Wedding Wednesday! - I'm on the move!

via Sister's Pinterest

As the countdown to the wedding continues, I am beginning to get the fitness and "slenderize" bug.  Like most brides out there, I want to look and feel the best I can on my wedding day.   With 5 1/2 months til the wedding (crazy!) I have become proactive to to reach this goal by becoming more active and making better food decisions.  

Become More Active: It has been a while since I last purchased a pair of shoes that had laces or required socks, so it's more than an understatement to say that getting a new pair of shoes was a MUST.  To be honest, buying running shoes isn't quite as fun as buying a pair of heels, but I felt a tinge of pride knowing I was on my way to getting into shape.

 With a friend, my new shoes and I have officially taken the first few steps to reaching my fitness and "wedding body"goal.  So far we have only gone walking a couple of times (4 1/2 miles each time!), but unlike Zoomba, I think my afternoon walks will be a fitness regimen I will stick with.  :)

Make Good Food Decisions:  I know that in order to reach their wedding body goal some people will cleanse and other try fad diets, but I have taken a different (more realistic) approach: I don't deprive myself of anything, but just make better choices.  

What exactly do I mean by this?  

I still love to eat onion rings, cupcakes, and pasta, but as often as possible, I just try to make healthy choices so that I don't feel guilty when I do want to splurge. 

What are a few of my healthy food choices?

Well, I try to eat breakfast everyday, and choose fat free yogurt with fruit over pastries.  When deciding what to get eat for lunch, I often (not always) choose salad rather than a burger or if I do choose the burger, I opt for a salad rather than french fries.  When getting snackie in the afternoon, I try my best avoid the office candy jar by choosing a high fiber cereal or granola.  And, when going out to eat, I try to portion out my food so I don't eat 2 or 3 servings of food.  These changes have not been easy but so far so good.  

Strawberry Pie!

The Mister strained his back at work the other week so I decided I'd bake him a pie to make things a little better (and to eliminate another item from my Thirty Before 30).   I baked a fresh strawberry pie (with help from my favorite sous chef, the Mister) using Ina Garten's "Perfect Pie Crust" and a strawberry pie recipe I found on allrecipes.com.  

Ingredients (crust):

12 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt 

1 tablespoon sugar

1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening

6 to 8 tablespoons (about 1/2 cup) ice water

 We rolled the dough using my newest kitchen gadget, my French rolling pin!

 The rolled dough was rolled over the pie pan and fitted.

 I tried to make the crust pretty, like the pre-made crusts I usually buy from the store.

 I poked some air holes to let the crust breathe while baking.

We didn't have pie weights so I filled the foil lined crust with the glass beads we usually use for our flower vases.

The Barefoot Contessa pie crust recipe isn't written for blind baking so I followed the baking instructions I found for another pie crust recipe:

Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes 

Bake the crust at 400 degrees for 15 minutes

Remove from the oven 

Lower the oven temperature to 350, and bake for an additional 8-10 minutes (I ended up baking the crust for about 15 minutes)

While the crust was chilling, baking, and chilling again we worked on the pie filling.

Ingredients:

1 quart fresh strawberries

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch 

3/4 cup water

 Placed half of the strawberries into the cooled pie crust.

 We put the other half of the strawberries in a food processor and placed it in a saucepan with the other ingredients.  I decided to add a gelatin mixture (1 1/2 teaspoon and 3 tablespoon iced water) to the saucepan so the finished pie would be easier to cut, hold its shape, and the wouldn't be a big mess in the pan when just a couple pieces are left.

Voila!
Unfortunately we had to wait a few hours for the pie to set and cool.  It was beyond delish!

 I only have one pie pan so we had to think of what to do with the extra pie crust dough... we made an A&G creation: "pie snackers!" The Mister rolled the dough and cut them into circles, then we buttered them lightly and filled them with some goodies from around the kitchen: blackberries, strawberries, bananas, dark chocolate, Reese's peanut butter cups, and a cinnamon sugar mix.

 Yum yum yum!