Trying to pump up the health

Since I got pregnant, I’ve really slacked off on eating healthy all the time.  Or even most of the time.  Combine that with a serious lack of exercise lately, and I’ve gotten sadly out of shape.  I haven’t really put on a lot of weight, but I’m not happy with how I look.

That means it’s time to start upping the ante.  I’m working in more fruits and vegetables into the diet.  I’ve cut down on the snacking.  I’ve been getting up to go walking/running almost every day for just over a week (I took a day off at the end of the week last week and again this morning).  I started a beginner 5k training program yesterday that I’m alternating with ab workouts, so I did the ab workout tonight.

As a result, I’m on the lookout for healthy recipes.  I should really hit up Pinterest for some variety since that’s where I seem to find all my recipes these days.

Tasty Lunch Reviews

I’ve been gone for work a few days this week, and I have to say that I have had some seriously fantastic lunches while on the road.  Like, possibly the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten in my entire life good.

Where did I eat, you ask?  Two tiny sandwich shops near the office I was working in: Alley Cat Cafe and Nonnie’s Kitchen.

At Alley Cat Cafe, I tried their special of the day, a turkey sandwich with apple, brie, chutney, and spinach, toasted on a panini press.  Pair that with a bowl of chicken tortilla soup, and there was one very happy Southern Sugar at the lunch table that day.  As a bonus, the ladies who run the cafe are absolutely lovely.

The day before, at Nonnie’s Kitchen, it was turkey, Gruyere, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and this incredible cranberry mustard.  I would love to know how they made that, because it was an excellent, slightly sweet complement to the bite of the cheese and the saltiness of the bacon.  Oh, and did I mention the fried biscuit with apple butter and the potato salad?  Oh my gosh, it was amazing!

I wish I had pictures of the restaurants and the food.  Especially the food.  Because I honestly haven’t had anything that delicious and charming in entirely too long.

Orange Cranberry Cream Cheese Spread

The holidays are a never-ending source of culinary exasperation and inspiration.  Exasperation as you try vainly to make forty bajillion recipes for holiday parties and holiday dinners.  Inspiration from the recipes everyone else is pinning and new delights at old favorites.

In this case, the inspiration came from a visit to one of my favorite breakfast spots: Panera.  I’m a total sucker for a whole grain bagel, sliced, toasted, and served with a fruity cream cheese.  So when I went in one workday morning just before Christmas and discovered that they had a new orange cranberry cream cheese, I had to try it.

It became my favorite thing, just in time for them to take it off the menu in favor of wild blueberry cream cheese post the holidays.  Which left me scrambling wildly to find a substitute I could make myself.

The texture of this is just a little bit off — it’s more liquidy than the Panera version — but the taste is so good that I have a hard time caring.  You can pop it on a bagel or serve it as a dip with graham cracker sticks or nilla wafers.  I even bet it would make a killer breakfast grilled cheese sandwich, although I haven’t tried that yet.  And it’s not difficult or expensive to make.

Orange Cranberry Cream Cheese (modified from Mississippi Kitchen‘s Cranberry-Orange Butter recipe)

Ingredients

8 oz cream cheese
1/3 c whole berry cranberry sauce
2 Tbsp orange marmalade

Bring your cream cheese to room temperature.  Mix it on medium-high for five minutes in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer until it gets a nice, whipped texture.  Then add in the cranberry sauce and marmalade and beat to combine.

Bam!  You’re ready to rock and roll with a bagel or whatever floats your boat.

Giving Nail Polish Jewelry a Shot

I kept seeing these pins on Pinterest proclaiming the easy awesomeness of nail polish jewelry, but I didn’t need any pretty, shiny things, so I passed them on by.  Then I realized that, okay, I don’t need pretty, shiny things, but dangit did I want some!

Nina Ultra Pro holographic gold topcoat backed by Butter London Queen Vic

Sally Girl white glitter backed by China Glaze For Audrey

So last week I got online and checked out what Sun and Moon had to offer, ordered myself up some glass domes and settings, and sat back to wait.  This morning, what was waiting for me in my mailbox?  Why, a lovely priority mail package with all my settings and domes, of course!

 

 

 

When I got home from taking the Munchkin to spend the night with my mom (we have to make a seriously lengthy road trip for a friend’s baby shower tomorrow), I set to work.  This is really an incredibly easy process, once you get past deciding what polishes you want to use with what settings.  That part took me a while, especially since I had to round up all my errant nail polishes hanging out around the house.

China Glaze Riveting backed by Ulta Red Carpet Red

China Glaze Water You Waiting For backed by China Glaze Hanging in the Balance

Anyway, here’s how you do it:

Turn your glass pieces over so that they’re facing backside (the side you would fasten into the setting) up.

Apply one to two coats of glitter polish to get a good covering.  I needed two coats with all of them to keep them from being terribly spotty.  Let these dry completely.  Well, let me rephrase this a bit.  You don’t need a glitter polish; I just chose them to give my pieces a little bit more depth and interest.  You could just as easily use a single polish that has the amount of dimension you like, in which case you could skip the next step.

Now apply a coat of whatever solid color polish you’ve chosen to use with your glitter.  This is really just to give a solid background to your pieces or add a little color contrast or depth.  Let this dry completely.

Use resin or glue (I used superglue because we have 475,631 tubes of it between here and the shop) to fasten your domes into the settings.  Let dry completely.

Now use jewelry pliers to attach any jump rings you need to your pendants and earrings, and you have a mass of new pretties!

Dragon Noodles

Mondays aren’t exactly my favorite day of the week.  They’re the first day of the work week, after all, taking me back to the office grind.  And on a week like this, Monday is freezing cold with accompanying sleet and drivers who freak out at the slightest hint of something slippery on the roads.  So I needed a little something to warm me up by the time I got home and got the Munchkin to bed.

Enter these delicious dragon noodles from Budget Bytes.  Inexpensive, quick, and very easy, they most definitely brought the heat and brightened my day.

I plan to bring these into the rotation at least once a month, but I think that next time I’ll add in a few veggies, likely broccoli and bell peppers, to round it out nicely.

Dragon noodles, from Budget Bytes

Ingredients:

4 oz lo mein noodles (I used chow mein because the local stores suck and didn’t have any lo mein)
2 Tbsp butter
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 large egg, whisked
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp sriracha
1 green onion, sliced
Cilantro

Cook your noodles according to the package directions.  Lo mein noodles take 5-7 minutes, while chow mein noodles take only 3 minutes.

While the noodles are cooking, make your sauce by combining the brown sugar, soy sauce, and sriracha.  Next, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large pan over medium-low heat; as the butter melts, add the red pepper flakes.  Add the egg to the pan and stir to scramble.

Once the egg has cooked, turn off the heat.  Drain your noodles and add them to the pan with the eggs and any leftover butter.  Pour in the sauce, and stir to coat the noodles and egg.  If there is extra liquid in the pan, turn the heat on low to thicken.

Dish up your noodles and top with cilantro and green onion.  Then enjoy!

Twice-a-Month Cooking

This is my latest play on once-a-month cooking.  Call it twice-a-month cooking, if you will.  I realized that trying to do everything at once, all in one day so my mom can babysit the Munchkin, is too much for me.  Plus I had way more leftovers than I had planned last time, so this time around I can take that into account when I plan my next two weeks.

I went with a couple of old favorites, two or three “cheat nights” where I use leftovers or breakfast, and a smattering of fun new recipes.  One of which I went ahead and test-drove tonight for dinner since I was running around like crazy.  I think those roasted vegetable and black bean tacos or burritos will be making a consistent appearance in the menu rotation after this.

I also included a couple of meals with alternative proteins, primarily black beans and eggs.  Meats of pretty much all varieties have gone up quite a bit in price, so I’m trying to find ways to bring our costs down without defaulting to peanut butter and jelly every night.  Particularly since the cost of that has gone up, too.

Add into that working around Southern Honey’s … simpler tastes so I’m not making two or three separate meals in a night (I do leave some leeway for toddler pickiness on the Munchkin’s part), and I’m just glad to have everything taken care of.

So, my menu for the next two weeks:

Sunday – Italian sausages with warm potato salad
Monday – Dragon noodles
Tuesday - Creamy taco mac
Wednesday – Honey spiced glazed chicken
Thursday – Pork chops in Italian dressing
Friday – Roasted veggie and sweet potato burritos
Saturday – Leftovers

Sunday – Out of town
Monday – Island chicken
Tuesday – Black beans with cumin and garlic; cilantro lime rice
Wednesday – Barbacoa
Thursday – Meatloaf
Friday – Breakfast burritos
Saturday – Leftovers

I should definitely have barbacoa left over for a meal in the next two weeks.  With everything else, we’ll see.

Christmas Craft Ideas

We’re looking to dial back a little bit this year for Christmas, especially since we have two friends having babies who need baby shower presents, but I still want to be able to give some great gifts.  As a result, it’s time for me to turn into Crafty McCrafterson.

One thing I’m thinking of is a bread and cheese basket: olive oil and rosemary bread, cinnamon quick bread, and both a savory and a sweet compound butter, all made at home.  I’m kicking myself a little for not managing to keep all my herbs alive for that compound butter, although I’m hoping to raid my mom’s huge basil plants to help out.

I’m also thinking a cookies and sweets basket: snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies, homemade caramels, and cherries soaked in Amaretto and dipped in white chocolate.

My third idea is a movie night basket: homemade hot chocolate mixes with tiny bottles of Bailey’s, popcorn, and gift certificates for a local movie store or a favorite movie.

For the coffee lover: A couple of small bags of flavored coffees, a tall mug with a homemade mug sleeve, and homemade tile coasters.

That’s all I’ve come up with so far, but I also have to throw together a couple of baby shower gifts, as well, so I’ve got to get cracking on all of them in short order.

Barbecue Chicken-Bacon Pizza

Some days I have to work hard to figure out what we’re going to have for dinner.  Other days, inspiration simply strikes out of the blue, and I roll with it.  Still other days, someone offhandedly mentions pizza on Twitter, and I become obsessed.  I give all credit for today’s inspiration to Miss Snarky Pants and her pizza-loving husband.

I knew I wanted to make a chicken pizza, but what sauce and cheese to go with it?  It was a conundrum, and for conundrum assistance, I turn to the ultimate vast font of information.  Not Google.  Not my mom.  Not even The Joy of Cooking.  Oh no, in situations like this, I turn the only place I could: Facebook.  It worked, too.  In no time, I had a suggestion that rocked Southern Honey’s socks — barbecue chicken pizza with sharp cheddar cheese, which became barbecue chicken pizza with bacon, red onion, and sharp cheddar and colby jack cheese.

And all of it thanks to the power of the internet.

Barbecue Chicken-Bacon Pizza

Ingredients

Your favorite pizza crust
1 Boneless skinless chicken breast, browned
1/2 c shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 c shredded colby jack cheese
1/4 red onion, chopped and sauteed
1/3 pound bacon, chopped

Sauce: 3 parts barbecue sauce to 1 part pizza sauce  (I used two parts of a honey barbecue sauce, one part of a chipotle sauce, and one part pizza sauce)

Preheat the oven to the proper temperature for your pizza crust.

Chop the bacon and cook it to your desired level of doneness, then saute the red onions in the bacon grease if you want for additional yumminess.  I then added some olive oil to the pan and browned my chicken.  Shred or cube the chicken.

Roll out the pizza crust.  Since I used my pizza stone, I threw down some corn meal to keep it from sticking first.  Then spread on your sauce.  Sprinkle with onions, bacon, and chicken, then cover completely with cheese.  Bake as directed, then slice and enjoy!

Renovation Delays

For all my bluster about a month ago about all the improvements I was going to bang out on the house, I have made practically no progress.  It’s embarrassing — no mirrors or cabinet doors in the bathrooms, stuff strewn all over the guest bed from under the guest bathroom sink.  Thankfully, nobody has come over to stay.

Thanks to my mom and shockingly cooperative weather (as in, it was only in the 80s today and not torching us in the upper 90s), I got a start on all those cabinet doors and the mirrors.  I sanded everything down and got two coats of paint on it all.  If I’d been able to get the stupid medicine cabinet off the wall the way I thought I would be able to, I’d be done with everything but the main body of each vanity.  :P

Well, almost done.  I forgot that I forgot to make sure I had the drill and the proper bits available since the new handles for the vanity doors require two screws instead of just one like the old handles.  This is why I can’t get anything done: No brain!

Who knows?  Maybe by next week I’ll have bathrooms I can actually use again.

Nahhhhh.

Zipper Peas: An Experiment

At the farmers market this weekend, I was scouting for fresh peas.  I love them but can’t afford to buy them at the store very often; I’m really going to have to break down and grow some for myself at some point.  I thought I had hit the mother lode this time when I saw a sign for zipper peas at my favorite stall.

Of course, when I got home, I started looking up just what zipper peas were and discovered that they’re more like blackeyed peas than snap peas.  I’m not really a fan of blackeyed peas, so this was kind of depressing.  Plus, I couldn’t find any recipes to start with that weren’t soup, which was really not what I was in the mood for.

Fortunately I finally found a suggestion in the comments on a blog.  With an added suggestion from a Facebook friend, I ended up with a dish that blew blackeyed peas out of the water.  I ate it as an entree because I was lazy, but it would be a good side dish, too.

Zipper Pea Bang-Up (serves two)

Ingredients

1 lb zipper peas (weight before shelling)
1 clove garlic
1/4 lb bacon, chopped
1/2 tomato, chopped
1 bay leaf
Pepper to taste
Olive oil

‘Unzip” and shell the peas (There’s a fiber running the length of each pea pod that you pull to open the pod — if you’re lucky.  Only some of mine unzipped properly.).  Rinse them and cull out any broken ones.

In a medium sauce pan, heat about a half-tablespoon of olive oil, then add the bacon and cook until crispy.  Stir in the peas, garlic, bay leaf, and pepper.  Simmer for about ten minutes, then add the tomatoes.  Simmer for another five to ten minutes until the peas are good and tender.