1. I read an article in the New York Times over the weekend that made me kind of sad. Had ‘Organic’ Been Oversized? talks about how many of the small organic companies that I love have been bought out by big conglomerates and how the organic label on our foods is slowly but surely being tainted. Very interesting read!

2. I am in love with my new Camelbak Groove bottle. It is the best of both worlds – Camelbak and filtration bottle.

3. I am addicted to RealBeanz Iced Coffee made with Coconut Water. If you can find the stuff try it! Not only do you get the pick me up of the caffeine, you don’t get as dehydrated as you would with traditional coffee thanks to the Coconut Water. I’m enjoying coconut water..who am I? I used to think I hate the stuff!

4. I am no longer a strickly solo runner! I went for a run with Tommy and his brother today and it was a lot of fun. We ran to a nearby park and used the grown up jungle gym to do pushups, dips and pullups…or in my case make a fool of myself attempting them. Tons of fun, either way!

5. I am getting a home gym! Tommy’s parents just finished moving out of their old house and since the boys aren’t living at home, this baby was going to get trashed until I stepped in to offer it a good home. We’re picking it up this week and I am SO excited!And not to mention perfect timing. The weights I bought a few months back were starting to feel a bit to light to me lately during my arm workouts!

6. Crossfit won’t be happening for another two weeks. I am so bummed, but the Foundations classes we have to take before starting WODs have been filling up like nuts. We’re on the wait list for next week, so here’s to hoping some people drop out!

7. I need to invest in a cute little notebook to start writing blog things down. I swear, I had much more to share, but I am blanking right now!

Share some news – what are your Tuesday Things?

The post Tuesday Things appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

I was supposed to meet with on of our clients and his lawyer to talk about prepping him for trial, but instead we were that we would be meeting with the other side to negotiate a settlement. Talk about making an already stressful event, even more stressful! Luckily, everything went off without a hitch, except for the part where I got a ticket – my first ticket ever! A copped pulled me over for making an illegal turn that wasn’t actually illegal. You can bet that I’m going to fight it – I know I’m right! And not to mention that the cop was a total jerk and wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. I found that kind of rude.

Anywho, I have no eats to share because I basically ate nothing yesterday. I had some cereal for breakfast and packed a lunch, but I left it in the office and never got to go back to the office before having to go to school for my midterm. On my way to school I grabbed a bagel from the corner deli where pickins are very slim. I also bought an iced coffee when I got to school which I proceeded to spill all over the floor two minutes before the test started. I was a hot mess yesterday!

After my midterm, I was ready to shut off my brain so I decided to read some articles and see what I had missed after my day. I found an article in the New York Times Fitness and Nutrition section that put a big smile on my face. Dessert At Breakfast May Help Dieters! Basically there was a study in which 144 obese people, ages 20 to 65, were put on  low-carb and low calorie diets. The only difference between the two groups was that one group was allowed to eat dessert for breakfast – cookies, cake, ice cream. Get this..the dessert group lost 13 more pounds on average than the control group.

So instead of this….

maybe I’ll start my days with this from now on!

Probably not!

Even though the article was interesting, it comes down to the fact that you cannot deprive yourself of anything because it will not work out well in the end. Now pass me a cupcake!

Have a great Thursday!

Have you ever gotten a ticket? Dessert for breakfast – yay or nay?

The post My First Ticket appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

I didn’t have anything spectacular in the eats department yesterday, so I figured instead of boring you to death with pictures of leftovers with a side salad, I’d do this fun, little survey that Hope from With A Side of Hope tagged me to do.

• You must post these rules.
• Each person must post 11 things about themselves on their blog.
• Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.

11 Things About Moi:

1. I’m an only child, or lonely child as I always called it when I was a kid.
2. I collect shot glasses. I have two shoe boxes full of them from all different places around the world.  It always comes in handy during parties because everyone picks a different glass and sticks to it.
3. I don’t have a favorite food, I just love so many different things that it would be so hard to choose just one!
4. I’m shy around people I don’t know too well, but once I open up, you won’t be able to keep my mouth shut.
5. I am a cougar, or so I am told by my boyfriend because I am a year and 4 months older than him.
6. I took dance classes for most of my childhood which resulted in some ridiculous pictures in my house.
7. I have no short term memory. I lose my phone and keys at least 20 times a day and freak out about it. At least I don’t lose Munchkin!
8. I used to wear glasses. After two years, I got my eyes rechecked and was told I don’t need them anymore.
9. I’ve lived in the same house since I was a year old.
10. I am a total makeup junkie. I could spend hours at Sephora and MAC.
11. Most of my family lives in Poland and I used to spend my summers there. I miss going there soo much! We’re a pretty awesome bunch!

Hope’s 11 Questions:

1. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why? Tough question! There are so many placed in the world that I’d like to visit. If I had to choose, I’d like to go someplace tropical and exotic like Bora Bora.

2. In 5 years I’ll be… done with school, hopefully married with a good job.
3. Coffee or tea? Coffee. I don’t know how I’d survive without the stuff!
4. Celebrity crush? Hmmm.. I’m not really big into celebrities, but Ryan Gosling is awfully pretty. Just not in that horrible movie, Drive.
5. Accomplishment you’re most proud of? Being a mom. A lot of people doubted that I would be a good mom because I got pregnant at a young age, but I can proudly say they are eating their words. 6. Favorite food or restaurant? I really don’t have one. Sushi, Mexican and Thai are my top three though.
7. What is your guilty pleasure? Really bad reality shows. The more pointless, the better. I may or may not be watching Jersey Shore as I type.

8. Tell something you can find in your purse at any given moment.. Lip gloss/chapstick. Sometimes I think I have a problem because I’ll have 5 kinds of gloss and chapstick, but forget to bring a pen to write with in school.
9. Favorite Disney movie? Beauty and the Beast. I’ve seen it a million times!10. Favorite meal of the day? Breakfast!
11. What language do you wish you spoke? I’m already bilingual, but I’ve always wanted to learn to speak French. So far, my knowledge doesn’t go much farther than croissant.

My 11 Questions:

1. What was your first job?
2. What’s the best place you’ve traveled to?
3. What’s your favorite color?
4. What’s your most prized possession?
5. When’s the last time you danced?
6. What time do you wake up in the morning?
7. PC or Mac?
8. Share your favorite recipe.
9. What’s the last thing you bought?
10. How did you come up with the name of your blog?
11. What’s your first memory from childhood?

Tag – You’re It!

• Kim @ Eat, Live, and Blog
• Corrie Ann
• Lena @ Fit on the Rocks
• Shari @ Shari Speaks
• Jessica @ What Would Jessica Eat?
• Madeline @ Food, Fitness, and Family
• Natalie @ Will Jog For Food
• Jessica @ Sushi & Sit Ups
• Olivia @ Peanut Butter Nerd
• Ema @ Ema’s Grand Ideas
• Marie @ Everyday Mie

Have a great Friday and weekend!

When’s the last time you danced? What was your first job?

The post 11 Things! appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

When I wake up to a cold, rainy day all my belly wants is some warm, gooey, comfort food. After perusing my fridge and pantry, I discovered that I  had everything I needed to make lasagna. Lasagna is a food that my mom would make when I was a kid, and once again, I don’t know where she got the recipe from because this isn’t exactly a traditional Polish food.

I love the idea of hiding veggies in foods that are typically considered not too great for you, and that’s what I do with my lasagna. Instead of using a whole box of lasagna noodles, I use half and swap in zucchini slices in some layers in place of the noodles.

Lasagna

• 1 pound ground turkey
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 box lasagna whole wheat lasagna noodles
• 1 large or 2 medium zucchini
• 1 pound shredded mozzarella cheese
• 15 oz container ricotta cheese
• 1 jar spaghetti sauce

Preheat over to 400 degrees. In a large pot, salt water and bring to a boil, add noodles and boil until al dente. In a skillet, brown the ground turkey. When the turkey is browned, add three tablespoons of spaghetti sauce, salt, pepper and oregano. Slice the zucchini lengthwise into long strips resembling the lasagna noodles.  Drain the noodles. In a large pan start the layering process with a base layer of noodles. Top with 1/4 turkey, cheeses and sauce. Alternate zucchini slices and noodles between the layers. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake for on hour.

While lasagna doesn’t photograph very well, it tastes amazing. The zucchini bakes up and it almost indistinguishable from the noodles.

I wanted to share an article that I stumbled upon yesterday about the Octomom. If you remember, the Octomom is the lady who gave birth to octuptlets a few years ago, while already having six older kids. This article talks about how she is disgusted her children and wishes she had never had them because she can’t control and discipline them.

Reading the article made me really sad, because she went out of her way to have all these children as a single mother and now she can’t control them.  The poor kids never asked to be brought into this world and now will know for the rest of their lives that their mother wishes she never had them.  I also feel like she brought them into the world for media attention and her plan of become famous backfired and now she’s miserable. I’ve seen her in TV interviews before and she seems like she’s not all there. I hope she gets the help she needs for her own sake, and the sake of her kids.

I gotta run now, I’m going to Sears to pick up my new dishwasher! I’ve been dishwasherless for almost two months since our old one broke.

Have a great Thursday!

What’s your favorite comfort food? How do you incorporate veggies into otherwise, not so healthy recipes? What do you think of the octomom’s comments about her children?

The post Cold Weather Comfort Food appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

When I was at Trader Joe’s on Tuesday, I bought baby beets to add to my salads because I have recently discovered my love for beets. These babies gave my otherwise plain salads a bit of a kick.

After my salad, I headed to school, which is where my day took an interesting turn.  I had been keeping track of what has been going on with the Occupy Wall Street protests since they began, but a friend and I decided to take a trip down there to see what was going on.  Wednesday’s protest was supposed to be the biggest one yet, because various labor unions were joining in.

Occupy Wall Street protests started on September 17, with about 1,000 protesters marching through the streets of New York proclaiming that they are the 99% that will not longer tolerate the 1%. That regular Americans should not have to struggle to make ends meet when there is so much greed and corruption going on, on Wall Street, in our financial sector and in the government.

While I think their message is spot on with what is going on in our country, I’ve come to see, firsthand, that some of the actions being taken to spread this message are not that great.

When we got downtown, the police presence was overwhelming.  I’ve been to plenty of outdoor events in New York City, but I have never seen so many police officers, in one place, at one time.

The protesters were contained to the sidewalks of Broadway, with barricades keeping them off the street to allow traffic to get by.

The closer to Wall Street we got, the vibe of the protest began to change.  The protesters closer to City Hall Park seemed fairly calm, carrying their signs, but the people at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway were a whole different story.

People had climbed up on the scaffolding and were pretty much taunting the cops with their chants.  They were also trying to get onto Wall Street, whose entrance had been barricaded shut with cops manning both sides of the barricades.

Since you could feel the tension building in the air, we decided not to stay and made our way out of there and onto the subway.  When I got home, I immediately got on my computer to see what was going on, only to find that in the place where I had stood not half an hour earlier, the police and protesters came to blows when protesting started rushing the barricades.

Honestly, I am a little disappointed.  If you follow the #occupywallstreet hash tag on Twitter, you see people calling for peaceful protest, which is something, I feel, they failed at today. Don’t get me wrong, the vast majority of people is protesting peacefully, but there are small groups that I feel are ruining it for everyone.  The media only shows the negative parts, which turns people off from the movement.

And those are just my two cents about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Have a great Thursday! Only one day until the weekend!

What are your thoughts on the occupy Wall Street movement?

The post Occupy Wall Street : An Observation appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

• 16 ounces fresh wide, flat rice noodles
• 2 chicken breasts, sliced thinly
• 2 cups broccoli
• 2 eggs
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 4 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 4 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• bean sprouts

After dinner, I took my boys to get haircuts, but since the right barber wasn’t there we decided to pass and get Starbucks instead.  I had a Caramel Frappacino Light and Tommy had an Iced Caramel Latte, both yummy as usual. 


Like most of the country, we got to talking about the Casey Anthony verdict and we were both shocked by the outcome of the case.  I understand the way the legal system works and that the prosecution may have gotten a bit overzealous with the charge that would have given her the death penalty, but having her get off probably with serving little to no jail time makes me sick.  All the signs pointed to the fact she did it and no normal mother would go out, party and get tattoos if their child went missing.  I know when I lose sight of Alex for two minutes at the park, I start getting panicky, I can’t imagine what I would be going through if he was gone for 30 days.  It really saddens me that she got off pretty much scott free, and she looked shocked herself when the verdict was read.

After the verdict was read I went on Twitter to express my own anger and see what others were saying about it and something that stood out in my head was a tweet that said that Michael Vick got two years in prison for animal abuse, but Casey Anthony gets to go home after killing her daughter.  This verdict really has me torn.  As a law student, I want to believe in the American legal and justice system, but verdicts like this make me skeptical as to whether it really works well.  

What do you think about the Casey Anthony trial outcome?

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The NYS Senate passed the bill making New York the sixth state to allow gay marriage.  Hopefully, one day, equality will be the norm and not the exception.

The post AS OF TODAY appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

 I think her defense really screwed her over by trying the blame her behavior on her father and brother sexually abusing her as a child.  In a different situation, the jury would probably pity her for the things she had to endure, but when they see the big brown eyes of Kaylee, I think all that kind of goes out the window.  And I think they must have known her father would deny it while on the stand, so what was the point of it? I want to know your thoughts on the trial. Have you been watching? Do you think Casey Anthony did it or do you believe the drowning story?

On a lighter note, yesterday was a pretty uneventful day in the Munchkin household.  The weather was pretty gross and it was raining on and off for most of the day, so we didn’t venture out farther than the backyard. 

Breakfast was a mixed cereal bowl.  I mixed Special K Red Berries and Special K Granola with blueberries and some milk.  The Special K is nowhere as good as the Kashi, but it only occurred to me recently that all the Kashi cereals are in the organic aisle of the supermarket and not in the regular cereal aisle, which is why I haven’t been able to find them. 

For lunch I ate some Sorrel Soup that my dad made.  I’m not a huge fan, but my father cooks himself a huge pot of soup at least twice a week and pretty much lives off of it.  I think its a Polish man thing because my grandfather used to do the same.

For dinner I took a shortcut and cooked up some ravioli for myself.  It was pretty good, but I think the ravioli was a little too wet when I added the sauce in because it became a little too soupy.

After dinner I dropped my mom off at the salon because she was in desperate need to get her hair did, just like I am and I got a  Dunkin Donut’s Frozen Hot Chocolate on my way home.  As I pulled up into the drive through I had a mental debate with myself about if I should get my usual iced coffee or go for the hot chocolate.  I was unpleasantly surprised, to say the least. The first couple of sips were okay, but it was just too sweet and didn’t really taste like hot chocolate at all.  I ended up spilling it out when I got home because I couldn’t drink it.

I was going to go for a run now, but apparently there is a serve thunderstorm and possible tornado heading my way.  This crazy weather needs to get the heck out of the area! Hope its tornado-less in your neck of the woods.  Happy Thursday!

The post Casey Anthony and an otherwise Uneventful Day appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

 With obesity rates rising like crazy in America it makes me sad that parents don’t try to instill better eating habits in their kids, especially since Wawa has a lot of healthy snack options like precut veggies with dip, fruit salad and my personal favorite cheese sticks. I know I’m not supposed to judge other people’s parenting choices but I sincerely feel bad for the kids who will one day have a tough time changing their unhealthy eating habits or will carry them through to their adult lives.

I’m a big fan of Jamie Oliver and I really like the changes he is trying to make with his Food Revolution.  I know some of the show is exaggerated to make good TV, but I think his efforts are really making a  difference.

The LA United School District just removed flavored milk from the cafeterias of all the school in Los Angeles county partially due to Jamie Oliver’s efforts.  Little things like that will remove thousands of calories and grams of sugar out of the diets of children in a district where over 30% are obese or on the verge of diabetes.

The smallest changes in a person’s diet can make a huge difference in the long run, and most times these changes so unnoticed by kids. If every school district were to follow in the footsteps of the LAUSD, the United States could take a step in the right direction in ending childhood obesity.

The post Taking a Step in the Right Direction appeared first on Frolic Through Life.

I also recently watched the documentary Food Inc., which shows where food in the United States comes from and how animals are raised for slaughter.  The documentary combined with the Dirty Dozen list kind of makes me want to become an organic farmer and grow my own food.  There are so many different chemicals that we put in our bodies without even knowing because they are not required to be put on the ingredient labels by the USDA.  For example, low grade hamburger meat is put through a treatment process where it is cleaned with ammonia to kill any bacteria that might be in it.  While it is good and nice that the bacteria won’t be in the food, I’m more worried about the effect that ingesting ammonia will have on a person.  I don’t want to discourage anyone from eating, but I really think we need to rethink the way our food is produced. I also highly recommend the documentary to everyone and if anyone has any books or movies about this topic please send the titles my way because it is something I really want to learn more about.

Now I will get off my soap box and get back to packing.  We are going to Philly for the rest of the week/weekend because my boyfriend is finally coming back from Poland tomorrow!

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