I shared the remainder of my reuben quiche with a couple co-workers yesterday, and they both agreed it was delicious!  Especially my one co-worker – she and I are Reuben geeks – we even compare notes when we’ve tried a new one.  So I had the last 1/4 for my breakfast yesterday.

I also had my first orange of the season – can’t wait to get some grapefruit.  I’ll have to ask if my MIL will send me some grapefruit this year – they grow them in their back yard 😀

When I got to work I was greeted with a brand new computer – its so fast!  Plus I have a 19 inch flat screen monitor – I have horrible eye sight, so this is so nice.  I have it on the largest font and if someone walked by they would think a blind person worked at my desk!   I only had 212 emails to go through, which wasn’t too bad considering I was off a whole week.

For lunch I had the last of my butternut squash soup and a side salad that had diced chicken, diced apple, carrots, cucumber, romaine and Ken’s Light Italian with romano cheese and red pepper – its my new favorite dressing – check out the stats!

Long time readers will know that not only do I hate onions, but I am not a huge fan of mushrooms.  I love the smell as they cook, but its a texture thing.  One of Tony’s favorite meals is Salisbury steak with mushroom sauce.  I decided to throw it together for a quick week night dinner.

Biz’s Week Night Salisbury Steak

• 1 pound 95% ground sirloin (I used Laura’s 96% Lean Ground Beef)
• 1 tablespoon steak seasoning (like McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning)
• 3 pieces of bacon, cooked and chopped
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cracked pepper
• 10 large mushrooms, sliced
• 1 package of brown gravy mix

Heat oil in large skillet.  Add garlic and mushrooms and cook until browned.  Set aside.  Mix beef with steak seasoning, salt and pepper and mix well.  Shape into 4 oval patties.  Cook over medium heat about 4 minutes a side, or until your preference of doneness.  (not sure that is a word, but I am sticking with it!)

Put gravy mix with 1 cup of water and bring to a boil.  Add mushrooms and stir and pour over the Salisbury steak.  Garnish with parsley.

My Dollar General sells that gravy mix 2 for $1.  It’s nice to have in the pantry – and each 1/4 cup serving is only 20 calories.  Tony and I split it, so 40 calories for 1/2 cup of gravy isn’t too bad!

And because I used the extra lean meat, 8 ounces of meat was only 280 calories.   I decided to try some gluten free noodles on the side – guess what?  Tony actually liked it better than whole wheat pasta! 😀

It was delicious! 😀

Stats for Monday:

• 1445 calories, 128 carbs, 110 protein, 56 fat and 17.9 fiber
• 34% of calories from fat
• 45 minute workout on treadmill at lunch – walk 3.9 mph on 5% incline for 5 minutes, then run at 5.5 for 5 minutes, then switched back and forth
• 5 minutes abs on the ball

I went to bed at a decent time last night so I am up early today.  I am off to make gluten free breakfast pizza – fingers crossed it works out!

Make it a great day!

When I saw how much leftover corned beef I would have, I immediately decided to make a Reuben quiche for breakfast yesterday morning.  Allison, you will love this!

Reuben Quiche (printer friendly version here)

Makes 4 servings (255 calories, 16 fat, 3.7 carbs, .4 fiber and 23 protein)

Ingredients

3	eggs
1	cup egg whites
6	ounces corned beef
2	ounces Swiss cheese
2	ounces sauerkraut
1	pinch of pepper
1/2	cup 2% milk

Directions

1. Chop leftover corned beef into bite sized pieces. Dice up Swiss cheese and chop sauerkraut.
2. Put whole eggs in large bowl and mix well. Add egg whites and remaining ingredients. Pour into pie plate and bake at 350 for 40 minutes, or until set and browned on top.
3. There is enough salt in the corned beef and cheese that you don’t need to add any additional.

My plate:

This was so good!  I thought the sauerkraut might be weird in a quiche, but all the ingredients worked wonderfully together.  This one is a keeper!

After Hannah and I went to the grocery store, we decided to do our long walk/jog.  It took us 50 minutes.  We then drove to see how far it was, both joking back and forth that it was probably 6 or 9 miles.  Um, turns out it is only a 2.9 walk, but hey, it’s better than nothing! 😀

As we were walking, we passed by a Christmas tree farm.

It totally reminded me of our first Christmas together as a family in 2001.  Hannah was 9 and my step-son was 11.  When we first moved to our town in July of 2001, I saw that we had a Christmas tree farm and thought what a great first family memory to have to chop down our first family Christmas tree!  Until we got there and found out they started at $65!

No way we were going to spend that much money on a tree (and have to do all the work!) so we went to the VFW hall and got a $19 tree.  Tony chopped off the bottom of the tree before we put it in our tree stand.  Joe took the stump and peeled off the bark and just started sanding it.  He sanded it for hours!  When I asked him what he was going to do with it, he said he couldn’t decide.

So Christmas morning, Joe hands me a gift.  This is what was inside:

He hand painted a snowman for me!  I was so touched because it was such a loving gesture and I really felt happy that I had married his Dad.   Fast forward nine years and this is the first snowman I look for to put out and the last one I put away.   I love you Joe! (even though you beat me in football picks this week!) 😀

When we got back from our walk it was already 3:30, so I just heated up a cup of my butternut squash soup and a few crackers to tide me over until dinner.

So for dinner I found a recipe for Chicken Cordon Blue from Kaylyn’s Kitchen.   In the recipe she said not to skip buying grueyere cheese because it made the dish.  When I went to my deli, I couldn’t find it behind the deli counter, but asked if they had it.  He found it, showed it to me and I said “why don’t you cut me one big slice about an inch and a half.”  He handed the cheese to me, I got some buffalo style turkey breast, threw the stuff in my cart and headed to the check out.

It wasn’t until I got home and noticed how expensive it was!

I thought it was delicious paired with brown rice.  Although I think Tony was disappointed, because when I said “how about Chicken Cordon Blue for dinner?”  I think he was thinking of those frozen ones when you cut into them butter just oozes all over.  Mine were sans butter, but still delicious. 😀

Even though I spent $11+ dollars on cheese, I still had a great grocery shop:

On the menu:  (remember breakfast and lunch is just me)

Breakfasts:

• Reuben Quiche
• breakfast pizza with gluten free flour
• egg mcmuffin with canteloupe
• oatmeal pancakes
• egg white omelet with black beans, pepper and cheese

Lunches:

• butternut squash soup and salad
• buffalo chicken chili over spaghetti squash
• Pork posole stew with cheese quesadilla
• brown rice and sausage stuffed zucchini
• stuffed pepper with gluten free pasta

Dinners:

• Salisbury steak with green beans
• chicken wings/celery/blue cheese dressing
• asian pork chops with stir fry veggies and brown rice
• grilled chicken chopped cobb salad
• cauliflower crust pizza (going to try that again!)

So while I had a great time being home this past week, it will nice to get back into a routine.  I didn’t drink nearly enough water, so I decided to skip this week’s weigh in and will step on the scale next Monday.

Hope you had a great holiday weekend.  Happy Monday! 😀

 

So remember how I made breakfast nachos the other morning?  Well Hannah woke up with breakfast nachos on the brain, so she made them for me! 😀

I had a couple errands to run – Brandi, I finally shipped your package to you for your BSI win!   I also stopped by a small store to get new printer cartridges.   The woman that worked there and I were chatting – she asked about how my Thanksgiving was and I told her it was weird that I only had one guest and didn’t cook that much.

So we continue talking and she started telling me about the dishes she made, and I said “so you like to cook?”  She replied “I love it!”  I then handed her My Bizzy Kitchen business card for her to check out my blog.  Guess what – she’d never heard of a food blog before?!”   I think I’ve opened up a whole new world to her!

On the drive back home there were ducks everywhere!

I am actually going to be making my buffalo chicken chili today for one of my lunches this week, but in a pinch, I usually have a can or two of Hormel chili.  My lunch: 1 cup chili over a 5 ounce baked potato.

I continued my clean sweep of the house – Hannah was cleaning out our pantry and found a butternut squash I forgot I bought!  I decided to make soup. 😀

Curry Butternut Squash Soup (printer friendly version here)

Makes 4 servings (generous 1.5 cups:  111 calories, 1.9 fat, 23 carbs, 3.4 fiber and 2.6 protein)

A delicious balance of sweet from the squash and heat from the curry powder and sriracha sauce.

Ingredients

1	teaspoon olive oil
2	cloves garlic, minced
1	granny smith apple, peeled and chopped
2	cups butternut squash
7	ounce potato
4	cups chicken stock
1/2	teaspoon curry powder
1	teaspoon dried tarragon
10	drops sriracha hot sauce

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400. Cut butternut squash in half, put on a baking sheet with about 1 cup of water and cook, cut side down for 30 minutes. Let cool. Remove pulp and seeds from the middle.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in stock pot. Add diced apples and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally. Scoop out squash flesh and put in pot along with remaining ingredients.
3. Cook until apples and potato are tender. Using a stick blender, puree soup until smooth.

While I know sage and butternut squash go well together, my sage had turned.  I decided to use curry powder, tarragon and sriracha sauce for my seasonings.

a little curry goes a long way - start low and add more to taste

silky, smooth, complex 😀

I love this soup!

It has such complex flavors.  First spoonful, you taste the sweetness of the squash and apple, then the curry and sriracha finish it off – its the perfect balance of sweet and heat.  And only 2 WW points! 😀

Tony and I both had a taste for corned beef – I don’t know why we really only think about it around St. Patrick’s Day.  We bought Nathan’s brand corned beef because it looked really lean and it comes with its own seasoning packet.  You put the corned beef in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

My plate:  4 ounces rosemary potatoes, 1 cup sauerkraut and 4 ounces of corned beef.

So I was trying to think what to do with the leftovers . . . .I may have a reuben quiche in the oven right now!

I also found a soup to make using the last of our pork roast from Thanksgiving – a Mexican soup called Posole – a spicy soup that sounds right up my alley.

So its my last day of staycation.  I slept in until 9:30 this morning 😀  I got everything done that I wanted, relaxed, spent lots of time with Tony and Hannah – its going to be hard getting up tomorrow morning!

Enjoy your Sunday!

I am sure they have been done before, but I somehow got the idea to make Hannah and I breakfast nachos yesterday morning.  I cut four corn tortillas and sprayed them with Pam, sprinkled with a bit of sea salt and baked for 12 minutes at 350.

I cooked the bacon in the microwave, and chopped that up.  I then scrambled 3 eggs.  When the chips were done, I divided the eggs over top 12 chips, added 1 ounce of cheese and broiled until the cheese melted, then sprinkled with the chopped bacon.  IT WAS SO GOOD!

Hannah didn’t have to work until late afternoon so she, Tony and I went out for lunch.

I usually get the bento box, but I wasn’t sure if there was going to be gluten in the tempura batter.  So I went with this:

I forgot to say no onions!  Hannah got those 😀

Tony requested brown rice for his sushi – it looked purple to us though!

Lunch actually gave us the idea for dinner.  I diced up some of the pork roast from Thanksgiving.

Tony was the chef last night – he used this brown rice, which I loved!

He added 2 eggs and scrambled them in the wok:

Then added canned stir fry veggies:

Then tossed in the pork:

Tony in action!

My bowl – I loved the crisp edges of some of the rice 😀

And of course, Tony thought I ruined it by adding this:

Perfect!

My name is Biz, and I am a paper hoarder.  I told you my big project this week was to clean our basement.   While the rest of the house is almost always company ready, the basement became just a catch all or dumping ground.  I mostly just ignore it as I go to the washer and dryer, but enough was enough.  The most embarrassing thing was that I had a pile of boxes – they were all empty from Christmas last year!

I am proud to say in just three hours, my basement is 75% clean!  My desk was a huge mess too.  I do our budget each month, and I have a folder for each month with all the bill stubs, where I write the check number and date it was paid.  I had 120 folders worth of bills.  Did I really need to keep a Com Ed bill stub from 10 years ago?

So I shredded almost three giant garbage bags of old bills.  Things that I thought I may need to keep were scanned and put on the computer.  I can actually use my desk now! 😀

By the time I came up from the basement, it was 4:30 and I realized I hadn’t done any exercise yet.  So I did Jillian’s 30 minute last chance workout on exercise t.v.   It was really hard!  Then I took our dog for a walk for 10 minutes – um, note to self, don’t walk the dog when its super cold outside after you are sweaty from a workout – I nearly froze to death in 10 minutes!

Today’s plan is to finish the last part of the basement and grocery shop so I have nothing to do tomorrow before having to go back to work on Monday.  It’s been a great week off! 😀

Have a great Saturday!

We had such a laid back Thanksgiving and it was awesome!  Just having one guest over takes almost all of the pressure off.  Not that we didn’t make good food, but we just made a few simple things and it was delicious.

I mentioned to Hannah if she wanted me to make biscuits and gravy for breakfast and her eyes lit up and said “yes please!”  I have made these mile high biscuits before – they are from Cook’s Illustrated and they are super tall, moist – simply amazing.

Well I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I did the trick of adding vinegar to regular milk to make my own.  Not sure if that was the fatal error, but they turned into buttery hockey pucks.

So back to the drawing board!

Baking Powder Biscuits

These turned out very good (although a couple rings below the mile high ones!).  To make the gravy, I used some of Christina’s Dad’s breakfast sausage (I used the other 3/4 for my sausage muffins later in the day).  So about 1/2 cup crumbled sausage, add 1/8 cup of flour to the pan and slowly stir in 1 cup of milk, until it’s nice and thick.  This step takes about 6-7 minutes, because you don’t want the gravy tasting like flour.  Add lots of cracked pepper and some salt.

I am submitting these biscuits to Christina’s Friday First!

I made our favorite shrimp cocktail for one of the appetizers:

Then Hannah’s favorite – bacon wrapped water chestnuts with a teriyaki glaze.  I just marinated 2 cans of water chestnuts overnight in about 1/3 cup of bottled teriyaki sauce.  Every time I went in the fridge I tossed them to coat well.

We used 1/4 of a slice of bacon to wrap each one.  With the remaining sauce in the bowl I added 1 teaspoon of brown sugar and a tablespoon of ketchup and mixed well.  I baked the chestnuts for 20 minutes without the glaze, then another 20 minutes with the glaze.  These are seriously addicting!

And any holiday table would not be complete without deviled eggs.  The two that are slightly green have pesto added to them – they were delicious. 😀

Hannah was in charge of her favorite side dish to make – tater tot casserole.  I am not exactly sure how she makes it, but she defrosts tater tots, mixes them with cream of cheddar and cream of chicken soup, milk, and cheese – tops them with corn flakes and bakes it.  I think this is the third year in a row she’s made it – its so good I had two servings of it!

I also made sausage stuffing muffins.   A took about 1 cup of crumbled breakfast sausage, mixed with 6 cups of stuffing mix, 3 cups of chicken broth and mixed well.  You want a pretty soggy muffin.  Put in muffin tin and bake for 30 minutes.

So Tony and I picked up what we thought was the same type of ham we got last year.  Last year we bought an uncooked ham.  It had lots of fat on the outside and took about 4 hours to cook.  It was salty and pink and tender when we sliced it.

Tony scored the top of the fat and it kind of bathed the ham as it cooked.

When it was time to cut it up, it was grey on the inside like a pork tenderloin, not like a ham.  Still not sure where we went wrong on this one, but since it wasn’t salty like last years, we really didn’t season this meat at all.  It was tender, but had I known exactly what type of meat I had, I would have brined it or at the bare minimum, seasoned it with olive oil and rosemary and salt and pepper overnight.

Live and learn, right?  I plan on making North Carolina pulled pork with the leftovers 😀

And I had a piece of my apple pie for dessert which turned out really good.  But I had no idea how to adjust the insulin intake on that since it was made with artificial sweetener.  About an hour and a half after dinner I tested my blood sugar and it was 314!  Oops!  So Hannah and I bundled up and did a brisk 30 minute walk.  An hour later my blood sugar was back down to 134.

And thanks to Hannah for being my sous chef – I really need to take lessons from her – she was constantly in cleaning mode so the after dinner clean up took us only about 5 minutes.  Thanks Hannah!  And thanks for manning the ham on the grill Tony!  😀  And also thanks to our nephew Chris who was able to spend the day with us – hope you had a nice time!

Maybe Dave can shine some light on what type of meat we bought?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  What is your favorite part of the holiday?  Mine is definitely spending time in the kitchen and enjoying good food with family! 😀