Seven things I learned

In Acc 255 I learned how to:

Start Building a business
Create a paypal Donate Button
Create products on CafePress
Find products on Clickbank
Create A sneeze Page
Create a recommendation blog
Write a How To Article
Create a Landing Page
Create a Link Post
Create a List Post
Review a top Blog
How to write a development plan

My favorite Chicago Eats

If you are an avid follower of my blog then you know that I am originally from Chicago and that I am very passionate about the variety of foods that city offers. If you are not an avid follower, no fear, here are some of my greatest blogs about Chicago food and restaurants along with my recommendations. I hope this is very useful to anyone who travels to Chicago and can’t decide on one restaurant in the sea of restaurants it has.

Check out http://foodloversdreamsunited.blogspot.com/2012/06/heaven-on-seven-windy-city-of-new.html it’s my blog and recommendation of a restaurant in downtown Chicago by the name of Heaven on Seven. It’s a New Orleans style restaurant by food and feel right in the middle of the Midwest. It is by far one of my favorite places to eat when I’m roaming in downtown Chicago.

Looking for a place to go with a group and eat until you can’t eat anymore and have food left over to take home then you definitely want to check out http://foodloversdreamsunited.blogspot.com/2012/07/chi-tung-chicago.html . This is an Asian Cuisine restaurant on the south side of Chicago and it has some pros and cons. Check out this blog post to see how I feel about it.

This restaurant can be found in California as well but since I’m a Chicago Girl it’s classified as a Chicago Restaurant in my book. Overall amazing food! Check out my blog about Portillos: http://foodloversdreamsunited.blogspot.com/2012/07/portillos.html

Looking for something to eat that fast and delicious while in Chicago? Check out these blog posts to find out my favorite fast food style restaurants to eat at while at home. http://foodloversdreamsunited.blogspot.com/2012/07/dillingers-restaurant.html

http://foodloversdreamsunited.blogspot.com/2012/07/chicago-mom-and-pop-restaurants.html

http://foodloversdreamsunited.blogspot.com/2012/07/sharks-fish-and-chicken-shack.html

Brownies Yummy!!!

In case you don’t follow our website or didn’t even know where our website is, I have shared one of my favorite recipes of all time. My mom taught me years ago how to make her delicious Turtle Brownies from scratch and I have decided that it is just too good of a recipe to not share with as many people as possible. So if you don’t follow our website have no fear, here is my mom’s secret to amazing brownies:

Step 1:

Add two (2) eggs to a large bowl and begin beating them at a low speed with a mixer.

Step 2:

Add your two (2) cups of sugar slowly into the eggs you are whipping. Continue whipping the mixer until it produces a white creamy consistency.

Step 3:

In a medium bowl combine your ½ cup of all purpose flour and your one (1) cup of cocoa powder.

Step 4:

Whisk or stir the cocoa and flour mixture by hand combining the ingredients and breaking up any lumps.

Step 5:

Gather 2 sticks of butter which is equal to one cup or you can substitute it for one cup of margarine.

Step 6:

Melt the butter.

Step 7:

Let the butter or margarine cool for no longer than a minute.

Step 8:

Put ½ cup of the butter into the egg and sugar mixture and mix for about 30 seconds.

Step 9:

Combine half of the flour and cocoa mixture into the other bowl. Mix until ingredients are mostly incorporated and add the second half (½) of the mixture.

Step 10:

Add in your other half cup of butter to the batter. Mix until batter is a nice smooth consistency.

Step 11:

Pour ½ of the batter greased pan

3 Meals a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Today I have actually eaten 3 meals, which is a serious rarity for me. For most of my life I have never eaten breakfast because my mom never cooked breakfast and it just rubbed off on me when I began taking care of myself. Not only this but in high school I would eat a very small lunch and then a large late dinner. Throughout my life, as you can tell, I have had some very bad eating habits and this didn’t change once I got to college. Once I got to college I found myself working three jobs while maintaining good grades on a full time class schedule. With this lifestyle my time was also occupied by homework from those classes, finding time to make out a monthly budget followed by tracking my expenses weekly to make sure I stay on track, and trying to have a social life. Because of all of this, I find myself only eating once a day, which is a large dinner usually after 8pm of unhealthy foods. This messed up my metabolism so bad that I managed to gain 40 pounds in 1 year and didn’t even notice. Lately I’ve been trying new dieting techniques and one of them was trying to condition my body into eating breakfast for sure and eventually eating 3 meals a day. Today I had a fruit smoothie and some almonds for breakfast, then a Jimmy John’s sandwich with a pickle for lunch, and I made Salmon Croquette for dinner. Not to mention that I ate all these meals before 7pm.

Diet Details

I am trying this new thing where I don’t eat beef at all and only eat pork once a month and it is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done as far as eating in my entire twenty one years of living. I couldn’t completely give up red meats because that’s where your body gets its zinc from. My protein comes from eggs so that’s not a major concern like some people would make it out to be. My favorite food has always been seafood, but throughout majority of my life I ate beef and pork and seafood was an occasional meal. However, my entire diet has flipped and seafood is my everyday meal and pork is on occasion. This has helped and hurt me so far. It has helped because I have noticed that my body digests food faster and that it’s easier to drop weight. However, I have been a lot more sluggish and having a lot less energy since. Seafood has also made my monthly food budget increase, which is a large factor in my everyday life as a college student. I put on all this extra weight my last two years of college because the most unhealthy, fattening foods are the cheapest and on a strict budget money trumps health many times. I have also had to budget time and seafood is one of those things that takes time to cook because it is so easy to overcook it. Overcooked seafood is disgusting to eat texturally and you can’t eat undercooked seafood without serious risks of sickness.

Diet buster

No matter how hard I try to stick to a regular diet there will always be those weaknesses that have me second guessing or cheating on it. For most people chocolate is their cheat. Others have the hardest time resisting things like coffee or beef or pork that isn't in their diet. For me, my weaknesses are chips and sweets. Everyone tells me that I can easily lose weight if I would stop eating so many sweets and drinking things with a lot of things with a lot of sugar. However, I have always had a weakness for ice cream. As I write this I am seriously considering going to cold stone creamery and getting my 3 ice cream concoction that I stumbled on because of this love for ice cream I have. Another weakness I have is fruit flavored juices, which contains a lot of juices in the syrups they are created from. I also have developed a weakness for baked goods lately, more specifically, cinnamon rolls and brownies. I am not a big chocolate or fudge fan but it’s something about a warm brownie that makes me melt. I have recently started eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast and now that I am trying to shake some of the bad foods that I eat, I had added one more challenge to the list. In order to try and prevent myself from eating these, I have found some substitutes that have fewer calories. Instead of ice cream, I have found these fat free, sugar free pudding packs by snack pack that are only 70 calories. I have really found a substitute for the bake goods but once I’m craving sweets I just eat cereal.

Carrot Fries YUM!

This is a snack that I have been eating since I was a kid and that I still eat to this day. I have shared this recipe with my nieces and nephews and they love it as well. It’s delicious and a crunchy, salty, and sweet treat that is also pretty healthy in comparison to most snacks.

Step 1:
Preheat your oven at 400°.
Step 2:
Rinse your carrots and peel until only the bare orange color is showing.
Step 3:
Cut the top and pointed tips of the carrots in an angle to create an angled-squared edge.
Step 4:
Cut each carrot in half length wise, and then cut the halves in half length wise to create quarters, if pretty long cut the quarters in half width wise on an angle to produce pieces that resemble the shape and length of the fries at the major fast food restaurants.
Step 5:
In a bowl, combine the olive oil, salt, and pepper and stir.
Step 6:
Add the “fries” to the mixture and toss with hands, covers the fries evenly with the mixture.
Step 7:
Place the fries on a lightly greased metal cookie sheet. Spread out as much as possible to ensure crispiness
Step 8:
Bake fries at 400° for 15 minutes on the first side then flip them and bake for another 7-8 minutes. Make sure to check on them periodically to make sure they are not burning.
Take the fries out and serve hot. Taste one and add salt if necessary.