Success!

  I made my first chuck roast today sans crockpot. Actually it was my first chuck roast period. I have always gotten the big thick roasts (to be honest, I have no idea what they're called still) and since we have been doing the farm fresh food and getting most of our meat from a co-op, which means ordering online, I accidentally ordered the chuck roast and you can't waste food...So I had to learn to cook it! I don't know what people did before google...I typed in chuck roast recipes and had hundreds of recipes sitting right in front of me. I picked one of them, modified it a bit, and off we went!

  I covered the roast in garlic powder, salt, pepper, red pepper, and chili powder. It's basically a homemade Tony Cachere's seasoning, so you can use that too and be fine. I let it sit for about 1 hour and then browned it on both sides for about 3-4 minutes on both sides in a bit of coconut oil. I greased the bottom of the glass dish with coconut oil and then put in the roast with some potatoes, onions and carrots and enough water to cover about 3/4 of the roast. I covered it with aluminum foil, then put it in the oven on 300 for 3 hours. I flipped it every hour and it came out wonderful! I took the rest of the juice in the dish (after pulling out the meat and all vegetables) and added a corn starch mixture of about 1/4 cup water and 2 tbsp corn starch to the juice while heating it and it made a really good gravy. It had just a little bit of kick to it, but it was great! Right as it was ready to come out my crazy neighbor (I only say that because I know he's going to read this at some point) texted me to come over and show me his new fence doorbell he installed for Jonah and we got distracted with painting stencils onto his house and I realized dinner was done and in the oven. Jason came back home and got it and we combined their salad for dinner with our roast and everyone was happy :-). It was a good night of friendship and food.

   I am working on coming up with some sort of schedule for myself on how to keep up this crazy whole foods mess when school starts. I think I'm going to have to start doing one major thing a night and going from there. I know every week I need to pack lunches (will have to be on Sunday night), prep breakfast stuff, make yogurt, meal plan, and fold laundry (I do it all throughout the week and lay it out as it comes out and fold it all at one time, normally on Thursday nights because the fabulous woman who deep cleans my house every two weeks so I can spend my Saturdays with my family comes every other Friday).

    I'm starting to get a little stressed about managing working full time + again while actually cooking and stuff because last year we did a whole lot of eating out or eating whatever you could find laying around. Luckily, I am blessed with a super helpful husband who doesn't mind riding the crazy train with me and helping me out with my crazy projects. At least I get a week to ease back into it by having a week full of training before I get my kiddos back, although I am definitely excited to get a routine back. It will 100% help with the weight loss since there will be no boredom eating and I run around like crazy with all of my little friends all day long, so it will be good :-) Jonah was asking today when he got to go back to school so he's excited too. I think we're all ready for routine.