Monday....Monday

I worked on my menu planning last night after finishing my freezer and pantry inventory for March.  I'm a little late to be working on the lists but it's been a crazy, busy month so far.

Here's our menu for this week (including 3 days of soccer practice until 6:45)

Monday:  Poorman's Dinner - fried potatoes with onions and hotdogs -all cooked together in a pile of        yummy goodness (don't judge, I have a house full of boys)

Tuesday:  Lemon Chicken and Spinach Salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil

Wednesday:  Pancakes

Thursday:  Crockpot dinner - German turnip delight (turnip, potato, onion and smoked sausage cooked together like a stew)

Friday:  Salmon Patties with hushpuppies and pea salad

Saturday:  Date night with Mr. Hautemama

Sunday:  Pork Roast stuffed with Louisianne peppers and whole garlic cloves, cheesy mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli

We'll use the pork roast leftovers for pork carnitas - soooo good!

Speaking of food, I've recently discovered the best low-fat snack evah!  It's Quaker True Delights Multigrain Fiber Crisps, Blackberry Pomegranate flavor.  I tried to find a picture on the internets, but no such luck.  You can eat 13 pieces of these delectable treats for 110 calories, 1.5 grams of fat and 3 grams of fiber.  That's 2 weight watchers points.  These rice cake crisps are sweet and crunchy without the fake sweetener after-taste that low-fat snacks can sometimes have.  I had to be careful to not eat the entire bag.  They...were....that....goooood!  That's my new go-to snack at night.  I'm a night snacker, I confess.

On to my other favorite subject.......TV!  I'm a total Bravo fanatic!  I've recently been watching Kell on Earth.  She's the lady that runs People's Revolution (the clothing, fashion, pr type company) that acted like a crazy boss on the Hills.  Lauren and Whitney worked for her in LA, then Whitney moved to NYC to work there.  Kelly Catrone is a crazy, confident woman who tells it like it is.....she's blunt and so real.  That's the draw.  I tend to be pretty real, what you see is what you get.  Just not as real as she is in the show.  She borders on brutal.

I can't wait for the Real Housewives of Orange County reunion show.  I'm really not digging Alexis and Jim, the new couple on the show this season.  Jim = slimy, controlling and white trash.  Enough said.  Vicki is a whiner and I don't feel sorry for Tamra. She needs to act more like a Mom and not a party girl.  The reunion should be good!

We have parent-teacher conferences at the boys school tomorrow.  I'm slightly nervous to talk to Small Fry's 3rd grade teacher.  I call her "the Nazi" at home.  My poor child tries so hard to not get a yellow or red card.  Sadly, he gets the ol' warning card at least once a week.  I told Small Fry just to try to cruise through until summer. Next year will be a better year!  Tater Tot went to the middle school to tour his school that he'll be going to next year and his teacher told him he would be in advanced Math next year.  That's a ton of work but I love it for him!  I'm so proud of both of my boys.  They are the best and smartest little guys in the world!

The healthy way

We've been trying to eat healthy since the holidays and it seems to be working.  It's easier to eat healthier when your hubby eats that way too.  In fact, it's easy and it makes you want to strangle your hubby. 

On a lark, Hubby decided to eat like I was and see if he lost any weight.  Well, as of two days ago, Mr. H has lost twenty pounds.....TWENTY!  I'm stuck at 16 pounds lost.  It's an achievement but not as good as the ol' hubster.  Why is it so easy for guys to lose weight???!!! He said all he's been doing is cutting down on his amount of food.  He still eats a hamburger every couple of days for lunch, but with a small order of fries.  UGH! I haven't had a hamburger in 3 months!  Actually, I'd rather have enchiladas than a hamburger. Mexican food is the devil to me.  It calls me from a far!

One of the dishes the Hubs and I have fixed for a side dish at dinner is roasted vegetables.  The kids love them! Even when I sneak asparagus in with the potatoes and carrots.

It's super simple and so tasty.  The key ingredient is Cavender's Greek seasoning. This stuff is magical. It makes everything taste good.  We put it on all vegetables, hamburgers, pork roast, really any type of meat.

All you need to do is cut your favorite vegetables into medium size chunks, like potatoes, carrots, turnips, brussel sprouts and asparagus.  Coat the diced veggies in olive oil and liberally sprinkle the Cavender's all over the pan. 

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.  Roast veggies for approximately 20 to 30 minutes.  It's really up to you how long.  Some people prefer the veggies a little more browned than others.  I just test the carrots and when they are fork tender, your veggies are done.

Speaking of healthy, we are going to be super tempted to cheat on our diets in the next couple of weeks because I'm going to put out a candy dish full of M & M's for the boys.  

Don't you just love the new St. Patrick's Day dish I found at Hobby Lobby?! 

I also bought the cutest little signs to put out throughout the house.

Kiss me...I'm Irish!

We all need a little of this.....

And, I always want our friends and family to feel welcome at our home!

Do you see the difference in the wood color on my dining room table in the pic above?  That wonderful water mark is actually a steam mark from a pizza box. The pizza box that my hubby put on the dining room table and left there for 3 hours while I was gone one night.  You can imagine the reaction I had when I lifted up the box and there was a huge white mark on my table. My prized french country dining room table. 

All I can say is......

Thank you Lord for Sharpie wood stain markers.  It isn't a great fix but it makes the mark in the wood look less noticeable.  That was one night I wasn't thinking too healthy....I was thinking very unhealthy thoughts in my mind....like how to maim a pizza eating husband...HA!

Hautemama

Wordy Wednesday

It's been an interesting week so far.  We've had one kid, Small Fry, home sick on Monday with a stomach virus.  I had to stay home from work for that one, but actually got a lot of work done around the house during the quiet time when Small Fry was just laying around.

On Tuesday, he went back to school and felt much better.  So good in fact that we decided to stick with our menu plan and make chicken enchiladas.  I had grabbed a large can of Las Palmas red enchilada sauce at Wal-mart on a whim. I'd never used it but decided it looked good enough to try.  I looked up a recipe for chicken enchiladas on the Las Palmas website.  The only addition I made was to mix a can of cream of chicken soup with the enchilada sauce.  I thought it would stretch the sauce and make it just a little thicker. I actually had about a 1/4 of the can left that I didn't use.  The recipe turned out so good!  We will definitely be eating this recipe again.  It's going in the rotation of our favorite meals.  I think next time, I'll serve Rice-a-Roni Spanish rice on the side and maybe some homemade guacamole. 

Laspalmassauce.com - great site for enchiladas

Yummy chicken enchiladas- some without cheese for low-fat version

This morning when the boys got up, guess who thought he should stay home because his brother was sick and got to stay home??? Yes, that would be older brother, AKA, Tater Tot.  You have to love brothers...what do women with 5 or 6 kids do? I have no idea because it's hard enough getting two boys to feel good everyday and go to school.  I always worry when one of them is sick because the other thinks he's sick too.  And usually, on the day they get to stay home, the 3:00 o'clock elixer hits and when all of their buddies are getting off the bus and going out to play after school, they forget they're sick at all.  Of course, I never acted sick to stay home and watch TV all day. Never, not me.

On the diet front, that's the perma-diet that I always seem to be on, we are doing really well.  Mr. Hautemama and I have been trying to watch everything we eat.  We've cut back on portions and stopped all of the mindless snacking.  It seems to be working, Mr. H has lost twenty pounds since Christmas (don't you just hate guys) - HA!  I've lost 16 pounds since the first of December.  For a couple of weeks, I'd been losing and gaining the same 3 pounds but Monday night, I lost 4 pounds overnight.  I have no idea what I did except try to drink a ton of water. 

I did find a great yogurt that I hadn't tried before - Yoplait Lite and Fit.  It's so good and only 60 calories. I had been buying Wal-mart's generic yogurt but it's 120 calories.  The Lite and Fit is half that!

Tonight was leftover night so Mr. H decided we needed to go out to eat.  We went to Mazzio's to have their salad bar.  It's the pizza place in town and it's the best salad bar in town.  That's really not saying much since we live in such a small town, but it's all we've got here.  The boys get tired of Mazzio's but it's cheap and yummy!

(Photos courtesy of google images)

We're spending the rest of the night watching the Olympics.  The boys are excited to see Shaun White snowboard.  I think Tater Tot loves him because he's a red head just like him.  The Flying Tomato - what a cute nickname!

I have no clue how to eat-diets confuse me

My office has been having a biggest loser contest and we weigh in every week. Well, it's now become a contest on who can harass the other better in regards to what they are eating or if they've worked out enough. Office dynamics are so strange that way-someone thinks because they work with you that they can tell you things that they normally wouldn't. I quit the contest because it's no one's damn business actually.

So I started the Atkins low-carb diet 2 days ago. All I've eaten is either salads, cheese, eggs or meat. The part I can't kick is the Diet Coke - it kills me to not have a Diet Coke. I mean, it's not even a real Coke - so it should be ok, right? Well, with Atkins, they want you to not drink caffeine either. No way, not this girl! I'm a momma with a ton of stuff on my plate - give me the Diet Coke.

I started Atkins because on Weight Watchers I always feel like I'm eating only carbohydrates and artificial sweetener. That can't be good. I think I've surmised that I'm a carbaholic. I love bread, biscuits, pancakes, crackers, rice, bagels. All of the carb filled crap. And...some of that fiber stuff will kill your stomach. Take it from me. Do not eat more than one Fiber One bar. Seriously........I learned that the hard way with a day off sick from work due to the fact that my stomach was doing somersaults from fiber overload.

So, how do you figure out what to eat. Is it low carb or the other extreme-the carb filled life of Weight Watchers? I have the hardest time deciding!
OK- Today I ate:
B
1 cup coffee with 2 tbsp ff half and half and 3 packets Sweet-n-Low
2 eggs, fried with butter
3 small sausage links
L
lettuce wedge with blue cheese dressing, eggs and bacon
Diet Coke
D
Chili cheeseburger with no bun
Only ate 1/4 of it though
Diet Coke

My weigh in on Tuesday was 195 - yuck! That feels bad.
handful of peanuts - 5g carb for 39 pieces