SMASH your year: February

I'm only about a month behind in posting my SMASHbook pages for February.

A few weeks ago, I had some minor medical problems that knocked me off my butt for a few days, but I'M BACK!

Here we go....February 2013:

I made the red Valentine's Day book and wrote a few notes about the holiday. I included a picture of the Valentines that Ryan gave his classmates. 

I love that we're doing this. I just know that in December 2013 when we look back at our year, we'll be proud of the fun memories we made and even more proud that we documented them!

See January's SMASHbook pages.

See Connie's AWESOME pages.

Menu Plan

Just got home form Kentucky. Loved the trip, but hated having to hit up the grocery store after driving all day.

Anyway, made it there and back and got a pretty good menu planned.

It is a BUSY week for me, but it's a good balance of work and socializing :)

Here's our plan for the week:

Sunday: Chicken Nuggets and/or cereal (lunch was our big meal today)
Monday: Mini Tacos
Tuesday: Cranberry Avocado Salad *new recipe

Cranberry Avocado Salad

Wednesday: Kale Stuffed Portabella mushrooms *new recipe

Kale stuffed portabella mushrooms

Thursday: General Tso's Chicken with fried rice

Looks good, huh?

New Recipes

Why is it that I only ever blog about food these days??

Cuz I'm back on Facebook ya'lll! I post all of my wit and humor there :)

OK, so we tried two new recipes.

Last night we had these Chicken Shawarma Pitas. Meh. They were OK. I was disappointed in the overall dish because when I made the marinade for the chicken, it smelled so good! It was creamy and had a little cinnamon kick. And the reviews on the website raved about the marinade.

But, when I cooked it, the chicken really dried out (probably some user error there) and the whole pita was just dry and bland. I also really messed up the yogurt based sauce that goes into the pita-- I accidentally used vanilla greek yogurt instead of plain. That made the sauce much sweeter than it's intended to be.

I think I was hoping for more of a gyro type meal, but this didn't do the trick (probably b/c its not a gyro recipe :) ). Next time I'm jonsing for a gyro, I'll try this recipe instead. I'll make it again (cooking the chicken in the oven instead of the Foreman grill and using plain yogurt instead of vanilla) but probably not for a while.

Luckily, tonight's dinner kicked some major flavor bootie!! We had Creamy Tortellini with Spinach and O.M.G! It was really good! At first I worried that the spinach wouldn't be cooked enough b/c all you do to prepare the spinach is to drain the tortellini over it in a colander. I thought that would make for some still crunch spinach leaves. Nope!

The recipe also called for savory garlic cooking cream. Huh? Never heard of it. Luckily I Googled it before I hit up the grocery. It's made by Kraft and found in the same section as the cream cheese.

I also almost bought cheese tortellini instead of the meat/sausage, but I'm glad I stuck with the recipe on that. I think the meat added a good flavor. Had I used the cheese, I think that would have been much and less flavorful.

I love everything about this dish. It's SUPER EASY, really creamy and has just a little bit of tomato flavor. Delicious.

The BONUS is that it's only 425 calories per serving!

I got the recipe from the magazine you get at the grocery store when you spend over $50. I usually don't look through it, but happened to this time. Glad I did. This is definitely a keeper.

Menu Plan

We'll be traveling to KY at the end of the week, so I only planned meals for Sun-Tuesday.

Trying TWO new recipes again :) Hope I'm not jinxing us by doing this two weeks in a row!

Sunday: Chicken shawarma pitas
Monday: Creamy Tortellini with spinach (doesn't that just sound delicious??)
Tuesday: Meatloaf and roasted broccoli

Have a great week my friends!

A few good recipes

This week, you'll recall that we're trying several new recipes. I usually limit new recipes to one per week in the event that they bomb badly :)

But this week, Craig picked out a few of them and was OK with trying new ones....

Last night we enjoyed the Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Peppers.  I've never made anything using roast beef (I'm not a big fan) so I wasn't sure about this.

They were pretty good, though! I thought the peppers would soften more in the oven and taste more like sauteed peppers so I was a little disappointed when they were still pretty crunchy. I also didn't have any mushrooms to use (as directed). We definitely missed having them, too.

In order to cut calories, I only used 1/2 the butter it calls for and on MY pepper, I only used one piece of cheese (instead of two).

Next time, we're going to make the philly cheesesteak and put it over portabella mushrooms! YUMMO!

So, this is a keeper, with just a few alterations.

Tonight we also made a new recipe: Turkey Black Bean Enchiladas.

Clearly I forgot to snap a pic before we chowed down :)

Ummm.....DELICIOUS! I made this as directed (no alterations) for the mixture, but only had flour tortillas so I used those. The recipe says to stuff the tortillas with 2/3 C mixture, but that was waaaay too much so I only used 1/3 C. As such, the nutrition info provided on the original recipe was incorrect. I recalculated and came up with 238 calories per enchilada. SCORE!

This, too, is definitely a keeper. Next time, though, we're going to add diced green chilis because we like things with a kick.

All in all, it's been a successful week of new recipes :) Oh and technically Monday night's recipe was new too since the mix I had turned out to be Honey Sesame instead of our usual General Tso's. It was pretty good, although I still prefer the Tso stuff.

Seriously, those mixtures make some AWESOME dishes. We especially like the fried rice mix. Craig said he prefers that over take out. They're the Sunbird Seasoning Asian mixes found in the international aisle at our local grocery. They're $0.99 a packet. And they're really, really good.

Tomorrow night-- BISCUITS and GRAVY! Oh yeah.

Finally, I am unreasonably and inexplicably excited about my new digital scale.

We've never owned one and one of the blogs I follow alerted that it was on sale for $9.99 (originally $59.99) at Amazon (and still is!). It's also free shipping for Prime members.

It measures in ounces, grams, kg, and lbs. With all of the conversions I'm doing with calorie counting, this has been a huge blessing! Plus, come on...it's fun piling crap on there to see how much it weighs :)

Organizing the important stuff

You know how you set out to accomplish a single, simple goal, like, "book a dental appointment," and then 2 hours later you've reorganized your entire household binder of important papers??

I had one of those super-efficient mornings. I needed to make a dentist appointment for Ryan now that he's finally on our dental plan and before I did, though, I wanted to review our policy details. After working in healthcare for 13 years, I knew better than to assume that every visit is covered. I wanted to make sure (best I could) that there aren't certain exclusions since Ryan is only 2.5 years old and this is his first visit.

The plan summary document is pretty straight forward, so I think I'm OK, but there's still a chance that the dentist will bill some totally obscure code that'll get rejected as "not medically necessary." That's just how things work.

Anyway, as I pulled out the documents to review, I started finding other paperwork that needed to be filed. Then I remembered that during MOPS last month, we made a Household Binder in which to organize important papers. Then I remembered that I found a ton of filing folders, binder clips, and tabbed folders in the guest bedroom recently. Then I remembered we recently opened a safety deposit box at a local bank and it's totally empty.

Organizing the household paperwork

Our Household Binder

Inside of Household Binder

One thing led to another which led to another and two hours later, I'm pretty well organized on the paperwork front :) And, I have some legal papers (Healthcare power of attorney, which, BTW, is DIFFERENT than the regular Power of Attorney) to put into our safety deposit box.

Our HealthCare Power of Attorney

Next fall, I'm the Assistant Coordinator of MOPS, so I need to start pulling things together now. I'm heading to Office Max later today (I could LIVE in that store) to grab an organizer or binder for the MOPS stuff. Many of the tabbed file folders I didn't use this AM will be put to good use for MOPS.

In addition to the binder, I also have a crate which I use for other major filings (taxes, retirement paperwork, car paperwork, work done on the house):

Something I'd like to be better at is saving (in one place) important receipts. You'd think that as much as I enjoy organizing that I'd already have that one down, but I don't. When we make a major purchase, I have every intention of storing the receipt in an important place. The problem is that I have approximately 539,205 important places for receipts! I have a folder in this crate for receipts (and ones to hold for 6 months), but I'm not great about actually putting receipts in there.

Later today, I'm taking Ryan to his first movie at the theater! We're going to see Wreck It Ralph with some friends. I'm hoping that Ryan sees how well the other kids behave and will model their behavior during the film. *Fingers Crossed!*

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I LOVE MONDAYS! 

Menu Plan

Here's what we're eating this week:

Sunday: Sloppy Joes with sweet potato fries
Monday: General Tso's chicken with fried rice
Tuesday: Philly Cheese steak peppers (new recipe)
Wednesday: Turkey and black bean Enchiladas (new recipe)
Thursday: Biscuits and gravy (made with low fat biscuits)

If you follow the recipe links, most of them contain the nutritional information per serving.

And, I have to admit, I was TOTALLY WRONG about the zucchini boats from last week. I thought Craig would give them 2 out of 5 stars and ask to limit them to once/month. But, he actually really liked them! I thought they were OK (3/5 stars), but he really, really liked them. I'm glad :)