40 weeks, 4 days

AhMahGah! I'm about to pull this baby out myself. My doctor said on Wednesday that I have no dilation and no fluid loss, so she didn't see a need to see me again until next week, when I'll be 41 weeks, 2 days. What?!?!?! Apparently it's really common for 1st pregnancies to be extra long.

All of this extra time has me nesting extra hard. I've been making freezer meals to have on hand.

I made pizza bagels, chicken and biscuit casserole, chicken and broccoli casserole, ham, apricot and goat cheese paninis, beef & bean burritos, swedish meatballs with mushrooms (for the crock pot) and stuffed french toast!

Here is my method for freezer pizza bagels. You'd think it would be very straight forward. It's not. There was a lot of trial and error involved in getting pizza bagels that don't come out of the oven mushy with sauce soaked into the bagel, or over bubbly with the sauce and cheese everywhere but the bagel! Follow all the steps, trust me!

Ingredients:
- 5 bagels from the bakery, unsliced
- 20 oz pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce or plain tomato sauce
- 1/2 bag of pepperonis, or about 3 oz, if getting it from a deli
- 2 cups shredded mozzarella

- take the bagels home and slice them yourself. Don't be tempted to buy presliced bagels, because they are too smooth and don't have the nooks and crannies to hold any sauce.
- lay the bagels on cookie sheets, cut sides up and freeze. If you put sauce on them right away, the sauce soaks into the bagel and makes it soggy when you bake them.
- place 4 paper towels on a microwave safe plate. Scatter pepperonis all over the paper towels, and microwave for about 30 seconds. When you pull the plate out, the paper towels will have turned orange from all the grease they soaked up. The pepperonis will feel dried out, but they will be OK
- make little stacks of pepperoni and cut them into tiny dices, about the size of a pea.
- place pepperonis into a bowl and stir in sauce.
- once bagels are frozen, pull them out of the freezer and top each one with a few tablespoons of pepperoni sauce mixture.
- top with shredded cheese. Press the cheese on top of them a little to get as much as possible to stick to the sauce
- place all of the bagels, still on cookie sheets, back in freezer and freeze until sauce and bagels are frozen together
- remove from freezer and wrap individually in Saran wrap. If some of the cheese falls off, carefully lay it on top of the bagel before wrapping. To prevent freezer burn even longer, store in a plastic freezer bag.

- to bake, preheat oven to 350. Unwrap however many bagels you want to cook and place on cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes, rotate baking sheet, and bake 10-14 more minutes.

Bubble Up Enchiladas

Thanks, Plain Chicken! We loved these and can't wait to try the pizza version. We baked half of it and froze the other half. I'll let you know how those turn out after I've thawed & baked them next week!

Caramel Cookies, Weight Watchers Points Plus 2012, 1 Points Plus

These are delicious. I made them this evening for Ryan to take to work tomorrow for Hump Day and he has just run out of the kitchen with an entire stack. They are super thin and crispy. Ryan suggested adding cocoa and making some buttercream frosting so that we can make our own Oreos.

Caramel Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed dark brown sugar*
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour*
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour*
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Add remaining ingredients and beat thoroughly.

Scrape dough out of dough and onto a large piece of plastic wrap. Roll dough into a log, about 2 1/2 inches wide; completely wrap dough in plastic wrap** and refrigerate until firm, at least 20 minutes or up to overnight.

Cut dough into 1/8-inch-thick slices and arrange on several large ungreased** cookie sheets about 1 to 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until lightly browned around edges, about 8 to 10 minutes.***

Allow cookies to cool on cookie sheet for about 1 minute and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Yields 1 cookie per serving.

* I didn't have enough brown sugar, so I had to use 9 tablespoons of dark brown sugar and 7 tablespoons of white sugar. I also didn't have enough all purpose flour and didn't have whole wheat flour at all. I used 3/4 cup of all purpose flour and 1/2 cup of cake flour.

** Because I didn't use enough flour, my dough was really sticky. Next time, I won't roll it out into a log. I had to drop the cookie dough onto the cookie sheets by the teaspoon full. I was also afraid to use ungreased cookie sheets, so I used parchment paper.

*** Too long. They will burn. 7 minutes was perfect.

Enjoy!

Vegetarian Pepper-less Hoppin' John

Beans & Rice is our #1 go-to meal when we're broke. It's also one of our favorite things to make and eat, so we're in luck. Since we had to pay rent, both our student loans, 2 sets of plane tickets and a boatload of medical bills this past week, we're down with the poor food. Also, black eyed peas are good for the New Year.

And that brings us to my friend, Lara. She's an herbivore and doesn't like bell peppers. I thought I'd whip up this version of Hoppin' John for her. We couldn't believe how delicious this was. Ryan asked for it again tomorrow.

Lara's Hoppin' John


- one can of black eyed peas, drained & rinsed*
- one large vidalia onion, chopped
- one veggie bouillon cube
- one clove chopped garlic
- seasonings ( I like using montreal steak )
- one tablespoon of olive oil
- prepared brown rice

- throw first 6 ingredients in a crock pot with a 1/4 cup of water. Cook 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low.
- serve over rice.

*rinsing canned beans gets rid of 60% of the sodium or something crazy like that

Pretzel Chicken

This is one of our favorite meals. I know it looks like a pork chop, but that is because I pound the chicken into a super thin cutlet and I'm not very good at it. I also made red potatoes roasted with olive oil and black pepper, and creamed spinach from the Weight Watchers website.

I also usually make a cheddar mustard sauce with this pretzel chicken and I left it out for this particular meal because of the obvious calorie count. I missed it. A lot.

Anywho, I would make this pronto if I were you!

Pretzel Chicken

4 Chicken breasts, pounded thin

pepper

1/4 cup of flour

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup of pretzels, crushed into course crumbs.

canola oil for frying (this is for the best result, but I used a very precise amount of olive oil because of WW)

- heat oil in skillet and pepper your cutlets

- place the flour in a shallow dish, the eggs in another shallow dish and the pretzels in a 3rd shallow dish ( I use pie tins)

- dredge the cutlets in that order <> and fry.

Enjoy. Lemme know if you want the cheddar mustard sauce recipe!