Cupcake Calendar: March and April 2012

I'm trying to keep myself busy while I make my way through the TiVo.

March

April

I sort of cheated on the April page by using a pre-made 5x7 "brag book" page and then "matting" it on background paper, but I'll have to work at things a LONG time to design something as nice as what the professionals come up with. When I try it, I always think my pages look busy and fussy, but of course when they do it, I think they look fantastic.

(Oh and also: those pictures on the April page are not from her birthday party, or even her birthday, but how perfect are they?)

Now if only I could get somewhere on the Cousins Calendar ... eesh.

12W12S11: Greek Stir-Fry

It's not really "Greek" and it's not exactly a stir-fry, but I didn't know what else to call this concoction besides "delicious." Possible substitutions are marked with asterisks.

Greek Stir-Fry
Makes 2 servings, about 550 calories each

• 3 ounces broad egg noodles
• chicken or vegetable bouillon cubes (optional)
• 2 tablespoons lemon vinaigrette*
• 1½ teaspoon olive oil
• 4 links (or about 12 ounces) chicken sausage with feta and spinach*
• 1 medium zucchini*
• 1 large yellow bell pepper*
• ¼ Vidalia onion
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary*

1. Cook egg noodles according to package directions, adding bouillon cubes to cooking water if desired. When done, drain and toss with vinaigrette. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, preheat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Slice sausage into thin rounds. Add sausage slices to skillet and cook 1-2 minutes or until meat starts to brown slightly. Stir.
3. Slice zucchini into rings. Cut pepper and onion into strips. Season with salt and pepper. Add to skillet and cook 1-2 minutes or until vegetables begin to soften. Stir.
4. Add rosemary and continue cooking until desired level of doneness, making sure meat is fully cooked, stirring often. If necessary, reduce heat partway through cooking to prevent burning.
5. Divide noodle mixture between two bowls. Top with cooked sausage and vegetables. Serve immediately. Enjoy!

*Possible substitutions: Instead of "Greek" stir fry (which, BTW, is because of the feata-and-spinach sausage and the lemon vinaigrette), you can make this "Italian" by using Italian dressing or balsamic vinaigrette instead of lemon, and sweet or hot Italian sausage. If you want, you can swap out oregano for the rosemary, but I like rosemary and it will work fine. Also, I used zucchini and a yellow bell pepper (mostly for color), but you can use a yellow summer squash and any color peppers you want. You could also add a can of diced tomatoes if you wanted to and cook the liquid down by at least half (I often do that when I serve this with a heartier pasta instead of egg noodles), or serve Italian-style stewed tomatoes on the side.

Let me know if you like it!

Cupcake Calendar: August 2012

Sometimes, you see some pictures, and you KNOW.

(Dedicated especially to my sister who likes to look ahead in my Flickr photostream.)

Cupcake Calendar: July 2012

I have to rebuild my entire digital scrapbooking library because the Apple Geniuses are really not as smart as advertised and they couldn't "find" my all my scrapbooking stuff to bring it over to the new computer, and I have to re-learn how to use Gimp because some of the buttons and shortcuts work differently on the Mac vs. the old PC, but you know what?

When you have a great picture to start with, you're pretty much set.

12W12S11: Faked Beans

You know how sometimes in your darkest hour, when you didn't have a chance to go grocery shopping over the weekend and you don't really have two nickels to rub together anyway so you're eating out of the cupboard and the freezer until payday, sometimes you whip up something out of random ingredients and it turns out to be pretty darned tasty?

Yeah, me neither.

No, I'm kidding: I made up this sort-of BBQ beans dish out of stuff I found in the pantry, the freezer, and the cooler full of dry goods that I never fully unpacked from our beach vacation last year. And it's really pretty good. So here is the recipe:

Faked Beans
Makes about 4 cups

• 2 cans (15½ ounces each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• ½ can Manwich sauce (about 1 cup)
• ½ cup barbecue sauce
• 2 tablespoons Heinz 57 sauce
• ½ pound Jenny-O turkey kielbasa, cut into chunks

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot and stir to combine well. Cook at high heat for 1 hour, stirring only as needed. Reduce heat to low and cook for an additional 1½-2 hours or until done, stirring only as needed. Add additional Heinz 57, ketcup, or barbecue sauce if needed. Reduce heat to warm and continue cooking until ready serve, or remove from heat, cover, and refrigerate over night. If necessary, reheat before serving.

Adjustments: Obviously this recipe can be doubled, since all my measurements are based on halves. I guess you can use any kind of beans you want. I used cannellini beans because they're light in color and pretty plain in flavor and I had about 5 cans of them in the cupboard. You can use any kind of barbecue sauce you like (our was store-brand brown sugar), or make your own. I don't know whether the Heinz 57 makes a difference, but I used it so I included it in my recipe. You could use ketchup or extra BBQ sauce instead. I used turkey kielbasa because we had it but you could use any kind of kielbasa here (or maybe even chorizo or andouille sausage, and definitely hot dogs would work).

My math is fuzzy because I didn't measure everything exactly, but this makes about 4 cups of the finished product. I counted 1⅓ cups as a serving, and there are about 350-400 calories per serving using this recipe. Using lower-sugar BBQ sauce, lower-fat kielbasa, and smaller quantities of everything can reduce the calorie count if you need to. Enjoy!

PS -- I called these "Faked Beans" because they aren't baked (even though most of the baked beans I eat aren't either) and also because I "faked" this recipe out of cupboard ingredients.

12W12S11: Um

Yeah. I have not been doing very well. I'll just 'fess up to that now and we'll figure out how to deal with the guilt later. I'm not completely off the rails crazy, but I have been having a hard time staying focused and committed -- mostly, when I know there are candies or cookies anywhere around me, I just can't will myself to stay away. So it's like starting over every day.

At least I'm not giving up. At least there is that.

===

Oh, hey, remember way back when I started this thing, and I said I was working toward the Wegman's "half-plate healthy" meal planning style? (See "Step/Week Eight.") Well, it turns out they might have been on to something, because the USDA recently changed the food pyramid to resemble that setup. Now it's "ChooseMyPlate" and, wouldn't you know it, half the plate is reserved for fruits and veggies. Even though I am not being 100% as careful and diligent as I should be, I still try to base on my meals on having plenty of fruits and veggies, so I am ahead of the curve here.

You know -- I know plenty of people don't care for the current President and First Lady, but I keep seeing Mrs. Obama on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel talking about eating healthier and making better dietary choices, and it's amazing how much of a difference this is already making in my house. Seriously. When I was a kid we had Nancy Reagan shouting at us to just say no to drugs, and I'm not entirely sure that it made a whole lot of difference. All it did for me was make me paranoid. But the Obama Administration's focus on positive reinforcement and good choices and activity and ownership of your diet is pretty refreshing, to me. Hopefully my kid will grow up with a better relationship to food than I had, with more of an emphasis on eating the right things and less of an emphasis on abstaining from everything. The concept of a "sometimes food" is pretty foreign to me, but it makes complete sense.

===

No weight change since the last time. I am taking this as a good sign -- the "no news is good news" approach. I have not been exercising and I already admitted that I haven't been  uber-careful and I have been eating my feelings more than I am comfortable with, but I will keep at this until I get it right.

12W12S11: Restart

So. Vacation #1 for the year is over. I'm up 11 lbs. from my lowest point, when I switched over to the 1½ lb.-per-week plan. I'm not blaming Lose It -- this one is all me. I have not been as diligent about tracking as I need to be to continue to lose weight. And I want to, because I felt good on vacation, but I didn't feel like I looked my best, and when you're walking around Southern California with all the beautiful people, you really want to look your best.

So. As of today I am back on the 2 lb.-per-week plan (using today's weight) until I get back into fighting form. I have some allies in this -- they know who they are -- and whatever our goals are, we're going to try to reach them together. I still have a long-term goal in mind, but my short-term goal is to have to buy a new bathing suit before we go on Vacation #2 over the week of Labor Day. I want to see pictures of myself and not go, "Eww."

So. Restart. It's on again, like Donkey Kong.