Fun Times Friday

So today was my friend Kim's birthday. To celebrate, several of us got lunch from Panera. As a surprise to Kim, we stopped by Jilly's Cupcakery on our way back to school. Holy Delicious.

My favorite flavor today was chocolate chip cookie dough. I mean, it was a little bite of Heaven, for sure.

We even got to meet THE Jill, the namesake and owner of the bakery. Really cool chick, she was.

Jilly's has two locations in the north metro, one in Roswell and one in Alpharetta. I highly suggest stopping by for a little treat!!

I am a Pinterst addict.

My name is Ann-Margaret and I am a Pinterest addict. Out of all the many items I have discovered via Pinterest, this pretty much sums up the major conundrum of my life:



So true......so true......

Everybody loves a casserole.

Okay, maybe not everybody. I think back to the story my parents tell of when they first got married. My mom was a very young bride and had received a casserole cookbook as a wedding gift. Being such a good little wife, she left no page of her new cookbook unturned. She put a casserole on the dinner table - every. single. night. My daddy was SICK of casseroles and still shutters at the thought of a one dish dinner to this day, some 34 years later. He will make a chicken pot pie occassionally, but that is about it.


I, on the other, love me a good casserole. As I started clearing out my camera in preparation for Easter weekend, I stumbled upon pictures of two casseroles I experimented with a few months ago. Both turned out very tasty and provided enough leftovers for several days thereafter. Both casseroles were  Weight Watchers AND husband friendly; in fact, the husbando could not get enough of the Bubble Up Enchilada casserole.


Check out the recipes below and let me know your thoughts. And also let me know - what is your favorite casserole dish?

Bubble Up Enchiladas
a Weight Watchers community recipe originally posted by user jaimew1976

1 pound lean ground turkey
10 oz canned enchilada sauce
8 oz canned tomato sauce
1 1/4 cup reduced fat mexican style shredded cheese
8 small low fat refrigerated biscuit dough

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown turkey and drain if needed. Mix in a enchilada and tomato sauce. Cut the refrigerated biscuits into fourths and stir them in the meat mixture. Place mixutre into a greased casserole dish and bake for 25 minutes. Take out of oven and sprinkle cheese on top. Bake an additional 10 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Serves 6, 7 PointsPlus per serving


Weight Watchers Deep-Dish Pizza Casserole
adapted from Food.com

1 pound lean ground turkey
15 oz can of diced tomatoes, any variety
sliced mushrooms (or any veggie you wish to add!)
10 oz can refrigerated pizza dough
6 oz shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Brown meat in a non-stick skillet. Drain, if necessary, and then add mushrooms. Continuing browning until mushrooms begin to release moisture. Add tomatoes and cook until heated through.

While meat cooks, coat a 9X13 baking dish with cooking spray. Unroll pizza crust dough, and press into bottom and halfway up the sides of the baking dish. Top the pizza crust with meat mixture.

Bake, uncovered, for 12 minutes. Top with cheese, and bake 5 minutes or until crust is browned and cheese melts.

Serves 6, 8 PointsPlus per serving

I love me some cookbooks....

I am super excited that I got a cookbook in the mail to test drive today!! Unfortuately, today's pollen count has given  me quite the headache and I just don't feel like looking through my new cookbook. But stay tuned....I know I will be cooking something from this one real soon!

Finding the time....

No one tells you how time consuming it is to be a new parent. I miss laying in bed at night, reading a book. Now, I give Jackson his last bottle at 10:30 pm, lay down to rea.......snore......snooze....snore......

And alas, when I am time starved, the last thing I want to do is cook. And clean up the kitchen. But somehow last weekend, I mustered the energy to cook beef stroganoff. And it was pretty darn good. I found the recipe on the back of a package of Publix brand egg noodles that was taking up space in the pantry. I amazingly had every ingredient on hand. The recipe was easy, yummy, and made enough for lunch the next day. I do believe this recipe is a keeper.

 





my plate....



















Eric's plate....isn't her clever?

Publix Apron Meals - Beefy Stroganoff

Ingredients 1 small yellow onion
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 lb lean ground beef, 7% fat
4 oz pre-sliced fresh baby portabellas
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup flour
8 oz wide egg noodles
1 (10.5-oz) can condensed beef broth
1 (8-oz) container sour cream


Prep
Put water on to boil for pasta.

Peel and dice onion.

Steps

Melt butter in large sauté pan on medium-high, then add onions and garlic; cook and stir 1 minute to soften. Add beef, mushrooms, salt, and pepper (wash hands); cook and stir 5–7 minutes or until meat crumbles and no pink remains.

Stir flour into beef mixture; cook and stir 2 minutes.

Cook pasta following package instructions.

Slowly stir broth into beef mixture; then stir in sour cream. Reduce heat to medium; cook and stir 7–8 minutes to blend flavors.

Drain pasta; serve beef mixture over pasta.

CALORIES (per 1/6 recipe) 360kcal; FAT 15g; CHOL 100mg; SODIUM 520mg; CARB 31g; FIBER 2g; PROTEIN 22g; VIT A 6%; VIT C 2%; CALC 4%; IRON 20%




I have been cooking up something really special....

So I have been missing from the blogosphere for over a year now. But I have a pretty good excuse...

 



I cooked up this cutie for about 9 months and gave birth in late July. I really hope to start finding pockets of time to focus on cooking, losing baby weight, and blogging about it. Please stay tuned....

where did i go?

I'm here...I am just completely over-committed right now. My mama told me tonight I need to start cutting some things out of my extra curricular life. Mama knows best....I hope to be more centered and back to blogging soon.

Good night, ya'll!

Back from vacay...

Today is our first day home from the First Annual Brannon/Stroble/Somers family vacation. I, Eric, Mama, Daddy, my brother Adam, his wife Kent, and Kent's parents rented a house for a week on Edisto Island. Oh yeah, this little cutie joined us too....

My brother and his wife are the proud parents of this little one. She owns a lot of my heart!!

In decompressing from our long trip back from the coast yesterday, I slept in and spent the entire day in my pajamas. I took my time waking up and then fixed myself a GIGANTIC breakfast sandwich.

This breakfast beauty consisted of an Arnold Sandwich Thin, mustard, 3 egg whites, a slice of reduced fat cheese, and two slices of lean ham for a total of 4 WW points.


I continued to lounge, unpack, and do laundry. Lunch was a freezer delight.

I really like this Smart Ones but could probably eat a whole other entree. I paired it with a Trader Joe's veggie egg roll for a lunch total of 7 WW points.

I couldn't leave the kitchen without a little chocolate action...

The uneventfullness of my day continued....yawn....

And then I whipped up dinner for the hubs and I.

Gorton's frozen fish fillets (2 WW points per filet), a cup of quinoa/ brown rice mix (4 WW points), a cup of green beans (0 WW points), and a piece of Pillsbury french bread (3 WW points). At the end of the meal, I had three points left for the day so I snuck another piece of bread. I. Love. Carbs.

I am off to watch the College World Series (Go Cocks!!) and catch up on the DVR with the hubs.

Good night, ya'll!!

I Am Back

Whew. It has been quite a long time since I posted. Here's a quick rundown of what's been going on...

1. I got a full-time teaching job in Special Education.

Wow....that sounded like a lot more in my head, and it certainly felt like more as I was living through it day by day. I am now on summer vacation and can hopefully focus on some "me" activities over the next few weeks. I will be posting about my musings with food very shortly.

I'm back!

Night ya'll!

Christmas 2009 in review...

Students brought me homemade yummies....

...which I had for breakfast.

I forged the madness of the Dekalb Farmer's Market with Amy on December 23...

I cooked a yummy breakfast for Eric and I on Christmas Eve...

Trader Joe's chicken sausage, Fresh Market cheese biscuits, tomato, fried egg, and cheese grits!

My kitty is not a lap kitty...

...but gave me the gift of a snuggle and a nap on Christmas Eve afternoon.

My husband is a goofball...

My daddy cooked his famous Christmas morning breakfast and it was De-lic-ious!!

maple sausage, bacon, and hashbrowns

fried eggs

make-your-own grits station

sleepy goofball husband

Then the opening of gifts commenced...

I think my daddy resembles a skinny Santa!

and my brother resembles Peter Griffin...

Christmas afternoon lunch of ham sandwiches and tomato soup

goofball husband looks homeless....

my daddy listens to my stocking requests!!!

Night ya'll...

Dear Santa, I've been a bad blogger...

This whole working full time seriously put a cramp in my blogging time. However, now that I have two weeks off, I am back and eating with camera in tow.

Today I was able to sleep in until 9:30. Halleluiah!! Sleeping in on a Monday morning was strange but nice. Eric woke up about this time too; he immediately put on some clothes and headed out to work. I, on the other, proceeded to remain in my pajamas for the next TEN HOURS. However, being pajama-clad did not mean I was lazy. On the contrary, I was able to get a lot done around the house.

I first powered up with some cereal and milk. Because I normally eat breakfast in the car or at school, cereal isn't usually an option. So today, I decided to indulge a little. I ended up trying the Oat Cluster Cheerios Crunch I bought a while back on sale. I used up the last of our skim milk in my cereal bowl (oops!) and had a glass of Trop50.

After eating breakfast and catching up with Kathie Lee and Hoda, I had to get to unloading this...

(Georgia is such a good little helper)

...and do a little bit of this...

I then began to wrap Christmas presents when I realized that I had Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 on the DVR. I took a break from wrapping to watch the movie and about half way through, I had the craving for some popcorn.

My popcorn wasn't bad and the movie wasn't bad either. I love having enough time to lounge all by myself and watch movies I've recorded on the DVR. Christmas break is oh-so-very nice!!! After the movie was over, I felt it was time for lunch so I rummaged around in the freezer and put together an Asian inspired meal of Trader Joe's veggie egg rolls and chicken dumplings I had gotten from Costco a few months ago.

My afternoon of pajama wearing progressed; I continued to wrap presents and even worked on cleaning out my closet. I waited until the first official day of winter to switch out my warm weather wardrobe for my cold weather wardrobe! When Eric got home around 7-ish, he showered (and by this time I had finally showered too!) and we ran out to take care of a few errands. While we were out, we grabbed dinner at Cheeseburger Bobby's. I had the chicken and cheese sandwich and loaded it up with all of the veggie toppings from the bar.

And of course, I consumed what looks like a mountain of fries, too. 'Tis the season of indulgence I suppose! When we got home from errands, I realized I had received a package from Cooking.com. I ordered my daddy something fun for Christmas and it arrived today - yay! I was super excited upon opening the box to find that the folks at Cooking.com had packed a little surprise for me too:

I have yet to try the Starbucks VIA, so I am super excited about my free samples. Although my daddy drinks coffee every morning, this is one coffee he would not be interested in. So....Merry Christmas to me!

Night ya'll!

i can't believe i like watching the country music awards

I do not know exactly where the past few days have gone. Busy days at school make for a fast week (I probably just jinxed the next few days and they will probably go by really slow). Any whoo - I'm just sitting here in my pajamas watching the CMA Awards reflecting on my noshing the past few days. Here's a recap:

Tuesday
Breakfast was a light multi grain english muffin, fat free cream cheese, and two leftover slices of center cut bacon. Mmmm...bacon. I also added some reduced sugar orange juice in my Wizard of Oz travel mug. (Love the WOZ!)

Lunch has been very unimaginative and very processed lately. I hope to go to the grocery store this weeked to stock up on healthier lunch options. In the mean time, Lean Cuisine will just have to do.

Eric was in charge of dinner because I had so many papers to grade. He ran up to our new favorite bbq place and ordered a POUND of shredded pork and coleslaw. I had a combination of the two (with a little mustard based bbq sauce) on a 1 point hambuger bun. I added a bag of the Weight Watchers pizza flavored pretzle thins. I LOVE these thins because they tast just like the pizza flavored Combos. Sinful yum!

Wednesday

I went to recreate the english muffin - cream cheese - bacon combination from Tuesday when I realized the rest of my english muffins were still in the freezer. Oops. So opted for the same combo, but this time on a spinach Flat Out. It was still delicious!

Lunch was still a little over-processed. But at least it included sugar free chocolate pudding. :)

Eric wasn't hungry at dinner time so I just fixed a littel sammy for myself. I recreated what is often referred to as a "turkey rachel" (a spin off of the reuben sandwhich). I used my 1 point hamburger bun as a base, then added light thousand island dressing, oven roasted turkey breast, melted asiago sliced cheese, and coleslaw. It ended up being a little soggy because of the dressing/ coleslaw combination, but it was a good sandwhich. Especially when paired with baked Doritos and a ginormous dill pickle. I. Love. Pickles.

In other exciting news, I got a special little package in the mail on Monday. Can't wait to try out the Nature Valley Nut Clusters and Chewy Trail Mix bars. I LOVE getting goodies in the mail!!

The eyelids are getting heavy....'tis time to retire.

Night ya'll!!!