Cauliflower Pizza Crust

If you're living in Low-Carb Land like me right now, you might be missing certain indulgences like, oh I don't know, bread in general! But let's get specific here. Pizza is a huge program buster, especially if you're on a low-carb plan, so I went searching for alternatives. I didn't have to look very hard because there are a lot of recipes out there for cauliflower pizza crust.

Even if you're not avoiding carbs, this is a healthier, lower-calorie option packed with veggies. The recipe I used is from Sandy's Kitchen and can be found here. After making cauliflower pizza a couple times, I now know that the key is making the crust thin so that it has the maximum potential for crispiness. Soggy crust is bad on real pizza and downright unbearable with cauliflower crust so spread it thin, people!

The crust is just grated raw cauliflower, shredded cheese, egg beaters and some seasonings. I used the shredding disk on my food processor but you could grate the cauliflower by hand too.

Using a spring-form pan makes it simple to get the crust into that perfect pizza shape, aka a circle. Covering the bottom in parchment paper before you snap the pan together and giving it a spray or two of cooking spray makes it a lot easier when it's time to flip the crust.

After baking the crust for 30 minutes, you flip the crust and bake for an additional 10-15 to get it nice and crispy. The edges will look a little burnt but that means you're doing it right!

Throw some toppings on with some sauce and some cheese and bake or broil for another 5-10 minutes. I just baked it and had no problem. I pureed a can of diced tomatoes and used about half a cup as the sauce. Yum yum.

So I'm not gonna lie. This dish will not be an exact replica for real pizza dough. But it's definitely a reasonable substitution to help kick the craving. And it's easy. Enjoy!

The Ultimate Holiday Comfort Food - Super Easy Turkey Pie

If there's one food that I love to make this time of year, it's a Turkey Pie. A lot of people call it turkey pot pie, but I don't know why and the name bothers me for some reason. So we just call it turkey pie (or chicken pie if that's the case.)

A little background... my husband and I started dating in October so it wasn't long before the holiday season was approaching. Our relationship was new so to avoid an awkward conversation about whether we should spend Thanksgiving together, I simply made plans to spend turkey day with a girlfriend in San Francisco. The weekend before Thanksgiving, my then-boyfriend invited me to come to dinner at his house with a couple friends. When I arrived, I discovered that he had cooked an entire turkey dinner ON HIS OWN so that we could still celebrate Thanksgiving together. What a catch!

Since then we've often hosted a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner with a small group of friends. There's always a lot of turkey leftover so I use this very simple recipe that I got from my aunt to turn some of the leftovers into a simple and delicious dinner. This year we weren't able to host our traditional dinner so I used a roasted turkey breast from the store instead. The beauty of this recipe is that you can sort of throw in whatever you have left from a turkey dinner.

You will need:
2 - 2 1/2 cups shredded turkey or chicken (cooked)
2 pre-made frozen pie crusts, thawed
1 cup corn (frozen is fine and doesn't need to be pre-cooked)
1 cup peas (frozen works too)
1 1/2 cups pre-cooked potatoes, cut in 1 inch chunks
1 1/2 - 2 cups gravy (you can use the jarred kind if you don't have any leftover)
anything else you want to throw in such as onions, carrots, celery (all pre-cooked or frozen work best)

1. Preheat your oven to 350 and take your pie crusts out of the freezer. Let them sit while you round up and prepare the other ingredients - shred the turkey/chicken, chop veggies, cut potatoes.

2. Use one of the pie crusts as the base for your pie. They usually come in a foil pie plate which will work just fine.

3. Dump in your leftovers or ingredients and pour the gravy over, mixing gently with a spoon or fork. Be careful not to tear the crust.

4. Gently remove the other pie crust from its tin plate and lay it on top of your pie, pinching the edges to seal them. Try not to tear it, but don't stress out if you do. Just sort of pinch it back together. Channel The Nester here and remember that it doesn't have to be perfect to be delicious.

5. Put the pie plate on a cookie sheet to catch spills and put it on the center rack. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes or so. The crust should be a nice golden brown. I sometimes turn on the broiler for just a few minutes at the end to make it crispier.

Hello yummy deliciousness!

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31 Days to a More Organized Life : Day Sixteen : Meal Planning, Part Two

Yesterday I admitted that I am horrible at meal planning and that it's one area where I would really like to improve. Whenever I read about someone who plans meals a month at a time (or actually cooks for a month at a time) I feel like such a slacker and so envious of their mama skills. I can at least make the effort to start out a week at a time.

I'm not the most able graphic designer and I don't really have the time to design my own meal planning sheet. And seriously why kill myself doing this when so many talented folks have already done this and provide free printables?!

31 Days to a More Organized Life : Day Fifteen : Meal Planning, Part One

Confession: I am awful at meal planning. It's one of the areas that I know would really help me, but I'm inconsistent at best when it comes to planning our meals in advance. I'd really like to improve on this so the next few days will be about taking some steps towards consistent menu planning.

To start off, I wanted to have some back-up meals in the freezer that can be thrown in the crock pot when I know it's going to be a hectic day. Even this takes some planning because the meals have to thaw beforehand. I think I can handle looking ahead at the week and seeing that Thursday is going to be busy so I better thaw a freezer meal Wednesday to make dinner easier the next night. Are you following me?

I did some research on good old Pinterest for freezer meals and found myself a brand new blog to read. It's the mecca of meals, crafts, DIY and it's called Six Sisters' Stuff. You might have heard of it; they have like ten zillion followers. The post that I found on Pinterest was this one about making 8 slow cooker freezer meals in one hour. Yahtzee!

I chose three of the eight meals to start: Black Bean Taco Soup, Hearty Beef Stew, and Cilantro Lime Chicken. I made a shopping list and took my little guy to the store to stock up.

I labeled gallon ziploc bags with each meal, today's date and the time each needs in the slow cooker. Then I just followed the instructions on Six Sisters and dumped everything in. I browned the ground turkey for the black bean taco soup first and let it cool while I put together the other two meals.

Now I have three ready-made meals that just need heating up to make dinner a snap!

Join me tomorrow for more adventures in meal planning and check out the previous days in the series here.

Super Simple Stuffed Shells

Sometimes you need an easy go-to recipe for a hearty meal that makes everyone happy. Kids of all ages are notorious for their various (and mostly inconsistent) food gripes, and mine are no exception. Take this little slice of heaven for example:

My Little Gal: What's for dinner?
Me: Stuffed shells.
Little Gal: (with 4-year-old distaste) What's stuffed shells?
Me: It's kind of like spaghetti but with a different kind of pasta. It's yummy.
Little Gal: I don't like stuffed shells.
Me: (sigh.)

Fast-forward to dinner time:
Little Gal: Mom, I tried it and I love stuffed shells!
Me: Yay.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

When I saw this recipe on Pinterest for easy banana muffins, it was one of those no-brainer pins. I didn't look at the full recipe right away because the description was enough of a sell. Easy? Good. Banana? Good. Muffins? Goood. (Name that show!)

The recipe on Keeping Up With the Joneses is super easy and uses basic ingredients. I also read a few of the comments to see if anyone had done anything differently. It's always nice to have options right?! Both kiddos helped me and the muffins turned out to be so yummy! Even my fussy little guy likes them.

You can see the original recipe here and how Jess made them, but I'll tell you what I did differently. For one, I used my food processor instead of a blender. Basically our blender sucks and my food processor doesn't so it was an easy decision.

I gave the oats a spin in the food processor before adding anything else to make them smoother and easier to blend in the batter. I also used a 6oz vanilla yogurt instead of Greek yogurt because that's what I had on hand. Because I was using a sweeter yogurt, I cut the sugar back to a 1/2 cup based on some of the comments on the post. Otherwise I stuck to the ingredients and followed the instructions.

Next time I make these, I would use riper bananas. I usually wait until my bananas are softer and a little brown before baking with them, but I'm impatient and these sounded good. I also might throw in some mini chocolate chips and see how that goes. The muffins are more dense than traditional muffins because they don't contain flour, but they are delicious and actually a good size for little ones. They take a few minutes to whip up and only 20-25 to bake. Success!

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Easiest BBQ Meal Ever

We had a small get-together for the 4th of July and I knew I needed a meal that would be super easy to fix. We were planning to spend part of the afternoon at another friend's house so we didn't have tons of time to prepare a dinner for our own guests. This meal feels homemade but it's quick and takes very little prep-work. Oh and I didn't take any pictures so you'll have to imagine what it looked like, which will be easy once you hear the ingredients.

BBQ Pulled-Chicken Sandwiches (feeds 8-9)
2 pre-cooked rotisserie chickens
2 bottles BBQ sauce (I like Sweet Baby Ray's)

Shred the chicken off the bone (I don't use the skin) using a fork or your fingers. Put the chicken and about 1 1/2 bottles of bbq sauce in a crockpot and stir. I add a little water so it's not so sticky. Let it sit on low for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally or on high for about an hour. Serve with sandwich buns, cheese and any other condiment you like.

Easy-Peasy Mexican Rice
1 cup cooked rice (I made 2 cups and it was way too much)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 jar salsa

Cook the rice ahead of time and chill in the fridge for a couple hours. Add the black beans and the salsa and stir. That's it. 

We also had grilled corn on the cob and it was really nice to not be slaving away in the kitchen while everyone was hanging out. Since I made way too much rice, we used the leftovers in tacos the next night, and I still ended up freezing a bunch of it. Apparently a little rice goes a long way! 

Eating South Beach Style

So it's day 5 of our south beach diet and my body is definitely still adjusting. The good news is that my willpower has been strong and I've fought the intense sugar cravings over the past few days. High five to me! I'm hoping it gets easier, but I'm still missing my caramel frappes! Phase one of the SBD meant to re-program your body so it's very strict and luckily short. By eliminating as much sugar as possible, even the healthy sugars found in fruit and whole grains, the idea is that you re-train your system to recognize good vs. bad sugar. And trust me when I say that my body really needed to hit the reset button in that department! Even though I'm pretty sure frappes are frowned upon even in the third and most lenient phase, I intend to reward myself for getting through these two weeks of torture.

from Foodchannel.com

Eating on the SBD is a challenge at times, but it's not as hard as I expected. The most difficult part for us is breakfast. When all starches are off limits, you're pretty much left with eggs, veggies and lean meats if you want to stick to traditional breakfast food. If you're the type who can eat leftover chicken stir-fry for breakfast, then this phase would be a lot easier for you... but I'm not, so eggs are getting old. I've been trying to mix it up as much as possible and I'll admit that having a good dose of protein in the morning is more satisfying than a bagel or toast. We've also been incorporating Egg Beaters into the routine so we're not eating 700 eggs (and all the cholesterol that they contain) every week.

I especially like having meals that don't feel like they're missing something without the carbs. We had turkey taco salads the other night and they were filling, delicious and felt like a normal meal even though we would usually have standard tacos with tortillas. I also made a turkey and bean chili, and apart from missing the yummy cornbread side, it was really good. We topped it with avocado, cheese and sour cream and felt like we were eating a normal dinner. I made a chicken and broccoli stir-fry the other night, which was yummy, but felt lacking without even brown rice. The next time I do a stir-fry I might try serving it over spaghetti squash which is pretty bland and tastes a lot like pasta. Lunches are generally salads with plenty of stuff like chicken, hard-boiled eggs or beans to make them more filling.

Finding some substitutes for foods that are off-limits has helped too. I've been drinking diet coke to kill the soda cravings and for the caffeine. I don't like regular coffee and I don't think I could handle this diet and give up all caffeine as well. It's still limited because I don't really like diet coke so I don't drink that much. I also found that Jello makes an awesome sugar-free pudding called Dulce de Leche that helps me not miss my caramel frappes as much. It's not the same, but it's a decent fix for now. We're a third of the way through phase one and I feel pretty good. My daughter's preschool teacher told me I looked great the other day and asked what I was doing. I think I was just wearing some camouflaging clothes but it was the encouragement I needed to keep going!

Mmm, pie

After two large family dinners at our house during Christmas, we were left with an abundance of leftovers. In the past, I have cringed guiltily as I've thrown away container after container of uneaten food during a refrigerator purge. This time I took a page from my aunt's book and was able to use almost all of our leftovers. So easy. So effective. So delicious.

Chicken pot pie is the ultimate comfort food in my book and we were not disappointed. I also made a beef pot pie with the remains of my standing rib roast from Christmas day. The beef pot pie was met with slightly less enthusiasm but still enjoyed. The chicken pot pie was the true hero, impressing not only the Husband, but my parents-in-law as well. Go me! I am truly a domestic goddess. And yes, that is my actual pie in the picture above. Below is the inside prior to cooking.

I just chopped up the leftover chicken, added some peeled, boiled potato chunks, frozen peas and corn, and some store-bought chicken gravy. The gravy could be construed as cheating but in this case there was no leftover gravy or stock and you need something to bind the ingredients. The last pie I made had homemade gravy in it so I'm not beating myself up too much over this one. I also used store-bought frozen pie crusts. Just thaw them a bit and use one of the crusts as the topper. Poke a few holes in the top to let steam escape and bake the pie at 375 for about 30 minutes. I sometimes crank the oven to 400 for another few minutes at the end to get a good golden crust. Then just serve it up. Yum!

Friday Finds

I cannot believe the 4th of July has passed. Where is the summer going?

I found a new site that I am in love with. It's called Crafty Nest and it is all about DIY projects. It's really wonderful and inspiring. Here's a bookcase made from old kitchen drawers.

This idea is pretty cute too. I could see doing it with sweet, girly patterns for over Baby's bed someday.Finally here's a treat that I was hoping to make for the 4th but it didn't happen. I'm thinking I'll take the recipe on our trip to my folks' house and make it for a bbq next weekend. The recipe comes from Better Homes & Gardens and I posted it below in case anyone else thinks it looks too delish to pass up.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup strawberry jam
• 4 cups small whole strawberries, halved or quartered

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 13x9x2-inch baking pan with foil, extending foil beyond the edges. Set aside.

2. In large mixing bowl beat butter and peanut butter on medium to high for 30 seconds. Beat in sugars, baking powder, and salt until combined. Add eggs and vanilla; beat until combined. Beat in as much flour as you can with mixer. Stir in remaining flour.

3. Spread dough in prepared pan. Bake 25 minutes or until top is lightly browned and toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.

4. Cool completely on rack. Remove from pan by lifting foil. Spread jam and top with berries. Cut into bars. Serve at once or refrigerate up to 6 hours. Makes 24 bars

Make Ahead: Wrap the peanut butter base in foil; store at room temperature up to 24 hours. Before serving, top with jam and berries. Or freeze the peanut butter base in a freezer container up to 3 months.

Happy Belated 4th of July!!

Cupcake Plan Gone Awry

photo by Bakerella at lovelylittlecakes.blogspot.com
Inspired by this post by Lindsey from the Pleated Poppy, I had a wonderful idea for Baby's 1st birthday party this weekend. (As a side note, this might be one of the most creative women on the planet and the parties she throws are jaw-droppingly cute.) Anyway, my plan was to make cupcakes and do the frosting myself but let the kids decorate their own cupcakes with sprinkles, confetti, etc. We invited a lot of families with children in the preschool to kindergarten age range so I thought even though we aren't doing a "kid's party" per se, this would be a fun activity. Fastforward to the rsvp update from Evite and with 55 people attending (55!) I decided that cupcakes were no longer part of the gameplan. With Baby not at an age where it will bum her out and Fiance working a half-day today, I decided that for the sake of my own sanity, baking six dozen cupcakes was not in my best interest. So we ordered a cake from Vons and I think it will be adorable. Plus my mood will be much better tomorrow if I'm not up until midnight tonight frosting six dozen damn cupcakes.
*Note: Obviously my cupcakes would have looked just like the one pictured above... in my wildest dreams where pigs fly over the frosty slopes of hell.

For future parties how cute are these featured on Bakerella...
Or these...
Someday soon I hope I have the time and effort to try these cuz they are so freaking cute!

South Beach Torture

Almost one year ago I gave birth to a tiny baby who arrived six weeks early. This combined with wretched morning sickness and weight loss early in pregnancy, pumping like a maniac and probably a good deal of anxiety about having a preemie in the NICU led to the miracle that was my complete loss of baby weight. Not only did I lose the weight that I gained during pregnancy, I somehow managed to not go back to my pre-preggers weight and stayed at my first trimester weight (because yes my morning sickness was that bad.) Before you decide I am a jerk who gloats about her baby weight, remember that there was a couple months not long ago that we call "the holiday season." Sigh. All that non-work to lose the weight was defeated by mashed potatoes and cookies and stuffing and pie and... you get the picture. In my defense I'd like to point out that the previous holiday season was spent feeling nauseous with occasional barfing.

Due to all the holiday goodies that I piled on my plate, I am now having to get rid of the excess before the mildly important event coming up in my life in five short months... aka my wedding. The Fiance has been wanting to lose some lbs as well so we decided that together we would enter the South Beach realm and try to get a jump start on our plan. Let me just say that the creator of the South Beach Diet must be in cahoots with the devil in some way because only someone with no soul would enforce two weeks without any carbs, sugar or even fruit for crying out loud! I admit I have not been totally faithful to the SBD. The flea market would not have been possible without the Starbucks frappucino or the breakfast sandwich that accompanied it. In an attempt not to completely throw out the plan, I did only eat just one side of the english muffin on the sandwich. Gold star for me.

The hardest part of the SBD for me is having to depend so much on vegetables in my diet. Vegetables have always been a sideshow to the main act in my culinary experience, as is true for most Americans. Apparently this is the problem and the entire root of the SBD in the first place. The other major stumbling block for me is breakfast. Without toast, cereal, fruit, etc you aren't left with many options unless you are the type of person who can eat last night's dinner leftovers for breakfast. I'm not. What are you left with? Eggs. I've searched high and low for SBD breakfast recipes that don't include eggs or egg substitute. They don't exist. We are halfway through the first two-week phase. I am really trying to stay motivated. Once we get through this phase, we can eat whole grains and fruit in moderation. Thank goodness. Until then I guess I better look up some more creative egg recipes.

30 (or 45) Minute Meals

Over the past several years, I have really learned to like cooking. I didn't always. I used to really not like cooking except for the occasional delicacy, like maybe grilled cheese. In all honesty I was a little intimidated by the kitchen and afraid that anything even slightly more advanced than toast would turn out to be a disaster. What I have realized over time is that even the most amazing chefs sometimes make meals that suck. Take my dad for example. He is phenomenal in the kitchen and generally at least one item on the menu is almost impossible to pronounce. But recently he told me about a recipe that almost flopped completely. Luckily he was able to save it but it only reinforced the idea in my head that everyone blows it sometimes so you can't be afraid to fail.

I also love Rachael Ray for this reason. People seem to have strong opinions about her- they either love her or hate her and I personally think she's great. She does have some quirks and her personality is annoyingly upbeat sometimes, but she also explains cooking in a way that is accessible for even a beginner. I also like a lot of her recipes because they are yummy without being frou-frou and overly fancy. The whole idea of the 30 minute meal is very appealing, especially since many nights I have to wait until Dad is home because Baby is fussy and tired at the dinner hour and doesn't want to hang out while Mom spends a long time cooking. I admit that I'm not quite at the 30 minute mark because I'm just not as efficient in the kitchen as Rachael, but I'm working on it. I made some good old fashioned comfort food the other night and it turned out really well. You can find the recipe here. And I've found that the more that I experiment with cooking, the more I like it.