Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Shells

Source: onceamonthmom.com via Emily on Pinterest

 

Ok, so I took OAMM’s recipe and I changed it a tad bid.  Click above to see her recipe.  I don’t like the flavor of Buffalo, so I did some without Buffalo for me.

• 12 oz. box jumbo shell pasta (I made the entire box, but even after making mine, and several for Tim, I did not use the entire box)
• 1.5 cups marinara sauce
• 0.5 cup + 3 Tablespoons Frank’s buffalo wing sauce
• 12 oz can of chicken breast
• 16 oz. nonfat cottage cheese
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 1-2 cups shredded part-skim Mozzarella cheese
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning

Boil the noodles and get them all ready then, first thing I did was put the cottage cheese in the food processor.  We didn’t want chunky filling, but I wanted to keep with the original recipe, so I made the cottage cheese nice and creamy.  I learned this trick from Katie @ Dashing Dish. 

Put about a half cup of sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 pan.  Then I mixed in the chicken, garlic powder, Italian seasoning and parmesan cheese and stuffed enough shells for me. (I baked these in a different dish, so just covered them with more red sauce and mozzarella cheese)  The rest were to become Buffalo.  I just added the 3 tablespoons of buffalo sauce into the cottage cheese mixture.  I stuffed as many shells as I could with the leftover mixture (about 1-2 tbsps per shell). 

Mix the 0.5 cup of buffalo sauce with the rest of the spaghetti sauce and pour that stuff on top of the buffalo chicken shells and top with mozz cheese and bake @ 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Here are my pictures, good luck telling that there are shells in there, it was all covered with sauce and cheese!  Tim said this stuff was awesome, I hope you enjoy it!

Have a happy Friday and great Labor Day weekend!

MIlestones

Or not.  I’m not sure, but we’ve done some firsts this past week, and I want to document them.

Last Friday night, we took Cooper to his first movie.  Ice Age 4.  It was his treat for being a big boy and #2ing on the potty.  Hooray!  He’s only done this once more since last Wednesday night, accidents otherwise, but we had to treat him for doing his first big boy potty.

I made banana “ice cream.” You know, the frozen banana whip? That’s right, I made it, and it was delicious. I took 3 bananas and broke them up into little pieces, then put them in the freezer, then into the food processor and whipped those suckers until they were a delicious “ice cream.” These deliciousness was supposed to help me not eat ice cream right? Well, Hubby had the great idea of putting that whip ON TOP of our ice cream and boy oh boy did he have a great idea with that. IT was UH-MAZE-ING. I cannot even tell you. I bought lots more very ripe bananas at the store on Sunday, and I have a big bowl of those bad boys in the freezer awaiting another ice cream craving. I think I’ll add some cocoa in with them next time, I’ve heard this is a good way to try them too. And, this time, I’ll eat them by themselves, and not on top of ice cream!

Source: userealbutter.com via Emily on Pinterest

Speaking of ice cream, we took Cooper to get his first ice cream cone last night.  We’ve always made him eat out of a bowl because of the mess, but for some reason, Tim decided he should try it out of a cone.  That’s fine with me.  Tim sat next to him, so I didn’t have the mess to deal with, I only got to spy on this kid and honestly?  He did quite well!  I was surprised. 

Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest.  Why do you suck me in?  I’ve tried a couple three of new recipes from there this week too.  Simple things really, but still new to me.

Source: onceamonthmom.com via Emily on Pinterest

Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Shells – I’m too lazy to dig out the camera to get the pictures right now, but I’ll say, Tim loved this recipe.  I changed it up a bit, so I’ll do a post soon to let you know how I changed it and I’ll make sure to show a picture.

Source: au.lifestyle.yahoo.com via Emily on Pinterest

Peanut Butter/Greek Yogurt Dip – I changed this too, it’s a simple recipe, but I couldn’t remember it off the top of my head, so I winged it.   I really liked this.  Something different and fairly healthy.  I used it for dessert one night and then for a snack with another apple the next day.

• 5 oz vanilla greek yogurt
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon honey
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (recipe called for 1/8 teaspoon, I think)

Here are my pictures, mine doesn’t look as peanut buttery…..

Overnight Oats – (I could have sworn I found this on Pinterest, but I cannot find it now, so the link is there for you) I did the banana peanut butter version of these.  I had all of the ingredients on hand and it was a simple mixture.  But, I don’t think I’ll be making these again.  At least not this version.  It was way too creamy to me.  I think of bananas as a “creamy” fruit and I think this needed a juicy fruit.  So, if I try again, I’ll try a juicer fruit, perhaps strawberries or blueberries.  I will say, it was very filling.


I think that’s all the “firsts” from our house today!  Have a great Thursday!

Running Challenges

The other day, I was was on Pinterest, as I usually am several times throughout the day, and I found this treadmill running challenge.  It was something that I said I would do someday.  Well, that day was sooner than I had expected.  Tim decided to hit the gym early last Friday, and I wanted to go too, since I couldn’t run at home with no one home to watch Cooper while I ran.  So, treadmill here I came.

I did the beginner’s running interval treadmill workout, or I should say, I tried to complete it.  I made a couple of minor changes due to the fact that I am not quite up to this workout even after the couch to 5k and the beginnings of bridge to 10k. 

Here is the original workout:	Here is what I did:
Minutes Speed 1-3 3 3-5 3.5 5-7 5.5 7-8 3.5 8-10 6 10-11 3.5 11-13 6.5 13-14 3.5 14-16 6 16-17 6.5 17-20 3.5	Minutes Speed 1-5 4 5-7 5.5 7-8 3.5 8-10 6 10-11 3.5 11-13 6.5 13-14 3.5 14-15:30 6 15:30-17 4 17-18:30 5.5 18:30-20 4

I got to the last bit of running and I just couldn’t catch my breath, so while I didn’t run as fast as she suggested in her challenge, I did run the same number of minutes.  I was satisfied with that.  And, I’ll tell you, I believe that that was pretty good for a short legged chubby girl.  What say you?

I am not a fan of running on a treadmill, so for those of you who also despise treadmill running, both of the above were a great workout for me, a beginning runner.  There is an intermediate workout as well as a challenge workout.  I’m sure for those more experienced runners these would be awesome!

What is your go to treadmill workout?  What do you do for a workout if you only have 20-30 minutes?  I’ve defaulted to walking/30 day shred/strength training.  I was pretty glad when Pinterest showed me a new way to workout!

Have a great day!

Misc & MP Monday

I’m linking up with Carissa today for Miscellany Monday, and also going to share our Meal Plan for this week as well. 

• I’m lucky my husband is still with us right now.  His car caught on fire at the gas station the other day when he stopped to get gas.  He could have been on the highway and then only God knows what would have happened.  So, I’m blessed beyond measure that he is ok, and that his car was a fairly easy fix.
• Mr. Cooper had a fever this weekend.  It started Saturday night. he was fine all day on Sunday but came back last night.  He seems to be okay this morning, so we’ll just have to see how it goes today.  That was until I took his temperature, and sure enough, we're staying home today, 100.9 degrees! 
• Ryan, Steph and Soup came over on Saturday and had dinner with us, it was so great to see them.  Love those kids!
• I worked in the 3 year old preschool class at church yesterday.  I think I’m signed up to work there weekly for the rest of the school year.  I have many good things to say about those workers, they have patience beyond measure.  I know working with lots of 3 year olds each week will help my patience and I will be praying for it daily.
• We made a “Thanksgiving” dinner yesterday.  We had to defrost our deep freezer, and we had a whole turkey in there, so we went ahead and made it.  We’ll have turkey meals all week.  Yum!
• Big Brother is by far my favorite reality show.  I love the drama.
• We’ve had Direct TV for two months now and I still do not know the channel line up, nor where any of my shows are.  I take that as a good thing – maybe I’m not watching as much TV as I used to?!?
• Are all 3 year olds such a mess?  My Cooper has toys out everywhere all of the time.  I can pick them up multiple times per day and within an hour, he’s got all of them pulled out.  We pick them up and put them away constantly.

Now onto our meal plan for this week.  We are trying to stick to our grocery budget this week since we went way over our budget the last couple of weeks.  Way over by at least $150.  OUCH!  Why is it so easy to spend so much money on groceries?  Anyhow, the reason I tell you this is to express that we’re trying to eat lots of the food we have here instead of splurging as much as we did last week.

• Grilled Salmon with salad, steamed broccoli, and tropical fruit.
• Turkey Pot Pies with salad, baked beans and tropical fruit.
• Ground Turkey Tacos with green beans and tropical fruit.
• Turkey rice casserole with salad, corn and tropical fruit.
• Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Shells with salad and tropical fruit.

Do you see a trend?  We like tropical fruit around here, in a big fat way!  I’m pretty sure we’ll throw in a buffalo chicken/bbq chicken pizza over the next weekend too, I’ve been craving that stuff.
Ok, long enough picture-less post for me, oh wait, I’ll go ahead and add a picture for fun.  This is my little guy on his 2nd birthday.  Cannot believe this he is going to be 3 in just over 1 month.  Craziness.

Happy Monday Y’all!

The Fair

  Well, we made it to the great Indiana State Fair last week; and I knew Coop was going to have a blast.  Thank Heavens for the delightful weather we had that day, it was in the low 80s and not those horrible 100s that we’ve had much of the summer. We went on $2 Tuesday, so I made it my goal to eat as much fair food as possible.  Probably not the best idea when trying to watch my figure, but what the heck, the fair is once a year, huh?  So let’s just start out with the list of what I stuffed my face with:

• $2 corndog
• $2 grilled ear of corn
• Pineapple whip in a cup with yummy pineapple juice
• $2 mini red velvet funnel cake
• Kettle Corn
• Rib Eye sandwich

Oh My, that’s a lot of food.  Now I will say, that comprised both lunch and dinner – so if I put that out there it doesn’t seem sooooooooooo bad does it?  (Ok, yes, it does, I know, I’m sorry) Hubby on the other hand was just about as good as he could be with food, he did not indulge much at all, and I’m so proud of him!  (just wish we could get in sync with our weight loss oals!!) Back to Cooper .  He had so much fun visiting all of the exhibits and animals at the fair.  We had to take the token corny photos:

Then there were the photos with the roosters.  And even a short video clip for you.

He loved those roosters.


Then the calves.

At the end of our trip, Cooper wanted to ride a ride.  He is pretty short, but they would allow him to ride with an adult.  So Tim, the one who is most afraid of roller coasters, went on a baby one with Coop.


I’ve gotta say, it scared them both.  They were glad when it was over.  It was just too big for my little boy and my big boy is just a fan of roller coasters, even the tiny ones.
On the way home, this is what we saw.



He was just pooped.  We had a good day at the fair. 
Do you go to your state fairs?  Are they a big event in your state?

Cake Mix Cookes - 2.5 WW+ Points

Last night, I wanted cookies.  I wanted cookies really bad.  All I knew was that

cookies = bad news. 

But I still wanted them.  You know the feeling?  So I did some “googling” and found a simple recipe for cake mix cookies.  They were using eggs and oil and a cake mix, but I figured, what the heck, how about I try them with Greek yogurt just like the cupcakes?

I pulled out the cake mix, the yogurt, the mini chocolate chips and the mixing bowl.  In no time, I was baking these “cookies.” Here’s the result.

I’ve gotta say, they are pretty good!  They definitely aren’t the buttery goodness of my regular chocolate chip cookies – but they satisfied my desire for cookies in a pinch.  So here’s the recipe.

• 1 cup plain (or vanilla Greek yogurt) with the liquid poured off
• 1 box cake mix
• ½ cup mini chocolate chips

Mix these up and scoop onto a cookie sheet – bake for 7-10 minutes @ 350 degrees. 

This made about 30 cookies using a medium cookie scoop making them 2.5 points plus per cookie. 

If you leave out the chocolate chips that would probably make them around 2 points per cookie. 

I obviously used a chocolate cake mix on these, but I cannot wait to try with a white, butter or yellow mix, maybe they’ll be more like actual chocolate chip cookies? HMMMM……………………….

Enjoy!

What is holding me back?

I have been asking myself that question quite a bit lately.

 

What is holding me back from counting those weight watcher points?  From eating healthy?  From using that measuring cup? 

 

I don’t know what the answer is.  What I know, is that I have been eating fairly healthy, not large portions, but I know that I have still been over-doing it.  For almost 3 months now.  What is wrong with me?!?! 

 

I am not where I want to be on the scale.  I am not where I want to be physically.  So why have I just stopped?  I wish I knew.  Here are things that I do know: 

 

·         I haven’t gained weight;  I’ve been wrestling with the same 2 pounds up and down for the last two months.

·         I am still exercising 5+ days per week even if it’s just a few mile walk

·         I am mindful of breakfasts/lunches/dinners Monday – Friday

·         I am snacking too much after Cooper goes to bed

·         Ice cream is a MAJOR downfall

·         I haven’t been out for a run for 7 days, and I miss it.  (must get shoes very soon)

 

My husband is motivated.  He’s doing awesome right now.  It seems that whenever he’s motivated, I’m not and vice versa.  I just want to jump back aboard the weight watchers train and start counting again, but something is holding me back.  I know I can live within those 30 points that I’m given. 

 

What holds you back?  What is something that gets you back into the mode of watching what’s going in your mouth and making healthful changes? 

 

Do I need to try something other than weight watchers?  It has been so good to me, I really hate to give it up, I feel like it’s a crutch.  Thing is, I’ve been paying for it for 3 months and not using it.

 

Do you have suggestions for me?  Tell me what you do to kick your butt back into gear, I need something!!

 

 

Pictures

I'm going to share a few random pictures with you from the past week. 

Last weekend, Tim and I decided to tackle cleaning out the garage.  It was terribly gross again, and there was no room to walk, so certainly no room for a car.  So, Cooper was out with us a lot.  He decided he'd play in his "toot, toot, chugga, chugga, big red car."  He didn't want to drive it, he only wanted to sit in it.  And of course, he's got his batting gloves on.  Cheesing it up much Coop?

Kampbell (Soup from here out) is one month old!  Isn't she a cutie pie?  I've gotten to see her two times this week!  They've been over to the house the last two nights and I'm going to get to see her again on Saturday, *excited!*  I just love snuggling with her and giving her kisses :)

The little boy doing his studies on the way to the babysitter today.  He loves his "computer" and he calls the dog "Blue" from Blue's Clues even though the dog's name is Scout.  Oh well, we hope this is helping him learn his alphabet, but I doubt it.  

Last Sunday after church we went to Ruby Tuesday to eat lunch.  Cooper loves getting these big ole cups from restaurants.  He thinks he's such a big boy! 

Cooper and Max.  Best friends.  Yesterday was Max's last day at the sitter's house.  Next week he's headed to preschool and they'll be forever separated.  It's going to be tough on both of them, but I know they'll be fine.  Jill and I are going to make sure we get them together at least once a month to keep their friendship alive.  This was a picture I took yesterday at the beginning of their last day together at the sitters.

What fun have you gotten into over the last week?

TGIF and Happy Weekend to you all!

Randoms with Running

I'm a new "runner" and I don't really know that much about the sport as of yet.  I never ran in my previous life.  I remember running in high school, we had to run 20 continuous minutes for physical education class and I remember it being tough.  Now that I've done the couch to 5k program and am working on albeit slowly the bridge to 10k, I feel like I have discovered a few things.

1) The importance of good shoes. This realization has just come to my attention this week actually.  I was running on Sunday morning and my shins were killing me.  Shin splints.  Though I didn't know that that is what it was for a few days.  You see, the last time I had shin splints they were on the front of my legs, and now my legs are killing me on the sides.  Posterior shin splints as the picture notates below.  As I discussed this with the trainer at the gym she told me to use a foam roller to stretch them or to use a tennis ball and roll along the area that is in pain.  She told me this is probably due to my shoes!  She asked when I'd last gotten new shoes (January!) and she told me that with all of the miles I've been putting in, its definitely time for new ones.  I said "ok" and walked out the door determined not to go and spend another $100+ on shoes that day.  I went running that night and now am bound and determined that I do indeed new shoes because even with the stretching, my legs are killing me.  So the shoes are on order.....

{source}

2)  Hydration is important.  I need to figure out how to keep hydrated while running.  What do I need?  Are there belts that can be worn that have containers for water?  Do they make some other kind of hydration packs?  I've been out doing these bridge to 10k trainings and running for over 45 minutes and since I'm a mouth breather while running, I really get thirsty.  Please tell me, how do you keep yourself hydrated?  How do you keep from keeping over from thirst!

{source}

3) Bugs are not my friend. I wish they would all go away while I'm running.  I am sick of them finding warmth inside my mouth and I am sick of choking on them whilst running because I'm already thirsty (as noted above) and could really do without more things making me thirsty!

{source}

4) Running playlist.  I need more songs.  I have several pins that give me lots of ideas, I just really need to go through and scrub these for some upbeat songs.  I've been listening to the same songs since I started doing my daily workouts and they're getting boring  I believe it's time for some new ones.  Any ideas for me?

5)  Motivation. I have become a major motivator to several people in my life in this last year.  I'm proud of that.  But I also want to make sure people know that I'm not perfect, that I have been eating poorly and skipping workouts too often in the past month.  My motivation has been low.  Why?  I have no idea.  But, I really want to get back with it.  Back to the 30 day shred with my co-workers, back to running 3+ days per week, and back to eating healthy.  I tend to do great Monday - Thursday, then am terrible on the weekends.  This too shall pass, right?  Let's hope!

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.  I hope I get motivated to post another

The Wiggles!

We took Cooper to the Wiggles show last night, and oh boy did he have fun!

Had to take a picture of the sign, to remember when and where it was, that wonderful night of Wiggletime! :)

Cooper and me before the start of the show, standing in the way too long line to buy him a tshirt.  We ditched the line quickly and I decided to leave mid show and head down to get one while there was no line.  Much better option!!

Daddy and Cooper waiting for the show to start!

Coopy snacking on his big ol pretzel before the show starts.

I didn't take many pictures during the show because we were in the balcony, but Murray did come up to the balcony and Cooper got to see him up close.  That was so great because Murray is Cooper's favorite Wiggle.

After the show, we took pictures with the Wiggles poster.

  

And you can see, Cooper had to put his Wiggles shirt on right after the show ended.  He knew I had gotten him one, so he begged, we finally gave in.  He wore it again this morning.  Isn't he a cutie pie?  Yeah, the shirt is a size or three too big, but he'll grow into it. 

What a Wednesday night we had!  He asked us "we'll come back tomorrow?"  We had to gently let him down on that one.  It was a great time.  Coop loved it, and that's what we wanted!

Happy Thursday Ladies!