Butternut Squash Ravioli and Sage Cream Sauce

Back story: One of my favorite restaurant dishes is the Butternut Squash Ravioli at Cactus Club. That is saying something for this meat-loving girl! I remember I selected it from the menu because it looked like something I wouldn't typically make at home. From the butternut squash-stuffed ravioli to the truffle sauce to the pine nuts and sage leaf, it looked like a dish with which to be reckoned.

Present day: During our trip to Costco yesterday we noticed some tortellini was on sale. Sweet! While I compared some prices and tossed it in our cart, our son noticed some red-striped pasta. I noticed it was a butternut squash ravioli and after little deliberation decided to add it to the cart too. THAT is saying something for this don't-veer-from-the-shopping-list-unless-it-is-on-sale girl! Tonight I decided to tackle it.

I didn't necessarily want to copy my beloved meal, but I wanted to capture it's essence. Dramatic, eh? After a quick Google search, I was able to find a knock-off recipe of the sauce with at least a list of ingredients (for some reason many of the measurements weren't showing up on the site). The sauce at the Cactus Club is oil-based, and from the ingredient list it looked like truffle oil is a main ingredient. Well, I don't have that in my pantry. Someday I would like to cook with it, but today I stuck with what I had on hand. Here is what I did:

Sage Cream Sauce:

*the measurements are approximations since I did a lot of dumping and taste-testing

Melt:

1/4 cup butter 

Whisk in:

1 heaping Tbsp flour

Add:

1 1/2 to 2 cups cream

a splash of rice wine vinegar

a glug of white wine (I actually used red wine because it was on hand, but white wine is preferable.)

Stir until thickened.

Add:

1 tsp. ground sage, or to taste

Salt and pepper, to taste

I have to say, this sauce really added to the ravioli. The kids also loved the sauce and doused their chicken in it too :).

Welcome Julienne and the New Year!

After a few whirlwind months, I am getting back into some routine. I am also finally ready to blog about our latest little blessing: Julienne! She arrived just a few days after her due date. After a somewhat eventful labor, our beautiful girl entered the world. We are absolutely in love with her - especially her big brother. William loves to hold her and is the first to run to her if she starts to fuss. The love is mutual. No one can get the smiles out of her like he can. It is so fun to watch!

When Julienne was 18 days old I took her to have newborn photos taken by Angela at Angela Joy Photography. I love how they turned out! Here are a few of my faves:

Our family enjoyed a relaxing Christmas holiday and now I am energized and ready to tackle a long list of projects. The theme is purging. Purging clothes, unneeded decor, stuff that has been hanging around in the crawl space untouched and even food. Am I the only one who buys cereal expecting to never come close to the expiration date only to forget about it and realize that it is months past expiration?? It is sad, I know. My goal is to use up a significant chunk of our food stores, organize things more consistently, and do a better job of meal planning. I also would like to start keeping a list on the freezer of what is inside. I hope that way I'll have less freezer burn as well as avoid the panic of planning to make chicken and only having one piece left.

I love to organize, but I'm not always great about keeping things that way. I am the queen of taking on too much and then getting frustrated and letting it go down hill. A classic example: Last year when we started homeschooling, I spent several days in the summer planning out a schedule. I had schedules for each day of the week and included lessons, chores, outings, etc. I had lists for toy rotation and monthly projects. I even included a garden calendar I found online that had a schedule of outdoor chores. The whole nine yards. Well when you go from no schedule at all to having every hour of the day regulated, you're asking for failure.  Kudos to people out there who can, but it's not for me. It lasted about a week. I've learned to take baby steps and make my goals easy enough to accomplish. It if is too much work, I just don't keep up with it. Plus having little ones makes scheduling anything rather tricky. Julienne is a little miss bossy pants and tends to plan our days for us. It's a good thing she's cute :).

Leavenworth 2013

Every year my hubby's side of the family goes to Leavenworth for a mini family vacation where we go cross country skiing, downhill skiing and exchange gifts. This year was super fun because we had not only one but two babies there! Last year when we went I was only a couple months pregnant with Kaylyn and we had just celebrated Georgene and Jasons wedding a week earlier. Little did we know that we would be celebrating Christmas with their baby as well!

Kaylyn was passed out for a good chunk of the trip :)

Jeremy and Kaylyn cross country skiing. Kaylyn loved being to see everything. She kept on making her happy sounds and kicking her legs and flapping her arms. It was pretty cute!

Family pic!

All the Bouwman kids and grandkids. Morgan is somewhere under all the blankets in the sled lol 

Nate & Clarissa

Jeremy just taking a break

Getting ready to open gifts

We always play a game of some sort to make gift opening even more fun. This year we played Apples to Apples which was pretty entertaining :)

Our cross country skiing family pic

Georgene and her little man Morgan

Grams and Morgan

Jeremy modeling his new hat!

Kaylyn's favorite part of everyone opening gifts is that she gets to play with the paper! 

Kaylynn & Morgan sporting their new festive jammies from Gramps & Grams! 

Kaylyn's first Christmas ornament that we got in Leavenworth along with the ornament that Kaylyn helped make of her hand :)

Our family ornament/souvenir that we also got in Leavenworth. Growing up my family got a new ornament like this every time there was a new baby. I love things like that! I was also super stoked that when we bought this one from Kris Kringle they did the personalization for free!

Kaylyn 6 months old!

Our little wee babe is growing up! It is sad and happy at the same time. I wish I could just lock her at this age for about a year and then let her keep growing :) She is just such a happy baby! She rarely cries and when she does she is either ready for sleep or she is hungry. She has been saying da da a lot lately. Too bad shes doesn't actually mean Jeremy but we still think it's cute:) She also got two little bottom teethies a little over a week ago so that was really exciting. I noticed them at my side of the family's Christmas Party when she grabbed my finger and started chewing on it. I was obviously super surprised to feel something sharp in her mouth! I felt kinda bad afterwards because that whole day she was just a bit of a fussy pants. Not really crying a lot just being a little winy and not wanting to sleep a whole lot. I got her in trouble a couple times because I put her down to go do something and she would arch her back and scream. Ya I was not super impressed with that and she knew it too because she stopped after I got her in trouble :) Even though I want her to know she can't just scream like that I did feel bad because she was in pain. Poor little bug! Parenting is tough!

Here are a few photos from our Christmas Party! 

Kaylyn with Great Grandpa Haveman

Grandpa Bisschop, Kaylyn, Julienne, and Great Grandpa Haveman

Kaylyn attacking her present :) 

Of course the wrapping paper was the most exciting part! 

Jeremy being ... himself ha ha I love him :) 

I have no idea what was going on here but I think its pretty funny 

Kaylyn & Julienne with the Great Grandparents 

Cousin love! Kaylyn is 6 months and Julienne is 2 months <3 

My parents with all their grandkids!

We started Kaylyn on some rice cereal a little over a week ago as well. The first time was hilarious! I will try to link the YouTube video down below. The second day went okay but after that she would do good one day and the next she would get super ticked off! And she never gets ticked off so we weren't really sure what to do. Here comes another parenting dilemma! We don't want her being the boss or a picky eater but after a couple days of trying/fighting with her we figured something had to change. Thankfully we were over at our friends Steve & Jessica's the other night and she suggested just trying the oatmeal I bought instead since she had heard as well that some kids just didn't like the rice and I could always use it later to add to applesauce and what not. Well she was pretty much brilliant because last night I tired the oatmeal and she at almost the whole thing plus her 6oz bottle. Yay for Kaylyn! She was pretty proud of herself too :)

Fist Attempt

 

Second 

Third 

I also just found this one as well. I think she is about 3 months here:)

Little Kaylyn bug is also sitting up really well on her own. I kinda wonder if she could have done it a while ago and I just never tried it or thought to try it for that matter:) I think I just sat her up in her play pen about two weeks ago and she has only fallen over a couple times and that is with no back support or anything! Hmm little stinker:) She loves sitting on her own. She flaps her arms like a crazy bird and just yells da da really loud. lol Who needs other entertainment when you have Kaylyn around! When we lay her on the floor on her back she still scoots around on her head. Come to think of it I don't know if I have ever taken a video of her doing that. Well it is super hilarious to watch. It also explains why she has tons of hair on the top of her head and not so much on the back and sides :)

Here is a sneak peek picture my friend Angela Joy Photography sent me of Kaylyn's 6 month photos. I can't wait to see the rest! 

Back on Track!

So I decided to restart the whole 30 day shred. I start level 3 tomorrow! Today is my day off since it is Sunday and I am already scared for tomorrow. Ha ha! I watch level three last week after my level 2 workout while chugging tons of water:)  Boy does it look tough! I just wanted to fall over watching them doing jumping jacks and tons of the other "regular" exercises all while holding the weights! I have been trying to figure out if they are using 3 or 5lb weights. I looked it up and they are using 5lbs but they are also uber fit. I have been using my 5lb weights since day one and I have been pretty much been able to do all the exercises so far. In level 1 there was this one set towards the end that got me every time. I could do the first set fine but the second set I would have to put them down halfway through. I got stronger and stronger every day until I could hold them the whole time. Yay for progress! I have been taking my measurements every 10 days and yesterday I took them again to compare to after 10 days of level 1. And I lost about 1" everywhere! Ya buddy!

So I started that above bit last night and now I can say that I did level 3 today and I am still alive. Ha ha it actually wasn't near as bad as I thought is was going to be. The part in the end where you hold the weights the whole time wasn't even that bad! Yay my muscles must be getting stronger! The very last ab workout was really tough though. Not tiring but the actual pose was really hard to hold. I am going to have Jeremy watch that section of the workout tonight and then have him watch me do it to see what I am doing wrong. But other than that it was great! I didn't feel near as tired as when I finish level 2 though but I am guessing that is because today is only day 1 and it usually get harder and harder each day because you get the hang of how the move is supposed to feel and then you can push yourself harder to do the more advanced moves. Oh ya! I also did some of the modified moves for the exercises that really strain the knees and I had no knee pain afterwards! I just realized that I didn't mention the knee pain before. Ever since I started level 1 my knee pain has been getting worse and worse. It never hurts during the actual workout but afterwards and the rest of the day it starts to get painful. At first I just shrugged it off and I just thought that my knees need to get stronger but the other night the pain kept waking me up. Lame sauce! I really don't want to stop doing the workouts because I am totally on a roll. The first time I started the program I had to stop due to injuries and now since I started it all over again I have done it every single day except Sundays. So I did some research online last night and a lot of people say that is a very common problem that people have with the 30 day shred. Oh also a side note, I do all the workouts with bare feet. When I started the program the very first time I would get major arch pain. I went to Fairhaven Runners and Walkers last year and they helped me get really good shoes after I was having lots of arch pain from doing Zumba. When I went to Zumba, the pain and decreased significantly but when I started the 30 day shred it felt really bad again. I did read that a bunch of people do it bare foot as well. I thought that maybe using no shoes was also causing problems but today I just stuck with Anita for some of the moves and it went great! I am planning to do some knee strengthening exercises on the side to hopefully help as well. I don't know if doing hair factors in as well since I am standing a lot in one place and on a hard surface. Hmm, anybody reading this let me know what you think!

Update On Life

I am pretty bummed to say that my 30 day shred isn't going as I hoped it would:( I was going really good there for a while until I pulled a muscle in my arm. After day 5 it was pretty sore but I just figured that was normal and to just push through it the next day. Ya not such a great idea. After day 6 I could barely move it. Lame sauce!!! I was so stoked to carry out my plan to stay committed for 30 days straight! After a couple days I was able to do just my daily exercises and then about a week later I felt that it was healed and that I could start up again. Ya not so much. After that day I must have tweaked something in my side/back and then every day after that for about a week it got worse and worse. It was so weird! At this point I felt like I was 80 or something! I was definitely feeling pretty down. But I am still determined to do this! Except I feel like I need to start all over again because the point of the whole this is to do it in 30 days not just whenever my body decided to not be crazy:) I am messing with it enough because I don't do it on Sundays so I am already kinda cheating:) I did the workout last night and boy I could tell that I have missed a couple days! It felt super good though! Kaylyn enjoyed watching me jump around like a crazy person from her exercauser:)

As far as Kaylyn goes, she is doing super good! She is 5 months old now. I know! Crazy! I am thinking she is in full fledged teething mode now. She has been drooling like crazy lately! She had her self a nice little mote going on around her exercauser the other day. lol It was pretty gross :) Today she was pretty much crying all morning which is completely not her. Poor little thing. I ended up giving her some baby Tylenol and that seemed to help. I was hoping to bring her to visit Jeremy today at work but I think we are just going to stay home. And I just checked the border and it doesn't look to pretty either. Oh well! Jeremy has been wanting me to bring her in sometime so all the people at his work can see her again. They saw here when she was about a month and a half I believe so it has been a while:) I have been so busy with hair that it still hasn't work out. Such is life! 

I have been super busy doing hair and makeup these past couple months and it has been such a blessing! I really am loving being able to be a mommy and a wife and still be able to do what I love on the side. Some weeks I over book myself so I am trying to be more strict with my scheduling:) It is hard saying no to something you love to do but afterwards when I look at all the other things I am behind on reality checks in:) This week is another busy hair week and this Saturday I have a bride's hair and makeup to do so I am excited for that. I just love weddings!!! I have really been loving getting into more makeup as well. I have always loved doing makeup but I never really had the kind of clientele that would want a service like that. It is becoming a huge trend to get hair and makeup done for senior photos, graduation photos, engagement photos, etc... I am super thankful for my awesome clients who trust me to just play away with their hair and makeup, and give me feedback with what they like and don't like about it. Practice makes perfect! I should be getting my MAC cosmetics pro card in the mail any day now so I can't wait to get a couple things from my MAC wish list so I can try out some of the products on my clients! 

Well I need to go get some house work down while our little wee babe is sleeping. We are hosting appetizers this Friday night for our church's Dine & Dash and I need to plan out what I am going to make yet. I love doing Dine & Dash! I love that our church does it twice a year too. The organizers do a super awesome job with making it that at every house you are at there are people with all different ages so you get to know so many people that maybe you wouldn't always talk to on a regular basis. It is such a great way to get to know the people you see every Sunday a whole lot more! Shoot! I hear the little peanut waking up from her nap wayyy to early. Little stinker:) She just loves playing with mommy so much that's why....I keep telling myself that. lol

Jillian Michaels is my new frenimy

Well I have finally done it. I started the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred. Today is day 3 and I have many more days to go:) On September 1st I started doing 5 push-ups and 10 crunches, and then the next day I added one more to each set.  I added one more of each set every day until I hit 20 push-ups and 25 crunches. I did it Monday - Friday and sometimes I did it once in the morning and once at night and some days I did it on Saturday as well. After only day two of doing it I felt broken lol Jeremy just laughed at me as I crawled into bed that night. BUT it got easier and easier and I felt less sore everyday. By day 8 of doing the push-ups and crunches I felt like I wanted a bit more of a challenge and I also wanted to work other parts of my body as well. So I added squats and glute exercises which are also called the fire hydrant doggie style. ha ha They look absolutely ridiculous to do but you get a serious case of butt lock! You may laugh but you won't be laughing if you do it yourself. It hurts! So after day 8 I did the same number of reps for the push-ups and the glutes and then the same number of reps for the crunches and squats. It made it a lot easier to remember how many of each to do every day. I actually would take a little sticky note of how many of each I wanted to do and I just stuck it on the back of our couch so I could see it when I was doing my exercises. I ended up leaving it there so every day I would walk past and see it and it would remind me to do my exercises. At the end of each workout I would go to the office and cross off what I did on our calendar. I seriously feel so good taking my orange highlighter and cross off that bad boy!

Now that I feel like my body is getting somewhere I wanted to start the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred. I have seen lots of people do it and watched some success stories on YouTube. I love it because it is not one of those fads that you loose a ton of weight by hardly doing anything or going on some ridiculous diet that you will end up loosing all the weight and then gaining it all back if not more in the end. It is hard work but that is what it takes to get it off and to keep it off! I am only on day 3 and I can already tell that I am getting better and better. It is about 20-30 min of intense cardio and strength training. It is non stop. No breaks here people! It kinda reminds me of Zumba but a bit more hardcore:) I loved taking Zumba before I got pregnant with Kaylyn. I would go to Zumba class 1-2 a week for an hour. The month before I got pregnant I went twice a week for a month and I lost 10lbs! Yay buddy that's what I'm talking about!!! It was sooo much fun! It was definitely hard work too (depending on who was teaching the class:) I went on the days when the hard core chick was teaching.) After half an hour you felt like you were going to just pass out on the floor. But that hour went by pretty quickly. I didn't think I would like group fitness classes but all the people in the class were super nice and didn't make you feel like a dork when you had no clue what you are doing. The biggest thing that I kept telling myself  not only in class but also doing my workouts on my own in the gym, was that everyone has to start from the bottom. All those super fit people you see working out or the people that do every step in Zumba perfectly all started from the bottom. They couldn't do those things that they do now in the beginning. Instead of looking at them and thinking to myself, dude this is so out of your league you can't do what they are doing. I used them as my inspiration instead. If I was on the elliptical and someone was next to me going all hardcore it just pushed me even harder. Also watching the Biggest Loser helped a lot too:) This may sound kinda dumb but the Biggest Loser really got me started. I remember watching it in November of 2010. I had the flu and I was bored out of my tree so I was like hey why not watch it. (I know it is kinda weird to watch the Biggest Loser while you feel sick to your stomach. I don't really know what I was thinking lol) I have a bunch of clients that are always talking about it when I do their hair. Now I can be cool too and actually know what they are talking about:) So while I was watching these people I was like "seriously Andrea? If these people can do it you can definitely do it!" So every time when I was at the gym and I felt like stopping I would just remember them and keep pushing harder.

Wow that ended up a lot longer than I was planning :) Things just come into my head and my fingers just start flying away! Anyways, I hope that by posting this I will hold myself accountable and keep going. Having the visual of all the X's on my calendar really help me. I love to "see" the progress. I actually have a spreadsheet on my computer that I have been doing for the past year. Every month I would right down my weight and all my measurements so I could track my progress. Also when I went to Anytime Fitness their website had a system to track your calories that you are burning and what excercises you are dong every workout. I am a very visual learner so that really helped too. It also helps that now that I am not going to the gym anymore (because of our wee baby and of course the $ of a membership) Jeremy has been helping me a lot. He started doing the push ups and crunches with me in the beginning but that only lasted two days. lol He was really busy at work and he was pretty much working out all day so I cut him some slack. I do remind him of it from time to time just to bug him cause I love him so much:) Well hopefully my next update will be an even better one with even more progress! ( I did take before pictures. I don't think I am going to post them after the 30 days but you never know:) We will see how brave I am)