What do you do when you dream about dinner at 10am?

you get home and make it as quickly as you can.....pure bliss !

Today I was dreaming of Shipwreck dinner so I had to get home and make a big pot of it.

Super easy and super inexpensive:

3 boxes of blue mac n cheese per directions.
one can low sodium veg all, drained
one can organic chopped tomatoes italien style, all liquid too
about a quarter of a box of thawed chopped broccoli
and about a pound and a half of cooked hamburger meat

once mac is done stir in everything else.

I refuse to feel guilty about eating it. It has veggies in it for goodness sake.

So in order to kill the guilt, I ate a second bowl.

that should shut it up until tomorrow.

Tonight's adventure

Ginger spiced BBQ Pork

approximately one cup of ketchup
1/2 cup ginger seasame Maries sauce/marinade
choppped garlic
a couple of dashes of low sodium kikomans soy sauce


mixed together and poured over sliced pork loin "chops"

baking at 350 degrees for an hour or so....will post how it is later....planning on serving over rice and veggies.

Wow !! Now thatza spicy....fish ?

Man I made a boo boo tonight on my dinner. Shoulda read all the ingrediants and looked at what was on my spoon before I added it to my supper....be warned that Ms Dash should have a warning label on it. WOWSA my eyes and nose are still running from the spicyness.....lesson learned...

Tonight was fine until i added too much ms dash.

One on the larger side cod fillet (yes honey, I cooked and ate the last one. I'm sorry)
about a small handful approx 1/2 cup of frozen peas and one bag Uncle Bens regular Brown rice. The kind you microwave for about 90 seconds....

In the skillet add about two tablespoons of water. Yes, water no oil although if I had been paying closer attention, I would have gotten it out before It stuck a bit. But a bit more water took care of that and then steamed away. Yep no oil or butter or anything else fattening or sprayed out of a can with those stinky propellents...which I'm not really a fan of, but sometimes ya just gotta....but not this time.

After the fish was "cooking" for about two mins I added the peas straight from the frozen Kroger bag from the freezer to the pan....Held it over the fish and shook a good amount out. LOL

then microwaved the rice....while that was "cooking" I added some ms dash to the fish....I used a teaspoon and should have used much much less. I do believe there couldn't possibly be any more redpepper flakes or coursely ground black pepper kernels in the whole jar now. I was scooping as the microwave went off and turned my head a split second and dumped the entire contents of said teaspoon all over the fish........duh !

Sigh. then proceeded to unstick fish as I didnt' turn down the temperature on the stove eye. then added the rice straight to the skillet (are ya sensing I hate to do dishes??) stirred a bit and then to attempt to lesson the burn of the ms dash I added one tablespoon of Smart Sense whipped butter about 2 table spoons of lite Kikomans Soy sauce and a very good shake of sesame seeds......mixed up....by this point there really isn't any point to try to keep the fish in one piece.......wanted to add some sliced almonds but I must have been out.

and Boom ! Dinner on a plate.

The Uncle Bens brown rice had 240 cals per serving and only like 80 or so grams of sodium compared to the 220 cals per serving of the teriaki flavor with get this 850 grams of sodium per serving.........and since I added my own with the soy sauce I really didn't miss the extra stuff I didn't need.......

one skillet, one spatula turner, one plate, one butter knife and one fork dirty for the maid..................yep I can still dream........oh and the entire fish cooked all the way thru in under four mins straight from the fridge in....wait for it...... yes plain water ! {{Who would have thought that what it used to live in and breathe with would be its ultimate demise ? I'm looking for the irony here....}}......so aside from the optional Smart Sense whipped butter I threw in to attempt to kill the burn this would have been even more "lowfat" than i started out with.....and now I need to go to the store for some more fish for hubby.

I'm gonna call this one a better luck next attempt. Other than the constant flow of tears down my face and snot out my nose, it was a pretty decent dish.
=-)

Dinner this morning ?

Yep, I try to prepare dinner when I get up so hubby has something to eat when he comes home from work....and sometimes it goes with all good intentions...."a really good thought" and then sometimes I think I have hit on a winner....

Not sure what to call this one:

One bag wacky mac pasta, the pasta made from beets, spinach and carrots i think.....different colors...you get the idea, cooked per directions on bag.



sauce:
one can chicken, drained
one small zucchini quartered and sliced thin slices
about two teaspoons olive oil
two good shakes ms dash, original
one can reg spaghetti sauce....

before i get hollared at, yes prepared sauce from a can....its 5am when i generally wake up, so sue me okay ??

empty chicken in skillet, add the oil, zucchini and ms dash and cook about ten mins before adding the sauce to the pan.

add to pasta and man this was so good for my lunch today...apparently was good for hubby, there aren't any leftovers.

wacky mac pastas have 8 grms protien per serving. Still have the carbs but since I'm watching more sodium and increasing the protien, i let it slide this time, but think this would work with the whole wheat pastas as well.

and one of these days i'll start taking photos to add.....of course I have to remember to not drop it into my morning coffee =-)

Aaaccckkk Mondays attacked !!!

It never fails....take off early to go to the doctors cuz you are actually sick as a dog, and all hades breaks loose....just felt like i was being attacked on all sides today. only got a small portion done I had set aside to do for today at work. sigh.....i really hate these kind of days......makes me feel rushed for the rest of the week.

oh well, at least I'm home and mr. tom has had a "great" Presidents Day. Been a marathon on the tv and he talked Daddy into getting up and fixing him a frozen pizza for lunch. sigh. i forgot to leave him something made. guilt guilt.....

at least I am feeling a bit better today....good thing too, apparently i picked a lousy time to be sick. time to round up the tax stuff and get those all done this week.

this weeks goals:
--prepare and send off taxes
--clean out truck
--keep kitchen done up
--go to cleaners again probably on wed to check on toms pants
--measure him for his other pants to be hemmed.


rest of this month:

--eat from cupboards/stash as much as possible until vacation
--get vacation reservations made and paid for.
--trip to in laws.
--get suitcases out.
--message to maintenance.

sounds like enough huh ?

Well time flies....

I had forgotten about this....go figure.. I can forget what happened yesterday, much less what all I have on the world wide web these days. So maybe I will be re-motivated to blog more since I have new laptop at my beck and call.....hopefully make myself more accountable for remembering to do stuff and a virtual paper trail for when I forget my day planner which I would be totally lost without.



First off, fighting off bronchitis...not even sure if thats even spelled right. just not movitivated to make sure its spelled correctly. Why give it credit because its causing so much breathing misery?? I survived the flu virus two weeks ago and whatever hubby had at the same time so this must be some kind of ninja steroid infused virus germ who deserves the credit not the silly diagnosis from the doc.........just saying to give credit where credit is due....



I found a bunch of stuff on sale at Target last weekend and one of them was multipacks of lysol wipes...now you know I stocked up on those.....shoot my grand plan for tonight is to lysol spray or wipe all the door knobs including the outside one. No one else should "catch" this.....



Well off to watch Biggest Loser episode I missed earlier this week. Hopefully I will make it to the end before I give in to sleep bliss.....actually think I'm gonna remember to do this again ! :-D

Dang the time flies...

when you've had a stroke. Literally. I'm ten-thousand times better now, but still have a ways to go. I have thanked the ladies on the blog world who were inspiring me to get my act together who had no clue what they had done for me. Alana Jo at http://justniftythrifty.blogspot.com/ had inspired me to do a coupon notebook to keep my stuff organized and in one place. I had my stoke on a monday afternoon and had not been to the "store" for the week yet. So, our first stroke weeks menues were lacking to say the least. A lot of what was on hand and stuff from mom. No one complained. I should have told her to fix them green veggies. Aaaccck ! ala Lucy from Peanuts. Anyways, when the slew of seemingly dr. appts kinda of came to an end, hubby was able to pick up my book, my store ads, my internet printed lists from the stores websites and make a trip out. Plus take the coupons with him. Could not have been easier. Except when I was trying to text him to not forget such and such....I was thinking I was hitting the cellphone keys and not hitting them hard enough. Fortunately, he finally gave up and called me.

I also want to recommend take out short term disability insurance if you are able to. Was a relief when hubby and myself were both on FMLA. I wasn't able to drive and was very unsteady at first. It may not seem like a lot, but when zero is coming in, its a blessing.

I also need to email Dave Ramsey, I think he needs to rethink his emergency fund amount. In between office visit copays, er copays, more new meds, hospital parking garage fees, etc...it all goes very quickly. in less than 6 weeks. Now we also used this for grocery monies too. See paragraph above, zero in..... Maybe it should be divided out so much per family member, then if you need to do more, you can use from the other amounts set aside for different people. Times have changed from when he first published this wonderous idea of getting people out of debt. This just showed me that one thousand was not enough for us. As our savings egg was no where near hatched ! I think that will work for us. I plan on setting aside at least five copays per person in the house, excluding the fur people. Maybe ten. I talked with a friend at church, and she was asking me about the endless dr visit wagon. In her case it was cancer, way more drs to see in a very short amount of time. Just something to think about people. So now we start off this year even more in debt. Yeah me. {{sarcasm oozing here.}}

So, God willing, things will just have to be even more stretched to the limits. So tonight I had already set up the turkey carcass from Christmas in the stockpot to make soup with. Acutally mr turkey had been int he pot in the fridge since Christmas, but didnt' get good and cooked until today. But boy it hit the spot. Huge pot for probably under 3.00 total including the seasonings. The turkey was "free" when so many $45 purchases were made at Ingles grocery store chain here. So a couple of carrots, potatoes, bag of whole wheat pasta from Big Lots no less, rest of the left over veggies from Christmas dinner {no waste there}. Totally yummy. Especially with handful of those oyster crackers thrown in on top. Ingles was a regular stop as it was a right turn off the interstate, go one block and boom you are there. Relearning to drive was scary as all get out......So I'm a slow lane sally even still these days. And will always from now on I'm sure always merge into traffic at a stop light. Guess thats why all those stops added up to our free bird !

Sorry so long. Just been too long, promise it wont be too long any more. Now to figure out how to incorporate links into my paragraphs like the professional bloggers I read....and upload more pics....and add links to the sidebar.....