Eat This, Not That!

I’m sure you’ve all seen the books like this. . .

a guide to eating healthier, by making smarter food choices! This is my take on ‘Eat This, Not That – the pizza version :-)

Friday is often ‘pizza night’ here, well it used to be for Jason and Kristen, I was always watching what I ate and didn’t even want a slice of Dominos or Digorno, or whatever it was they were having. But of course sometimes I did, and I always felt like I was eating something really greasy and very unhealthy! Last week I bought some ready made pizza crusts so Kristen could make her own pizza, I got them from Target, one pack was whole wheat, the other was a cheesy one, she really liked making her own. This past week I went one step further and bought frozen whole wheat pizza dough from Whole Foods Market. Once it was defrosted in the fridge we could roll it out and top it with whatever we liked. . . .

   

Kristen’s (and Daddy’s) was topped with Italian sausage, turkey pepperoni shredded and fresh mozzarella.

Mine was much more colorful (imo), I topped it with shredded mozzarella (just a small amount) then added red onion, yellow bell pepper, fresh mozzarella and a little basil from my herb garden :-) Next time I would add fresh mushrooms too, but I had none in at the time.

oh, and I drizzled it with some really nice olive oil I just bought.

I didn’t take a cooked picture of mine, but I have to tell you it was absolutely delicious, even Jason liked my veggie one. I can see this becoming a Friday night staple here. Next I want to make my own dough(preferably whole wheat)  so I can calculate how many ww points is in the whole thing, toppings included.

So, right now, I’m choosing to eat this. . .

not that . . . .

Last weekend!

Goodness, this week got away with me (as most of them seem to do), I agree with Darylynn - “what happened, where did it go"?” And if I think back I can’t really say there was much I did other than the usual housework, laundry, running to the store, taking Kiki to piano lesson and a trip to Whole Foods with my friend Cindy yesterday!

With all that said, I must get on and start my day, make the beds, load the dishwasher etc, so I will leave you with some photos from last weekend, when we celebrated mom-in-law’s birthday:

I made a wonderful carrot cake, (I’ll have to share the recipe another time) with cream cheese frosting. Honestly, this is so good I could eat all of these pieces!

Kristen doesn’t like carrot cake so I helped her make cupcakes, and showed her how my Mam used to decorate them with me. We called them butterfly cakes :-) Simply cut a little circle out of the top of the cake, put in some frosting, cut the little circle piece of cake you have in half , then add them back to the top of the cake (with the straight cut sides facing out) so it looks like butterfly wings. I added antenna with bits of orange peel – sprinkle with icing sugar. Look at that crazy Kiki, she can’t wait to eat this!!!

The table was set for a simple pasta lunch. Penne pasta with a choice of marina sauce w/ground turkey and turkey Italian sausage in it, or creamy alfredo with onions, peas, bacon and mushrooms in it. Side salad and fresh baked bread. Simple but satisfying (sorry I didn’t get pics).

Flowers and pressies await!

And Kristen makes Boo look all pretty for Grandma arriving!

Birthday kisses from Boo (notice he has his little blue shirt on too!)

Recognize the green top I’m wearing? It looked like this the last time you saw it!!

Yep, I finished my pretty Garden Spring Tee… I’ll share more photos next time. Have a great weekend!

You Can Laugh At My Wellies!

Go ahead, laugh :-) Jason does every time I wear them! He wonders why I put such big (welly) boots on to go out in the garden, and I tell him “because if I wear my flip flops the fire ants will get me!”.

We’ve been busy in the garden all weekend, planting seeds, and yesterday I had my inlaws over to celebrate mom-in-laws birthday (which is actually tomorrow). I’ll post more about that later. I’ve been to the ENT this morning for a check up and to pick up my allergy drops. I just got back and need to catch up on laundry and cleaning up the kitchen (what’s new?!) so here’s a few pictures, and hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow.

Last week Kristen and I started painting some garden signs. They came out pretty good. I need to do more for things like corn, potatoes, onions and peas. . .

Jason - planting some potatoes!

Linking to Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.

Cooking with Kiki!

Kristen recently asked if she could cook with me in the kitchen – not ‘BAKE’ (as in the usual cupcakes or cookies thing) but ‘COOK’! Of course it’s something I would get around to showing her one day, I mean I don’t want my daughter going off to college and not be able to even boil an egg! But it was nice that the request came from her. I was the one that mentioned it shouldn’t be just cookies and cakes, and that she should learn some basic skills (scrambling an egg came to mind first) which she was fine with.

So, last weekend we decided to make ‘French Toast’.

So, step by step I tell her what to do. Here she is beating the egg in the dish – full of concentration :-)

She dipped the bread in the egg and sprinkled on cinnamon, then placed it in the pan.

Once both slices were cooked she wanted them cut in to strips, I guess so they resembled this . . . !!

And of course, being the sugar fiend that she is, she didn’t want just maple syrup drizzled on there with a little powdered sugar!

She wanted the powdered sugar mixed with water to make a frosting to drizzle on there + maple syrup + more powdered sugar!

I was the one that threw the raspberries on there to make it look healthy, ha ha :-) (which, I might add she didn’t eat!)

On a serious note, I’d much prefer she ate this wholewheat bread dipped in egg, drizzled with frosting, than the frozen ‘stuff’ we’ve had in the past. I don’t even want to think what ingredients are in those! We’ve had the Aunt Jemima toast sticks before (or Kristen has, I won’t eat it!) and it doesn’t even look like bread inside :(

And what’s worse is, they looked so ‘yucky’ I didn’t even want to try them, but I was happy enough to feed it to my child! That has to stop, but more of this kind of cooking is a go!

After we made our first French Toast Kristen announced later in the day that she wanted to surprise Daddy with breakfast in bed the next morning, and make the French Toast again. We nearly succeeded! Jason woke up on Sunday morning and came downstairs before we cooked it. But Kristen still made it again and we all enjoyed it together :-)

We’ve made scrambled egg since then, and chicken nuggets, but I didn’t get pictures. Next time we do them I’ll take pics and blog about it again. Perhaps I’ll make a new series ‘Cookin with Kiki’ :-)

What about you, do you cook with your kids? If they’re older can you remember what the first thing you taught them was?

Have you seen the site Spatulatta.com? If you have kids that want to get in the kitchen with you check it out. It’s kids showing kids how to cook… lots of videos of recipes on there.

C’est Fini!

The yard work is finished!!! :-) Hard to believe we went from this. . .

to this. . . . in less than a week!

Cheryl and I ended up not doing the craft fair after all (she hadn’t heard from the organizers, so she’s either going to get a refund or do the fair in May) so I got to play in the garden all weekend with Jason. As you can see we wasted no time in getting the plants in that we had bought . . .

Lots of pepper plants! Don’t ask me why but Jason wanted a huge variety – we have jalapeno, cayenne, habenaro, banana pepper, golden bell peppers, red bell peppers, and I’m sure a few others too. He bought about 12 total at Lowes this weekend. I bought two more tomato plants, one makes a very good tomato paste apparently!

So here’s me posing at the first bed we planted. The top (where I’m standing has peppers and tomato plants in it. And at the bottom where the grid is we’ve put herbs in and planted some seeds for green beans, beets and zucchini. (I’ve added more herbs since we took this photo)

Of course, now I have to ‘pretty’ things up out there too, so to start I made a new sign . . . .

I want to make similar signs for the veggies like I did the first year we did the garden. They looked like this . . .

Cute huh? I need to buy better wood though, these didn’t last long in the wind and rain.

So, here’s to a great gardening year (raising a glass) for us all :-) I’ll be sure to keep you all posted on the progress in ours.

Linking to Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage.

I did it!

I’ve managed to get Kristen’s piano recital on YouTube, hopefully you can click on the picture and it will play!

 

Taking it to the next level!

As many of you know I’ve been trying to eat a lot healthier since Christmas. I’d gained a few pounds after last summer and kept on gaining as we went through Thanksgiving and the holidays. I let myself indulge in way too much candy, chocolate, chips, big meals etc, and I paid the price! I couldn’t get my jeans fastened and resorted to elastic waist pants all through the winter!

I’m happy to say since December I have dropped 10lbs :-) My jeans fit again and I’m still on track with healthy eating. BUT, I could do better! Despite the fact that I eat a lot of veggies and fruit I still find myself buying a lot of processed foods, quick frozen meals, tinned soups etc. and I want to change that.

Although my breakfast could be something healthy like this . . .

low fat whole grain waffle, Better ‘n’ Butter pb (85% less fat than regular pb), one egg and 1 eggwhite scrambled, and some fresh strawberries and grapes,

my lunch could be something ‘not so healthy’ (imo) like this. . . .

OK, so it says ‘lean’ on the packet and I know there’s only 7 ww pts in this meal, but is it really healthy? What is actually in it? Yes, it’s low in fat, only has 270 calories in it, but it has 750mg of sodium!!

Considering the recommended amount of sodium per day is between 1500mg and 2300mg, that is a LOT! To be honest I’ve never really checked labels for sodium, but it’s about time I did! Even soups I buy contain a lot – and why do I buy them when I can just as easily make my own? I love homemade soups and I want to start making an effort to prepare a lot more of our meals from scratch, rather than opening a tin or popping a frozen meal in the microwave!

Jason and I were talking this week also about the ‘meats’ we eat. He had watched a show on tv this week, I think it was called FoodInc. I haven’t seen it yet, but seriously when I think about what I eat, I am realizing that a lot of it is still total ‘junk food’! And not only that but I’m feeding it to my child as well! I really want to try and eat better… ‘cleaner’! Clean Eating is a great example of how to do this. I have the books, I’ve bought the magazines, but I’ve not been eating this way. It’s time to start, make a better effort.

Our veggie gardens will soon be finished, we are excited to try and grow our own produce again. I want to create my own ‘freezer meals’ so I know exactly what ingredients are in them. I want to make my own soups, dips, hummus etc. I want to . . . and I will :-)

Sorry if this got a bit long winded, but I’m sharing my heart today, and this is heavily laying on it. It’s never too late to start, as they say, and I’m sure along the way I’ll stumble, but the best thing I can do is try.

Now with all that said, let me quickly share with you what I made yesterday. . . my friend Cindy and I found a great bargain in Target after we’d had coffee together – All Natural whole chickens, ($3 off) for just $1.99 each! We each bought 4 of them!!!

I’ve shared this recipe before I think, a simple roast chicken with rosemary and lemon, and that’s all I did yesterday. I bought a big bag of lemons at Target, came home and cut some rosemary from the garden, stuffed the chicken with both and drizzled olive oil on top. Roasted it for 1 1/2 hours (it was a 3.5lb bird) and voila!

There is no need for me to buy a rotisserie chicken again, when I can make my own like this (especially at such a great price)!

And finally, this was our driveway yesterday!

The yard work is just about complete, crushed granite paths are in, we will be waiting for new soil and mulch to be delivered today or this weekend.

I’ll have finished photos to share on Monday (hopefully!).

Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading this unexpected long post!