The Incredible Shrinking Whimsigal

Braised Beef Short Ribs - It's What's for Dinner. :)

2011-03-14T23:12:00.004-04:00

Beef short ribs. I have SUCH a weakness for beef short ribs! We went to Disneyworld a couple of years ago and ate at a pub in Downtown Disney. There I had the most tender, succulent, delicious short ribs I'd ever eaten and I've been on a mission ever since to re-create the yummy goodness I had that night. Well, my dinner tonight wasn't even close but it was good! LOL

Short ribs tend to go on sale a lot at our local Harris Teeter grocery store so I can get 4 ribs for around $3.50. The only bad thing that I've noticed about the ribs our store offers (and this could be typical of the cut) is that they are very fatty. So while they look substantial in the package, really, two packages is what would be needed to feed 2-3 people. Anyway, I found a recipe online which you may download here:

http://www.foodchannel.com/recipes/recipe/braised-beef-short-ribs/

It was a very simple and straight-forward recipe and the only thing I changed was the red wine. We have every other kind of alcohol here in the house EXCEPT red wine and I was feeling lazy and didn't want to run out and get any. So instead, at that step in the recipe, I substituted beef broth and it seemed to work out ok. Oh, I also added 2 bay leaves and a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste before popping it into the oven. :)

Let me tell you, the fragrance that was wafting through the house was unbelievable. The kind of thing that I knew was going to make my husband happy when he walked in the door from work. Oh man, it smelled amazing!! To serve along with the short ribs, I made some mashed potatoes using this recipe, which never disappoints.

3 medium yukon gold potatoes
1-2 pinches of salt
1-2 tbs butter
a healthy splash of milk (i used 2%)

I chopped the potatoes into uniform cubes and then put them in a pot and covered them with water. Added a bit of salt to that. Brought the water to a boil and simmered it over medium heat for 15 minutes. Then I poured it all into a strainer and returned the potatoes to the pan, set over to the side with the lid on, and let the potatoes steam for 10-15 mins. Then, using a potato masher, I added the butter and the milk and just mashed it all up until it was the consistency I wanted. Always add the salt last and taste it as you go.

Here is the final result. Have mercy! Stick to your ribs delicious!!

Scratch-Made Pizza!!!

2011-03-08T18:50:00.004-05:00

Have you ever done something and failed miserably? Has that experience made you think you just weren't destined to be successful at that task? I have. ANything to do with creating something with yeast has been the bane of my existence for a very long time. Either my yeast was too old or I would kill it with water that was too hot. Well, today I wanted to make pizza for my boys from scratch. While their eating habits certainly need some major improvements, I realize that those changes aren't going to take place overnight and that baby steps are what are called for here. Pizza for dinner? Ok, fine. But we're not ordering Pizza Hut or Domino's nor are we getting Totino's Party Pizzas (oh I do love those) or Red Baron. If pizza is what's for dinner, then I get to control the ingredients and it's going to be really homemade.

My sister told me about a pizza dough recipe that she uses by Tyler Florence so, once I located one I gathered my ingredients and got to work. You can see the recipe on the Food Network's website here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/fresh-pizza-dough-recipe/index.html

The first thing that thrilled me to no end was, I managed to get the yeast part right. I didn't kill it!!!! It was beautiful and foamy in the bowl. Next, I followed the directions for mixing it in my stand mixer then allowed it to rise for one hour. After an hour, I had two beautiful dough balls that I was able to top with pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and parmesan cheese. Here is what it looked like from beginning to end.

The boys loved it and I got to feel good about giving them a more reasonable version of one of their favorite foods!!! Also, if I can make this, YOU can make this. Believe me on that, ok?

When Life Hands You Lemons....

2011-03-07T16:40:00.003-05:00

You know what? Sometimes, things happen and there is no rhyme or reason to it. They just happen and you've got to learn to roll with it. Otherwise, you'll get rolled over and what fun is that going to be?? After I met with the dermatologist the other day, she told me that I have a form of eczema as well as a mild case of rosacea. Man, can I just tell you that was NOT what I wanted to hear. It makes dealing with my skin a bit more challenging and, for the time being, I'm on some very pricey medicated creams and face wash. Oh well. What can one do? Deal with it. That's what. So, now that I now why my face has been looking like a chemical peel gone wrong, now I can focus on getting myself in shape.

This year, I turn 40. Yep, the big 4-0. Oh lordy look who's forty. I don't feel like I'm older than 25 and my husband would swear that at heart, I'm still a teenybopper. I do love me some pop music. :) But since this year is such a big deal birthday, I promised myself this was going to be the year that I got into shape. This year is supposed to be one where I am kinder to myself. So far, that is a goal that has gone unaccomplished. Now, it's time to get serious. My birthday is in October and, I'm not being unrealistic and expecting to be 120lbs by then. Or ever. But I do want to be eating better, eating more home-cooked meals and less fast food. I want to be MOVING a lot more than I do now. And those are all things that can be done, I just have to get off my tookus and do them!!

Today, my sister and I got together and she is helping me get back into the swing of cooking at home. The last few years have been pretty crazy here and I didn't deal with it well at all. My husband was hardly ever home for dinner and my kids hate to eat anything that isn't a nugget or cheese pizza. So it seemed like a lot of work to cook a full-on dinner just for me. Now I know though that the kids and I all need to eat better than we do and all it takes is a little planning. My sister also has a food blog called, For the Love of Food. She is a great cook and makes many things from scratch as well as on a budget. She does a great job of tentatively planning the weekly menu and sticking to it. Click on the link above and check out her blog when you get a chance. You'll be glad you did. And tell her I sent you!!

Anyway, I hope you will continue to stick with me as I pick up the pace and get this party started. This is the year of living better and treating myself with kindness. Won't you do it, too? You will thank yourself for it later. :)

Heading to the dermatologist today

2011-03-02T11:18:00.002-05:00

My skin has been an absolute MESS lately so, out of desperation because nothing else I have tried is working, I'm going to the dermatologist today. I suspect that I will be making some dietary changes after this visit so look for an update on that. Of course, with access to the internet and WebMD I have already self-diagnosed. LOL And the information I've read thus far leads me to believe that I will see some positive changes by eliminating yeast and sugar from my diet. So, we'll see. My appointment is late this afternoon. Wish me luck!!

My Crazy Journey

2011-02-24T17:22:00.002-05:00

When I started this blog I hoped I would be a lot thinner and would have enjoyed many delectable, home-prepared gourmet meals. What I have learned about myself is, I find that kind of lifestyle very difficult to maintain. For a long time, I was allowing other things to get in the way and, for the last several months, we have not been eating much prepared at home. Thankfully though, that has really turned around. I have found myself enjoying being in the kitchen again after hating it for a while. And I'm also on a journey to feed my soul along with my body and I am going to use this blog as a platform to share what happens along the way. Already, my body feels at peace knowing that it is going to get the sustenance it needs, not only with nutrients but with intangible things that only the spirit can feel.

So I hope you will join me as I continue on my path with all the twists and turns. I am not as concerned about being thin anymore. Now I just want to be happy. :)

Where Do I Begin?

2010-06-08T19:11:00.003-04:00

So, forgive my long absence. I have been so uninspired and, even though my last post had me thinking I had my kitchen mojo back, I found out that was not the case at all. And even now, I have no idea how many times dinner will be homemade during the week but let me tell you this, my goal is to cook 100% of the time. Or if I don't want to cook then we will go out somewhere that uses local ingredients. Why? Because last night we watched "Food, Inc.", that's why.

If you haven't seen that movie, don't wait. It's a watch instant on Netflix right now or you can purchase it somewhere I'm sure. This movie totally rocked our world. Even my chicken nugget, french fry, coke drinking, happy meal eating children have sworn that they don't want to eat "like that" anymore. We have had really involved conversations about shopping at our local farmers market and supporting people close to home. The boys are totally on board with that, and they're even excited at the thought of meeting the people that grow our food. The farmers have become their new rock stars, people to be admired, and I'm cool with that.

In keeping with our new philosophy, the boys and I headed to Earthfare, an organic market in town, and we picked up some supplies for tonight's dinner. My oldest and I decided to share a grass-fed ribeye and with that I served a tomato-mozzarella salad prepared with basil from my mom's own garden. Well, maybe I should say my dad's garden because he's really the one that plants and takes care of everything. Anyway, the basil was SO fragrant! Never have I purchased any basil from the grocery store and had it smell so amazingly potent. Here is a photo of the finished product:

I used organic grape tomatoes as well as organic fresh mozz. Man, oh man! It was divine!! The ribeye was surprising to me. Having never eaten grass-fed beef before I didn't know what to expect so, upon popping the first bite in my mouth I was surprised by the gamey taste that greeted me. I like lamb so I really liked this beef! It's not as strong tasting as lamb but it certainly had echoes of that flavor.

Eating this way is going to be a lot more expensive and is going to require a lot more planning. After watching that movie though it became evident to me that we are not eating *right* much of the time and something's got to give. Hopefully, eating this way will teach my children about where our food comes from and how to feed yourself as healthfully as possible!

It has been a long, long, time

2009-12-09T11:11:00.002-05:00

Wow, when I clicked on the blog this morning to look up a recipe for a friend, I was stunned when I saw that I haven't been on here since July. Then, when I thought about what all has been going on for the last several months, I wasn't THAT surprised.

In my last post, I was talking about how my meds for heartburn hadn't been working so I decided to try just Zantac on my own. Well, that ended up not working out at all. So there I was, off to see a specialist and, one barium x-ray later, I was on a new prescription...this time for Protonix...and on my way to feeling much, much, better. I'm still holding steady at 192 after losing several pounds because I couldn't eat anything. A couple pounds came back on but that's ok. At least I can eat now.

The one really depressing thing that has happened to me is, I really can't seem to get my cooking groove back. Now that I can eat, I just don't feel inspired to actually prepare anything wonderful for myself. Perfect example. Last night, instead of doing something with the fresh chicken breasts and veggies in my refrigerator, I opted to cook a grilled cheese sandwich, accompanied by a pickle. Now, that's thrilling isn't it? I do want to cook more and prepare fun, easy dishes but just haven't hit that point where I'm really motivated to do it. I do have to prepare Christmas Day dinner for my whole family this year and am looking forward to that. I want to WANT to cook every day though!!

Of course, it would seem I'm falling into the same old patterns that I always follow with my way of eating. There are always a million reasons that I can come up with that it's not convenient to cook for myself. What I need to do is just suck it up and eat right and exercise. Have you ever seen the move "The Color Purple"? There is a scene in it that keeps repeating in my mind and I would swear it's my body talking to me. The scene I'm talking about is when Celie confronts Danny Glover's character about how badly he has treated her. She says, "Until you do right by me, everything you even think about is gonna fail". And I think that is where I am right now. My body has had it and something has got to give. I'm not going to truly feel good until I do right by it.

I'm sorry it has been so long since I last posted and my plan is to get back on the wagon and start cooking beautiful, delicious meals again. I hope that, where ever you are, your holiday season is blessed, full of love and happiness. Come back and check for a new post this week. :)

The Ups and Downs of the last few months

2009-07-06T14:02:00.003-04:00

Food wise, things have been mostly downs since March. My stomach has been in such a bad state for a very long time and I really didn't know what was going on. In August of 2008, I was diagnosed with heartburn and given a prescription for Prilosec and told to lose some weight. Beyond that, I received little direction. Things were going ok until the holidays when apparently, I lost my damn mind. I started eating and drinking things I don't even like such as coffee, alcohol. I was drinking soda every day when I hadn't had regular soda for years. My body kicked into high gear and rebelled and that rebellion manifested itself in a terrible way. What I thought was a stomach bug ended up being GERD, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. Oh fun! My doctor doubled my dose of Prilosec and yet still no advice on what to eat. Taking matters into my own hands, I began to research it and came across of wealth of information that began to show me what I was going to have to do in order to live with GERD. It took a few months to get my medicine and my prescription right and now things seem to be on the right track. Boring menus but at least I'm not writhing in agony because my chest is on fire.

Some happy side effects of this new way of eating, I have lost 17 lbs. In August I weighed 207. This morning I weighed 190. Most of that weight loss occurred in the last couple of months because I was trying to find the right things to eat and my stomach was in such a horrible place. Now I'm on OTC Zantac 150, once a day. The prilosec and the nexium were both making my breathing labored and my heartbeat speed up. It was very frightening! The Zantac seems to be working so far. My blood pressure is good at 110/70 and my resting heart rate is excellent at 64. During the week, I exercise by swimming at the pool and that seems to really help me feel good, too.

My diet is less than exciting these days. The list of things I shouldn't eat is fairly long and rather depressing when you love to eat, like I do. Onions, garlic, pepper, sugar, chocolate, cinnamon, lemon, oranges, limes, all no-no's. At first, I was consumed with thoughts of, "What am I going to eat then? Will I have to eat this way forever?" I still don't know the answer to the first one but the "what" seems to be a bit clearer. My day usually begins with a bit of cottage cheese and fresh fruit, I drink only water between meals, lunch is a sandwich or a turkey hot dog with a touch of cole slaw (no mustard or ketchup), dinner is chicken and veggies or something similar, lightly prepared. The key is to be sure it's low in fat because fat is a heartburn trigger as well. So far, things are boring but they're working. I'm losing weight and not suffering with heartburn.

This experience has taught me many things about myself. First of all, I have a CRAZY sweet tooth!! Living without sugar and chocolate has been so incredibly hard for me but the reward of comfortable living has made it doable. Second I have learned that at my darkest moment I won't give up. That is reassuring, indeed. Even when I was sitting in the doctor's office crying my eyes out, I had my doubts about whether there was a way for me to feel well again but I didn't give up hope. Thankfully, it feels like I'm on the right path.

If you are suffering from GERD or acid reflux, I highly recommend you get a book called,"Eating for Acid Reflux" which you can find at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Acid-Reflux-Handbook-Heartburn/dp/1569244928

I don't get any kickback if you buy it. It has made a big difference for me and I think it could for you, too, if you are not finding medical solutions to your acid reflux problem. My goal is to be off the medicine in a couple of months and to manage it completely through diet. That may not be possible until I lose all the weight I need to lose first but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Hope all is well in your world!

It's Peach Cobbler, y'all

2009-03-28T12:58:00.003-04:00

Mmmmmm. Have you ever had peach cobbler? Here in the South we eat it a lot in the summer time, especially with barbeque but I really had a hankering for it and just had to make myself some this week!

Now for the record, things with flour in them make me feel unwell so, these days, I really cannot enjoy many treats like these. As long as I don't have other things with flour in them during the day, I will allow myself one small portion of this, just so I can have a taste. This is a recipe that I adapted from Paula Deen's "The Lady & Son's" cookbook for pear cobbler.

My Peach Cobbler

Peach Mixture
16 oz bag of frozen peaches
2 tbs butter (salted)
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 TBS pumpkin pie spice (or less depending on your taste)
1/4 cup cold water
1/2 TBS cornstarch
1 TBS lemon juice, (fresh squeezed if you have it)

Batter:
1 stick salted butter
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
3/4 cup self-rising flour
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large saute pan or non-stick skillet, empty the package of frozen peaches and allow the frost to cook off over medium heat. Add the butter, sugar, lemon juice, and pumpkin pie spice and cook for 1-2 mins. Take your 1/4 cup of cold water and add the cornstarch to it. Pour that into the skillet and cook over a low heat until the mixture is thick, stirring occasionally. As this is cooking, prepare your batter.

Place the stick of butter in a baking dish (like you would use for a casserole) and then put the dish and butter into the 350-degree oven until the butter has melted. Remove and leave the oven on.

Stir together the sugar and flour. Slowly add the milk, stirring a bit at a time, and mix well. Pour the batter over the melted butter in the baking dish. DON'T STIR IT. Gently scoop a couple of peach slices at a time from the skillet and drop them into the batter, moving around the dish until all the spaces are full of peaches. Then very carefully pour the remaining sauce from the pan over the top of the mixture (DON'T STIR) and put it in the 350 degree oven for 30-45 mins, until it's a nice golden brown. It should look like this:

Serve alone or with a dollop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream on top. It is delicious!!!!

BEST. Cookie. EVER.

2009-01-16T12:27:00.003-05:00

For a long time now, I have been relentlessly searching for the perfect sugar cookie recipe. Many years ago, I ate a sugar cookie and loved it but had never been able to duplicate the flavor myself. Until now. Oh my goodness. Seriously, I will make these so much more often than Chocolate Chip which had been my favorite cookie for several years running. Because I'm a sharer, I'm going to share the recipe with you.

For all you New Year's dieters out there, I'm sorry for tempting you with this. They are truly, delicious.

I adapted the recipe from one in Dorie Greenspan's book called, "Baking", and her recipe is titled, "Grandma's All-Occasion Sugar Cookies".

2 cups all-purpose flour
scant 1/2 tsp KOSHER salt, omit the salt if you only have iodized or cut back to 1/4 tsp.
1/2 tsp baking powder
10 Tbs salted butter at room temp (yes, I said SALTED)
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 tsps vanilla extract
2 tsps almond extract

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.

With a mixer, (I used my kitchen aid stand mixer) beat the butter at medium speed until it is smooth. Add the sugar and beat again for 2 minutes. Add the large egg and the yolk and beat for a couple more minutes. Add the vanilla and the almond extracts. Turn the mixer off and add the flour in increments, mixing only until it comes together. Frankly at this point, I just grab a big wooden spoon and mix the flour in by hand because my stand mixer leaves all kinds of dry bits at the bottom otherwise. Don't overmix the dough though, you don't want your cookies to be tough.

On wax paper, divide the dough in half. you can roll it out into discs for cutting cookies or, if you're like me and totally impatient with that kind of thing, just roll it into a tube shape so it looks like refrigerated cookie dough you can buy at the store. Let it chill in the fridge for a couple of hours then you can cut into shapes or slice and bake. Your choice!

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 8-12 minutes (depending on your oven) until they are done. The tops should not change color. They should still look pale when done.

Please make these and let me know what you think. The original recipe called for unsalted butter and 1 tsp of vanilla, no almond extract. I for one, love the combination of sugar and sweet hence the reason I used salted butter. Oh, and I didn't have any unsalted butter in the fridge. :)

Make these cookies ASAP!!!

French Onion Soup, Meatballs and a Kitchen Assistant

2008-12-08T07:19:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, I spent almost the whole day in the kitchen. Well, not the whole day but several hours at least. That was not my intention when I woke up but it just ended up that way. It began around lunchtime when I was really hungry but just didn't want a PB&J or a hot dog so I decided to make something for myself. I didn't want to make a whole meal or anything so soup seemed like the logical choice. Since my fridge was pretty bare of any ingredients, I strode over to the pantry to see what was there and I settled on making French Onion Soup. Man, it was GOOD! If you'd like the recipe, click HERE.

As previously stated, my fridge was bare as was my pantry so I was scrambling to put together the ingredients necessary to make the soup. I had onions, beef broth, thyme, flour, butter, bread and cheese and once I put them all together, this is was I got:

It was surprisingly good considering there wasn't a recipe to follow and the ingredients were thrown together in a moment. The only thing I wasn't completely wild about was the bread I used for the top but my choices were pretty limited. A slice of a baguette would have been much, much better but I used what was on hand, Pepperidge Farm Whole Grain Farmhouse Style White Bread. It was put in a 400 degree oven for about 10 mins, until dry and toasted and it worked out ok but it was definitely the weakest part of the soup. If you can't dowload the document at the link above, here is the recipe:

French Onion Soup in a Pinch

Ingredients:
2 Tbs butter
1 tsp olive oil
2 small yellow onions
ground thyme, 2 tsp
2 Tbs flour
3 cups of broth (beef or a combo of beef and chicken)
thyme leaves, dried 1 tsp
cream or milk 1/4 cup
dry sherry
2 pieces of hearty bread
cheese of your choosing (swiss, mozz, parm)

Take your two yellow onions and cut them in half. Peel off the outer paper and skin then cut them into half rings. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium high heat along with the olive oil. Once it is bubbling, add the onions, salt, pepper, and ground thyme and cook until caramelized but not scorched. Stir constantly to keep them from burning.

Once the onions are ready, add the flour and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add the broth and then taste. Add more salt and pepper if necessary. Add the dried thyme leaves and the cream and stir in 1-2 Tbs of dry sherry. Turn heat to low.

While this is cooking, spray two pieces of bread with Pam and place on a cookie sheet in a 400-degree oven until very toasted and dry. Then, put soup in ovenproof bowls, top each with one slice of bread and then sprinkle the top with either swiss, parmesan, or mozz cheese. I used shredded mozz. Put under the broiler or in 400 degree oven set to convection until cheese is brown and bubbly.

Sit down and eat. I hope you enjoy it!

After lunch, it was time for my next projects: mini hamburgers and meatballs. I wasn't wild with how these turned out so you won't see the recipe here but I ended up with 24 mini burgers and three jelly-roll pans of these:

Well, what the heck. I'll tell you how I made the meatballs and perhaps you can improve them or suggest something that might make them better next time.

Ingredients:
1 lbs ground italian sausage (mild)
2 lbs ground beef
2 eggs
garlic powder
onion powder
italian-style breadcumbs
salt
pepper
milk

I combined all the ingredients until moist then I pinched off a piece and rolled it into small-medium sized balls. These were placed on the pan and then cooked at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. It seemed like they needed another layer of flavor or something, like more herbs. They were fine, just not "wow" for me. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them!

Later in the day, while making the mini burgers, I called my sister for a quick minute. During the call, she told me that my niece was sad because my sister told her she couldn't come play with us. "She can come play!" I said. So, off I went to pick up my kitchen assistant. Though I didn't know it would work out like that at the time. :)

When we got back to my house, she wanted to help me in the kitchen. See, my sister cooks all the time and my niece, though only two, loves to get in there and help out. So we pulled up a stool and let her make her own creation. Look at this face:

Who could tell her no?

Somewhere in our house she found a mini rolling pin and she wanted to roll out my meatballs but that didn't seem like a good idea so I gave her a piece of bread.

She requested some cheese to put on top and then she proceeded to roll it out. Sort of. Then she pretended to make soup and let all of us taste it, including herself.

This is where a healthy relationship with food begins, by letting your children in the kitchen early. Allowing them to see where meals are created and giving them the freedom to experiment with things as well. It is one of the things I wish my mother had done with me and it is something my sister does all the time with her daughter. Wonderful!

I have to say, after being in the kitchen with all that meat cooking yesterday pretty much cured my interest in meatballs for quite some time. I'm glad I made a big batch because it certainly seems like a money saver to have so many on hand in the freezer but I think it will be a while before I eat any myself. LOL

Today, I'm making a standing rib roast for dinner so be sure to come back tomorrow for the scoop on that!

What's Going On

2008-12-03T14:23:00.002-05:00

Well, it has been a pretty crazy few weeks. After my dietary psychotic self left that incredibly desperate post, I had a change of heart and decided to stay with eating whole foods from all groups. Then, a week into November, I got bronchitis and laryngitis and am still suffering today though admittedly not like I was in the beginning. I survived the Thanksgiving holiday without gaining weight and feel like that is an acheivement of which to be proud. Now, it's on to Christmas. The extended holiday period that is laden with sweets, rich foods, and all kinds of wonderful temptations. I do feel prepared though to meet the challenge of eating well. Can't explain how that happened but a new sense of determination has settled over me and I feel good about things again. If you are currently or have ever battled with your weight, maybe you can identify with the schizophrenic feelings associated with trying to get a grip on the best course of action. At any rate, it feels like things are going well on that front.

Today, I sat down with my kids and we had a really long discussion about how we have been eating and what we need to do in order to make healthier decisions about the food we put into our bodies. They seem to live on the following:

nitrate-free hot dogs
chicken nuggets
spaghetti (whole wheat)
broccoli
peanut butter and honey sandwiches on whole wheat
homemade cheeseburgers
grapes
apples
corn

It's not the worst list in the world but it could use a little variety. I told them that, with the state our economy is in, I cannot afford to keep running the kitchen like a restaurant and they are going to have to start eating what we eat. I just can't fix three meals every night, it's exhausting and expensive. So we sat together and came up with a bunch of different things that they will eat and they agreed to try some new things, too. We all agreed if someone doesn't like the meal being offered then they have the option of eating a PB and honey sandwich instead but, they have to try the dinner I cooked first. It felt good to include them and get their input on what they are willing to do in order to make our meals more affordable and healthy for us all.

I still need to find my own inspiration in the kitchen. It hasn't hit me yet and I've been yearning for it to do so. I've already planned our Christmas Day dinner that we eat with our extended family and I feel pretty underwhelmed by that but it is what it is. Sean and I decided that next year, we're switching things up and, instead of doing dinner with everyone, we're going to do a brunch on Christmas Day. So far, the only people struggling with that idea are my sister and her husband and they have said they may not make it next year. I will be seriously disappointed if that happens but, they have their own family and their own feelings about what is important for them and I can only respect the choice they make. It's not up to me to decide for anyone else. I think it's going to be fun though. Surprisingly, my mom is really excited about it. She was actually encouraging me to go ahead and make the change this year but I knew my sister would feel like that was too much of a curve ball so we've decided to hold off until next year. I don't want to cause any bad feelings right at the holiday, ya know?

I don't know if anyone still reads here, as slack as I have been about updating but, if you're out there, I would love to know the answer to this question. What is your favorite cookbook or website related to cooking? I have a gazillion cookbooks sitting on the shelf and yet I cannot find anything in any of them that is inspiring me to get in the kitchen and create something delicious. What is the best book on your shelf? What is your favorite recipe? I have several books by the barefoot Contessa and find things I like in all of them but I want to try something new. Any suggestions made will be greatly appreciated!!

Here is a picture of the last meal I ate before I got bronchitis and wished I would fall off the face of the earth:

It was a petite sirloin, bacon and onion potato gratin and sauteed green beans. The steak was awful. Of course, I bought it at walmart so I don't know why I expected it to be any different. Everything else was delicious though. Especially the potato gratin. It was my first time making one and it was sooooo good!! And easy, too.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough but I am really looking forward to seeing some cookbook suggestions. And hopeful that someone still reads here enough to make said suggestions. LOL

I'm so lost

2008-10-28T12:10:00.002-04:00

I don't even know where to begin. At the beginning you say? Fine, except I really don't know where that is. My weight is such an issue. I'm depressed and loathe seeing myself in the mirror or, god-forbid, a photograph. I feel....desperate...lost...confused. I have tried so many things over the years and the only one to give me the best success was eating low carb. See, my struggle with weight is much like an alcoholic's struggle with the bottle. I can say this because my mother is an alcoholic and I've witnessed first-hand her battle to quit harming herself with booze. It's tough and, while I do not drink, I do eat. My self-medication is food and I will use it and abuse it like nobody's business. Now though, I'm actually afraid. I'm afraid that my health is going to get to a place of no return and I will die at an early age. It would be devastating for my boys to lose their mother so now is the time for me to get my shit together. Even though Thanksgiving, with all it's glorious, carb-laden side dishes is right around the corner I have to do something. Even though Christmas, with it's stocking's full of chocolate bounty, is only a short time away, I have to do something. I am unable to do a modified portion size lifestyle. That just doesn't work for me. I have to go back to doing low carb.

This time, low carb eating is going to be different. I'm going to do it differently in the respect that I'm not going to eat a bunch of fake foods to replace the ones I'm omitting. I will only use artificial sweetners in my tea or in a sauce if need be and I'm not going to eat a bunch of candy full of sugar alcohols. Believe me when I say this alone will make my family happy. My low carb days were some of the gassiest in history, all because of sugar alcohols. TMI. Sorry.

I will continue to document my journey and hope you will continue to join me. This site is about food and eating, too, and even though I'm cutting out flour-based meals and desserts, I'm still going to get my delicious grub on.

Now, I'm off to make up a meal plan for the upcoming week. I have roasted red pepper soup on my mind and may have to whip up a batch!!!

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches!

2008-10-13T18:30:00.002-04:00

Wow, isn't this exciting?! I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be a part of the Foodbuzz Publisher Community! Here is a copy of the press release:

"LAUNCH OF GLOBAL FOODBUZZ BLOGGER COMMUNITY
LEVERAGES REAL-PEOPLE, REAL-TIME POWER OF FOOD PUBLISHING

San Francisco – October 13, 2008: Foodbuzz, Inc., officially inaugurates its food blogger community with more than 1,000 blog partners, a global food blogging event and an online platform that captures the real-people, real-time power of food publishing in every corner of the world. At launch, the Foodbuzz community ranks as one of the top-10 Internet destinations for food and dining (Quantcast), with bloggers based in 45 countries and 863 cities serving up daily food content.
“Food bloggers are at the forefront of reality publishing and the dramatic growth of new media has redefined how food enthusiasts access tasty content,” said Doug Collister, Executive Vice President of Foodbuzz, Inc. “Food bloggers are the new breed of local food experts and at any minute of the day, Foodbuzz is there to help capture the immediacy of their hands-on experiences, be it a memorable restaurant meal, a trip to the farmers market, or a special home-cooked meal.”
Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews. Members decide the “tastiness” of each piece of content by voting and “buzz” the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions. Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.
“Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe,” said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc.

The Foodbuzz blogger community is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month driven by strong growth in existing partner blogs and the addition of over 100 new blogs per month. “The Foodbuzz.com Web site is like the stock of a great soup. The Web site provides the base or backbone for bloggers to interact as a community, contribute content, and have that content buzzed by their peers,” said Mr. Dehan.
Global Blogging Event
Demonstrating the talent and scope of the Foodbuzz community, 24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs offered online food enthusiasts an international, virtual street festival of food and diversity. The new feature showcased blog posts from 24 Foodbuzz partner bloggers chronicling events occurring around the globe during a 24 hour period and included:
• Mid-Autumn Festival Banquest (New York, NY)
• The "Found on Foodbuzz" 24-Item Tasting Menu (San Francisco, CA)
• Aussie BBQ Bonanza – Celebrating Diversity (Sydney, Australia)
• The Four Corners of Carolina BBQ Road Trip (Charleston, SC)
• Criminal Tastes – An Illegal Supper (Crested Butte, CO)
• From Matambre to Empanadas: An Argentine Dinner (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• A Sweet Trompe l’oeil (Seattle, WA)

“24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs” captures the quality and unique local perspective of our food bloggers and shared it with the world,” said Ryan Stern, Director of the Foodbuzz Publisher Community. “It illustrates exactly what the future of food publishing is all about – real food, experienced by real people, shared real-time.”
About Foodbuzz, Inc.
Based in San Francisco, Foodbuzz, Inc., launched its beta Web site, foodbuzz.com, in 2007. In less than a year, Fooduzz.com and its community of over 1,000 exclusive partner food blogs have grown into an extended online property that reaches more than three million users. "

Please go to Foodbuzz.com and check out what the "buzz" is all about!

Sharking

2008-10-10T12:30:00.003-04:00

That's what I call it when I keep going into the kitchen and looking for something to eat repeatedly, without finding anything. I keep circling the kitchen, and circling the kitchen until I'm so hungry I'm ready to take a bite out of the fridge itself to see if it tastes good. Thankfully, these days, my sharking has been cut back extensively. I've been eating good food, in proper small portions, and haven't been snacking in-between meals. Now though, I'm sharking in a different way - via the internet.

Yes, now I circle the world wide web looking for new and delicious recipes to try. Especially since the holidays are right around the corner, I want to experiment and try some new things. The holidays always find me mired down in the regulars but this year, I'm going to step out of the box and try something new. If you know of any websites that have some wonderful things I might try, please feel free to leave a link here. I just don't want Green Bean Casserole this year. GASP!!! Did those words actually just escape my fingertips?? Blasphemy, I tell you. Long has GBC been one of my favorite foods, indeed I am known in my family for making it better than anyone else. A strange feat considering the ingredients but HEY! I'm going to take the accolades however I can get them, okay?

Somethings for which I'd like recipes are:

different way to prepare sweet potatoes, my new love
brussels sprouts
stuffing (I use my mom's cornbread dressing recipe which is to die for but want to try something else)
zucchini, squash, broccoli, or cauliflower

I am looking for things to make completely from scratch. No soup-in-a-can-casseroles for me this year. Nope, I'm trying to go old school which will without a doubt be a lot more work but I want to take on the challenge of seeing if I can do it. Any websites or recipes you can point me towards are greatly appreciated. Now, if you will excuse me, I've got some googling to do.

OMG People

2008-10-09T12:30:00.002-04:00

Last night, I decided to get a little jiggy with my menu. See, I tend to be one of those people who gets in a cooking rut and will cook the same things week after week. It's easy for me to blame it on my husband's work schedule but I'm not going to do that anymore. I want to step out and experiment in the kitchen, get adventurous! Last night was the first step down that path.

While out and about yesterday I stopped off at one of our more chichi grocery stores and bought 2 snow crab clusters. Sean and I spent last weekend in MD and had some of the best crab we've ever eaten and I wanted to try and fix it myself. What I didn't know about the snow crab you buy at a store is that it's already fully cooked, just frozen afterwards so all you're really doing is heating it up. Ok, so that sounds like a no-brainer! I'm liking it already! I asked the butcher how it should be prepared and he said I had my choice of either boiling the clusters for a few minutes or baking them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. I chose to boil them. This is so simple, y'all.

Take these ingredients here:

and place them in a large stockpot filled 3/4 full with water. Don't use the whole container of Old Bay, only use about 1/2 cup. Bring the water and Old Bay to a boil and add the crab to the pot, boil for about 5-7 minutes and voila! Crab legs! They were really delicious, easy, and low on the mess in the kitchen. Serve with melted butter and you will think you've died and gone to heaven. I must confess that, although I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter, Sean and I really ate most of the crab plain. It's so sweet and delicate that it doesn't need much adornment. I was quite pleased with how it turned out!

Fast forward to breakfast this morning. No, it didn't involve crab at all, just pancakes. Buttermilk pancakes that is. A couple of nights ago, the boys and I were watching "Good Eats" on Food TV with Alton Brown and he was showing viewers how to make the perfect pancake. Admittedly my pancakes always just turn out so-so, as a result I watched the episode with interest. This morning I was inspired to make some buttermilk pancakes and by using some of Alton's tips they were the best I've ever made!! Here is the recipe:

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
3 Tbs sugar (i used turbinado sugar)
1 1/2 cups to 2 cups buttermilk
1 egg
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

If you have a countertop griddle with a thermometer setting, bully for you! I don't so I had to heat up a large skillet, sprayed lightly with Pam and then wiped clean. If you're one of the lucky saps with a griddle, heat it to 350 degrees.

In the meantime, mix together the egg, 1 1/2 cup of buttermilk, vanilla extract, and oil in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, place the 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour. Pour the wet ingredients on top of the dry and mix, counting to 10. According to Alton, over-mixing is the reason pancakes turn out badly so I was very carfeul NOT to over-mix! The batter was still lumpy but that was ok. It was a little too thick and I didn't catch it until I got the first few cakes in the pan. I went back and added a splash or two of buttermilk to thin the batter out and the results were beautiful!

See how thick they are? Yummmm. I used a cookie dough scoop to measure out my batter in the pan so this recipe made at least 24 small pancakes. I served myself three, topped with pure maple syrup...

No, that's not butter on top, it's the reflection of the light over my stove. These were so moist they didn't need a lick of butter. My only complaint was they were a touch gummy. Anyone know why that might be? Please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know!

Pork Tenderloin

2008-10-01T10:22:00.004-04:00

Have you ever prepared Pork tenderloin? many people are intimidated about cooking pork because, let's face it. It can get pretty dry if you don't do it right and, there have been many, many, times when I didn't do it right. But a couple of nights ago, I prepared the most juicy, succulent pork tenderloin I've ever cooked.

When I buy the meat at the store, it comes in a package with two long pieces. I take the "tail" end, where it tapers down to a thin narrow strip and fold it under, tying it off with some cooking twine to insure even doneness. Is that a word? I don't know. I'm not a pro, people. Anyway, usually, I season the meat with olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, and herbs de provence, then sear all sides in a pan, and then put the pan in the oven to finish it off. Well, this time, I only seasoned it with some garlic salt, pepper, herbs de provence, put it in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes and took it out when the temp read about 170 degrees on a meat thermometer. I let it rest for about 15 minutes and people? Let me tell you, this was the best pork tenderloin I've ever eaten. it was perfectly cooked all the way through and each piece was so tender and juicy I thought my husband was going to ask me to marry him all over again. It was that good. If you haven't tried this cut of meat, do it ASAP. You will not be sorry. It is also a pleasantly nutritious meat. here are the facts for a 3 oz serving, roasted:

Amount Per Serving
Calories
122
Calories from Fat
27
% Daily Value*
Total Fat
3.0g
5%
Saturated Fat
1.0g
5%
Trans Fat
0.0g
Polyunsaturated Fat
0.4g
Monounsaturated Fat
1.1g
Cholesterol
62mg
21%
Sodium
48mg
2%
Total Carbohydrates
0.0g
0%
Protein
22.2g

Serve it with some wild rice cooked in beef broth and some steamed broccoli topped with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and cracked pepper and you've got a winner of a meal.

On the personal front, I have been doing quite well with getting back on track with portions and eating whole foods instead of processed. So far so good!!

Harsh Realities of Losing Weight

2008-09-25T12:11:00.004-04:00

This blog is called the Incredible Shrinking Whimsigal. It is so titled because I've long been on a journey to shrink my size. That has been slow in happening. :) It's not just my dress size that I want to shrink though. If I can shrink the portions I serve on my plate, if I can shrink my grocery budget, those count as little successes, too. The harsh reality is, I have not been focused on reducing my portion size and as a result, my own size has not reduced in any way. That must change. I absolutely believe that you can eat delicious food and lose weight, it just requires a little more sense when you eat and some activity as well. For the last few months, I've been lying to myself because I eat McDonald's once a week and just plain eat out a lot. In order to lose weight that cannot continue. In order to be healthy that cannot continue. There is just so much junk in processed, prepared food that no one can live a healthy lifestyle by eating that all the time. It's time for me to get serious and be brutally honest with myself. As long I as I don't make any changes, I won't see any changes and it's as simple as that. It's time to get back to basics. Eat good, whole food. Prepare as much as I can on my own, even snack foods like chips. This is not a difficult task, I just haven't been serious about it for a while and have been lazing along, telling myself, "Oh I'll start tomorrow," and that tomorrow never comes. Until today. Today, I'm making a commitment to myself to be serious about getting healthy. No excuses, no procrastination. You will continue to see delicious meals here and I will break down for you what size portion I ate. I am going back to the tenets of Dr. Will Clower and am going to slow down when I eat. So many times, my meals are rushed, or eaten in the car and that has all got to change. Will you join me in living a more mindful life? Can you commit to sitting down at the table at least once a day and enjoying a slow meal? That is the commitment I'm making and I hope you'll stick around to watch me do it. For those of you who are in the same boat I am and need to lose some weight, don't give up. It's so easy to get frustrated and we tend to be harder on ourselves than anyone else but please, don't do that. It's a recipe for failure. If you fall down, just get back up. You can do it and I can, too. We just have to honor the commitment to ourselves to do so. Now that all of that is out of the way, would you like to see what I made for lunch yesterday? Great! Right this way!

One of my favorite things to do with beef and beef leftovers is make Shepherd's Pie. It's a dish that I grew up eating and have long loved and whenever I make it, the house smells amazing and transports me back in time to my childhood. Usually, I make it with ground beef because it's not often that I have leftover roast beef on hand On this occasion though there was leftover London Broil so I decided to give it a shot as the star of one of my favorite meals.

Because the meat is described as London Broil, one might think that those words describe the cut of meat when, in fact London Broil describes the manner in which the meat is cooked. The cut of London Broil is usually Top Round and here is the nutritional info, in case you're interested, as noted by The Daily Plate:

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 ounce (28g)
Amount per Serving
Calories 49 Calories from Fat 11
% Daily Value *
Total Fat 1g 2%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol 17mg 6%
Sodium 12mg 0%
Total Carbohydrate 0g 0%
Dietary Fiber 0g 0%
Sugars 0g
Protein 9g 18%
Vitamin A 0%
Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0%
Iron 4%
Est. Percent of Calories from:
Fat 18.4% Carbs 0.0%
Protein 73.5%

You can see that it is a fairly lean cut of meat and it is generally prepared in the following manner:

marinate the beef
broil or grill to medium rare
slice across the grain at a 45-degree angle

If not prepared correctly, it an be a horrible dining experience. On this particular occasion, I did not marinate my London Broil and it was fine but I did cook it under the broiler for 6 mins per side, after generously seasoning it with McCormick's Montreal Steak Seasoning. I was the only one home to eat it so there was quite a bit leftover and that's when I decided to use it in shepherd's pie. It was divine! The montreal steak seasoning really added a lot of kick to a dish that can be comfortable but less than exciting to eat. I wholeheartedly recommend that spice blend and use it ALL the time. Here is my recipe:

Shepherds Pie
Serves 6-8

1-1.5 lbs top round, London Broil, cooked, seasoned with Montreal Steak Seasoning (i was using leftovers)
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 - 3/4 cup of frozen chopped onion, (or fresh)
1 Tbs olive oil
salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 yukon gold potatoes, prepared as mashed potatoes
3/4 can beef broth
flour

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and spray a casserole dish with Pam.

First, cube the leftover london broil, not too fine, but into very small, bite-size pieces. Next, over medium heat in a large saute pan, heat up the 1 Tbs of olive oil. When it's hot enough, add the onions and saute until the begin to soften. At this point, add the cubed london broil and the garlic and cook for about 5 minutes. This gives the beef some time to warm up and release some of the fat that has grown cold in the fridge. At this point, begin adding flour in 1 Tbs increments until the meat is covered well but not too much. You're going to add the beef broth to make a gravy but you don't want it too thick. Cook for a couple of minutes to give the flour a chance to cook down a bit and then add the beef broth. Continue to cook and add the frozen peas. You can microwave them first but it's not necessary if you want to skip that step. Once the mixture begins to thicken, it's ready to go into the casserole dish. Carefully transfer it from the pan to this dish, if it splatters you'll get burned so watch out! Once the mixture is in the dish, top it with the mashed potatoes you made, or, if you're lucky you can use potatoes you had leftover, too! Sometimes, I take 2 Tbs of butter and dice it and place it on top of the potatoes before putting it in the oven. This time however I did not do that and it was still delish. One other thing, I always place my casserole dish on a foil covered cookie sheet because sometimes the gravy will bubble over the top. This will prevent a messy oven! Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes then take it out and let it cool down for about 20-30 minutes. Serve in a small bowl and enjoy!

Recent Eats

2008-09-24T10:53:00.003-04:00

This week has been filled with good eats. On Sunday, I had big plans for watching football, even though I would be doing it by myself. The planned menu was homemade buffalo wings with ranch, chips and dip, and chocolate cake. None of that came to fruition because I spent all of Sunday morning helping my two boys clean their rooms. By the time that chore was done, I sat on the sofa with a ham sandwich and a pickle and watched the games. Fine by me, I really didn't need all that food to myself anyway. On Monday though, Ryan (my youngest) and I decided to get in the kitchen and make some chocolate cupcakes. He and I sat together on the sofa and looked through Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking, and picked a recipe that looked pretty scrumptious to us both. Baking generally is not my forte. In the kitchen my tendency is to be haphazard and not measure things exactly. Cooking is forgiving of this method where baking needs precise measurements. As a result, I don't bake things from scratch very often. These cupcakes though were simple and absolutely divine when they were done.

Here is the recipe for Chocolate Cupcakes as adapted form Dorie Greenspan in the book, Baking From My Home to Yours.

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick of unsalted butter, room temp
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a 12-cup muffin pan, fill each mold with a paper cup.

In a medium size bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa, whisking them together. Then in another bowl or in your stand mixer, cream the butter on medium speed. Add sugar and beat for 2 minutes. Then add the egg, mix well then add the yolk and beat until combined. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl between egg additions. Beat in the vanilla, reduce speed on mixer to low and add half of your dry ingredients. Again, scrape down your bowl, add the buttermilk and mix well, then add the rest of your dry ingredients. Scrape down the bowl once again and add the cooled, melted chocolate. Using a cookie scoop or your choice of instrument, scoop the batter evenly into the 12 muffin cups.

Place on the center rack of your oven and bake for a minimum of 22 minutes. In my oven this was plenty so be sure to keep your eye on them. Let them cool on a wire rack and frost if you desire. We just have been eating them plain!! Y'all, the batter alone was heavenly.

The cupcakes were beautiful and delicious. So simple to make and I will absolutely make these again. Why use a box when you can create something so good from scratch?

If you've read here before, you know I love to eat biscuits. Now that the temps are cooler in the morning, it's hard to beat the fresh, steamy goodness of a made-from-scratch biscuit. Again, why use biscuits in a can when you can quickly whip up a good, wholesome biscuit yourself. I use White Lily flour, which is the BEST, and their recipe on the back of the package. Simplicity defined. 2 cups White Lily self-rising flour, 1/4 cup butter or shortening, 2/3 to 3/4 cup of buttermilk or milk. They say to bake them at 500 degrees but in my oven, that will cremate your late Uncle George so instead, I cook them at 450 or 475. Know your equipment. It will help you get wonderful results. One thing that is interesting about these biscuits is, depending on what the weather is like, you may need more or less liquid. Today I think I probably used a cup of buttermilk and my dough was almost too sticky to roll out. ALMOST...it worked out wonderfully.

Oh, the smell of your house once you bake these in the oven is to DIE for!!! When my husband is home and I make these while he's still sleeping, the smell alone will wake him from the deepest slumber and lure him downstairs.

My favorite way to eat these is with a touch of salted butter on each half, and then a bit of either grape or cherry jam:

Oh...mercy day. So, SO good!!!

On the weight loss front, right now, I'm at 198. My goal is to lose 5 lbs a month and I think that seems pretty doable. I just have to get my butt in gear and start walking on my treadmill. NO more excuses! It's time to get it done!

Tomorrow I'm going to show you what I do with leftover london broil and mashed potatoes. It's a recipe you've seen here before but a teensy bit different because of the meat.

See you then!

Sweet Potatoes - Not Just for Thanksgiving

2008-09-20T20:40:00.004-04:00

As more and more Americans are trying to find ways to get more whole, nutritious foods into their diets, many are branching out and trying things that might otherwise be reserved for specific purposes. Take the sweet potato for example. For years, this vegetable has been prepared as a sweet side dish during our most gluttonous holiday of the year- Thanksgiving. Whether cooked into a Sweet Potato Pie or baked in a casserole topped with mini marshmallows, this vegetable has long adorned the holiday tables of many an American family. I'd like to invite you now to try this root vegetable in another incarnation. I like to use sweet potatoes to make soup.

Sweet potatoes in soup was not my creation. When Sean (my husband) and I went on our honeymoon 10 years ago, we ate a bowl of this in Disney World. I was never a fan of sweet potatoes and would rebel should anyone dare to put them on my plate but, on this particular occasion, my throat was sore and soup was the only thing I could imagine eating. The only soup on the menu utilized sweet potatoes as the main ingredient so, in desperation, I ordered it. That soup was the most heavenly soup I have ever eaten and last year, I decided to try and recreate it. While I haven't been able to do that, my recipe is tolerable and my husband and I actually enjoy it quite a bit. Now that the weather has turned a bit colder, tonight seemed like as good a time as any to prepare this soup. Be warned, it looks like baby food. I can't lie to you about that but it is good and it will warm you up when things are chilly outside so here is my recipe:

Sweet Potato Soup
serves 4

2 large sweet potatoes (baked)
1 tbs butter
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
cumin
chili powder
cinnamon
salt and pepper
1 to 1 1/2 cups of GOOD chicken broth like Kitchen Basics brand
milk or cream (optional)

I baked the sweet potatoes in the oven because I think this caramelizes the sugars in the potato. Is this true? I have no idea but it's in my head that it does so this is how I prepare them for the soup.
I take the potatoes out to cool and while this is going on, I melt the Tbs of butter in a saucepan over medium high heat and add the chopped onion and 1 minced clove of garlic.
To this, I add 1/2 to 1 tsp of cumin, 1/8 to 1/2 tsp of chili powder, 1/2 tsp pf cinnamon, a generous pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of pepper. I let this cook over medium heat until the onions are soft but be careful not to burn the garlic as it will get bitter.
When the onions are soft, I scrape the flesh from the sweet potatoes and add it to the saucepan with the onions.
To this, I add the chicken broth. Please use good chicken broth. I used Swanson's and it is just too weak to be useful in this situation. Kitchen Basics is the best but I was being cheap. Don't make the same mistake.
After I added the broth, I used my immersion blender to smooth together the potatoes and the onions. My taste leans towards a thicker consistency but you may prefer a thinner soup. If that is the case, just add more chicken broth. In the event that you don't have an immersion blender, you may use a food processor or a regular blender.
When using a regular blender, PLEASE BE CAREFUL. You must cover the top with a towel when blending hot liquids or else it will splatter and you will get burned. Not good! Be safe and spend the $20 on an immersion blender!!
At this point, taste your soup. Is it spicy enough for you? If not, add a couple of shakes of tabasco. Make sure it is to your liking.
At this time, you may add milk or cream if you like. It is quite good this way. Tonight, I just went for plain jane without milk and it was still good.

Serve this with a side salad and you have a wonderful, light, healthful dinner. It only takes about 30 minutes to put this together, not including the baking time for the potatoes.

As far as nutrition is concerned, you can't go wrong with these little beauties. Sweet potatoes contain twice the daily recommended allowance of Vitamin A and nearly half the daily requirement of Vitamin C. It's low calorie yet chock full of nutritious goodness. For more information on them, go HERE. Sweet potatoes are such a wonderful vegetable and they don't have to be slathered in butter and smothered in brown sugar and mini marshmallows. Not that there's anything wrong with that but if you're looking for a different way to prepare these, give this a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

(tap, tap) Is this thing on?

2008-09-20T11:35:00.002-04:00

It has been a while and things have been crazy as hell around here but, what's new right? Everyone's lives are crazy these days and it seems like much of my time is spent trying to keep myself from eating my way through a bad economy. LOL Seriously though times are hard all over and trying to lose weight while keeping the grocery bill down is not exactly the easiest thing to accomplish.

I'm off to watch my oldest child play baseball but I am planning to write a more in depth post tonight. Fall is here and it is my favorite time of the year. So many good things to eat and so many good recipes to share! I have a wonderful one to share with you this evening and, if you like soup and if you like sweet potatoes, you will like this recipe for sure.

Stay tuned!

Liar, Liar :)

2008-08-28T17:28:00.003-04:00

So. I told a lie this week. Well, is it a lie if you say you're going to do something and then don't? I don't know the technicalities involved but this week I failed to follow through on the menu. Not good. We went to the grocery store unprepared today and hungry, too which is NEVER a good idea. $117 later, we left. I have some vague ideas about what we'll eat but nothing written down. Oh well, we'll just have to post our eats daily, I guess. :)

In other news, tomorrow I go back to my doctor for a follow-up appt. Can't wait. Here's hoping I get a good report.

This has been a crazy week in our state. On Monday, the remnants of Hurricane Fay worked their way here and our yard suddenly looked like it had a pond in it. Not only that but for some reason, the rain drove all these flies inside and that was nothing but madness and mayhem for two days straight! I felt like I was in a video game, in a stage where I'm fighting these things but they keep coming back. It was unreal and very disturbing. Finally today we are fly-free and I'm cooking for the first time this week. I didn't want to be anywhere near the kitchen because the flies kept congregating around the window over my sink. SHUDDER! You have no idea how happy we are that the rain has stopped.

I hope wherever you are that you and your family are safe, dry, and comfortable. Getting ready for the long weekend? We'll just be glad to be together for three days straight. I love it when Sean has a day off.

More tomorrow!

That Time of Year

2008-08-25T20:50:00.002-04:00

Around this time of year, summer begins to drag on for me. Maybe it's because I live in the South where summer tends to last until Halloween but whatever it is, I'm ready for Fall. Fall is my absolute most favorite season of the year. The changing leaves, fall festivals, candied apples, roasted chicken, pipin' hot bowls of soup, and the list goes on. All I can think about are the glorious meals that I can prepare once it's not 94 degrees outside anymore and I get more excited about that than Christmas! LOL

Sorry I missed a few posts lately. In my other life, I'm an aspiring photographer and am trying to get my business up and running. Right now, my brain has been on overdrive trying to deal with all the mundane details required to get a business started. It's pretty insane actually. I feel like I'm going 'round in circles with it and I'll be glad when it's complete!

This week, the boys and I are getting back to planning our menu. Grocery shopping is just useless these days without a plan and we can't afford to be planless! Tonight for example, I had to throw away $18 worth of FILET MIGNON because I didn't cook it in time and it turned doo doo brown. You cannot imagine my dismay and horror when I pulled those things out of the fridge. All day long I had been dreaming of preparing those gorgeous little beauties but instead, I ended up having a potato and a piece of chicken. It was good but it wasn't FILET MIGNON. Okay? So we can afford anymore instances like that and it's back to the menus for us with the boys choosing 4 nights worth of eats and me choosing the other 3. It worked out well in the first week and they actually have requested that we do it again.

Look for a menu post from me on Wednesday! Hope you're doing well!

Decadence

2008-08-20T13:09:00.003-04:00

This week, I needed some comfort and sometimes, accompanying comfort is decadence. I had some chicken breasts that needed to be prepared so what did I do with them? Fried 'em up, y'all. Paula Deen style. Not a Paula Deen recipe but I fried them in my iron skillet in, wait for it...Crisco. I know it's horrible for you but I wanted to see how it would turn out prepared that way and it was mighty delicious. Definitely not weight loss fare but every once in a while, you've got to go a little bit wild.

Evie's Fried Chicken

2 large boneless, skinless breasts
1/2 - 3/4 cup of flour
1- 1 1/2 Tbs Montreal Steak Seasoning
1-2 tsps poultry seasoning
salt (for sprinkling afterwards)
2 Tbs crisco or enough oil to rise 1/2" on side of skillet

First, I pounded the chicken breasts to try and make them as evenly sized as possible. Then I put the flour and spices in a pie dish and dredged each breast through the mixture while the crisco was heating up. Do not add the chicken until that oil is good and hot or else you won't get a nice crust on your chicken. I cooked these for 5-7 minutes per side until I felt sure that they were done then I set them on papertowels to drain and rest until ready to eat. reserve drippings in pan to make gravy (see below).

Sides, Southern Green Beans and Mashed Potatoes with Cream Gravy.
For the beans you will need a 1/2 cup of chopped onion (I used frozen) 1 tsp butter, salt, pepper, ham boullion, and 1/2 package of frozen cut green beans. Oh, and water.

Before cooking the chicken, I actually got the beans going because they need to cook for a long time to get that good southern flavor happening. I put the butter in a saucepan and let it melt over medium heat and then I added the onions. I cooked these until they were soft and translucent. Then, I added about 1 tsp, maybe 2 of the boullion and some water (1/2 cup?). I stirred this until the boullion was well combined. Then I added the green beans and enough water to cover. I let this cook over medium low heat for 30-40 minutes.

I prepared the potatoes as I always do by dicing them, placing them in a saucepan and covering them with just enough water. Add salt, and gently boil for 10 minutes. Drain and then put back in the pan and cover, allowing them to steam for 15 minutes. Then I take my potato masher and smush them really well, adding butter and milk to taste. Add salt at the end if necessary. If you make cream gravy, be sure to keep a light hand with the salt in the potatoes. The gravy will be seasoned and you don't want to overdo it.

Gravy
reserved drippings
flour
salt and pepper
milk (to thin out)

Over medium low heat, add flour to the drippings in small increments until all the grease is absorbed. Cook for a couple of minutes stirring constantly. Then add milk (eyeball until gravy is right consistency), stirring well and add salt and pepper to taste. Then you're ready to eat!

So, so good y'all. Small portions. remember that. My weight is still holding steady at 197. I haven't gotten back into walking since I was sick but that's about to change. Things should begin moving off me once I get moving.

Make some chicken this weekend!

Sausage and Lentil Soup

2008-08-14T16:25:00.002-04:00

Yesterday the temperature only went up to about 75 degrees and for August in the South, that is a very cool temperature. It got me in the mood for soup. But not a heavy, cream-based soup. No, I wanted something "light" and broth-based so I got out this bistro cookbook I have and proceeded to comb through it for a recipe. There was only one that I had most of the ingedients for so it was the one I decided to prepare. Here is my version of "Lentil Soup with Pork Sausages" as adapted from the Bistro Cooking cookbook, by Patricia Wells.

Ingredients:
1/2 package of nitrate free bacon
1 onion, chopped well
1 grated carrot
2 tsp ground cumin
2 cloves of garlic, pushed through a press or minced
4 whole cloves
2 1/4 quarts of liquid (I used half chicken broth and half water)
1 pound organic french green lentils
2 bay leaves
1 Tbs unsalted butter
3 Tbs Worcestershire Sauce
1 package of polish kielbasa

First you will need a large stockpot. Brown the bacon in the bottom of the pot, then remove the bacon leaving the drippings behind.
Next, add the cumin, chopped onion, grated carrot, 2 minced cloves of garlic, and the 4 whole cloves and saute these until they are all nice and brown.
Then add the lentils and bay leaves, give it a good stir, and then add all your liquid. At this point, you will also need to add a liberal amount of salt and pepper. Taste the broth as you add to make sure it's to your liking.
Bring to a boil then turn down the heat and let the lentils simmer until cooked through, which takes about 45 minutes.
About 10 minutes before the lentils are done, slice the kielbasa into rounds and place it into a pan with the 1 Tbs of butter and the Worcestershire sauce. You may also add a light sprinkling of cumin here if you wish. Cutting the sausage and then cooking it cuts down the time it takes to get these done and you want them to be a nice brown. When you see that, you'll know they're ready.
In small soup bowls, ladle some of the lentil soup in first then top it with a few pieces of the cut kielbasa. It's quite tasty and so simple because there aren't many ingredients. This should serve at least 4-6 people. I had a bunch of soup leftover to freeze for another day.

Here is what mine looked like:

A couple of notes for you, this took a lot more salt than I would have thought it would so don't be scared when you're adding it to yours. Also, if you can't find the French Green lentils, regular lentils will do just as well. I halfway think I like them better because they're a little more substantial than their French counterpart.

If you make this and enjoy it, please leave me a comment and let me know!

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

2008-08-11T20:07:00.005-04:00

I'm not dead. Yeah, I know you were thinking I had fallen face-down into a vat of caramel or something and had OD'd but fear not! I yet live. Last week was a rough one though because our house was infected by some kind of ass-kicking cold and I didn't cook as much as I would have liked. However, in spite of eating out a couple of times, really it wasn't a bad week eats-wise overall.

Thanks to my handy dandy menu planning, grocery shopping has been quite breezy and affordable here lately. I'm liking the whole menu thing and fully intend to keep that up. The kids have been enjoying their involvement in the process, too, and I expect that, as time goes on, they will grow accustomed to eating healthier foods. It's not going to happen overnight because they haven't been raised to eat that way but with time I'm hopeful that things will get better.

About me. This morning I had a quick, small breakfast of one Alexia Biscuit. These things are delicious and are so close to homemade tasting it is ridiculous. It's a pricey option but sometimes, I don't feel like standing in the kitchen making biscuits. No, I want to sit on the sofa, waiting for the ovven to preheat while taking in the glorious sights on re-runs of "Third Watch" on A&E. Bosco is yummy to look at, what can I say? But these biscuits are made from all natural ingredients so I feel a lot less guilty eating one of these:

as opposed to eating a McDonald's biscuit. Look for them in your grocer's freezer section. I promise you will love them. And no, I'm not getting paid a single cent to promote them they're just that damn good.

For lunch, my sister took me out to a wonderful little local restaurant and I had an Italian deli-style sandwich with a small side salad. The salad was fabulous because they use nice, dark green lettuce, along with julienned zucchini and carrots. Not that there's anything wrong with iceberg but I enjoy a hearty salad when I go out to eat.

For dinner, the boys wanted to go out for pizza and, since Sean wasn't home for dinner tonight, I was happy to oblige. Here is what my piece looked like:

In the spirit of full disclosure, this picture is of a piece of pizza that I ate last year but I swear, the one I ate tonight looked JUST like this. Except it had yellow peppers instead of green but that was the only difference! It was funny because I really didn't want pizza and did my darndest to convince the boys to choose something else but in the end, that pizza was goooood.

Now, my belly is full and I am finished eating for the night. My weight is actually down another pound to 197. It's slow but I'm good with that. I'm trying to make changes and choices that I can live my life with and not do a crash diet that will send me off on a binge when a stressful moment strikes. Tonight, I'm going to sit snuggled up under a blanket and watch "the Closer" and "Saving Grace". It's nice to feel like I'm on the right track for a change.

I'll be back tomorrow and with better photos! Hope all is well in your world!

I'm Sick

2008-08-06T17:24:00.001-04:00

I'm just to tired to post anything substantial. I will be back tomorrow or Friday.

Here we go!

2008-08-03T10:43:00.003-04:00

So, after visiting the doctor I had a coming to Jesus party for myself. Things have got to change or else my life will be miserable and I don't want to be miserable. I've implemented some changes in my life that should help with that and here is what they are. First of all, I'm using weekly menus. This will help me keep a record of what I eat AND it will help me spend more wisely at the grocery store. Another thing I have done with the weekly menus is get the kids in on the action. Right now, they eat pretty much what they want which means I'm preparing at least 3 different meals, 3 times a day. I'm not going to do that anymore so we've made a compromise. They get to choose their meals 4x a week and then in turn, they must eat what I choose for them 3x a week. You can't make a kid go cold turkey onto grownup food so this seems like a decent way to get them to make the eventual switch to healthier eats. The kids and I sat down together and figured out or menu for this week and here they are, their menu and mine:

Kids
Friday: Chicken Nuggets, french fries (all from frozen)
Saturday: Pizza (homemade)
Sunday: My choice
Monday: My choice
Tuesday: Corn Dogs, Grapes
Wednesday: Spaghetti, Meatballs, Salad
Thursday: My choice

Me and Sean
Friday: Fish, Green beans, Rice
Saturday: Homemade pizza
Sunday: Meatloaf, broccoli, Potatoes
Monday: Oven Fried Chicken, Peas, Rice
Tuesday: Leftovers from Meatloaf night
Wednesday: Spaghetti and Meatballs
Thursday: Turkey Sloppy Joe's and Salad (from Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals 2 book)

There are some meals that we will eat with the kids like pizza and spaghetti because I use whole wheat crusts and noodles. And on the nights when the kids don't eat with us I'm able to incorporate leftovers into our meals. It's economical and healthful. I'm liking our plan thus far.

Here are some photos of what we've been eating this week. My new favorite breakfast is something the Pioneer Woman featured on the cooking portion of her website and it's called Egg-in-a-nest. I freaking love this now and eat it almost every day. There's just something about the combination of lightly toasted bread, seasoned with salt and pepper paired up with a gently fried egg in the middle. It is, in one word, divine.

I use a whole grain bread and cage free egg because the yolks are a million times better.

Another breakfast I make when I have the time is an egg and some sauteed potatoes.

For this version, I used red potatoes which I diced along with a green pepper that was grown organically in my container garden. The homegrown peppers pack a lot of flavor into them and are really sweet and delicious. I love eating an egg for breakfast, in case you couldn't tell. It just is a great start to the day.

Salmon is a favorite fish around here. It's hearty, pretty, and doesn't need a lot of adornment to bring out the wonderful flavor of this fish. Here is a piece of wild Alaskan Salmon that I bought at the store:

Isn't it beautiful? Anyway, I cook this under the broiler skin side-up after I season it with a tsp of olive oil, and a tsp of lemon-pepper. Once the skin begins to bubble, I pull it out of the oven, pull the skin off, flip it over and finish it off under the broiler for a few more minutes. The times will vary depending on the thickness and cut of your fish but this particular piece took 5-7 mins start to finish. I served it with a long/wild rice blend, and steamed green beans that I tossed in a pan with some garlic infused oil. Mmmmmmm. So good.

Yesterday, I got a little crazy in the kitchen and decided to make my own pizza dough from scratch. Baking and I don't usually get along because, let's face it. I'm one lazy sucker and I don't like have to be so precise with my measurements. Eyeballing it is more my thing but in order for me to have a healthy dough, I was going to have to make it myself. Last year, I bought a Wolfgang Puck food processor and it came with a couple of recipes for pizza dough. I used the one for whole wheat dough and it turned out all right but I don't think I would use it again. Anyway, here is the pizza in all it's crispy, golden glory:

Again, I used homegrown peppers, canned black olives, and canned mushrooms. Calm down! I was going to use fresh shrooms but they had gone bad. I'll use fresh next time, ok? Here is the pizza up close:

Can't you just smell it?

I'm feeling really positive about this direction in which we're going. It feels good including the kids in the menu-making process and it helps all of us make healthier choices. Since I've added wheat products back into my diet I'm expecting to see my weight go back up a bit but this week, I'm putting exercise into my routine and am hoping it may offset the gain.

I'll be back tomorrow to post pics of tonight's dinner!

Menu Post and Recent Eats Coming Soon

2008-08-02T23:02:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow morning I will be posting my menu and recent eats. I will show you my latest favorite thing to eat for breakfast!!

See you tomorrow!

Evie

Been a rough eats week folks.

2008-07-31T17:48:00.002-04:00

I have not been feeling well, friends. In fact, I have been feeling so yucky that I went BACK to the doctor, again. This time, I requested a woman because I was really feeling like no one was listening to me and I'm glad I did that because things have been much better since I did that.

You know what the diagnosis is? I'm fat. Yep, I've GOT to lose some weight. A lot of my issues can be connected to my overweight state. For the time being I'm on Prilosec for acid reflux, the reflux has been causing my breathing problems evidently. She also suggested a sleeping pill, exercise, and a healthy diet. As you will remember, I was associating my problems with a possible allergy to wheat but I can tell you, based on my experience over the last couple of days that I don't think I have an allergy at all. I felt amazing today and expect to fell better as the days progress.

I suspected that my weight was part of the problem but it took a visit to the doctor to confirm it. I'm lucky. My weight hasn't caused my blood pressure to be high but I don't want it to get to that point. As a result of my visit to the doctor, I have decided to make another change here. Every week, I"m going to post my menu ideas here for each meal. I will document one in photos every day and share nutritional info when I can. My plan is to use recipes from Cooking Light, Rachael Ray, and Dr. Will Clower's books, as noted in the sidebar. When using a recipe, I will provide a book title or internet link when available so you can follow along with me if you like!!

Tonight, I'm going through a stack of cookbooks on my coffee table to prepare my menu for the week. Sorry about the prolonged absence I just wasn't feeling well enough to post here for the last few days. Come back on Saturday as the menu should be up by then!!

am I turning into a food snob??

2008-07-23T10:48:00.002-04:00

For days I have been craving my favorite side dish. My old family meal stand-by - green bean casserole. The ingredients were purchased and all I was waiting for was the right moment to prepare my all-time favorite meal. Yes. You read that right, I said meal because I can absolutely eat it all by itself. At least, I used to be able to do it until last night. I knew something was wrong when I popped open the can of Durkee's Fried Onions, which in the past I have munched on while mixing the casserole's ingredients, because when I took a little taste, something was amiss. They didn't taste good to me. Immediately, worry set in. I thought perhaps I had a funky can of onions. Well, I forged on and got the casserole together and put it in the oven and anxiously waited for it to come together. It came out of the oven and sat on the stovestop, steamily resting, and I continued to wait for it eagerly. Earlier I had baked some drumsticks in the oven with BBQ sauce and knew this meal would be so good in it's old-schooly comfortable way. After the casserole had cooled down, I plated my dinner with one drumstick and a healthy spoonful of Green Bean Casserole....

It's never been a pretty thing on the plate...

I took a bite, the first one of this manna from heaven in a long time, and was instantly disappointed. It tasted nothing like I expected nor like I remembered. Gone was the delicious warmth that used to envelop me when eating this dish and it was replaced with a bland, slimy, blahness that defied explanation. Has it finally happened then? Have I reached a point in my quest for finding good eats that my old favorites are now history? I don't know, friends. I just don't know. What is known is this. I woke up to a different world this morning, people. Green Bean Casserole no longer equals goodness to me and what that means in the scheme of things is yet undetermined but for now I think it means I have moved on. I'm really ready to eat better things or perhaps to find a more delicious way to prepare the dish that doesn't include canned soup, onions, and beans. Does this portend other major food changes? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Oi yoi, yoi

2008-07-22T11:13:00.002-04:00

What a crazy few days we've had around here. Thanks goodness I have been doing ok foodwise, in spite of all the stressful things going on because my weight is down to 198.5. Hey! Every little bit counts!!!

On Friday, we yet again ate the chicken dish I've been gnawing on for the last few days. I was going to fix salmon but Sean didn't get home at a decent hour so we just had leftovers. On Saturday at lunchtime, I figured I would fix the salmon we missed out on the night before but I didn't count on finding it spoiled in the fridge. That's the one bad thing about buying fish on special. If you don't eat it the same day you buy it, you may as well throw it out. So what was I going to do? Thankfully I had some butterflied pork chops in the fridge and we had those along with some roasted asparagus and tomato, mozz, and basil, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Roasted Aparagus is so good and easy. You need:

1 bunch of asparagus
olive oil
salt and pepper
parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cover a jellyroll pan in foil, unless you like to clean dishes in which case you may leave the pan naked.
Trim 2 inches off the ends of the asparagus and place on your jellyroll pan.
Drizzle with 2 tsps of olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper over the top and then toss them around the pan to coat.
Put them in the oven for about 15 minutes.
When you removed them, sprinkle some good quality parm on the top or grate some if you have fresh parm.

So gooood!

The Tomatoa, Mozz, and basil is pretty basic. For two people, I used:
1 tomato
half a fresh ball of mozz
a few leaves of fresh basil
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

Slice your tomato and mozz and layer them on a plate along with some torn basil leaves. Drizzle with the oil and vinegar very lightly, you don't want to drown them. Then crack fresh pepper and sprinkle a tiny bit of kosher salt over the top.

This is quickly becoming one of my favorite things to eat, in spite of the fact that I have never been a big fan of tomatoes. I can't wait for the baby tomatoes growing on my plant to get big enough to eat!

The pork chops were simple as well. In case you haven't noticed, I like keeping things simple. I'm simple. Got it? Ok.

2 butterfly-cut chops 1/2" thick
2 tsp olive oil
garlic salt, fresh pepper

Warm the oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Season the meat according to your own taste and add to the pan once you see ripples in the oil. Cook a few minutes per side, until the you can press on the thickest part and it feels like the part of your palm, close to the heel of your hand. Firm but not hard. It should still have some give. Pork is tricky because you don't want to overcook it or else it's really unpleasant.

This was a great meal!

Later that night we went out to dinner with friends and had a nice time. I got tuna in a soy-ginger glaze served with rice. For dessert, Sean and I split a piece of carrot cake, it is one of our favorites!! Then Sean proceeded to drink too much and spent the next day hungover. LOL

Last night, the boys and I had McDick's for dinner. Usually, I would have the Filet-o-fish combo but instead exercised some restraint and had a regular burger, small fries, and a small vanilla shake. It was not good but I was proud of myself for keeping my portion sizes small.

Hope all has been well with you!

Still here!

2008-07-20T23:47:00.001-04:00

I will have a post for you tomorrow, friends. One of my littles is sick so I'm a bit preoccupied. Come back tomorrow though for some photos!

Hope you had a great weekend!

Lunch and an Interesting Article

2008-07-17T08:56:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was a pretty good, healthy eats day for me. I started out the day with lowfat cottage cheese and pineapple. Yum! That combination is about the only way I can eat cottage cheese and it was delicious. As I puttered around the house yesterday, I was trying to figure out what to do for lunch. The day before I had cleaned out my freezer and had taken out some thin chicken breasts to defrost so those HAD to be used yesterday. My sister had invited me over for dinner so chicken was on the menu for lunch. Frankly, I've been feeling a little uninspired by my chicken preparation ideas and yesterday was no exception.

Usually when I cook these scallopini-style breasts I pan-fry them and then make a caper sauce but I didn't want capers yesterday. I still pan-fried the breasts but this time, I made a very light sauce out of dry sherry, chicken broth, and a touch of half-n-half. It was so good! I forget how good sherry is for cooking until I use it. It just adds a layer of taste that is so unexpected. What I did was season the chicken with kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper and garlic powder on both sides while 2 Tbs of olive oil was heating in my pan. Then I quickly cooked the chicken (there was a lot) and layered the breasts on a plate while I got out the ingredients for the sauce. Into the still hot pan I poured a 1/2 cup of good chicken broth, 1/2 cup of sherry and brought it to a boil and reduced it by half, stirring occasionally to be sure all those yummy brown bits released from the bottom of the pan. Once the liquids had reduced I added about a 1/4 cup of half-n-half over low heat. I tasted it and added a pinch of salt and a couple of turns from the pepper mill and the sauce was ready.

While all this was going on, I put my microwave to work on my side dishes which were leftover rice and green beans. My meal was absolutely delicious and light!

I still have plenty of leftovers so it will be repeated today.

Last night for dinner, my sister fixed homemade steak and cheese sandwiches which were out of this world. They weren't heavy or greasy and were seasoned very well also. On the side, she fixed a salad which I topped with 1 1/2 tsp of light ranch dressing. It was so good! After dinner, we had some chocolate chip cookies which really hit the spot, too. I needed that chocolate! As I said earlier, yesterday was a good eats day for me. I felt really satisfied with it.

I don't know if I've ever said anything about my dieting past on here but a few years ago, I followed a low-carb regime and lost quite a bit of weight. I actually enjoyed eating low carb and because of choosing that lifestyle, I fell in love with a lot of vegetables that I had never tried before and still love to this day. However, when I hit a bump on the road of life, I fell off the wagon and used food to try and make me feel better and the weight piled on pretty quickly. That is pretty common for me, I gain fast and lose fast. At any rate, I didn't go back to low carb and I've been trying to lose weight ever since. That was in 2003. I was pretty bitter for a long time and blamed the low carb diet for my weight gain, which would have happened no matter what regimen I was following. Why am I telling you all this? Yesterday, I was reading the news on the internet and came across the following article:

Low Carb Beats Low Fat on Weight Loss

It is an interesting read which basically states that low carb, low fat, and low cal diets all produce weight loss but out of the three, low carb provides the best results in both weight loss and improved cholesterol. Check it out for yourself. What are your thoughts on that?

Not sure what today brings in the way of food but I'm going to do my best to make it healthful and delicious!!

Stress Eating

2008-07-15T21:57:00.002-04:00

Y'all. I'm BRIZOKE! That's "Broke" for those of you who don't understand my pitiful attempt at being hip. The stress has really gotten me down and I spent the day trying to make myself feel better with food. There wasn't much here to float my boat but tonight we went over to my sister's house and had pizza. All in all, it could have been worse. Like I said, there wasn't a bunch of junk in the house so my stress monkey went hunrgy for most of the day. The only thing I munched on was a few chips with homemade salsa. I couldn't decide whether to be more depressed that I had no money or no junk food in which to drown my sorrows.

The economic times are hard right now and, even though we make a good living, the rising costs of fuel and food are hitting us pretty hard right now. Something happened at dinner though that made me realize that even as stressed as I am, there are people who are having an even harder time than we are. When my sister and I went to pick up the pizza, there was a young girl in the parking lot trying to sell candy. Her family was sitting in the car as she wandered from person to person, doing her very best to make some money. My sis and I felt terrible because we didn't have one iota of cash on us. We just never carry it anymore. When we told her we didn't have any money, she looked at our pizza boxes with obvious envy. It was quite a moment. One of those, "Ok, Evie, it's time to get over yourself" moments. Here I am, money is tight but at least I can afford to eat without resorting to taking my children to a shopping center to sell candy bars. Something has got to change and soon. If people like me are struggling, I can't begin to imagine what it's like for that little girl's family.

I'm sorry for going off on that tangent but that occurrence really affected me.

My goal for wednesday is to be more positive, to eat mindfully, and healthfully, and get up and move. Please come back and see how I did!

Everybody Loves Pie

2008-07-13T20:41:00.004-04:00

Well, maybe not everyone but I sure do! Apple, cherry, Lemon meringue, Key Lime, chocolate Silk. Need I go on? While on our PA trip, my SIL had the latest issue of Cooking Light magazine and prominently featured on the cover was a beautiful cherry pie. I knew when I got home that a copy of that magazine was going to be in my cart on the next trip to the grocery store.
Being who I am, I couldn't make the recipe as printed. Nope, had to switch things up a tad. Instead of cherry pie, I made peach which required additional spices and some adjustments to the recipe. Without further adieu, here is the recipe for Evie's Rustic Peach Pie as adapted from the Cooking Light July 2008 edition's recipe for Fresh Cherry Pie.

2 TBS uncooked quick-cooking tapioca
5-6 large fresh peaches, peeled and sliced
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 TBS fresh lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon (all of it!)
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 TBS maple syrup (the real thing)
1/8 tsp salt
1 (15 ounce) package refrigerated pie dough (i used pillsbury)
Cooking spray
2 TBS water
1 large egg white
2 TBS turbinado sugar

Place tapioca in a spice or coffee grinder; process until finely ground (i used mortar and pestle). Combine tapioca and next 8 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl; toss well. Let stand for 30 minutes and then stir to combine.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Roll one of the packaged pie crusts into an 11-inch circle. Place in the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. (i forgot the spray, don't do that) Allow the dough to extend over the edge of the plate. Pour the peach mixture into the dough and be sure to scrape all the spicy goodness in there. You don't want to miss a thing. Roll the remaining dough into a 12-inch circle and then cut 12 1-inch strips. (i did 1/2 inch strips because I read wrong) arrange in a lattice pattern over the peach mixture. Fold edges under and crimp. (i SO can't do this well)

Combine 2 TBS water and egg white in a small bowl. Brush the egg white mixture over dough on top of pie and sprinkle dough evenly with turbinado sugar. Bake at 400 degress for 20 minutes. Then take from the oven and shield pie crust edges with foil. Put back in oven and bake for an additional 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Cool pie in pan for 45 minutes on a wire rack. Makes 12 servings.

Y'all. This pie is SO good. I might have to eat a slice for breakfast. It's only 282 calories so I can do that.

Our evening meal was courtesy of another cooking light recipe, this time from their website. Farfalle Carbonara. Again, I made a couple of tiny adjustments because that's just how I roll, yo, but for the most part the recipe remained unchanged. You can find the recipe HERE. The only changes I made were to add 1 cup of frozen baby peas that I heated in the microwave and 1/4 cup of half-and-half. It was really pretty good, see?

For those of you doing WW points, one serving of the pie is 6 points and one serving of the Carbonara is 8 points. Well worth every one. Oh, and I was 199 even today, yeah!!! This week I begin exercising in earnest!!

Another delicious dinner

2008-07-13T10:37:00.003-04:00

Last night, we ate a goooood dinner. It was simple, delicious, light, and flavorful. Oh yeah, it was healthy, too. I took two filets of salmon, with the skin still on, and broiled them, served that alongside a wild rice blend (not Uncle Ben's), and tomatoes fresh from my garden paired up with artisan mozzarella and organic basil. Yummy!

To prepare the salmon, I preheated my broiler for about 15-20 minutes. Of course I'm cooking on Wilma Flinstone's range so yours may not take that long to heat up. I seasoned the salmon with kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper, and a light sprinkling of lemon-pepper seasoning. Then I placed the filets skin side up on a foil-wrapped cookie sheet and placed them under the broiler until the skin started to bubble. Once that happened, I took them out, peeled the skin off and put them back under the broiler for 1-2 minutes and they were cooked perfectly.

While the broiler was heating up though, I cooked the rice in the microwave. THis is by far my most preferred method of cooking rice because I don't have to worry about messing it up on the stove and it is cooked perfectly every time. I had a wild rice blend that included white basmati rice, red rice, and wild rice which I placed in my Pampered Chef steamer along with 1 1/2 cups of fat free beef broth (to 1 cup rice) and about 2 tsps of butter. That took about 20 minutes to cook.

When those things were both done, I took the last couple of minutes before plating the meal to prepare the tomato-mozzarella dish. I had two beautiful tomatoes from my patio garden and after slicing them and the artisan mozzarella, I layered them with torn leaves of organic basil. Then I drizzled a TINY bit of olive oil and some balsamic vinaigrette on top and Voila!!

Dinner was served. It was really, really, good, didn't make a big mess in the kitchen, and was so easy to do. My goal is going to be to try and find a way to make all my dinners like this. I love to eat but I hate slaving in the kitchen!!

After dinner, we went to Baskin Robbins where I had one scoop of my all-time favorite flavor, Pralines-n-Cream. It is freaking DELICIOUS. Forget Cold-Stone Creamery, just give me a sugar cone topped with a scoop of Pralines and Cream and we'll be friends forever.

This week, I'm planning on making a peach pie from scratch so stay tuned and see how that works out.

Dinner was Good!

2008-07-11T11:36:00.002-04:00

Last night I had leftovers for dinner and, really, I'm not such a big fan of leftovers. Well except that it means less work for me in the kitchen. I ate the leftover chicken and capers from Tuesday night (in spite of the coconut taste) and paired it with some steamed green beans and a small serving of smashed red potatoes.

It was actually pretty good the second time around. I still struggled with the sweetness imparted by the coconut oil but the capers helped get beyond that. I've gone back to using my smaller plate and find it to be a very useful tool in determining the proper portion size. I did find that yesterday I felt pretty hungry during the day. Not sure if that's due to an increase in activity or what but I've been busting my ass trying to get this house clean. You all know I'm not neat and cleaning house is a major struggle for me but I'm tired of looking around and being surrounded by cluttery shit.

Don't know if I mentioned this or not but this year, I decided to try my hand at gardening and here are the first fruits of my labor. Homegrown tomatoes!

Of course, they're not really that color, I was just trying to get artsy with the photo. They still need to ripen on the counter for a couple more days and then I think they'll be good and ready! Funny thing is I'm not a huge tomato fan but we'll see if homegrown tomatoes taste better to me.

And just because I've been holding out on the photo front, here are some gratuitous shots from our trip to PA. First is the view of Philly looking over the Delaware River from NJ.

I was actually pretty pleased with how this turned out and think it might look good blown up and on the wall.
Now this photo is of some pears on a tree in my SIL's yard. I'm so jealous that she has fruit trees!

I don't even like pears but I love the color of those!

This weekend I'm going to be spending time looking for some good, simple recipes that don't use a ton of ingredients in an attempt to plan my menu for the week. Sean won't be around for dinner most of the week so I may have my big meal for lunch. For some reason, it just seems easier to me to cook a big meal during the day instead of in the evening. Are there any recipes you can suggest or any websites you particularly enjoy? I'd love to hear!!

What's Up, Party people?

2008-07-09T09:42:00.002-04:00

I'm back and SUB 200lbs! Yeah baby!!! I'm 199.5 but it's below 200 so that's all I care about for now. Thank goodness I nearly starved to death on our trip so I could break that 200lb barrier. LOL You know that's not true....

Yesterday, I started an exercise routine although it wasn't the one I originally intended. See, we have an elliptical trainer, a treadmill, and a Sears version of the bowflex and we use none of them. But my husband won't let them go because, I guess it's kind of like women and their skinny clothes. One day, you might be able to use them again. Yesterday was that day for me. My intentions were to get on the treadmill for 30 mins and ease back into a routine but the stupid thing wouldn't work so I had to get on the elliptial trainer instead. Man, I frickin' hate that thing. It's really, really, hard for me to use for two reasons. One because it's just tough. Two because it's missing the plastic pads that your feet rest on so I spent the 7 minutes on it trying to keep from falling off and getting injured. I think today I'm going to check out my extensive library of exercise DVD's and do something aerobic that way. It's less likely to maim me.

Eats-wise, things have been going pretty well. I made chicken last night which I sauteed in coconut oil which is supposed to be the "new healthy" oil. I'm not a big fan because in spite of reading that it doesn't give off a funny flavor, it really does. I'm going to stick with olive oil, thank you very much. I also made creamed corn which was delicious. Have you ever made that? It's so easy! Here's what I did.

3 ears of corn
1 TBS butter
milk
cornstarch

Take a knife and cut the kernels from the corn into a bowl, reserving all of the milk given off of the cob. Also, be sure to scrape the cob down really well to get as much milk as you can off the ear. My corn was a little too old for this which is why I had to use milk and cornstarch. Over medium heat, add 1TBS butter to a pan and melt it, then add the corn kernels and corn milk. Remember, if your corn gave off a lot of milk you may not need the cornstarch. You want to cook it over a medium-low heat until it starts to thicken up. If it doesn't do this, then make a slurry of 2 tsps of cornstarch and 3/4 cup cold milk and add to the corn. Add salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste and cook for a total of 20-30 minutes. It's really delicious when you use very fresh corn.

I steamed some broccoli and served it along with the chicken and corn. Tasty!

Right now, I'm following the WW points program but as soon as my 3 months are up, I'm not going to continue using it. If I keep this as my journal, then I don't see the need to continue paying for WW's. I KNOW how to eat right, it's just a matter of actually doing it.

I know I haven't posted any photos of food yet and I'm sorry about that. These blog posts are like dry bread without photos so I will try and fix that this week. I've just been lazy about it, frankly.

Well, I hope you had a wonderful 4th holiday!! I got my hot dog on and that's always an important part of the 4th for me. :) Stay tuned because this week, I'm going to try and make green bean casserole from scratch without using flour. Woo Hoo!!

Heading Out!

2008-07-01T16:42:00.002-04:00

We're heading out for PA, baby! We'll be back on Sunday so I will get back to posting again on Monday.

Have a great 4th of July holiday!!!

Within POints but eating crap

2008-06-28T11:37:00.002-04:00

I don't think the WW points system intended people like me to eat their day's points value in fun-size Baby Ruths. Call me crazy but, I'm thinking they meant for us to eat healthful things like fruits, veggies, and the like. Yesterday began with a container of Stonyfield Whole Milk Strawberry yogurt. Freaking delicious. I just can't eat the low-fat stuff. It tastes like ass. Not that I would actually have any idea what that is like...Moving on. For lunch, I had three ham roll-ups which is basically a slice of ham, a tsp of mayo all rolled up in a lettuce leaf because I'm still avoiding gluten. It was quite good although I think iceberg is a better rolling lettuce than say, romaine. Just my personal opinion on that one. That afternoon, I ate 3 fun-size Baby Ruth's and had 2 Cokes!!! People, I had gone for YEARS without buying Coke at the store but for some reason, this week, I bought them and drank two yesterday. Sheesh!!

Okay y'all. Here is the topper. For dinner we had MCDonalds because I was too lazy to get in the kitchen and cook anything. I pulled myself back a bit and didn't order my usual super-huge ass busting Filet'oFish combo and instead ordered a regular Cheeseburger and small fries. Yes, I know I ate gluten by eating a burger. Amazingly, it didn't bother me so now, I'm thinking I'm just plain crazy. And big. And that's why I feel yucky, because I'm a crazy, big, hypochondriac. Anyway, I only went over my daily points by 1. can you believe that??? Insanity.

This morning, I got on the scale and I'm at an even 200 lbs. It's kind of sad but I was happy to see it on the scale. A few months ago, I was 192. Throw in a hysterectomy and a 6 week recovery and BOOM up to 203. But now, things on are the way back down and that feels good. I really think cutting out gluten products has helped me drop the weight. I'm not cutting it out completely but I am still going to try and create meals that don't include it if I can. Now, we're going out of town on Wednesday so, on the road it's harder to avoid but I will do my best. Also from Wed-Sun you may not see any posts from me because I don't know that I will have access to the internet. No, we're not traveling to some backwoods cabin but since we're visiting family I don't feel right asking to use their computer all the time, just because I need to speak to my people. LOL

Today we slept until 10:30, how glorious is that? Thank god my kids are at an age where they sleep past the crack of dawn and we can all be slackers together on the weekend. Families that sleep together...wait. Eww. Nope, that isn't right. Well, you catch my drift.

Yesterday wasn't as bad as I thought

2008-06-26T09:55:00.002-04:00

Quick update. For those of you doing Weight Watchers, my daily points value is 25 and when I wrote my post last night, I hadn't finished my log for the day so this morning, I finished it up and was quite surprised by what I saw. With all the crazy stuff I ate, I thought for sure I'd gone over my allowance but in fact, I was .5 a point under. Insane, isn't it???

Just had to post that here. PLUS, I'm down two pounds. Still over 200 (ewww) but on the way down at least. Today has started out well with cottage cheese and fruit for breakfast and a handful of raw almonds. Looking forward to the rest of the day!

First Day In

2008-06-25T22:19:00.002-04:00

So today was my first day "back". As I said in my post yesterday, I'm trying to stay away from gluten and wheat, which was a bit more of a struggle than I thought but I did it. All I had for breakfast this morning was a small sausage patty I had cooked yesterday. It was a crazy morning as I had to get the boys up and dressed and ready to play gold with my dad at 9:30. That might not sound like much but my boys can SLEEP and my 6 year old is especially hard to wake up. Anyway, by the time they were out the door, I wasn't far behind and on my way to the grocery store. What the hell, people? I planned to spend $60. Yes, I know that was a freaking ridiculous idea to begin with but still! That was my goal. Well, apparently I needed more than I thought and then add $4.99 to my total to buy a pie for the troops on the 4th of July and I spent $152. Good Lord. That was a credit card purchase, let me tell you. Anyway, I digress.

After the grocery store, I met some friends for lunch at a mexican restaurant. I barely ate any of it because we were so busy gabbing so of course I had to come home and eat. Still avoiding gluten, I chose sour cream and onion chips and 1/2 a Cadbury bar. Mmmm. Doesn't that sound healthy? FF to dinner, I prepared baby back ribs in the oven which were to die for. I would have used the grill but it broke while it was on a couple of months ago and the fire dept came and yada yada yada, we can't use it anymore. I had a small green salad with a Ginger dressing and one small new potato roasted in the oven. I only ate four ribs. If you want to know the secret to fall off the bone ribs, it's cooking them for a couple of hours in the oven at 300 degrees, tightly wrapped in aluminum foil. Then top them with your fave BBQ sauce and put them back in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. They are Goooood.

All in all, it wasn't a TERRIBLE day. It could have been better and I used up some of my extra points but I actually do feel like I'm back on track. I'm better prepared and ready to face tomorrow and make healthy choices. Tomorrow will be MUCH different!

Giving it another go!

2008-06-24T13:56:00.003-04:00

After an extended absence I'm back to give this thing another shot. The last few months have been busy and stressful but I've found a happy balance and am ready to meet my weight challenges head-on. My current weight is 203. Yikes. Seriously? Did I just type that number? On a 5'3" person, that's substantial. So far, I've been very lucky in that my blood pressure is great and I haven't eaten my way into diabetes. Yet. I'm feeling confused about which approach to eating I should take. It seems that no matter which path I choose to take, I have the uncanny ability to find out how to get fatter on it. I know that's totally my fault and not the diet's.

Two weeks ago, I signed back up with Weight Watchers online and kept up with my journal for two days. Stellar. My plan is to utilize the WW online journaling tool along with whatever mode of eating I settle on.

In regards to may way of eating, I'm still a believer in the Will Clower approach, all things in moderation and I'm only going to add one small change to it. Lately, I've been thinking that I may have an allergy or intolerance for wheat. I don't think I have celiac disease but I do feel yucky when I eat wheat products. For now, I'm going to go gluten/wheat free along with eating healthful whole foods in moderation. For example, at breakfast I will have one egg, a slice of all natural/nitrate free bacon, and some berries. For lunch, a sauteed chicken breast served with brussel sprouts simmered in chicken broth and then a piece of chocolate for an ender. Dinner may be Salmon cooked on the grill, served with one new potato and steamed haricots verts with some fresh fruit for dessert. I'm going to try eating this way for 60 days and see how I feel then. Any weight loss would be an added benefit.

Obviously, another thing I have GOT to do is amp up my activity level. Right now, much of my day is sedentary, sitting in front of the TV or computer. I get up to eat, pee, or do some housework. If you've ever seen my house though, you know I'm slacking on the last one. My goal at first is going to be to get up and move at a brisk pace for 20 minutes a day. Each week, I'm going to add 5-10 minutes, and then also begin adding weight training. We'll see how this goes.

Instead of taking photos of every meal, I'm going to pick one a day and more than likely it will be breakfast or lunch. Mostly because the lighting in my house is terrible and I hate the way pictures look when I take them indoors at night.

So, that's where I am for now. I'm still here and still heavy. Care to watch me wander down the long, slow, road to weight loss success? 'Cause that's where I'm heading. I'm tired of being tired, tired of not feeling cute, tired of not wanting my picture taken with my family. Something in my life has got to change and I'm the only one who can do that.

I hope someone out there is reading and I hope you will accompany me on this journey!

Taking a Break

2008-04-20T14:01:00.003-04:00

With so many things going on right now, this blog has really fallen to the wayside. I'm officially taking a break from keeping this site current but hope to get a handle on things in a month or two.

Thanks to everyone who has been a reader here and I hope to see you here again one day. If you're interested in keeping up with me, you can visit me at my other blog HERE. It has to do with family so I update that one a lot.

Take care!

Evie

Quickly Checking in!

2008-04-05T21:06:00.002-04:00

So Wednesday was a crappy eating day. I skipped breakfast altogether because I woke up late and had to get the boys to a dental appointment. After that, I came home and had an egg salad sandwich for lunch and a chocolate chip cookie. Dinner was pitiful. Sean didn't get home until really late so I just popped a bag of popcorn and watched the CSI Miami marathon on A&EHD. It's the cheesiest show. Ever. But I'm so addicted to it, it's ridiculous!

Thursday was a little better. I had two biscuits for breakfast along with a cup of tea. For lunch I had another egg salad sandwich and for dinner well, I can't remember dinner. I know I was proud of myself because this week I have done a great job of using what's in the fridge!

Friday morning, I woke up and had two biscuits and one egg and a cup of tea. At lunch, I made some homemade cream of mushroom soup and it was heavenly!! It's been really cold, dreary, and rainy around here and the soup seriously hit the spot. For dinner, it was leftover night. We still had meatloaf and mac and cheese in the fridge and I had some brussel sprouts that I needed to use. I ended up letting Sean have the meatloaf and mac and cheese and I ate a huge portion of the brussel sprouts. It was delicious!!

Sorry for not keeping up with things for a few days. I'm going to weigh myself on Monday and am hoping to see a 1lb loss. Keep your fingers crossed!

Meatloaf, Beatloaf, I hate meatloaf...not really

2008-04-02T08:06:00.003-04:00

Recognize that Meatloaf line anyone? It's from one of my favorite movies of all time. Can you guess it?

Yesterday was another good eats day for me! Yaaaay! I got up and had biscuits again for breakfast and then I had shrimp and grits leftovers for lunch. You know, in my post yesterday, I mentioned that I had fixed the grits with chicken broth instead of milk or cream combined with water and for me personally, I have to say that the milk version is my preference. You try it both ways and let me know which way you think is best.

I snacked on two or three chocolate chip cookies yesterday but that was it as far as snacks went. My sister called yesterday afternoon and we took all the kids down to the park for a walk on the trail. We weren't walking at a breakneck speed but we were out for a while and we were moving and that's what was important.

In a direct response to increasing grocery prices I have been trying to figure out how to better plan our meals so I can utilize the food we buy in the most efficient way possible. A couple of nights ago, I made a big batch of Baked Macaroni and Cheese and froze half of it for another time. Last night, I took the remainder, freshened it up a bit with a couple of splashes of milk and a little more cheese and popped it into the oven with delicious results.

With that I was serving a Turkey Meatloaf. I love Meatloaf and so does my husband and nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing him enjoy my cooking. I took about a pound and a half of ground turkey and mixed in some chopped peppers and onions, one beaten egg, a Tbs of dijon mustard, a Tbs of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp of salt, freshly ground pepper, and a half a cup of bread crumbs. Oh yeah! A generous sprinkle of dried parsley, too! Formed it into a loaf and popped it into a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, I drizzled some ketchup on the top and cooked it for about 20 more minutes. It was pretty good!!

Going along with my goal to cook at least one new recipe a week, I prepared a vegetable that I had never worked with before, broccolini. My sister has sung the praises of this veggie many, many times but I have just never bought it. After last night, it may well become a staple around here. It was freaking delicious! First, I trimmed some of the leaves off the long stalks but I actually think you could skip this. Then, after asking my sister about it, I blanched them for a couple of minutes to make them a little tender before sauteeing them in a skillet with 2 tsps of olive oil, a touch of butter and one clove of garlic put through a press. I think next time I would steam the broccolini instead of submerging it in water but oh. my. god. It was FABULOUS!

For my plate, I had small portions of each and couldn't eat it all. It was a delicious filling meal.

I'm feeling so good about where I am right now but I'm trying not to get too confident. Usually about the time that happens, I flub it up.

Have you ever had broccolini? What is your favorite vegetable?

A good day

2008-04-01T10:22:00.003-04:00

Yesterday began fresh, as all days do, with the promise of good food and staying on course. While the kids were sleeping, I fixed myself a cup of tea and warmed up two of the biscuits I made the day before. After topping them with my favorites, butter and cherry preserves, I sat enjoyed and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the house before the day really got started.

Once the kids got up, we spent the morning hanging out, tidying up, keeping busy basically. When lunchtime rolled around I had planned to have an egg salad sandwich but decided on a salad instead. My favorite salad is one topped with chopped egg, bacon, and olives then drizzled with a bit of ranch dressing. Thankfully I had hard boiled eggs in the fridge. I don't know what it is but chopped egg is one of the yummiest things I think you can put on a salad.

This was really filling and really held me over until I had a snack later in the afternoon. Oh and what a snack it was!

One of my goals was to make homemade snacks and not buy any at the store. I bought a new cookbook while I was recovering from my surgery and was finally able to make something out of it! I chose chocolate chip cookies. They were so, so delicious! Thin, with crispy buttery edges and a chewy center. Oh man, they were good! The recipe made a ton of cookies, too.

For dinner, I made shrimp and grits, which you've seen me mention here before. This time though, I did something a little different. Instead of using a combination milk or cream with water to cook the grits, I used some homemade chicken broth that was in the freezer. I thought it would make the dish a little bit lighter. I used 4 cups of chicken broth and maybe a 1/2 cup of cream. That was the only thing I did different. It did change the taste but it was good, and the dish didn't feel as heavy as it usually does.

At the end of the day, I felt really good about how I did. The only thing I didn't accomplish yesterday was doing a workout video but that's ok. Baby steps. It's hard to make changes and if all I can do right now is change my eating habits then that's all I can do. trying to do too much can be overwhelming and self-defeating. Already, today feels like a good day. Like I'm in total control of myself and my emotions. It's a start!

Southern Evening

2008-03-30T23:40:00.003-04:00

I was in desperate need of some comfort food. It's been a rough week, people. Somehow though I'm still here and tonight was all about eating some good southern cookin'. I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, being a southerner and all, but until tonight I have never eaten collard greens, turnip greens, mustard greens. Nope. Not once. Seriously! I am a big fan now of cabbage and brussel sprouts so it seemed like the right time to try them.

In order to keep them true to their southern heritage, I followed a recipe that has you prepare them with ham hocks. Ok, y'all. I had never even seen a ham hock and I have to tell you - it freaked me out! This is what I saw when I opened the package:

YES! That is p-i-g hair on that thing. Hell, I didn't know what to do so I threw it in the pot anyway. I was freaked but not deterred. The ham hock had to simmer in 3 quarts of water for an hour, along with some salt and pepper. Once that time had passed, I added these:

I washed them really well because someone told me they are covered in grit, then I removed the thick stalk that runs down the center of each leaf. After that I chopped the leaves and then added them to the hairy ham hock water. Mmmmmm. Doesn't that sound good? Here is what the greens looked like after cooking for one hour:

A lot like spinach really. They were ok but I think they were a touch too salty. My fault because I forgot I was using a scaled down version of a recipe.

In addition to the greens, I also made biscuits today and let me tell you...they were unfreakingbelievably delicious. Best I have ever made in fact.

Let me tell you something. If you're going to make biscuits, do yourself a favor and get White Lily Self Rising Flour. It is by far the best flour to use for making biscuits and you will not regret buying it. Even if you have to order it online because you can't get it in your area, do it. They are amazing! I snuggled them close to one another in the pan which helped them rise a little. God, I can't wait for breakfast so I can have one with some butter and cherry preserves!

Okay, I'm calm now. I didn't take a picture of dinner because, frankly it was very unattractive. I sauteed some chicken, cooked a Paula Deen version of Mac and Cheese, and ate some of the collards. Not exactly what I was going for but it was ok. We'll have leftover mac and cheese tomorrow along with a turkey meatloaf I'm going to make.

Have you ever fixed greens? If so, how did you do it? Did you use a hairy ham hock, too? LOL I have to know!!!

Mini goals

2008-03-30T16:35:00.002-04:00

I have been doing a lot of thinking and soul-searching lately. After finding myself at the center of a family drama (which I had a hand in) I turned away completely from my dietary/lifestyle objectives. All I wanted to do was wallow in self-pity. Well, enough is enough. I'm done feeling bad because that doesn't serve any purpose at all. It's time to get a grip and start making some positive changes, even if they're only small ones for now. Here are my goals for the immediate future:

This week, I am going to cook every meal my family eats. There won't be any fast food eaten by anyone in this house, except for Sean because he works outside of the home and I can't control that.
I'm going to prepare homemade snacks for my family as well. At the grocery store today I didn't buy any chips or yucky snacky things and am planning to fix some goodies instead.
This week, I'm going to start moving either by doing a workout video or going for a walk with the boys or both. My goal is to move my body in a directed fashion at least once a day.
Each month I would like to lose 5 lbs. I think that is a reasonable goal to set.
I am going to try at least one new recipe a week. Have already started that tonight by cooking collard greens.
I am going to be gentle with myself. If I fall down in my task of mindful eating, I will not beat myself up over it. I will just do better the next go round.

Right now, the greens are simmering on the stove, I cooked some fabulous biscuits earlier, and I'm getting ready to make some baked macaroni and cheese. I was craving a southern meal and tonight we're having Fried Chicken Breasts, Mac and Cheese, and Collards. The biscuits are for breakfast tomorrow. Of course, all of these things will have to be eaten in small portions because if I fill my plate with them, I will overeat and continue to be overweight. Tonight I begin practicing eating the right portion size.

I have already taken some pictures of the cooking I've done this afternoon and am coming back tonight to record it here.

Battling My Commitment

2008-03-18T22:01:00.004-04:00

I have to be honest with you. The past two days haven't been fantastic. For some reason, I'm really fighting a battle within myself to get committed to eating right. On an academic level, I know that eating whole, unprocessed food is what's best for me and my family. But there is something holding me back from taking all the necessary steps to be successful at eating well. This morning I started out well with one egg and a cup of tea.

I ate it slowly and really enjoyed some quiet moments with my tea and a new book. It was truly delightful. A little while later, I walked into the kitchen and spied some cookies I'd made for the kids in the cookie jar. well, I felt like I HAD to have one. Errrr, two.

Hey! They were organic at least.

Then, at my sister's house later, I had a bit of the shepherd's pie she had made for dinner last night, which was delicious incidentally. After eating that, I felt certain that I would have no need for lunch. A little while later at home, I went into the kitchen and had some left over corned beef and cabbage.

Hmmmm. Just not doing so well. Nevermind this is the THIRD meal I've had from this! Yesterday morning I made my own corned beef hash.

Last night for dinner I had two slices of White Pizza from a local pizza joint.

I think part of the problem is I'm feeling a little down. My husband has taken on the challenge of getting his MBA. We already don't get to see him very much because he works long hours. Now when he's home, he's very, very busy and it's going to be like that for at least the next two years. I want him to get his MBA and I support him wholeheartedly. It's something he's wanted to do for a really long time. It's just a tough adjustment and we're still trying to hit our stride with it. In the meantime, I'm just finishing up my 6th week of recovery after my hysterectomy, and have a lot of work ahead of me once I'm cleared by the doctor to do it. It doesn't take much walking around my house to make me feel overwhelmed by the scale of the task at hand. Every single room is a mess! Sometimes I feel like putting our most precious things in the car, walking out the front door and never looking back! It's that bad. I know that by doing a little bit at a time it will get done but as I've seen with my weight loss attempts, knowing and doing are two different things.

Sorry that this post is such a downer but I'm just trying to keep it real and honest. Eating right is not hard but making up your mind and totally committing to it seems to be very difficult for me right now. I'm not giving up though. Just venting my frustration about my current lack of willpower.

I WILL be back tomorrow. This blog is a blessing! I don't know what I'd do without a place to vent.

Weekend Eats

2008-03-17T12:21:00.002-04:00

Well, it was a weekend filled with Corned Beef and Cabbage, my friends. My husband's family is Irish Catholic and we went to my MIL's house for her annual St. Patty's Day festivities. I really look forward to this because it's the one time of year I get to eat delicious corned beef. Every year, I make my own too, so we have leftovers, but it's just never as good as hers. In order to contribute something to the festivities, I made the adorable Green Beer Cookies that Bridget at Bake At 350 posted about last week. They weren't as professional looking as hers but she gave great directions on her blog and I thought they turned out really well for a newbie.

They were complimented a lot at the party, which is always nice!

Yesterday, I made my own corned beef and cabbage. One of these years, I will get it right!

I used these itty bitty potatoes and they looked so cute!

My sister and I have decided to pool our resources and go in together on a bunch of vegetable plants. We'll divvy them up between us and reap the benefits of fresh food. Also, I think I'm going to join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). You pay a weekly fee to a local farm and every week they give you your share of freshly harvested produce. I'm excited about that!

I think as far as weekend eats go, I'm not going to post. It's hard to keep up two blogs, period, but the weekends are extra crazy. I will try and give a summary on Mondays though.

Come back tomorrow to see how today's eats go!

Happy St. Patty's Day everybody!!!

Yesterday's eats - Yikes!

2008-03-14T11:24:00.002-04:00

Ok, I'm just going to be honest with you. Yesterday was a terrible eats day for me. I waited way too long to eat breakfast and as a result I was starving. We ran to the grocery store and when we got home I shoved a bologna sandwich down my gullet. Hey, it was good but not the right thing to eat. For lunch, I had....wait for it......another bologna sandwich! We had some friends over at lunchtime and, instead of eating in front of them , I waited until they left around four and I was again ravenous. It's so important to eat when you're hungry!

Then at a dinner I was just feeling plain old lazy and I took the boys to Chick-fil-a. I ate a sandwich, cole slaw, and drank an unsweetened tea. It could have been worse I guess!

Today is better and I'll report on that tomorrow!

I'm not going to freak out about my wandering off the path. I'm just going to keep going!

Yesterday's Eats

2008-03-13T10:44:00.003-04:00

All in all, yesterday was a good eats day. Today hasn't started off well but I'm going to take hold of that now and eat well the rest of the day.

Yesterday I had my usual breakfast:

But I added grits and a clementine. One of my friends, MamaPodkayne, had wondered about my earlier complaint about clementines not being as flavorful as oranges. She will be happy to know that the one in this photo was full of juicy sweetness and worth every single bite. It was delicious!

A note about eggs. I try to get organic eggs. Lately I've had some bad luck with a brand sold here called "Be Family". The quality has not been consistent and many times I have cracked one only to be overwhelmed by the smell of fish. As a result, I've stopped buying that brand and now buy my grocery store's Cage Free eggs. For years, I have HATED to eat the yolk and would only eat the white when I fried an egg but the Cage Free and organic egg yolks taste amazing. There's no bite to them as in a mass-produced egg. Also, check this out:

Look how high that yolk sits. A regular egg yolk is much flatter. These are a gorgeous color, too!

Ok, back to what I ate yesterday. For lunch I hit the rotisserie chicken again for what I think is the last meal I'm going to get out of it. After tearing some romaine leaves, I topped them with some chicken, grapes, green olives, and a few chopped pecan pieces. Add to that some bacon bits and a touch of ranch dressing and you have the salad I ate for lunch. With it I had some of those tiny toasts you can buy at the store spread with some herbed goat cheese. My god, that was so good. The cheese was mild and so incredibly creamy. It was a very sensory lunch!

Now, that lunch lasted for a while but by late afternoon I needed a little something so I fixed this:

Hot tea and a Le Petit Ecolier cookie. I think that means "schoolboy" in French. THey're really good. Crisp cookie, not too sweet, topped with milk, dark, or white chocolate. Yum!

By Dinnertime, I was tired and decided to heat up one of the frozen meals my mom had prepared for me, Beef Stroganoff.

I had to cook the noodles but the oven did all the work on the rest!

I splurged a bit and induglged a desire for something buttery and had a cherry turnover with a tiny bit of vanilla ice cream.

Truth be told, I shouldn't have eaten all of it. Half would have been more than enough. Next time, I'll split one with my hubby, but this is all about learning how to eat in proper portions. Now I know better for next time!

Today's going to be kind of crazy because we're having a play date during my normal lunchtime so I may have to eat something earlier than normal but check back tomorrow to see!

Yesterday's Eats

2008-03-12T10:24:00.003-04:00

For those of you who are new, let me give a brief refresher on what I'm doing. I read a book called, The Fat Fallacy by Will Clower and it completely changed the way I look at the food I eat. GET THIS BOOK or get the updated version. You won't be sorry. It's all about looking at the French model of eating. Good quality ingredients, rich meals, in small portions. We eat too much and we eat poor quality food and it's really taking a toll on our health. So much of our food is filled with chemicals and we need to take control of what we eat and give our bodies as organic and as wholesome food as we possibly can. This is not easy by any means. With the economy in its current state, food prices have soared which makes organic food that much more expensive. Also, it can be difficult to find time to prepare things from scratch when one leads a busy life. But I say this to you, isn't it worth it to make the time in order to live a better quality life? Isn't it worth the extra expense to buy organic when you can? Start small and pick a few things to buy organic. Work your way into it gradually. Another book I'd like to recommend is To Buy or Not To Buy Organic by Cindy Burke. She has done a lot of research and has comprised a helpful list of the things that are important to buy in their organic form. It's a wonderful guide to organic shopping and I highly recommend you purchase it!

Okay!! Now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to what I ate yesterday! It was a much better day for me eatswise. Breakfast was very simple, a French roll and an egg, served alongside a glass of whole milk. Mmmmmm. Whole milk is the only way to go!

After breakfast, my sister and I dropped our kids off with our mom and went hunting for a cookie cutter in the shape of a beer mug. Bridget at Bake at 350 made some freaking adorable cookies for St. Patty's Day and I thought it would be fun to make them to take to my mother-in-law's party on Saturday. Well, Greensboro, NC is not a hotbed of baking fanatics apparently because I couldn't find one. We had rhinos but no beer mugs. Go figure. After all that walking I was tired and just wanted to fix an easy lunch. There was still some rotisserie chicken in the fridge so I cut off some breast meat and put it between two slices of whole wheat bread and mayonnaise. Easy Peasy.

Later in the afternoon, I did snack on some baked pita chips and roasted red pepper hummus. Yum!

Dinner was delicious. I was finally feeling really good yesterday and I was able to get in the kitchen and cook an entire meal. We had some pork chops that had to be cooked or frozen yesterday and it had been so long since we'd had pork that I decided to cook them. They were loin chops, thick cut, on the bone. I seasoned them with a touch of Lawry's seasoned salt and some fresh ground pepper on both sides and then placed them in a skillet with about 1 Tbs of olive oil. While these were cooking, I boiled some yukon gold potatoes that I had earlier chopped and placed in a boiler with some salted water. When the pork chops were done, I placed them on a plate and covered them with a tent of aluminum foil to keep them warm while I prepared a sauce to go with them. First, I poured about a 1/2 cup of chicken broth into the pan to deglaze it. White wine would be another good choice for that but I didn't have any. Once all the brown bits had been released from the bottom of the pan, I added a tsp of butter, some salt and pepper, a 1/4 cup of cream, and 1 or 2 Tbs of capers. I let this come together over Low heat while I mashed the potatoes. With the pork and potatoes I also served some romaine lettuce topped with a vinaigrette. It was DEEE-lish!

One thing I'm going to have to concentrate on is small portion sizes and eating slowly. I got out of the habit while I was recovering and now it's a challenge. But! I did it once and I know I can again.

Thanks for reading!

Today's Eats

2008-03-10T20:11:00.003-04:00

Whew, I had to dust those words off before putting them in the title bar, it's been so long since I posted that here! Well, today was my fresh start, my clean slate and it seemed like I had gotten off on the right foot. Until I ate those Doritos. And that microwave butter popcorn for lunch. BUt I rallied late in the day and saved myself by having a healthy dinner of rotisserie chicken and my favorite brussel sprouts with bacon and cranberries. Not a stellar first day out but I'm not going to punish myself over it. I've spent the last several weeks eating a bunch of junk and it's so hard to stop it cold turkey.

Here is breakfast:

Sean bought some clementines at the grocery store and, while they are blissfully easy to peel, these don't have much flavor. I really prefer the strong, pungent orange.

Lunch was, as I stated above, doritos and microwave butter popcorn. I don't have a photo of that because, as you can imagine, my fingers were covered in Dorito dust and grease from the popcorn butter and I wasn't about to touch my camera with those!

Here is my photo of dinner:

It was simple, easy, healthful, and delicious. I think tomorrow I'm going to make some chicken salad out of what's left of the rotisserie chicken. Also, tomorrow, I'm going to throw away the snacky foods so I'm not tempted to eat them!

Haven't cooked in WEEKS!

2008-03-09T15:46:00.002-04:00

God, can you believe how long it's been since I prepared a decent meal for myself? I sure can't and this week, that's all going to change. My recovery hasn't been as quick as I would like but it feels like I'm finally in a place where I can cook something other than the frozen dinners my mom cooked for me weeks ago. They've all been delicious but Sean and I are ready for something different. Today is going to be spent looking through some cookbooks and planning out a tentative menu for the week. I'm still under a "no lifting over 10lbs" restriction so grocery shopping is a challenge but I'm determined to get back to normal this week!

My meals lately have been:

(B) one or two eggs, fried in butter
one slice of all natural, nitrate-free bacon
a cup of tea

(L) sandwich and chips

(D) frozen meal like baked spaghetti, swedish meatballs, greek chicken
rice or potatoes (not with spaghetti!)
salad, green beans, brussel sprouts, or broccoli

Have you tried any dressings by Brianna? I'm totally addicted to Brianna's New American Dressing. If you can find it, try it. It's absolutely delicious.

My weight right now is hovering around 197 and I'd like to see a nice drop in that by the Fourth of July. Since my surgery, my waist size went up two inches and I need to ask my Doc if that's swelling or actual weight gain. Keep your fingers crossed that it's swelling! LOL

Please check back tomorrow night or Tuesday morning for the latest and greatest update. Two more weeks until I get the all-clear from my doctor! Yay!!!

Making Plans

2008-02-20T11:09:00.003-05:00

Since I've been laid up recovering, I've taken the opportunity to look through some cookbooks. Some old, some new. Here are the three that I've been really into for the past few days:

It's been nice to have the luxury of lying around looking through cookbooks and as a result I've found many things that I'd like to make as soon as I'm feeling up to it.

The American Classics cookbook is full of recipes that are considered typical American fare but have been tested in a gazillion different variations in order to find the "best". From this cookbook, I'm going to try their recipe for Green Bean Casserole because out of all the non-chichi dishes in the world that one is my all time fave.

Baking is a book authored by Dorie Greenspan and was recommended on a website that I stalk called Culinary Concoctions b Peabody. So many scrumptious things get posted on Peabody's site so when she recommended this cookbook, I knew I had to have it. It arrived yesterday and I devoured every word I could. There are tons of recipes I want to try but most notably one titled, "Snickery Squares". Good grief, it just looks delicious!

In My French Kitchen my obsession with all things French is fed with tantalizing recipes galore. I think the one I'm going to try first from here is a side dish called, "Cabbage Galette". It's looks golden and delectable and I can't wait until I feel well enough to try this recipe.

On a different note, yesterday my husband walked in the door after work with SEVEN boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Seriously! Look!

You can see that we've already busted into two boxes...Oh! We also ordered cookies from a girl up the street so then we'll be swimming in cookies! Gluttony is an ugly thing. LOL

A recent discovery here has been prunes. They were recommended to me as a way to keep things moving post-surgery and as luck would have it, I discovered that they are actually very tasty. Healthy and tasty? Excellent!

Well, I'm hoping that by this weekend, I will be back to normal with cooking at least, even if I'm not allowed to load the dishwasher. Sean will just have to do that part. For now, I'm going to settle back on the sofa with my books and one of these:

Hey, a girl has to take advantage of the circumstances!

Slowly but surely making my way back

2008-02-15T10:45:00.002-05:00

A week ago yesterday, I had a hysterectomy. The first few days were pretty rough but I'm starting to feel so much better and am feeling a little antsy about getting back to normal. For the last several days, my mother has been staying here and taking care of me and she's a phenomenal cook so we've been talking about food A LOT! :) It's really helped me get in the mindset of preparing meals and enjoying it at the same time. So while I continue to recover, I'm reading cookbooks and gearing up for the day when I can actually stand on my feet long enough to cook a meal. It can't happen soon enough for me.

Bon Appetit's March issue has some delicious looking things that I want to try, like brining my own Corned Beef. My husband's family are all Irish-American so Corned Beef is something I'd like to be able to cook well. My MIL's is delicious and, even though I cook one every year, mine are never as good as hers.

I've been tagged for a meme by Bridget at Bake at 350 and since meme's are fun and I don't have any food posts for you, here are my answers to the quiz. Well, first here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

I'm going to break rules number 3 and 4 because at the moment, my fuzzy brain cannot think of five people to tag. However, if you read this post and would like to participate, PLEASE do and leave a note and link to your blog so we can come read all about you!!

Five Facts About ME

1. I'm a silly-minded person. My mental development lurched to a halt somewhere around 16 yrs old and so I still find silly things very funny. Just yesterday, my mom and I were sitting here and I was reading a cookbook for boys and girls from 1957. In it there is a description of the difference between wieners and frankfurters:

Wieners are -
short and skinny

Frankfurters are -
long and plump

Well, sue me! My mind went to it's dirty place and we laughed for several minutes about it. Needless to say I was sore afterwards but it was hilarious!!

2. On that note, I will confess that one of my dreams is to take a US Hot Dog tour. Hot dogs are my absolute favorite thing to eat. Foodies, calm down. I know it's not chichi or classy but they are damn good and it's one of my goals to one day explore the regional versions of my all-time fave.

3. My sister and I are married to brothers. Yes, it's a little weird but we're all such good friends that it's wonderful at the same time. My husband had to go out of town and leave me recovery from surgery on Sunday. My mom stayed with me until yesterday. Well, my Brother-in-law was sweet and offered to pickup a pizza for me and the boys since I'm not yet allowed to drive. When he got there with the pizza, I opened the door to let him in and he was standing there with the pizza AND a red rose for me. It was SO Sweet!!!!! I completely adore him. He felt sad because my hubby and I were spending Valentine's Day apart. Isn't that just nice??

4. I'm not a great cook. I think I do all right but I'm not going to be one of these people who create a bunch of fabulous recipes and end up with their own show on FoodTV . Although I do think I have a great personality for TV. Hey! FoodTV! You listening out there? Need anyone with a great personality but little training and talent for cooking? I'm your girl! Contact me at unschoolingwhimsigal@gmail.com for booking arrangements. LOL

5. I have tons of celebrity crushes, which actually brings us full circle to #1. The 16 year old in me is still boy crazy about stars. However, I don't go for the typical gorgeous guy. No, no, no. Funny is what gets me going. Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, just to name a few! I love funny guys!

Thanks Bridget for choosing me! I LOVE your blog!!!

Well, that's about all I can manage for today. Thanks for sticking with me and I hope to be posting some good eats AND trying to lose weight very very soon!

Love,

Evie

I had surgery but I will be back

2008-02-09T19:12:00.000-05:00

I am recuperating from major surgery but plan to be back posting as soon as I can.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Evie

One Day Later

2008-02-05T12:53:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I didn't make it to yesterday afternoon for a post after all but I'm here today! We just got back from a grand 5-day vacation in Disney World and we had a wonderful time. My stomach was a bit sick so I didn't get to indulge in the gluttonous portion of the vacation as I had planned and I actually lost 5 pounds because I barely ate at all. What I did eat, I enjoyed and here is a picture of my favorite meal there:

It's a Fruit and Cheese Platter at the Rose and Crown Pub in Epcot Sean wanted to stop and do a tasting of Scotch and he ordered this tray for us to share. It was divine! Candied walnuts, 2 types of cheese, a pastry filled with warm blue cheese, grapes, and sesame crackers served with chutney. It was perfect for two people and kept me full until dinner that night.

My trip was not filled with foodie delights, as I had hoped it would be. The selections at various restaurants in general left me wanting. One night I ordered prime rib and it was way too dry. Very disappointing. Our appetizers were good though. One thing I found myself thinking while we were there, "Hey, I could cook something better than this at home." It was interesting to be there and want to cook something for myself instead of eating out.

I'm getting ready to have surgery on Thursday (a hysterectomy) so I won't be doing a ton of cooking for myself for at least a week. But my mom has very kindly cooked a bunch of dinners for me to put in the freezer and just pop into the oven when we're hungry. Once I'm up and able, I'm ready to face my weght head-on and get this show back on track. I was doing so well and then fell off the wagon, so to speak. Now though, with my new bionic body (LOL not really) I'm feeling optimistic about exercise and eating right. I hope you will join me as I once again employ the tactics learned from reading Dr. Will Clower's books. Whole, unprocessed, healthy foods in the right portions. NO junk food anymore. Just can't keep eating McDonald's and expect to lose weight!

Thanks for sticking around! Come back tomorrow for another update!

POST LATER TODAY

2008-02-04T07:56:00.001-05:00

I am going to post something later today. An update and a promise so be sure to check back later, probably this afternoon, to see what it is!

Evie

Yesterday's Eats

2008-01-09T09:06:00.000-05:00

Began with a good breakfast. I had an egg "fried" in Pam Cooking Spray and an English Muffin topped with a lite garden vegetable cream cheese. Along with that I had a small glass of orange juice which provided me an unpleasant surprise - pulp. Ewwww. I really don't like a drink that has "stuff" in it. That really freaks me out for some reason! Anyway, it was a nice breakfast and it felt like a good start to the day.

For lunch, there was leftover mushroom soup in the fridge so I had a small bowl of that with a small salad, topped with a few green olives and some ranch dressing. Bacon bits finished that off and it, too was delicious!

In the afternoon, I hit a major bump in the road. My PMS was in maximum overdrive and I had a colossal meltdown. It was like the PMS perfect storm because certain events aligned and washed over me in a way that left me defenseless. Thankfully though, I just cried it out instead of eating my way through it. It was a rough time but it felt like a win because I didn't try to apply food as the salve to my emotional wounds. By the time dinner rolled around though, I was completely exhausted and just couldn't get off my duff and come up with a plan for dinner. Sean picked up something for me on his way home and, although it wasn't great, it could have been worse! I had a Chick-fil-a sandwich, fries, and an unsweetened tea. Not great, but not horrible.

It was a hard day in the end, and I was mentally spent, but I felt like the victor in the battle which was important. I'm having surgery in a couple of weeks and won't be able to work out or even clean house for up to 8 weeks and it's vital that I get a grip on emotional eating before that gets here. Otherwise my weight situation could be pretty bad by the time my recovery period is up. Keep your fingers crossed!

Ouch!

2008-01-07T23:29:00.000-05:00

Got on the scale today, oh boy....(I'm hearing the Beatles in my head) It wasn't a pretty number I saw glaring up at me like the lights on the Vegas strip but it's where I am and where the journey to a healthier me begins. 198. Whew, I said it!

I went downstairs and enjoyed few quiet moments to myself before the kids were up and running around the house like the lunatics they are. After remembering that there were croissants in the bread drawer, I turned on the oven and warmed one up to a beautiful golden brown. Served alongside a small glass of whole milk, it made for a lovely simple breakfast.

For lunch I had settled on making homemade mushroom soup - again. Can't help it! It's my all-time favorite soup. I'd like to introduce you to someone very special to me. They're such a huge help to me and have been a part of my life for about 8 years.

It's my handy dandy Pampered Chef food chopper! Man, I love this thing. It chops onions, nuts, candy, you name it! And, in no time it takes a carton of mushrooms from whole to this:

Which means it takes even less time for me to make and eat this bowl of gloriousness:

Guess what? I'm having it again tomorrow with a salad! I can't wait!

Dinner was also delicious, though there aren't any photos. Sean and I split a rib eye steak which was served with french green beans and mashed yukon gold potatoes. Yum-EEE. For dessert I chewed two pieces of Orbitz spearmint gum. It helps my digestive system. At least I think it does.

All in all, today felt like a great day. The boys and I got out and played tennis with our neighbor and that was awesome. She's in her late 60's and had me running all over the court. I wish we could do that more often!

I'm starting my way back to healthy slowly. It's hard to do it cold turkey so I'm feeling good about this approach. Tomorrow is going to be another good day, I can feel it!

Weekend Grub

2008-01-06T19:24:00.000-05:00

This weekend was not one of good eats. Sporadic eats would be more like it! On Friday, I got up and skipped breakfast. Then by lunchtime, the boys wanted pizza so I ordered some from a delivery place. I ate three pieces!! I was really full after that. Shocking isn't it? LOL Friday night we watched the movie, "Transformers", which totally rocked by the way, and I popped some popcorn on the stove. That along with a can of Coke was my dinner. Woo-hoo.

Saturday was much the same. I stopped and got a biscuit and a sweet tea then skipped lunch. Dinner was a small cup of homemade Chex mix. Geez, I knew it was bad but it looks even worse written out!!

Today, was full of hustle and bustle. We were busy taking down decorations, cleaning the boys' room, cleaning out the inside of my car, putting things in our new storage facility and eating was low on the priority list. Skipped breakfast, had a ham sandwich for lunch and then we went out for dinner and I got fish and chips. God, I ate so much at dinner that I'm so uncomfortable.

Tomorrow, I'm getting on the scale for the first time in a while and I'm not looking forward to what it says. But, no matter what the number, I won't let it discourage me. I'm going to take each day one at a time and know that everything's going to be ok. When I put pressure on myself to succeed, I fail. No pressure here. Just living life. Eating good food and getting active. Those are my first steps on the path to healthy living. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I should be back to taking photos of meals!

Today's Eats

2008-01-03T19:45:00.000-05:00

Today started out quite well with an egg and two slices of whole wheat toast with a bit of butter and cherry preserves.

It held me over until early afternoon where I had a steaming hot bowl of split pea with ham soup.

This also was great and I was feeling good until - dun dun dun (ominous music sounds). We had a playdate with one of Ryan's friends and he drove me to the very brink of insanity. Thank god there isn't a McDonald's that delivers because I would have really been in trouble! Emotional eating is a big problem for me. I know it and can feel when it's happening but as yet haven't mustered up the courage to stop myself from binging (sp?) when I'm upset. He was here for 2 and half hours and I really did some damage. Leftover mashed potatoes, chocolate, mixed nuts. Random things that I could quickly shove in my mouth to assuage the emotional battle I was feeling in my chest.

Oh how I love these....

As a result, I'm not feeling all that hungry for dinner and will probably not eat again until the morning, at which time I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and start with a clean slate. Whew. I sure am glad I didn't make any resolutions. They would have already been out the window!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T12:50:00.000-05:00

Looking forward to getting my food on in 2008! I promised my husband a lap dance for Christmas '08 so I've got to get to work on shedding the pounds.

Happy New Year and Best Wishes to everyone!

Christmas Dinner

2007-12-28T08:35:00.001-05:00

Holidays in my family have always been about food. My mother is an awesome cook, all self-taught, and my life has been filled with good eats. It's also made for some intimidating moments because her chef's hat is a big one to fill so I get nervous when I cook something for everyone. This year was no different and it was full of comical errors. Let me give you some examples.

For weeks I struggled over what to serve for Christmas Day dinner. I knew we were going to have a standing rib roast but beyond that, I wasn't sure what everyone would like to have as sides. Oh, and dessert! Don't get me started on how hard it was to pick out a dessert! My mom kept saying, "Why does everything have to be homemade? Just buy something." Well, Mom, because you always made it all, that's why! At some point, it was decided that we would have Potatoes Dauphinoise, Green Beans, and yorkshire pudding. For dessert, I was making the Guinness Cake that I had made for Sean's birthday and the Pioneer Woman's Peach Maple Crisp. So far so good right? Well, the Guinness Cake recipe had it topped with a Cream Cheese Icing, which I like, but I wanted to do something that looked fluffier so I settled on a Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I had seen at BakeSpace. Christmas Eve day, I went ahead and made the frosting, just in case I messed it up. Good thing I did that. It was a more complicated frosting than I'm used to making because a double boiler and egg whites were involved but I got through that part with flying colors. In fact, I made it through the whole process with flying colors and my buttercream was GORGEOUS and I was so proud of myself! I dipped my finger in the excess that was on my mixer paddle and closed my eyes, ready to taste the gloriousness that is buttercream, when.....ACK! I used SALTED butter instead of unsalted. Hol. Lee. Crap. People, there was 1 and 1/4 lb of butter in there AND 5 egg whites. Crap, crap, megacrap! I had to start over. Damn.

Double boiler...mmphfg.....boil the water...mmpfgh....water's boiling, put egg whites in bowl....mmmpfgh...turn around and completely forget about egg whites in double boiler over boiling water...WHAT. Crap! Again?? Do it all again?? Really??? Jiminy Christmas. Ok. So at this point, I decide to just do a seven-minute frosting, which is white, glossy, and beautiful and it turned out just fine. First fiasco- check. On to the second.

At dinner the next night, I had to fix Green Bean Casserole because the fancy french green beans purchased at the store a couple of days earlier looked like someone has snuck a bird into my fridge and asked it to kindly poop all over them. They were brown and moldy and I was hacked. No bigee, everyone likes Green Bean Casserole so that was fine. What wasn't fine was what transpired next. The roast was cooking in my main oven, which is tiny (2 cu ft) so I had to use a toaster oven that I got last year to cook everything else. No problem. Well, one problem...Have you ever made Green Bean Casserole? You bake it for 25 minutes, take it out and top it with fried onions then put it back in the oven for 5 minutes to brown the onions. Apparently, I think 5 minutes and 15 minutes are the same because I burnt the hell out of the topping. Fiasco number two - check. On to the third...

The roasts came out of the oven and looked beautiful, smelled fantastic, and they gave off a bunch of glorious drippings to use to make gravy and yorkshire pudding. While the pudds were in the oven, my mom and I set to making the gravy in the roasting pan on the stovetop. There were many spices in the bottom of the roasting pan because I had slathered them on the roasts before cooking them and the gravy was looking and tasting great. Suddenly, my mom said, "What's that plasticky smell?" I paused and took a whiff. "I don't smell anything." Then I laughed and said, "The way this dinner is going though there could be Saran Wrap on the eye and I wouldn't be surprised." We laughed and went about our business with cooking and eating dinner. Once dinner was finished and everyone had gone home, Sean and I were cleaning the kitchen when I heard him exclaim, "Oh man! That's great. That's beautiful!" I turned and saw what he was freaking out about - a melted plastic lid all over the eye on my stove as well as the bottom of my roasting dish. **Sigh** Oh well, it was a delicious dinner anyway. Maybe next year I'll make it flawlessly. HA! yeah right.

Seriously though, all the goof-ups aside, we had a nice dinner and I learned a lot about how to do it better for next year. Hope you all had great holiday meals, too!

Sausage, Black Beans, and Yellow Rice...GOOD!

2007-12-16T20:17:00.000-05:00

So, one recipe I used to make all the time last year is the one I'm about to give you for Sausage, Beans, and Rice. IN fact I made it so much so that we got sick of it and I had to quit making it. Well, I made it last night for dinner and it was DE-lish! Are you ready for it? Here we go. Disclaimer, this recipe is from the book, Fat Fallacy.

You will need:

1 can of black beans (soup size)
1 ring of kielbasa, turkey or pork whichever you prefer
Yellow rice, comes in a tube (see pic below)
ground cumin
Cajun seasoning
pepper
garlic salt
olive oil
worcestershire sauce

First, take the kielbasa and cut it into bite size pieces. Then, in a good size (medium to large) skillet, heat 3 Tbs of olive oil and add the sausage to it. Add a generous amount of worcestershire sauce (1/4 cup maybe) to the sausage and cook over medium heat. While it's cooking, liberally sprinkle cumin and cajun seasoning over it, maybe 1 or 2 tsps of each. Toss the sausage and make sure all pieces get coated with worcestershire and spices. Let this cook until nice and crispy brown, about 10 minutes.

Sausage when it goes in the pan.

nice and crispy. It's so hard not to eat all these by myself!

Once the sausage is done, scoop it out and try and leave some of the oil in the pan. Pour the black beans into the pan. I know some folks rinse their beans but I just dump the whole thing in and cook it all up. Over medium heat cook the beans for about 20 minutes, adding cumin, cajun seasoning and garlic salt. Be careful here because your cajun seasoning may have salt in it so taste your beans before you add the garlic salt.

While the beans are cooking, prepare the rice according to the package directions. I do this in the microwave so I don't have too many pots on the stovetop. The rice and beans should be done around the same time. When they're done, combine it all together. Yes, it's not much to look at but it is damn good!

Being mixed...

Ready to eat!

I know it's not pretty but it really is tasty. Anyone I've ever fixed this for has loved it! I hope you do, too!

Let me talk to you about Brussels Sprouts

2007-12-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

A much maligned vegetable indeed but one that, when prepared right, can be one of the most delicious things you have ever eaten. First and foremost, it is imperative that you begin with fresh brussels sprouts. In many cases, frozen vegetables are just as good as their fresh counterparts, but in this instance fresh is a gazillion times better. Frozen brussels always taste skuny and yucky to me but fresh ones have a wonderful flavor. The recipe I prefer to use is the Barefoot Contessa's. Ina Garten is a little snooty but there can be no denying that her recipes turn our right every time. This recipe can be found in her book, Barefoot In Paris or you can find it on Food Tv's website.

Brussels Sprouts Lardons

2 tablespoons good olive oil
6 ounces Italian pancetta or bacon, 1/4-inch dice
1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts (2 containers), trimmed and cut in 1/2
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup golden raisins
1 3/4 cups Homemade Chicken Stock, or canned broth
Heat the olive oil in a large (12-inch) saute pan and add the pancetta. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the fat is rendered and the pancetta is golden brown and crisp, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the pancetta to a plate lined with a paper towel.

Add the Brussels sprouts, salt, and pepper to the fat in the pan and saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes, until lightly browned. Add the raisins and chicken stock. Lower the heat and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the sprouts are tender when pierced with a knife, about 15 minutes. If the skillet becomes too dry, add a little chicken stock or water. Return the pancetta to the pan, heat through, season to taste, and serve.

*********note from evie***** I do not add raisins when I cook this but last night I did use craisins for the first time and it was GOOD. Don't poo poo it until you try it.

Here are the fresh sprouts, cooking in the bacon drippings. Smells so good...

At this stage, I've added the broth and they cook until most of the broth is gone. I add the craisins and the reserved bacon pieces and serve alongside a piece of salmon that I totally overcooked. Sprouts - good. Salmon - BAD.

For the past couple of days, I've been eating some buttermilk biscuits that I made from scratch. It's a recipe that I got from Pinch My Salt's website (see links) and I just adore these biscuits. When it's cold outside, nothing says comfort like a warm, soft, fluffy biscuit!

Also, a couple of days ago, I made a ginormous batch of Split Pea with Ham soup and we've been living on that as well. I would take a photo of that but as my friend, Rinnyboo, can attest, it doesn't look very good. Tastes great but it's ugly as a mud fence. My recipe for that is simple:

1 leftover hambone with ham still on
6 cups of liquid (I used a combination of Chicken and Turkey Stock and water)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
1 package dried green split peas (1 lb?)
2 carrots chopped
1 onion chopped

In a large stockpot, add liquid, hambone, and split peas. Bring to a boil, cover, and then lower heat and simmer for one hour. After one hour, add the chopped onion, carrot, and thyme leaves, cover and simmer for 30 minutes to an hour. Taste and add salt and pepper as necessary. Remove from heat and let cool. Remove hambone from the pot, leaving as much ham in the soup as possible. Cool soup and then store in refrigerator. This makes A LOT of soup so you may want to freeze half of it.

I'm still struggling with my eating habits, friends. I'm at 194 and holding which I'll be happy with if I make it through the holidays at that weight and don't add anymore. Hope everyone else has been faring well!

Dinner and a Contest

2007-11-29T21:18:00.000-05:00

Well, all day I had a yucky feeling in my tummy and had to break down and drink a Coke to settle my stomach. 14 million burps later, it was feeling better but I was still uneasy about having anything major for dinner so I settled on something simple - breakfast for dinner! I scrambled a couple of eggs for Sean and myself and separately diced some potatoes, red and green peppers, and onions and sauteed those in a pan. The potatoes took about 20 minutes to cook but they were well worth the wait. It was a nice, comfy meal and hit my tummy just right!

Now, down to business. On my other blog, I'm having a contest. I love Pioneer Woman and, in honor of her, I'm giving away the first $25 I earned from the ads on that blog. Please journey over there tomorrow and enter yourself in the contest. I will put the $25 on a gift certificate to the store of your choosing and will mail it to you just in time for holiday shopping, if you so desire. So come on in and play! Not too many people read my blog so your odds of winning are pretty darn good!

I'll be back tomorrow with more good eats!

What I ate yesterday

2007-11-29T12:24:00.000-05:00

Well, in an effort to "do better" eatswise, I got up yesterday and ate my favorite simple breakfast, a croissant and a small glass of milk. This breakfast is so good and so filling that I didn't eat again until much, much later. However, what I ate later was not a great choice, two of my favorite christmas cookies. They tasted delicious though!

For dinner, I decided to try Mama Podkayne's Turkey Tetrazzini recipe and it was delicious. The only thing I did differently was to add some parsley flakes, chopped mushroom, and italian style bread crumbs to the top. Follow the link and get her recipe, it was really quite good! I had a small serving of that along with a salad topped with a tsp of Caesar Dressing.

This morning I awoke with a killer sinus headache, and even after advil it's still bothering me. I feel dizzy and out of sorts, too. Really sucks. Anyway, I had another helping of the tetrazzini for breakfast and the advil makes it feel like it's jus sitting there. Eat first THEN take advil, not vice versa! Otherwise you'll have a lead balloon in your tummy. As a result of that I will be skipping lunch today! LOL

I will try to update later with the dinner meal.

Favorite Christmas Cookie

2007-11-27T17:51:00.000-05:00

There's nothing remotely Christmasy looking about this cookie. The only reason I associate it with Christmas is because my mom made them every year during the holidays and I adore them. They have a decadent, buttery crust and then the top layer consists of brown sugar, sliced almonds and coconut. It is baked until it reaches a gorgeous golden brown color, not at all this:

Have I mentioned that my oven is 30 years old? It tends to cook a little hotter than I anticipate and I forget to check on this batch. They're not burnt at all, just browner than usual, but they still tasted chewy and buttery. So freakin' good.

I got on the scale today, after I promised myself that I wouldn't and damn it! I have put on 2 pounds. Now I'm all freaked out and want to lose 5 before Christmas. Am I crazy? Is it unreasonable to try and do that during the holidays? Not like I have tons of friends and am going to be inundated with party invitations so I don't have to worry about party food gluttony. I think I can do it and I'm going to give it a shot.

Anyway, I wanted to give you all the recipe for my favorite cookie. It's from a Betty Crocker book called, Cooky Book and it's chock full of other great cookie recipes. If you like baking cookies, then I highly recommend this book!

Here's the recipe:

Dream Bars, Sometimes called Toffee-Nut Bars

1/2 cup shortening (part butter or margerine) I use all butter
1/2 cup brown sugar packed
1 cup flour
Almond Coconut Topping (below)

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix shortening and sugar thoroughly. Stir in flour. Press and flatten with hand to cover bottom of ungreased oblong pan (13x9.5x2"). Bake 10 minutes. Then spread with Topping. Return to oven and bake 25 min. more or until golden brown. Cool slightly then cut into bars. Makes about 2 1/2 dozen 3x1" bars.

***NOTE FROM EVIE*** My sister and I have found that we have to make a double batch of the crust to get this to turn out right but my mom says we're crazy. Take that for whatever it's worth.

Almond-Coconut Topping
2 eggs, well beaten
1 cup Brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. vanilla
2 Tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup moist shredded coconut
1 cup slivered almonds, or other nuts (I used 2/3 cup sliced almonds)

Mix eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Mix with flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in coconut and almonds.

Unless you have a serious aversion to coconut I believe everyone will enjoy these cookies. I usually bake up a bunch of these and give them out to my neighbors!

Enjoy!

Pics of yesterday's feast

2007-11-26T21:43:00.001-05:00

Here's a collage of yesterday's feast which was repeated at tonight's dinner. For breakfast I had some cornbread dressing, and for lunch I had a turkey sandwich and some green bean casserole. LOL Doesn't that sound elegant and delicious?

Gravy, cake in a box, green bean casserole, turkey, and dressing. In the center was my plate last night. Mmmmm good! Even two days in a row!

Unscathed!

2007-11-25T19:14:00.000-05:00

WOO! I made it! I didn't overdo it this Thanksgiving holiday and that feels like a real accomplishment. Many times holidays are an excuse for me to overindulge but for some reason, this year was different. Perhaps it is the permission I grant myself on a daily basis to eat whatever I choose thereby defeating any associations with denial. Denial always sets me up for a binge. Also, we didn't spend exorbitant amounts of time with my sister which also seems to be a binge trigger. She and I are not good for each other that way. We each enable the other to give in to our baser desires for food. Perhaps it's a subconscious wish to see the other fail in our respective quests for weight loss. Damn, sibling rivalry is rough!

Thursday, I got up and had a croissant for breakfast. It was a low-key morning because we were heading over to my sister's for Thanksgiving lunch. There, I was quite good about putting a TASTE of each item on my plate and not heaps of food. As a result, I didn't overeat and suffer needlessly. Later, we went to Sean's mom's house and thankfully I was still content from our late lunch so I didn't eat anything there. I did eat something when we got home but I don't remember it being much of anything. The rest of the weekend is a blur eatswise but there weren't any calorically crazy meals. Today, I did actually roast a turkey breast, make cornbread dressing and green bean casserole. We have leftovers but not a ton so it will not be Gorgefest around here.

I feel really good about how I handled eating this week. We did eat out once but I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. I feel like things are finally under control and like I'm really ready to face this challenge head-on.

Here's to a new week of good eats!

Food at my sister's house.

All my boys on Turkey Day. Don't they look handsome?!

Recent Eats

2007-11-20T22:38:00.000-05:00

Alrighty then! Let me try and run down my grub-a-dubs since Saturday for you. Saturday night, I cooked a gorgeous New Zealand rack of lamb, along with some mashed potatoes and tiny green peas. We spent the rest of the evening on our patio, sitting in front of our new fire pit. It was really, really nice.

Sunday morning, I got up and had this for breakfast:

Remember this? It's my version of the Panera Souffle that I love so much. Then, for lunch I had an egg salad sandwich on whole wheat bread. Dinner was a little less healthy, a sub from Jersey Mike's and I was regretting eating that almost immediately.

Monday, I got up and had one of these glorious things for breakfast with some cherry preserves:

I can't remember what I had for lunch but, for dinner I made Shrimp and Grits. Yumm-O!

Today for breakfast I had another croissant. Sooo good. Then for lunch I had leftover shrimp and grits. Dinner was fairly substantial. See, I have taken on the mantle of cooking Christmas dinner for my family and we traditionally have a rib-roast. Well, that's not exactly something I cook all the time or ever so I felt a need to practice before the big show. Last year my mom helped me but she got drunk and gave me some very bad instructions so this year I'm doing it alone. Luckily, the grocery store had roasts on sale this week so here goes.

Here is the roast totally naked. It's okay, I'm not exploiting anyone here, we're all consenting adults...

I placed it rib side down in a roasting pan and then slathered it with olive oil, herbs de provence, salt and pepper. Then I surrounded the meat with some root veggies (carrots and onions) and covered those with olive oil. Here, take a look for yourself:

Then, I put the pan in a preheated 350 degree oven and cooked the roast until the internal temp reached 125 degrees. I took it out of the oven to rest for 20 minutes.

While it was resting, I prepared some mashed potatoes and some baby broccoli. It was fabulous! The roast was so incredibly tender and juicy! I'm not scared to cook it at Christmas at all.

This week, I have really gotten back on "plan" and, with the exception of the Jersey Mike's incident, I haven't eaten any junky food. I'm feeling good about getting through the holidays without going crazy.

Tomorrow's food won't be terribly exciting, it'll just be more leftovers but I'll fill you in all the same. Have a great night!

Fooling Myself

2007-11-17T12:43:00.000-05:00

Friends, I have been in deep denial. I somehow have been able to rationalize eating unhealthy food, which I haven't documented here. Frozen Pizzas, hot dogs, and McDonalds are not great choices and once in a very long while, it's ok to eat something like that. However, I have been eating like that a lot during the week and have been cooking less and less. My weight is back at 192, after having lost 3lbs by following the principles set forth by Dr. Clower in The Fat Fallacy so now is the time for me to get a grip. The holidays can be such a difficult time for dieters but for people who eat whole foods, not processed foods, it can be a cornucopia of delights. Eating whole foods in the proper portion sizes is my goal, along with banning all junk food through the end of the year. Not only is it bad for my waistline but it's bad for my wallet as well. You will begin to see more posts from me again regarding what I'm eating because it's gotten to the point of ridiculousness here. It is possible to lose weight eating good food. One just has to make the conscious choice to do it.

Thanks for sticking around and hopefully, you'll find the site a little more interesting once I get back on track.

Mmmmmm...pasta

2007-11-14T20:11:00.000-05:00

Normally, I'm not such a big pasta fan but, as you will see later in this post, I enjoyed a lovely pasta dish this evening. First things first. Breakfast.

Yesterday I really wanted French Toast but no one else did so I waited until today to satisfy my craving. It was well worth the wait.

One beaten egg, a splash of cream, mixed with a generous amount of cinnamon and a sprinkling of vanilla and nutmeg. Add to that three slices of bread and you have breakfast for one mom and one kid. Ryan had cheese and crackers instead. He's not real big on breakfast food!

For lunch today, I had a hot dog with mustard and a handful of chips with a glass of organic lemonade. Yummy!

Dinner. It's always a challenge for me. Sean gets home so, so late and, if he hasn't called me by 7pm, I'm just about ready to give up on cooking at all. However that has been leading to some bad eating habits lately (I'm back up to 192) so I think I need to cook dinner early and just let him eat leftovers when he gets home. Tonight was my first journey down that path and I created a really delicious meal.

First, I took a cup and a half to two cups of penne pasta and boiled it. At the same time, I put 1 Tbs butter and a cup of half and half in a small saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter had melted, I added about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of parmesan cheese, a handful of Monterey Jack cheese, some dried rosemary leaves, freshly ground pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg and left all that to simmer over Low heat. Then I chopped some baby bella mushrooms and cooked them in a Tbs of butter. When they were ready (soft and slightly browned) I added them directly to the sauce. Then I cooked 1/2 of shrimp in 1 Tbs butter with one clove of finely chopped garlic and a splash of vermouth. When the shrimp began to get pink, I added the entire mixture to the sauce as well. I combined the sauce with the pasta (DRAINED) and then put it in a casserole dish, topped it with some Italian breadcrumbs and put it in a 425 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes. Since I was cooking the dish in the oven I didn't cook the shrimp in the pan all the way through. It's better for the shrimp to be slightly underdone in that instance.

When it came out of the oven, it looked like this:

Oh, and like this:

And when I put it on my plate it looked like this:

Like I said, I don't usually like pasta but this was really darn good! There was no recipe, just throwing some stuff together at the spur of the moment.

In other news, I got a new food processor today. My old one called it quits after my mom helped me make bread the other day. My new one is a Wolfgang Puck monster, 900 watts and 12 cups. Hopefully it will last me a long time. Good night sweet cuisinart...you were good to me.

Oh. My. God.

2007-11-11T20:11:00.000-05:00

Remember how much I love these from Panera?

Well, after scanning the internet for a recipe, I got lucky and found a message on a board from someone who bakes at Panera and, while they couldn't divulge the actual recipe, they did give a general how-to which I followed today. It's not as pretty as theirs but it was just as tasty!

Forgive the photo, it was taken in my kitchen at night and I was in a hurry to eat the darn thing so I didn't take the usual care in taking a photo.

Here are the general directions I copied from the internet:

Although, the term "souffle" is a misnomer here. They are not made in
any "souffle" style/technique that I know of! The batter is
quiche-like (and I really wish they would all it quiche). Recipes are
strictly confidential, but I can say that the dough is a french
croissant dough richer than the typical American version; ours is
made with European butter--i.e. higher butter fat content). You could
just use your favorite quiche recipe for the batter (ours contains
Romano and asiago cheese, spinach, bacon, red pepper, Tabasco sauce,
artichoke hearts). The "souffles" are not actually baked in the paper
molds (but I wish we could bake them in the molds because the
dishwashers frequently run the pans through the dishwasher (they are
not supposed to do this) which strips them and makes the "souffles"
stick horribly), but we use specially designed "souffle" pans. If you
can find a pecan roll mold, that will work fine, or even a
Texas-sized muffin pan.

The dough is rolled to about 1/4 inch thick, cut into 3.5x 3.5 inch
squares (of course, this step is done for us in a factory, and the
squares come to us frozen) and then it is stretched by hand to 6x6
inches and then fitted into the mold. Each piece of dough is then
filled with about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter, and topped with a bit
more asiago cheese before being folded over.

They are baked at 360 degrees in our rotating oven for about 26
minutes with 20 seconds steam. You will need to bake at 400 degrees
for about 20 minutes or so in a home oven (mist the top generously
with water and then egg wash).

I used a croissant recipe out of one of my baking books, which was quite tedious. If you're not feeling particularly picky you could take a shortcut and try Crescent Roll dough in a can. I cannot guarantee the same results but it would be a lot faster than making croissant dough by hand. For the quiche-like batter, I took 7 eggs, 1/2 cup of cream and beat them by hand, adding 1lb of cooked, crumbled breakfast sausage, sauteed peppers 1/2 of a red and 1/2 of a green), 1/2 an onion, a handful of chopped mushrooms, and some parmesan cheese. Baked in the paper molds for about 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees and, damn, they were good!!! I hope someone out there will try this as well and let me know how you tweaked it.

mmmmm...Cornbread Dressing

2007-11-10T08:41:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is. If my mother were dead she'd be rolling over in her grave but she's not so she'll just be pissed if she sees this. Thankfully, for me, my parents have little to no interest in either one of my blogs so I'm pretty safe in posting this here without fear.

Remember my recipe for Mamaw's Cornbread and how you were supposed to let it sit out for a day to get stale? Well, hopefully you haven't been waiting on my lazy ass to post this recipe, since I've been so slack about it and all. At any rate, late or not, here is Mamaw's Cornbread Dressing Recipe.

1 loaf day old cornbread
6 slices Pepperidge Farm White Bread, torn and toasted in oven (350 degrees, 5-10mins)
1/2 - 1 cup celery chopped
1/2 - 1 cup onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic, choppped
1 stick butter
1 Tbs Poultry Seasoning
1 can cream of chicken OR cream of mushroom soup
(sometimes I mix it up and use some of both)
1 3oz can of evaporated milk
chicken broth to moisten and to taste
2 eggs beaten
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Break up the cornbread and put it in a large bowl with the torn white bread.

Melt the stick of butter in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the chopped celery, onion, and garlic and cook until soft and translucent. Don't brown them!

To the dry ingredients, add the poultry seasoning, soup, evaporated milk, eggs, cooked veggies, and chicken broth until the mixture looks nice and wet, not soupy but really, really moist.

Pour into a deep, rectangular casserole dish and cook in 350 degree oven for 30-45 minutes, until the top is deep, rich brown. Unless you're from up North, I can guarantee that you will love this dressing. If you're from the North, all bets are off. My mother-in-law is from the North and has her own style of stuffing, which I really don't care for at all. She makes many things that I love but stuffing is not one of them. I've been ruined from years and years of cornbread dressing though so it's not her fault.

Please let me know if you make and like it!

I made bread today!

2007-11-08T18:18:00.000-05:00

Look! I made bread!! French Bread!

My mom came over this morning and very kindly helped me get the yeast going and put the dough together then I took her home and came back and did the rest. I was really pleased with how it turned out! I haven't eaten a piece yet, just a nibble, but it was good.

I don't have the recipe, it was in my mom's head, or else I'd share it with you.

Speaking of heads, I was puttering around today and an object fell from up high and bonked me on the head causing me to bleed for quite a while. Yeah, it was a lot of fun! Thank goodness I have a wonderful neighbor because she came over and administered first aid, and may have even dyed my hair in the process since she used peroxide to clean my wound. LOL Honestly though she was awesome and I'm so glad she's our neighbor. She rocks!

I'm still feeling a little woozy but I wanted to show off my bread. Tomorrow, I'll post pictures of my recent eats and give you the recipe for my Mamaw's Cornbread Dressing. Just don't tell my mom I gave it to you, okay?

Mamaw's Cornbread

2007-11-06T17:49:00.000-05:00

So today I made up a batch of my Mamaw's cornbread. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, she was my mother's grandmother, was 1/2 Native American, and died a long, long, time ago. When my mom would spend summers with her, she had to use an outhouse, ok? Long time ago. Anyway, this recipe is for the cornbread that we have been eating for as long as I can remember and it's what we use at Thanksgiving to make Cornbread Dressing. I'm going to make the dressing tomorrow.

Mamaw's Cornbread

1 cup yellow cornmeal (not self-rising)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbs Sugar
3 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup of milk or buttermilk
1/2 CUP of butter, melted
2 eggs beaten
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Sift together the first five ingredients. Set aside.

Blend together the milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla then add them to the dry ingredients. Stir until well combined. Pour into a greased 10" iron skillet and then place in the 450 degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Here is a photo of the batter:

Doesn't it look pretty? :)

Here it is in the skillet:

You could use a pie pan if you don't have a skillet but keep an eye on it in the oven because I don't know how that would affect the cooking time.

Here it is when it came out of the oven:

Now I will leave it on the counter overnight to dry out in order for me to use it in the dressing tomorrow. If you make it, please let me know how it turns out!

Enjoy!

Back and I have a recipe to share!

2007-11-06T09:58:00.001-05:00

My sister and I had a wonderful time in Disney World and it was a much needed vacation. NOw I'm back though, and I'm ready to face my eating head on. Today I'm going to be posting a recipe for my great-grandmother's Southern Cornbread. It's the best cornbread and I'm going to use it later in a Cornbread Dressing that I'm making later today. I'll post the recipe for that as well.

So come back this afternoon for a bonafide southern treat, courtesy of Mamaw!

Off to Disney World

2007-11-02T07:16:00.001-04:00

See you on Monday! I'm off to Disney World with my sister for a Girls Vacation Weekend!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Evie

Today's Eats - Barely Anything

2007-10-31T22:02:00.000-04:00

Today I had my doctor's appointment, you know, the one where I was considering dressing my hoo-hoo in a costume? Well I chickened out of that but I had a good appointment nonetheless. I didn't want to eat beforehand on account of I like that weight to be as low as possible! I was 192. It's official, the three pounds I lost have been found. Darn it! After my appointment I went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch because I'm a self-medicator and I felt that was going to make me happy. It was tasty but I felt so guilty later for eating it. Here's what I had:

With a sweet tea no less.

The rest of the day was spent carving a pumpkin and taking the kids to my mom's for a visit. By the time we got home we were in Halloween preparation mode so I didn't eat dinner. Well, I had a few packs of Halloween candy, but that certainly didn't satisfy me! Now I'm really hungry but there's no point in eating this late.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow because we have nowhere to go, Ryan has a playdate away from home in the afternoon, and the day after, I'm off to Disney World! yay!!

Hope you all had a great day and a happy, safe Halloween!

Today's Eats - Don't Faint

2007-10-30T21:14:00.000-04:00

Yes, friends. Your eyes do not deceive you this really is a post, current, about what I ate today. Nothing glamourous, mind you. Pretty standard fare. Anyway, here we go.

For breakfast this morning, Iain wanted scrambled eggs, so I had some, too. Along with a piece of buttered toast.

Lunch was leftover Creamy Artichoke Soup:

I think I posted a link to the recipe in an earlier post.

For dinner I made gumbo and tomorrow I'm going to post more pictures and the recipe because everyone should know how to make gumbo. It's a great one pot meal that can feed a lot of people. I ended up not eating "dinner" because I snacked on the gumbo while it cooked (and some tortilla chips and salsa, and some skittles, and asmall box of Dots!) but here is Sean's bowl:

It was quite good and I am excited to share the recipe with you tomorrow!

Hey, in the morning, I'm going for my annual pap exam (tmi?) and I got all cracked up because my sister and I were joking about how I should dress "it" up for Halloween. Have mercy, we came up with some doozies! Let your mind marinate on that...

See you tomorrow!

Where have I been??

2007-10-30T14:29:00.001-04:00

Good grief! Almost a week since my last post, now that's ri-damn-diculous! I'll tell you it's been hard to get back into the saddle since taking that time off, friends, but I'm going to attempt to recap what I've eaten since last week. It won't be pretty, it won't be descriptive but hey, I've got some catching up to do so let's go!

Thursday

B - Chicken Club biscuit (fried chicken, cheese, lett, tom, pickle on a biscuit. uh-oh)

L - in the car Fish Filet Combo from McDonalds. Double Uh-oh

D - in Charlottesville, at a local Mexican Restaurant. A taco salad topped with a spicy ranch dressing and steak. I ate about half. Not so bad! WAIT! Oh no! Churros?? Aye caramba! Fried dough covered in cinnamon sugar? uh-oh again.

Friday

B - two chocolate doughnuts from the free breakfast at our hotel.

L- McRib? They have the McRib!!! On the road...mcrib combo from mcdonalds. What is wrong with me??

D- a small bowl of she-crab soup. It was pretty gross.

Saturday

B - no breakfast
L - hot dog on a bun with mustard
D- shrimp and grits and peach maple crisp Now, THAT was good!

Sunday
B - scrambled eggs and natural bacon
L - ice cream from cold stone
D - leftover shrimp and grits and peach maple crisp

Monday

B - 2 eggs fried in a touch of butter and a piece of whole grain toast
L - frozen Totino's party Pizza (uh-oh, not again)
D - Pork Chops and Brussel Sprouts Lardons a la Barefoot Contessa

I promise that today I'm back, really. I've been taking pictures since yesterday and am ready today to get going. Now, keep in mind that Friday - Sunday I will be AWOL because my sister and I are taking a girls only trip to Disney World. I haven't decided if I'm taking my camera or not yet but I will recap all of our glorious eats while we're there and record here on Sunday night or Monday.

Whomever is still with me, thanks for sticking around!

Today's Eats

2007-10-24T20:02:00.000-04:00

Today is Sean's birthday and I had much to do in preparation for his dinner tonight. This morning when I woke up, one of the first things I did was - no, not eat breakfast - make his birthday cake. Nigella Lawson has a recipe in her book, Feast, for a Chocolate Guinness Cake. One of the ingredients is Guinness beer. Yes, you read that right, the cake is made with beer! Here is what it looked like when it came out of the oven:

Doesn't that look good?

Once the cake had been baked, I fixed myself something to eat - leftover Zucchini Gratin. It was the last of it and it was quite tasty.

After lunch, the boys and I had to run some errands and during that time, I struggled to decide what to fix Sean for dinner. On the one hand, I had no idea what time he would be home so that caused me some concern. I wanted to fix Shrimp and Grits but we're having company over for dinner on Saturday and I plan to fix that for them. I settled on London Broil, which turned out all right.

The frosting for the cake was a Cream Cheese frosting, which was intended to emulate the frothy, creamy head of a Guinness beer. I mixed mine up and frosted the cake and, while mine was a tad bit lumpy it tasted just fine!

This is what the cake looked like in all its frosted glory!

Well, usually when I cook London Broil the preferred method is on the grill. I like being able to see it and touch it to check for doneness. As luck would have it, our grill is on the fritz and the last time I cooked London Broil, it didn't cook well. Tonight I decided to cook it under the broiler in my oven with, unfortunately similar results to the broken grill. Sean was a trooper and ate it but I was disappointed.

Here is my plate from dinner:

London Broil is best when thrown on a hot grill and cooked for 6-7 mins per side. My oven took way too long to cook it which makes the meat tougher. Oh well, the cake was good and I think Sean enjoyed it. He's taking the rest to work tomorrow because we're going out of town for a couple of days and won't be here to eat it.

I feel like I'm getting back on track which is good because, according to the scale I've put on the 3 lbs I had recently lost! Argh! I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I will focus that energy on staying on course. We'll be on the road tomorrow so I'm not sure how I'll update but hopefully the hotel will have internet access and I can post something tomorrow night.

Recent Eats

2007-10-23T14:14:00.000-04:00

Well yesterday and today have been hectic so I don't have any photos to share but I am going to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly of what I've eaten over the last couple of days.

On Monday we got up and out the door early to go visit our friend Marin in Raleigh so for breakfast I had a package of chocolate covered donuts and some potato chips. Mmmm. Doesn't that sound healthy?! Wait, it gets better! On the way home we stopped at Burger King and, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I ordered a Big Fish sandwich combo. It was horrible, thank god, so I couldn't eat it. Dinner was decent at least. Leftover Zucchini Gratin and a small caesar salad. That was good! The recipe is as follows, adapted from a Barefoot Contessa recipe:

2 zucchini (sliced)
2 yellow squash (sliced)
one small onion (chopped)
1 cup half and half (HOT)
salt and pepper, nutmeg
1/2 cup fresh or panko bread crumbs mixed with 1/2 cup grated swiss cheese
1/2 -3/4 stick of butter
2 Tbs flour

Melt the butter in a large saute pan. when melted, saute the onions over medium heat until translucent, 15-20 minutes. Watch them because you don't want them to brown. Once they're ready, add the zucchini and yellow squash and cook that for 5-10 mins, or until soft. Add the flour and cook for a couple of minutes and then add the hot half and half. Add salt and pepper to taste along with a couple of sprinkles of nutmeg and cook until the sauce thickens. Once the sauce has thickened, pour the mixture into a small casserole dish and top with the bread crumb cheese mixture. If the mixture doesn't cover the top, add more. Dot the top with a few small pieces of butter and then place in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes or until brown and bubbly.

It is delicious!! I tried to wrap things up with a gorgeous espresso that I saw Giada de Laurentis make which consisted of freshly made espresso, heavy cream, and chocolate liqueur, topped with sweetened whipped cream. Doesn't that sound divine? I tried it and YUCK. I'm just not grown up enough to enjoy the bitter drink. My husband loved it though so if you're a fan of espresso then give it a try!

Today, we went out to get some things for Sean's birthday which is tomorrow. I'm having a hard time planning for it because we may be going out of town for a couple of days. I won't know for sure until later! At any rate, after skipping breakfast this morning, we went out to eat at a local restaurant and I got a cheeseburger and some chips. It was good, not exactly healthy, but good. I ate about 3/4 of it.

I'm not sure what I'm fixing dinner tonight but tentatively, I'm planning to fix another Giada recipe, Artichoke and Leek Soup. You can find the recipe here.

I will update tonight, hopefully with a photo!

UPDATE:

Argh. No photo but I did make the soup with the following changes. Giada called for marsacapone (sp) cheese and I didn't have any so I just used half and half instead. Also, I added some thyme leaves to it because nothing cozies up a meal like thyme. Other than that I followed her recipe and it was good, people. Warm, thick, rich. Mmmmm. Like curling up in front of a fire with your honey, that's how cozy it was. I also served a bratwurst with it because, as filling as soup can be, I need something to chew on as well. It was a very satisfying meal.

It looks like we're not going out of town tomorrow so I will post pictures of the cake I make for Sean's birthday. I think I'm going to make Shrimp and Grits for him for dinner because I'm not sure what time he'll be home and that is a meal I can have ready in 30 minutes which is about how long it takes him to get home from work, give or take a few minutes. Also, the kids and I don't have anywhere to go tomorrow and I'm looking forward to hanging out in my PJ's, eating some yummy food, taking some glorious photos, and posting it all on here for you guys.

Thanks for sticking with me!

She's baaaaaack

2007-10-21T09:39:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the break, folks but I really, really needed it! There were so many things I wanted to do, NEEDED to do, and I was feeling challenged by the need to keep up with the photos here on this blog. Also, it was getting a little overwhelming to come up with something pretty to eat every meal of the day. I'm over that now because I'm getting back to my idea of just capturing what I eat. If it's gorgeous, great. If it's ordinary, great. It is what it is. I know you guys aren't sitting out there expecting me to fix some fantabulous meal 3x a day!

Anyway, I took some pictures of dinner last night, which was fabulous and I'm here today to share with you the beauty of a tapas dinner. If you are unfamilar with the concept of tapas, it's a Spanish term referring to tastes of different dishes. If you went to a tapas restaurant you would order several different dishes to share with folks at your table. It's a great way to eat because it's hard to eat too much. It's like having a dinner of appetizers. Well, my sister and I had gotten together eariler in the day and had decided to cook something but we weren't sure what. IN fact, when we went to the store yesterday afternoon, we had a completely different idea about dinner and we changed our mind as we were collecting ingredients. Here is our menu from last night:

Steak Crostini, with Italian flat-leaf parsley, a sour cream mustard with horseradish, topped with shaved parmesan

Caprese Salad which is toasted bread topped with sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil leaf, olive oil, and salt and pepper

Mini Ciliantro Crabcakes made with (gasp) canned white crabmeat, chopped fresh cilantro, roasted red pepper, red onion, coriander, nutmeg, and chinese five spice powder. Along with egg, mayo and panko bread cumbs as the binders.

Hoisin Haricot Verts, french green beans blanched then cooked in a saute pan with Hoisin Sauce and sesame seeds.

Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas, my sister's own recipe so I'm not sure what's in it besides chicken, chili powder, cumin, sour cream, cheese, green chilies, sandwiched in 2 tortillas then fried in a saute pan. Yum-O

My sister also made these divine Mini Chocolate Cream Pies which are made up of chocolate pudding to which she added coffee and Godiva chocolate liquer. Holy. Crap. They were good.

Here are pics from dinner:

Steak Crostini

Caprese Salad

Mini Crabcakes

Haricot Verts

Chicken Quesadilla

Chocolate Cream pies before whipped Cream and after.

This dinner was so delicious, both to the eye and the palate which only increases the pleasure of the meal. I highly encourage you to try a snacky dinner at least once a week. It's a lot of fun!

Taking a few days off

2007-10-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

Don't worry if you don't see any posts from me for a few days. I've been neglecting some things around the house and need to spend a few days getting things in order.

By Monday I will be back to posting as usual!

Thanks for your patience!

Evie

Recent Eats

2007-10-16T21:52:00.000-04:00

I've been a tad under the weather, friends so my recent eats have been pretty slim to none. Yesterday I didn't manage to eat breakfast but I did eat some soup for lunch. Our grocery store carries some all natural soups that are pretty darn good, no additives, no preservatives. They were running a by one get one free special so I got one container of New England Clam Chowder and one of Charleston She-Crab Soup. Mmmm-mm good! Here's my bowl of soup from yesterday:

I spent a lot of the day on the sofa because I felt incredibly weak. Last year around this same time I was diagnosed with extreme fatigue. I don't know if it has anything to do with the time of year, or time of the month if you catch my drift, but I've been pretty exhausted for the past couple of days. I did manage to take the boys to the park for a little bit yesterday but then spent the rest of the night on the sofa. For dinner I had a bag of organic microwave popcorn and a Coke.

This morning I was determined to get off to a good start. There was some leftover french bread in the freezer so after thawing it out, I used it to make some french toast. Usually when I make french toast it turns out AWFUL. Have no idea why that is but sometimes the things that are the simplest for most people are the hardest for me. LOL Today though, someone was looking over me because the french toast this morning was delicious. Even Iain liked it! He said it tasted like the french toast at Disney World! Here's a shot of it:

For lunch, I simply had a hot dog and some water then a couple of squares of chocolate. For dinner I was going to fix pork chops, brussel sprouts and mashed potatoes but I only got around to the brussel sprouts and potatoes. The brussels were good! I used to despise these things but once I used the Barefoot Contessa's recipe, which involves bacon, I was hooked. I'll post a picture of them tomorrow.

Tomorrow's eats are going to be interesting. My sister and I are meeting up with RinnyBoo at the State Fair and I'm looking forward to having some fair food!

Good night!

Today's Eats

2007-10-14T18:29:00.000-04:00

I think we're developing a Sunday morning ritual. Why, you may ask? Well, this morning, Sean went out to Panera and picked up a couple of those delicious souffle's we ate last weekend. They are sooo good! Although, after eating it again today I think it's more of a strata than a souffle. Sean also went to Starbucks and picked up my favorite beverage, a chai latte. While I didn't take a picture of that, I did take a couple of good shots of the souffle:

I ate every stinking bite of that and it was delicious. However the Chai Latte was huge and I only drank about half of that before throwing the rest away. I love that drink so much. It's like drinking gingerbread!

Lunch had me in a quandary. We have tons of leftovers in the fridge but they were all so cheese laden and I didn't think I could handle anymore cheese today. So then, what to have for lunch? I decided just to have a sandwich. A ham and mayo sandwich with pickle slices on whole wheat bread. It was really good!

Now that it's time for dinner, I'm not totally sure what we're having. I put out a London Broil but I don't think it's thawed out yet. If it doesn't thaw, I'm not sure what we'll do. Whatever happens, I'll update you later!

DINNER:

Ha! Dinner was a comedy of errors which I won't dwell on here but it finally got done and we all ate together as a family. Nice! We don't get to do that very often. I made London Broil, a package of Parmesan and Romano Cheese Rice, and baby broccoli florets:

I overcooked the london broil just a tad but all in all it was pretty good. RYan tried it and didn't like it but he did eat the rice and broccoli and a PB and honey sandwich. Iain liked the london broil all right but he didn't like the rice. He thought it tasted like Mac and Cheese, which he can't stand. I'm just happy they both tried something they didn't like. I fixed the leftovers for Sean to take to work tomorrow for lunch so hopefully he'll eat them. He's been eating out a lot and I told him we haven't budgeted for that and he really shouldn't do it every day. We'll see what happens tomorrow!

Good night!

Today's Eats

2007-10-13T23:46:00.000-04:00

I got up early this morning and made these beautiful pancakes. If you click on the picture, it will take you to my Flickr page which has a link to the recipe I used. These turned out really nicely and went really well with the bacon I cooked, too. :)

We had a busy day. After breakfast, we wandered out to a Fall Festival, which had been very poorly organized but we didn't let that get us down and we all had a great time. Be sure to go to my unschooling blog tomorrow and check out some pics from that adventure. We were at the festival smack during lunch time and, since I love a good hot dog, that was my lunch of choice along with a Mountain Dew.

It was plain, my usual is slaw and mustard, but the line was pretty long and we all just wanted to sit down and eat!

Tonight, we went out to dinner with my sister and her hubby to a Mexican restaurant that was okay. A little on the salty side but not greasy at least. I got combo number one, 1 taco, two cheese enchiladas and rice. I ate half the taco, one enchilada, 1/3 of the rice. Oh yeah, and a million chips with salsa. Why is it that you can eat a whole basket of those before you realize what you've done??

I got my "studio" partially set up with a table, a lamp, some foam core to try and direct light in the room, and some props to use. The pancakes are the first picture I took in there and I think it turned out pretty well. It's nice to have a dedicated spot to take the pictures because it was getting to be a big ordeal to drag out all my equipment to get the kinds of shots I wanted. See, in order to get my shots really, really sharp, I've started using a tripod. I've been using a higher aperture, a lower film speed, and both of those require a tripod when the light is not totally bright because the shutter speed will be slow and you'll get a very blurry image otherwise. Also, using the ISO 100 gives me a much clearer picture than I was getting at 400 ISO. I'm really learning a lot and am enjoying taking pictures of food. It's inspiring me to cook more and making me step outside of my comfort zone, too. This week I'm thinking about trying a couple of French foods that I love. We'll see!

Have a great night!

yesterday and today's eats - ugh

2007-10-12T15:37:00.000-04:00

It's been a crazy couple of days around here. I'm beginning to appreciate how difficult and time consuming it is to maintain two blogs, a household, two kids, and a burgeoning hobby in photography. It's exhausting and frankly all those have suffered a little over the past couple of days.

Yesterday's breakfast was boring. I wanted to make a beautiful souffle or something but just couldn't find a recipe I wanted to use. Instead I just made the Old Faithful, scrambled eggs and biscuits. The picture is terrible, too. I think I did something wrong when I developed it so later on I'll revisit it and put the better version here.

I didn't eat lunch yesterday. Well, I did if you count the 12 raw almonds I ate while walking out the door. Breakfast held me over until almost 3 and then Iain and I had to go out and run some errands while Ryan was at a Kid Mosh. That's what we call playdates because my husband hates the word playdate. Anyway, I ate the almonds and drank some water and we were off.

Dinner. Another missed meal. Unless you count the tiny slice of frozen pizza that I ate. I made Tuna Casserole but I didn't eat it. Don't know what was up with me yesterday...

This morning, I got up and had to run some more errands and when we got back, I had another handful of almonds. It was late and I thought we were having lunch with Sean so I didn't want to eat a big breakfast and get so full that I couldn't enjoy lunch. Well, of course we ended up not going. Sean was really busy and didn't even call me until 12:30 to tell me that we couldn't get together. Oh well. I had the tuna casserole in the fridge so I just reheated some of that. This picture turned out terrible too. I'm not sure what's up with that but here it is anyway! LOL

It's all out of focus. Would you believe I took 25 pictures and every last one of them looked that way?? I was really pissed.

This afternoon I'm going to be spending time setting up "my" room. The boys just combined rooms so I'm taking Iain's old room as my own and am going to set up my own photography studio. It's just so difficult to keep all my camera supplies downstairs so I can get a picture together when I need it. This will be easier on everyone I think.

Not sure what we're doing for dinner. The boys wanted to go out but we'll just have to wait and see. Whatever it is, I'll update and hopefully the picture will be in focus!!

DINNER:

We ate over at my sister's last night and I didn't feel like taking my camera over but I'm going to do my best to describe for you what we had. First, we started with the Pioneer Woman's cheese bread, toasts as we like to make them. This time, instead of using all monterey jack cheese, I used a combo of pepper jack and monterey jack. They were quite good and I probably had 4. Ok, 5. No really, I had 10. They were SO good! LOL Then my sister made her own sloppy joes using a Rachael Ray recipe. INstead of ground beef though Beth used ground turkey. They were better than any Sloppy Joe I've ever had in my life. The sauce was sweet and savory, just perfect! I only had a half of one though since I'd eaten all those cheese toasts. To go along with the sandwiches, she made a caesar salad. It was a really nice dinner, but I did eat a tad too much. Hopefully I won't regret eating all that cheese. LOL!

see you later!

Today's Eats

2007-10-10T20:22:00.000-04:00

Well, it was another "early" day here. Really early for me since I was cleaning up doggie presents at 3:15 in the morning but we won't talk about that. I really do love my new fur coat though. Ahhh, I'm only teasing! the pup is just fine. The boys were up at 8am and we hit the ground running because we had a lot we wanted to do today. I did make sure to take time and have a quiet, relaxing breakfast before all the craziness began. I cooked some natural bacon in the oven, a tad too long, my favorite way to cook it. It just cooks so much more evenly that way. I had that along with some organic french vanilla yogurt and my homemade granola. Mmmmmm. So good!

It took me a while to figure out what I was having for lunch. There was some chicken in the fridge that needed to be cooked today but I just wasn't sure what to do with it. I settled on Parmesan Chicken, mashed potatoes, and tiny green peas. For the chicken, I soaked it in buttermilk while I prepared the coating which was panko bread crumbs, grated parmesan cheese (NOT Kraft), hot hungarian paprika, poultry seasoning, parsley flakes, and coarse pepper. In an iron skillet I put 1-2 Tbs of canola oil and heated it up. Once I dredged the chicken in the coating, I placed it in the skillet, seasoned it with kosher salt and browned it on both sides. Then I placed it in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, while my potatoes cooked. Here is the finished product:

Late afternoon, I decided to go ahead and have dinner. Sean has been getting home so late that it just feels pointless to try and eat dinner with him. Since lunch was so big I just had a small snacky dinner which consisted of a Granny Smith apple, some Danish cheese (which was not so great), and some fancy shmancy garlic crackers. I have to tell you that this dinner was less than satisfying so it will not be repeated. See for yourself:

As you can see, it wasn't very inspiring! LOL I've been combing through all my cookbooks and haven't found anything yet that I'm itching to fix. Maybe tomorrow some inspiration will hit. Oh, one more thing. I have added a quick, 15 minute exercise routine to my day. Nothing set in stone, just 15 minutes of activity. In the family room I have left some wrap-on hand weights so when I'm just sitting around, I can turn on the music channel on TV and dance around with the weights on my hands. I did it yesterday and can really feel it today. It's just something to get me started so I'm not doing a set step-by-step routine. Today the boys and I got out and walked a lot so that was my exercise today. My weight has creeped back up to 191 and I feel that it's because of little nibbles of things I have throughout the day. they don't seem like much at the time but apparently they're adding up. They seemed so insignificant that I didn't even mention them here. That's going to stop though. No more nibbling and more exercise!

See you all tomorrow!

Today's Eats

2007-10-09T19:44:00.001-04:00

Not sure why but we were all up at what felt like the crack of dawn to me at 7:15am. The boys got up and came downstairs and we just hung out this morning. I made another batch of biscuits from www.pinchmysalt.com and, in an attempt to avoid the sticky dough from last time, I think I made this just a touch too dry. With butter and jam you can't tell the difference! LOL Here is what my breakfast looked like this morning:

They were really yummy!

For lunch I decided to try and make some fried chicken. My mom told me that my grandma used Crisco so that is what I did today, too. Crisco is not good for you but it sure is good. To go along with the chicken I made a cauliflower au gratin and some haricot verts. Here is my plate from lunch:

Later I munched on some Harry and David Moose Crunch, which is like PoppyCock or Crunch n munch, and I really regret it. I had a major sugar crash this afternoon and was weak, tired and a complete bi-yotch. I'm feeling better now but man, it was rough for a while. Not sure what I'm having for dinner because I'm not really hungry but, if I eat I'll be sure to update.

Today's Eats

2007-10-08T21:05:00.000-04:00

Woke up this morning - Late! Well, at 9am anyway, and had to rush around because we had nothing to eat and we needed to get to the grocery store. Once we got out and back, it was almost 11am so I decided to just eat lunch. While we were in the grocery store Ryan had mentioned that he would like to get some macaroni and cheese. Of course, I wasn't buying a box just because it had Spider-Man on it but I told him we'd make our own. Once it was made though he only wanted a peanut butter and honey sandwich so I ate it instead! Really, I don't know why anyone would make the box version when it's just as easy to make homemade pretty quickly. I boiled 1 cup of macaroni and when it was ready, I added a Tbs of butter, a generous handful of shredded cheddar cheese, one slice of american cheese, and a splash of cream. Throw in a pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of pepper and you can go ahead an eat it if you want to. I however wanted to add a bread crumb topping which would add a tiny bit more cooking time. I put a small amount for my lunch in a ramekin and the rest in a larger dish for later. Topped with a tsp of butter and a sprinkling of italian bread crumbs, the ramekin went in a 350 degree oven for about 10 mins. While that cooked, I sliced an all natural hot dog on the bias and cooked it in a skillet with some butter. Here is the finished product:

After lunch I went a good while before I was hungry again and, while there were plenty of healthy things for me to choose for a snack, I instead chose to snack on this:

I spent a lot of time thinking about what to fix for dinner. That seems to be the norm these days because I want to show you something visually appealing but my personal repertoire is quite shallow. At any rate, it's 9:17 as I write this and Sean is still not home so around 7:30 I decided not to wait and just fix something easy. It's not the best picture but it's a record of what I ate! LOL

A couple of slices of natural bacon, 1 egg, 1 buttermilk biscuit, and 3 chopped strawmatos seasoned with salt and pepper. Like I said, not exciting but it was dinner!

Tonight I'm going to cruise though my cookbooks and see what interesting fare I can come up with for tomorrow. Hopefully something better than breakfast for dinner.

Weekend Eats

2007-10-07T22:42:00.000-04:00

I'm going to give a quick summary of the food I gorged on this weekend and, I do mean gorged. Right now I feel like an overstuffed pillow.....ugh.

So Saturday morning I got to sleep late and so I skipped breakfast. We went out to eat for lunch and I had two slices of cheese pizza. Not very exciting. Later on, we dropped the kids of with my parents for a sleepover and went crazy! Oh, it was so invigorating to be out and about without worrying about whether everyone's needs were being met. Sean took me from store to store helping me try to find things for me to use in my quest to become a cooler food photographer. You will see in a moment an embarrassingly bad shot I took trying to be all artsy but hold onto your britches, it's be here soon enough. So we went to Garden Ridge, Tuesday Morning, TJ Maxx, all on a quest for cool plates and kitchen items. Sean did try to get me to test drive a car but I wasn't having it. It starts with a test drive and 12 hours later your eyeball deep in a 72 year car loan. No thanks! After we wore ourselves out with shopping, we wanted to go somewhere hip to eat. You know, somewhere cooler than Ronald's Maison de boeuf. (mcdonalds for those who don't parlez francais) We settled on a brand new restaurant downtown called Rim. The name alone caused Sean to go into fits of 12 year old toilet humor. It was really good though! A tapas place, the offerings were not innumerable but they were absolutely divine. We started out with Marcona Almonds (peeled and roasted in sunflower oil) and Flash Fried Calamari. Next we ordered Tuna Tartare, Curried Lamb Meatloaf, and Hoisin Haricots Verts. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Everything is sized to share and perfect for two people. Next we ordered pork, cabbage and ginger potstickers. God, they were so good, I thought I was going to embarrass myself in the restaurant while exclaiming my satisfaction with the meal. Here are the things I remembered to take pictures of:

Hoisin Haricots Verts..see the black and white sesame seeds?

Curried Lamb Meatloaf with a cucumber sauce, oh god this was too good.

Tuna Tartare, this was spicy and mustardy, just plain delicious. It was served with a pickled tomato watermelon relish. Sounds weird but it was damn good!

After dinner, we ventured on down to Ganache Bakery for our over the top dessert of the night. Here is where the embarrassing photo comes in. See, when we got home had all these cool plates and cake stands that I'd bought and I wanted to get a cool, fantabulous shot of my cake to post here. Well, I overthought it just a tad. Here is the best shot I got and you'll see that's not saying much:

That picture is so terrible and I wouldn't share it with just anybody! LOL

We came home, watched a movie, went to bed. When we got up, we wanted to take advantage of the peace and quiet and grabbed some reading material and went out for breakfast. It was a major decision trying to figure out if we should go somewhere and get a big breakfast or just go somewhere small for pastry and coffee. Small won. We headed over to Panera and I had a Turkey Sausage and Potato Souffle with a Chai Latte. Chai Latte is my favorite! It was great too because we were able to sit outside. Sean read the paper, I read my cookbooks and Sur la Table catalog. For an hour. It was glorious!!

We picked up the kids and then headed home to get some things done before the beginning of the week kicked us in the ass. For lunch I had Shepherd's Pie leftovers which I won't bore you with another picture of that. Then my sister called and offered to buy us dinner in honor of my b-day. Cool, I can get down with that. We ended up ordering appetizers from a local place and I had some wings, some chips and dip, and some nachos. The only thing I got a picture of though was the wings. Here you go:

No cake tonight, baby! I was full after eating all that and here I sit feeling like a complete glutton but happy at the same time. It was a really nice weekend. I hope you all had a nice weekend too!

Yesterday's Eats - Birthday!

2007-10-06T09:51:00.002-04:00

One might think that celebrating a birthday without a cake is a bad thing but I'm here to tell you that you can recognize your birthday without a cake and live to talk about it!

Yesterday morning I got up and opened my gifts which included some new camera and computer gear. I also received a birthday present I ordered for myself which was a book on digital photography. I've been incredibly inspired by some of the photos over at Flickr and really want to improve my skills so I tried something new when shooting my breakfast images. I couldn't really tell a difference but I'm trying! Breakfast was quite simple, two buttermilk biscuits with a touch of Bonne Maman cherry preserves. I adore cherry jelly, especially on biscuits...

This held me over for a long time, surprisingly and later I had some leftover Shepherd's Pie for lunch.

For dinner, Sean asked the boys where they wanted to take me and they, of course, wanted Mario's Pizza. However I wasn't in the mood for a big greasy slice of pizza so instead I had a big greasy burger at Fincastle's, a diner downtown. LOL

It wasn't greasy actually. We hadn't eaten there before but the menu looked like fun, Cherry Crush, baby cokes with peanuts, fried pickles. I didn't have any of that, though I was sorry I didn't order a Cherry Crush because I loved those when I was a little girl. The burger was really tasty. A lot of places do not season their burgers and this one had a great combination of pepper and salt. Really good. I ordered onion rings as my side because I'm a total sucker for them:

These were good, too but they could have used a touch of salt. It's hard to beat the flavor of a salty onion ring dredged in ketchup. Mmmmmm, that's tasty!!

After dinner, Sean wanted to take me to our most decadent local bakery called Ganache. They have the most incredible cakes and are the only game in town to go to when you have a special occasion and you want to get something other than the standard cavity-inducing fare offered at the grocery store. They made our wedding cake and that was to die for! Anyway, I was so full after dinner though I decided to wait until tonight to get some cake. The kids are spending the night with my parents so maybe Sean and I will head over to Ganache later and enjoy something gorgeous with a cup of coffee. Here's what my plate looked like at the end of dinner by the way:

After dinner, we headed over to my favorite book store and there I was able to buy $250 worth of books for $84. I love the used book store! I picked up The Joy of Cooking, How to Bake, and The New Basics Cookbook. Also got a couple of books on parties, a Celtic activity book for kids (super cool), a Marvel Encyclopedia and a photography book. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I didn't miss the cake one bit. It was a great birthday!