Rainy Days

What's better on a rainy day than toasty bread and warm soup? Last night, after dinner was on it's way to being done, I decided to start a loaf of Jalapeno Cheddar Bread and a batch of Black Bean and Roasted Red Pepper Soup.

I looked back through my posts and couldn't find anyplace that I had given you the link to my very favorite bread recipe. We've made this Jalapeno Cheddar Bread in the bread machine a bunch of times, but this time it was definitely the best. The peppers I added were ones that we had dehydrated a few weeks ago. Some bites of the bread were pretty spicy - and delicious!

Look at the big hunks of pepper!!

When I made the Cuban Chicken the other night, I had prepared an entire pound of black beans. I didn't even use half of the beans, so I needed to find other things to do with it. I used some today for lunch, in my turkey wrap. Some more went into this Black Bean and Roasted Red Pepper Soup. I changed the recipe a little. I only used 1.5 red peppers and used 2 jalapenos instead of the pobalanos, and I roasted them on the grill. I used the vegetable stock to make a totally vegan soup (until I dropped sour cream in my bowl!)

We topped our soup with some sour cream, avacado, and tomatoes.


This was the first time we bought this large avacado. We stopped at Walmart to pick some up and while we were discussing the difference between the large lighter colored avacado and the small tough skinned darker ones, another shopper was nice enough to tell us the difference and which was better to use in certain recipes. Score one for Walmart shoppers - though that won't convince me to start shopping there again!!


Soup in the pan:

Soup in the bowl, with a side of toasty, buttery bread:


So good!! Even though it was rainy out, which would usually be perfect for the spicy, filling food - we decided to cut back on using the air conditioning, so it was a little warmer in the house than I would have liked for this food. It was still delicious, though!!!

Going to do some reading - time to start Harry Potter 3!!

Good night!

Wanted: Inspiration

I've been pretty down on myself lately on my eating healthy habits, which is why I haven't been on here much. We're still doing really well focusing on whole foods, maybe too well. I feel like we've been eating too much REAL butter, REAL sour cream, and other stuff like heavy cream. I'm going to start making it a point to back away from the fatty whole foods for a bit. Some may say maybe we should eat the fat-free sour cream, etc., but I challenge you to find some that isn't full of junk. Seriously. Look at the ingredients in real sour cream and then look at the ingredients in fat-free. My rule for ingredients is the fewer, the better - and I need to know what the words mean, or it's probably nothing I want.

That being said, I'm hoping to have some better posts up here. Tonight we had turkey sausage and apple cole slaw for dinner. No pics because we were rushing to get everything done in time to sit down for House. To replace tonight's pictures, I'll give you a quick run down of the weekend past.


Friday night we went to do some grocery shopping and found these Wheat Thins Flatbread crackers that are all natural!! We topped it with 1/2 a brick of brie while we cooked the rest of our dinner. (see....fatty, fatty cheese....but oh so good!)

Dinner was Portobello Mushroom Caps, stuffed with Scallops and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I just sauteed the scallops, mushroom stems and sun-dried tomatoes in the pan with some garlic.

Then we stuffed the scallops in these caps that had been on the grill, and topped them with a slice of havarti cheese (more fatty fatty cheese).


We decided on Friday to venture into the world of boxed wine. We hadn't bought it yet I guess because we felt there was something redneck about it...but this box was the equivalent of 4 bottles for the price of 1.5!!

Action shot....pouring the first glass. Tasted as good as the bottle - I'm sold!

Dinner with some brussel sprouts.

Chuck was trying to get his own dinner. He sat in this position for at least 20 minutes, which is a long time for a Jack Russel. See the stick bug in the bottom of the picture? That was his focus.

Saturday morning we were up and on the beach by 7:45-8:00. This is a good vision to start your day with!
We were there to do the Browns Backers (spelled wrong on the sign!) beach sweep before heading off to Nathan's KAB (Keep America Beautiful) Kids beach sweep.
KAB had a great turn out!

We found these pretty flowers all the way down the street to the beach. I had to take a picture!

KAB sign...

Sunday was football and bad snacking, but a delicious home made grilled chicken salad for dinner.

I really hope we can get back in a healthier groove, because I've been feeling just all around blah, and I'm sure it's because of the diet!! Wish us luck!!

Good night!!

My how the week flies by!!

I have (thankfully!) been SO busy at work this week, that writing a blog and paying attention to the food we've been eating really has been one of the last things on my mind! I keep thinking to myself "well, this would be a good picture" or "I could write about this" and then don't snap the shot, or make a note, and then it's out of my mind. I'm really glad to be busy at work, but I miss the days where I have at least a few minutes to think about non-work things while sitting at my desk! So, I'll hit the highlights and the things I DID think about!

Monday night we had our first squash of the (almost) fall. We'd had some summer squash here and there, but that's not the same. It doesn't have that cozy feeling that some of the winter squash has. Lucas had never eaten acorn squash before, so I bought some for him to try. Simply cut it in half, place it face down in a dish with a little bit of water and steam in the microwave for 10-15 minutes, until a fork slides in when you poke it. I like mine with lots of melted butter and some brown sugar, and eat it right out of the shell. We had the squash with some boiled red potatoes and bbq (from scratch!) pork chops. Good dinner!


Sugary, buttery yum!


A while back I ordered from free samples via a blog I read: Hangry Pants. She referred me to the site the samples actually came from - here. I got this package of chia seeds and another package of something that I haven't broken into yet...saving that for another post!




Anyway, I dropped some of the chia seeds in my yogurt for breakfast Tuesday. I didn't add much, since I didn't know what to expect, so I'm not sure what effect it had. Guess I'll read up on it a little more, then finish off the pack. If anyone knows the benefits of chia seeds, fill me in!


That leads us to tonight. Our friend Tara came over for dinner, and we decided to try out a new recipe. Cuban Chicken with Black Beans. The only thing I would change in the recipe would be to use boneless, skinless breast. Boneless because I'm not a fan of bone-in chicken, skinless because the skin got kind of soggy after cooking in all the liquid and beans. Other than that, the meal was delicious!! We had to use green pepper rather than red, and we used brown rice. YUM!!


Tara brought dessert. She remembered that Lucas can't eat sugar, and brought him a sugar free chocolate ice cream. He had some of that after dinner with some banana jam and peanut butter. We girls (and Nathan) shared some of this cake. I ate it without reading the ingredients, knowing that it was probably full of things that "aren't allowed". It was really good - light and fluffy and CHOCOLATEY!! Sure enough though, after we ate it, I read the label and it's loaded with high fructose corn syrup, among other things. Oh well! Too late! It was already in my belly!!

So know we're caught up! Final note for tonight...we're watching the finale for America's Got Talent, and the most original perfomers on the show, and the ones who should have one, in my opinion, just got voted off!!! Check them out!! (the performance starts at about 2:14)



Good night!!

A Weekend in Review

This weekend began with us going to the 5th Annual Paws Across the Water Duck Race in North Myrtle Beach. I posted a picture earlier of our office duck. Here it is among some of the other contestants. We didn't win in the end, but isn't he cute??

There were hundreds of ducks dumped into the waterway out of this cement truck. They floated down river until the end of the barricade stopped them, ducks were drawn, and winners were named.




We didn't win, but we had a great day in the sun!!

Next stop - Oktoberfest in Little River. There was a huge beer tent set up with a German band and dancers. There wasn't as great of a selection of beer as last year, and the food prices were a little high for us, but we enjoyed the people watching a bit. My sister and I were trying to figure out the point of the calf warmers on this guy:


Finally it was home for the Ohio State vs. USC game. We made sliders and breaded mushrooms for dinner.

Lucas even tried mustard! He avoids it at any cost usually, but decided he'd give it a shot. Look at the fear in his face:

Fear quickly turned to disgust!

He won't be eating any more mustard for awhile!

We all stood up for a good O-H-I-O cheer before the game started...

Today was the first Browns game, and the first meeting of the North Myrtle Beach Browns Backers at Wild Wing Cafe.

My good friend Tara, a Vikings fan, was brave enough to come out and watch the game with over 50 Browns fans! Her team won, but no one attacked her or anything. Lucas through a few things at her, but nothing solid that hurt her!

Touchdown!

Me and Lucas, right before the raffle drawing:


Lucas and Nathan, enjoying the game together.

After the game it was nap time, and then tuna melts and tomato soup for dinner. The season finale of True Blood is tonight.

Tomorrow I'll be back on track with some food posts! We were running so much this weekend, there wasn't much time for great food! I actually feel pretty yucky from the greasy wings, chips and dips and other football food! For the rest of the season, I'll have to try to steer clear of it all!!

Good night!!

TGIF!

We found some new plates! We've been looking for new plates for 3 reasons. (1) we have plain jane boring plates, none of which match (2) we refinished our kitchen chairs, and wanted something that matched and (3) we wanted to spice up our food pics a little more than our plain white plates. We've been looking for cheap solid color plates, plastic or not, every place we go. We've even made trips to several dollar stores looking for cheap plastic summer plates. No luck at all. Last night we saw an ad for stoneware at Bilo on sale - 4 for $5!!! The colors looked like something we may want, so today we went to check them out. They were just what we needed!! See how they match our chairs?!




After work we headed to the beach for a bit, and took Chuck to run out some of his energy. As I type this, he's starting to crash for the night. He looks like a sleep baby.

Dalton's home from his dad's this weekend, so I wanted to make a dinner he'd eat, and the easiest idea was spaghetti. I'm not a fan, so I sauteed some eggplant (from our garden), green and banana peppers (from our garden) and mushrooms to put on top of the spaghetti sauce. I can't imagine eating the noodles too, because I was stuffed after this plateful!!



We're getting ready to watch a movie and SLEEP. Busy day tomorrow - charity duck race, Oktoberfest (and beer!) and then Ohio State game at night.

Good night!!

Tofu!!

We've been talking about trying tofu ever since our vegetarian week, and finally got up the nerve to buy some this last week. We kept finding other things to eat, but realized last night that today was the expiration date on the package that we bought, so gave in and decided to give it a try. When we first opened it, it didn't look like the most appetizing thing we'd ever eaten.

We drained it and got as much moisture off as we could, and the diced it up, along with some veggies.

After Lucas announced on twitter that this was what was for dinner, we got a reply from Paul, of The Baker's Dog, saying that people tend to cook it in chunks that are too big....so I diced it even smaller, just to be safe!

It looks like a sponge. I really wasn't expecting good things to come from this.

My happy husband cooking up our meal:

After adding veggies and veggie stock: baby bella mushrooms, brussel sprouts, brocolli, red pepper and onion. The recipe I was following didn't make much sense to me. It called for chicken broth. If you eat chicken, why would you be making a tofu stir fry, instead of chicken stir fry? I mean, I eat chicken, but not with tofu...get my point? Anyway, I happened to have a carton of vegetable stock in the fridge, and used that instead.


Next step is more veggie stock, mixed with teriyaki or stir fry sauce and a little corn starch. Look how thick the sauce got - pretty quickly, too!


I borrowed some Bragg's Aminos from the office for Lucas to try. We noticed that some of the soy sauce we had been eating has corn syrup in it, so I keep meaning to buy some of this at Natural Foods. We also realized that there's less sodium in this, while tasting really salty, and that would be better for us, considering we tend to overdo it on the salt sometimes.


The finished product:

This may be the best food picture I've posted on here!


End result of our experiment - it was absolutely delicious!! We'll definitely be making tofu a semi-regular part of our menu!

Off to watch the last 2 minutes of the game!!! Good night!!