New Recipe for a New Years Resolution

Hello blog world! Happy 2013! One of my New Years Resolutions is to be a better blogger. So, in honor of that, here's the first post of 2013. :)

As another New Years Resolution, I am attempting to eat clean. In short, I'm trying to weed out processed foods, white flour, sugar, etc. It's proving to be more of a challenge than I anticipated! Tonight, we decided to try a new recipe-- Healthy Fettuccine Alfredo! Jacob LOVES fettuccine, but I can never get over how fatty and rich it is! So, this recipe from Runner's World was a perfect compromise!

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. vegetable farfalle (It's our favorite! You could also use whole wheat or vegetable fettuccine)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 3/4 cup low-fat, low-sodium chicken broth
• 3/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• 3/4 cup Greek yogurt
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Prepare pasta according to package. Prepare sauce as pasta is boiling.
2. Melt butter in a large sauce pan over medium heat. Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes.
3. Place cornstarch in a small bowl. Whisk in chicken broth until smooth. Pour into sauce pan and raise the heat, bringing sauce to a simmer, whisking occasionally.
4. Whisk in cheese and continue whisking until melted. Immeadiately remove pan from heat. Whisk in yogurt until smooth.
5. Toss pasta with Alfredo sauce. Season with salt and pepper and enjoy! :)

Let me know if you make it/what you think!

Homemade Tortilla Chips for Shrimp Nachos

It's Sunday and we usually like to experiment! We have been curious about making our own tortilla chips. Being the Mexican food lovers that we are, we are always looking for how to make cleaner, lower calorie Tex-Mex. We had some tortillas, some leftover shrimp that we needed to use before it went bad and some cheese. Jacob looked up how to make your own tortilla chips, and stumbled across this recipe on Food Network. We've had really good success with their recipes before so we decided to try!

Ingredients:

• 6 inch tortillas (each tortilla makes 6 chips...we used 5 for the 2 of us and it was definitely enough)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Cover baking sheet with foil. Cut your tortillas into 6ths.
2. Brush both sides of each tortilla with vegetable oil. 2 tablespoons was just about perfect for our 5 tortillas, so pour accordingly!

3. Salt your chips. Place in the oven for 5 minutes. Turn baking sheet around and cook for 3-4 more minutes.

**Watch your chips very carefully! It actually took us 2 tries to make chips because they burned to a crisp the first time (we baked them for 6 minutes + 6 minutes). The second time we were paranoid so we did 5 minutes + 3 minutes. The chips could have been a little crispier and still been good, so I'd watch carefully and leave in the oven for 5 minutes + 4 minutes. They looked like this:

To use up our shrimp, we cooked it in 2 tbsp. olive oil, lime juice, salt, pepper and cilantro. When our chips were finished, we sprinkled with fat free shredded cheddar cheese and 2% milk Mexican blend cheese (I used about 1/4 cup of each on my 12 chips). We then placed one of our shrimp in the middle of each cheesy chip and placed back in the oven for 2 minutes. Then we had this...

They were amazing! We ate them with guacamole and loved them! We didn't feel gross like we usually do when we eat tex-mex or nachos. We may never buy chips again! :)

Healthy Junk Food

If I had to describe this week in one phrase, it would he "healthy junk food." Jacob and I are junk food lovers at heart. Although we are MUCH healthier now than this time a year ago, we still crave pizza, chicken fingers, french fries and sweets. Our proudest cooking accomplishments are always when we find a clean and healthy way to eat our favorite junk foods.This week was a win in that area! On Sunday night, we ate Spicy Curried Chicken Fingers from Food Network's healthy section.

I know what you're probably thinking... "Curry? GROSS." But there is so little of it in this that it just adds a little spice!

Ingredients:

• cooking spray
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon curry
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 cups panko
• 3 chicken breasts cut into 1-inch strips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400. Spray baking sheet with cooking spray (we also put down foil first for easier cleanup)
2. Whisk eggs, mustard, curry and cumin in a shallow bowl. Place the Panko in a seperate bowl.
3. Dip the chicken strips in the egg mixture, letting the extra roll off, the coat with the Panko.
4. Place chicken on baking sheet, coating with cooking spray.
5. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn chicken and respray with cooking spray, then bake 10 more minutes!

Mmm! It was good! Then today, Jacob and I had healthy burgers and fries. Our burgers were MorningStar Farms Spicy Black Bean Burgers, which are my absolute obsession! We eat them on whole wheat sandwich thins with mustard! Our fries were adapted from Skinny Taste's Baked Seasoned Fries. Overall we liked them, but I do have a few pointers from our experience!

Ingredients:

• cooking spray
• 2 medium potatoes, washed and dried
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 tablepoon dried rosemary
• 1/2 tablespoon thyme
• 1/2 tablespoon marjoram
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1.2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400. Line baking sheet with foil for easy clean up (always a plus!) Lightly coat with cooking spray.
2. Cut each potato width wise, then into about 1/4 inch slices. Place in large bowl.

3. Add oil and toss well. Then add all spices, ensuring that your fries are all coated.
4. Place in a single layer (This is VERY important) on baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes or until crisp, turning once halfway through.

We kind of ended up piling our fries on the baking sheet, as our potatoes ended up making a lot of fries. So, some were crispy and some were crunchy. Making sure the fries are in a single layer is very important. They had an AWESOME flavor. Another one of our favorite fry substitutes is Smashed Potatoes. They are basically the same idea, but they take quite a bit longer to make!

Hope you enjoy binging on junk food healthily! :)

Monday Munchies: Shrimp Quesadillas with Tomato Avocado Salsa

Hello! We have been eating really well this week... lots of good recipes! Tonight was made some AWESOME low-fat quesadillas. I know what you're thinking...the thought of quesadillas isn't low fat...but these weren't bad for you and they tasted delicious! We also made our own salsa!

Our recipe was adapted from Skinnytaste with ingredients we could find at our local Super Target!

Ingredients:

Salsa

• 1 medium avocado, diced
• 3/4 regular sized can of plain, diced tomatoes
• 1/4 red onion, diced
• 1 tbsp chopped cilantro
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Quesadillas

• 16 large shrimp
• cumin
• garlic powder
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup fat free cheddar cheese
• 4 wheat/high fiber tortillas (we used Mission Artisan Style Corn-Wheat Tortillas... we are kind of obsessed with them)
• olive oil spray

1. For salsa... pour 3/4 can of tomatoes in bowl. Mix in diced avocado and red onion with a spoon. Then mix in lemon juice and chopped cilantro. Place aside (and try not to snack on it while you cook like I did! :))
2. Spray cooking spray in can. Season shrimp with cumin, garlic, salt and pepper and cook over medium heat until cooked through (2-3 minutes). Set aside.
3. Spray more cooking spray in pan (this is imperative for the quesadilla). Place tortilla in pan. Add 1/4 cup of cheese, 8 shrimp and salsa. Cook over medium heat until cheese is melted.

   4. Place second tortilla over shrimp and goodies. To turn the quesadilla, lift off of pan with spatchula. Place plate on top of uncooked tortilla. Flip plate to bottom and slide back onto pan (I added more cooking spray...I really didnt want them to stick). Cook for 2-3 more minutes until tortilla is brown.

We used the additional salsa to dip our quesadillas in! So yummy!

Let me know if you try it/what you think! We LOVED them! :)

Caliente Low-Fat Chipotle Buttermilk Ranch

Facebook and I have a love/hate relationship. Sometimes, I feel trapped by facebook. I don't like finding out things I should hear face-to-face from there. But, sometimes I think it's fun to catch up with old friends. It was one of those good experiences that led to this revamped salad recipe.

A few weeks ago, after I posted our Lime Chicken Taco recipe, a friend from high school posted on my wall that she had tried putting the chicken on a salad and really liked it. Jacob and I thought this sounded like a good idea, so we wanted to try it.

I also thought it would be fun to try to make my own Chipotle Ranch dressing to go on the salad! So, I adapted a recipe for Low-Fat Buttermilk Ranch from Skinnytaste. I like the idea of making my own dressing because that way I know EXACTLY what's in it and strange processed ingredients don't sneak in!

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup fat free sour cream
• 3/4 cup fat free Greek yogurt
• 1/3 cup light mayo
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley
• 1 tsp salt
• dash of pepper
• dash of cumin
• 2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
• 1-1/2 cups low fat buttermilk
• 1 chipotle chile from a can of chipotle chilies in adobo sauce

Directions:

1. Combine sour cream, Greek yogurt, mayo, garlic powder, onion powder, parsley, salt, pepper, cumin and chile in blender. Blend for about 1 minute, until the pepper is ground and combined into the other ingredients.
2. Add buttermilk and balsamic vinegar and blend again for about 30 seconds.

I will warn you that this recipe made a ton of dressing, so I shared it with several friends. Also, it is REALLY spicy. Next time I may try only using half of the pepper. It has really good flavor and consistency, though. It went well with the salad-- the salad even made Jacob full, which is hard to do! :)

Enjoy!

Picture of Purpose

I love art. Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso...even modern art, such as Pollock, has a soft spot in my heart. My mother instilled this love in me at an early age. When I was in elementary school, my mom would take me on a mother/daughter date to whatever was on exhibit at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth. I listened with excitement and anticipation as the docent discussed minute details, imperfections and hidings of paintings both old and new. I soaked up symbolism and color like a sponge. We also were fortunate enough to have art docents at our school. One of my favorite works, and one that was most fascinating to me, was "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges-Pierre Seurat. Seurat employs a technique called pointillism, where he painted millions upon billions of tiny dots of very distinct and contrasted colors. The human eye miraculously blends these hundreds of colors together to form a single hue of distinctive color. Each dot was meticulously placed, each color carefully chosen  for a purpose: to blend and manufacture a masterpiece.

Purpose is an interesting concept. To me, it answers the question "why?" it is the reason you're running down the road of life that you've chosen or been placed on. The dictionary defines purpose as "1. the reason for which something exists or is done/made 2. An intended or desired result or aim 3. determination; resoluteness." The bible has many things to say about purpose. I love the way Paul describes it in Ephesians 1:3-10:

Spiritual Blessings in Christ
³  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴  even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵  he predestined us^[a] for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, ⁶  to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. ⁷  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, ⁸ which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight ⁹  making known^[b] to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ ¹⁰ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God's ultimate purpose is salvation, as Christ came to save us all. (Romans 3:23 ESV, Romans 11:32 ESV)

Specifically, too, Christ has given each believer unique gifts to "be His hands and His feet." As Paul writes in Romans 12:4-8:

⁴ For as in one body we have many members,^[a] and the members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. ⁶  Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; ⁷ if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; ⁸ the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads,^[b] with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Verses 5b-6 have really been on my heart recently. The Holy Spirit has been relentlessly revealing to me the importance of us using what's been gifted to us, as the "body" both literally and spiritually speaking, cannot functions properly without each part doing what it's been created to do.

I've been focusing on ways to wrap my human mind around a God-sized purpose. The best way God has shown me is by thinking of life as "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." We are each one dot. One minuscule yet undeniably and incredibly important part of this enormous painting was can't yet fully see (1 Corinthians 13:12). Sure, we see those dots around us- we know their colors, if they're changing, what they're doing, but only the Master, the Designer, the omniscient Artist can see, and create, the masterpiece. Each of us dots has a purpose- to be the color He painted us, the color He created us to be. Whether it's red, yellow, green, magenta, cerulean, a color similar or different to those around us, in being this color, we fulfill our place, our purpose, in the Master's Masterpiece. Sure, sometimes we tint ourselves another color, we see others and turn into their color, a color we were never intended to be, but our Master painter is faithful and good to repaint us back to the color we intended. He is the Perfect Painter, which we also were never intended to be. We must surrender our control to Him, as He is flawless and faithful to paint us in the way we were intended. We must continue to have faith when it becomes difficult to not change color, trusting that He can see the whole picture and that, one day, we will see it, too.

I'm thankful to be part of the masterpiece. I pray that I fulfill my purpose in His masterpiece instead of trying to fit Him into my own.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust!!!

After being traumatized by cauliflower as children (thanks, Yvonne and Cynthia for trying to teach us to be healthy! :)), Jacob and I bought our first head of cauliflower as adults to try a new culinary quest this week-- Cauliflower Pizza Crust!

Jacob (and I) loves pizza. I try to avoid flour. This seemed like a good compromise to me! As I mentioned last night, Jacob made me promise that we would order regular pizza if this wasn't good! I had been excited all day, and finally late this afternoon I embarked on the Cauliflower Crust journey.

Our crust was found on pinterest and taken from Recipe Girl. I liked it because it had cheese in it, and I knew a cheesy crust was more likely to get Jacob to eat it! :)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Large head cauliflower (which makes about 2 cups of shredded cauliflower)
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried minced garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon onion salt (or onion powder + salt if you're me and realized in the process of all of this that you didn't actually have onion salt :))

1. Shred the cauliflower into small crumbles. We used a cheese grater. I grated half of it and my hand got tired to Jacob took over. On Recipe Girl, she says you can use a food processor, but we don't currently have one of those. This took about 15 minutes, but wasn't too bad! Again, you'll need about 2 cups of cauliflower crumbles. It took us about 1/2 of our head of cauliflower. Transfer the crumbles to a bowl and microwave for 8 minutes. Then let cool.

2.   Preheat the oven to 450. Spray a cookie sheet or pizza pan with nonstick spray-- this is very important or the middle of the crust will stick!
3.  In a medium bowl, combine the microwaved cauliflower crumbles with mozzarella, egg, oregano, garlic and onion salt. Mix well-- we just used a spoon and they mixed really easily.
4.  Pat the crust onto your pizza pan or cookie sheet. We made ours fairly thin. Spray the top lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 10-15 minutes. Ours only took 10 but I've had friends who had a hard time getting the middle cooked through!

5. After your crust is cooked, you can add any toppings like a regular pizza. We used pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella! Then we baked the pizza (still at 450) for 4 more minutes (since the crust was just out of the oven it didn't take much longer).

We let the pizza cool, then cut it and ate it. The crust was soft, so we needed a knife and fork to eat it. It was pretty good! We gave it about 3 out of 5 stars! Jacob liked it so we did not have to order another dinner!

We also made a pro/con list about the crust:
PRO:

• It saved a lot of calories-- at about 84 calories for 1/6 of crust, it cuts your crust calories in half!
• It didn't taste like cauliflower-- we don't like that taste, so this was good for us
• The pizza cooked SUPER fast because the crust was already hot. Total cook time for us for the crust and our pizza was 14 minutes!

CON:

• It took a little while to make-- about an hour from grating cauliflower to eating. We spend a little more time cooking in the summer, but during the school year I'm only in for 30 minute or less meals!
• The texture was soft- I think I had envisioned a crunchy crust and I think that might have tasted better. We are looking for a crispy alternative.
• We don't think it would have reheated well-- it just seemed like it would have been a soggy, cheesy mess! We didn't have a lot left over but we just threw it away.

Overall, it was definitely a success! I will keep you all updated on our continued quest to improve the Cauliflower Crust! Hope you enjoy!