Buffalo Chicken Pizza

from: Parenting

Ingredients
4 mini­whole-wheat pitas, split
1 cup chopped cooked chicken (such as Perdue)
1/2 cup grated carrot
1 cup frozen corn kernels, defrosted
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
1/2 cup shredded reduced fat cheddar cheese

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place split pitas on a baking sheet. Put chicken, carrot, corn, and barbecue sauce in a mixing bowl and stir to combine. Spoon 2 tablespoons chicken mixture onto each pita. Sprinkle 1 Tbs of cheese on top of each, and bake until cheese is bubbly, about 8 minutes.

Nutritional Info (1/4 recipe(
238 calories, 5 g fat (2 g saturated), 523 mg sodium, 38 mg cholesterol

from: Parenting

Ingredients
1/4 cup orange juice
3 tsp lemon juice
1 tbs white wine vinegar
2 tbs canola oil
1 tbs honey
1 tbs peeled, grated ginger
Salt and pepper to taste

4 small flounder fillets, 4 to 6 ounces each
4 cups snow peas (about 3/4 pound)
Lemon wedges

Directions
Whisk the first 7 ingredients (OJ through S&P) together to create the dressing.

Place each fish fillet on a large square of foil and turn of the edges of the foil. Top each fillet with 1 cup of snow peas and 2 tablespoons of dressing. Fold the foil around the fish to form a pouch, and crimp so it is sealed.

Put the foil pouches on a baking sheet and bake at 425 for 15-20 minutes, until fish flakes easily with a fork. Service with rice and garnish with lemon.

Nutritional Info (1 packet(
273 calories, 11 g fat, 118 mg sodium, 68 mg cholesterol

from: Parenting

Ingredients
2 1/2 lb beef brisket
1/2 tsp pepper
1 package dried onion-soup mix
2 tsp dry mustard
3/4 cup water
12 baby carrots

Directions
Brown the brisket on all sides in a large skillet over medium heat, about 5 minutes per side. Sprinkle with pepper. Place in a 4- to 6-quart slow cooker.

In a medium bowl, combine the soup mix, mustard, and water. Stir well. Pour over brisket. Add carrots to pot and stir. Cover and cook on low for about 6 hours — meat will be soft and tender, almost falling apart.

Remove from cooker and let stand for 15 minutes before slicing thin. Serve on sandwich buns, with ketchup or mustard.

Nutritional Info (1/8 recipe(
237 calories, 12 g fat (4 g saturated), 385 mg sodium, 83 mg cholesterol

from: Parenting

Ingredients
Cooking spray
6 oz-package stuffing mix
4 cups broccoli florets
4 chicken cutlets (approximately 4 oz each)
1/2 cup jarred chicken gravy
Pepper

Directions
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Spritz center of 4 sheets of foil with cooking spray. Prepare stuffing according to package directions, excluding butter. Place 1/4 stuffing in center of each foil sheet. Top with 1 cup broccoli and a chicken cutlet. Drizzle 2 tablespoons gravy over each cutlet; sprinkle with pepper.

Seal packages and place on foil-covered baking pan. Bake 25 minutes or until chicken is cooked through (to 170 degrees). Reheat remaining gravy and serve on the side.

Nutritional Info (1 packet(
318 calories, 5 g fat (1 g saturated), 880 mg sodium, 66 mg cholesterol

from: Parenting

Ingredients
1 cup rice
2 Tbs butter
½ small onion, finely chopped (about ½ cup)
1 clove garlic, minced
10-oz package frozen peas
Pinch salt
¼ cup chicken broth or prepared bouillon
30 basil leaves (about 1 cup loosely packed)
cup grated parmesan cheese

Directions
Prepare rice according to package directions. Meanwhile, melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and cook, stirring frequently, until quite soft but not brown, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes more. Add the peas and a pinch of salt, stir thoroughly with the garlic and onion mixture, then add the chicken broth. Cover pan and bring to a boil; boil 2 minutes (not more, or the peas will be overdone).

Remove from heat and transfer contents to the bowl of a food processor. Add the basil leaves. Process for about 15 seconds, until the peas are beginning to be mashed and the basil is chopped but there are still many whole pieces of pea in the mixture. Combine thoroughly with the cooked rice and parmesan cheese. Serve immediately.

from: Weight Watchers Shortcuts Cookbook

Ingredients
1/2 C plain fat-free Greek-style yogurt
1 T lemon juice
1 T chopped fresh mint
12 oz packaged fully-cooked turkey meatballs
4 6-inch multi-grain pitas
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped

Directions
Combine yogurt, lemon juice & mint in a bowl and set aside. Spray large non-stick skillet with cooking spray and heat over medium. Add meatballs and cook, covered, turning frequently until heated through, about 5 minutes.

Cut a pocket in each pita. Fill with 3 meatballs, tomatoes, cucumber and about 3 T of the yogurt sauce. Serve immediately.

Nutritional Info (1 pocket(
353 cals, 9 g fat, 787 mg sodium, 43 g carbs, 4 g fiber, 26 g protein, 144 mg calcium

from: adapted from Rachael Ray's Recipe

Ingredients
grilled or roasted chicken breast, cut into small chunks or strips
buffalo sauce (we like Frank's best)
scallions
monterey jack cheese
bleu cheese crumbles
finely chopped scallions
pizza crust of your choice

Directions
Toss the chicken in the sauce and assemble the pizza as you would any pizza. This seems to work paticularly well if you put the jack cheese on last since it contains the bleu cheese crumbles.

Bake it up … and enjoy (possibly with celery and carrot sticks and a beer?)!

Delusions of Grandeur

Waaay back when (August or so?!) I started a scrapbook for Tabby. I wanted to keep up with it and have her first year allll put together for her first birthday party. I was reasonably pleased with how things were going, but then things got busy, as things do, and the project was shelved. You know how it goes.

Apparently, I am completely nuts, because now I'm determined to finish it in the 16 days before Tabby's party. This could probably be done relatively easily with just a few hours of work if I would just use pre-made element,s but since I'm nuts, I insist on making most of if not all of the elements for a page. Me and my laptop are getting waaay cozy.

At least I have a lot of photos to work with … that's one spot where I did not slack off. It is so amazing and fun to see how big she's gotten and to think about how much she's grown and changed. I look forward to having my project finished and being able to see the year in snapshots.

Party Time


Here's the invite I sent out last week. I think everyone's gotten theirs by now. Like I said, it's going to be a small mostly family affair, but I still wanted invites for the scrapbook. I made lots of versions of this and drove Matt a bit nuts.

In other news, I have a new pimp tooth (sometimes called a crown). It is gold. It is covered with porcelain … but still. I now have 5% more bling. Yea, it's way late in my world. Goodnight.

Already Behind

And my week hasn't even started.

But I did ….
* Finally put Christmas stuff away (90%)
* Pick up some stuff for Tabby's b'day party
* Have a lovely 2 hour nap with my baby girl
* Make us a delicious (and slightly time-consuming) dinner
* Get allll of the returns handled
* 4 (or was it 5?) loads of laundry
* Picked up the house
* Had lunch out with Matt
* Logged a couple of miles

Hmm… I'm actually feeling pretty good about everything I accomplished now. And heck … there's always tomorrow.

I'm so sick of #*@% Winter!!!

Yea. The ski trip was … crappy. I enjoyed the comradarie with my fellow employees and all, but the drive sucked both ways and I didn't even get to ski. Matt was supposed to bring up my ski equipment this AM and I-70 was closed. So we sat around all morning waiting for it to open … and not so he could get through, but so that we could go home. By the time he could've gotten through, it would have been pointless to hit the slopes. Worst part of all was that my mom was up there with us and she is flying to Mexico tomorrow morning and we were worried she was going to miss her flight. Just as we were leaving town to take a really long alternate route down, they opened up I-70 and we took off.

I am soooo glad to be home.

Separation Anxiety

It's getting late … I just spent the past 20 minutes tossing stuff into my weekender bag. My clothes are laid out. My teeth are brushed. I should head to bed … and yet. I can't quite do it. I've got one last thing to do. I need to sneak into Tabby's room where she's been happily sleeping since 7:30 and give her a snuggle. I guess that it must get easier over time, but now it's still very hard for me to be apart from her. I haven't even left yet … won't really leave for some hours yet and still … and I'm already looking forward to Friday night when I'll get to see her again and hear her funny baby laugh and see that bright smile.

I sure like being her mama.

Party Girl and Other Mind Fluff

One of the things on my “to do” list for this weekend was to get invites out for baby girl's b'day. It did not get done … partially because I was waffling on the idea of having invitations at all. It will be a small affair with mostly family in attendance and normally for this sort of thing, I'd send out emails and make a few phone calls … but seeing as this is her FIRST BIRTHDAY, I'd sort of like something … y'know, paper … for the scrapbook. It seems a bit silly, but kind of important nonetheless.

I do think I've narrowed down the theme a bit. Everyone's suggestions were really helpful. I think we'll be going with a purple/green theme at least for the invitations (I'm crap at drawing) … but I may add some children's book elements into the mix as well. I will need to start looking into cupcakes and other foodstuffs soon … but hopefully I can get the invites out tonight.

And as my homage to Super Tuesday, I left what I thought was a funny comment on The Kitchen blog. C'mon, people, oven Mitts?!?! That's hilarious. Anyway … I don't think they got it either. And back in reality: I couldn't vote in the election. I am registered as an independent and they don't allow us to vote in primaries here in CO (which I think is very narrow-minded). But I still say my “party” designation stands. I wouldn't want to be a part of any party that would have me as a member.

We made Chunky Potato-Crab Chowder for dinner which was beyond excellent. We both raved about it … and as an added bonus, it was really easy to cook. Tabby loved it too.

11 Months!!!

Well since 10 months completely blew by me (I think we were skiing??), I thought I'd have to recap at 11 months. As I write this, Miss T is busy crawling around under my desk and that definitely underscores her biggest changes in the past couple of months … mobility. She crawls, cruises, pulls herself up and enjoys being chased. She is absolutely thrilled with her newfound freedom and sleeps like mad at night and is even napping better.

We're starting to see even more personality emerge. It always amazes me the things she finds to be absolutely hilarious and those that she gets so wound up over. Perhaps she has her mama's temper? Hope not.

She is chattering away at 90 miles per hour almost all the time now. We still have no clue what she's saying most of the time, but she's added a few things to her repoitoire, including “duh-gee” (ducky), “gog-geee” (doggy), “tuttle” (turtle) and “woozat?” (what/who is that? – usually accompanied by pointing).

What else can I tell you? In the world of food, she continues to be a huge eater … and she seems to have gotten a bit more picky, refusing a few of the things she used to enjoy (did we overfeed on these??). She's also really into snuggling … the dog, her kitty pillow, and us. And she loves to give everyone she meets kisses.

It hurts my heart a bit to know that she isn't the little baby we brought home from the hospital anymore. But we're so thrilled to see the amazing, funny and capable girl she's growing into. And besides, she still loves a good snuggle.