Randomness

Cooper made this at his preschool for me for Mother's Day. I am blessed. I didn't include this in my weekend post because I didn't see this until Monday..... I cried when opening it. I am complete mush these days.

Have you tried these??? They are awesome! A great way to change up how you make chicken, pork, or fish. We've only tried a few of them and only with chicken, but we've liked them all, and this one is our favorite so far.

We do a picture of each person on their birthday with their birthday dessert of choice, and it has to say their age. We mostly use candles, but I got creative with Ryan's peanut butter pie this year. We are only going to have one slot left very soon..... Sooner or later I'll have to add another frame. I just updated this with this year's spring birthdays, Ryan, Tim and Andrew. Next up is Katy, then Soup, then the rest of us in the fall. Do you do anything like this in your family? This frame hangs in our kitchen. I love seeing these photos every day.

I saw this idea somewhere, probably Pinterest, but I like it. I hope I can remember it for Katy's first birthday party. A pennant banner with each monthly photo. So neat!

It's getting closer.......

Have a great Thursday Ladies!

Rain is a good thing.

Maybe I should blog.  That’s the thought that goes through my head at various times throughout the day.  I just feel like with all of the madness that is my life these days, I have nothing to blog about. 

When in reality, I should probably be writing this stuff down to keep in my memory book for the future.

Back to the subject.  Rain is indeed a good thing for me these days.  If you’ve gotten as much rain around your parts as we’ve had in Indianapolis, you’ve had quite a lot.  So far, this is our third most rainiest April ever.   We’re only 0.4 of an inch of rain away from being the second wettest April, and I have no doubt that in the next week, we’ll get at least that much. 

For me, rain is a GREAT thing – especially on days like yesterday.  The rain meant that Tim’s baseball game was canceled.  Which meant that he could join us for some after work/school fun at McDonalds before going to Cooper’s first preschool play!  We live too far away from his school to make it worth driving home then coming all the way back by 6:30, so my plan was to take him to a fairly close McDonalds that had a play place inside, let him down a cheeseburger and then play until it was time to head back to his school.  Thankfully Tim was there to help wrangle him in after the chaos that was the McDonalds play place! 

Here’s a picture of them playing foosball – Cooper actually did pretty decent!

I plan to do an entire post with some pictures and videos of his play, so I won’t talk much more about it here, but it was great, he did so much better than I expected. 

Other happenings over the last week/weekend – Steph and I did some freezer cooking last Saturday (another post to come on that), Cooper has been to swimming lessons and goes back tonight, and Tim and Cooper had lots of outdoor playtime last Sunday after church and naps (and Tim’s double header).  It has been a busy week so far!  We’ve got stuff to do nearly every night until next Thursday, so I’ll be happy for a much needed break by then!

It’s been raining here since yesterday afternoon, and we’re finally getting a short break in it right now.  I’m hoping against hope that the fields are too wet for a baseball game to happen tonight.  I would really love for Tim to go to swimming lessons with us and then I need his help around the house, we’re having carpets cleaned tomorrow!!!

Are your lives crazy too?  Do you have something going on every single night?!?!  Happy Wednesday all!

The Grind

Today, I'm linking up with my good friend Holly for "A Day in the Life" - I'll tell you all how boring my life truly is on a daily basis!!  Aren't you excited?  I know I am! LOL.

Ok, One thing to note, my schedule varies a bit, and I'll notate the changes with this lovely blue. The changes in the schedule are because some days I actually haul myself out of bed in the morning and go for a run.  The timing for running mornings will be in blue.

6:00-7:30 (5:45-8:00) - Alarm goes off, (get dressed, go run), get in shower,  (the next several things are excluded on running days) blow dry hair, dress, fold clothes, get other laundry ready for washer, pick up bedroom, wake Cooper, take him potty, get him dressed and ready (teeth brushed, hair combed, etc) - Go downstairs and make Cooper breakfast, get lunches started --- Enter Tim who helps finish lunches and getting Cooper's eye drop in his eye - we then head out the door, finally!

7:30 - 8:15 (8:00 - 8:45) Drive to work (hubby and I work at same place so carpool most days), drop Cooper off at babysitter (which includes forcing him to go potty before we leave), head into work

8:15 - 12:00 (8:45 - 4:30) Work (meetings, spreadsheets, more spreadsheets, etc)

12:00 - 12:45 or 1:00 - lunch (On running days, I eat lunch at my desk while I work, on non-running days, I still usually eat lunch at my desk while browsing blogs, people.com, or I sometimes run errands)

12:45 - 4:30 - Work (more meetings, more spreadsheets and whatever else)

4:30 - 5:30 - Leave work, Pick Cooper up and drive home

5:30 - 6:30 - Dinner (prep, cooking, eating and clean-up) One of us will cook and one of us plays with Cooper.  Depending on the meal these responsiblities are switched, and cleanup is mostly for the person who didn't cook, but not aways.

6:30 - 7:30 or 8:00 - Playtime with Cooper - mostly baseball, but sometimes riding bikes, taking a walk, trampoline time, basketball, playing in a band, blocks, cars, really whatever he wants to play at the moment.

7:30 - 8:00 (OR 8:00 - 8:30 depending on how tired Cooper is) - bedtime prep, potty, teeth brush, bathtime, reading books, singing songs, prayers

8:00 or 8:30 - 10:00 Free time???  Sometimes.... Usually not.  We pick up the house, Cooper's toys, clean up anything from the kitchen necessary, etc.  Then - I will TRY to get a snack and catch up on some DVR'd shows and read some blogs, maybe do a bit of blogging myself.  I like to do my posts the night before, but that doesn't always happen (like today!)

10:00 - bedtime for me - I will usually read some sort of book or USA Today on my iPad until I fall asleep

So - like I said.  Pretty boring - but that is our general routine.  Time goes so fast and it seems like we don't have as much with Cooper as we'd like, so we *try* to spend every moment (at least one of us) playing with him in the evenings.  This doesn't always happen, like last night, I had to get some cleaning done while Tim was mowing the grass.  But after that, Cooper and I had some great trampoline time and snuggled while reading books. 

One more thing I forgot - I should have thrown in about 5-6 instances of full on RUSHING Cooper to the potty each and every night as well as at least one in the morning.  That kid is crazy and thinks he has to pee all of the time. Laundry is never done at my house, toys are everywhere all of the time, and our rooms are never clean, no matter how much I want them to be.  We try, we really do.  Life just gets in the way.  And.... I would rather my house be a mess and me spend quality time with those who matter rather than spending that time cleaning. 

I hope you'll take a few moments and link up with Holly - she's great!  Have a FAB day!

   

Freezer Cooking

This past Sunday, my friend Shannon and I got together to do some freezer cooking.  We’d been planning this for over a month and were super excited to do it!  I packed up my entire house three huge bags of food, pots, pans and measuring cups and lugged it to Shannon’s.  Three and a half hours later, I had this:

That’s 12, count them TWELVE meals!  I cannot explain how excited this makes me. 

• 2 – 9x13 pans full of lasagna roll-ups
• 1 – 9x13 pan of Chicken Black Bean Green Enchilada Rice Bake
• 1 – 9x13 pan of Chicken Enchilada Stuffed Peppers
• 1 gallon ziplock bag of spaghetti sauce
• 1 – gallon ziplock bag with mini meatloaves
• 1 – gallon ziplock bag with red wine herbed dump chicken
• 1 – gallon ziplock bag with lemon garlic dump chicken
• 1 – gallon ziplock bag of taco meat
• 2 – broccoli beef pies
• 1 – gallon ziplock bag of ready made chicken nuggets (not shown)

I think that these 3.5 hours of work on a Sunday saved me at least 10 hours of cooking in the future.  I’m not really sure how some women do freezer cooking for an entire month at a time, but it felt really good to get 12 meals in the freezer and ready for consumption.  I think I’ll get a few more in there in another couple of weeks including:

Chicken Stroganoff
Baked Spaghetti or Baked Ziti
Spaghetti Pie
Pancakes/French Toast Sticks
Breakfast Sandwiches
Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Shells
Taco Soup

In the meantime, give it a try, get a friend and spend a few hours to save you lots more!

Happy Hump Day!

Recipes via Pinterest

Folks.  Have you tried many Pinterest Recipes?  Well I have – most recently in the past week I’ve tried several.  Five to be exact.  Wanna know how many I’ll be making again?  Any guesses?  Well, here is the list and links to the recipes:

• Crock Pot Beer Chicken
• Cream Cheese Crock Pot Chicken
• Crock Pot Potato Soup
• Chicken Teriyaki Noodle Bowl
• Cheese Bread

Now, what’s your guess?
TWO.  Yup, that’s right, only two.  We really had a crappy week for new recipes last week.  I was super excited to try all of these, I was excited about crock pot recipes.  I was excited for new recipes in general.  BUT, only two made the passing grade.  Which two you ask?
Crock Pot Potato Soup & Chicken Teriyaki Noodle Bowl
The hubby ate ALL of the soup.  He was in love at first bite :)  I didn’t even get to eat a bowl.  That’s my own fault though, because I put too many onions in it and it was a bit too overwhelming to me.  I cannot wait to make it again and not add as many onions.
The Chicken Teriyaki Noodle Bowls were amazing.  I had never made my own teriyaki sauce and now I don’t think I’ll ever buy it again.  This recipe was seriously good.  We made it with pork cutlets instead of chicken because we had had chicken so much last week that pork sounded better to us. 
I’ve concluded that you never know about a recipe until you try it.  And I am glad that I tried these recipes even if they didn’t turn out like I had hoped.  I also learned that even if you like all of the ingredients to a recipe separately, that doesn’t meant that you’ll like them together.  Weird, right?  I thought so.  So the next time you want to try tons of new yummy recipes in one week.  Be prepared, they may all crash and burn.  Let’s just say I am thankful for a husband, stepson and toddler who don’t mind when I go crazy some weeks and make all new food!
And just because I cannot resist, here’s a picture of my boy the day we were taking Kampbell’s pictures.  He just had to be like his niece.  Ha!

He’s a terrorist, but he’s a cute terrorist, right?

Happy Tuesday!

Weekend Wrap-Up

What a weekend!!

It was a busy but super fun weekend for us, and I’m dreading the day back at work, but know it will be fine!  This past weekend was a big baseball tournament in Indy, so Tim was super busy umpiring Thursday evening through Saturday.  He had 8 games between 3pm Thursday through 3pm Saturday!!  So, that meant a lot of QT for Cooper and me!  What do we do with that time?  Hang out, do chores, play lots of baseball and some soccer and visit daddy’s games!

Friday night, Cooper and I went grocery shopping and then we came home and played with sidewalk chalk, played some soccer and lots of baseball.  My pictures reflect the soccer part of our evening because we have soooo many pictures of Cooper playing baseball, to have him interested in another sport makes me happy, so I had to take lots of pictures.

On Saturday morning Tim had to be at the baseball fields by 7:15, so we were up super early, I was hoping to go back to sleep for a bit once Tim left, at 6:40, but Cooper had other plans.  He was bright eyed and bushy tailed before Tim left.  So… got up and made breakfast and clowned around quite before I decided we’d go and watch daddy’s game.  We hopped in the car and got there just in time to see about 15 minutes of the first game and then we talked to him for awhile before we headed out.  It was super warm on Saturday, so Tim was pretty hot in his umpiring gear.  He decided he had to cool off by soaking himself in a cold wet towel.  Pretty comical sight, one that I just have to share with you.

He looks like a puffed up old lady with a scarf around his head, lol.  That’s what a ton of umpiring gear and a nice cold towel over your head will do to ya! :)

Moving on.  Saturday afternoon we were having a family dinner with my Dad, Gwen, Steph, Ryan, and Andrew, Tim, Cooper and me.  I made a great roast recipe, I found it on pinterest (of course!) and it turned out wonderful.  Then for dessert, we had fruit pizza.  It was delicious, take a peek.

Oh my were they good!  I haven’t made this recipe for over 5 years, but it was worth it, and everyone seemed to like it.  We only ate the circular one though, because it was so much.  I had no idea we would be so full after lunch.  Oh well, that just left quite a bit for Sunday!

Here are some pictures of Cooper with Dad and Gwen, Cooper was being kind of a big stinker, but we’ll forgive him.

I cannot believe I didn’t get any pictures of Kampbell or the rest of the crew, time was just so busy that I didn’t make time for it.  That bothers me, but I know I’ll get some pictures next time.

On Sunday, we were terrible and skipped church, took Cooper to a little league baseball tournament to watch more baseball, had an early lunch and then came home for naps and a lazy day.  It was so nice not to be jam packed with stuff to do.  We did have visitors, Erica and Mel came over and ate some fruit pizza and shared with me some of their powdered peanut butter.  They had just bought it, it was super yummy.  Here’s a link for you if you want to try some of your own, I know I’ll be buying it soon!

After Cooper’s nap time, Tim’s buddy Jon came over, and Andrew and I worked on some of his homework for his summer class.  I didn’t do any cooking, any laundry or any major work today.  I haven’t had a day like that in so long, it was fantastic!

Monday’s meal plan will most likely be posted later on in the week because I’m too tired of typing right now to write it up!  Here’s to a great week! Happy Monday to you!

Meal Plan Monday

Well, I’m on vacation this week, but I wanted to share the meal plan that we had last week (the one where I was too busy to share this with you). 

• Grilled Chicken, boxed mac and cheese and green beans. 
• Dashing Dish Lasagna Roll-ups –
• Dashing Dish Honey Parmesan Chicken Poppers
• Dashing Dish Italian Stuffed Peppers
• Spaghetti
• Individual Chicken Pot Pies

We did pretty well with this meal plan, we did 5 of 6 of these and so that is a major score to me.  I loved the Italian stuffed peppers.  Definitely one of my favorites.  I added some low fat cream cheese into along with some crushed red pepper into my sauce and it was delicious! (the rest of the fam had meat sauce)
I think that’s about it, hope you have a great week!!

Meal Plan Monday

So I’ve been slacking, right??  The main reason is this:  Tim is umpiring 6 days a week.  Last week he did 9 games in those 6 days.  It makes life busy even if I’m not the one doing the umpiring.  I have the 6 days/week single parenting thing just about down pat, yet, it leaves me with about zero time to get anything else done except play with Cooper.  Which is A-OK with me, this blog is just going to have to suffer a bit.  Everyone out there in blogland will just have to understand, ok?  Good.

Now, I’ve got my meal plans for three weeks back,  and last week we didn’t even do a meal plan (I can only remember a few meals from plan on the week of 4/30), and I’ve got a few things ready for this week so here goes:

4/23 Week’s meal plan:

·         Picky Palate’s Chicken and Black Bean Green Enchilada Rice Bake – We were supposed to have had this the previous week, but here was attempt 2, and it was successful.

• Mama Laughlin’s Skinny Doritos Taco Bake – yummo! – Again, we were supposed to have had this the previous week and it was a fail, so I tried again, and success.
• Spaghetti – we ended up skipping it.
• Grilled pork chops/broccoli/couscous – skipped it.
• Stir Fry – Success
• Tuna Salad Sandwiches – skipped.

So, you’ll notice – we did 3 out of 6 on the meal plan – a whopping 50%. 

So, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be that successful the following week, but I did create a plan, I just don’t remember it all.  For the week of 4/30 I remember these:

·         Tuna Salad Sandwiches - skipped

·         Tacos - skipped

·         Grilled Chicken Salads - success

·         Penne Rosa with Shrimp - success - and this was pretty good - I would make it more spicy next time, but Tim looooved it, made with chicken instead of shrimp, everything else, followed to the T.

·         Breakfast – ½ success

So….another 50% on that meal plan which is way the week of 5/7 – I didn’t plan… Not a single meal was cooked in my house last week (weekdays).  I did manage to cook the PW’s Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork again over the weekend and it was delicious.

Biggest reason I didn’t make a meal plan last week?  I’d make those meals in my meal plan (ok, realistically, only 50% of those meals), but I’d make them, and Tim wouldn’t want a full meal when he got home.  Cooper barely touches anything that’s not a banana covered with peanut butter.  Andrew wasn’t home from college yet, so that left me, cooking a meal after Cooper would get to bed, (around 8), and having to put most of it in the fridge and then in the trash when no one ate the leftovers.  What a waste of my time cooking, cleaning and our money on the groceries that got thrown away.  So…. I just decided to quit for a week and see how it went.

This week week of 5/14 – I haven’t done any grocery shopping yet (going after work today) – but I plan do cook a few things this week, but certainly not a meal every night.  Here’s why.  I am tired of cereal.  I like a hot meal at night.  I don’t want to eat noodles 3 nights again.  (noodles are easy to make, therefore they are what I went to when I needed hot food)

Meal plan ideas for 5/14:

·         Stir fry – because everyone in my house will eat it and if not, its healthy enough for me to bring leftovers for lunch.

·         Dashing Dish Lasagna Roll-ups – because they are delicious and I can eat them day after day if needed to prevent from going in the trash

·         Dashing Dish Honey Parmesan Chicken Poppers – because they sound good and I want to try something new with chicken.

That’s it.  That’s all I’ve got for you.  I hope you’re weekly meal plans are going better than mine.  I’m afraid that this will be our routine all summer.  Tim umpiring, no cooking, lots of fun otherwise!!!  I don’t think it’s too terrible!!!

Have a great week, I seriously hope to get those baby shower pictures up this week!!!



Meal Plan Monday

Wow, what a weekend!  I’ll wrap that up tomorrow, but for now, I want to give you our meal plan for the week.  I am wrapping up last week’s first.  I said I was going to take a break from wrapping up prior weeks plans, but here’s the thing.  They keep me accountable.  When I didn’t recap last week, I went on to be terrible on eating our scheduled meals last week…… Here in lies the start to a vicious cycle, so I won’t be repeating those mistakes again….. I hope.
Last week 4/9 – 4/13:

• Sloppy Joe’s - Tim got the wrong meat out for Wednesday, so they had hot dogs instead
• Hamburgers & Chips - They didn’t have this either, they swapped spaghetti for it on Thursday night.
• Stir Fry – we had this Monday night, it was delicious.
• Spaghetti – They had this Thursday night while I was gone.
• Tacos – We didn’t have this either.

So, We’ve got Tuesday and Friday nights that we were bad.  And by bad, I mean BAD.  Tuesday we had Qdoba.  What can I say, we had a coupon for a $5 chicken entrée and I couldn’t pass it up!  Friday – We ate out again…. Only this time, it was Culver’s fish sandwiches and fries.  Oh my was it good and oh so worth all of the points!!!
This weekend I made the Pioneer Woman’s Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork, and it was AMAZING! It took 6 hours, but after it was over, we had 6 lbs of delicious pulled pork.  LOVE.  Sunday’s lunch was that pulled pork with the entire family and we had baked potatoes and green beans as sides, yummo!
Ok, onto this week’s meal plan.  4/16 – 4/20…

• Kevin & Amanda’s Cheeseburger Macaroni – now, I’m making some big changes with this, so I hope they work.  I haven’t made this since starting weight watchers, but we really miss it, and I’m going to have a go at it.  I’ll use 99/1 lean ground turkey instead of ground beef, instead of butter, I’ll use the go to: ICBINB Light.  I’ll use skim milk, and 1 cup of light cheddar cheese.

• Grilled Chicken, Couscous and green beans.  We use Marakesh Express Couscous, it asks you to add oil, but we don’t, and it doesn’t taste any different.  So the point value isn’t too bad for a carb side.
• Picky Palate’s Chicken and Black Bean Green Enchilada Rice Bake – I’ll do the same with replacing the cheese with lowfat cheese, other than that, same recipe.
• Mama Laughlin’s Skinny Doritos Taco Bake – yummo!
• Spaghetti
• Breakfast Foods (eggs, turkey bacon, toast)

I have high hopes for this this week.  We shall see!  Enjoy your week!

Weekend Things

I wanted to write a post about this weekend, because this weekend was awesome.  I’m going to wrap up via pictures!!

Friday night, we dyed Easter eggs.  With Kool-aid.  I posted about it, and we did it.  Check those babies out.  Didn’t they turn out great?  So vibrant and pretty.  The best part, no stink, only fruity smells!  Picture round up, Steph and Ryan, Andrew, Cooper saying “tada!” Tim with his egg, our eggs, and me with mine. 


On Saturday, we went down to southern Indiana to visit the family for Layne’s birthday celebration.  Layne finally got his big blue truck..  He had been asking for this truck for a loooong time and when he finally got it, he was so excited.  Since we weren’t going to be down for Easter, my mom also hid some eggs for the kids to hunt together.

Top left.  Layne in his big blue Ford Raptor truck for the first time.    Middle, Little sweet Layne letting his cousin drive his car.  Top right & bottom left, Cooper hunting for the Easter eggs.  He had a great time gathering up almost 75 eggs.  Bottom right, Larissa driving the boys around in the truck.  These kids had an awesome time draining the battery on that truck.  So fun.

Sunday was great also.  Easter service at church is one of my favorites.  Then we had breakfast and got ready for Tim’s birthday celebration and Easter celebration.  Baking, cooking and just putting the last minute touches on everything is always a good time, ha.  When the guests arrived, we ate all of our goodies, had cake and ice cream and sang to the birthday boy then headed outside to enjoy the beautiful weather.  After visiting Layne for his birthday on Saturday, Cooper decided he was ready to drive his Mustang that we got him for Christmas.

Top left, the kids helping Cooper open his Easter gift, they were supposed to open theirs too, but Cooper often requires more attention….. Middle, Cooper driving his car, having fun. Top right, Steph and Ryan.  Middle left – if you click on the picture, you’ll notice there were about 10 of us in a big circle in our cul-de-sac making sure Cooper was safe in his car.  Middle, Tim with his cake.  Bottom left Steph and Andrew.  Bottom right is our latest family photo.  I think it turned out pretty great. 
That’s a wrap.  Have a great Tuesday!

PW Day! & Weigh In Results & My Cooper James

Hey People!  Today is the day, I'm going to *try* to meet the Pioneer Woman and get my cookbooks signed!!!  Yippie!

Ree, now isn't she pretty?  How in the world does she stay so thin with her awesome recipes???

Weigh in results..... I lost 2.4 lbs this week!  I am 34% toward my weight loss goal!  I don't know why, but I like to calculate that each week.  It is encouaging to know that I'm 34% of the way there, but that I've still got a long road ahead.  I know that with time and effort, I can make it to 100% :)

Now, onto my favorite subject in the entire world.  My kid, my sweet little boy, My Cooper.  I've been really bad about sharing pictures of him lately, or even telling stories about our family.  I hope to do a family recap soon, but until then I'm going to give you a Cooper recap via some photos from my iPhone.  Why do I have a DSLR when most of the time the phone is what I use for my camera?  ARGH!  Oh well, here we go.

This is my big boy trying on Andrew's hat.  Cooper loves hats.  I need to find a baseball cap in his size and get it ordered.  Doesn't he just look so cute?

 He just loves to drive with Mommy or Daddy, so on this night, Daddy let him "drive" to park the cars after Cooper had finished playing in the driveway.

 Since the weather has been so wonderful, we've been spending a LOT of time outside lately.  On this particular night, we got the sidewalk chalk out and he scribbled, but I wanted to get his picture with his name.  We had to make happy faces inside each letter because that is what Nana does with Cooper. 

This was last Friday night. We went to play putt putt with our friends Erica and Mel for Erica's birthday.  Cooper had a great time.  He did just about everything that you can do with a putter that was not golf related. It was a bat and a stick and whatever else you can imagine, but he never quite got t hang of hitting the golf balls.  We all had a great time.

These two pictures were taken at an outlet mall that sits halfway between our house in Indianapolis and my Mom's house in Southern Indiana.  We don't often stop, but this Mama needed a few new shirts, so Cooper and I made a short stop in Eddie Bauer and then he saw the firetruck.  Cooper loves to sit on these rides, but insert that quarter and he gets scared to death.  So, I let him sit, for nearly 10 minutes while he played with Snoopy and drove that truck.  I love this kid.

Like I said, he looooooooooves sitting atop these rides, but we don't dare insert the change to make them start running.  This time it was when we were grocery shopping this week at Meijer.  He was so excited to ride the horsey! :)

Last, but not least, my little guy enjoying a treat last night while we shopped at Target.  I cannot tell you how much easier a lemonade and a bag of popcorn can make a shopping trip!  It's amazing!  For $1.99, it's worth every penny plus more. 

I think that's a wrap from me, hope you enjoyed the random reading, have a wonderful Thursday! :)

Meal Plan Monday

So, I’ve decided I’m going to *try* to share our weekly meal plans with you all each week.  I’ll also try to make sure I have a recipe for you so that you are able to take these plans an incorporate into your meal plans if you want.  Since this is my first post, I’ll need some feed back – please give me good and bad.  I appreciate all suggestions!!

First thing to note.  I come up with 5-6 meals for our plan (this week I have 7), and I DO NOT choose what day we’re having what (except when I’m going to be gone, then hubby has Manwich, more on that later).  We tend to change our minds from one day to the next, so I just plan one night ahead. 

Second, I said I plan one night ahead, because, I try very hard to make the next night’s meal the night before, once Cooper is in bed.  This way when we get home, I can spend as much time with my munchkin as possible.

Third, we have found that planning is key for us to keep in check with out weight watcher’s points calculating.  Each day we know how many points we’re having for dinner, so that makes it easy to plan breakfast, lunch and snacks.  This planning also helps us when grocery shopping, we know exactly what to buy since we know what we’ll be eating.  Grocery shopping is so smooth these days.  I don’t mind going at all.  Ok, on with the plan…..

Here ya go!

• Chicken and Spinach Pasta Bake (I used light cream cheese and cooked the onions with the chicken with some pam so no oil, 56 weight watcher points in the entire recipe, we get about 8 servings)
• Tacos (ground turkey with taco seasoning, high fiber tortillas, light sour cream, low fat cheese, tomatoes, salsa, each taco has about 4 WW pts with 2 oz meat, 1 tbs sour cream and 1/2 oz cheese)
• Rosamarina Chicken (Chicken in the Wok) or here I provide weight watchers points on both links
• 2x4 (weight watchers points included on link)
• Stir Fry (we add about a pound of diced chicken to 1/2 of the bag and use 1 sauce packet)
• Grilled chicken with sautéed broccoli and mac and cheese (I season chicken with Weber Grill seasonings, sauté broccoli with light butter, beau monde seasoning and minced garlic, and I’ll substitute low fat cheese and skim milk in the linked mac and cheese recipe.  I will calc points for mac and cheese and let you know how it turns out when I make it, this is a new recipe for me.
• Sloppy Joes (Manwich, high fiber low fat hamburger buns and 1 lb ground turkey), and whatever else hubby wants to make.  This is for Tuesday night because I don’t like Manwich and I am going to visit a friend that night)

Well, there ya go,  this is our meal plan this week.  What do you think?  We usually eat pretty decent, we like a lot of casserole/combination type meals, and we often have left overs for weekend meals/lunches.  You’ll probably find more soups, pasta bakes and other combination meals here than usual places.

Let me know if you found something you like!  Share some good recipes with me!!  I love trying new things, just remember, hubby and I are on weight watchers, so we’ll skinny down everything as much as we can!

Have a great Monday!!!

 

Skinny "Big Macs"

As you've probably read, my husband and I are doing Weight Watchers.  Because we are doing Weight Watchers, we are making it our goal to stay away from McDonalds.  Hubby even has a bet with Andrew that he'll stay away the whole year.  If he accomplishes this, he gets $20 from Andrew.  This is not a lot of money, but hopefully it'll be enough to steer clear of that place for 2012 and beyond.

Anyway, hubby has a love for the Big Mac from McDonalds.  He will even sing the song for you if you ask politely.  So, since I was doing the meal plan for this week, I decided that there had to be a way that we could make these for hubby without him having to lose his bet.  So the adventure began.

I started off by taking 1 lb of 97% lean ground turkey and dividing it up into 8 2 ounce patties.  (I figured that was about the size of a Big Mac patty  but actually I think these were a bit bigger.)  We cooked them and added our cheese, in the meantime, hubby was browning some onions, there are a few in the burger picture if you look closely.

Next was creating all of the layers.  We had a pack of 8 buns, so we used 4 entire buns and the bottoms from the other 4 for the middle layer.  Here are the buns with the onions.

 Nex the first burger with cheese.  (We used one american cheese slice per big mac, cut in half for each burger)

 

Added some shredded lettuce and some thousand island dressing (just a squirt cause this was the full fat kind)

 Layer two, bottom bun of extra 4 buns, then burger #2, more lettuce, pickle and thousand island.

The final product.  I must say, for being homemade, we did a bang up job.  Hubby loved them and said this is a do again.  Each "Big Mac" had 10 weight watchers points each.  Compared to the real thing, this is a "points plus bargain"  Real Big Macs have 19 points!

  

 Here was our meal, homemade big macs with homemade french fries.  I made a new french fry recipe, got it from weight watchers, but we didn't really care for them much, so I won't be sharing that recipe as we decided to not make them again.

 What foods have you tried to make "skinny"???

A Recipe: Spaghetti Pie

This week, my hubby asked me if we could have spaghetti pie for dinner one night.  In nearly 4 years, I cannot recall ever hearing this from him.  I’d never heard of it otherwise either.  So, we looked it up, and all of the ingredients sounded good, so we made it and ate it, and IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!  I decided right then and there, this would be inserted into our regular meal rotation.

Here’s the recipe for ya, via Better Homes & Gardens (I got it from the cookbook but it’s online here with a slight variation, the fennel was left out from online recipe)  I forgot to take pictures of ours, so here is one I borrowed, see the source for another variation of the recipe.

Spaghetti Pie

Source

Here’s the recipe for ya, via Better Homes & Gardens (I got it from the cookbook but it’s online here with a slight variation, the fennel was left out from online recipe)

Ingredients

• 4 ounces dried spaghetti
• 1 tablespoon butter or margarine (I’m pretty sure this could be eliminated)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 8 ounces ground beef or bulk Italian sausage
• 1/2 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
• 1/2 cup chopped green sweet pepper
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed fennel seed
• 1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed

• Nonstick cooking spray

• 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese, drained
• 1/2 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese (I’d say we used a bit more than this, maybe 3/4 cup)

Directions

1. Cook spaghetti according to package directions. Drain.

2. Return spaghetti to warm saucepan. Stir butter into hot pasta until melted. Stir in egg and Parmesan cheese; set aside.

3. Meanwhile, in a medium skillet cook ground beef, onion, sweet pepper, fennel, and garlic until meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain. Stir in tomato sauce and oregano; heat through.

4. Coat a 9-inch pie plate with nonstick cooking spray. Press spaghetti mixture onto bottom and up sides of pie plate, forming a crust. Spread cottage cheese on the top and up the sides of pasta crust. Spread meat mixture over cottage cheese. Sprinkle with shredded mozzarella cheese.

5. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until bubbly and heated through. To serve, cut into wedges.

This recipe is pretty low in fat and high in protein.  Give it a try, it’s delicious!  Everyone loved it, we had just enough left over to take for lunch the next day.  Yummy.