: flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, raisins.

Combine both bowls together. Do not use a blender, and don't over mix.

Put in muffin pan and bake for 15-20min.

The recipe makes about 12.

I hope you enjoy these recipes and hopefully they will help you to not skip breakfast when you have a busy morning.

Warmly,

Juliana

A delicious breakfast for my husband's very last day of finals

We just finished eating a delicious breakfast! Today my husband has his last test of his undergraduate school. I am so proud of him for finishing strong his last semester! We are excited to move on with our lives and start a new adventure. For his last day of finals, I thought to prepare a delicious and at the same time very nutritious breakfast so it can fuel his brain with energy to study. 

We had some toast, and homemade yogurt together with our breakfast and some grapes when we finished. Needless to say that we finished the whole pan. :-) Enjoy these pictures and click here for the recipe.

P.S For my Albanian friends, I know that in Albania we don't have Brussels Sprouts, but with what I can tell they are just mini cabbages, so I guess you can try using cabbage instead. I hope it works. :-)

Warmly,

Juliana

URGENT POST!! PLEASE READ AND PASS IT ALONG!

First of all, I have two confessions/ realizations to make.
Last Saturday, we really needed to go grocery shopping but we got caught up with some other things, and by the time it was lunch time we realized that it was too late to go grocery shopping. So, I recommended that we eat a can of chili beans and a can of soup. We hadn't had canned food in a long long long time. I have always made everything from scratch at home. We both knew we wouldn't like it but we decided to eat it anyway for one time. After lunch we both started feeling sick. The food felt really heavy in our stomach and we felt like throwing up.
Second experience was last week again. I was feeling so bloated and I felt that my stomach felt a lot bigger, and I had gained a couple of pounds. So, I decided to take a break of a week from sugar. I don't eat sugar every day, but I find myself eating sugar a couple of times a week. For example last week after I had decided to give up sugar for one week, I went to a baby shower and they had sweets that I would have eaten if I hadn't taken this commitment. Yesterday was the last day, and today I could start eating sugar. Not only my stomach had gone back to normality, and the scale too, but I didn't feel that urge to dig in sugar, like I normally do. I honestly feel that I beat and addiction for at least one week. And I feel great!

NOW THE MOST IMPORTANT PART... Check out these pictures...

Instant oatmeal

Bread

Granola bars and crackers

Chips and microwave popcorn

Condiments like ketchup, dressings, mayonnaise etc

Chips, Ramen noddles, energy drinks, juices etc

These are all isles from grocery stores here in US. All of these items contain white sugar in them. The reason why this is bad will be explained in the video below. Please make smart food choices for yourself and your family. I am glad to say that our cart usually get filled with a lot of fruits and veggies, eggs, milk, cheese, nuts, chicken, beans, rice. I may have forgotten to list a couple more items but these are the biggest one. Actually, I want to stop buying tomato sauce because it contains sugar as well. Not only is fresh tomato sauce better but it is also cheaper. I find one pound of tomatoes between 50-70 cents/pound and one can of tomato sauce is the cheapest $1. There is no doubt that in the long term fresh and homemade everything is cheaper, better, and healthier for us.

CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO, AND TELL ME IF YOUR MIND IS NOT BLOWN AWAY! MINE WAS!!

CLICK HERE!!!

Stay healthy!
Warmly,

Juliana

Breakfast and dinner with the Hoxha's

If you were visiting our family today, this is what you would have had for breakfast and dinner. (For lunch we had leftovers from yesterday ;-))

Breakfast
Baked Spinach and Eggs
This breakfast was full of nutrients and protein, and kept us full for a long time. We also had some toast, olives and homemade yogurt (I will have to post the recipe for the homemade yogurt someday). It was way good and easy to make.
This recipe requires only three ingredients. You can find the recipe here. I changed the recipe a little bit. Instead of using straight spinach, I sauteed it with onions and garlic before baking it with the eggs. This way the spinach had more flavor.

Dinner

Wisconsin cauliflower soup

Don't get fooled by the name, this recipe is very easy and delicious. This will be a good way to incorporate cauliflower in your meal. Perla loved this soup. Click here for the recipe.

30 minute Homemade dinner rolls

I love homemade bread but I rarely make it because it takes a lot of time and I have never gotten it right. However, this recipe takes only 30 minutes and you can have delicious, warm dinner rolls to go with your meal. Click here to get the recipe.

Homemade strawberry jam

I had bought some strawberries for really cheap and wanted to make strawberry jam for more than a week, but was feeling kind of lazy and I procrastinated until today. But I finally made it. Something I love about homemade jam is that I know what is inside. Almost all store jams have corn syrup, and other ingredients I have never heard about. This recipe has only three ingredients, strawberries, sugar, and lemon. Click here for the recipe.

Well, I hope you would have enjoyed having dinner with the Hoxha's. Thanks for stopping by! Let me know what you think of our food.

Warmly,

Juliana

A post only about my husband!!!

Well, this is the first time I am actually writing about my husband. I want to dedicate this post to his incredible creativity in the kitchen. Not to brag but he is not just a great cook but his plates look like art work...much much better than mine. His creativity goes beyond the plate decoration...I usually need a recipe to follow when I cook, he can make a meal using anything we have in the fridge or the pantry. I am so grateful for him, for thinking so out of the box....totally the opposite of me, this way we complement each other. So, here are some of the delicious and beautiful plates he has cooked for us. Oh, and I usually take pictures of his plates. He likes when I praise him, and keep record of his talent. hihihihi


Rice, lamb, and bean sauce

Lamb, sauteed vegetables, and tzatziki 

This was from the time we were single, and I honestly can't exactly remember what it was, but it looks like meatloaf with sauteed vegetables, and soup. :-)

Fried rice, pouched egg, vegetables, and chicken. His plate has hot sauce on top

Again I can't remember this one either, but I think it is bread ball filled with vegetables, lamb, and salad with homemade croutons. 

Shrimp in a stick, sauteed vegetables and lamb

That is all I have in my camera. Next time you see him, please tell him how good he is, it will make him so happy!! Haha

Well, thank you for stopping by and hang in there because the weekend is here.

Warmly,

Juliana

Conference weekend and my thoughts on the Ordain Women group

We enjoyed this Conference Weekend a lot! It was very inspiring and life changing, as always. I have a lot of work to do during this coming six months to read, study and ponder, the magnificent talks given in conference. I don't know if any of you followed my suggestion to write down your questions before conference and listen to the talks attentively to find the answers to your questions, but I did it. I wrote down my questions before conference. However, I realized as I was listening to the talks were really directed to me, not because they were the answer to my questions but because they were the answers to the questions I should have asked but that I didn't know they were a problem or that I needed to ask about. Does it make sense? For example, I am a little impulsive in communication, including communications with my husband and talks like President Monson and Elder Zwick's were directed to me. I didn't realize how impulsive I am until I heard these talks. Anyway, what I want to say with this is that, conference can be life changing if we listen with an open heart and mind!!!

Next, I have heard a lot about the Ordain Women group lately. I don't want to open any discussion, but here are my thoughts and why. I love my LDS and non-LDS sisters. There is no doubt about that. However, I DON'T support the cause of the Ordain Women group. That's it! In this church I feel valuable and appreciated. In my home my role as a woman is respected and loved and I feel I am equal to my husband, we have different responsibilities, but we are equal. So, I personally don't have any reason to join/support your cause. 

My husband listened to the Priesthood session of the conference at home, so I had a chance to listen to it too. I don't know how much of the talk to include here, because it was all so great and it explained deep doctrine, but here are some of the quotes from Elder Oaks talk titled "The keys and authority of the priesthood".

In an address to the Relief Society, President Joseph Fielding Smith, then President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said this: “While the sisters have not been given the Priesthood, it has not been conferred upon them, that does not mean that the Lord has not given unto them authority. … A person may have authority given to him, or a sister to her, to do certain things in the Church that are binding and absolutely necessary for our salvation, such as the work that our sisters do in the House of the Lord. They have authority given unto them to do some great and wonderful things, sacred unto the Lord, and binding just as thoroughly as are the blessings that are given by the men who hold the Priesthood.”

The greatest power God has given to His sons cannot be exercised without the companionship of one of His daughters, because only to His daughters has God given the power “to be a creator of bodies … so that God’s design and the Great Plan might meet fruition.”¹² Those are the words of President J. Reuben Clark.

He continued: “This is the place of our wives and of our mothers in the Eternal Plan. They are not bearers of the Priesthood; they are not charged with carrying out the duties and functions of the Priesthood; nor are they laden with its responsibilities; they are builders and organizers under its power, and partakers of its blessings, possessing the complement of the Priesthood powers and possessing a function as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the Priesthood itself.”

Lastly, Elder Oaks made a great point:

Latter-day Saints surely recognize that qualifying for exaltation is not a matter of asserting rights but a matter of fulfilling responsibilities.

As women, I feel like we have many responsibilities. Let's give 150% of ourselves to accomplish those responsibilities for which we will be held accountable one day to our Father in Heaven.

And lastly, as this conference has passed, let's try a little harder to be a little better, and most importantly, let's be more OBEDIENT to what our leaders have told us.

What did you enjoy the most from Conference weekend? Wasn't it great spending all day with your family? I loved that part as well! :)

Warmly,

Juliana 

How to prepare for General Conference

The General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a big deal to all the latter-day saints. General Conference happens twice a year, on a weekend, and lasts for ten hours. During General Conference The Prophet, his counselors, the twelve apostles, and other general authorities and leaders speak to all the world.

Elder Uchtdorf told a story in one of his talks titled "General Conference-- No ordinary blessing".

A fine member of the Church was talking with a neighbor who was not of our faith. When the topic of discussion turned to general conference, the neighbor asked, “You say you have prophets and apostles? And twice a year in a worldwide conference they reveal the word of God?”

“Absolutely,” the member replied with confidence.

The neighbor thought about that for a moment. He seemed genuinely interested and then asked, “What did they say in the last general conference?”

At this point the good member of the Church went from feeling excited about sharing the gospel to feeling embarrassed. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of the details of a single talk.

His friend found this troubling and said, “You mean to tell me that God speaks to man in our day and you can’t remember what He said?”

The brother felt humbled by this exchange. He vowed that he would do better to remember the words spoken by the Lord’s servants in general conference.

Now, we don't want to be in that situation, for this reason it is important to prepare for General Conference. So I have some tips for you and for myself. 1) Before the Conference, a week or a couple of days before, write down the question that you have and that you are hoping to find the answer during General Conference. 2) During General Conference, take the paper with your questions and write next to the questions the answers that you hear during Conference. You may find your answers in one talk or several talks. We will not be able to remember what was said in every talk. However, there are messages in each General Conference given as a gift and a blessing from Heaven specifically for our personal life situation. All the talks are important to listen to, to read and to ponder but there are specific talks that touch us more than the others. Using these tips, I feel that it would be easier for us to remember what was said in those talks.

Next week, I will share with you what I learned from the Conference, and I hope to hear your experience as well.

Warmly,
Juliana