Icing Smiles, Inc + Cookie Club =

So I know in my last post I explained that I'm part of a non profit organization that offers cakes to children in need at local medical facilities. You can go to www.icingsmiles.org to find out more about it- it's definitely a worthwhile organization. As part of that, there is a Cookie Club in which each month we will get a theme for the cookies in which we need to create and mail cookies to children and families who need a little surprise! For November, it's all about smiling faces and pumpkins so of course I did a test run of some pumpkin cookies that I decorated and sent to Ryan's work. I'm sure all 60+ will be gone by early this week if not mid-week. I have high expectations from them so if I don't get empty containers back.....well, it always happens! Here's a few examples!

News, News and more News

Ok, so I know it's been awhile again. It's been a busy few days recently and it's only getting worse as the school year goes. As I've gone, I've been trying to snap pictures of some dinners so they're below.

Cheesy Broccoli and chicken Alfredo-surprisingly healthy and it even passed the "Ryan test".

CSA fresh corn on the cob and cauliflower and macaroni and cheese. Oh so cheesy and oh so good! Again, it passed the Ryan test...I must be doing well recently!

Oven "Fried" Chicken legs....always a keeper and definitely a great comfort food! Instead of bread crumbs and fatty stuff, I use Fiber One cereal crumbs and egg substitute to stick the crumbs to the chicken. Of course, I take off the skin to take off extra fat and calories that are not needed. These are good without all of that!

Quiche- Ryan's first quiche and he liked it! I used corn and kale in mine. Of course you can't forget the cheese, so we had that as well!

A rare glimpse of the hungry man before dinner and before his food has disappeared.

Eggplant Parmesan and low fat buttered corn. Definitely a quick meal, but oh so delicious!

One of the quickest and healthiest meals in awhile- a large salad, fresh from the CSA farm and grilled chicken with some low fat, low calorie dressing. Definitely filling and oh so yummy!

Tilapia with roasted veggies. Light, but a little something different than the normal meat and potatoes kind of meal.

Roasted eggplant, squash, red and green peppers, and onions- all CSA and all oh so yummy. I used this in so many ways- roased veggie sandwiches, wraps for lunch, on pizza and whatever I decided to use it for. This is a quick, and easy way to use and add vegetables to lots of different dishes without worrying about what to do with each type of veggie individually. I just roasted them with a little oil, salt and pepper and some simple garlic powder and spcies.

This was something that I did not think we would like- Turkey stuffed cabbage. This was a Hungry Girl recipe and used CSA cabbage with veggies and turkey stuffed inside with some simple spices and tomato sauce. It started out not as good, with the cooking time taking longer than usual I thought, but once they were cooked, we realized what we had been missing all these years! I'll be making these again and changing the filling as I go!

Donut Acorns-I made these as small treats for a business fair I was involved in at church. The bottom is a donut hole with chocolate frosting and crusted pretzels on top and half of a pretzel stick for the "handle". They were definitely cute and oh so delicious!

My first of two attempts at making my own homemade caremel. Apparently, it has to be cooked for at least 16 minutes, so the second time around turned out as caremel. The first time was just a sugar syrup that I still have to find a use for since I wasn't going to throw out the ingredients. Hmmm....

Green apple Caramel Apple Cupcakes....I made these for the business fair and Ryan's work buddies benefited as well. The inside is a fresh apple cupcake with homemade caramel filling then it's topped with cream cheese frosting, green sugar to create the green apple and half of a pretzel stick and mint leaf to show the top of the apple. Fun to make and definitely fun to eat!

Another view of the Caramel Apple Green Apple Cupcakes.

Homemade with chunky tomatoes for sauce, green peppers, arugula, more tomatoes, cheese and pepperoni under all of that as well. Was very good and very veggie loaded!

"Cookies" I made from frozen pie dough I got from the store. I took decorations along to the business fair and let kids decorate them while their parents shopped.

I've also been working on some of my baking and have found a great resource for this...it's a company called Icing Smiles Inc, which is a non-profit organization that provides birthday and special event cakes for children and their siblings/family who has major medical concerns that often prevent them from having a cake or celebration. I would create and donate the cake for these children and would get more experience in the process. We'll see what this turns into, but I'm definitely looking forward to my first cake for these kids. They deserve it!Along with cakes, I'm also part of the "cookie team" which creates cookies based on a theme and sends them to kids who may need a little pick me up. November's theme is smiley faces and pumpkins. We'll see what I come up with for those!

I'm also working on expanding my baking to church functions and to try to help others and benefit them. I know I am looking forward to the holidays to get my creativity moving and seeing what I can come up with! You never know where I'll come up with ideas and when you'll see some goodies showing up! See you there!

Exciting News

Hi all,
Wow, it's been an exciting week or so and definitely awhile since I've been on here. First of all, I appreciate all the support that you all give me!

Ready for my big news? Ya sure?

I'm officially a part of a "small, home" business fair at my church. The preschool is having a fundraiser that has small home business like Creative Memories, 31 Purses etc. We will each have a table to display and sell our products and take orders. What am I selling, you may ask? LOTS of things....crafts like baby blocks that can be personalized, no sew blankets, and of course baking for the upcoming holidays. I'll have treats to sell and cupcakes for kids to decorate as well. It's definitely exciting since I'm hoping to get some orders for the holidays and to make some extra money for us since I'm working part-time right now.

If anyone would like to order anything, let me know! I'm always taking orders for any baked goods, crafts for gifts or whatever....I deal with the creativity while you take the credit for it! I'm so excited for this opportunity at the business fair and hope to be able to come home with LOTS of orders!

New Food and New Fun

On Monday night, I made baked beans in the crockpot so this was my alternate to having to eat baked beans for the next 3 days- I made a form of a taco salad for lunch one day with fat free sour cream and reduced fat cheese on top of CSA organic fresh lettuce and tomatoes....this is definitely something I'll be making again. I was soo good! I wonder if other leftovers could be made into a salad form?

Tuesday I made a pepper and onion mixture, cooked it all up and put a piece of tilapia on top with fajita seasoning. We turned them into the fish tacos you see below. Sooo amazing and oh so healthy too! This is a keeper recipe!

I had a ton of veggies that I didn't want to go bad and I had gotten some roasted veggies from Wegmans last week so I was so happy to be able to make this! I'm sure mine were much healthier than theirs too since they look different than theirs and I know what goes into mine! Today I turned this into a roasted veggie pizza....amazing and quick lunch and of course I got tons of veggies into me! I'll be doing that again next week!

 

That's it for now folks, I'm off to my in-laws for a quick overnight trip and some home shopping...yay for Signature Homestyles so we're on own for dinner at a local restaurant. Can't wait!

Lots of baking and a few changes around life!

Well, it's been awhile since I was on here and that's because I've been making a lot of changes in my life for the positive. I've also been in the baking spirit recently so we are swamped with baked goods it feels like. In less than a week, I've made oatmeal pumpkin cookies-1/4 without flaxseed for Ryan and the other 3/4 with flaxseed for me. He's got to throwing a fit when I add it to things...luckily he didn't realize I added to dinner tonight!

I also realized I had two rotting bananas and half a can of pumpkin leftover from some other things so I made banana, pumpkin and oat bread with chocolate chips. Pretty tasty if I can say so myself and of course, it has flaxseed. Can you see a trend?

I was recently told by my naturopathic dr that I needed to increase how much flaxseed I was eating so it's going in everything recently so I'll get more of it. The other thing I was told was to increase vegetarian meals and cut out most of my carbs. That's a hard combo because anytime I exclude meat from a meal, I feel like I have to include pasta so I'm trying to figure out ways around that. I'm thinking quiche might be an option with roasted vegetables and no crust, but we'll have to see when I'll have time to make that.

My other big news....and I mean, this is BIG! I've decided to go partly gluten-free in my own life. I"m not forcing Ryan and will not make anything that we both will end up eating that is gluten free, but I'm trying it as an experiment to see if that will help me lose weight since that is my constant struggle. I've also worked up to at least an hour of cardio a day on top of my normal routine of weights, so I'm hoping between all of this, I'll see a change on the scale in the next few weeks. All of this is part of my quest to lose weight and get rid of my PCOS symptoms. (By the way, it's PCOS awareness month, which is why I'm adding it into my post today). Anyway, I'll let you know how the newest decisions affect me/us.

http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2011/08/gluten-free-bread-machine-tips.html

The above site, is something that I've found to help me decide to make gluten free bread in my machine because $5 per loaf is a little too much at Wegmans and Walmart stopped carrying gluten-free stuff I think. I'll try to remember to take pictures of my gluten-free bread and share it so everyone can see what I'm making. It's been a busy few weeks though, so I don't get to post as often as I like. As it is, I'm supposed to be making two online games at the moment and haven't started yet. Guess I'd better get started huh?

Mini Apple Pie....best ever!

Ok, I know what you're thinking. Yes, I made homemade mini apple pies, but no I did not make the crust. At the current month in time, I do not have the time to do this and when I saw the mini graham cracker crusts at the grocery store and remembered I had bought some light no sugar added apple filling a few weeks ago-I knew what I was going to do! Make mini apple pies...we even had some Fiber-one cereal that I could crush up to make a crumb topping and of course you can't have pie without whipped cream! Definitely thinking of having one now.....have a look!

Before they were baked to mouth-watering perfection!

The final product....I think they're just dying for some whipped cream, don't you? I can't wait to taste test the first one! I'll even get a little fiber out of it. And of course, for those of you that are as health conscious as I am, they're only about 160 calories and under 5 grahams of fat total! That's what I call a sweet snack!

Pumpkin Carrot Breakfast Bars with Almonds

Ok, so earlier I showed the before pictures of the yummy pumpkin carrot breakfast bars. Afterwards, I baked them off and tried one just to see if they were good, of course! I also realized I forgot to say that I added almonds to them too....definitely very yummy and Ryan even ate one!

My finished product...doesn't it look yummy? I think it looks amazing and it's so moist and flavorful! You should try it, but that would mean you would have to make a small field trip to come see me...I'm ok with that!

Fake, Real, Canned and Yummy

Sunday after church, Ryan wasn't hungry so I made boca burgers for me with fresh lettuce, a little tangy ketchup and CSA tomatoes on top of 100 calorie buns. For those wondering, this is the fake.....not real meat but sure tasted like it. The real is next....

This is the real-we had some plans on Sunday evening for Labor Day but they ended up canceled and we ended up with steaks...oh, what to do, what to do. I say make juicy steak and mashed potatoes with gravy. Yes and Yes-they were instant and I do know how to make real, but was worn out so instant it was. Definitely as delicious as it looks! We don't get them often, but Ryan wanted them and we hadn't had them in awhile so.....

Now, onto the canned. This is my yummy CSA tomatoes and ppers with onions, some spices and garlic that I cut and mixed to make fresh tomato sauce. We'll see how it turns out soon. This was my first attempt at canning, so hopefully it works out!

Thanks to some inspiration from my sister Jenna, I decided to attempt canning grape juice. I'm not sure if I have the right kind of grapes so we'll just wait and see in a little while to see how it turns out. Of course I put my spin on it and used splenda instead of sugar for healthier purposes. What's that? Of course, I'll tell you how it is when I open it!

This is my final product of my spaghetti sauce-fresh and canned....looks so yummy. There may be some spaghetti and meatballs in our future!

Ok, now this was one of my flops recently. I got this recipe from a cookbook and thought it sounded good. Granted, I used different veggies than it called for but thought it would still be good since I didn't change the sauce that covered it all. We kinda liked it but wish it would've had more flavor to it-rather bland. That and we kept picking out the eggplant cubes from it. We didn't like this version of eggplant so I'll keep attempting to see what we do like.

I decided today, that I wanted to use our CSA carrots from last week to make some form of breakfast item. After searching through every cookbook, all I could come up with was carrot cake. Which is good and all but I wanted something a little different. This "different" came in the form of fresh grated carrots, pumpkin, spices, a little flax seed (but don't tell Ryan), and some quick oats sprinkled on top to make pumpkin carrot breakfast bars!

My two main ingredients, ready to use their flavors for good!

My pumpkin carrot cake breakfast bars-ready for the oven! I'll have pictures and maybe an empty pan to show later....we'll see. I don't think this will be going to Ryan's work-I think it'll mostly be for me. Especially if/when he finds out that it's got the flax seed-he says I mess things up with that but hey, I like it!

Well, that's it for this post. Off to the gym we go then home to sample a little of my breakfast bars... a little pre-breakfast testing, just to be sure! Make sure you check back soon for more yummy flavors!

Labor Day Cupcakes

I forgot to add my version of cupcakes for Labor Day picnics. These were supposed to be made into watermelons but I didn't have time so I covered chocolate cupcakes with white frosting and then rolled them in colored sprinkles-red, white and blue. Enjoy!

Updating...I know it's been awhile!

Okay, so it's been about a week since I last posted I think. Work has been so very busy that I haven't had time to do much else. I'm hoping to have some time before this long weekend is over to relax and recap with my husband and just do some things that I enjoy, but don't normally get done. Here's what I've been up to the last week or so.....

 

This was our appetizer for my birthday dinner at Duke's. I can't remember if I posted birthday pictures so here's a few pictures to help. This was bruschetta with a homemade chunky tomato and garlic salsa. It was wonderful and we always enjoy getting this when we go there. We eat the whole thing in under 10 minutes and Ryan just loves to eat the salsa!

This was Ryan's buffalo chicken sandwich. A little too spicy for my taste buds...maybe that's why he ordered it, so I couldn't eat it!

This was my meal, a veggie filled sandwich with cheese and a special mayo...definitely decadent, but I figured it was healthy enough for my birthday since it had veggies...gotta make exceptions for your birthday right?

I had to work a few nights this past week so Ryan tried making vegetable lasagna...turned out very good. He used CSA eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini and a few other things we had on hand. A great dinner for something that he did by himself...he's becoming quite the chef!

These were cheese and sausage filled calzones. Ryan loved the golden and crispy outside. I loved that they came together in under 20 minutes plus baking time. I did add CSA veggies to these as well. These didn't last long in our house!

This was my version of the cheeseburger parfait by Hungry Girl (She has a show on Food Network that I totally love and now I have 3 of her cookbooks, so look for more recipes from her, that I've made into my own.) She makes food healthy while still making it delicious. This had ground boca burgers which Ryan said he loved this before he found out it wasn't actually meat so I think I win this round! It is layers of mashed potatoes, boca burger, onions, ketchup and chopped pickles on top. Everything on a cheeseburger and for a quarter of this whole thing, it's under 200 calories! Definitely worth it for me!

Another view of the cheeseburger parfait-I made it in a pie pan because we don't have parfait glasses.

Thursday, I made these cheesy enchiladas. This is another Hungry Girl recipe and we thought it was quite delicious. These had a few CSA veggies in them as well.

I served the veggie enchiladas with brown rice underneath and it passed the Ryan test.

Upcoming....
Well, I'm hoping to start canning thanks to some motivation from some of my sisters and family. We had a picnic today and started talking about how everyone is canning different things. I'm thinking of trying grape juice, salsa, tomato sauce, pickles and we'll go from there. Have to get all of the equipment first so that's a task for tomorrow with some birthday money than I might try to start experimenting on Monday since I have the day off. I'm hoping to use more of my CSA veggies this way...I'll give updates as I can.