New Year, New Recipe - Good Luck Greens and Peas

Even though Don and I are living in Kansas, our hearts belong to the South and its many traditions. The tradition of eating black eyed peas and greens (for luck and prosperity) on New Year's Day is one we've enjoyed - but only if someone else cooked it. Until now! Today I bring to you quite possibly the EASIEST recipe for greens and peas...it includes an entire ham so makes a perfect main meal, AND is done in the crock pot. Even though I am a day late for the New Year :) this is heavenly to serve on those cold winter nights we've got ahead of us. Top it off with another EASY recipe (quite possibly the most delicious cornbread ever) and you will be singing my praises in 2013!

Yes - I know my photography skills still suck it.  On the resolution list AGAIN! :)

Good Luck Greens and Peas with Ham (adapted from Southern Living recipe)
32oz vegetable broth
32 oz frozen black eyed peas (defrosted)
1 sweet onion, cut in to eigths
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
2T light brown sugar
2T dijon mustard
1 smoked, fully cooked, semi-boneless ham (approx 5 lbs - we used one that was already sliced)
16oz package shredded fresh collard greens

Place first 5 ingredients in a 6qt slow cooker. Stir together brown sugar and mustard - rub over ham. Place ham in slow cooker. Cover and cook on HIGH 6-7 hours or until ham is tender.

Uncover and add collard greens. Cover and cook on HIGH 1 hour or until tender. Remove bone and stir to mix ingredients. Use slotted spoon to serve.

Shelia's Texas Cornbread
1 stick of butter, melted
3 boxes of Jiffy Cornbread mix
3 eggs
1 can cream corn
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Empty boxes of cornbread mix in to a bowl. Add eggs, cream corn, cheddar cheese and half of the melted butter. Mix together.

Pour the other half of the melted butter in to a 9x13 baking dish and spread to cover the bottom of the dish. Pour batter in to baking dish and cook at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Enjoy - and Happy New Year!

Make a Change Monday - Spring Cleaning and Pinterest

Like many of you across the country - we are having weird weather.  This time last week it was 50 degrees, this weekend it was 80.  What does a girl do when the seasons start to change?  Spring Cleaning!  Not normal spring cleaning of course - I didn't get out a vacuum or dust rags or anything crazy like that!  Instead I:

purged my Tupperware

cleaned out my closet

organized my Pinterest boards

While this may seem a little less motivated than say - repainting a bathroom or replanting the front yard, these piddly projects actually ended up making a few changes of their own.  Who knew?

Where the @#$% are all the Tupperware lids?
This is a phrase I hear at least once a week from Don, usually about 5am, usually when I am still in bed and he thinks he is talking to himself.   Don has started taking his lunch to work in recent months, which has helped us in a couple of ways.  We save money, it encourages me to cook more and in bigger portions so we have leftovers, and it is much healthier than grabbing fast food or something out of a vending machine every day. Even though the cupboard where we keep the plastic tubs started out looking fabulously organized - this is what it looked like on Saturday.

It took us less than 10 minutes to get everything out, match tops to bottoms, toss out the mismatched pieces, and put it all back in the cupboard.  While I'm sure it won't stay that way - it reminded us that it only takes a few minutes of working together to make life a little easier.

You're not in high school anymore (or needing to wear power suits).
Don and I met my family Saturday night for dinner at Brasa in Raleigh.  Incredible meal - wear elastic-waist pants and prepare to take a meat-induced nap afterwards.  Anyhoo - I needed something "nice" to wear, and all of my warm weather clothes were in the guest room closet. I was dragging them out one by one - picking something out, trying it on, deciding it wasn't the right thing, dragging out another piece...I finally got so fed up that I pulled out EVERYTHING, took it in to our bedroom, plopped it on the bed, and tried on every single piece of summer clothing I own (including - ugh - bathing suits). I took a REAL look at each piece - did I wear it last summer?  does it go with other stuff I own?  do I feel comfortable in it? - and got rid of almost 20 items.  I was so motivated that I went back through my winter clothes, tried on everything I hadn't worn in the last three months, and got rid of even more.  The power suit I bought "just in case"?  Gone.  The skirt I've had since high school that is too tight in all the wrong places?  Out the door.  The sweater my MIL gave me that I would never wear but have held on to for three years?  Donated. I thought long and hard about the "I plan to lose 10 pounds this year" story we all tell ourselves, and realized that keeping clothes that might fit "someday" just made me feel bad every time I went to get dressed. While it didn't always feel good to look in the mirror (my butt has gotten a little larger since last summer) - it DOES feel good to finally have a closet full of clothes I feel comfortable wearing out of the house.  Getting dressed just got a whole lot easier - I even organized my closet by color!

Using Pinterest for good
Jessica Turner (The Mom Creative) shared a great blog post last week about using Pinterest.

While I am already pretty good about tips #2-10, tip #1 really struck a chord with me.  I use Pinterest as part of my job (how lucky am I?) but I only had six boards, so I spent a LOT of time looking for pins I needed and wishing I was more organized.  I brought my ipad with me on our drive up to Raleigh and was able to organize about 90% of my pins in an hour and a half - and learned a LOT in those 90 minutes.  A few tips in addition to Jessica's:

Organize your boards AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.  I only have about 600 pins, but I still wish I had done it sooner.  Don't feel like you need to do it all in one sitting - if we hadn't been driving up to Raleigh I would have done it gradually over time.

100 pins maximum per board is a good number. When I started this weekend my "I create" board had over 250 pins.  I created some new boards and moved pins around, and when my I create board had about 100 pins remaining I was able to scroll through and feel like I had a good grasp of what it contained.  Having no more than 100 pins also makes it easier to find (and delete) duplicate pins. I had this recipe pinned FIVE TIMES.  Five!

Look through your board before you start moving pins around. I have a board called "food glorious food" - and I wanted to separate out sweet/dessert items from everything else.  I had about 120 pins on my board and was almost halfway through moving my dessert pins over to a new board when I realized that more than HALF of my pins were desserts! It would have saved a LOT of time if I had just renamed the board "desserts" and moved the other pins somewhere else.

Be prepared to learn something about yourself. I'm not talking about life changing lessons here...but you never know what you might discover!  Don and I love weekend breakfasts, and unless we have our nephews over (in which case we have pancakes) we ALWAYS make something savory.  I never thought anything about it until I created a "breakfast" board - and all but two of the pins were for sweet foods!  Looks like we might try something new next weekend! 

Happy Spring to all - if you are on Pinterest I'd love to check out your boards!  Share your link in the comments section here on on my FB page - let's inspire each other!

 

Make a Change Monday - Healthy Eating that Tastes Good too!

Those of you who checked out yesterday's blog post about bacon jam may be hard pressed to believe that I am trying to eat healthier this year.  My love affair with bacon just reaffirms my belief that for ME to be able to make some real lifestyle changes I have to find a balance between food I love that isn't super healthy, and healthy food that I can learn to love.  So it is after years worth of procrastinating and several recipe testings I present to you...

HUNGRY GIRL!

One of the things I love about HG is that she LOVES food. To quote her website: "Lisa is a typical woman battling the same food issues most females struggle with every day. She considers herself a 'foodologist,' not because she has some kind of fancy degree, but because she is obsessed with food –– how wonderful it is, and how much of it she can eat and still fit into her pants."  I have been following her for years - for a while I subscribed to her daily email but only read them about once a week, then I bought one of her cookbooks and never opened it, then I started watching her when she was on tv but never tried any of the recipes, you get the idea.  I even got two of her newest cookbooks for Christmas - but had already put them on the shelf with the other bajillion cookbooks I own without even taking a peek. 

Then I came up with this crazy "Make a Change Monday" idea.  

SURELY, I thought, SURELY if I put "find healthy food I enjoy eating" as one of the things on my list I will eventually get around to it.  I had already started making some concessions...egg beaters instead of eggs. 2% milk shredded cheese instead of regular.  Reduced fat mayonnaise.  Still - I wasn't inspired. 

Then a few weeks ago, as luck would have it, Don was out of town and I was too lazy to go to the grocery store and the cookbooks were laying around the kitchen so I broke one open and discovered...

Red Hot Chick'n Salad
6 oz cooked skinless lean chicken breast, cubed (I used some canned chicken breast I had in the cupboard)
3 T fat-free mayo (I used reduced fat because it is what I had in the fridge - and I would actually only use 2T next time - I don't like my salads super creamy)
3 T chopped celery (I hate celery - so I doubled the amount of carrots)
3 T chopped carrots
2 t reduced fat parmesan style grated topping (I used 1 tsp of regular)
1 1/2 t Frank's RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce
1/2 t dry ranch dip/dressing mix

In a medium bowl, combine mayo, Frank's, and ranch mix, and stir well. Add chicken, celery, and carrots to the sauce and stir. Sprinkle with parm style topping and stir again. Enjoy!

The recipe makes two 3/4 cup servings.  If you make the original recipe it is only 142 calories and 2.25g fat, and 3 weight watchers points per serving.  Was mine a little higher?  Sure.  But it was a lot better for me than the frozen pizza I would have plopped in the oven, and this chicken salad was GOOOOOOOD. Like "I could eat this every day for lunch" good.  I am not really a sandwich eater - but I got out some Special K multi grain crackers and made a meal out of it, and felt pretty darn proud of myself.

So then I was inspired to try more recipes - and with FEW exceptions, I have been thrilled with the results. Some of my favorites?

The Spinach, Tomato, Feta 'n Egg Wrap Attack (links to recipe) - SUPER filling in the morning and it gives me a break from the monotony of yogurt or oatmeal.

Jalapeno Swappers (links to recipe) - the Kingstons LOVE bar food so I was pretty skeptical that something made with Fiber One cereal would make the cut.  Imagine my surprise!  They are delicious - and I don't feel guilty afterwards.

Now lest you think I have become some unpaid spokesperson for HG (did I mention she has great desserts too?) - not all of the recipes were a hit.  HG uses these tofu noodles in many of her main dish recipes as a substitute for pasta. She gives you specific instructions on how to wash/dry and prepare them and swears they'll taste like the real thing.  I have nothing against tofu - I've eaten it in asian recipes for years and actually enjoy it.  But I do not love these noodles.  I the opposite of love these noodles.  So pasta and I still have a little work to do.

 So once again - thanks to you guys inspiring me to make some changes, I'm crossing another item off my list. If you are like me and LOVE food but want to make some healthier choices, I really do recommend Hungry Girl.  You can find a TON of her recipes online, there is no club to join, you can sign up for her every day emails or just peruse her website when the mood strikes you, it lets you be you with no hidden gimmicks or fees or pressure.  Eat and enjoy - and tell me how you are making some healthier choices in 2012!

Two Words for You...Bacon Jam

That's right...Jam.  Made with Bacon.  Take in the awesomeness.

Before I share this recipe for what could be the greatest invention in the history of America, let me just say that I KNOW this is a horrendous photo.  I KNOW I need an iphone that has a decent camera, and I KNOW that a real blogger would have spent 20 minutes getting the lighting just right and taking 700 photos just to get the perfect image and then editing the photo to make it look mouthwatering and fantastical.  Me? I just wanted to get the dang thing in my mouth.

I came across the original recipe in our local paper - and it is attributed to Chef Aaron Cozadd, Union Workshop.  Chef Aaron...wherever you are...the Kingstons love you.  Both Kingstons.  We might want to marry you.  I tweaked the recipe a little bit to accomodate what we had at the house, so I share those revisions here with you.  Enjoy - then take a nap - because you will be too full to do anything else.

3AM DOG WITH BACON JAM
*I altered the recipe to make enough for four hot dogs.  You are not going to eat just one - trust me.  I don't even really LIKE hot dogs all that much and I ate two - and would have eaten three if we hadn't run out of eggs.*

4 hot dogs
4 hot dog buns
whole grain mustard
1 c. hash browns - fried crispy
bacon jam
2 fried eggs

BACON JAM
1 lb (a pkg) bacon - diced small
1 onion peeled and diced
2 tbsp miced garlic
1/2c cider vinegar (or slightly less than 1/2 c red wine vinegar, add water to make 1/2c)
1/2c packed brown sugar
1/4c syrup (we used Mrs. Butterworth)
3/4c dark coffee
1/4tsp black pepper

In a medium skillet, cook the bacon over medium high heat, stirring frequently until bacon starts to become crispy. Transfer to a paper-towel lined plate. Drain all but 2 tbsp of the bacon fat. 

(while this is happening you can cook your hashbrowns - we used frozen hashbrowns and 1 Tbsp of oil - heat oil in the pan then add hashbrowns - flattening in to a single layer.  Cover and cook approx 10 minutes, flipping once halfway through.  Set aside.)

Place the skillet back on the stove (with the bacon fat in it) and add onion and garlic.  Cook over medium until the onion is translucent.  Add the remaining ingredients. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring frequently, then boil hard for two minutes.  Stir in the bacon and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and the liquid is syrupy (add water if it seems to be drying out). Let stand for 5 minutes.

(while this is happening you can cook your hotdogs - either on the grill or in a pan on the stove.  We split ours down the middle so it would be easier to "load" them with toppings. You can also warm up your buns - wrap each bun in a damp paper towel and microwave them together for 30 seconds.)

Transfer mixture to a food processor (we used a blender) and pulse until bacon jam is a spreadable consistency.

To assemble the awesomeness:

Place the hot dog bun on the plate.  Smear one side of the bun with mustard and the other side with bacon jam. Add hot dog. Top with 1/4 of the hashbrowns and 1/2 of a fried egg.

Stuff your face and enjoy! Then spend the rest of the day making a list of what else you can put bacon jam on - because you will have LOTS left over.