Quiche Cups!

I love having eggs and bacon or sausage in the mornings for breakfast. In the past this was only a weekend breakfast. As my college roommates know I am not a morning person. Thank you Jill for making sure I got to class by 9:).

Now that I'm at home with Alexandra I do have time to make a weekend breakfast during the week but not enough time to clean it up. While on South Beach I made these egg cups for a filling low carb breakfast. The quiche cups are delicious. You can fill them with your favorite breakfast veggies and meats. I liked to fill mine with bell peppers, onions, sausage, or bacon, and cheese.

Tex Mex Chicken Salad

This is one of my all time favorite summer dishes. I started making this chicken salad when I was on Weigh Watchers. It so easy to make and you can serve it as a sandwich, a salad, or as an appetizer in chip cups! All you need is sour cream or Greek yogurt, mayo, cumin, chili powder, black beans, corn, scallions, chicken, and I like to add a can of tomatoes with green chilies. If you buy the precooked frozen chicken already cut into cubes you just have to microwave it and add it to the beans, corn, tomatoes and scallions. I mixed equal parts sour cream and mayo with the spices (use as much or as little as you want) in a sepreat ramekin before adding the sauce to the chicken mixture. That's it. SO easy. It's great as a wrap or just as a chicken salad. You can see I didn't add any corn. I made this while we were on Phase one of our South Beach diet.

To make this as an appetizer I would dice the chicken before adding it to the mixture, or even use shredded chicken that I had pre-roasted and froze in 1 cup measurement baggies. Then just scoop the salad into Tortilla Chip cups and you are good to go.

Cheers
Katie

All Moved In!

Greetings Happy Hour Readers! I am finally all set up in our new house in Raleigh!!!! It is older than our house in Durham and the yard needs some major TLC but the kitchen is a dream. I love my flat top stove, and now that the oven works (long story) I'm excited to get back into baking.

The last 2 weeks V.J. and I decided to do phase one of the South Beach Diet. We have done this in the past and have been successful in jump starting our "healthy lifestyle" and weight loss. This time around we were successful once again but we complained alot more. I am already on a restricted diet due to my UC. Take away bread, white wine and pasta...not a happy Katie. But we stuck with it and I added exercise. I'm excited to announce I lost 6.5 pounds. The dishes I'm going to talk about in the upcoming entrees are ones I made while one South Beach. Some are awesome, some not so much, and others I loved at first but became tired of in the end.

I love to hear comments from all of you.

Cheers,
Katie

Shrimp and Chicken on the Grill

Tonight for dinner we started our second weekend of "Saturday dinner at home!"

All of your ingredients 

The shrimp in the Marinade, and the Chicken and Veggies on squires. 

Cilantro Garlic Butter 

Dinner is served

Steak Diane

One of my favorites while suffering through phase 1 on south beach.

Chicken Taco Salad

Growing up this was how we always made taco salad. I was in college before I found out that most people don't use thousand island dressing when making taco salad. For me this is the only way to make it and even though I have tried the traditional sour cream and salsa, it doesn't taste right without thousand island.

This is also a great way to use the roasted chicken from the freezer.

Cheers,
Katie

Meal from the freezer.

With the move in less than 2 weeks we are cleaning out our freezer. I had one bag left of the Bolognese sauce I made from Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy cook book. Lidia Bastianich is one of my favorite cooks. A few months ago I made a big pot of her Bolognese sauce. I measured out 1 and a half cup increments into plastic baggies and placed them in the freezer. That way I could have pasta with Bolognese sauce anytime and not have to cook it all day.

I made a little more pasta than I had sauce for so I just added about a cup from a jar of sauce we had in the pantry. I mixed the pasta, sauce and some parmigiana and baked it for 10 minutes at 350. This gave me time to finish up the salad and heat up some Texas toast. It was so good.

Bolognese sauce can be made in a shorter amount of time. It is totally worth it though to take your time and make a big pot that cooks all day. I will definitely make another batch after we move into our new house.

Cheers
Katie

Lunch and Dinner out?!?!

Last night I took Alexandra to a birthday party at Pump It Up in Raleigh. She had a great time and I was very impressed how smoothly everything was handled with maybe 20 kids running around between the ages of less then a year to maybe 6 years old. I think there were 3 parties going on at once and you never would have known it.

The party went to 6:45. Since VJ and I had trivia at Carolina Ale House, so we decided to eat there. This was decided before we figured out I would need to go pick up the wardrobe boxes. Our movers are located right by VJ's office so we all went out to lunch at Shane's Rib Shack. Shane's had really good BBQ and their sauce was really good. It was a tomato base sauce that wasn't to tangy. I highly recommend trying Shane's.

Cheers
Katie

Cinco DiMizio part two

We have some left over ground beef and taco shells from our Cinco DiMizio party so we are having leftovers tonight. I'm not sure if Alexandra is going to be up for it but a quick quesadilla can fix a fussy eater. I would enjoy a Mexican beer but I have ballet class tonight and a bloated ballerina isn't fun for anyone.

Tacos were great. I started to just use chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper to season the beef and chicken. It's pretty good. I had forgotten to pick up some more shredded cheese so I took two sticks of string cheese and made my own:). It worked out. One of my new favorite toppings are sautéed onions and bell peppers. I cook everything in the same skillet after the ground beef so that they can all have the same seasoning. Next time I think I'll mix in some diced jalapeño peppers for a little kick.

Alexandra shocked us by eating her quesadilla and half of the diced tomatoes. Last night we couldn't get her to touch her food. Ahh the joys of parenting.

Cheers,
Katie

Two weeks till moving week

Wow it has been forever since I wrote on my blog. Well we move in 17 days. So two weeks from today is moving week. I already know moving week will consists of lots of take out meals. We are right now working on operation clean out the fridge and pantry. This makes it hard to come up with meal plans that provide a verity of different dishes. Oh well just two weeks to go then I'll be in my new kitchen and be able cook something different every night:).

For now I'm going back to a favorite. Hot pepper jelly shrimp. It's from Now Eat This by Rocco DiSpirito. It's really good and not too hot. I like to serve it with rice and either broccoli or green beans. Asparagus would be really good too.

Dinner was just as good as always . I enjoyed it with a Chardonnay. Alexandra normally enjoys this meal but tonight didn't want anything todo with it. She would much rather play outside.

Cheers
Katie

One Day at a Time

I have been posting my updates on facebook letting you know how I have been doing with my UC. Today was my first day on my own with Alexandra and it went really well. We had breakfast and lunch in the living room since I still need to be sitting other wise I become really dizzy. Alexandra is such a trooper. She played with her toys and watched TV when I had to take my multiple trips to the bathroom. I'm so grateful she is able to entertain herself.

I keep telling myself that she won't remember all the TV and Mommy not being able to do much. VJ has been amazing through this whole ordeal. He has worked from home for most of the last 3 weeks to take care of Alexandra and myself. He has been to all of my doctor appointments and has helped with all the research of different treatment options. He has been my rock. Thank you Honey I love you.

My mom and dad have also been my source of comfort. Mom was down here 10 days helping with Alexandra and make sure the house didn't fall apart. She comes back this weekend to help for another week. Thank you Daddy for letting mom come down and take care of me. Even though I'm 31 I still really wanted my mommy to comfort me when the pain was too much=).

All I can do now is take this illness one day at a time. Today is a good day. I am grateful I can start counting them and not just see the long weeks of bad days.

Cheers
Katie

Holiday Weight

No matter how hard I tried I still put on 3 pounds over the crazy holiday season. So it's back to the workout program. My only problem is finding the right time to work out. We use to go on walks in the morning before Alexandra's morning nap. Then we would go out for playdates before her afternoon nap. Now that we are down to one nap (from 1 to 3) we do our playdates in the morning. I could go on a walk when she gets up at 3 but the motivation is gone by then.

I guess I really liked working out in the morning because then I was done for the day. Any tips to stay motivated throughout the day?

Back to"normal"

I love the Christmas season. But the day after Christmas I'm over the decorations and just want things to go back to "normal". Anyone else have these feelings?

We took down our tree and decorations yesterday. My living room has shrunk with everything decorated. The only thing left to do is put the boxed back in the attic.

Our morning and afternoon rutiens are going back to normal too. To all the moms out there (or anyone else) Alexandra functions so much better with a rutiene. I'm looking forward to a quiet week and not having to run around town all morning and eating out everyday.

Happy New Year!

Hello 2012! 2011 was a hard year for our family so we are looking forward to a new year. I don't know how we did it but VJ and I stayed up till 2:00 last night. We can't remember the last time we were up that late. We think the gun fire at midnight gave us an adrenalin boost.

Yes we are sure it was gun fire. We could hear a car drive up the road while firing a gun. There was also the recognizable shotgun, and the sound if someone unloading a clip. This was followed by lots of police cars rushing to our area. Alexandra slept through the whole thing.

So we really hope we can sell the house this year:)!

Other than the house we also want to get our family back in shape. So it's time to bring back the lose it app. Instead of having one big goal i think smaller goals are more achievable. So my goal is to be down 10 pounds by Valentines Day. That's it. I'll come up with a new goal on the 14th.

My other goal is to take more "me time". As you know I've been struggling with ulcerative colitis since August. One thought my doctor and I had was to help me have more time to relax and rest. So I take meds to help me sleep all night and listen to calming waves while Alexandra takes a nap. I think that should also mean I should go to a day spa on a biweekly bases:) just a thought:).

So happy new years everyone. Let's make it a wonderful year.