Thursday, February 23, 2012

What's for lunch.


Lunch meat and cheese rollups, I stick a plastic stick through them and slice into 1" pieces. Accompanying the roll ups we have strawberries and a cutie orange. She also had goldfish and a graham crackers with nutella. I think she also had a yogurt and milk that day.

Peanut butter and honey star sandwich, strawberries,cucumbers, pears and baby carrots. The little container has salad dressing to dip the veggies in.



This was Anthony's school lunch one day, he has a really early lunch so it's more of a snack and he usually eats again at home later. Flower shaped PB&J, cucumbers, strawberries and pears.



Goldfish, a butterfly peanut butter and honey sandwich (it wouldn't fit as a whole butterfly so it's folded in half. My lunches are definitely not super elaborate. I don't have time.) a cutie orange and some cucumbers. The yellow container had a few m&m's in it.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

A day at the beach...




Last weekend we went to HB to watch a play my friend's daughter was in. She was great. We weren't allowed to have camera's in the show though so I have no photos. It was so nice to see everyone though. I miss my friends over that way. Our kids have all gotten older and we just don't see them that often anymore. So after the show we had a late lunch at Jeff's favorite restaurant at the beach. We love Woody's. Although it's gotten a lot harder for me to eat there. When I was pregnant with Amelia I would eat chili fries and a chocolate shake for lunch. Gee I wonder why I gained so much weight? lol. It's always fun to take cell phone pictures in the booths...



After lunch at Woody's we headed to the real beach. I love the pier in HB. It was nice and cool out. Not a ton of people on the beach (the pier and downtown HB were packed though) I didn't get a lot of great pictures because it was sunset so the light was weird. And J was obsessed with getting a picture of the kids and I in front of the curfew sign. I think he took seven of them.









It was such a nice day. I love the beach. And I love it even more when it's peaceful. We looked for shells, wandered around, got sand all over and just had a nice time as a family. I need to remember to spend more time at the beach in the winter.

Monday, February 06, 2012

Menu Plan Monday

Here's what we're eating this week, what are you having? Some of the recipes can be found below.

Monday: BBQ chicken sandwiches, on wheat sandwich thins, with sweet potato fries, cucumbers
Tuesday: Salmon, brown rice, broccoli,
Wednesday: Cowboy Stew (new recipe, we'll see how it goes) Salad
Thursday: Creamy Red Potatoes and Chicken (another new recipe,)
Friday: Leftovers/Eat out
Saturday: Broccoli chicken casserole
Sunday: Enchiladas


I have this huge list of slow cooker recipes that a friend sent me years ago, it's got hundreds of recipes. However, there's no mention of where they came from originally. Both of these recipes come from this list. If you know where it came from or if this is your recipe, tell me and I'll give credit. :-)

Creamy Red Potatoes and Chicken
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 8 hrs
Ingredients
1 1/2 Pounds Red Potatoes -- chunked
8 Ounces low fat cream Cheese
10 3/4 Ounces can Cream of Potato Soup
1 Envelope Ranch-style Dressing Mix
12 Ounces Chicken Breast Without Skin -- cut into strips
Notes / Directions
Place potatoes in slow cooker. Beat together the cream cheese, soup and salad dressing mix.
Stir in chicken strips and spread over potatoes (or just stir all together). Cover and cook on Low 8
hours, or until potatoes are tender. Stir once after 5-6 hours. Stir before serving.

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 381 Calories; 15g Fat (35.5% calories from fat); 25g
Protein; 36g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 84mg Cholesterol; 626mg Sodium.

Makes: 6 servings
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 8 hrs
Ingredients
1 1/4 lbs beef stew meat
4 potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 4" pcs.
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 (28 oz.) can Baked beans in BBQ Sauce
Notes / Directions
Mix beef, potatoes, onion, salt and pepper in 3 1/2 qt. to 4 qt. slow cooker. Spread beans over beef
mixture. Cover and cook on LOW 8-10 hrs. or until beef is tender.

Per serving: cal 370, fat 12g, sat fat 5g, chol 65mg, sod 1030mg, carb 46g, fiber 8g, prot 28g
Points: 7

Did you post your menus this week? Need more menu inspiration? Go visit Laura at orgjunkie.com for more great menu plans. And leave me a comment if you planned your menu this week and I'll stop by and visit you too.

Friday, February 03, 2012

The ice cream cone cupcakes



Amelia wanted ice cream one cupcakes for her birthday. I remember having them one year when I was a kid, so I went on a mission to find a recipe. Here's what I ended up with.



I made two batches way ahead of time because I wanted to make sure it was going to work how I wanted it to. Make up a batch of cake batter, just like you would for cupcakes. I used boxed cake mixes. I tend to splurge on the icing, not the cake for my kid's parties. For the party I made two dozen chocolate and two dozen white with sprinkles.

Use a cupcake pan and put the ice cream cones in the pan. Fill 2/3 or so full with batter. It's okay if you have batter left over, you don't want to fill them too full. if they get overfilled, the cupcake will cook over the top and make the cone all icky.



Bake them according to your cake recipe directions for cupcakes. I cooked 24 at a time, with the cones in two pans on one rack in the oven. Because they're taller than cupcakes, that seemed to be the best way.



After they cool they just need to be frosted and decorated. I used the same buttercream recipe I always use for my kids cake. Half got dyed pink and half I left white. I had a hard time storing the finished ice cream cone cupcakes. My cupcake holders weren't tall enough. So I had 2 dozen in a cupcake holder with foil over the top, and toothpicks holding the foil off the icing. The other batch ended up in a big cake holder, and they kept falling over. I'll have to figure out a better way to store them next time.

Happy 7th birthday Mia!






Where'd the time go? How on earth did I become the mother of a seven year old? I swear I just had her. I went back and found some old pictures from my blog from the first few years. I forget how grown up she is, until I see her as a baby.

Her party turned out great. I was a little sad that she had an opinion on who came this year, we invited mostly friends from school instead of my friends and their kids. We also had Jeff's mom and my Grandpa here. It was nice.