SWeeT PePPeR ToPPeD BaKeD PoTaTo

The other day my mother came home from work with a surprise for me.  She had stopped at Sun Harvest (a family-owned store here in San Antonio that reminds me of a small WholeFoods) and found some mini sweet peppers on sale.  Two big bags for 5$ means a lot of peppers for me to create with - and I will admit that sometimes I eat them whole like an apple because they are so good.  She also brought home 3 potatoes and 2 sweet potatoes, saying that she wants me to make her a baked potato.  Not a problem.

The first thing I did was preheat the oven to 350F.  While the oven was heating up, I rubbed the outside of the potatoes with a bit of olive oil and placed them on a baking sheet.  They took about an hour and a half to cook because they were big, but I started checking them at 1 hour.

Then I sliced the peppers into mini rings ... and cut a few green onions up small (those are a necessity on baked potatoes in my family).

I sauteed them as I normally saute my vegetables - a little bit of pan spray, then 2 teaspoons of butter towards the end.  I wanted them to be tender, but not mushy.  I also cracked some fresh black pepper over the top.

Don't those potatoes look yummy in there cooking.  The olive oil is not necessary, but I do it because I love to eat the skin of the potatoes too and I think it gives it a nice taste as well as a little crisp.

I cut the potato in half, then sliced it all up so that it spread out on the plate.  I then added a little bit of butter, the gren onions, some pepper, a little salt and the peppers on top, then finished it off with some romano cheese.  I also decided to add just a little of this really good spread my mother has found since she's been out here - Challenge Butter Tuscan style spreadable butter with canola and olive oil - garlic and Italian herb flavored.  It gave it a really good Italian flavor.  Yumm-ee!!

Tea TiMe

I love to drink hot tea.  It is probably my favorite thing to drink ... and I'll drink it at any time.  It is very soothing, calming, relaxing.  I especially like a tea called chai tea that my mother got me drinking years ago. 

She used to make it homemade ... and I think I may begin doing that myself because it is so hard to find a good one.

I have, with the help of my taste-testers (my twin nieces), found one or two that are better than the rest. 

The good thing about chai, as I found out all those years ago, is that it is good both HOT and COLD.  Just a little bit of milk, a little bit of sweetener ... and yum!!

This brand is good - the chai white tea and the vanilla chai.  I have not tried this with the vanilla chai yet.

Three packets is all I need ... boil the water, take it off the heat and place the tea bags in.  Something I have learned over the years - wait until the bubbles are gone before adding the tea bags so that the water's not too hot. I keep the tea bags in for about 5 minutes - no more.  Pour some cold water into a pitcher, then pour the tea into it, then finish with some more cold water until the pitcher is full.

This is all you need ... the brewed tea, a glass, 1/2 cup of milk and sweetener.  We use lactose free fat free milk because my mother has some issues with lactose and, due to her diabetes, she can't drink soy milk.  I also like my chai tea sweet so I use four sweeteners in a big glass like I have here.

Pour it all in, stir it up and enjoy!!  Yum!!

CHiCKPeaS aND VeG WiTH eGG

I have a weight problem.  It's not extreme (though I refuse to tell anyone how much I weigh), but I can stand to lose some pounds, get my butt up and get moving,  eat healthier, workout more, etc etc etc. 

I have watched so many people do everything unhealthy they can think of to lose weight, always feeling like I didn't have the "willpower" that they do because I can't starve myself ... or eat only broccoli or lettuce ... or do one of those stupid fad diets ... or go to the gym for hours at a time every day ... or even take the diet pills (yuck!!).  I'm not doing it because I want to find a man or because I'm jealous of my skinny friends or any other nonsense like that.  I'm doing it because I want to be healthy and live a long happy productive life.  I spend time with my nieces and realize that I am pooped after a couple of hours while they are still running strong and I don't like that feeling (Aunt Meghan is supposed to be able to do anything) ... and I want to see them grow up.

I want to lose the weight in a healthy way - so when I got to San Antonio, I discussed it with my mother.  She talked to a nutritionist friend of hers who suggested that we try this ... eat three meals and one snack a day, taking in no more than 45 carbohydrates per meal and 20 carbohydrates per snack, subtracting the fiber from the carbohydrates to get the right amount.  We are supposed to eat close to that number - and those carbohydrates will give us enough energy to get through our day until the next time we eat.

I have been doing this for the last 2 weeks and happily I have lost a few pounds.  I have also had to change things around a bit - mainly the last meal.  I feel like 45 carbohydrates is WAY too much for me to be eating within an hour or two of bedtime, especially since there are at least 2 days a week where I eat late - waiting for my mother to get home, not wanting for her to eat dinner alone.  While counting my carbs, I've also been paying attention to the calories, fiber and protein that I'm taking in.

As I said in a post before, I LOVE CHICKPEAS!!  I make them from dried beans and since it's a little time consuming to do so (soaking them overnight, then cooking them until they are tender), I make a whole package at a time and use them throughout the week.

I also love the smell of sauteed onions.  Especially with fresh garlic.  Such a delicious smell that makes me smile and reminds me a lot of when my mom cooked all the time when we were younger.  It has to be one of my favorite kitchen smells (I may have told you this before haha).

This dish I made for breakfast.

These are pretty much all the seasonings I need.  I add others when I feel the need calls for it - but fresh cracked pepper, granulated garlic and this chili & lime spice blend that I LOVE LOVE LOVE right now are pretty much all this recipe needed.

I sauteed my onions, first with just some pan spray, adding 2 teaspoons of butter in the middle of cooking to give that nice buttery taste.  The butter I use is Smart Balance Heart Right Light buttery spread (for 1 tablespoon it has 80 calories, 0 carbs).  As they cooked, I looked through the refrigerator to see what leftovers I had in there - see, no real plan - just whatever jumps out and grabs my interest.

I found some leftover sweet peas (Bird's Eye SteamFresh, only fresh cracked pepper added) and the chickpeas I made the other day.

When the onions were done, I mixed 3/4 cup peas and 1/2 cup chickpeas into the mixture, then added the seasonings, cooking them until the peas and chickpeas were hot.

Once they were cooked, I took them off the burner and began to cook my egg.  All I needed was a little bit of pan spray and some fresh cracked pepper.  I crack the egg into a small bowl and then pour it into the hot pan so that it cooks on one side and doesn't spread out too far.

I dished in some of the onion/chickpea/sweet peas mixture into a bowl, then placed the cooked egg on top.  That's all there is to it.

 How do I eat mine?  I cut the egg up so that the soft yoke spills out into the mixture below - yum - and allowing me to have a little egg with each bite.

a DeLiCiouS VeGGie oMeLeT

I LOVE OMELETS!!  They are one of my most favorite things to make ... something people who spend the night at my home request ... and something that almost every roommate I've had has asked me to make (and also asked me to teach them how to make the).  Its funny that they used to be one of my most hated items to create ... I just could never seem to get them right.  And then one day I got an idea ... and it worked.

This particular omelet is a veggie one that I created for "brunch" one day for myself. 

These are all the ingredients that I needed ... and it's really quite simple.  I had spray for my pan, this chili & lime spice blend that I love, fresh cracked pepper, 1/4 cup shredded cheese, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of the Asian vegetable medley (frozen veggies that contained edamame, red sweet peppers, baby corn and snow peas) and 2 tablespoons of peach mango salsa to use on the side.  

Let's begin your omelet making lesson.  The first thing you do is put your pan over medium heat and let it get warm.  While it's getting warm, beat your eggs.  I don't add milk or anything because I feel that it takes away from the wonderful flavor of the eggs.  I also do not use any butter to cook my eggs.  Once the pan is warm, spray your pan and then pour in the eggs, making sure to move them around in the pan so that they coat the entire bottom.  Once they start to get a little firm on the bottom, I add the seasonings that I'm going to use, but I don't add salt (my preference).

After I put the seasonings on, I take the pan off the heat and move it around so that the eggs start to go up the side of the pan a little, making sure to coat about halfway up all the way around.  This gives you a little bit bigger omelet as well as makes it easier for you to get your spatula under it in order to fold it.

Once it starts to get really firm, with only a little liquid on top, I added half of the veggies that I had and the cheese.

I then folded it in half with the spatula.  Just stick the spatula under the edge of the omelet (it will start to pull away from the pan) and slowly slide it under.  Yes, my omelet has a little split in it.  That's because I like my omelet to have a lot of stuff in it.  If I had put in less, it wouldn't have had that.

I then slid the spatula under the omelet an lifted it out to put on my plate.  (I like to keep it in the pan for about 30 to 45 seconds so that the cheese has a chance to melt a little).  As you can see, I served the rest of the vegetables on the side.  This omelet tasted delicious with a little bit of the salsa on each piece.  Yum!!

Doesn't it look absolutely beautiful??  It's actually making me want to go make myself one right now haha.

And the great thing about omelets is that you can fill them with anything you want.  I have made one with sliced avocado inside, with sauteed onions and sweet peppers, with mushrooms, even with just cheese.

Note:  If you are going to make several of these (say for your family), I would suggest taking the pan off the heat in between and wiping it out with a piece of paper towel.  It gives you a clean palette to create the next one on and stops your omelet from getting burnt.

CHiCKPeaS ...

I am a huge fan of chickpeas.  They are very healthy ... and yummy to eat.  Chickpeas are the main ingredient in a lot of greek foods, like hummus.  I enjoy baking them in the oven and snacking on them (or frying them in the pan with a little oil and a lot of seasoning), putting them on top of salads or incorporating them into other dishes.  When I got to San Antonio, it was one of the first things I bought at the grocery store.  I am one of those people that insist on buying my beans dried and boiling them myself - then I know what's been added to it - but you can always purchase canned ones, just remember to rinse them before you use them.

This particular day I was really wanting to do something interesting with them - especially since my mother had told me the only way she had really tried them was in hummus or occasionally on a salad and she wasn't really thrilled with them.  I decided to add them to sauteed bell peppers and onions and then incorporate some DreamFields pasta into the mix.

I am not a big fan of a lot of pastas and rice because of the way that they make me feel after I am done eating them.  And I have noticed that since I became a vegetarian, those products (as well as bread and other high carbohydrate foods) make me feel even worse than I did before.  I believe in eating things in moderation and have shopped around for lower carb brands of certain products.  (The tip I have learned:  ONLY make the amount that you are going to use for the meal you are making.  That way you don't go back and get seconds and feel ... well ... blah after eating too much of it.)  DreamFields is a product that I have found that I really do enjoy.  It has good flavor and has only 5 grams of digestible carbs per serving, so it doesn't raise my blood sugar levels and makes me feel full longer.  Check it out.  (Dreamfieldsfoods.com)

I cut the bell peppers and onions into thin slices and then sauteed them in a pan that was sprayed with some olive oil cooking spray.  After a few minutes, I added 2 teaspoons of butter to the pan ... to give it that butter taste I so enjoy my sauteed onions to have.  (I don't use a lot of butter or oil in my cooking.)  I then added 1/2 cup of chickpeas to the pan (ones that I had boiled earlier in the day).  After about five minutes, I added a chili & lime spice blend, granulated garlic and fresh cracked black pepper - stirred it a few more times and then removed it from the heat.  I then took 2 servings of the pasta (I was making this for both my mother and myself) and mixed it into the pan with the vegetable/chickpea mixture.  After adding just a little bit of sea salt, it was ready to serve. 

This dish ended up being enough for both of us to have some for dinner and the rest for lunch the next day.  And I have made my mother a fan of chickpeas.

aPPLeS aND oNioNS

I love to mix things together that you don't usually think to mix together ... and a lot of the things I create are purely based on what I'm craving at the time.  I take a look at what it is that I'm wanting ... then look through the refrigerator, the pantry, the bowls of fruits and veggies on the counter and think of what it is that I want to create next.

This began as a faded thought ... I love the smell of onions and garlic being sauteed together ... one of my most favorite kitchen smells actually.  But hmm ... what else can be added to onions in that pan to give me a great flavor?  And then it hit me ... apples.  Now, the dish was originally intended to be something that would accompany some sliced potatoes that I enjoy making, but when I opened the pantry and pulled out my potatoes, I realized that the two I had left - the two I had counted on - were very sad and pathetic and in much need of a burial.  All the same, the dish turned out wonderfully.

I cut the onion in half, then thinly sliced the halves.  I then cut the apple in half, removed the core and cut its two halves into thin slices as well.  Very simple.  I then placed my pan over medium heat and added 2 teaspoons olive oil and 2 teaspoons butter.  I placed the onions and cooked them for about 3 minutes before adding the apple slices to the pan, cooked until they were tender and added a little salt and a lot of pepper.  They were delicious. 

i DiD iT!!

It is 6pm and I'm doing it.  I'm actually - right at this very moment - sitting in a chair at the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown Houston, bags packed, ticket in hand, heading to San Antonio.  I have only mentioned this to one person outside of my family.  I'm nervous ... and maybe a little scared.  So far so good, though.  This is a whole new experience for me, but people have been very nice and I'm actually pretty excited.  Who knows what's going to happen there?  Things happen for a reason and I believe that coincidences are just things God has done, but decided not to take credit for.


I am on the bus - on my way!! - and I was lucky enough to get a window seat.  I have met a nice older lady who is sitting next to me and a guy who just got out of jail after 8 years, though you wouldn't think so if he didn't tell you.  (I also met a lady who is a preacher that travels back and forth on the bus all the time.)  I believe that everyone who touches your life does so for a reason and that your life will never be the same because of them.  She and I have had a very interesting conversation about food (she wants to cut meat out of her life so it's funny that she chose to sit next to me) and, with him, we've had an interesting conversation about God and religion.  She is a teacher of religion, he is not sure if he wants to find God because so many people used it in jail.  I don't believe in some of the things she had to say (i.e. that people who are gay won't go to heaven without asking for God's permission), but a very nice lady none-the-less.  Just another 20 more minutes and I'll be at my destination.  The excitement is there - and so is the fear, but I'm not going to let that fear stop me.  I'm also not going to allow any negativity - or worry of negativity - allow me not to be open to the good things that can happen here.


It is 4am and my mom is asleep.  We were up till around 3am laughing and talking.  It feels good here.  I don't know where I'm going to go from here ... or what I'm going to do while I'm here ... but I'm going to enjoy this time.  I ... feel very relaxed here.  It's beautiful ... and peaceful.