Vacay Week!

Last week was SUCH A LAZY WEEK. Every night I came home from work and crashed...missed two nights of work outs, and ate frozen TJ's pizzas a few too many times. Now I'm even more thankful that I was planning to take this week off work, have a little personal stay-cation week in ol' Chitown.

I've got a look of cooking and baking to catch up on.
Last night I finally made these grilled fennel crusted pork chops. I wasn't the biggest fan of the carrot salad on the side, but pork/fennel is a beautiful combination. If you haven't tried it, please do! Just smash the fennel seeds a bit, crack 'em up, to release a little more flavor, and season your pork with salt, pepper, and the fennel. That's all it needs.

Today I'm catching up with this creamy chicken and spinach pasta I was supposed to make last week...woops.

In my free time, I'm hoping to work through a few dessert recipes. I have a giant  accordion file folder that I sort my recipes in after ripping them out of magazines, printing off line, and scribbling on napkins. Boyfriend doesn't believe it's actually organized, but I swear it is, by breakfast, lunch, dinner, sides, desserts, and etc. It weighs about 8 lbs. so I need to have a big baking spree and tackle a few desserts this week.

There are so many good dessert recipes out there, but who ever finds the time to make dessert? Definitely not during the week, that's for sure. We need more cookies in our life. ASAP.

I'm just home from teaching my 6AM spinning class, starting the week off right! Only other goals today would include taking 3 big bags of clothes to the donation center and starting this throw, or at least getting the supplies for it. And I have to finally finish 1Q84, the book I've been reading. I'm so close!