i see you mickey d's

Every Saturday morning David or I wake up and scramble eggs.  With me eating breakfast SO EARLY during the week and him being a law student, we both have to eat quickly and sometimes on-the-go.  So the weekends are a huge treat, scrambled eggs and coffee from a real mug usually on our porch!

Last week, my cousin Tommy came to visit.  He taught me something that many others may already know about, but was foreign to me...

microwaving eggs!

In just 40 seconds, you will have a egg over well.  By reducing the seconds you could have an egg over easy or medium.  Let me just tell you--this was revolutionary for me.  Eating low-carb is really hard to do at breakfast time.  My options are limited.  I have relied mostly on different types of low-carb bars to get me by.  But although I am a serious creature of habit, I do get tired of those after awhile.  And now, I have another option!

Our family dog, Charley is getting older and more picky about food.  And she went through a canadian bacon phase.  Well one morning my mama had the brilliant idea that we should recreate the Egg White Delight that McDonald's has just come out with, using Tommy's microwavable egg method and no bread!  A DELICIOUS new low-carb breakfast option!

Egg White Delicious

Serving Size 1

2 egg whites

1 piece of low-sodium canadian bacon

1 piece of cheese (we use colby jack)

In a small bowl, microwave 2 egg whites covered with press and seal wrap or saran wrap for 40 seconds.  In a skillet, heat up a piece of canadian bacon.  It usually just needs to be heated for about two minutes per side.  Once the eggs and bacon are cooked, transfer them to a plate.  Eggs on bottom, then bacon and cheese.  Put back in the microwave for 30 seconds to melt the cheese.

Enjoy with a nice iced coffee!

What low-carb options do you eat for a quick breakfast?

skinny peach ice cream

It's official y'all...

I have stumbled upon something

FABULOUS MAGNIFICENT AMAZING WONDERFUL delicious.

Let's get serious, you won't be speaking real english when you taste it because it is THAT good.

My cousin Tommy came to visit and with him he brought a HUGE box of peaches from the motherland (middle GA).  My dad worked on a peach farm when he was a kid for about 80 cents an hour.  He always said the big perk of the job was eating peaches until your belly ached--so you know he was in heaven!  We started trying to brainstorm all of the yummy things we could make with peaches, but also keeping in mind my sugar-free, low carb diet.

I started googling and there were a lot of great options.  I was drawn to one posted by Health magazine.  And boy did they hit it out of the park!  My whole family LOVED it!  It's diabetic friendly and only 58 calories! Woohoo!

Skinny Peach Ice Cream
Makes 1/2 gallon

2 cups of Carnation evaporated fat-free milk
1 cup fat free milk
2/3 cups Splenda (or any other zero calorie sugar)
1/2 cup egg white substitute
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 generous cups of chopped peaches (and any extra juice!)

First, use a hand mixer to blend the first 5 ingredients.
Stir in the peaches.
Put it in your ice cream maker and let it work!

Ours only took about 20 minutes in our electric ice cream maker and then we put it in the freezer to stiffen up some more before enjoying.

I promise you won't regret making this delicious treat!

What kinds of ice cream or peach desserts do you make?

Happy 4th!

Roasted Green Beans and Mushrooms

This weekend has been so much fun! Friday night, David and I went on date night as usual.

We watched the end of the Braves game at dinner and saw the in-fly ball call.

Let's just say, so far, not a good weekend for Georgia sports.

However, I still love my Dawgs!

David and I threw a little get together for the game last night.

But more on that another time!

Onto the food!

The challenge I have found with a low-carb diet is coming up with good side dishes.

I am a creature of habit.

Once I find something I love (for example, mashed cauli) I wear it out.

So I've been searching for something different, something yummy that is not just frozen veggies.

And something easy.

Let me preface this recipe by saying, you will not be able to control yourself.

In fact, David and I tried it before plating it for dinner and had to stop ourselves so we would have some left!  This recipe is SO good and SO easy and SO addicting!

And being the creature of habit that I am, we ate it as a side TWICE last week!

I hope you love them as much as we do!

Roasted Green Beans and Mushrooms

Fresh cut green beans

Mushrooms

1 1/2 tbsp Olive Oil

2 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar

Salt and Pepper to your liking

Parmesan to your liking

Then follow these EASY directions...

Toss everything into a baggie.

Shake it up! Cover everything.

I've been shake it up, coating it and letting it sit until the oven preheats!

Spread everything out on a baking sheet.

Make sure you spray it so nothing sticks!

And YUM!

I hope you enjoy!!

We definitely have!

done and done

David and I are so busy during the week we hardly have time to do anything, especially cook!

While I was searching Pinterest, I started to notice how so many women make their meals once a week or once every two weeks and freeze them.  

So I picked out a couple recipes and got busy.
This literally took me less than 20 minutes to put together.

Before I talk about my recipes, I should tell you about an amazing new app I downloaded.  Not only do I have it on my iPhone, I can access it via the web anywhere.

On Google Chrome, I have a Evernote Webclipper.  So anytime I find a recipe I like, I click on my clipper and tag it in recipes.  It organizes everything for me!  I can clip any recipes and tag them to a specific notebook.

The best part, if I need to look up something from a recipe that I can't remember, I can access it EASILY while at the store!

I made two dishes for this week--Basil Pesto Chicken and Chicken Parm Bake!

I write the directions on the tops, so that David can start something before I get home if he wants.

Here are my recipes!

Basil Pesto Chicken

- Chicken breasts

- Basil Pesto

- Mozzarella cheese

Cook at 375 for 25 minutes.

Pull out, cover in mozzarella cheese and continue cooking 5-7 minutes!

Enjoy!

Chicken Parm Bake

- Chicken breasts

- 1 cup Fage greek yogurt

- 1/2 cup parmesan cheese

- Seasoned salt

- Pepper

- Garlic powder

- Onion powder

Preheat to 375.

Cover chicken breasts in the seasonings.

Mix greek yogurt and parm cheese together.

Cover chicken in mixture.  Cover the top of every piece so that it doesn't dry out!

Cook 45 minutes.

Top with fresh parm at the end and let melt.

ENJOY!

banana pancakes? no flour? yes ma'am.

I hope you are having a great weekend!  My Dawgs beat Tennessee and my Volleydoggs came in 3rd at their region tournament!  Hard work pays off!  Now all I feel like doing is going to bed for days!

Fall break is soon enough!

I have a new AMAZING recipe to share with you!

No Flour Banana Pancakes

Do the words pancakes and gluten free go together? Nope.  And they don't taste good either.

But you know what does taste good? Banana pancakes.

What's even better?  Flour free banana pancakes.

Take 1 banana, 1 egg, and 1 egg white. (I also added a little cinnamon!)

Blend. Not too much, but enough!

Spray your skillet.

Make pancakes!

No flour! Lots of protein and potassium!

And they taste, AMAZING!!!!!

I hope you enjoy them!

sundays

I love Sundays.

First, we are loving our Church.

www.watfbc.org

Secondly, it is always just a good day.

I go grocery shopping.

Then make a dinner that will hopefully provide enough leftovers for three nights.

But more on that in a minute... I need to brag on my amazing hubby real quick.

He surprised me with a dozen red roses on Friday!

Work has been wearing me OUT, so it was a really great surprise!

 

But back to Sunday.  Last night, I burnt FOUR fingers on a pan that I didn't know was hot.  OUCH!

 David and I have received a lot of tomatoes recently.  Which I have no qualms with, because I LOVE slicing them up, adding some mozzarella and parm, Italian seasonings, and broiling them for 3-4 minutes.  It's like summer in your mouth.

 

Last night I decided to try out a snack recipe I had seen on Pinterest.   I'm not a huge edamame fan, however when I saw crispy in front of it, I knew I had to make them.

They were everything I dream they would be.  YUMMY!

All I did was shell frozen edamame, tossed them in a little oil, lots of salt and pepper, and grated parm.  400 degrees, 15 minutes. YUMMY pieces of heaven.

 

Needless to say, we had a good Sunday.

I hope yours was too!

I Did It!!!

I made the cauliflower pizza!!! It was so good (and easy)!  David is never skeptical when I tell him about my cooking ambitions.  But when I said, cauliflower pizza crust, I knew he was wondering how it would taste (as was I), it sounds weird!  However, we loved it!  It tasted just like pizza!

All that went into the crust was cauliflower, 1 egg, and seasoning!  First, I turned my cauliflower head into "rice" via my favorite kitchen appliance, the food processor.  I then steamed it on the stove.  Make sure you pat out all of the moisture afterwards.

Once I mixed the ingredients together, I patted out my crust and baked it at 450 for 30 minutes, or until you've reached the crispiness that you like!  Then I turned my oven to broil, added my toppings, and put it back in for about 6 minutes.  

It was so yummy!  I will definitely be making this dish for us again!

Just like real pizza, but gluten free/no carb!

YAY!

Have you tried cauliflower pizza? What are your thoughts?

cauliflower pizza

I have been extremely under the weather this week.  Some bug has gotten me and apparently refuses to leave! UGH!  I've done lots of sleeping, sleeping, and sleeping.... and just trying to recover!  My volleyball girls made me this sweet Get Well card!  It definitely helped!

I have had time to get over prepared for this coming week though!  And if I haven't made it obvious, I love cauliflower!  There are SO MANY uses for it!  When I learned that you can make pizza crust our of it, well I was sold.  And I love pizza, SO MUCH!  I'm looking so forward to trying it this week!  I will let you know how mine turns out!  Look how yummy it looks!

Stuffed Peppers!

I have been eying stuffed peppers on Pinterest for awhile now. And after repeatedly being told that a crock pot is a teacher's best friend, I decided to give them a try!

I spent my Saturday doing laundry, writing lesson plans, and getting ready for the first day of school. I was so busy and seriously all over the place. So I popped those peppers in the crock pot for the day.

They were amazing! David and I are in love! They were nothing I expected, and so good!!!

Let me tell you what I did! First, I put some ground turkey in a bowl. Then I added tons of seasonings, which included:

-Onion Powder
-Oregano
-Salt
-Minced garlic
-Seasoned salt
-Garlic salt

I tossed them all together. While doing this, I was boiling some rice. Once the rice had boiled, I added a cup of cooked brown rice to the meat and tossed it all together!

Lastly, I added about a 1/2 cup of marinara sauce to the meat mixture. My sauce had chunks of tomato and basil in it, adding a good texture to the meat!

I cut the tops off my peppers (I used two green and two red) and cleaned them out. I stuffed them with the meat mixture. I even put some of the leftover mixture on two of the tops.

I put them close together in the crock pot and cooked on high the first 2 hours, then low for 4 more hours. However, I read that low for 8 hours works too.

For the last 2 minutes I threw some mozzarella cheese on them and it was perfect!

I thought David would demolish at least two of these, but one was plenty!  I could hardly eat a whole one!  So now we have leftovers :)

Seriously, these peppers are so good! I would recommend them to anyone!

I hope you enjoy!

Chef Courtney

Just before my wedding, I wrote about my cooking first meal as a wife. Well, it has taken some time, lots of moving and lots of traveling has prevented it from occurring before this week.

However! I have exciting news! I did t! And it was SO YUMMY!!!! First of all, my goal was to create a meal that I could enjoy without thinking about carbs and sugar. Check. Defeating insulin resistance one day at a time!

We had artichoke and parm stuffed chicken, zucchini parm, and mashed cauliflower. It was so good! David said the mashed cauliflower was better than mashed potatoes! I threw some cheese in them and they were unbelievable! And let me just go ahead and put this out there.... I'M A REALY GOOD COOK!!! I'm trying not to let my head get too big, but I have been really successful this week! I even perfected a guacamole (my new love) recipe!

I'm always looking for alternative foods and recipes to replace carbs. Do you know of any I can try?