Enchiladas the Slow Way

My slow cooker enchiladas got bumped from Friday to Sunday because we finally found a great babysitter, and we went out on a date Friday night! But that's a different story.
So the enchiladas...(These are not my enchiladas...I didn't take a picture, so I found this online, but mine looked something like this.)

I had never made them in the slow cooker before, but they turned out FANTASTIC! I think it's going to be my new standard for enchiladas. The coolest part is that you can just adapt your favorite enchilada recipe and cook it slow. Here's how:

Cut the tortillas into quarters (I used corn...not sure how it would turn out with flour).
Put a little sauce in the bottom of the slow cooker, and then layer tortillas, sauce, meat, cheese, tortillas, sauce, meat, cheese, until you fill the slow cooker or run out of ingredients. (I used my small crock pot, but you could use any size...just depends on how much you want to make.) Then cook on low for 3-4 hours. SOO yummy, so easy, and a great option for the heat of the summer!

Thoughts on Food & Cooking

I love, love, love cooking! I love creating and I love eating, and I have recently realized that I ESPECIALLY love those things when they are simple. I occasionally get all fancy schmancy, but more often than not, my dinners are to the table in about 30 minutes (unless it's in a slow cooker, in which case, the total time I SPEND on it is still under 30 min). Lately it has been HOT, and it only took one casserole to realize that I don't want to turn on the oven and heat up the house any more, so I've been planning my meals carefully. Here's this week's lineup:
Sunday: Veggie-infused Sloppy Joes
Monday: Cranberry Meatballs with Rice
Tuesday: Curried Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Wednesday: Carnitas
Thursday: Pink Pasta with Italian Sausage
Friday: Slow Cooker Enchiladas
Saturday: Pasta Primavera
Each of these meals is created either stove top, on the grill, or in the slow-cooker to minimize heat production. Perfect for summer. I may have to get creative to transform more of my oven meals into slow cooker recipes in order to keep this up.
Some facebook friends petitioned me for my carnitas "recipe" yesterday, so I thought I might as well share what I did here too...
Carnitas

Take one pork loin, about 1.5 lbs, toss it in the slow cooker and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Chop up a few small sweet peppers, a small onion, and a handful of cilantro and cover the pork with those. Add 1/2 cup water. Let it cook on... low for about 6 hours. When it is ready, pull out the meat with tongs (it should fall apart) and scoop out most the onion, peppers and cilantro to add to the meat (but leave the liquid behind & discard when cool). Shred and serve on warm corn tortillas with guacamole, sour cream and pico de gallo. My FAVORITE guacamole is just mashed avocado with salt and onion powder to taste, but you can do something fancier if you like that. For the pico, chop up onion, jalapeno, tomato, and cilantro, and add salt to taste. This time I added fresh corn because I had some leftover corn on the cob. It was delicious. Oh, and don't forget a lime wedge on the side! It brings out all the flavors perfectly!

Aren't you tempted?

The other thing I've been thinking a lot about lately is how to keep our family healthy. We went sugar-free for the month of May, and it was such a great experience. Not only did I lose nine pounds, but I felt fantastic! And, as I mentioned in a previous post, I saw a drastic change in Olivia. June 1st we took a trip to Texas to visit Jon's family, and celebrated Olivia's second birthday while we were there. All of that equated to plenty of sugar, and sure enough, the tantrums were back. Since we have been home, I've been really careful, and now that a few days have passed (and she's had the chance to detox) she's an absolute delight again! Suspicions confirmed. We don't plan to stay 100% sugar free from here on out, but here are some of my take-aways from the experience:
-No more sugar cereals! I used to think cereals like frosted mini-wheats and honey bunches of oats didn't count as sugar cereals. I was wrong. Feeding your body sugar is definitely not the best way to start your day, and I have found that if we eat plain cereal (like plain cheerios...still have a LITTLE bit of sugar, but almost everything does) we are more likely to add fruit to it, which is good for us. If I run out of bananas, I add a little bit of agave nectar for sweetness. Still delicious, and SO much healthier, which equals happier.
-Dessert is not necessary every day. Let alone three times a day. And yes, that candy bar counts as a dessert.
-IF we are going to eat dessert, it should be for a special occasion, and there is no need to feel guilty about eating it after the kids go to bed. Sugar can have a powerful negative effect on small children.
-Watermelon can be just as tempting to kids as m&m's, provided the m&m's are not in the picture. :)
-Lots of recipes call for WAY too much sugar. After we ended our sugar-free month I made some banana muffins. I used half the sugar that was called for. They were totally delicious.
-Ice cream and chocolate chips do not need to take up permanent residence in my freezer. If it's not there, it is SO much less tempting!
-There are LOTS of great ways to satisfy a sweet tooth (believe me, we know all about those around here!) that don't actually involve lots of processed sugar. Examples: fruit, whole wheat toast with honey, cereal with agave nectar, greek yogurt with honey or fruit, a fruit smoothie, homemade popsicles. I am also really excited to try out some of the recipes on honey.com. Turns out there are lots of baked goods you can make without sugar. I'm just waiting for the weather to cool off so I can use my oven again. Also, I am falling in love with Agave nectar. And I think I might need to invest in an ice cream maker to make some yummy, healthy ice cream. Recommendations?

If things go as planned, sugar will not be making a major reappearance in our lives. Here's to healthy, happy food!

It's Virtually a Book Club!

Last night I went to book club. Jon was gone at mutual (activity night for the youth he works with at church), and the girls were asleep. I didn't need a babysitter, because book club was in my own basement. But I didn't have to clean up for company, or fix snacks for anyone but myself! Talk about awesome! To make it even better, the other members of the book club were some of my favorite people in the whole wide world! No, not my imaginary friends...my mom and sisters!! We had our first ever book club over skype. We did a four-way video call, fixed our own snacks, and chatted the night away. Our selection was "Parenting with Love & Logic" by Foster Cline and Jim Fay (highly recommend!) and we had a fantastic discussion about the content, as well as sharing plenty of our own parenting anecdotes. Even my not-yet-parent sisters joined in. The only thing that would have made it better is if Diana, who got sick and couldn't make it, had been there. I finished the evening feeling like I had really spent a night with the girls. I can't wait to do it again! Best book club ever!

Friday the 13th

I'm not a superstitious person, but Friday the 13th always makes me a little nervous. You see, 13 years ago, my family was awakened early one Friday morning (you guessed it...it was also the 13th day of the month) to a house quickly filling up with smoke. My then soon-to-be Eagle scout brother heard the alarm we slept through, and ran
through the house alerting the other eight of us, and even getting the dog out safely. As we ran out into the snow on that cold, Michigan, February morning, my sweet sister Maria began to cry. "Don't worry," we told her, "we'll be alright!" "It's not that!" She protested, "I'm not wearing any pants!" Pants or no, we piled into our station wagon and watched as not one, not two, but seven fire trucks pulled up to our billowing home to quench the threatening flames. The radio was tuned to the oldies station, and as "the pied piper" played in the background, my ears distinctly heard the lyric "I'm the fire fighter..."  Luckily (pun intended) the only permanent damage was to the laundry room, where I (yes, I) had put a load in the dryer late at night. The rest of the house was permeated with smoke, though, and we moved, temporarily, to a hotel while things were scrubbed from top to bottom. My sister and I both recall comments about camp fires at school that day, although we thought the clothes we had salvaged smelled okay. I guess "okay" is relative.
So another Friday the 13th is here. And I will go about my business with a touch of nervousness. But not enough to keep me from driving my little family through 5 states to NYC this afternoon. I might just rub my lucky rabbit's foot to be safe, though. Or more likely, offer a silent prayer. Which should probably be a prayer of gratitude. Because that day could have been so much worse. And I'm pretty sure it was more than luck that kept us safe.
Happy Friday the 13th everyone! (And for the record, I don't own a lucky rabbit's foot).

Munchkin off Sugar

This little munchkin fell asleep during dinner the other day. I think she's getting tired of watching the rest of us eat. Time to start rice cereal, perhaps?
In other news, Jon and I are not eating sugar for the month of May. It's been a bit easier than I thought it would be thanks to loads of fruit, but the side effects have been astonishing! Not only do Jon and I feel great and have lots of energy, but Olivia (who still eats the occasional grahm cracker, but by association eats MUCH less sugar than before) seems to have emerged from her premature case of the terrible twos, and has been an absolute delight! I admit that I always thought that people who didn't let their kids eat any sugar were demonstrating nazi tendencies, but I have been humbled to discover that they just might be on to something. I am now very interested in researching the effect of sugar on children, and I think this change might become a semi-permanent one. Thoughts?

Just giddy about turning four months old...

Anna is four months old today, and couldn't be happier about it!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

Sad babe

Today we were having a lovely morning. I was feeding Anna and Olivia was calling daddy at work. But when the conversation was over, I guess Liv was upset, because she chucked the phone. Right at Anna's head. Poor baby has a little goose egg. And Livi lost her "phone privlidges". At 22 months. What is this world coming to?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7