Happy Birthday Mr. Honeybear

This is totally embarrassing, but I guess you might as well know this about me.

Forrest and I:

a) talk to each other in strange voices when no one else is around...and sometimes even in public when we forget that other people might hear us

b) we officially refer to each other as Mr. and Mrs. Honeybear

I don't really know how it all started, but it has stuck, and there is nothing that can turn my day around like being called Mrs. Honeybear.

Anyhow, yesterday was his 28th birthday, and I felt the title of this blog should give a shout out to the man himself.

 

Forrest's new fins for his surfboard bagged up in front of our antique chest 

i love this piece of furniture...the bag is a nice touch!

We love doing birthdays around Casita Cory. Nannie believed that birthdays should be celebrated all month long, and growing up I greatly benefited from her firm belief in making birthdays drag on. So, we have kind of adopted Nannie's Birthday Policy in our home. One day really isn't enough time to make someone feel just how special they are.

snapshot of the card I got for Forrest

Another tradition is that you get to eat what you want on your birthday. When we lived in Williamsburg I always asked for Plaza Azteca, because who doesn't love table-side guacamole service? Seriously. 

Forrest decided this year that he wanted Papa Johns pizza. Papa Johns. Really? But who I am to deny this wonderful man of the meal he desires on his birthday. So PJs it was.

my attempt to make Papa Johns look artistic = fail

Did I mention the b-day boy got stitches this week from a surfing incident?

We aren't big "birthday cake" people. Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for butter cream icing as much as the next gal, but we try to do something different on birthdays. Forrest's favorite cake is Angel Food cake. I tried making one from scratch a few years ago on his birthday to show him how domestic I was, but I didn't realize how long it needed to cool, so it fell flat as a pancake. 

Last year I made Angel Food cupcakes from a box and topped them with homemade whipped cream and raspberries, but this year I wanted to try something different. 

I am in love with all things pumpkin. October is in the fall after all, and come mid-September I have an irrational craving for pumpkin flavored sweets. I was thinking about how on earth to combine pumpkin and angel food cake, so I Googled it up. And low-and-behold: a recipe for PUMPKIN ANGEL FOOD CAKE WITH SALTED CARAMEL GLAZE. holymolyholymolyholymoly. This link will take you to a great blog where you can find the recipe (and print it off) and pictures to guide your baking.

Here are my only additions to the recipe:
1) I poured the sauce over the cake while it was still cooling in the pan on Wednesday night (about an hour into the cooling process).
2) Thursday morning I cut around the edges with a knife, removed it from the pan and the caramel dripped down the sides
3)  Make two batches of the caramel glaze---one for the cake, one for you.

4) Serve it with a big dollop of Casita Cory Cinnamon Whipped Cream!

Here are the pictures I took while baking up this delicious birthday treat!

cake ingredients

caramel glaze ingredients

psychedelic: mixing the cream into the caramel sauce

the finished product

wanted to capture that caramel sauce

playing around with my retro camera app in the afternoon light of my kitchen

i love my cake stand!

CARAMEL...YUM

birthday wishes :)

Just an idea for those of you who aren't too thrilled with the idea of pumpkin angel food cake--I can see that glaze on apple cake or banana nut muffins. It would also be great for dipping apple slices in this time of year!

Black Bean Veggie Soup

This recipe was handed down to me when I was in college from my dear friend and mentor, Michelle. This is one of those meals that never fails to taste delicious, and it only takes about 45 minutes to put together. 

I posted the recipe for this on my menu card the other day, but here it is again on a printable recipe card. 

Recipe Card

That recipe is great by itself, but here is how I like to serve it up:

1) Place some broken tortilla chips in a bowl (I love to keep blue corn chips around the house)

2) Then pour the soup over the chips

3) Add some shredded cheese on top.

4) Finally, top if off with a dollop of sour cream

Enjoy!

Window to my Wednesday

wearing pink to brighten up a rainy day

coffee.period.

lovely :)

grapefruit and breakfast quiches = happy morning

confronting my idols

my soul thirsts for you, God

really fun speaking activity my students did today

 

 

 

 

 

Just another not-so-manic Monday...

Mexican Monday: Chicken & Steak Fajitas w/ Spanish Rice

Some people really hate Mondays. I can understand why. The weekend comes to an end, no more lounging on the sofa or late night dinners with friends. Once the work week starts some of my favorite things get put on hold until Friday comes around again.


But I actually really love Mondays. I love a new beginning. A new day, a new week and a chance to start fresh. It's like every seven days I hit a reset button somewhere in my psyche and old habits I want to shed or new hopes I have for self-improvement get another chance. I like that. By Thursday some of my resolve and excitement may have faded, but that Monday morning feeling that I get--to start again--is something I look forward to. 

Tues: Cheese Tortellini and Sundried Tomatoes with Pesto 

This Monday I kicked off my first week of our 9 week menu-athon (get it..haha). A few posts ago I gave you the calendars I created with 9 weeks of pre-planed, pre-cooked, and pre-purchased meals. I work full-time and am also working on my masters degree online at night, so I was looking for a way to simplify my life. 

After a day at work and a good butt-kicking at the gym, my possible hours for grad school work begin preciously ticking away. Normally I frantically scan my brain thinking of what I will be cooking and how long it is going to take to get it done. And then there are the days that I forget something for a recipe and have to run to the grocery store on my way home. My anxiety starts to build. By the time I get home from the gym and showered, I resent the meal I am about to cook so much I feel that resentment in every bite. It is just plain awful for me to eat a meal I can't even enjoy. 


To make my life a little easier until I finish my masters in May, I decided to try this menu idea and see if it made my day-to-day dinner making easier. 


I cannot tell you how great it felt yesterday after sweating to the oldies in BodyStep to head home knowing that all I had to do was chop up some peppers and onions and throw them into a skillet with my previously prepared chicken and steak strips while the Spanish rice simmered away on the stove. I had a plan and all of my materials. I felt calm as I cooked. It was comforting to  know that within 20 minutes I would be sitting down to catch up with my hubby over a delicious meal. No stress. By 8:45 I was at my desk click-clacking away at my instructional analysis flowchart. That my friends is victory. 


I even had a chance late in the evening to do some research on formatting the blog and have made some updates. Let me know what you like and if there is anything you would like me to fix. I also am new to blogging, so if you have any tips on ways to enhance your blog, I would love to know!

To try and make it so that you can follow along on the 9 week menu, I have created a grocery list, menu reminder and mini recipe card that highlights what you will need for this week's menu. Let me know if you like the format or if you think I could make it more user-friendly in the future.  You can print it out and fold it in half for easy carrying.

 

Keep cooking :)

Megan 

Mr. Haas's Pizza

I love pizza and Mexican food. Anytime I can find a way to put those two things together is magic. The following is a recipe I made this past week, and let me say that the creaminess of the avocados with the spiciness of the jalapeños and the juiciness of the fresh tomatoes...wow. I made one pizza thinking it would be enough to feed the two of us. I was wrong. We both felt disappointed that there wasn't more and I ended up sacrificing my third piece to feed the hungry man who lives with me.

Mr. Haas's Pizza

Ingredients:

1 jalapeño, seeded and sliced (into little circles)

1/4 cup sliced red onion

1 roma tomato, sliced

a little less than a 1/4 cup frozen corn

2 tbsp medium salsa

1/2 cup shredded cheddar jack cheese

1 Trader Joe's pizza crust

2 tbsp corn meal

1tbsp olive oil

1 Haas avocado cut into large chunks

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 F

Follow the directions for getting the pizza crust to room temp

Place 2 tbsp corn meal on the pizza stone and roll the pizza crust out to desired size

Brush 1 tbsp olive oil over the crust and bake until the crust starts to bubble up
Heat the frozen corn in the microwave for about 1min 30sec
Remove the crust from the oven and spread the salsa out over the crust with the back of a spoon
Layer the corn, jalapeños, onion and tomato on the crust
Top with the cheddar jack cheese
Bake until the cheese melts and starts to brown
Remove and top with the avocado chunks

Serves ~6 medium pizza slices

It was light and fresh and absolutely delicious. Let me know what you think of it. 

Also, let me know if you have any ideas of how to give pizza a Southwest twist!

9 week menu

I love to cook. It is something that brings me such calm in this busy life we're living. I love watching the people I love eat my food and I bask in the praise they give me when it tastes good.

The first 4 months Forrest and I were married I cooked a different meal almost every night (I had planned for leftovers, but if you know my husband you know that it is rare the night a meal makes it to night two, much less night three). I loved it, but I soon became exhausted.

Since we moved and my daily commute is longer and my classes at the gym start later, I have been getting home around 7 and have been too tired to cook anything that takes longer that 20 minutes. I also have been getting really stressed about cooking and what we are going to eat and when I will have time to make it and will it last a day or two... Something I once loved has now become something that causes me stress. I don't like this at all.

Forrest and I have never been food hoarders. I buy each week what we will need for that week and there is little extra in the pantry or the freezer. Now, I grew up in a family of food hoarders. I remember cleaning out Nannie's pantry and finding canned foods at least a decade past their expiration date. When my mom was making dinner and realized she was missing something we would call Nanny and she would say, "Come on over to Elsie's store and pick it up." I am not sure who Elsie is, but Elsie's store always had what we needed...in abundance. My Dad, growing up in this environment picked up the habits of his mother and to this day has about 5 cabinets of non perishables.

I have always prided myself on my bare pantry and lightly packed freezer (that meant there was always room for a quart or two of ice cream...genius right?). But recently, I have just run out of steam during the week to put a meal together. Forrest and I really don't like eating out much or spending our money on food we can make ourselves (and know every ingredient that is in it). I realized that I have been running to the store buying what at the moment I think I want to eat only to come home and realize I'm not really in the mood. I have not been planning anything and food has been going to waste. When there are children in the world who would eat those things I am throwing away, I decided we needed to do something different.

I started to realize maybe there was a happy medium between my food hoarding past and my week-by-week plan.


It all actually started a little backwards. The other day I had time to make some soups. I made 2 and 1/2 quarts of veggie soup, veggie black bean soup and chili (each). I bought some containers to freeze them and thought, "Man having these already prepared will really make my life easier." But then I started to think about making other meals in advance and freezing them. hmmm....

So I sat down and charted out a plan. Now, there is nothing really exciting on this menu. In fact I have already started thinking about some of my favorite meals that this menu does not allow for during the week. My hope is that having this plan during the week will relieve the stress I have felt about cooking and will allow me to be creative and actually enjoy cooking on the weekends.

Here are the menus (click on them to see a larger size):

Now I have set it up so that we have Mexican Mondays, Italian Tuesdays, Soup & Sumthing Wednesdays, Leftover Thursdays and Random Fridays. I built in a day to eat leftovers so that nothing goes to waste. I have allowed for eating out a few Fridays because that is the day I want to cook the least. I also made those meals really easy...breakfast and homemade pizza...so that I know even if I am cooking it won't be a stressful meal. I also didn't plan any meals of the weekends because then I can really cook what I am in the mood to cook and can enjoy buying fresh ingredients. I also have decided to keep salad stuff around the house so that we can have fresh veggies with our meals since most of the food has been prepared in advance.

After buying all of the ingredients for the soups and the containers to put them in. I cooked them up and here is a picture of the results.

Then I decided to do some food hoarding and purchase all of the supplies I would need in advance.

Here is what I purchased and either stored away in the pantry or in the freezer:
1 box of whole wheat penne pasta
1 box of whole wheat spaghetti
1 box of whole wheat rigatoni
4 jars of pasta sauce
1 jar of vodka sauce
5 cans of refried beans
2 cans of black beans
1 box of 3 taco mixes
1 Frontera Fajita seasoning mix (it is a big bag with way too much sodium to use in just one recipe so I am going to split it up and use it twice).
2 cans of diced tomatoes
2 boxes of Spanish rice mix
2 packages of Butternut Squash Ravioli (Trader Joe's)
1 package of cheese tortellini (TJs)
1 bag of sun dried tomatoes (TJs)
2 jars of BBQ sauce
2 packages of frozen meatballs (1 turkey and 1 beef--TJs)
2 whole wheat pizza dough (TJs)
1 box multi-grain pancake mix (TJs)
2 packages of peppered Turkey bacon (TJs)
1 bag of sweet potato fries (TJs)
1 bag of burrito size tortillas (8 count)
1 bag of fajita size tortillas (10 count)
1 bag of taco size tortillas (20 count)
1 jar of pesto sauce (TJs)
3 bags of frozen chicken (Purdue or TJs)

Here are the things I had around the house that I can use in the recipes:
1 can enchilada sauce
2 boxes of boil-in-a-bag rice
1 box of cornbread
1 taco seasoning mix
Plus I also had some pasta sauce, beans, frozen corn and pancake mix.


Everything that fit in the pantry I put in there...it now looks like this:

Then I cooked up all of the chicken, chopped or sliced it depending on how I plan on using it in the recipe (I also allowed more for tacos than for any other meal, and more for burritos than for quesadillas). I packaged them in containers or freezer bags and put them in the freezer.

I also took all of the packages of tortillas and separated them with wax paper and put them in gallon size bags based on the meals (so I put in 3 for quesadillas & burritos, 5 for fajitas, and 6 for tacos). I don't plan on have many left overs from the Mexican or Italian nights, but my hope is really to reduce the amount of food wasted in our house over the next 9 weeks.

Now my freezer is chock a block full...

I also made the mini breakfast quiches to make my morning meal easier and froze those as well. You can see the recipe for those here. I made some with red & green peppers, onions, turkey bacon and cheese and another batch with spinach, tomato, onions & turkey bacon. I have about 42 of those which I packaged in twos so I have about 21 days of breakfast (or 5 weeks worth) prepackaged and ready to go.


I don't know how well this is going to work, but it seems like a good plan. After doing all of this, I recently saw this and plan on using it next time because I like all of the fresh ingredients! Slow Cooker Frozen Meals

Anyhow...I will keep you posted on how this works. Have a great day!

Long overdue update

Hey everyone! I can't believe it has been so long since my last post. I was hoping to continue blogging throughout last school year, but got busy with teaching, grad school and group fitness classes. I have been cooking all along, but I haven't had very much free time to stop and write about it.

For those of you reading who haven't heard the news yet, Forrest got a new job!!! So in June we packed up Casita Cory (with the help of our amazing small group friends from the Chapel) and moved down to Raleigh, NC. I got a job at a charter school down here teaching high school Spanish and we moved all of our belongings into a sweet little 2 bedroom apartment. This summer/early fall has been very hectic with both of us getting accustomed to our new jobs. Forrest is learning all of the biz of corporate fitness equipment sales and I am getting used to a longer commute, longer school day and a new year-round schedule. (By the way when Forrest reads this he will laugh at my "long commute" comment since he has put over 5,000 miles on his car since we moved down here!)

Needless to say it has been a whirlwind! Oh...and we have been house hunting and put an offer down on a home 5 weeks ago. It is a short sale so it takes a loooooooooong time for the bank to respond to our paperwork, but we are hoping*** to hear something this week! We know that God has a plan for us, we have seen that in how He worked out a job for Forrest in an industry he loves, a job for me at an awesome school and found us a great apartment where we didn't have to sacrifice luxury for price. God is good and we lift all of what has happened in our lives the past few months up to Him.

We have found a great church...The Summit Church here in North Raleigh and really love it. We have joined a small group with about 7 or 8 amazing couples from the Summit. I was having a tough time when we first moved here (I cried quite a bit...and I ate a lot...which made me cry some more...*sigh*), but one Sunday at the Summit I knew we had found our church home because for the first time in about 6 weeks I felt like I belonged somewhere in Raleigh.

Moving ain't easy, but knowing that God called us to this city has given me a peace in the midst of this transition (okay...I feel peaceful a lot...but to be completely honest I also cried for Williamsburg and my friends and anything vaguely familiar until about August).

Now...I haven't had much to cry about recently because with this awesome year round schedule I have had 3 WHOLE WEEKS OFF FROM WORK!!! woohoo :) So for those of you who aren't used to this (I am still trying to figure it all out!)...here in Wake County there are basically way too many students and not enough room for them all at one time in the schools, so several elementary and some middle schools work on year round schedules. Track In is when you are in school and Track Out is when you are out of school. My school doesn't follow the Wake County year round schedule so everyone tells me I am on a modified Track. I don't really know what it all means, but basically I work for 9 weeks and then I am off for 3 weeks. This coming Track In I actually work 9 weeks, but in the middle I have a week off at Thanksgiving. It is pretty amazing to have this time to relax and get my wits together. I am actually looking forward to going back to work on Friday.

With all of this time for my brain to actually ponder life I have been able to add some cool things into my daily schedule...like more time for devotions, morning Zumba, having breakfast with Forrest, traveling to see my family and cooking!

Look forward to posting again soon!