Sunday, January 25, 2015

Freezer Mania

I have realized that I will be overwhelmingly busy this semester; 3 jobs, 17 hours of class, training for several athletic events, and of course household and family duties.  After my initial freakout of how am I going to survive the next few months?!?! I had a bright idea, of course, freezer meals!  This is the first time that I have attempted freezer meals.  I ended up making several meals off of one website, added a few of our favorite recipes, and made a super delicious Baked Spaghetti Squash mac-n-cheese.  All of my freezer meals *other than the mac-n-cheese* are grain free.  I used this site for pretty much all of my meals.

***As a side note, I do not follow exact recipes pretty much ever, with these I tried following pretty closely.  I used coconut milk and usually would use goat cheese (I did use regular cheese in The Mac-N-Cheese, For all of the recipes containing meat I used Italian turkey in the Bell Peppers and Jambalaya.  I used ground chicken in the Shepherds pie, and used steak in the Stew.


From her site I have made sweet-potato-shepherds-pie which received a huge thumbs up!  stuffed-bell-peppers, another thumbs up!  Riced cauliflower is AWESOME!  Pumpkin-butternut-stew, which I loved, however Nathan said it wasn't filling enough for him.  Jambalaya, we have yet to try this, but I am very excited about it!  I also packaged my recipe of Vegetarian-white-bean-chili,yummy yum! For each of the recipes above I split the contents from the original recipe into two freezer bags with 2-3 servings per bag, so instead of having 5 meals, we had 10!

I also made 2 loaf size aluminum pans of Meatless-eggplant-lasagna.  While technically not in a freezer bag, it still counts right??  I prepared some easy freezer meals with some leftovers, such as Turkey Italian sausage with onion and green pepper, a couple of turkey burger patties, some chicken breasts to throw in the crock with a jar of salsa..yum yum, great for chicken tacos!

The rave of the bunch was..... Baked Spaghetti Squash!  This recipe is not grain free, as I used rice flour (but you could use coconut flour), I used unsweetened coconut milk in place of the regular milk.  We did not freeze this one, we ate it the evening that it was made.

I poked several holes in my squash and microwaved it for 10 minutes (in lieu of baking it for an hour), I then let it cool and scraped the squash directly into the pan.  Unfortunately *because I apparently suck* I only took a few pictures.


We ate the fake mac-n-cheese with the stuffed peppers, so I have a pic of those too!
Nate even enjoyed that meal, he said that the mac-n-cheese tasted like cheesy rice, yummy either way!




Sunday, January 18, 2015

Yep the day finally came, I thought I was happy the day she said "yes" to my proposal but it doesn't even compare to the "I do" she said on January 10th. It was a cold day but with a little sun, trees blocking the wind and the warmth from Sara's glow it felt like spring!! To say I am happy would be an understatement and I am just as excited as the future we are working towards together. Ok enough of my rambling about how much I love my wife, I just wanted to post a few pictures for you all!!!




Sunday, January 4, 2015

Lentils and Sausage to ring in the New Year

I recently have put a hold on my non-meatness, I have been running a lot and over-carbing, I was constantly craving more.  For fear that I was not getting enough protein after 2.5 months of not eating meat, I added fish and chicken back into my diet.  It was actually a perfect time to add meat back in so that I could enjoy my favorite New Years dish of Lentils and Sausage ( I used spicy chicken sausage).  Eating this meal is said to bring good luck and fortune to you throughout the year...the luck and fortune have already begun!

While this may not be the prettiest meal, the taste was AMAZING!
What you will need:

-2 tbsp  Olive oil
- 2 tbsp dried Italian seasoning
- 1 large onion
- 2 large carrots
- 1 large parsnip
- 2 large celery stalks
- 2 cups of brown lentils
- 4-5 cups of broth (I used vegetable)
- baby spinach leaves
- fully cooked Italian sausage ( I used spicy, Italian chicken sausage)

I removed the casings from 4 large sausage links and began browning them in a large pot with the olive oil.  I tried breaking them into small pieces as I was cooking them




After the sausage was browned, I transferred it into a bowl.  I then added the peeled and diced carrots, parsnip, onion, celery, and Italian seasoning to the remaining juices and oil left from the sausage.


I sauteed the veggies for roughly 7 minutes ( constant stirring) and then added the lentils, broth and the sausage back into the pot.  I let this simmer for about an hour stirring occasionally.  During the last 15 minutes I added the spinach, I used a packet of finely chopped steamer spinach...It turned everything bright green!  I would suggest using a bag of baby spinach and cook until it wilts.  While the taste was excellent the presentation was lacking (way too green).


This dish even got a thumbs up from Nathan (who claims not to like lentils), it was delish!

Until next time...

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Happy New Years!

January 1st has got to be one of my most favorite days during the year.  New beginnings, new goals, new hopes and dreams, and the excitement to have a fresh start.  I have a pretty hefty 'bucket list' of to-dos during 2015.  One of which is to post on this blog at least once a week (Nathan you can gladly help me out with this one!), whether it be a recipe or project, or just a little update on the family this is a goal that I will strive to achieve. 

 Happy New Year, from us to you - make this year count!!

Closing of Another Chapter

Welcome back everyone!! As you can tell we once again took a long hiatus as life got busy and other tasks took priority over this blog. It...