Lean and Green Meals!

Cody and I have been trying to incorporate veggies into our meals along with lower calorie options. So I have been on a journey to create lean and green meals for week day dinners!


Cucumber Sandwiches

For the first meal you slice full cucumbers down the middle long way (or hot dog style) and scrape out the insides with a spoon or melon scooper to make hollow halves. 

Fill the insides with what you would a normal sandwich such as guacamole, ranch, deli meat, cheese, olives, spinach, tomatoes, etc. Place the other half of the cucumber on top for the other half of the "bread". 

This is a super low calorie "sandwich" option that is extremely tasty and easy to make! 

*Pro trip: hollow out the cucumbers really well so you can chew each bite well. If the walls are a little on the thicker side, it's difficult to eat.*

Mini Dessert:

For a mini dessert, take a mini oreo and fill it with a little bit of cookie dough, some red velvet dessert hummus (found at Publix), and some peanut butter! Delicious! 

Cucumber "Sushi"

Next on our list is cucumber sushi! (there is no fish in cucumber sushi). To make this fish-free sushi meal, take cucumbers and slice them in very thin strips on a mandolin (not the musical instrument). Then lay any type of meat such as pulled pork on the strips along with any filling of your choice such as ranch, olives, pickles, shredded cheese, etc. Roll each of the strips up and stick a toothpick through them to keep their roll shape. Voila, we are done!! This is Cody's favorite! 

Mini Dessert:

Take mini Nilla wafers and spray cool whip in between for a nice bite!

Zucchini Noodle Scramble

Our final lean and green meal is zucchini noodles (in the frozen veggie section at Walmart) cooked like pasta and crumbled up meatloaf (made with steel cut oats instead of breadcrumbs, Cody's recipe) and a squirt of Simply Heinz ketchup on top! This could also be made with just ground beef or ground turkey also! This is probably my favorite of the meals!

I hope this has inspired you to also try some lean and green meals! It's easy to escape the healthy eating route without realizing it. Luckily these meals are super easy to make and delicious if I don't say so myself;).

Love,

Kayla Raborn

4/27/19

O&W Game and Easter!

It's that time of year again!!!! FOOTBALLLL TIME IN TENNNNNNESSSSEEEEEE!!!!

The Orange and White game has come and gone. We have so much fun when dad comes to visit! I love that we all have a common interest we can share together. 

We arrived Friday night and all picked dad up from the airport. We went home, told stories, ate candy and went to bed at 1am. 

The next morning we ate a huge feast Nana prepared for us and headed to the Orange and White game! We got a nice close, free spot and saw the warm ups at 4:30pm. The game unfortunately started at 6pm. Luckily we had great weather and had a blast; the game was 4 quarters with tv timeouts so it was lengthy but we still got out in time for Blaze pizza at 9pm. 

Morgan's custom pizza.

Cody's custom pizza.

My veggie custom pizza, of course.

After Blaze, we re-watched the game super analyzing every play and went to bed at 2am after visiting with each other. 

Sunday we woke up early, went to church, and ate a delicious Mexican meal Nana cooked.

Of course following tradition, Morgan and I got our famous picture in front of the gorgeous flower bush in front of Nana's house. For some reason we look more tan this year, that is a mistake because we aren't haha. The only thing different is our hair is longer!

My beautiful sister!

She snapped this pretty picture of me!

After lunch all of us including cousin Nathan ran out and grabbed the new recipe Butterfinger and the original and did a blind taste test below.

The original was on the top and the new recipe is on the bottom. You can already visibly see the original recipe is much more crumbly, different color, poorer quality chocolate, and a little thinner. Taste wise, the new recipe at the bottom sticks to your teeth less, has a richer toffee taste, a wonderful lingering after taste, and a deeper peanut butter flavor. The new recipe won out of 3/5 people. What a fun experiment! Do this with your family while the original recipes are still out! Which is your favorite?

We finished the day playing dominos. I won two out of the three games and I never win!!! We probably had some of the best fun doing this just talking together.

It was difficult to leave Knoxville and dad but it helped knowing he will be back in 6 weeks for Morgan's wedding!

On the way out Cody and I swung by and got some boba rose tea! So amazing! I am obsessed with boba/bubble tea right now!

............................
The next weekend (the day before Easter), Cody's sister-in-law and oldest brother had their gender reveal party for their second child. I had bet all of of my proverbial money on it being a girl but see below if I am right.



The kick says it all, I was dead wrong and Travis and Amy are all-boy parents to two little boys. Kaden was ecstatic. 


After the whiplash of being so wrong we all cheerfully congratulated Travis and Amy. Little ones are such a blessing!

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Easter
......................

One of my favorite things to do is decorate my house for Easter and Christmas. I feel like I am decorating in celebration for our Savior.

I of course have to brag on this new Easter decor mom got for me. This is so out of character for her but so fitting for me, a 'pooping' duck! When you press it down, it poops a candy piece and quacks! I was so surprised when I opened this, mom rocks!!!!!! This will be on my counter every Easter for the rest of my life! :):)

I thought this plush fluffy bunny was the epitome of precious, but I love stuffed animals. I wanted to order this from Altar'd State so bad but it was sold out unfortunately. Maybe next year!

This random picture of this little girl kissing her bunnies just made my heart melt. 

Easter morning was so special, me and Cody's bond lately has been really really great so every day right now is magical. Also there is something special celebrating our living Savior with your spouse.

*We have found some things that improve our life lately that I will expand upon that in another post but we have gotten some health related answers and help (we are more than ok, will explain later) so life is good.  

I finally got to wear this cute Easter outfit that you saw from my previous post 2 blog posts back form Altar'd State. It was so comfy and cute:). 

It was such an absolutely beautiful day! Perfect day to celebrate our risen Savior!

Ok guys, so what color color are my eyes here? My eyes change between green, blue, and grey. 

Of course we couldn't have Easter without Easter donuts! Cody's idea and I was all for it! 

After church we picked up Buffalo Wild wings and took them to Cody's parents house to spend the day, eat with them, grade Cody's papers, and fellowship. It was beyond a perfect day!

Happy Easter 2019!!!!!!!

With so much love,

Kayla Raborn

4/21/19 

Life Update!

Life Update

Hey everyone! I just wanted to catch you up on what is going on in the Raborn house in this beautiful month of March/April!!

The sun was so incredibly bright. 

So at work I just hit my 2 year anniversary!! I am so incredibly excited and can't believe it has already been 2 years! We are also in the process of lots of changes and product, line, office, and lab additions within these next two years. It is all very exciting but filled with lots of changes!  So just the other day I had to move everything out of my office to temporarily move to the plant down the street. This will be for the next 10 months until they have our new offices ready. They will be cubicle style so it will be interesting. 

Moving day outfit!

Completely empty office. It is actually kind of sad. But I won't be sad about not having any black mold or rats! Whew. 

What a great time to be at Shaw!

Of course the typical *classy* bathroom selfie at work. My office is my car now for the next 10 months so I am everywhere around the company! (Dalton, Cartersville, Ringgold).

You know they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day...especially before work but I don't even know what to say about these cereals. They are just odd. So incredibly odd. I am happy with Cody's creativity but on this one I may just let him eat these.

So in honor of mom's birthday on March 18th, we went up to Kingsport TN to visit Morgan and celebrate mom! Sasha was packed up ready to go!

We arrived late at night after work so once we arrived we fell asleep pretty quickly. The next morning we didn't waste time and got right to work. I got into wedding planning mode and we knocked out 3.5 hours of intense wedding planning! Morgan's wedding is 2.5 months away, time is ticking!!

We then explored some of the surrounding areas and park of what Kingsport has to offer. We found this gorgeous dog/walking park and explored!

Tres amigas!

Morgan took this snapshot!

We then went to the mall, and headed back to her apartment. We made cupcakes, chatted, and admired Morgan's decorations around her little place. It's so odd to see her so grown up! I miss her so much!

The next weekend Mom and Morgan came to visit me in Chattanooga! (and with Sasha of course!) Look at my beautiful mama!

Our sweet Sashie

I taught her how to walk respectfully next to me instead of pulling and dragging constantly. We made small progress!

The next day mom and Sasha had to go home but me, Morgan, Edgar, and his two brothers got to explore the trails near our new house and current apartment that I found! I found a true hidden gem; these trails were absolutely incredible! The hike was beautiful on top of the mountain, the trails were well marked and maintained, and not too difficult!

The crew!!

The next weekend we celebrated our nephews 5th birthday at the Chattanooga zoo! I can't believe he is already 5! We had an absolute blast and love seeing him so happy! 

We got him a helicopter raptor lego set and squishy 'poop' 😅, we couldn't help it!

He is such a ham! :)

We ended the day with a sprinkled banana pop!

So let's jump to Cody and I's 8 year anniversary, April 1st! We can't believe it has been 8 years, 2 years shy of a decade together. Oh the adventures we have had, the sweet sweet times. 8 years ago we found the greatest gift, love. 

To celebrate, we had the best weekend planned! Friday night we met up at Tai Chi after work, our new favorite restaurant! I always get the salmon seaweed wrap and Cody tries the different ramens. Of course I have fallen in love with boba/bubble tea!

After dinner we explored Target where I got this GORGEOUS shirt below!

We then went grocery shopping at Publix and went home and fell asleep lol. 

The next morning we had a packed day of hiking planned! I brought Cody to the White Oak mountain trails in collegedale and hiked the most difficult trail, but the most rewarding. The views were absolutely to die for, we could see our home area for miles. We hiked 5 miles in 2 hours! And the best part was that Cody LOVED it! Huge win for us both! We now have our favorite place to hike!

I of course had to take a picture of the highest point and the hardest trial we hiked. We were so proud of ourselves!

Can you see our apartment complex!?!

We did it!

My handsome hubby!

The whole 1.5 mile part of the trail on the ridge was pure rock. The rocks were about as big as a small living room! So much fun!

We then hiked back to our car, drove home and got ready for our movie to end the night! We haven't been to the movies in so long! Above was what I was sporting to our movie date, wifey!

The next morning after church we ate breakfast at First Watch our favorite restaurant. I tried the seasonal lemon blueberry quinoa pancakes! They were pretty good!

We then played a game of pool and ended the day spending time with Cody's family! 

Life is really good lately! Happy 8 years to us!

Love,

Kayla Raborn

4/16/19