What Lies Beneath!

Hi guys, hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was uneventful (and rather lazy) which I didn't mind at all. I am feeling much better, but sometimes my head still feels kinda dizzy and light, I'm assuming from the sinus pressure still?! Not much I can do about it, so I'm trying to just ignore it and do the best I can.

I had to share this with you all . . . remember this:

Hmm, actually, now that I think about it, I'm not even sure I shared it with you? This is a cauliflower plant that I put in the garden back in September, when the weather started cooling down! I don't even think I've taken any more pictures of it since then . . . until this week that is.

This is how it looked over the weekend! It's huge and it's been huge for some weeks now. We've had wind and rain and frost, and this thing was looking pretty pathetic, as you can see (and yes, those are weeds in our lovely crushed granite paths that need dealing with!)

 A couple of weeks ago I went out there to see if anything was happening under all those sorry looking leaves, and I was pleasantly surprised, because I think I saw a 'white head' starting to grow! So, this past weekend I went out there again wondering how things had been developing, and look what I found . . . 

  

  Is there anyone home?

Yes! Lil ole me is home!!

I was AMAZED, look at this thing, he's so pretty :-)  I can't believe I just planted a tiny little thing a few months ago, left it all alone out there and he grew! Now that's the kind of gardening I like!

Now, what to make with him? How about cauliflower cheese! I decided to make some cheese sauce, and what better recipe to follow than the wonderful PW's, and while I'm at it why not make her delicious mac and cheese too!  So, that's exactly what I did on Saturday . . . .

 I've made PW's mac and cheese recipe before, you can find it online HERE. I just boiled the cauliflower and added some of the cheese sauce to it then put it under the broiler (grill) to brown. I took the photo before I browned it though, and boy does there seem a lot of cheese on top of it!

I must say it doesn't look very appetizing here, but it was yummy! Certainly not something I'll be eating again any time soon though. I've started back on Weight Watchers today! More about that next time.

Eating Right!

Hi everyone, is it Friday yet? These 6am mornings are not fun at all, I feel so tired still, where is the energy I had just before Christmas? Hopefully it will return soon.
 

At the start of a new year I always like to focus on good health and eating right. I honestly can't say that I'm doing that too much yet. There is still a load of 'junk' (by which I mean delicious chocolate) laying around here that I can't seem to stop eating! And I am in the terrible habit of snacking after dinner on cheese and crackers (there's no chips in the house, we've eaten them all and I refuse to buy more!). I am trying to eat right and have been buying fruit like crazy. One main reason is that Kristen is eating it now too. She would rarely eat fruit, watermelon during the summer and that was about it, hardly ever an apple, sometimes a strawberry here and there, but this past week she's been eating the berries I've bought, and the cherries. Since last weekend I've been to the store 3 times to stock up on more fruit. This was my latest purchase yesterday. . . . 

 Blueberries were a great price this week, only $1.98 per tub, the raspberries were nearly $5 for the same size! No raspberries for us this week ;-) Those oranges you see are delicious, I forgot the name of them, honey somethings? Only $4.98 for the whole tray! And they are so juicy and sweet, I eat like 3 or 4 a day!

I was trying to play with the 'Bokeh' on my camera, getting the front of the oranges in focus with the back of the picture blurred!

I know I've mentioned this magazine before. . .

There are some yummy recipes in this month. Cheryl made a yummy chicken soup with sweet potatoes this week, she gave me some to try. 

 It was really very tasty, also had kale and mushrooms in it.

I'm thinking of making this for dinner tonight, but using chicken instead. Kristen likes couscous and broccoli so I may just put everything on her plate separately but I'll do mine like this with the oranges.  And I will try and NOT snack on the cheese after dinner. Perhaps a greek yogurt and fruit will be my dessert :-)

Are you eating healthy? Or are you still nibbling on the Christmas Candy like me? !!

Catching up

Hi everyone, hope you're all having a good start to your week. The days sure do go fast, I haven't posted since Thursday! I wasn't very well over the weekend, I think it was allergies. On Friday I started getting a huge cold sore on my lip too - man do they hurt. Usually I can 'nip them in the bud' (I use Abreva, if I so much as feel a tingle - if you've ever had a cold sore, you'll know what I mean) but for some reason I didn't feel this until it was quite a large lump! And even though I put Abreva on it straight away, by the next day it had really broken out and was huge :-(  I also had a fever on Saturday and spent most of the afternoon asleep on the couch while Jason took Kristen to his work picnic.

I felt a lot better on Sunday and actually went up to the gym with Cheryl and Steve. I've decided to join again! I really need to get active. Most of my afternoons I seem to be spending on the couch, after I've done housework etc, trying to knit Christmas gifts. I know I can find the time to pop up to the gym for an hour every other day. I didn't go yesterday because I was feeling pretty tired, from the workout I did on Sunday and probably the allergy problems right now. I don't want to over do it, so I'm going to try and go again today.

I'm finding there's not much to blog about right now because I'm not really doing much. Other than housework and knitting, and baking! I did say I'd share my apple pie pics with you last week, so here they are. . . .

As I mentioned, I made the pie because we got some apples off our tree :-)  I actually made the pastry from scratch and although it was ok, I didn't think it was GREAT!  The ice cream, now that was delicious. Homemade ice cream = yummy! And it couldn't be easier, it's just milk, cream sugar and vanilla and I pour it in to my icecream maker and turn it on. 20 minutes later you have delicious creamy ice cream. 

We're still waiting for the weather to cool down here! The mornings aren't too bad, usually in the low 70's, but by the afternoon we're still hitting high 90's. This is how the garden is looking at the minute. . . . 

All those plants you see there (spilling out on to the paths) are tomato plants! We planted them back at the beginning of the summer and haven't had any tomatoes off them? I think it was just too dry. Now that we are able to water a bit more we are trying to get them going again. They are full of little yellow flowers now, so we're hoping we get a huge crop of tomatoes in the next few weeks.

The grocery store was selling plants and herbs again so I bought a few including another tomato plant! some peppers and some new herbs.  I cleaned out my herb garden. The basil I had was huge and had gone to seed, so I cut it all down and now it's growing new leaves. You can see him below looking like a small tree without many leaves.

 

This basil plant below is purple and actually smells like licorice and basil!  I haven't used it yet, and actually probably wont. I just like to have a nice selection of herbs to smell as I go around the garden!

 Another new plant I planted last week . . . cauliflower :-) I've never grown one before, although we did get broccoli a couple of years ago, so I'm sure I can do cauli too.  What about you, are you still growing anything in the garden?

Welcome back PW!

Actually what I really mean is, welcome back to 'cooking with The Pioneer Woman' :-)  I hope you'll join me each week as I continue my way through Ree's wonderful cook book and trying her delicious recipes. 

And of course you can watch along with Ree on Saturday mornings on her new show on FoodNetwork. It airs at 11.30am/10.30c. I saw the first episode last weekend when Ree made her yummy chicken fried steak. I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I will have to make it soon as it's hubby's favorite too. 

This week I chose Maple Pecan Scones from Ree's book. But I'm actually calling mine Praline Pecan Scones. . . I'll explain why in a minute ;-)

Making scones is pretty simple, you start off with dry ingredients, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Then cut in 2 sticks of cold butter until you have crumbles.  Add in some chopped pecans, and then to that you add 3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream and one egg! Ree certainly can give Paula Deen a run for her money when it comes to butter and cream (and in other recipes, Mayo), that's for sure! You can tell these scones are going to be decadent, can't you?

Once everything is combined, roll the dough to a 10" circle and cut in to 8. Wow, all that butter and cream and I'm only getting 8 scones? I don't even want to think how many calories are in each one!!

Bake at 350 for about 22-26 minutes. Now, here's where I messed up! I set my timer but forgot to hit start - then I popped over to Cheryl's to see if she had any maple extract for the icing. She didn't have any, but she did have some Praline Liqueur! So I used that, hence the reason my scones are called Praline Pecan. But when I got back, probably after 10 minutes, I wasn't sure exactly how much longer to bake the scones, because the timer hadn't actually started. Ree did say not to let the sides get brown, so I had to just guess, and to be honest, I think I could have left them for at least 3 or 4 more minutes. They weren't undercooked, but I just still felt like they could have had longer in the oven.

Once they have totally cooled you whip up a batch of icing (I only used about half the recipe because I didn't have a full 1lb of confectioners sugar, and even then I had too much of it, so I would suggest you not do the whole recipe for the icing, you really don't need it). I sprinkled nuts on some (which was optional) and left the others plain. 

Verdict: These got great reviews from EVERYONE :-)  I tried one myself (actually only half, didn't want to ruin my low carb weekend) and took some next door to Cheryl. Her Dad tried one and said it was 'heaven', and her teenage son tried one and gave me two thumbs up. Jason also thought they were delicious. Kristen. . . . well, she doesn't like nuts so didn't care for the scone, but she sure enjoyed cleaning out the icing bowl!!!

So, if you want to impress your guests this weekend, serve them a batch of these scones. If you don't have the cookbook, check out THIS recipe for Vanilla Bean Scones on Ree's website, I'm sure they will be just as delicious. 

Our Weekend

Hi guys, I'm happy to see that most of our friends on the East coast got through Hurricane Irene with not much damage and just a short power outage. Glad everyone is safe.

We had a great weekend (despite the horrible heat of over 110 degrees!!) and I actually took my camera out with me (so I'd have something to blog about this morning) ;-)  First off, let me share something I made on Friday  - for the past couple of weeks I've been watching my carb intake. I've actually been trying to stick to the Atkins diet and limit my carbs to just 20 per day. I was doing ok, but then last week we had book club night and of course I just couldn't not taste all the wonderful food we brought. I had a couple of days eating whatever I wanted and suffered the consequences with a 2 1/2lb gain on the scales by last Monday morning! SO, I jumped right back on low carb again the next day, and I started browsing Pinterest for some recipes - I also made a 'low carb' board :-)  One of the recipes I found was this one,

It looked like a loaded baked potato chowder, but it said low carb so I knew it couldn't be potatoes. It is actually a Creamy Cauliflower soup with Bacon, Cheddar and Chives. If you click the picture above it will take you to the recipe.  So I tried it, and here's mine . . .

It was super thick and super creamy, really rather decadent tasting and I could only have a small cup full. But I really liked it. Jason tried it the next day and even he said it was good (considering it was cauliflower!). I like the 'pretend mashed potatoes' that you make with cauliflower so I knew I'd like this. Even Kristen said it was nice, although she didn't ask for a bowl, just had a spoonful of mine!

On Sunday we went out for brunch. A rare occasion for us, usually I make brunch at home on the weekends with eggs and bacon and homemade waffles. It was rather nice having it all made for me this weekend. We went to IHOP, Kiki's favorite for breakfast cos she loves the smiley face pancakes!

I was being really good and stuck to my low carb, and had the sampler platter . . . 

I asked for some toast instead of the pancakes and allowed myself one slice of wholewheat (to dip in my yummy eggs) :-)  Jason, (who said he's going to start low carb today with me!!!!!) had what I'd call a 'last supper'! Huge glass of orange juice AND his favorite Chicken Fried Steak, along with gravy, eggs, hash browns, and pancakes! What can I say?!!

After we ate, we took a drive through the old neighborhood we used to live in. It's a gated community with beautiful hill country views. (for those of you who don't know, we moved from there about 5 years ago because we thought we were going to move to Denver with Jason's job. We rented for 6mths after we sold our house, then decided we didn't want to leave TX, so we bought the house we are in now, in what I call a 'normal' neighborhood where Kristen can ride her bike and play outside with friends).

Our old 'hood' has had a new section added to it which we really had never seen. There are some gorgeous homes in it, all well over half a million $ - and yes I did manage to snap a picture.

Yesterday I also made a recipe from PW's cookbook. I'm going to share that with you all tomorrow. Did any of you see her new show on Saturday? What did you think? And what did you do this weekend?

It’s starting to pay off. . .

. . . all our hard work in the garden, that is!  We have been enjoying some things from the garden the past week or so and I haven’t even had a chance to blog about it.

I’m gonna make this a super quick post, I just got back from a 25 min walk/jog around the neighborhood – it’s only 9.15am and already I’ve taken over 5000 steps! I should hit 10,000 today :-)

Last night Jason and I went out back as we usually do after dinner, and this is what I picked . . . .

Acorn squash, summer (yellow squash) and a zucchini, 3 peaches and 3 green beans!!! Yes, just 3 green beans, that is so funny I think. Usually we would get a lot more all at once, but this small crop we planted first didn’t do so well in the beginning, and there’s not much on them right now. We have another larger crop we planted a few weeks after that are looking really good, and we have a whole row of ‘pole beans’ that are growing up the netting really fast.

These aren’t the first peaches from the tree, we had some last week

 

We can’t remember what kind of peach this is but it’s definitely different to the other two trees – a much earlier producing one for sure, as the other trees have tiny peaches on, and they’re no where near ripe yet. But these babies were . . . and they were delicious.

I can’t tell you how nice it is to just pick them off the tree and sit on the back porch eating them, they’re so juicy, and still warm from the sun – truly amazing.

Here’s a meal I did last week…. rather eclectic but we wanted to eat what was harvested from the garden – We had soup I made with the chicken from the Farmer’s Market. Our first acorn squash were ready, so I roasted two with a little butter and brown sugar. You can see a small bowl of plums (they have all gone from the tree now – we didn’t get as many as we did last year, and they were smaller, but still so good)

Here’s one just before I picked it off the tree!

There’s also a bowl of salad from our garden. I’ve since cut much more, just look at the bowl fulls I got this week:

The corn is getting high but I don’t see any ‘ears’ yet! Cantaloupes are flowering as are the watermelons. Peppers are starting to grow better too. It’s all looking great.

Linking to:

Outdoor Wednesday

Tuesday Garden Party

Weight Watchers – Cookbook Review

Some time last year, as a way to encourage myself to eat healthy I decided to ‘splurge’ and buy the Weight Watchers At Home Kit. I didn’t want/need to go to meetings and at the time I didn’t want to join the online program either. The At Home Kit was perfect for me. I received lots of motivational books, along with the WW food calculator, cookbook  AND a free subscription to their magazine (which I love).  I stuck with the plan for just a few months though, then kinda fell off the wagon during the Summer and Winter months.

When I decided I needed to get back on track with better eating and exercise I was a little sad to find out that Weight Watchers had revamped their whole program! It was now called Weight Watchers Points Plus. It meant all the material I’d just invested in was rather obsolete, even the calculator wouldn’t calculate the food points correctly (all that had changed too). But still, I was sort of excited too. A new year was approaching and I really wanted to get back to eating healthy (I’d really let me myself over-indulge during Christmas!).  So, this time I DID join on line, and 5 months later I am still following the plan (most of the time) AND still feel motivated because I check in with a group of girls at the forums every day. Accountability is the key.

I bought a new WW calculator but I didn’t buy a new cookbook. I had to recalculate the points of a recipe when I made it using my new calculator. . . . .  that is, until now.

Now I have :

Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook, 4th Edition. And it calculates the PointsPlus for every meal :-) 

The WW New Complete Cookbook has been completely revised and updated to reflect the way Americans are eating today. Packed with 500 delicious and nutritional-conscious recipes, this new edition of the cookbook helps people stay on track and achieve their weight management goals, including information and values for those following the new PointsPlus program.

When I first received the book I spent most of the evening just browsing through it slowly. Turning every page and almost drooling at some of the wonderful photos!

Really? Nachos Grandes!!  That’s what I love about Weight Watchers – NOTHING is off limits :-) The book is filled with great recipes from Breakfasts and Brunches to Slow Cooker Classics and everything in between. My only problem?   . . . deciding what to cook first!

I decided to make this Chicken and Rice dish. It looks so savory, AND I had all the ingredients in.

To be honest looking at the recipe photo, I thought the dish might be rather complicated, but I was happy to see there was only 4 steps to it, and step #1 was preheat the oven to 350!  This was going to be easier than I thought.

I didn’t have ‘chicken parts’ (breast, drumstick and thighs') just skinned chicken thighs, so I used those….. sautéed in a pan til browned (then remove)

then cook bell pepper, celery, garlic and onion for about 5 minutes. I added some small diced patty pan squash that I just picked from the garden too :-)  Next I stirred in a can of tomatoes and some chicken broth, once it was boiling I added rice and oregano (I didn’t have any saffron that it called for).

Transfer everything (including the browned chicken) to a casserole dish and cook covered for about 25 minutes until chicken is cooked, then add some frozen peas and cook covered again for 15 minutes.  I took this picture before I’d added the peas!

   

Just as I expected, this was a really savory tasting dish. I loved the veggies in it and the thighs were really nice and moist. I had more of this the next day for lunch and the flavors were even more intense.

I can’t say enough good things about Weight Watchers, I love that I can eat all of the things I like, nothing is off limits. It’s teaching me to watch my portion sizes and to eat lots more fruit and veg (all free points) :-)  I can’t wait to try more recipes from the book.

 

** I received a review copy of this book from Wiley publishing in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and thoughts are 100% mine **