Every Sat morning in Madison there is a strong urge to head over to the Hilldale farmer's market. The best thing about our apartment- other than it is quiet, big but not too big, and on a bus line straight to school- is that we are about two blocks from the Hilldale Mall. So we got a great assortment of veggies, some basil bread and shared a delicious cherry-vanilla muffin, we headed to the Sidewalk Sale in the mall. These sales seem to happen in conjunction with State Street's Maxwell day sales. We ooed and aahed but didn't get much.

Then we headed out to Walmart, Sams and Sears looking for some inexpensive exercise equipment. Initially we had our hearts set on an exercise bike, but read many-a-review stating that the bikes are "boring" and people loose interest in them soon. Well with all of the rain we have been having lately, outdoor activites are greatly limited so we need something that we won't dread doing. The answer came to us at Sears. We found an Elliptical machine on sale. After heading back home and checking out the online reviews- we decided that this machine was for us and picked one up. That night we put it all together- it is great that we work well together :) and had a machine ready to be used for the next day (that was a lot of work to put it all together).

Today we cooked Pinwheel cookies from our "joy of cookies" book and learned that when the instructions specify thick jam- don't substitute jelly :) for one thing the jelly just cooks right out of the cookies, but also the roll with jelly won't freeze in the freezer due to the high sugar content- and you need the rolls to freeze or at least harden so you don't end up with mushed cookes. We made peach and strawberry ones that tasted great. After shopping at Sams, we made Spinach lasagna (good use of canned spinach) for the week with loads of reduced fat mozarella. Mark cooked the Turkey and I don't know what he put in it, but it was awsome- we definately have a dish for the week!