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Good morning friends and Happy New Year!

This year is shaping up to be crazy so far.  I have many meetings (which I am excited about... that's weird...), several celebrations and weight loss.  I thought I would start on Monday but I kicked off the diet change pretty much yesterday and this morning.

For breakfast, while not greatly healthy, it was a step in a good direction.  I made a few pieces of bacon and cooked two eggs in the bacon grease.  No bread to soak up the yoke (dearly missed that part, nothing like sourdough toast and egg yoke).  This is kind of a Paleo thing and it was delicious.  Heh!  I ate at about 630am this morning.  It is now almost 9am and I am starting to feel tinges hunger pains.  I will ignore them for as long as I can.  I like to eat or do something with my mouth when I am bored (Phrasing boom!), so I will resist to help get over it.

My best friend, and cohort in crime, Jason, shared a chili recipe with me.  Eric, my love, and I decided to make it yesterday for dinner.  IT WAS AMAZING!  We went to Fry's to get the ingredients because I don't just have Cumin Powder sitting around.  While there, they were having an awesome sale on sirloin steaks; Buy 1 get 2 free.  How could I pass that up?  So I did not.  Eric picked out of awesome steaks. We were going to use ground beef in the chili, but since I had a ton of new steak, we opted for that instead.  Sauteed some onions, added some diced fire roasted tomatoes and a ton of seasonings and it was delicious.  It made enough for at least 3 more meals for 2 people.  You will find the recipe below.  Mind you, Eric and I took liberties with it.  This is how we cooked it, Jason did it a bit differently.  Heh!  I also accidentally bought 2 cans of kidney beans instead of 1 can of kidney and 1 can of pinto.  It was still good.  LOL!

Foods:
1 lb Ground Beef (I used two small/medium Sirloin steaks cut into cubes)
1 onion - chopped
2 cans of Fire Roasted Diced Red Tomatoes
1 can of Kidney Beans
1 can of Pinto Beans

Spices:
Salt
Pepper
Chipotle Chili Powder
Cumin Powder
Cajun Seasoning
Steak Rub (I used a Mesquite Steak rub since I already had it)

We sauteed the onions with the spices for a few minutes, then added the meat to brown it.  Once brown, we added the tomatoes, the drained and rinsed beans, covered, brought to a slight boil, then let it simmer for nearly 2 hours.  We tested about halfway though and added some additional seasonings as well as just before we took off to consume.  Let it cook for at least an hour.  The flavor is more rich and just darn good!  This is a slow carb meal and is delicious!

Several of the spices can be found with the Mexican food for MUCH cheaper.  They come in bag form instead of bottle but they worked out rather well.

For lunch today I am doing a salad with avocado, chicken and cucumbers (I thought I had tomatoes).  I made my own dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar and garlic salt, onion salt and garlic seasoning from the Ren Faire.  Jason suggested doing cottage cheese as a snack, which I will try in a bit and then chili for dinner.  Tomorrow is a long meeting day, and they are supplying food.  Doing sammiches so hopefully I can keep that a little healthy.

Have a good day all and take care!  <3  I hope your New Year brings love, happiness, luck and prosperity!