Hot Italian Sausage Red Beans and Rice

This has become one of our favorite dinners; it's so easy to make, and so incredibly good.

You need:
2TB olive oil

1 medium yellow onion

1 large clove garlic

2 medium green peppers

1lb hot italian sausage, or mild if you prefer. I buy the loose kind, uncased, but of course you can just slice up normal cased sausage, or buy the links and cut it out of the cases.

1 15-oz can red beans

1 cup long grain brown rice

1 15-oz can chicken broth

1/2 cup hot water

seasonings to taste (obviously not all are mandatory, and you can be creative. These are just what we have in the cabinet and what I generally use):

1TB salt

1TB black pepper

2tsp crushed red pepper

1TB dried basil

1TB dried oregano

1TB coriander

1tsp cumin (be careful with cumin- too much can really overpower anything)

1tsp dried mustard

1 bay leaf

What to do:

Roughly dice onion and garlic, and cube green peppers.

In large skillet, heat oil, then add onion and garlic, and saute on medium heat until brown, about 5 minutes. Add sausage, peppers and seasonings, and saute until meat is cooked thoroughly, about 10 minutes. Carefully drain excess fat.

Add beans, rice, broth and water, and bring to a light boil over medium heat, then cover tightly and reduce heat to low. Allow to simmer slowly for 45-55 minutes, stirring only once or twice during that period, until rice is tender and liquid is mostly cooked off.

Allow to sit, lightly covered, for 5 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

(PS- Don't forget to refrigerate the leftovers before you go to bed. It's even better the next day!)

Top 10 Fitness Tips

Because everyone loves a good top 10 list, right?

Fitness is a daunting challenge to many, but what's easy is gradually making small, simple changes in your daily routine.  Educating yourself is a vital part of tackling any new challenge, so this is a compilation of what I've learned are the most important steps to living a healthier lifestyle.  At least, they're what works for me.

In no particular order:

1.  Drink more water.  A huge portion of our caloric overindulgence is in beverage form.  Instead of spending your day going from coffee to soda to beer, drink water all day.  You'll be surprised by how much you didn't need that caffeine.  Make water your beverage of choice at lunch and/or dinner, and keep a bottle at your desk.  And drink more tea, hot as a replacement for coffee, iced instead of soda.  An iced tea/lemonade mix is something available at most soda fountains, and it's the most irresistible beverage on the planet.

Physical Fitness

(Yes, I realize the post below this one is a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, and I stand by it.  It's all about moderation, people.)

I ran on my high school's cross-country team, and I loved it.  It was the only sport in which I was even close to showing anything resembling natural skill, and I have nothing but fond memories of the smell of freshly cut grass that filled our lungs every practice and the familiar fatigue in my muscles and taste of sweat on my lips.

When I went to college I read the average 5k time of my school's cross-country team's members and never mustered the courage to show up at a practice, which was probably a mistake.  Luckily, George Mason also had a brand-spankin' new fitness center on campus, and the summer before my senior year I took classes and also took my butt in to work out 5 days a week.  I taught myself how to lift weights, diversify my exercise, and combine lifting and cardio activity to maximize my return.  My senior year was a very productive one for me in the gym.

For some stupid reason the summer after my senior year in college I started smoking.  Even more inexplicable is that I started by smoking Marlboro Lights, which shows a lack of both intellect and taste.  I ended up smoking a pack a day of the toastier Camel Lights for the next 9 1/2 years. Amazingly, I actually did have a gym membership for part of this time and did work out for about a year, but as soon as I moved further than a block from the gym the habit quickly died.

I do have smoking to thank for meeting my husband, as we first introduced ourselves over Camel Lights outside our jobs on Connecticut Avenue in Washington.  And it was Brett and I that tackled and conquered the mighty tobacco together 8 years later, in January 2009, married and living in Chicago, where a pack of Camel Lights now topped $9.

We were having a cigarette in the bathroom one night, as was our custom.  Hey, this was January in Chicago, and anyway at least we weren't just smoking in the living room like our parents did.  We were discussing how nasty smoking made us smell, and how much money we were spending, and how much we needed to quit, which was actually rare for us to be talking about.  And something made it just snap in my brain.  I don't even think I said it to Brett right then, but sitting in that bathroom sucking on that cancer stick, I made up my mind.

--

The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookies You've Ever Had In Your Life

I'm not joking.  Here we go:




Blue Ribbon Chocolate Chip Cookies


Here's what you need:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup shortening 
Of course you can just use 3/4 cup butter if you don't have any shortening, but shortening improves the consistency and makes them taste better.)


1 cup packed brown sugar (I use light brown.)
1/2 cup white sugar


1 TB vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk