Cabin Fever Feast

Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair

The day started really early around our house this morning.  Billy had a 9:30am flight taking him out to San Francisco (anyone get the San Francisco song reference now or am I the only hippie around here??) on a business trip, so we had to get up and going in a hurry.  He comes home the evening before we leave for a weekend in Tampa, so the dog had to go the vet today for boarding and the cat needed shots and food.

I got up just after 5am and put my workout clothes on, but I never made it to an actual workout.  First of all, I woke up with my legs KILLING me.  I popped Aleve, drank some water and decided to take it easy.  I ended up making coffee for Billy and whole wheat banana pancakes for Noah.

We got Billy and all the animals out the door and then Noah and settled down for breakfast.

This was my first time using this recipe.  I was afraid it would be too healthy wheaty, but it was honestly perfect.  Noah had no complaints either!

My Mom was over today to hang out with Noah.  I whipped out a fast and tasty lunch on the spot.

Tuna pasta salad over spring mix with french bread from our CSA basket.

Tuna Pasta Salad:

Cook 1/2 bag veggie rotini according to directions.  Drain and return to pot.  Add one drained can of tuna, 1 can of sliced black olives, partial bottle of Newman’s Own Oil and Vinegar dressing (to taste), salt and pepper.  Serve warm or cold over spring mix.

We dipped the bread in olive oil with a dash of balsamic vinaigrette and fresh cracked pepper.

Super lunch!

I ran out to the vet to get Dakota this afternoon.  The good news is that he’s doing good and fully recovered from his kidney stuff!  The bad news is that I have $230 less in my pocket now.  Dang, pets are expensive!! 

And the tire malfunction light came on while I was driving Special Agent Cooper AGAIN.  I suppose I’ll have to have it for really checked into now.  I spent what should have been a fun, no baby in the car hot mama freedom ride driving like a little old lady scared that I was going to lose a tire. Bleh!!

Dinner was a mish mash of leftovers.

Tuna pasta salad, salmon salad and a hunk of french bread.

It was Tuesday, so Mom and I had our usual after work glass of wine.  Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon tonight.

I may or may not have ended the evening with a big ole handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips!

I am proud of my Billy.  When he arrived in San Fran today, he took the rail car from the airport to the hotel.  We don’t have public transportation to that degree here, so he was open to it but a little overwhelmed.  Thanks to the amazing internet, I walked him through exactly what to do and where to go.  Woot! 

I miss him already!

Monday…more wine, please.

Oh HELLO.  Anyone else have a helluva Monday as well?

Mine started last night when I couldn’t go to sleep.  Then when I finally fell asleep, I woke up after midnight in the throes of the worst nightmares ever.  I didn’t think I was going to get my heart to stop racing and my calf muscles were cramping up.  H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E.

And today, my stomach hurt all day as did my lower back.  I tried to do Jillian Michaels this morning and got through about 20 minutes before I got completely sick to my stomach.  I ended up in a fetal position for a while.  Yeah. 

My plan was to finish my workout after work today, but my back was DONE by then, so I decided a rest was in order.  So was a big handful of chocolate chips!  :)

Let’s discuss something happier….BREAKFAST!

Bob’s steel cut oats cooked in water.  Then I added a splash of light plain soy milk, a sliced banana and a tablespoon of chunky natural peanut butter.  Velvet Hammer coffee with soy creamer and honey.

Billy brought home lunch today from our office building restaurant, Salut.

Salmon salmon with tomatoes and red onions.  Vinaigrette on the side.  I saved half of it for my afternoon snack, but I never ate it because I felt so rough.  I had a cup of coffee and a bunch of water instead.

Dinner was a Billy special and brought to us courtesy of our monthly CSA farm basket.  We had 3 catfish fillets from the Arkansas Delta Catfish Capital, Dumas.  Billy worked his cajun seasoning magic on it and served it with leftover lima beans (they just better and better every day!) and sweet potatoes.  If you are like me, you grew up eating nuked sweet potatoes from the microwave.  I honestly had no idea how good they could be baked in the oven or on the grill.  Wow.  Seriously, amazing.

Mmmm. 

I also drowned my cares in a nice cabernet:

Cellar No. 8.  If you are looking for an inexpensive bottle of wine, check out Cellar No. 8.  Always nice and around $10.

Now I’m watching Larry King Live, which suddenly turned into all Michael Jackson propofol coverage instead of whatever it was previously scheduled.  I adored him when I was 10.  I love his music.  I thought he turned really freaky.  The Pope didn’t get this kind of coverage.  The Dalai Lama probably won’t either.  Hell.In.A.Handbasket.

:-)

My hubby is headed to California on business tomorrow morning, so I’m off to enjoy his company while I can.  When I say enjoy his company, by that I mean make him rub my aching back.  Of course,.

We made it through Monday!  High Five!

Birthdays and Blood

Happy Sunday!  I can’t believe that the weekend is already gone!

We had a relaxing yet productive day here.  I was trying to keep it low key this weekend even though I really wanted to work myself into a frenzy as Billy is leaving again this week for a business trip and then we leave for a weekend trip on Friday.

This morning I got up just after 7am and did a couple of workouts on Comcast’s On Demand channel from Exercise TV.  I did Jillian Michael’s Shred Level 1 (awesome!) and a silly Surfer Girl ab workout.

In the meantime, Billy made breakfast.  I woke up feeling sick to my stomach today and by breakfast time, I was a quivering mess, so I forgot to take a picture.  He made homemade biscuits from scratch, scrambled eggs and Arkansas bacon (a large meaty cut of pork shoulder, I think- a lot like a thin piece of ham).  I put mine on a biscuit with a slice of smoked cheddar cheese to make a little breakfast sandwich.  Yum.

No coffee because I was still out of soy creamer, so water for me.  I needed it anyway with my stomach.

Billy went to the grocery store for us after breakfast while Noah was napping, so I should be fully stocked while he’s gone. 

Lunch was a leftover feast of smoked chicken and lima beans.  Billy filled my plate, check it out…

I couldn’t eat all that!  :)

After lunch, we headed out to Sam’s Club for bulk bags of chicken breasts and fresh pineapple.  When we returned home, I took a little nap on the couch while Noah napped and Billy played football on the Xbox.

When I woke, I was so freaking hungry.  I had a few tortilla chips and a slice of cheese while I fixed a snack.

The official snack:

Broiled banana with chunky natural peanut butter (easy, warm, delicious).  It feels naughty, but it’s good for you!

We had a 6pm dinner reservation tonight at Bene Vita, a local Italian style restaurant, in celebration of my Dad’s 60th birthday tomorrow!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEST DAD EVER!!!!

We started off with a bottle of my Dad’s choosing:

You know me and Pinot…it was eh, okay.  :)

Dad and I split the salmon (of course) and I ordered it without butter with sides of asparagus and sautéed veggies.  The salmon was nice.  The asparagus was mediocre…a tad overcooked.  The veggies were good, but I could definitely taste butter. 

Billy got the lasagna:

Billy and I split a glass of Ravenswood Zin:

And we got a little birthday treat of tiramissou…split 5 ways.

We came home just in time to watch tonight’s episode of True Blood on HBO.  So good!  Mom and I heard a table at Bonefish the other night discussing the antics of Sookie and Bill, so I guess we aren’t the only ones caught up in the Bon Temps vampire intrigue!

Then we watched Hung, the newest show from HBO.  We almost didn’t give this show a chance since the basic premise is a drowntrodden,fallen on hard times high school coach who turns to prostitution to help pay his bills.  And the title describes what makes him such a good trick.  Yeah.  Really.  Surprisingly, it’s really well written and we are now completely hooked on the characters.  Seriously, check it out.

Now I’m off to bed because 5am comes so early and Jillian will be waiting on me!

Foodie Recap

Hello, loves!

I have wonderful news in my world…Billy just got back last night from his two weeks at Fort Sill in Oklahoma for Captain’s Career Course training (he’s a captain in the Army National Guard).

Noah’s been saying, “Mama, Dada, Mama, Dada”  all day long.  So cute!  We are definitely glad that he’s home.

Since I’ve been summer breaking for so long from the blog, I’m going to just post some highlights from the time I was gone.  For the most part, I still kept taking pictures of my food.  Isn’t that funny?  Can’t keep a food blogger down!

 

Noah at the wheel of my Dad’s 60th birthday gift from my Mom…a ‘73 Corvette Stingray…

I’m scared….:-)

 

Homemade hamburger buns…easy and delish!  If I find the recipe again, I’ll share it!

Dinner party spread:

We had my parents over for a business meeting and dinner.  Billy grilled up buffalo burgers with goat cheese, baked sweet potato fries and watermelon from our CSA farm basket.  Yum.

 

Noah loves GREEN MONSTERS!  Of course he does, they are THAT good!  :)

Friday night dinner out with my parents.  We went to a new Little Rock restaurant, The Pantry, which describes its food as rustic old world cooking.

We started with hummus and pita.  It was really good and they brought extra pita without us even having to ask for it.  Excellent!

And my Mom is on their email list and she got a secret code word to get us 30% off of a bottle of wine that evening.

Organic and very good!

 

I got the Stock Pot as my entree…cod in a tomato broth with baguette. 

It was A LOT of food and cooked to perfection.  It would be perfect to share with someone.  I felt guilty because I ended up leaving quite a bit behind.

I can’t wait to take Billy here.  They have great German beers and classic dishes like Grilled Bratwurst.  My got their Rustic Bowl special of the night (lasagna) and $5 of it was donated to a local charity.  How wonderful is that?

 

We got notice last week that Ozark Mountain Smokehouse was closing and new ownership was not immediately known, so I placed a rush order that included 8 jars of my favorite mustard…they threw in a few extra for me.

Spicy Mustard.  In the Kitchen with a knife.  I LOVE THAT.  I tried to explain the Clue reference to my Mom.  She didn’t get it.

 

Here was a lovely after dinner treat….a glass of Biltmore Estate Century red wine and a piece of chocolate cake from Boulevard Bread Company.

 

Noah’s latest trick.  He’ll be somersaulting before we know it!

 

 

Tonight’s dinner.  All cooked by my amazing husband.

 

Lima beans and potatoes from this month’s CSA farm basket and smoked chicken from the Ozark Mountain Smokehouse.

Lovely dinner!

It’s good to be back!

I'm Still Here!

Just a quick note to let you know that a couple of busy evenings has turned into a summer blogging hiatus.  Sir William is attending a two week Captain's Career course at Ft Sill and I've been playing single Mom in the interim.

It's been interesting to say the least and by the end of the night after Noah's gone to bed, I'm pooped and ready for a nice glass of wine!

So, my personal sanity wins over the blog, but I do plan on posting some highlights this weekend because I do have great things to share!!

We went to dinner with my parents last night to a new restaurant in town called The Pantry.  Can't wait to show you my dinner entree!

Hugs,

Angelea

Courts and Queens

BREAKFAST

It was another wonderful oatmeal day!

 

Bob's Scottish oats cooked in water with soy milk, sliced bananas and crunchy almond butter added at the end. 

This is my standard breakfast and I love it.  Today was a travel to Hot Springs day, so I knew I needed a lasting breakfast.  This one fills the bill!  :)

LUNCH

We got to meet Courtney, an old friend at Central Park Fusion in Hot Springs today.  Courtney (COURT) and I met when we owned a popcorn shop, Poppa's Corn, in downtown Hot Springs.  Her parents owned The Gift Tree, a boutique store a few doors down.  She would come over quite often for ice cream during the summer or after school and we would gab and gab and gab.  She's like a little sis to me and we all adore her!

 

We had a great time catching up.  I forgot to take a picture of my lunch, but I had the wasabi chicken sandwich and a side salad with vinaigrette on the side.  I gave Noah my  bread and made a chicken salad for myself.

Yum!

DINNER

Tonight's dinner goal was to use the tomato infused pasta that came in our CSA farm basket last week.

I came up with Pesto Pasta with roasted red peppers and Round Cheesy Bread.  I meant to fix a side salad, but ran out of time.

 

Pesto Pasta

8oz pasta
1/3 cup minced fresh basil
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, quartered
1/8 tsp of nutmeg
1/3 cup of olive oil

Cook pasta.  Meanwhile, place the basil, parsley, cheese, salt, garlic and nutmeg in a blender and whirl on low until finely chopped.  Gradually add oil.  Drain pasta, add pesto and toss.

Tonight I added a roasted red pepper that I had left from a previous CSA basket.  I just threw it in the blender with the olive oil and it worked out lovely.  I didn't remove the peel or seeds or anything.

Round Cheesy Bread

1 1/2 cups baking mix (store bought or homemade mix)
1 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 tsp dried oregano (fresh works nicely too)
1/2 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
2 Tbsp butter (or margarine), melted
Additional Parmesan cheese

Combine the first six ingredients in a bowl (batter will be thick).  Spoon into a greased 8" round pan.  Drizzle with butter and sprinkle with the additional Parmesan cheese.  Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.  Cool for ten minutes and then cut into wedges.

This bread is like crack.  Or chocolate.  You'll want to slap your dining companions unconscious and eat the whole pan by yourself.

I also had two glasses of Cellar No 8's Merlot.  I'm back into Merlot!  Once again, Cellar No 8 doesn't disappoint.  It's a consistently nice and inexpensive bottle of wine.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEST FRIEND, MICHAELA!  SHE'S 34 TODAY AND BIG AS A HOUSE.  Then again, she is also 8 months pregnant.  :-)  Love you, Reina (QUEEN)!

Nymph

Pick Guitar, Fill Fruit Jar and Be Gay-oh

Tonight was cajun night in the kitchen!  We got some okra in our CSA farm basket last week that I wanted to make sure and use.  When I think okra, my mind always drifts to wonderful cajun style dishes like gumbo and such.

First things first, let's start with breakfast.

 

Scottish oats cooked in water.  Then I added soy milk, peanut butter and sliced bananas.  Breakfast at my desk because I am SWAMPED right now.

LUNCH

Green Monster!!!  I felt the need for spinach.  What can I say??

 

1 cup soy milk

1frozen banana

1 scoop of Amazing Grass Chocolate Meal

1 spoonful of peanut butter

4 handfuls of spinach

Whirled up in my sucky sucky blender.  Everytime I make GM's in my blender, it starts smelling hot and I secretly pray for it have a terminal heart attack.  It sucks!

DINNER

Here come the cajun, ma cher amio....

Jambalaya with Okra

 

Made heart healthy with chicken and turkey smoked sausage links.  Here's the link to the recipe I followed.  I sliced up the okra and stirred them in during the last 15 mins of cooking. 

Billy and I really liked this dish, but hesitate to call it real jambalaya.  It was more like rice with some jamb ingredients.  It needed more saucy sauce.

It was still tasty and it made a ton and a half. 

I had a Diamond Bear IPA as well.

Tomorrow is a travel Wednesday as we're taking my Mom to Hot Springs for the day.  It looks like we are getting to have lunch with a very good friend of ours while we are there.  I hope so!

Good night!

Down on the Farm

So I took a little blog vacation.

It started off on Friday forgetting to take pictures and then carried on the next day when I attended my best friend's baby shower.  I remembered to take pictures of everything except my food!  I decided that my pea blog brain needed a bit of a rest.

I took time this weekend and plotted out how to best utilize all of our wonderful CSA farm basket goodies for the month.

This morning I sat down for breakfast with mix up bowl of cereal (Kashi Heart to Heart, bran flakes and Kashi Go Lean) in rice milk and all of my menu planning madness.  I thought I would share with you:

There's my list of basket stuff plus other items in my freezer and pantry.  Then I scribbled down meal ideas.  The sheet to the right is the weekly menu plan and the one on top is the grocery list.  Whoo hoo!

Lunch today was brought home by Billy.  He brought me a turkey sandwich from Salut Bistro in our office building.

 

Looks pretty good?  It was completely COLD.  Totally disappointing.  Not to mention that they have a regular menu and then tenant's only menu.  Billy ordered off the regular menu and this sandwich is from the tenant's menu. The regular sandwich comes on a hoagie, has bacon and is definitely HOT.

Oh well.

If I'd had lunch meat or bread, I could have made my own.  :)

This afternoon, I really desperately wanted coffee.  I suffered this morning with unsweetened vanilla hemp milk in my coffee.  I couldn't do it again this afternoon.  I ate a snickerdoodle cookie instead.  Heh. I hovered over the cookie jar and didn't take a picture.  Maybe not the best snack choice??  :)

After work, I sent Billy to Kroger with a list of groceries to round out our basket and instructions to shop as frugally as possible.  Little did I know, that set off a series of discussions about How Frugal and what ORGANICS to buy and we can't sacrifice our family's health for sake of a budget and yada yada.  I told him that I trusted him and sent him on his way.

How did he do???  I think he did really well.  The ticket total was just over $111 and he bought a few household goods like dishwashing detergent as well.  Big ticket items were $5.99 for a pound of buffalo meat, $4.39 for store brand organic flour, $7.49 for a mega canister of black pepper, $7.99 for real maple syrup, $4.99 for Noah's Kashi cereal.

He rushed home with a few items I needed for tonight's dinner (eggs!).

 

Purple Hull Peas, eggplant casserole and cornmeal muffins.  The peas and eggplant were from our basket.  The cornmeal was from a previous basket.  I used basil from our garden in casserole sauce.

I cooked the peas (from fresh, not dried) in 8 cups of boiling chicken broth for about an hour until tender.  Delicious!

The eggplant recipe was from our CSA newsletter and I shall not repeat it here or anywhere.  Billy ate it, but didn't like it.  I wouldn't even eat it.  I soaked the eggplant in salt water to remove any bitterness, but it didn't seem to help.  Yuck.

The rest of this week will be built around the CSA basket.  I'm looking forward to it.   A lot of times, we don't make a plan and then we discover that the squash has gone bad or the okra is wrinkly or the pasta is all dried up.  No more!  No wasting!

More fun with local produce tomorrow, loves!

Night!

Homemade Tortillas are AMAZING!

No post last night, but I had a lot of work to catch up on.  Then I was just DONE!

Here's a brief rundown on yesterday's meals as part of the $70 Emergency Meal Plan experiment.  

Breakfast was french toast made with homemade bread (all 4 loaves are almost gone, wah!). Orange juice (the last of it). 

 

I was on my own for lunch because Billy was traveling, so I warmed up leftover Lentil Soup with Dumplings AGAIN.  I promise that this was the last of it.

 

Dinner-Creamed Tuna and Peas over Rice and Garlic Toast

Doesn't this sound absolutely NASTY?

 

Doesn't it look gross too??  :-)

It wasn't!!!  I won't say it was great, but we could definitely eat it.  I made the sauce with half skim milk and half rice milk.  I'm allergic to dairy, but didn't want to go full on rice milk for fear that the hubby would be able to tell. 

Before bed, I mixed up oats and milk and put it in the fridge for Oatmeal Pancakes this morning.

 

Already hard at work again...

These pancakes reminded me a lot of IHOP's harvest grain and nut cakes...I think I could easily recreate them, which would be so yummy!

Today's lunch was cooked spinach, batter bread (aka spoon bread) and margarine.  I was short an egg on the bread and it cooked for 40 mins, which I didn't really plan well for.

I ended up warming up some Lentil Chili.

 

Batter bread on the side, but frankly, I was scared to eat it.  It was mushy and I wasn't into it.

Last Dinner on the meal plan

Homemade tortillas with refried beans and fried onions.

I MADE TORTILLAS!  And they are easy and DELICIOUS.  So so so much better than anything we've ever had from the store or a restaurant.  Wow.  Recipe on the HH website from the link above.

And the refried beans were leftover pintos from the other night mashed up with 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and simmered down to a nice sauciness.

Fried onions:  one onion sliced thinly and sauteed in one tablespoon of margarine until brownish.  These are good!

 

That' a real ugly picture.  Here's a better one:

 

Yes, even Noah liked the tortillas!!  :)

Now I'm off to finish up my meal plans for the next week...we still want to keep our grocery expenses on the frugal side.  I've learned some things from the frugal food experiment (more on that later) that I want to carry on.  It's been very eye opening and I'd like to keep on this kind of path except in a healthier menu.

I feel a little carbed out with so much cornbread and pancakes!!  I am a little tired of margarine!!

Now I'm ready to relax a little even though I need to do more work.  I think Little Miss Tortilla Maker needs to put her feet up!!  ;-)

Good night!

Lovin' the Lentils

Another day down on the $70 Emergency Meal plan!  Another day of country cooking the frugal way!

BREAKFAST

Oatmeal cooked in water.  I added a little rice milk and 2 tsp of peanut butter as well.  Toast with margarine and jelly on the side.  OJ.

 

LUNCH

Today I fixed the Lentils with Veggies and Dumplings.  Dang!  Good stuff!

 

This recipe is definitely a keeper!  Easy to make with simple ingredients.

DINNER

Dinner was going to be bean burritos, but today was so busy with work for all of us.  I worked late and so did Billy so we decided to warm up leftover soup from lunch. 

It was that good!

 

I still have a lot of unfinished work, so I think I'm settling down with my laptop for a while this evening.

Good night!