Update in Life

Happy Easter friends!

Pancake Weekend

Yay life! But as long as I'm doing something interesting, forgetting to blog is okay. 

So, how this happened....

Pancake Cake

Birthday Brunch

This past weekend was my birthday! And as birthday weekends go, this one was pretty good. It included my family, friends, video games and a 5k.

First birthday with my family!

Lasagna Debacle

This is the story of how this week's lunch is going to be sandwiches.

Originally, the menu was going to be this awesome looking recipe for turkey, spinach, and mushroom lasagna for lunch and kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew) for dinner.

Turkey Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna

(Healthy. Delicious.)

And

Kimchi Jjigae

(Maangchi)

Before I continue, I would like to say this to the lasagna lover, it is not for the faint of heart. And now I will start at the beginning.

Baby Shower!

Being pregnant apparently does not stop me from doing a million things. I will do it SLOWER, but the amount of work does not decrease. But that's okay because it leads to awesome things!

This past Saturday, David and I had our baby shower for Baby Lyons. It wasn't anything fancy but it did take some planning and I did get a few decorations for the house.

Whoo, Winnie the Pooh theme!

Baked Buffalo Chicken

Hooray for slightly better versions of food that I love! Buffalo wings are delicious but they can be way too buttery and over-fried. I found this recipe that bakes the chicken with light breading, buffalo sauce and ranch. This dish also fulfills the spiciness kick that I want because I don't really want to eat my normal spicy foods although it's been getting better (yay!).

Here's the link to the original recipe, Buffalo Baked Chicken. I have made some adjustments though because I wanted more of a kick and I didn't want to use blue cheese either.

So here it is, my version!

Baked Chicken Parmesan

Life has been pretty normal. Except for the swelling belly that is. Things seem to be progressing nicely so there's no complaining here. My sinuses have been bothering me a lot though. I had an infection a couple weeks ago that kept getting worse and my normal ways of handling this was not working. I eventually spoke with the midwife and she gave me some more tips on helping out my sinuses without taking antibiotics. It took about 2 weeks but, thankfully, it got better. HOWEVER, a symptom of pregnancy are swollen and stuffy sinuses so it's not like my sinuses will be getting back to normal any time soon. But I know I got better from a sinus infection. Thank God, because I really didn't want to take antibiotics. Going to a midwife has been a great decision. So back to food...

Classic French Toast

I love french toast. It is definitely one of my favorite breakfast foods. I haven't eaten it a lot since it's bread but it's definitely a nice treat once it a while. And a treat it is since today was the best I felt in a long time! I still get tired easily but the nausea is gone as long as I keep my hunger under control.

So to continue celebrating I am sharing my awesome french toast recipe with my friends so you can join in on the yumminess. Sidebar: When I cook something that's not from a recipe, I tend not to measure things, but I will explain/describe to the best of my ability (sorry).

Serving: ~7 pieces of french toast
3 eggs
7 pieces of bread
2% milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
Cinnamon sugar
Powdered sugar (optional)
Syrup/Honey

So, before I get to the recipe part, a few notes to the ingredients so you know why this is the best french toast (I'm so modest).

Yum!!

The recipe makes 7 pieces but if you want to make more or less, here is the formula to make it work and you won't worry about making too much or too little batter. For every egg you add to the recipe, double the amount of bread + 1. For example, for this recipe I used 3 eggs so I used 7 slices of bread. This definitely depends on how much batter you put on the bread, but I found it to be a good rule of thumb. OR, if you don't care how much you make just keep making them until you run out of batter!

I know people these days are afraid of whole milk but skim and 1% milk are too watery for me; I think 2% is a good compromise. Making french toast today was a whim so I used whole wheat bread. BUT if you are planning to make some ahead of time, buy Pepperidge Farm's Cinnamon Bread. IT HELPS MAKE THE YUMMIEST FRENCH TOAST. But seriously, use whatever fancies you. Just don't get super porous bread, then the french toast gets too soggy.

So you have your ingredients:

I love recipes that have minimal ingredients

1. Once you crack the eggs in a medium bowl, pour the milk until you see only the yolk and little bit of the whites
2. Add the vanilla and cinnamon sugar (measure at your discretion) and whisk it all together
3. Grease (or PAM) your pan/griddle and once it is hot enough, dip the bread in the batter on both sides and place on pan
4. After 2-3 minutes, flip and cook for another couple of minutes
5. Keep doing that until you use the whole batter

This is what I mean by not measuring. Make sure your milk and eggs look like this

So you finished making the french toast but it's a little boring so it's time to add a few embellishments. I sprinkled a bit more cinnamon sugar (I really love cinnamon sure) while they were toasting. And then I sprinkled a little powdered sugar to make them look pretty. Lastly, I added some fresh strawberries.

So now enjoy with your favorite syrup! Happy Sunday!

Simple Turkey Burger

I wouldn't say that my diet is incredibly limited but it has become a little more difficult to plan for meals. We used to decide meals together where each of us would choose something for lunch or dinner. Well, since my body went all wonky, David learned early on that I should just choose all the meals because there are certain foods I don't want to eat. So I am now scouring Pinterest to find meals that I will want to eat.

I came upon this recipe for a simple turkey burger. And because it is a burger, the variations of ingredients are almost endless. So I took this recipe and changed up some of the ingredients to make it more palatable for myself (David will eat just about anything so he has no say).

Servings: 4-6 patties

1 lb ground turkey

1 medium yellow onion

1 tbsp garlic powder

1 cup chives (or any other herb you prefer)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Toppings:

lettuce

tomatoes

cheese

whatever else you want

Dice the onion and if you have fresh chives/herbs, chop them up finely. Toss the onion and chives in a bowl with the ground turkey, garlic powder, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. Form into patties. Grill or pan-fry them. We don't have a grill so I pan fried them. Sidebar: when you do buy ground turkey, make sure to get the one that is not so lean. This way your patties will hold better together and be juicier. I find 15% fat works pretty well. There is a time and place for lean turkey meat, burgers is not one of them.

Besides the burgers being better for you than beef burgers, having the onions and chives in the patty helps the flavor of the burger and if you don't want anything on your burger, you'll still have flavor in your burger and not just the taste of meat.

This is dinner for the week

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Flourless)

I am not the biggest peanut butter fan. I don't like peanut butter jelly sandwiches and you will never see me eat peanut butter out of the jar. That's David's go to quick snack. However, I do enjoy peanut butter cookies. Probably because the extra sugar helps mask some of the peanut taste. So I definitely enjoy these cookies.

They are especially tasty because they are gluten-free. When we decided to cut back our gluten intake, I started to be on the look out for desserts and snacks that were gluten-free. We both love sweets and dessert-y stuff, so finding recipes that were gluten-free was a little important. I happened upon this recipe in a Southern Living magazine a couple of years ago and immediately copied it so I could bake it at home. It was a huge hit for everyone in the apartment. Not only are they good cookies, but we found they were a good snack after a big workout and great travel food. If they didn't have some self-control the guys would have probably eaten a good 3.5 dozen cookies in 2 days.

The cookies aren't exactly healthy, but if you are cutting back on carbs and/or gluten, this is a great cookie to have around. I made a few adjustments to the original recipe because I felt too much sugar was being used and the chocolate chips weren't quite right. One more note before I share the recipe, 1 cup of peanut butter is about half the jar. So I just use the whole jar at once and this way you don't have leftover peanut butter if you don't eat a lot of it and you make more cookies at one time. The recipe I'll be sharing is for using a whole jar of peanut butter and yields 3.5 to 4 dozen cookies.

1    jar creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup sugar
2    large eggs
1    tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 bag mini-chocolate chips

*If you are going to half the recipe, keep using the 3/4 cup of sugar because that was in the original recipe. Or half it if you want to still cut back on the sugar.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Stir peanut butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl until well blended.
3. Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets.
5. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until puffed and lightly browned. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to wire rack to continue cooling.

The batter will be a little mushy but will stiffen up when the chocolate chips are added.

I spray baking Pam on the tablespoon so the batter won't stick to it and will drop onto the pan easily.

If you use regular metal pans, I highly recommend using parchment paper. But if you use a stone pan, just spray a little baking Pam and it will work great.

The cookies are REALLY soft when they are taken out of the oven, so definitely let them sit and cool for a few minutes before transferring them to the cooling rack.

They are great with tea or milk or coffee. And perfect as a dessert or a snack.

Enjoy!

Avocado Veggie Pita

As most of you know, we majorly cut back on our gluten intake. We'll indulge occasionally, usually on the weekends, but it's usually no breads and such most of the time. But, of course, there will always be exceptions. And this meal is an exception.

The original recipe is called the Florida Avocado Summer Wrap. And I think it's a wonderful meal for lunch. It's light but the avocado gives the yummy fats to help you get full, so when you are finished you don't feel heavy. 

However, I did several tweaks to the ones I make. Instead of a wrap, I put everything into a pita (whole wheat). I'm also not a fan of vinegar so I omitted that in the mix for the tomatoes and onions (the onions are for David, I hate raw onions). I used regular red tomatoes instead of the yellow ones and I added red bell pepper to the pita. Also, hummus because hummus is delicious. Honestly, I think you can put in whatever you want and it will still be delicious. The reason I like the combination I made is because the red bell peppers give a nice kick while the carrots give that snappy sweetness. The tomatoes are just sweet enough to bring out the avocado and the hummus just grounds everything. Man that was technical. Bottom line, I think they balance each other well.

All the pieces you will need

I slice everything up ahead of time for the week and store them in separate tupperware containers. Except for the avocados. Because they go brown (not bad, just brown) quickly, I'll slice one at a time and cut more during the week as needed. Then when it is time to build the pita, I can do an assembly line thing.

I start with spreading a layer of hummus, then carrots, tomatoes, red bell peppes, onions (if you insist on using them) and then the avocado. I throw in a side of kettle chips and it's the perfect lunch.

Let me know how your turns out if you use other vegetables besides the ones I mentioned!