Hungry Lady: Eating for Two Edition

Well, I've been doing quite a bit of cooking and trying out new recipes. I'm not sure if I'm trying to compensate for the fact that I didn't get off the couch for my entire first trimester or looking ahead to much of the same for the third, but while I have the energy and appetite, I thought, why not cook?!

You may or may not have seen these before on Pinterest, but thought I'd give you the run-down on two new recipes that are definitely worth trying.

Skinny Spinach Lasagna Rolls
On a scale of Lazy to Julia Child, I award this a solid Betty Crocker. It was delicious, made enough for plenty of leftovers and was relatively easy. It took about 30 minutes of prep and about 30 minutes to bake. Here's the full recipe, but note that I subbed regular lasagna noodles for whole grain and added more spaghetti sauce than it called for because "I like things saucy."

(via)

Crawfish & Rice Casserole
Considering Greg and I both lived in Louisiana for several years of our life, it should come as no surprise that we both love seafood. So, when I stumbled upon this recipe, I knew I had to give it a whirl. My gem of a husband took the lead on this one and honestly, it was kind of a lot of work. We also did 1/2 crawfish (frozen from Kroger) and 1/2 shrimp and opted for instant microwave rice because we're lazy like that. It was delicious. Despite it being a huge pain to cook, we'll definitely be cooking again! (Recipe here!)

(via)

(our photo - it was much more appetizing than it looks!)

Oh, and after only a little over two years, I finally put on my big girl panties and decided to get real place settings for our dinner table. Yay for being an adult!

(Don't mind the Joe's cup...  :-)

Let me know if you give these recipes a try! And follow my appropriately named "Mmmmm" board on Pinterest!

Hungry Lady: Favorite Recipe Ever

This is a new series (what's with everyone creating new blog "series"? And here I am jumping on the bandwagon...) about food/eating/recipes. It's really more a way to categorize what I'm talking about (see tags below) kind of like the Crafty Bitch posts. :-)

Right. So. It's happened a hundred times (maybe not a hundred times, but errrr, yeah maybe a hundred times?) you're hungry, you're pinning. Must I go on? Then, you take it up a notch from passive pinning to active Pinterest-searching, seeking out those beautiful, aspirational food images. (P.S. Am I the only one whose food never looks quite as beautiful as it does on Pinterest?) The next thing you know, you've pinned 20-30 recipes (of things you quite possibly won't ever make) and people are thinking, "Oh man, that's a hungry lady."

So, I feel the need to share with you my favorite recipe I've ever stumbled upon. I used to get these quarterly Kraft Food & Family magazines. They are chock-full of some amazing recipes. I have Pinterest now, so I've let me subscription go, but I still reference them all the time when Pinny just isn't doing it for me.

I've made this recipe at least 10 times and it still does the trick. It's relatively easy, relatively healthy (key word: relatively. As in, relative to a Big Mac Extra Value Meal, it's healthy) and damn good.

Three Cheese Chicken Penne Pasta
1-1/2 cups multi-grain penne pasta, uncooked
1 pkg. (9 oz.) fresh spinach leaves
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
1 tsp. dried basil leaves
1 can (14-1/2 oz.) diced tomatoes, drained
1 jar (14 oz.) spaghetti sauce
2 oz. (1/4 of 8-oz. pkg.) Cream Cheese (1/3 less fat), cubed
1 cup KRAFT 2% Milk Shredded Mozzarella Cheese, divided
2 Tbsp. KRAFT Grated Parmesan Cheese
(Editor's Note: I actually skip the Parmesan cheese and throw in fresh, sliced mushrooms. Yum!)

HEAT oven to 375ºF. COOK pasta in large saucepan as directed on package, omitting salt and adding spinach to the boiling water for the last minute.

MEANWHILE, cook and stir chicken and basil in large nonstick skillet sprayed with cooking spray on medium-high heat 3 min. Stir in tomatoes and spaghetti sauce; bring to boil. Simmer on low heat 3 min. or until chicken is done. Stir in cream cheese. (I use a whisk for this stage)

DRAIN pasta mixture; return to pan. Stir in chicken mixture and 1/2 cup mozzarella; pour into 2-qt. casserole sprayed with cooking spray. BAKE 20 min. or until heated through; top with remaining cheeses. Bake 3 min. or until mozzarella is melted.

I just totally stole this from the Kraft's website, so let me give credit where it's due!

Has anyone else ever tried this gem? If not, I've pinned the recipe here.

If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

Crafty Bitch: Meal Planning

When I think "meal plan," my mind automatically goes to freshman year of college when every meal I ate was purchased from my meal plan. It was like this magic little credit card that bought me any food on campus I could ever hope for. Chick-fil-a in the student union, mixers for that date party in the student convenient store (sorry, Mom!), pizza bagels from the cafe, you name it.

Well, fast-forward to the real life and sadly enough, there is no magic credit card (at least not one that we don't have to pay off every month) that my parents under-write and meal planning means sitting down each week to decide what we're going to eat for dinner and making a grocery list. It's a sexy life, but someone has to put on her sexy sweatpants and go grocery shopping. (Oh don't worry, I plan on upgrading to the Frisco Mom uniform of a Juicy Couture track suit as soon as I have children. I mean, as if you even had to ask.)

So, when I came across these little erasable menu boards on Pinterest, I just had to put the craftiness into action and I actually really use it.

(via)

It took all of about 10 minutes to complete (my kind of craft). I picked up this frame from Ikea for like $7, a cute piece of scrapbook paper, some scrapbook letters and um, voila?

(Of course I had to pay homage to my alma mater with the orange and white paper! Think it looks just great next to my OK State Scentsy.)

And while I'm at it, I thought I'd share a few recipes that we've tried recently that we give two enthusiastic thumbs up.

First up, we tried out these (skinny) chicken rollatinis and thought they were fantastic. You also have to use a meat hammer and I found that to be therapeutic. I also forgot to take a picture until we'd already eaten several. Woops.

(recipe here)

We LOVE seafood so when I stumbled across this spicy cajun chicken pasta recipe, we subbed the chicken with shrimp and it was ah-mazing.

(recipe here)

We've gone on an appetizer kick lately and tried a few items:

(OK, I lost the recipe. But they were delish.)

Jalapeno poppers (though I'd recommend cutting back on the cumin; we're also going to wrap them in bacon next time!)

(recipe here)

OK, so let's get real: my avocado fries didn't look this pretty, they took forever and made my house smell like a KFC for several days, but I have to admit: They. Were. Freaking. Awesome.

Does anyone else obsessively meal plan?

Friendsgiving

If you watch (one of our fave shows on TV) How I Met Your Mother, you'll get the reference. But a friend of ours was inspired by the show's annual "Friendsgiving" party. So, we gathered together with a couple of Greg's friends/old co-workers and made a few new friends.

The week before, emails went back and forth about what everyone would bring. I made a few suggestions to the hubby including some kind of dip, an appetizer, a casserole/side dish or possibly a pie. So Greg signs us up for pie - uh correction: two pies. Apple and pumpkin. I was immediately a little on-edge. I know my way around the kitchen, but I happen to be a terrible baker. I don't even have a pie dish. I am like Betty Crocker's white trash sister in the kitchen. If I could over-bake, under-bake, burn, etc. any sort of sweet treat, I probably will.

So, I perused Pinterest and came across two really great recipes for pumpkin and apple pie.

 (recipe here)

(recipe here)

And I would 100% recommend them both. I generally find a way to ruin things that I bake, but they both turned out really tasty!

Here are a few action shots and then the final product:

Can you tell I'm a little on-edge despite the smile? ;-)

Before the lattice work began

Ready for the Oven...

 

All in all, it was a total success. I had fried turkey for the first time (um, delicious!), amazingly good food (mac n cheese, garlic roasted mash potatoes, turducken and of course pie). Of course I only took one picture, but just to prove that Friendsgiving happened...

Hopefully, many more to come. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Eat Up!

We've fallen into a bit of a rut. At least when it comes to food. I probably have my grocery list memorized. We stick with the usuals - we grill a lot, we do pasta, lots of fish, etc. - and don't experiment much.

So the hubby had the great idea of trying out a new recipe each week. We're shooting for Sunday nights since both of us work full-time and don't have time to cook a full-out meal with lots of ingredients during the week. So, we had our first Recipe Sunday two weeks ago and tested out White Cheese Chicken Enchiladas, as originally found here. (I mean, I obviously found it through Pinterest).

It was DELISH. Totally worth the time and effort.

Last week, we decided to get a little wild. And when I say "get wild," I mean "gain five pounds from one meal." We tried Chicken Fried Steak. (Hey, I NEVER said they were HEALTHY meals!) Here's the recipe we tried and here's how it turned out:

Amazing. Totally recommend. Plus, we still have a handful of wedding gifts that we've never taken out of the box and this little countertop grill was one of them... until now!

Finally, while I'm not much of a baker, I took a stab at these little treats - Oreo Cheesecake Cookies. And apparently my baking curse has been BROKEN! They were super-yummy.

(source)

Now, I promise not to write a blog post every time we try a new recipe - I know none of you care that much (except my Mom. I bet my Mom cares. :-), but I'm always looking for new recipes, ideas, etc. so thought I would share the successes. Though I'm sure there will be failures to come, as well.

Happy Eating!

Pimp My Food

Side Note: I've been a little bit MIA lately. Mostly just enjoying my cold house and spending time with my hubby, who is actually NOT working crazy hours right now.

I've been trying to cook more lately and make sure the hubby and I are eating a little healthier, so when I came across this pin on my other lover, Pinterest, about Super Foods I've been working on integrating these (along with other healthy foods) into our diets more.

So, I thought I'd share a few tips for how we've integrated these not always super-exciting super-food items, into our normal, not fancy, it-better-take-less-than-30-minutes meals.

Spaghetti - first, we've actually made the switch over to whole wheat pasta. Some people don't like the texture, I honestly can't tell a huge difference and neither can the hubby. Second, I throw in a big handful of spinach during the last minute I'm boiling the noodles. Just an extra way to get some greens into an otherwise "non-green" meal. We've also started subbing lean Jennie-O ground turkey instead of ground beef... In spaghetti. We tried turkey burgers and were not impressed, but you can't tell a difference in the spaghetti sauce!

Brown Rice - Everyone knows brown rice is better for you than white rice, but it's a little... meh. So a little trick I learn on the Nate Berky Show that gives it a little something extra. I actually saute onions in extra virgin olive oil (you can add garlic or pretty much any veggies that sautes well) and then throw that into my "Dressed-Up Rice." You don't even need to season it.

Foil Packets - this is one I give the hubby full credit for. We used tilapia but you can use any fish high in Omega-3 fatty acids (like salmon). In a foil packet, throw in a portion of fish, your fave veggies (we used zuchini, red peppers, asparagus and squash), a clove or two of crushed, fresh garlic, 1/2 cup of white wine (now you're talking my language), then throw on the grill for 15 minutes or so. (OK, so I obviously didn't cook this as evidenced by the vague instructions). But you can totally make it your own!

For snacks, I mean aside from the obvious chips and grapes that are ALWAYS on-hand in our home (get it, anyone?), we've now got pistachios and watermelon to snack on. Both GREAT super-foods!

Now as I slowly get off of and back away from my high horse close out this blog post, I must say that in my cabinet, I currently have Reese's Puff cereal (1, it was on sale; 2, it's now made with whole grains) and a container of Oreos. And to top it off, we're having Digiorno pizza tonight for dinner. It's all about variety, right?

Any other good tips for integrating super-foods into yummy meals?