Holiday Re-cap and Birthday Party

After a very successful and busy Christmas, I am happy to say the holidays are almost over. I had a wonderful time seeing my family and friends, however, it was really tiring. It was one busy day after another. So now after baby boy's first birthday yesterday and my last Christmas party tonight I will have a few days of relaxation before heading off to the dells! Exciting! 

Anyways. For the birthday party yesterday, I used some ideas I found on Pinterest. Obviously! 

The food: Salsa Chicken. Let me start by saying: I LOVE CROCKPOT COOKING. It is just so easy. And there are so many options. This was probably my 4th time making this recipe and it is really good. The original pin brought me here to Texas Fit Chicks blog. If you are too lazy to go to the link, the recipe is:
1 cup frozen corn
2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 can rinsed black beans
1.5 cups of chunky salsa. 
(I didn't actually measure any of this. And I tripled the recipe. Roughly 7 chicken breasts, 3 cans of corn and beans, and two jars of salsa (one large & one small). It fed 12 people with enough left over for another meal for a family of 5! We made the burrito with it.)
It is super easy and super good. I like to let the chicken cook almost the whole time and then make pulled chicken. I used the entire mixture of beans, corn, chicken and salsa and put it in a tortilla with taco/burrito fixings. It was a hit. It is going in my recipe book for sure. Next time I make it I will have to take a picture!

Apple slices. Also a HUGE hit. I cut up 4 apples and they were all gone in about 20 minutes.    The original link brought me here. All you do is cut up an apple or two really thin slices and soak the slices in a bowl. In the bowl you squeeze the juice of one orange and one lemon (more if needed). Enough so that all the slices are covered. Put the bowl in the fridge for 30 minutes-2 hours. SO GOOD.

The biggest thing that happened yesterday, was my little man turning 1. ONE!?!? How did that happen? Of course I had to take a few pictures ( by a few I mean like 175??) I got the idea for the pictures I took here. I loved the idea of 3 different pictures but that go together and have a message. Here are a few of the pictures I took. 

I think I got a few pretty good shots of him. I will have to get a few printed before his party to put out. Maybe even a few wallets or sizes for people to take at the party next weekend. Thank goodness I still have some time to decide which ones I want to use. But I think these turned out pretty well. I'm still a rookie photographer but I love capturing the moments. 

I recently decided I was going to put scrapbooking on hold, since I have no time and limited funds, but I wanted to have a way to display my photos from the last year besides the 10 picture frames. So I decided to make a family yearbook. I saw a deal on amazon for photo books at Photobin.com. So i started one. I am currently 100 pages in and am only at July in my pictures. Theres more work to be done. But I am excited to get it printed! :) I will post pictures of that when it's done! 

Time to get ready for the last Christmas Party of the year! Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season. My new years resolution will have to be blogging more! 

Until next time,
-Amanda :) 

Waffle sandwiches

As we have all been told, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day". I never was huge on breakfast, except the weekends of course, when there were pancakes, bacon and eggs, fried potatoes...cereal and milk just didn't compare. So I just didn't really eat it. Which of course meant I was starving by lunchtime and ate way more than necessary. I think the end of high school and beginning of college I began to realize just how important breakfast was. Now I eat it everyday. It really does make a huge difference in my energy levels and productiveness throughout the entire day.

Coming up with a variety of quick (and delicious) breakfasts has been an issue for me, I'm trying hard to eat healthy and lose all the baby weight. I have a lot of smoothies for breakfast, but I can only drink smoothies so many days in a row. I will get waffles to eat without syrup if I am running late, but the whole grain ones are so plain without syrup.

So I began to try different things on my waffles: cream cheeses, peanut butter, chocolate, nutella, fruit, etc. Whatever I believe will add flavor.

Well here's a winner: Peanut buter & Nutella with banana slices. YUM

I do thin layers of the Nutella and peanut butter or it is too much!

I'm not going to go and say this is low-cal or anything, because both peanut butter and nutella are high in calorie and fat, but it is quick and easy! 

2 Eggo-Whole Grain frozen waffles: 280 calories

1 tbsp Skippy Natural Peanut butter: 95 calories (I'm not sure I even use that much!)

1 tbsp Nutella: 100 calories (again probly 3/4 of tbsp or less)

1/3 banana: roughly 40 calories (less because I used 7 little slices!) 

There are so many ways to make this more healthy, but Breakfast is important! I figure I usually burn off all of breakfast playing with Colton all day :) These calories will help you jumpstart your entire day and get your metabolism going, might as well give it something to work off! 

Other ideas for waffle sandwiches:

blueberry waffles with plain low-fat cream cheese

whole grain waffles with plain low-fat cream cheese and sliced strawberries

whole grain waffles with peanut butter and honey

I will update as I come up with more ideas and try them out :) 

Happy wednesday everyone! Don't forget to eat your breakfast! 

-A

Grown-up Chips and Cheese

Lookie here, I'm getting in one more post today! Probably the last for the week or two, thats how it goes with children. They take away your time on the internet. Could be worse right?

So my dinner plans got cancelled and I haven't gone to the grocery store yet. I always put off shopping with him because...well, shopping with a 9 month old sucks. So I have basically nothing to eat. No bread, very little amount a veggies, one egg. Hard to make something delicious. But I was wrong.

My dad sent me back to school with salsa yesterday. I LOVE homemade salsa. LOVE. I thought about doing chips and cheese, but I saw very little nutritional value in that even with the salsa. Chips and cheese used to be my go to snack. I mean come on. Its EASY. Throw a few chips on a plate, sprinkle on some cheese. Microwave for 60 seconds. Eat. Yum.

Well I realllllyyyy wanted to use this salsa and I didn't know what else to make so I grabbed the chips and went in the fridge to get the cheese, and there was some corn and black beans. Cue light bulb.

I grabbed cheese, corn, black beans, zucchini, onion, jalepeno, and tomato. All things I love that I just happened to have a little bit of sitting as leftovers in the fridge. Don't you love when things just come together like this??

I laid my chips on the plate, spooned on the corn and black beans, sprinkled on the cheese, cut up the onion, zucchini, and jalepeno, added that, and sprinkled with a little more cheese. I threw it in the microwave for a minute at a time. Each time on power three. I do this so I don't burn the cheese and have the rest cold. I think it ended up being around 3 minutes on power 3.

I then put the tomatos on top. Serve with salsa and light sour cream. It was great! And actually had some nutritional value! Score!

I just tried to add the picture I took, but my phone says that media can't be displayed. Just that picture? Right. Well I guess I will just have to make it again. Oh well :) I'll post it next time I make it!


But here are some other ideas of what you could put in this:
-avocado
-green peppers
-chicken
-ground beef
-brown rice
-green chiles
-cilantro
-lettuce

I think you get the idea! You really can use whatever you can find in your fridge!

Tilapia Ficcata and Zucchini Boats

As much as I hate cooking for one, I am trying to eat better and not eat frozen packaged meals all the time. So, alone, I am working on trying recipes that I have pinned. I meant to post this about 2 weeks ago, but I tried these two new recipes.

The first one I made was the Zucchini Boats. You can find the original recipe here.

(Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees). First crush up a clove of garlic and mix it in with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Take whole zucchinis and cut them in half. Then, slice the bottom so its level and it doesn't roll around in the pan. Scoop out  all the seeds from each zucchini. Brush the olive oil mixture on the zucchini boats.

The recipe suggested using grape tomatos. I don't believe that the kind you use actually matters, I think she suggested it because of the size. I used the tomatos from my dad's garden (aka the best tomatos ever!), and arranged slices along the boat. If you have bread crumbs, I did not at the time, sprinkle them on now. Stick in the oven for about 30 minutes.

After the 30 minutes, take them out and place your cheese, I used mozzarella, in between each tomato slice. Place back in the oven and broil until the cheese is bubbling and golden brown.

I used the toaster oven and it turned out great! I enjoyed my zucchini boats with garlic butter rice. Not the healthiest choice but it was delicious!

The next recipe I tried was Tilapia Ficcata, this is another one I found on pinterest. The original recipe from Proud Italian Cook, can be found here.  

I have always been a fan of fish, mostly in the fried form during a camping trip, but I will eat it whenever. I have only made it myself a few times, but when I found this recipe I knew I had to try. Fish is very good for you and low in calories and fat (I am still trying to lose the baby weight!).

Here are the directions from Proud Italian Cook:

"In a saute pan heat some butter and olive oil. Dredge your fish in some flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Nicely brown both sides of your fish, I prefer tilapia in this, I think it holds up really well and I like the "non fishy" taste.

Gently remove your fish, deglaze your pan with some white wine scraping up the brown bits. Squeeze a half of a juicy lemon in, more if you like, a nice splash of chicken stock, a couple tablespoons of capers, and a little more butter. After it reduces a while, put your fish back in along with some sliced lemons and fresh parsley. Cook a couple minutes more just till the fish is done, and the all the flavors blend together." 

I did not have capers. It is just not something I have in my kitchen. I don't mind them and I am sure they work well with this recipe, but I did not add them or the parsley in. But this was seriously SO FRICKIN' GOOD! I loved it. I am a huge fan of lemon so this was perfect! I highly recommend trying this sometime. 

Once again I had rice in my meal, this time adding the green beans! It was so good! I need to make it again!

So that is a few of the meals I found on pinterest that I have tried and enjoyed. Hopefully I will be able to try a few more in the next couple of weeks and let you know how they go!