A Few Changes…

It’s been a while since I have been able to write a post for this blog.  I have much to tell you few who read my blog.  I’d like to tell you about the amazing events surrounding the celebration of Madison’s 18th birthday.  It was truly the most memorable of all of her birthdays for me.  My darling immediate family went above and beyond to make it an absolute joyful time for me…in spite of the fact that I miss this girl beyond words.  I will write a post about it soon and share some very special pictures.

The kids started back to school for their second year of online studies.  We got a much better start this year! The students are staying on track, and I’m happy to report are doing very well.  I love having them home with me, but having so much less of the burden to make sure they are learning.  I just didn’t feel qualified anymore.  I still oversee everything they are learning and I’m able to raise a ruckus if something doesn’t sit right with me.  I can write more about this later as well.

Probably the biggest change in my life is my drastic eating lifestyle change.  I got turned on to a page on Facebook called Wheat Belly.  I started to research it, bought the books, read testimonials, and viewed before and after pictures of people who have eliminated wheat from their diets. I.was.sold.  I bought the cookbooks, emptied my home of all things wheat (it is in SO much), and away we went.  I am not on a gluten free diet…there is a difference. On a gluten free diet you can still have some grains, and I have eliminated all of them.   The wheat we get today is genetically modified and wreaks havoc on so many systems in our bodies.  It can cause fat to accumulate in our abdomens…hence the name “Wheat Belly.”  Amazingly, people have adapted this lifestyle in their homes, and the transformation is incredible.  I have been on it for nearly a month.  I went through a withdrawal period (there are appetite stimulating opiates in today’s wheat that are like drugs in your system), and that was less than desirable.  I felt miserable for a few days.  But now…my constant joint/muscle pain is gone, my clothes are getting loose, I feel great, my appetite has decreased in a major way, I’m eating healthy stuff, I can think more clearly, and my blood sugars are coming down.  This may even allow me to eliminate all of my medications within the year.  That is an incredible thought for me….no more insulin shots? I’ll take it!

I probably won’t turn this into a food blog, but I intend to post a great deal about my pursuit of healthy living. I’ll share recipes I’ve discovered, blogs that have been a great help to me, and maybe some progress pictures! I don’t think I’ll ever share my before pictures, but we’ll see…

As I said before, wheat is in SO much of what we buy now, that it was tricky to eliminate.  I also eliminated refined sugar, and limited my carbs and dairy drastically.  You’d be amazed at how much is still out there to eat, and how DELICIOUS it is.  I am no longer craving sugar or carbs, and I have not had a coke in over a month.  That is HUGE for me.  Coke is like alcohol to me.  I LOVE it, and it’s been the hardest habit for me to break.  I’d take an ice cold coke over almost anything any day.  But I can now sit in a restaurant (it’s the only time I allow my kids to have a soda…because I can’t have it in our home), and not try to sneak a sip of my kids’ drinks.  I’m happy with my lemon water…truly happy.  I’m happy because this is working for me, and I’m seeing results.

I’ll be back to share meal plans, menu ideas, a typical lunch for me, and a yummy hot cereal recipe that is rocking my mornings! I never dreamed something would appeal to me more than oatmeal!

One of my most favorite meals is spaghetti.  I didn’t think I’d ever get to have it again, because I can’t have any kind of pasta.  What a bummer.  Then I heard about the Spiralizer, and making “pasta” out of vegetables.  I am happy to report that I had spaghetti for dinner last night with zucchini noodles! It was the BEST I’ve ever had, and there was no guilt afterwards.  It was perfectly healthy.  I did not have that bloated full feeling you get after eating a big plate of pasta. I just had a wonderful full feeling that carried me through to bedtime.  No more evening snacks for me! Not because I can’t, I just don’t need one.  I’m not hungry anymore. Here is a picture of my spaghetti! It was so delicious!

So….I’ll pop in more often, because I have so much to share!  I’m getting healthy in other areas of my life, and I’ll share that with you as well.  Great things are happening at our casa!  Be back soon!

My Favorite Soup….

I LOVE Clam Chowder! I like the New England version and the Manhattan version.  We have a restaurant that makes the best Manhattan Clam Chowder I have ever had, and I go there on every birthday…just for the soup! The New England Clam Chowder that I like around here comes from Red Robin and a little Greek restaurant.  They are not seafood restaurants. Isn’t that funny?

I have always wanted to try to make my own chowder, but my boys have an aversion to all things shell fish, so I have never bothered.  As I was perusing recipes on Pinterest, I found a really easy recipe for both versions of the chowder.  I decided I’d make it for lunch someday and my girl and I would get to enjoy it all ourselves! Today was that day.  I found a great easy recipe at Food.com, and tweaked it a bit to fit my tastes.  It called for dill weed, and this girl DOES NOT LIKE dill weed. Blech…

There was a little prep time involved in this soup, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  It all came together in less than an hour.  Though I don’t have a picture of the step by step process (I really need to start doing that), I have a picture of the finished soup, and it was DELICIOUS!

I did tweak my soup a bit from the original recipe.  I didn’t use the dill that the recipe called for, as I said before.  I used turkey bacon instead of regular bacon.  It didn’t crisp up like normal bacon, but it was SO good in this soup.  Morgan, our bacon lover, said it was great.  I will probably stick with turkey bacon from now on!

Here is the recipe…my version.  If you want the real thing visit Food.com and search for…

Thick and Creamy New England Clam Chowder

Ingredients:

6-7 pieces turkey bacon cut into small pieces
1 medium onion chopped
2 (10-ounce) cans baby clams with juice reserved
6-7 potatoes cubed
2 (10 3/4-ounce) cans cream of celery soup
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter

Method: Add bacon to sauce pan and cook on medium low heat until crispy (turkey bacon does not really get crisp…just cook until it looks done).  Add onion and cook until translucent.  Add clam juice from both cans. Add potatoes.  Cook and cover until potatoes are fork tender, about 15-20 minutes. Stir occasionally so potatoes won't stick (you might need to add a little liquid to keep the sticking from happening). Add clams, soup, cream, and milk. Stir together. Add butter and let melt into the chowder. Cook for about 30-45 minutes or until thickened.  Stir occasionally.

Note: The original recipe called for 2 – 5 ounce cans of clam with their juices.  I doubled it.  I hate when I have clam chowder in a restaurant and there is hardly any clam in it.  So I took care of that and doubled the clams.  It did not overpower at all, and was DELICIOUS! I actually forgot the 1 tbsp of butter in my soup, but will do that next time.  I guess it will add a tiny bit of richness to the soup. I am not a fan of condensed soups per se, but I do love cream of celery, so I was thrilled to see it is in this recipe.  I diced my potatoes quite small, so they cooked faster.  Once all of the ingredients were in the pot, I did not cook the soup for the 30-45 minutes the recipe suggested.  I just waited until it was heated through and the clams were cooked.  We grabbed the deepest bowls we could find and filled them up with this yummy goodness.  It is a VERY filling soup, so one bowl was plenty.  Since my girl and I are the only ones eating it, we have leftovers for the weekend!

I was so happy with the results of my first try making this chowder.  It was seriously one of the best I’ve tasted, and I will be making it often! Yum!

 

 

Let’s Lighten Up…

Things got a little deep and a bit sad around here for a couple posts, so let’s lighten up a bit, shall we? I got through one of the toughest weeks of my year once again by the grace of God…so that called for a yummy dessert.

Oh yes it did!

A few months ago I came across a recipe called Lemon Delight.  It called for a lemon crème pie filling made by Comstock (really yummy pie fillings).  When I put the dessert on my menu plan and went to shop for the ingredients, do you think I could find lemon crème pie filling? No I could not! So I substituted regular lemon pie filling, and the recipe turned out great, and was DELICIOUS!

SUPER DELICIOUS!

The dessert was so good that I thought I’d make it again, this time with the correct pie filling.  Again, I couldn’t find it.  But…I saw key lime crème pie filling.  We LURVE key lime pie at our house, so I was thinking that might taste pretty good.  I bought the pie filling, and the other day my sweet girl and I made that dessert together.  It was INCREDIBLE.  I’m not kidding when I say that.  It was sincerely VERY good, and I don’t think I’ll bother to look for the lemon crème again.  I like the key lime crème much better!

The crust of this dessert is one of the best parts of it.  You mix butter, flour, and crushed pecans together, and press it into the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish.  You bake it until golden brown, and when it has cooled you add the layers of filling.  We finish ours off with a dollop of whipped cream, and we are in heaven!

Here is a picture of our finished dessert! Isn’t it pretty and refreshing looking?

Want the recipe? Ask and you shall receive…you’re welcome!

Ingredients:

Crust:
3/4 cup butter softened 1 stick + 4 tbsp
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup chopped pecan

Filling:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 (8-ounce) container whipped topping (I used Cool Whip – GASP!)
1 (21-ounce) can Comstock Key Lime Crème pie filling
1 can whipped cream

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare shortbread crust by adding the butter and flour to a bowl and blend using a large fork or pasty blender. Add chopped pecans and mix. Press mixture into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until light golden brown. When done remove from oven and let cool. While the crust is cooling prepare the filling. Mix the cream cheese and powdered sugar together using an electric mixer. Fold in the whipped topping (cool whip) into the cream cheese mixture. When the crust is completely cooled add the cream cheese filling on top of the crust and spread evenly. Top with lemon creme and refrigerate for at least 4 - 6 hours (I could not wait this long…2 hours tops). Garnish with Reddi-Whip before serving.

If you try it, come back and tell me! We loved this dessert so much!

Meal Planning & Cooking software…time saving, money saving, stress relieving :)

Ok…Once a year I have to write a post on this.  I can’t think of another area of my life that I have relieved as much stress as I have in the cooking department (maybe with the exception of recently cleaning/purging my house ).  It did not come easy to me.  When we were first married and became parents, I did not cook well.  I had a few recipes that people gave me with wedding gifts, but we ate a lot of boxed foods, and just JUNK now that I look back on it.

For Christmas 2005, my husband gave me a copy of some cooking software.  I looked at the box and thought he was crazy.  What in the world would I ever do with cooking software? But then I read the back of the CD case, read the reviews online, read what that software would help me do, and I was hooked!

I learned to cook by recipes and ingredients, and have rarely if ever bought another boxed food item.  This software and the beginning of meal planning was life changing for me…and I don’t say that lightly.  I mean REALLY life changing.

I entered all of my favorite recipes into my software, used some of the recipes that came with the software, and found a few more favorites online.  I began to compile menus for two weeks at a time.  I wholeheartedly recommend the two week plan.  Meal planning is not the most fun thing to do for some, so only having to do it every two weeks is great.

Here’s what I do:

I first look in my pantry/fridge to see what ingredients I have on hand.  I can enter those ingredients into my software, and it will give me meal ideas from the recipes I have there…so cool!  Next, I pick a few of our favorite recipes, and I set up a two week menu and fill it in. I try to have a couple chicken dishes and a couple beef dishes on each menu.  I like to have one pasta dish, and one international dish if possible.  I add soups to the menus during the cold months, and some during the warm months.  We have seafood dishes on occasion as well.  My crock pot is my friend in the kitchen, so I use a lot of crock pot recipes.  I will add event dishes to my menus if we are going somewhere, and I make one dessert for every 2 week menu plan.  Here is what my software looks like…

That column on the left is a list of all of my cookbooks.  I can click on the cookbook I want, and scroll through it for recipes.  I add those to my menus.  Once the menus are complete, I click on “list”, and my software will make me a grocery list based on the recipes I chose, and the ingredients needed for them.  Once I have the list in my hand, I do inventory of my fridge/pantry again to see what I have on the list and what I need to buy.  I then hand write a final list and that is what I take with me to the store.  I write it based on sections of the store, and it’s very easy to shop that way.

This is how a typical week’s menu prints out for me…

I am able to choose fun fonts for printing, and it prints out in an easy to read format.  I print out both menus for the two week plan…seven days at a time.  We eat leftovers on the weekends, so I only plan five days. This gets posted on the side of my fridge, along with a sheet protector filled with all of the recipes for that two week plan. A typical recipe looks like this…very easy to read and follow with ingredients listed at the top in columns, and directions underneath.

All I have to do when I’m ready to prepare a meal is grab that day’s recipe out of the sheet protector, and voila! I’m ready to make dinner.   The nice thing about having the menus and recipes posted on the fridge, is that no one EVER has to ask me what is for dinner.  They can just look at the menu.  Now sometimes, due to circumstances beyond our control, I have to switch days around.  That is not a problem at all.  I just do it.   I make the meal that was scheduled for that day another day.  It is just whatever works out best for us. We are able to be a bit flexible. 

Here are the menus and recipes posted on the fridge…Menus on top, recipes underneath.  The watermelon pad is where I make lists of staples we need like toilet paper, etc.  Things that would not be on a cooking list

I cannot express to you enough how much this has changed my life.  It is something I only have to think about every two weeks, and then I don’t.   I just grab a recipe and cook meals.  My husband takes most leftovers for his meals at work, and we eat some on the weekends.  Otherwise we just have soup and sandwiches or stuff like that…easy peasy. I am a person who THRIVES on routine, order, schedules and everything in its place.  Menu planning allows me to have that in a very important area of our lives.  I can still be flexible, but for the most part we follow a schedule, and it relieves a lot of stress for me.

Meal planning has saved us money.  I only buy what is on my list.  I used to shop grabbing whatever looked good to me, and would find ingredients months down the road that were never used.  I have cut our grocery bill well in half doing this, and most two week shopping trips, we come out having only spent $150 or less, both stores combined.  That’s pretty good for a family of four.

For Christmas this past year, my husband bought me the updated version of my cooking software (and I got two extra copies for a STEAL).  I will soon be able to get an iPhone app for the software that will make it even easier to shop.  I can email recipes easily with the software, and I can even type the name of a dish in the search engine, and it will find a recipe for me online.  Then I just click “capture”, and the recipe is automatically entered.  SO NICE.

I gave one of my copies of my software to my sister, but I still have one left.  It is normally around $100 to buy it (SO worth it), but if any of my local friends that read my blog think that this could be for them, I’d be happy to GIVE them the other copy. (Sorry…not into shipping and you MUST be serious about this.  I don’t want to give it to someone that doesn’t really want to give this menu planning business a shot )

The example of the recipe I posted was for Mexican Chicken Stuffed Shells.  It was a new recipe, and I was excited to try it.  It was a bit more work than most recipes I use (I go with easy prep recipes ), but it made two batches.  I cooked one tonight for dinner, and put the other one in the freezer for a future meal.  Next time will not mean as much work!   The meal was very tasty, and I’ll definitely make it again.  This is what it looked like, and this is the picture that I will enter into the recipe so that I can see what it looks like when I’m choosing recipes.  I always try to add a picture, because that helps greatly in recipe selection.

I LOVE to talk about meal planning and cooking software, because it is something that has changed my life, and has relieved a great deal of stress.  Cooking is easier now, and the whole family gets involved in the planning and preparation of meals now.  We love it!  Maybe I will start posting my menus, and some of my recipes again.  I really enjoyed doing that!

Local friends….let me know if you are interested in this software.  It has been a great help to me.

Recipe Freak…

I’ll admit, I have turned into a recipe freak.  I LOVE to scan cookbooks, cooking sites, and cooking blogs for new recipes.  I LOVE Pinterest for finding new recipes, and my new favorite is Punchfork.com.  You can type in ingredients you have on hand in the search bar, and tons of recipe suggestions will pop up in just a second.  I love the blogs and sites that let you pin their recipe pictures, because I can come back later and jot down the recipe.  Those are the only recipes I copy now, because I don’t always have the time to jot it down right when I see it.  There are many sites/blogs that do allow pinning, so I’m all set!

I usually use Punchfork for meal suggestions.  I’m not ever in a pinch wondering what to make for dinner, because I plan my meals two weeks at a time, and my menus are on my cooking software (which I have raved about on my blog several times).  I have found some great new recipes all over the internet, and cooking is so much fun now!  I really enjoy it…

This is what I am making tonight….only I’m tweaking the recipe a bit.

I never liked cabbage rolls as a kid.  I think I had them once, and thought “this is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth”, second only to a dish my mom served once called “Slum Gully”.  Don’t ask…

As I’ve gotten older, my taste buds have changed, and I like things I didn’t like as a child.  My husband brought home a big cabbage on Saturday, so I decided to give cabbage rolls a shot.

I like the cooking sites that have reviews on their recipes.  That is a great help to me, and I usually read them all.  I get ideas for tweaking the recipe, and can see things that didn’t work out with the original recipe.  This recipe was no exception.  There were hundreds of reviews on this recipe, so I didn’t read them all.  But the ones I read were a great help, and I think dinner will be good tonight!

This was supposed to be a crock pot, cook all day recipe, but many found that their cabbage rolls turned out dry, or dry in spots.  Many just baked theirs in a 9x13 at 350 for 90 minutes.  That’s what I’m doing.  Many doubled the sauce, added different spices, excluded some things that didn’t taste right, etc.  One person said that the rolls were too much prep, so she made hers into a casserole.  I agree.  I had to boil the cabbage to loosen the leaves, make the rice, make the filling, pull the leaves off the cabbage, and then I would have had to stuff the leaves and roll them.  I opted for the casserole version tonight as well.  It looked fanstastic going into the oven, and I can’t wait to try it. 

If you’re interested, I’ll post the recipe I used, and my tweaks!  I don’t have time right now, but I’ll be back….and I’ll let you know how dinner turned out!

Pioneer Woman Cooks…And So Do I!

I love Pioneer Woman’s blog, and I think her recipes are great.  I love how she takes pictures as she cooks, because I am a visual learner.  It helps me when I can see what is “supposed” to happen :).  Many of her recipes are too involved for me, or for our household. I like quick, easy, simple meals. 

I saw this recipe on her blog months ago, and have never tried it.  It sounded really easy, and looked delicious.  Tonight I finally tried it, and it was fantastic.  It is called Pasta In Tomato Cream Sauce.  The flavor was so good, and it was great just paired with a side of whole green beans.  This is what it looked like plated (don’t I sound cook-smart? :)

I shall present this recipe to you as Pioneer Woman does.  First we have our “cast of characters.”

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter (sorry it didn’t make the picture :)
1 medium onion finely chopped
4 garlic cloves minced (I used my Tupperware chopper…love that thing!)
1/4 teaspoon salt ( I used sea salt)
1/4 teaspoon  black pepper 
2 15 ounce cans tomato sauce
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 dash of sugar (to cut down on the acidity from the tomatoes)
1 pound fettuccine noodles
1/4 teaspoon chopped basil (I just used dried basil, and it was fine)

Start by cooking your noodles and set aside ( I did this about halfway through the sauce prep so that the noodles would not finish cooking too soon).  Reserve one cup of pasta water to thin sauce at the end if needed.  In a heated skillet melt 2 tablespoons of butter, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add onions and garlic and saute for about a minute.  Add tomato sauce, salt, pepper, and sugar to taste.  Reduce heat to low and let simmer for 25-30 minutes stirring occasionally. (About 15 minutes into this process is when I tossed my noodles in to cook)

This is what my sauce looked like at this stage… It tasted HEAVENLY. I could have stopped there, and it would have been great. But we move on…

 
Remove sauce from heat.  Add heavy cream, and cheese (to taste…you might not need the whole 1/2 cup cheese.  I love it, so I added the whole ding dang thing :) If the sauce needs to be thinned a bit, this is where you would do that by adding a bit of that pasta water you reserved.

Mix the pasta with the sauce, sprinkle the basil on top, and voila! You have dinner!

I’m not kidding when I say the flavor in this dish was SO DELICIOUS.  You could taste the garlic so well, and the combination of the tomato sauce, cream, and parmesan cheese was wonderful.  I would DEFINITELY make this again.  It took me around 45 minutes to prepare this, including the time the sauce had to simmer, and the noodles cooked.  Yum, yum, yum!

Since we are a diabetic household, I must add this.  You can make this recipe just as good, and just as yummy if you use the fat-free or low-fat version of every ingredient I listed (or most of them anyway).  I didn’t tonight, but I have used them and it would be fine.  I cooked it the way Pioneer Woman does, and just had a very small portion.  It was very filling, and SO SO SO yummy :)

As I said earlier, I served mine with a side of whole green beans, and I had a dish of parmesan cheese in case anyone wanted that on top.  It really didn’t need it. :) Try it, you’ll LOVE it!

Chicken Pillows…

This recipe is a keeper.  I found it at Life as a Lofthouse’s blog, and it’s a fabulous recipe.  You can exchange every ingredient in this recipe for either low-fat or non-fat ingredients (except the dough and chicken :). I didn’t do that, because I was preparing it for my family, and I served it with vegetable sides.  I figured the little extra fat wouldn’t hurt them, and would taste great. :)

I have to get in the habit of taking pictures of my recipes as I make them, like the fancy cooking blogs do.  I always forget, so I just have a final result picture.  These are my Chicken Pillows…

I am going to try my hand at some other variety of pillows in the coming weeks/months. I think these would be great with a small spoonful of mixed vegetables thrown in, as sort of a mini-pot pie pocket.  I’m also going to try some little Chicken Cordon Bleu pockets.  I’ll make them the way the recipe specifies, but I’ll add some diced ham and Swiss cheese to the mix, and then prepare a light Swiss cheese sauce to pour over them instead of the chicken gravy.  I think those would be really good.  I’ll let you know how they go…and I’ll try to take pictures as I make them this time!

In the meantime…here’s the recipe…

Chicken Pillows

4-6 servings

2 cups Chicken, cooked and shredded (I cooked 3-4 chicken breasts and shredded them.  I like my pillows MEATY :)
4 ounces Cream Cheese, softened
1 Tablespoon Butter, softened
1/2 Tablespoon dried Chives
1/2 Tablespoon dried, minced Onion
Salt and Pepper, to taste
1- (8 oz) can Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough
1/4 cup Butter, melted
1 cup Italian Breadcrumbs (I used plain this time because that was all I had. They worked fine, though I’m sure the Italian will add some flavor)

GRAVY: (I just made my gravy with my poultry gravy mix.  I’ll post her recipe for you)
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
1 packet Chicken Gravy mix
3/4 cup Water

DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet with cooking spray and set aside.

Mix together the softened cream cheese and 1 tablespoon butter. Add in chicken, chives, onion and season with salt and pepper.

Unroll your crescent dough and press together two triangles to create one rectangle. Make sure you press together the perforations well so your filling wont ooze out. You should have 4 rectangles total.

Spoon about 3 tablespoons of chicken mixture into the center of rectangle. Fold each corner over the center of filling. Press together to cover filling entirely. Shape into a ball. Repeat with all rectangles. Once all pillows are formed, dip each into the melted butter, and then coat in breadcrumbs. Shake off excess. Place each coated chicken pillow onto the greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

While chicken pillows are baking, make the chicken gravy. In a small saucepan, mix together the cream of chicken soup, gravy packet and water. Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to low and let simmer and thicken until ready to use.

Pour gravy over each chicken pillow and serve!

Let me know if you try these!

***COOK’S NOTE*** I doubled this recipe thinking these pillows looked small.  YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO THAT.  One per person was PLENTY.  I had four left over!  They are great as leftovers, but I really did not need to double the recipe.  I will not do that in the future.

Shredded Apple Pie…

I found this wonderful recipe on Life As A Lofthouse’s blog. It is a recipe from a steakhouse down south, that went out of business.  I thought it looked so yummy, that Morgan and I just HAD to try to make it.  You’re supposed to serve it with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream, but I only had whipped topping tonight.  Next time I will be equipped!  The pie is REALLY RICH, so the whipped cream was probably plenty.  FYI…I don’t skimp on my dessert recipes, so no low fat, or no fat ingredients here.  You can do that if you want…but like I said…no skimping here!

Here we go…

(In my best Julia Child voice) First…you peel the apples…The recipe calls for Red Delicious, but I used Honey Crisp.  They are so sweet and flavorful.  I don’t care for Red Delicious, personally. To each his own… :)

Then you shred the apples…being very careful not to shred any fingers.  Morgan wanted to do this part, so I only had her shred until she got close to the core.  I wanted her to have enough apple to hold onto, that her fingers would not come near the grater…She did a great job!

  
Next you mix all of the ingredients together, and bake all of this yummy goodness! Pay no attention to the dirty oven :(

Just out of the oven…beautiful! We put foil around the edges of the crust for the first half of baking time, so the crust would not burn. 

  
A close up of how beautiful the crust turned out…

Cutting into our beautiful pie after we let it cool for a while…

Plating pieces of pie…

The finished product….complete with a lovely dollop of whipped cream…

   
Click on the link at the top of my post, and that will take you straight to the recipe for this yummy pie!

A Trip to the Hospital…and More Food!

My sweet mom “failed” a stress test at the cardiologist’s office this week, so she was scheduled for a heart catheterization the next morning.  She was so scared, and worried that the cath wouldn’t be the answer and she’d have to have bypass surgery.  Her heart has not been in very good shape, and because of that, she has not been able to have knee replacement surgery she desperately needs.

The heart cath was done yesterday, and the doctor was able to use a new trans-radial approach.  Normally the catheter goes in through the groin, and after the procedure you have to lie very still on your back for HOURS.  The trans-radial goes through your wrist, and is so much better for the patient.  My mom only needed to keep her arm still, and did not have to spend the night in the hospital. 

The procedure went really well, and mom is doing great.  The doctor was able to repair the blocked artery with a balloon, as opposed to a stent, and said her heart is fine and she can have her knee surgery.  I got to whisper that in her ear as she was coming out of her sedation, and she got the sweetest groggy grin on her face. :)  She will be so glad to have that done.

I saw her today, and she is looking great.  She gave us the fixins’ for a turkey dinner tonight, including my favorite….turnip!

Mom instructed me on how to cook it, and I can’t wait to try it.  I’m the only one here that likes them, so I’ll be having some for lunch tomorrow.  It’s great with a little butter and sea salt on it! Yum!!

I was browsing my favorite cooking blogs and came across these wonderful cookies for Valentine’s Day.  I am not a fan of Oreos, but these homemade strawberry Oreos look great!  I found them at Six Sisters Stuff, and can’t wait to make them with Morgan sometime next week.  Ah, who am I kidding?  I can’t wait to EAT them! :) Don’t they look yummy?

In addition to my favorite recipe blogs, I also find a lot of great ideas on Pinterest, and Punchfork.com.  Not many people know about Punchfork.  It is very similar to Pinterest, except it is ALL recipes.  You can type in a dish, and TONS of recipes will pop up for it.  I really like that site.

I’ll be back with more fun food ideas soon! 

Great Lunch Ideas…

I don’t know about you, but I always struggle to come up with new lunch ideas for my kids.  We home school, so I don’t just pack a lunch and send them off with it.  I like to make a warm, filling lunch for them, so they are nice and full when we do our afternoon lessons.  I hate to stop for snacks :(.

As I have said before, I plan my menus 2 weeks at a time and buy groceries every 2 weeks for those menus.  I decided to start planning breakfast/lunch menus as well so I wouldn’t have to figure out every day what to fix.  I like the items I chose for those menus, but I also wanted to find some ideas so we can change things up a bit from time to time.  The key for me is “simple”.  I don’t have a lot of time to make anything fancy, but I want it to be simple and yummy.

In the course of my decreasing the number of blogs I follow, I kept all of the cooking blogs, and blogs that share recipes.  I love Jamie cooks it up, Life as a Lofthouse, Six Sisters Stuff, and Many’s Recipe Box.  I have gotten some great ideas for dinners, lunches and desserts from those blogs.  I thought I would share a couple with you!

Taco Cupcakes! If I was having a Super Bowl party this weekend, I would so make these!  They are easy, and they look delicious.  You can substitute low-fat, or non-fat ingredients as you need to, and that is the beauty of it. This idea came from Life as a Lofthouse, and I can’t wait to try them…Don’t they look yummy?! :)

Taco Cupcakes
Recipe by: Plain Chicken

1 lb lean ground beef (I used 96% lean)
1 packet taco seasoning
2/3 cup water
1 can black beans, drained
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
36 wonton wrappers
Favorite Taco toppings: salsa, sour cream, etc

DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Brown the ground beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Drain grease. Stir in taco seasoning, water and black beans. Bring mixture to a boil, and then reduce heat to low. Let simmer for 10 minutes, or until water is absorbed.
Spray 18 regular muffin cups with cooking spray. Place one wonton wrapper in each muffin cup. Divide half of the meat mixture between muffin cups. Sprinkle half of the cheese over the meat. Repeat layers with another wonton wrapper, taco meat and cheese.
Bake at 375 for 15-18 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and wrappers are golden brown. Serve with your favorite taco toppings!

Then today, I was looking at the same blog, and found these little beauties…my kids will love these!  They would also be great for a party, but my kids will love them for lunch too!

Pepperoni Rollups

Pepperoni Roll Ups
Recipe from: Taste of Home

1 tube (8 ounces) refrigerated Pillsbury crescent rolls
32 slices pepperoni (I used Hormel's turkey pepperoni slices)
4 pieces string cheese, cut in half
1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 Tablespoon butter, melted
Marinara or Pizza sauce, for dipping

DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Unroll crescent dough; separate into 8 triangles. Place 4 pepperoni slices on the large end of each triangle. Place one half string cheese on the top of the pepperonis. Roll up towards point. Place roll ups atleast 2 inches apart on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Mix together Italian seasoning and melted butter. Brush over the tops of the roll ups. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm!

I’ll share some of the great dessert and dinner ideas I have gotten later!

Menu Planning…

I can’t say enough about menu planning.  It is something that has made my life as a wife/mother/homemaker so much easier.  It has taken quite a bit of stress out of my life that used to be there.  At one point I had 15 weeks of menus planned.  That’s right…15 weeks.  I didn’t repeat a meal ONCE in that whole 15 week period.  I was loving life, because I didn’t even have to THINK about what would be for dinner.  It was all there in my cooking software, ready to be printed out, shopped for, and then carried out…

Then last night….I got this hair brained idea to rework my menus, rename some cookbooks in my cooking software, and move some recipes around so it all would be easier to access.  In doing that, I wiped out those 15 weeks of menus.  I didn’t realize that if I changed the name of the cookbook the menu took a recipe from, it wouldn’t know where to find it. :(  15 weeks of menus GONE.

At first I was REALLY upset.  That was A LOT of work to put those all together.  But when I looked back over some menus that I had printed out, I realized that I had planned them ALL based on our school year schedule.  We have a very different schedule in the summer.  I really needed to rework many of my menus anyway. 

I’ve been reading a few blogs lately where my friends have talked about their own menu planning.  The underlying point in all of the blogs was that you need to plan your menus in such a way that fits your family’s schedule/routine.  I thought it would be much better if I just planned my menus 2 weeks at a time (since we shop every two weeks), and did it based on what we would be doing during those two weeks.  That way I would not purchase ingredients for a meal that we would not be home to prepare/eat.  I also decided to go back to planning my breakfast and lunch menus as well.  Having the whole day of meals planned means I don’t have to figure out anything as far as food for the day goes.  It’s all posted on my fridge, and I just have to make it happen.  All of the ingredients are in my fridge or pantry.  This GREATLY reduces the temptation to pile my littles in the car and drive somewhere for carry-out which adds up after a while.

Last night I sat down with my cooking software.  I reworked all of my cookbooks and recipes so that they are better organized, easier to access, and will make my menu planning a quick, stress-free, enjoyable task for me to do.  I will do it the night before we shop for groceries.  Menus will be posted on the fridge each week with the recipes for each meal attached, so that it is all easy for me to find when I need it.  If something is frozen and needs to be thawed for the next day’s meal, we will do that as soon as dinner dishes are washed the night before.

One thing I plan to implement is bringing our favorites around more often.  It just was not realistic to not repeat a meal for 15 weeks.  We tried a lot of new stuff, and we still will, but we’ll also bring out the things we enjoy more often. Parker and Morgan are each going to help me plan a menu from time to time. When they do, it will include all of their favorites for that week. They will also be required to help me cook one of those meals that week.  They will also get to pick a dessert to make for that week.  I think it will be fun, and will allow my kids to be in the kitchen more.  I’m looking forward to it.

My usual format is to pick one chicken dish, one beef dish, one Mexican dish, one pasta dish, and one breakfast entree dish per week.  I don’t plan meals for the weekends, because we just eat leftovers or soup/sandwiches. Sometimes I double up on the chicken dishes and exclude a breakfast entree. It depends on what is going on in our week.

So yes, I lost a LOT of work, but it helped me do some things to make our meal preparation easier, and a better fit for our family.  I can’t say enough about the cooking software I got for Christmas, or what a stress reliever meal planning has been for me.  I am happy to help anyone get started on it, or to share more of my ideas here, or even share some of my menus/recipes.  I never used to enjoy cooking, but I think it was because I didn’t have a system in place that removed the stressful part of it for me.  I have done that, and now I enjoy making good, nutritious meals for my family.

I am diabetic, so most of my recipes have to be tweaked or even some rewritten.  I will post the recipes exactly as I got them from different cookbooks, blogs, websites, etc.  You can feel free to tweak them to fit your family as I have had to do (subbing fat-free for whole fat items, sugar-free for sugar-filled, etc. :).  I hope the meal preparation part of your life as a wife/mother is as enjoyable to you as mine is to me.  :)