smalltownhealthyliving

A little peek into my life as a midwest mom, wife, and chiropractor…

Hamburger Hot Dish

Well hello there.  I felt like being a slacker on Sunday and making Hubby post for me.  I played in a women’s volleyball tournament in Vinton on Saturday, first tournament in several years.  I knew ahead of time I would be sore, based on prior experience and the fact we played 5 matches, 12 games total.  I was pretty stiff on Sunday, but nothing was too painful, thank goodness.  I had so much fun, it felt great to play competitively again- run an offense and have a setter who can run quicks and shoots (no offense to my women’s team! Love you guys!). I hope I get to play again sometime soon, before my jumping ability declines or my shoulder falls out of its socket.

 

There are quite a few meals I didn’t post, so I’ll do the usual round-up of pictures from the last couple days, starting with last Friday night- homemade pizza!  We tried using real mozzarella cheese at the advice of some friends, good call. 

 

Before:

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After:

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I had some fruit for breakfast on Saturday, as I wanted to keep it light since we played at 8:30.  Subway was lunch- no pics.  Then Hubby made some supper, going along with the pizza theme (since we had leftover toppings) he made pizza rolls with lowfat crescent roll dough.  Stuffed with sausage, pepperoni, green peppers, spinach and shredded mozzarella. 

 

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Sunday morning was pancake morning- plain ol’ pancakes, no picture.  We had some leftover taco meat, so we had tacos for lunch- double-decker tacos.  Hubby loves these things, copied from Taco Bell.  It’s a hard shell taco that’s wrapped with a soft shell spread with refried beans so that they stick together.  We topped them with cheddar pepper jack cheese, spinach, taco sauce and plain Greek yogurt.  He always has 3, I have 1. 

 

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Now for supper, a yummy casserole I found in my Taste of Everly cookbook. I think the title was actually Hamburger Hot Dish, but I’m too lazy to go dig it out and look for the recipe again.  Here’s what I did:

 

Hamburger Hot Dish

  • 1 lb ground beef
  • 1/2 onion, chopped
  • 2 cups pasta- I used a 13 oz box of whole wheat rotini
  • 2 cups peas- I steamed a bag of frozen peas and used the whole bag
  • 2 cups Velveeta, chopped in little pieces- used the 2%
  • 1 can Healthy Request cream of mushroom soup
  • 2 small cans V8- I used the Spicy Hot

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Brown ground beef with onions and drain excess fat.  At the same time, prepare the pasta according to the box.  Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and stir, adding salt and pepper if needed.  Spread in a 9 x 13 pan and bake for 1 hour. 

 

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Sorry about the shadow.  I was in such a hurry to eat it I didn’t care about the quality of picture.  It was good, of course.  You can’t even really taste the V8, it just gives a hint of tomato flavor.  I think the original recipe actually states “the Velveeta makes this recipe.”  It does give it a nice cheesy factor.  I suppose you could also use shredded cheddar if you wanted to make it a tad healthier.

 

We’ve been making a lot of good-tasting not-as-healthy-as-we-should-be-eating kinds of foods lately, so I’m thinking about doing a cleanse.  It’s been awhile, and that was one of my goals this year.  I think maybe after Tyler’s birthday…

 

Anyway, yesterday was all leftovers.  Today’s breakfast was a whole wheat English muffin with peanut butter and banana.

 

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Taco salad for lunch.

 

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During the lunch hour we threw together a bunch of stuff in the crockpots and made chili.  We made up 2 crockpots’ worth, so we used 2 lbs of ground beef, 1 onion, 2 green peppers, 2 cans black beans, 2 cans pinto beans, 2 cans kidney beans, 4 cans tomato sauce, 2 cans petite diced tomatoes and 3 packets of hot chili seasoning. 

 

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My natural daylight pictures are so much prettier than my ugly flash pictures. 

 

That pretty much catches us up.  Things have been super busy in the clinic lately, which is good but makes life hectic when you are gone 4 nights a week and have to help with laundry, dishes, cooking, book work for the clinic and charts.  Volleyball will be done in a couple weeks, and I decided that I’m going to take a break from teaching my exercise class- last class will be March 13th.  I decided I’d rather do my own workouts on my own time so that I can spend more time with my family.  One of the blogs I read is having a “Best Body Bootcamp” that starts next week.  It’s basically about 4 workouts sent to you every week for 8 weeks, with prizes given out every week.  Should be fun.  Here’s the info

 

Time to get to work on some charts and then hit the hay.  Drive safe tomorrow if you’re in this area… sounds like it’s gonna be slippery!

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Another Guest Post

Hi all.  I was gone all day Saturday playing in a volleyball tournament and today I was recovering and getting some stuff done.  I’ll be back on Tuesday with a recipe and some pics.  Hubby filled in for me and posted about his day Saturday.  I will warn you, he likes to be funny and make stuff up (like his last post), so please don’t believe everything he says and call social services on us.  And I apologize if you are offended in any way.  Just shake your head and laugh.  Story of my life.  Smile

 

 

Single Dad day.

Hello again loyal blog readers.  Leah was gone all day Saturday so I had to pick up the slack and do extra chores, and as it turns out "posting on the blog" is one of the chores.  I wish I had some awesome stories about the crazy things I got into when she was gone, but I had Tyler so I had to be extra responsible.

After breakfast (Tyler had some yogurt or something) we had some serious playtime in the house.  It was pretty fun but I could tell Tyler was starting to get a little bored so I decided it was time for a change of scenery.  So I piled him into the stroller and we headed for the park!  It did not go well.  First of all, he can’t walk on his own yet so the playground scene was lame.  Second of all, no one else was even there, I guess just because it was 35 degrees and the ground was still mostly covered in snow people just aren’t into the park scene.  Third, we were both under dressed, his hands were all cold and purple and he had this scared look on his face.  I’m glad we bailed early. 

Since we weren’t ready to go home yet, I decided to take him to the mall.  It seemed like the perfect place for us to go.  Now, its always been my understanding that taking a super cute kid to a mall or something is a chick-magnet, but I was wrong!  There was only one girl that came up to talk to us and she was kinda ugly.  I tried everything, we hit up the arcade, the big department stores (in the perfume AND jewelry areas), and also put Tyler on one of those tiny rides that cost a buck just for the dolphin to rock back and forth for a minute(RIPOFF!!!).  We got pretzels at the pretzel maker, got a slice at Sbarro’s, then polished that off with some ice cones and we still didn’t get any attention from the ladies.  I feel like I did everything right, I was sportin’ my "indoor shades" and even had my collar popped on my lucky KC Chiefs polo.  I’m gonna have to do some research and get to the bottom of this "kids are chick-magnets" hogwash.  It was a major letdown.

Tyler was starting to get fussy, I wasn’t sure if it was because he was super tired or if he was just disappointed that I failed him at the park and the mall, so we headed home.  He ate some leftover soup and I polished off the lefties from Friday night’s homemade ‘za.  Tyler fell asleep right after lunch and I could finally focus on the big game that was about to start.  For those who don’t know, I’m a huge fan of the Kansas Jayhawks, and they played the most evil team(Missouri Tigers) in the world with the regular season conference championship on the line.  For a point of reference, if you had to rank the worst things to ever happen to America the list would look roughly like this: 1) Slavery, 2) Missouri Tigers, 3) stuff white people did to natives, 4) tie between Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Carrot Top.  In fact, every time the Missouri Tigers win a basketball game, a thousand puppies die.  So it goes without saying, the stakes were high.

About midway through the first half everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  I was yelling a lot and I punched the floor twice.  That woke up Tyler so I got him out of the crib to watch the game.  It was at this point that I decided I needed to channel my anger in a more productive fashion.  So every time something bad happened, I did as many push-ups as I could.  Tyler had a scared look on his face at first, but before long he was just sitting and laughing at me while I was doing push-ups.  This went on for about an hour before KU started to show signs of life.  KU ended up overcoming a 19 point deficit to win in overtime.  IT WAS AWESOME.  My head was spinning and I couldn’t lift my arms!  In the end, good triumphed over evil, KU secured the conference championship, and a thousand puppies got to stay alive!

Shortly after that Leah made it back home, which was perfect, because I needed some help in raising this kid.  She does A LOT of stuff around the house and Tyler was missing her big time.  For dinner I decided to roll up the leftover pizza ingredients from Friday night into some crescent rolls, they were delicious.  I know this is kind of a "health" blog so you should know that I did add one spinach leaf to half of the pizza rolls to step up the health factor.  Spinach has some good healthy stuff in it, so it makes you healthier if you eat it.  

Tyler was super happy to have mom back, she is the best at rocking him to sleep.  She did her thing and he was OUT!  Whenever I try to rock him he either wants to laugh and play or just cries until mom comes to the rescue.  I’m glad one of us knows how to get a baby to sleep.

All in all, it was a great day, but it will be fine with me if it’s a long time before the next time I have do the single dad thing again.  I think Tyler agrees.

 

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Philly Cheesesteak Makeover

We were planning on making cheesesteaks anyways, but last night right before making supper I came across this recipe in the latest Cooking Light magazine.  Here are the stats:

The Classic:
1,151 calories per sandwich
27.3 grams saturated fat
1,480 milligrams sodium

The Makeover:
397 calories per sandwich
4.9 grams saturated fat
637 milligrams sodium

 

We didn’t exactly use steak though.  We had set out a chuck roast, so we decided to make that work.  It’s a lean cut along the same line as flank steak (I think), but it can be very tough and full of tendons.  Hubby cut up the meat in small pieces and then chopped the peppers and onions, which took quite awhile so I helped by starting the meat on the cast iron.  

 

We changed a couple things up, starting with the mushrooms.  Since I don’t like fungus on my sandwiches, we left those out.  I really liked the cheese sauce, but I had to add more milk because it was so thick.  We also used just regular wheat hamburger buns because we didn’t have hoagies.

 

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It was awesome.  I accompanied my sandwich with some very healthy Cheezits.

 

On to today.  For breakfast I tried out the strawberry banana Chobani.  It was just ok.  It tasted kind of fake, if that makes sense.  I’ll just stick to my own strawberry banana smoothies.  Tyler had half of it, since it was 2%.  I put my half on small bowl of protein Special K.  Never had that before, Hubby had opened it awhile back but didn’t like it.  I’m not a big fan either but if you smother it in yogurt it’s all good.

 

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Pretty productive morning, had a conference call in the AM and finished up a bunch of stuff in the clinic.  When I got home I started some lunch, using the leftover chicken broth from poaching the chicken breasts earlier this week. 

 

I set out to make chicken noodle soup, but I apparently put too many noodles in or didn’t have enough liquid, because it was more like just chicken and noodles.  Here’s how I did it- this is super easy:

 

I chopped up a bunch of carrots, celery and onion and placed in a pot with a tablespoon of butter, dried parsley, salt and pepper.  This sautéed for a couple minutes.

 

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Then I dumped in the broth (approximately one and a half containers of Swanson’s) that I had strained through a fine strainer to get rid of the weird chunks.  I also added the leftover shredded chicken breast, along with one box of whole wheat penne noodles.  If I wanted a more liquid soup I probably should have only added half of the box.  I let this simmer for about half an hour.

 

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To make it a little creamier, I whisked two tablespoons of flour with 1/4 cup of cold water and then added it to the “soup”. 

 

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Tyler and I loved it!  Hubby had something else for lunch.

 

Today I had to send some headshots of us in to put in our ad in one of the phonebooks.  We took pictures of ourselves in our living room (don’t know why I chose the blue wall- good thing they will be printed in black and white) and then I experimented with a photo editing program, Picknik.  It’s free, and they are only available until April?  So try it out soon.

 

I really like the air-brushing effect and shine effect.  And I can’t remember which feature I used, but one of them totally got rid of the chunk of spinach in Hubby’s teeth.  I didn’t even go through all the effects, could have probably even done more.  Here are the before and after pics:

 

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Hubby prepared supper for me tonight, and it was fabulous.  I only had one person at my exercise class because of the snow, but we still got a good workout in.  It was nice to have dinner waiting- I’m such a lucky gal.

 

He made some sirloin steaks on the cast iron (can you hear my arteries clogging?), along with a baked sweet potato topped with cinnamon for me and some steamed broccoli.  I sliced my steak and put it in a spinach salad with feta cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette. 

 

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That made up for my lack of veggies last night.

 

We had a really fun day with Tyler.  He’s such a goober, and I just love spending time with him. 

 

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Vacation Recap

I realize I missed Sunday’s post.  I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.  We didn’t get home until later in the afternoon on Sunday, and I was just exhausted.  Can’t believe just laying around for a couple days will do that.  Weird.

 

We had a great time in NW Iowa.  Lots of family time- Tyler got to have plenty of Grandma/Grandpa time, as well as some cousin Beau time. 

 

IMG_0966They were infatuated with Matt’s hat

 

IMG_0972I love Beau’s expression here.  Busted!

 

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Hubby had some friends up from Kansas and they all did some fishing.  That provided the meal for Saturday night- fish, cheesy potatoes, corn casserole, roasted green beans and brussel sprouts.  SOOO yummy.

 

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Sunday morning my mom made us a delicious breakfast before we hit the road.  We stopped at McD’s in Webster City on the way home for lunch, and it of course made us feel like barf.  Supper was a light meal of popcorn.  I think we were in bed by 8, we were so tired from the weekend.

 

Yesterday we were super busy in the clinic of course, since we were gone on Friday.  I didn’t get a chance to hit Fareway until today, so yesterday for lunch we went to a local deli- Deli One.  I think we’ve only been there a couple times since moving here.  Don’t know why, it’s pretty good.  I had a turkey and Swiss sub with some Wisconsin cheese soup on the side. 

 

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We did have some hamburger thawing, so for supper I made some meatballs with 1 pound ground beef, 1 egg, handful of oatmeal, salt, pepper and feta cheese.  Accompanied by a frozen veggie mix. 

 

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This morning we woke up to a text from our office manager, she was home sick with the stomach flu.  So we packed Tyler up and took him to daycare and both of us worked all day.  Crossing my fingers that none of us catch it…. doesn’t sound fun.

 

I did manage to sneak away to the grocery store this morning and stock up, and look what I found:

 

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the three new flavors of Chobani!  There’s strawberry banana, passion fruit, and blood orange.  I’ll let you know how they are.

 

I bought another premade salad from Fareway, so I had half for lunch with a piece of whole wheat bread and some turkey, and then I had the other half tonight with some chicken that I cooked up. 

 

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I didn’t take any pictures, but I think this is my favorite winter way to prepare chicken.  I just threw in some semi-frozen chicken breasts into a pot with one and a half containers of low sodium chicken broth.  Put in on the stove on low and got Tyler ready for bed.  Half an hour later I pulled the chicken out and shredded it.  I’m saving the broth to make some soup.  Usually we grill up a bunch in the summer then cut it up and store in containers, that way when we want to make wraps, salads, quesadillas, etc., we always have some ready.  The shredded chicken isn’t as flavorful as the grilled chicken, but it’s definitely juicy.

 

Sometime over the weekend I finally finished my book- 11/22/63 by Stephen King.  I’m not usually one for sci-fi, but this one was more about history.  I really enjoyed it, even though it was super long.  The percentage number on my Kindle moved so slowly, then I found out the book was 849 pages.  No wonder. 

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In a gist, it’s about a teach from present day who goes back in time to try to prevent the assassination of JFK.  There are a whole bunch of twists and turns along the way, but I really enjoyed the parts about his life (in the past) in a small town outside of Dallas leading up to the main climax of the book.  Definitely recommend this one if you’re at all interested in history, particularly the 50’s and 60’s.  Here’s a real review.

 

I have to finish up a bunch of notes, so that’s all for now.  I’ll be back Thursday with a new recipe- a healthy one this time! 

 

Random notes: I still record Glee, even though everything but the first half of the first season has been crap.  Tonight was quite the dramatic night though, holy crap.  It was like 4 after-school specials wrapped up in one.  Just thought I’d throw that out in case anyone on here watches the show and wants to discuss it.  Also- I’m listening to one of my favorite Sirius stations- Coffee House- and they’re playing an awesome acoustic version of Hey Ya.  I like it way better than the original.  This station got me through many late nights with Tyler. 

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Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream!!!

Oh man is this a good recipe.  I’m a sucker for anything pumpkin, but this is amazing.  Better than Dairy Queen.  Better than Culver’s.  Better than… dare I say it… Coldstone?!

 

Ever since I received the ice cream maker for Christmas, I’ve had this recipe on the back burner.  I finally decided to get the ingredients and make it, so we can have it in the freezer.  WARNING: this is NOT a healthy recipe.  SOOOO worth it though!

 

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

Adapted from Lauren’s Latest

1 cup heavy cream
1 cup half and half
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 package graham crackers, crushed but not into fine pieces

Heat cream, half & half, sugars, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in the top of a double boiler until sugars and salt have dissolved. In a small bowl stir egg yolks together to break. Stream about 1 cup of hot cream mixture into egg yolks to temper. Pour egg mixture back into double boiler and heat, stirring constantly until it has thickened. You will know it is done when the mixture coats the spatula. Remove from heat and cool.  Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.

When you are ready to make your ice cream, assemble ice cream maker {with frozen bowl} and turn on. Pour ice cream base into machine and churn for 10-12 minutes or until creamy and frozen. In the last 30 seconds pour graham cracker pieces into machine to mix. Scoop ice cream into a larger container, cover and freeze.

 

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Don’t have a double boiler?  No problem.  You can improvise.  I filled a medium size sauce pan with water and got it boiling.  Then I placed a ceramic (maybe it was glass?) bowl on top of the sauce pan.  And there you go.

 

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I made this recipe as part of my Valentine’s Day Dinner.  I put an arm roast in the crockpot before going to work on Tuesday, just seared each side in olive oil for a couple minutes on each side, then dumped a bunch of peppercorn seasoning on it and put in in the crockpot with a little water. 

 

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I also roasted more broccoli, just like I did on Saturday.  Then pumpkin pie ice cream for dessert, as well as ONE chocolate.

 

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My two Valentines got me two roses, chocolates and a card.  It was a nice little surprise. Smile

 

Nothing else too picture worthy on Tuesday or Wednesday except these:

 

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They were on sale at Fareway, so I couldn’t resist.  I was going to do something fabulous with them, but instead I just ate them plain, all by myself.  Yum.

 

It’s winter vacay time, and we’re heading to the exotic NW Iowa!  Well, actually we’re already there.  Got here last night.  Hubby is fishing with his buds this weekend and I’m just hanging out and trying to finish up tax work.

 

This morning Hubby and I hit up the local YMCA for a workout.  Here are our dorky pictures from the weight room.  We were very motivated by the cheesy posters from the 1980’s plastered all over.  I was pretty impressed with their facilities though, a lot has changed since the last time I was there. 

 

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After the workout we ran to the bank so I could cash a check and one of my mom’s friends was working the window.  She said she reads the blog, and especially liked the pizza burger post by Hubby.  So hi Barb!  Thanks for reading!

 

For meals today my mom made us chicken enchiladas and crab quesadillas.  My favorite were the crab quesadillas- super tasty.  Had a side of spinach with some nasty avocados… I can never pick out good ones- they’re always mushy or brown.  Let me know if you know how.

 

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The guys brought back supper from the Ranch, our local watering hole.  It was wing night, so we had some delicious wings.  I cut up a couple boneless ones and put them on some spinach with celery and lite Ranch dressing. 

 

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Little guy is 11 months old today… next month is the big one!

 

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