Recipe Book: Green Pepper Pizzas & Mini Cheesecakes

These recipes are from a few weeks ago.  I needed to type up the cheesecake recipe, so the post has been sitting in drafts ever since.  Since I'm very seriously procrastinating anything truly productive this morning, I figured I'd get this one finished.

Green Pepper Pizzas 

• 1 green pepper per person, halved (0 points)
• 3/4 cup (low-fat) cheese per person (6 points)
• 1/2 cup (or a little less) tomato sauce of choice per person (2 points)
• Toppings of choice (varies)

Because green peppers tend to be slippery when cooked, I sprinkled 1/4 cup of the cheese over both halves of the pepper.  Then about half the tomato sauce (I used Pesto Artichoke) in each pepper half, 1/4 cup of cheese on top of that, and the toppings.  I used a Morningstar meatless sausage patty (2 points) crumbled over one half of my green pepper, and four slices of turkey pepperoni on the other (17 slices are 2 points, so...).

Total WW PointsPlus as prepared: 10 

*~*~*

Mini Cheesecakes 

• 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 2 Tbsp light butter, melted (this may not be enough...)
• 2/3 cup low-fat cream cheese
• 6 Tbsp fat-free cream cheese
• 3 Tbsp lemon juice
• 2 large egg whites
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup light cherry pie filling*

Place 12 cupcake liners in a cupcake pan.  Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a small bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs and butter; mix well.  Spoon 1 tablespoon of crumb mixture into bottom of each liner and press down gently; refrigerate until ready to use.  In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer, beat both types of cream cheese together until fluffy.  Add lemon juice, egg whites, vanilla extract, and sugar; beat until smooth.  Spoon cream cheese mixture evenly into liners; bake until set, about 15 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.  Top each cheesecake with 1 tablespoon cherry pie filling*.  

* I am not a fan of cherry pie, so cherry pie filling as a topping did not sound delicious to me.  Slimy cherries in gel?  Ew.  So I took frozen raspberries (which is what I happened to have in my freezer), microwaved them, added a little sugar, and mashed them with a fork.  Voila!  Fruit topping.

WW PointsPlus: 3 

This recipe came straight out of Weight Watchers Weekly from 2/5/12.  

What's Life Without a Project?

I had my first ever baked sweet potato for dinner tonight.  I can hardly believe I've never had one before!  I've made baked sweet potato fries, baked sweet potato chips, and sweet potato pie, I order sweet potato side dishes whenever they're on a menu, but have never eaten just a regular, baked sweet potato.  It was delicious!

Sweet potatoes weren't the point of this post, though.

Remember my garbage-picked table?

Ta-da!  I think it came out pretty well.  We may end up putting one of the leafs in, or we may keep it square.

Done staining

 It's really a much more uniform color than it looks in that picture...

In its natural habitat

And then... We were on such a roll with the DIY that we couldn't give it one day's rest before starting in on another project.

I've lived in this condo for three and a half years, and I don't think I've really used or enjoyed the little patio off the living room even once.  We've been semi-seriously keeping an eye out for smallish, reasonably-priced patio furniture for at least a year now.

What is Target for if not impulse buys?

I cleaned fallen leaves and spider webs, got rid of the never-used doggie pee patch we built for Chloe, and then put together our new purchase.

Bistro set!

Morning coffee outside!

Steve and I enjoyed our coffee outside this morning after our run, and then later, our lunch (Trader Joe's Indian vegetables, samosas, and garlic naan).

And then, to make our little space just that much neater, we found some decorative fencing to hide the unsightly air conditioning unit and our bicycles.  It took some creative finagling and visits to two different hardware stores to attach the vinyl fencing to stabilizing two-by-fours, but it worked.

 
The only thing that would make our patio complete would be twinkle lights.  I think I'll get on that next weekend.

Grandma & Grandpa

On February 21, 1941, a spunky fifteen-year-old girl asked a shy fifteen-year-old boy to go to a dance with her. He said yes, but that he didn't know how to dance. She said she'd teach him.

There's been a war, a marriage, three children, six grandchildren, and a lifetime of happiness. 71 years later, they're still dancing together.

Happy 71st Anniversary of your first date, Grandma and Grandpa!

Dumpster Diving DIY

Back when Gen and I shared the apartment, our only table was her card table (and chairs).  We used to host weekly game nights.  On one such evening, we were sitting around the table with Ryan, Jake, and Val, and Val was telling me about her new Sims game.

"I'm doing it without using the money cheat!" she said.  "Which means I have to buy all the most ghetto furniture, like a ca--like the cheapest table they have."

"Were you going to say 'card table'?" I asked.

"No!  ...yes."

"Don't worry, we know it's kinda ghetto."

When Jake and Val moved back to Texas several months later, they gave us their old dining table and chairs.

And that table has served us well for the last probably six years.  But it was free to us, and I think it was free to Jake and Val before that.

Last Thanksgiving, Steve and I hosted his family.  Sometime in October, when I realized we'd have between six and ten people, I started looking for a table that would seat more than four.  I really wanted one that had leafs and would be smallish for everyday use, and could expand for holidays and dinner parties.  But dining sets are expensive, and I never found one I loved enough to spend the money on.  We ended up with our existing little dining table and Gen's card table pushed up next to each other for Thanksgiving.

But a new table has been on my mind, and I've been sort of trolling Craigslist ever since, hoping the perfect thing would come along.  So far, it hasn't.

On Saturday morning, there was a table out by the dumpster nearest our condo.  It was a little pitted and gouged, a bit stained, and fairly dirty.  It looked like one I'd seen on Craigslist.  (It might have actually been that very one.)  I hadn't been willing to pay money for it, but for free...

As the day wore on, I started having thoughts of refinishing it.  Maybe.  Steve and I went out to dinner that night with some friends, and on my way out to the car, I thought, If the table is still here when we get home, I'll take it.

But it was gone.

Darn!

Of course, I started having deep regrets about missing out on this awesome furniture-refinishing project (New Thing #3?), and having a table that could expand, and, and... Sadface.

But the next morning, it was back!  Which must mean there was something really wrong with it, right?  Hmm.

Steve and I checked it out, and it was a bit wobbly.  But it looked like one leg had come a little loose, and one of the adjustable feet on the bottom was missing.  Easy fixes!  We took it.

New table, cleaned but still a little gross.

 A couple firm whacks with a rubber mallet and the leg was solid and secure.  $6 at Home Depot got us a whole new set of little adjustable feet (as yet to be installed), and... a few hours worth of research on the internet and $120 more got us a nice sander, sandpaper, tack cloths, steel wool, staining sealer, brushes, and a paint tray.

And a DIY project!

Sand it.

Naked Table!

 The other thing I discovered is that my paint clothes seem to have grown since 2008.  Woops!  (The sad thing is, they're not my biggest pair...)

Too big!

Steve and I worked together to put one coat of stain/sealer on.  It needs to dry for eight hours, which would put us at 9:00 tonight, so I think Coat #2 will have to wait.  But it's a project on its way to greatness!  (I hope.)

Staining

I'll post a picture of the finished table once it's done.  We won't be working on it tomorrow, since it's our looooong class day, and it really will depend on the lighting whether we can work on it one evening this week at all, or if we'll have to wait for Saturday.  But yay, table!  We'll just need to find some chairs...

Fitocracy

A long time ago, someone once tried to encourage me to get into running with, "All the skinny girls run!"  I am not, have never been, and will never be a skinny girl, and I'm good with that.  But somewhere in the back of my mind, I feel like running is the "healthy" exercise.

And I hate running!  (In spite of or because of being on the track team for two years in high school?  The world may never know.)

But I like elliptical machines, which are almost like running, without the joint-jarring.  The only problem is that my condo is fairly small, and there really isn't room for an elliptical machine.  And gym memberships turn into my fat tax: the money I dish out every month as a punishment for not exercising the way I should, because after the shine wears off, history dictates that I'll keep paying for that membership, but I won't use it.

So this is the story of how I got around my exercise machine dilemma.

The company I work for partners with a health education and encouragement program that has online health courses, and you can track all your health-related activity.  You get points for exercise, routine medical exams, knowing your height/weight/BMI, quitting smoking, enrolling in a healthy pregnancy program, attending Weight Watchers... just about anything.  And every month they have drawings for people at the Bronze, Silver, and Gold point-level (up to $500).

In December, they were encouraging people to eat more fruits and vegetables.  If you tracked fifteen servings in a week (I would say I average 35-40...), you got entered into a weekly instant drawing for $100.

And I won one!

I finally received it near the end of January, and I was determined to put it back into something health-related.

Enter my new toy:

Mini-elliptical

It's not nearly as effective as a gym-sized elliptical trainer; it's more of a pedaling machine.  But the lack of handles actually encourages core strength, and I use hand weights in various motions to compensate.  It doesn't take up space in my living room, and I can do it while catching up on "Supernatural" or "Modern Family" in the evenings.  Like.

*~*~*

Have you heard of Fitocracy?  I know some of you are already on there...  It's similar to my company's online health program, but just for exercise.  You get points for every workout you log.  There are Achievements and Quests and you level-up, which makes it fun.  If you would like an invite, let me know!  (It's free.)

Joining Fitocracy and getting my little elliptical have helped keep me on track with my Move More goal.  I feel pretty good about that!

One of the Fitocracy Quests was Go For a Jog, which involved running a mile in under 12 minutes.  So, even though I hate to run, I made two laps around our condo complex (for a total of 1.04 miles) in 11:39.  Not great, but I'm pretty sure I haven't run a mile in one go since those Presidential Fitness Tests in high school.  

And back then, I was on the track team.

Be Mine

I'm torn between thinking Valentine's Day is a Hallmark Holiday, and acknowledging that it's nice to have a reason to step away from the everyday hustle and bustle of life and do something a little bit special.

Our first Valentine's Day as a married couple was on one of our Crazy Tuesdays, with about three minutes (seriously) between pulling in to our complex after work and running back out the door to class, which lasts until 11 PM. 

Instead, we got all our grocery shopping and other errands taken care of on Saturday, threw the weekly house cleaning out the window, and drove up to Solvang for the day on Sunday.

 

 

We walked around, took pictures, browsed through shop after quaint little shop, and ate.  Boy, did we eat!  We had butter cookies--both plain and chocolate-dipped-and-buttercream-filled--and French waffles.  We had Medisterpolse (sausage) and Frikadeller (meatballs) and coffee.  And we topped it off with pea soup and milkshakes.

To (sort of) balance out all that eating, we walked and walked and walked for hours.  We walked from one end of town to the other and back again.  We walked around the (tiny) Hans Christian Andersen museum.  We walked around a park and through all those quaint little shops, past windmills and all around the grounds of the Old Mission Santa Ines.

Solvang is very cute.  And it was our second New Thing to Do of the year!

When we headed out, we decided to take the coastal drive home instead of the winding through-the-mountains-and-valley road we'd taken to get there.  The coastal drive just happened to take us through Buellton and past a Pea Soup Andersen's.  (On the way up to Fresno, there are signs for Pea Soup Andersen's, and Steve and I were disappointed that first trip to discover that the restaurant is actually not close at all, and would mean a fairly really significant detour.  Like, to Buellton.)

But now I can say I've been, I've eaten, and the pea soup was quite good.  Our "Traveler's Special" bowl of unlimited soup actually came with a milkshake.  Ha!

All in all, a very successful first married Valentine's Day Weekend.  ♥

Yeah, he's a keeper.

I haven't listened to FM radio in my car in probably six years.  The radio in my Malibu broke circa-2006 when "helpful" strangers thought they knew better than I did how to jump start a car, and when I got my Honda in 2007, it came XM-compatible. And that's not to mention the audiobooks, which are the reason I decided XM wasn't worth paying for anymore when my subscription expired last month. I'm between audiobooks at the moment, so for the first time since '06 (and for the first time in this car, ever), I'm trying to figure out which radio stations I like.  I do a lot of clicking through one after another after another.

The other day, I paused on what turned out to be a religious station.  The (male) hosts were talking about how men are portrayed on TV, often as the "dopey oaf" character.  (Maybe I don't watch the right shows, but I have a lot of intelligent men on my line-up.)  They went on to discuss how conversations between (real-life) women tend toward complaining about their husbands, instead of celebrating them.  (I'm not sure my female friends do a lot of husband-complaining, either, so maybe I wasn't their intended audience...)  The result was asking listeners to call in and brag about their husbands/male friends/brothers.

I'm not the call-in-to-the-radio type, so I'll just brag about mine right here, for all of the Internets to read. In addition to all the wonderful things about Steve, he does things like this:

Fridays are my late night at work, so I get home about an hour later than usual.  I called Steve when I was on the road.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Looking up on the internet how to cook dinner."

"What are we having?"

"Surprise..."

When I got home, there was asparagus cooking in soy sauce and garlic on the two-burner griddle, pear gorgonzola salad in a bowl on the table, two lobster tails (the first lobster either of us had ever eaten) in their final minute of boiling on the stove, home-mixed garlic butter in a little dish, and two glasses of wine, poured and ready. 

My husband?  Is awesome.

Surprise Nuptials

A friend from high school, someone I keep in touch with mostly through other people, had a surprise wedding a few weeks ago.  She and her longtime boyfriend were each hitting milestone birthdays, so they invited everyone to a "joint seventieth birthday" celebration, and then, right in the middle of everything--surprise!--wedding.

I heard that some people were hurt, that they felt like they were intentionally excluded from wedding planning, but I'm sure that was the farthest thing from J's mind when she came up with the idea.  I'm sure she was actually trying not to inconvenience anyone.

And I think the whole idea is kind of awesome!  (I say this as someone who was not in the position to be involved with her wedding in the first place...)  It's very much her style.  Like eloping, but with all of your favorite people there.  None of stress or expectations or drama, all of the friends and family.  When I was in wedding crunch time, I definitely saw the appeal of eloping.  I loved everything about how my wedding turned out and, in the end, would not have done anything differently, but there were a few weeks there I thought I might not make it out the other side.

Mostly, I'm happy for J and her husband.  They're married! ♥

*~*~*

Also, an update on our countertop onion garden.  First of all Steve informed me that the reason for the baked potato work party was The Superbowl.  Ha!  I'm not sure how that escaped me.  I guess it was a "Spud Bowl" lunch.  Cute!

Anyway, I took this picture this morning, 48 hours after the last one.  Look how fast they grow!

Countertop Garden

 Steve is on the Party Committee at his work, and last Friday they hosted a baked potato lunch.  I think there was an occasion, but I'm not sure Steve ever mentioned it.  Groundhog Day a day late, maybe?  He brought a lot of the fixins (fixin'...s? fixins'?), including chives.

What he had leftover was the bulb part of the green onion.  He read online that you can just plop the bottom inch or so of the bulb--with roots--into a cup of water and re-grow them!  This picture was actually taken yesterday morning; today, they are noticeably taller.  Cool!

Recipe Book: Curry Roasted Cauliflower & Onion Balsamic Chicken

This post is for my sister.  I was telling her about this ridiculously easy-peasy chicken recipe the other night, and she wanted the details. 

I have to apologize in advance for the impreciseness of these recipes.  The chicken recipe was given to me like this, and the cauliflower is one I make all the time (seriously, we have it with dinner at least once most weeks, sometimes more) and just eyeball at this point.

Another note:  For the first time ever, we used purple cauliflower.  Did you know there was a such thing as purple cauliflower?  I had NO IDEA!  It kind of blew my mind.  Tasted the same, just... purple. 

Please excuse the purple cauliflower...

Onion Balsamic Chicken

• Chicken - about 2 pounds
• 1 package Dry Onion Soup mix
• Balsamic Vinegar to taste

Cover chicken with onion soup mix, and then cover the entire thing with balsamic vinegar.  You might consider covering your baking pan with foil first, as the vinegar baked into a difficult-to-remove layer on my Pyrex dish that took soaking and some good, hearty scrubbing to remove.  Anyway!  Bake at 350° for 30-35 minutes, until chicken is cooked through.

WW: 4 points for 4 oz of chicken. 


Curry Roasted Cauliflower

• Cauliflower - about half a large head or one small head, cut up
• ~1 tsp Curry (or to taste)
• ~1 tsp Olive Oil 
• ~1 tsp Salt (or to taste)
• ~1 Tbsp Minced Garlic (I like a lot of garlic... say it with me, "or to taste")

In a large bag or bowl, mix cauliflower with curry, olive oil, and salt.  Spray your baking pan with cooking spray, spread out cauliflower.  Bake at 450° for 15 minutes, taking the cauliflower out at the halfway point to turn it over and mix it up a bit. (I do 8 minutes, stir, 7 minutes...)  Stir in garlic, bake 5 more minutes.

WW: 1 point