Sweet! Potato Salad

I've been experimenting with vegetables that I get from a local food co-op. It's like Iron Chef every week when we get our basket of fruit and veggies.

I made this sweet potato salad the other night with sugar snap peas, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, celery, green onion, green pepper, fresh basil, fresh thyme, and a dressing of red pepper flakes, OOMayo, brown mustard, olive oil (to loosen it up) salt, pepper, and lime juice. It was AMAZING and so fresh tasting! And by the end I was sooo full. I'm definately less of a meat eater when I have an abundance of vegetables in my fridge.

Cinnamon and Sugar

Last night, spur of the moment, I decided to raid my mothers pantry and make lovely cinnamon sugar breakfast muffins. They are from the pioneer woman blog and she calls them french breakfast puffs. I decided to take the light way out of all the butter and only butter the tops and then dip them in cinnamon and sugar. They are divine and pioneer woman doesn't lie, they freeze and reheat in the microwave beautifully! Sorry no picture, it was late - I guess I'll just have to make them again! :)

We are enjoying the turn in the weather and I am finally starting not to feel like a faker when I put on a maternity sweater :). As long as it is pretty fitted - there just isn't much showing yet and I know that later I'll be grateful for that. I have felt this baby jamming since thirteen weeks every now and then and now at 16 weeks I'm finally consistently feeling movement during each day and it makes it all more exciting and real.

Any guesses on what the gender will be? We won't know for a while, but we sure are excited to find out!

A Basket of Biscuits

I got it into my head today that I wanted to make biscuits. When ascribing to a weight watchers lifestyle they do not seem to be the most intelligent choice in food. But I was looking up a recipe for low point Chicken Fricassee, my mom recommended it to utilize the diced tomatoes that I have. When I looked it up online I found that it went well with biscuits and I was improvising anyway because I could not find a recipe that utilized tomatoes, only onions and peppers. So I made the following recipes:



Low Point Chicken Fricassee: 7 servings for 4.5 to 5 pts per servings



Chicken Breasts (boneless skinless) 16 oz. (16 pts)

Fiber One All Bran Cereal (1 cup processed to fine texture) (7 pts)

1/2 C egg beaters (2 pts)

3 Cans Diced Tomatoes (4 pts)

Seasoned Pepper

Red Pepper Flakes

2 cloves garlic

Salt

1 tsp olive oil (1 pt)



Coat chicken in egg beaters and then bran cereal mixed with spices.

Place Ooil in skillet and saute garlic til golden brown. Add coated chicken pieces and let grill for 6 minutes on each side. Move Chicken to separate pan that is oven safe and bake at 350 for 15 minutes (or until cooked through). Add diced tomatoes to pan with garlic and add more of same spices to tomatoes. Let tomatoes cook down to a stew like consistency.

Low Point Biscuits: Makes 16 to 17 biscuits at almost 2 pts each

1 C Whole Wheat Flour

1 C White Flour

3 T Shortening

3/4 C FF Milk

1.5 t baking powder

.5 t baking soda



Bake at 500 for 9 minutes, cool on wire rack.


They were great! We ate it for 3 days, so obviously I need to learn to cook smaller portions!

Holiday Cheer

In the rush that is Christmas preparations I took some time to bake. Yes many would not call this a break, but I do, especially when my life has been hectic and busy while knitting for gifts, making mistakes on knitted gifts, reknitting gifts, making ornaments, making deliveries and keeping the house clean for guests of all kinds. Add in to this equation some nice driveway shoveling and salting and basically freezing to the bone and you've got about the stress level I've been experiencing lately.

A bright spot in my last few weeks was when I stepped on the scale at my weekly WW meeting and I had lost 2 lbs! That was nice and completely due to the 5 points per day that I dropped because of how much solid food Little is eating, therefor decreasing my nursing calorie expenditure. I am only 3 lbs from pre-pregnancy weight and that is just the best feeling.

I am now getting ready for the final rush to wrap all the gifts that I have purchased and finish all the lofty projects I have started. And I just got the best present of all - My sister who lives upstairs just got a snowblower! No more shoveling for me! It has been a good workout, but my back muscles will thank me later.

And after this holiday rush I will take the time to put together a yearly greeting and send it out, whether it be via email or the snail variety. I say yearly greeting because I hesitate to say holiday because it may not be around the holidays that it arrives. But I look forward to making this card and adding some nice photos to my collection of family pictures.

Turkey Day Recap

I remember in the not so distant past, telling you about my history making skills with spicy stuffing on Thanksgiving. This year my beautiful and talented mother stole the honors when she was lovingly spicing the stuffing and accidentally launched the entire bottle of pepper into the bowl! We then proceeded to sift the stuffing to get all the pepper out of it and only leave what remained stuck to the bread. It was an experience full of roaring laughter and lots of sneezes!

We hosted our Turkey Day event at a hotel that over half of our family has worked for in the past. We rented a conference room adjoining a suite and had a grand time playing games and being overly boisterous and excited on the whole. I love my loud, crazy, fun family!

After we helped clean up, it was on to some later-evening festivities at the Husbands family home. Every year that we are present they have thier own version of a Turkey Bowl. Since the Husband and family are not the most athletically inclined their Turkey Bowl involves setting up different plays on this electric football game that the Husband and I purchased for my Father-in-Law as a Christmas gift a few years ago. It is HILARIOUS to watch them get so excited!

After some pumpkin pie and not too many of my flex points (15 is not bad for such a gluttonous holiday) we headed home and got some rest before protesting Black Friday by not shopping AT ALL! Instead we spent the time with family decorating for the holidays and enjoying each others company.

Inspiring Thanksgiving

I decided to put together an idea board of inspiration for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Yes, there are lots of food items, but isn't that what Turkey Day is about? All of these things make me feel like autumn and the beginning of the holiday season. What do you think? Also, to all those who were sad when Victoria Magazine ended a few years ago - They're back! See the links below.

Credits: Votives: Pottery Barn, Cinnamon Decor: Hostess w/the mostess , Poached Pear: Victoria Magazine, Pear Gallette: Victoria Magazine, Eggnog Cheesecake: Victoria Magazine, Pumpkin Centerpiece: TheKnot.com, Fritatta: DominoMag, Fruit Centerpiece: TheKnot.com, Bark Rim Salad Bowls: Pottery Barn, Burlap Favor Bags: TheKnot.com, Buffet Setting: TheKnot.com.

Pucker up Butter Cup...

I have been yearning (yes, yearning) to try canning something and my sister has been doing so and making me completely jealous of her perfect jams and nectars that she has produced. So I tried my hand at making Pumpkin Butter with a recipe I found online. It turned out well, but the spices need adjustment. I have come to the realization that I do not like ginger very much. I had true gingerale the other day and did not like it one bit and that helped me to realize that it was an overpowering taste in my pumpkin butter. I am going to toy with it this week while the husband is gone for work. I am making it from fresh pumpkins, mother hen style, baking, peeling, seasoning, pureeing and eating!

Hungry for Hungry Girl?

UPDATE:

I have yet to get my hands on this cookbook, it is not at my local walmart and my wallet cannot handle anything but walmart... so the quest is still in progress...more later!There is a website I came across today that I have absolutely fallen in love with. It is Hungry-Girl.com a website with food tips and tricks and lots of low point recommendations.

I am headed off to the store to buy her cookbook today and will sit down and write a review of it as soon as I have tried it out. Lisa - The Hungry Girl - is a fun-loving food loving woman who is just trying to keep off that excess flab that accumulates when you enjoy food as much as most of us do.

I would love to work with someone like her, doing what she does. I subscribed to her emails and can't wait to read her witty and fun writings.

I'll update this with a review of the cookbook soon!

Smiles...

Baby Mama