Quinoa Stir Fry!

I've been on this diet for almost 2 months now and every once in awhile I just crave something bad for me. Usually chocolate. But last week I wanted PF Changs. BADLY. So, from that craving, Quinoa Stir Fry was born. 

I don't mean to pat myself on the back here, but this is one of my best, dreamed up concoctions. It worked out exactly as I thought it would in my head. If you want a healthier take a stir fry, you've got to try it. 

Also, I have some optional ingredients listed. I don't eat eggs, so I left that out, and my snow peas had just gone bad (opps, forgot I had those). I marinated some chicken, which Chris grilled for me and he served his sliced (the pic below was his plate) and I diced mine and mixed it in. As a side, we had edamame, which I had to fight Brody for. We both have a slight addiction to that stuff. Yuuuum.

Quinoa Stir Fry!
Source: JennaBlogs.com
Serves: 4-6

2 cups quinoa, rinsed well
2 cups water
2 cups finely chopped and peeled carrots
3/4 cup chopped cilantro
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 Tablespoons finely chopped chives
1 teaspoon grated ginger
5 Tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
2 teaspoons sriracha
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil, DIVIDED

OPTIONAL: Grilled chicken breast, eggs, snow peas etc.

Directions:

Rinse quinoa well. This removes that waxy, nutty taste. Add quinoa and water to a pot. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Cook about 15-20 minutes, or until all the water is absorbed and quinoa is cooked through. Fluff with a fork. Set aside.

Mix soy sauce and sriracha together and set aside.

Add 1 Tablespoon oil to a skillet or wok. Add your carrots. Salt and pepper them, and cook over medium-high heat stirring frequently. Cook about 4 minutes and then add ginger and garlic. Cook 1-2 more minutes. Remove to a bowl and set aside. Heat remaining 1T of oil in the skillet/wok. Add your quinoa. Stir fry the quinoa for about 3-4 minutes, then add your carrot mixture back in. Cook another couple of minutes and then add in your soy sauce mixture. Cook another 1-2 minutes.

Remove from heat, and place quinoa in a bowl. Stir in your cilantro and chives.

Serve warm.

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Our Storm Shelter & Helping Heather

Before I get to the rest of this post, a twitter friend of mine named Heather and her husband and children lost everything to the tornado that hit Oklahoma. Thankfully, they are all physically okay and staying with her parents right now. If you feel led, some of the girls have put together a fund for Heather and her family. You can donate directly to them via the paypal link below.

Last night while all of the storms were rolling in, I tweeted a picture of our storm shelter. It's a bad iPhone pic and our power was out so all I had was the flash from my phone, but you can see it pretty well.

Anyway, so many of you tweeted me asking about it, so I thought I'd post more about it here.

This is the pic I'm referring to:

Before we built our new house, we decided to invest in a storm shelter. We saw these at a local home building show and loved that they are an above ground shelter. I'm not a rep for this company and they haven't asked me to write this post or anything, and hopefully I don't mess my facts up, but you can get all the accurate information by visiting THIS site.

From what I understand, our shelter is the only above ground FEMA certified storm shelter rated to withstand an F5 tornado. Most of the other ones are below ground shelters. We looked at those - you can have a portion of your garage dug up to hold one - but my concern was what if a car or something blew over top of it and locked you in? With our shelter, the door opens inward and overall, it feels safer and certainly less claustrophobic to me.

We actually unbolted it from the floor and moved it with us to our new home. By the way, this thing is heavy so it's not super easy to move, but it can be done. The shelter can support over 100,000 pounds stacked on top of it, and we feel really safe having it at our house.

They offer different sizes to accommodate what your family needs. Ours is a 4*6' unit. We keep water, flashlights, a first aid kit and other necessities in it. I had trouble getting a connection to my wifi and even to 4G while in it, but for whatever reason, I had just enough connection to be able to read twitter and know when it was safe to come out!

I realized that a lot of people didn't know about these shelters last night while we were tweeting during the storm, so I just wanted to mention them on here today. It's a great investment and it really offers our family peace of mind. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll do my best to answer them!

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Home Reveal, Part 2!

I hope you all enjoyed my first post! Downstairs, the colors are all very neutral, cool blue/grays. Upstairs, where the kids' bedrooms are, we went a little wild! Using the Color Visualizer by Sherwin-Williams, I was able to easily select the colors I wanted. I ran to the store and picked up sample sizes of all the paint colors I was interested in. I decided to go back for some additional colors, and all I had to do was call them in and then pick them up at the store 30 minutes later! It was such a hassle-free experience.

First up, this is Brayden's room. He is waaaay into construction stuff, so we decided to do an accent wall in June Day because it looks similar to the CAT construction equipment color. We used Colonnade Gray on the other three walls. We hired a painter to come in and paint their logo in the corner. Brayden flipped out when he saw it. His room makes him SO happy!

Brody is a huge football fan. This scares me a little because he's only two and super into it. What will he be like as a teen?! Ha! Obviously, his favorite team would have to be the Razorbacks, so we painted his room in Colonnade Gray with an accent wall of Stolen Kiss.

Last, but definitely not least, if you've been following my blog, you know we are hoping to adopt a baby girl. If you missed that, you can find my first post about our decision here. We've slowly been putting our nursery together and I'm excited to show a glimpse of it to you!

I love these two Sherwin-Williams colors together. This is Colonnade Gray along with Impatient Pink. A lot of the nurseries I've seen take the stripes in a horizontal pattern, but I'm a rule breaker. Below is her dressing room. To the left of the picture is her closet and behind me is her bathroom. This is a great space for when she is older to store all of her clothing and jewelry. Right now I have my mom's old dresser that I refinished in there with baby bedding and stuff in it. It's just a cool space - I totally would have wanted this when I was younger!

Once her room is fully put together, I'll share more pictures.

This concludes my home tour! I hope you were inspired by my paint selections!


For a chance to win a $100 Sherwin-Williams gift card, share in the comments below what room you would like to makeover in your home?

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