Merrrrrrry Christmas!

I’ve mentioned a time or twenty that Christmas is my FAAAAAAVORITE. The lights! The decorations! The muuuuuusic! It is THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR.

Ya feel like slapping the sleigh bells outta me yet?

One of my faves is our Advent calendar. This baby is probably a quarter of a century old and it’s been part of my Christmas tradition since I can remember. I didn’t even know that the typical basic lame-o Advent calendar has chocolates in it. Psssht. Felt ornaments hung on jingle bells is where it’s AT.

Growing up my brothers and I used to fight over who got to hang up the ornaments each day. Of course me being the oldest and ahem, most intelligent, would do the math backwards. Of course hanging up the Santa ornament on Christmas Eve day was the grand prize in life, so I’d count back every third day and graciously “let” my brothers start it off so that I’d have my turn synced up for the Big Guy.

Lucky for me, and also confusing for me, is that my husband does not give a rip about this thing. FINE. More ornaments for me to hang up. Until Mac gets older. Shoot. The window of not having to share is sweet but short.

Anyway. Cooking. That’s what I’m supposed to talk about.

I made something kinda lazy the other night but oh hey, it was super tasty so here it comes at ya. Enchiladas were on the menu, but when it came down to it I was not motivated to spoon the filling carefully and wrap the tortillas carefully and place them carefully in the pan. Nope, lazy wins. Instead I stacked ‘em up in my Dutch oven. Time saver it tastes the same. Win win.

Enchilada Stacker

-5 whole wheat tortillas, about 10” in diameter

-2 cups shredded chicken (I had leftover frozen cheater chicken that I thawed)

-1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

-1 bag sweet peppers, seeded and halved (about 2 cups worth)

-1 Tbsp olive oil

-1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped (about 1 ½ cups worth)

-1 can enchilada sauce (though I only used ~3/4 cup)- either red or green

-2/3 cup shredded cheese (I used cheddar, though Monterey Jack would be tasty)

-Pinch of Chipotle chili powder

I chose to roast the sweet peppers and onions, but really you could just saute these in a pan if you want to go faster. To roast, heat oven to 375 degrees and toss peppers and onions with olive oil. They take about 15-20 minutes- might want to stir halfway to ensure even roasting.

Combine chicken, black beans, peppers, onions, pepper, and chili powder in a bowl. Set aside.

Spoon ~2 tablespoons enchilada sauce on bottom of Dutch oven. Layer one tortilla. Spoon one quarter of your chicken mixture on top. Top with a light sprinkle of cheese. Add another tortilla. Add more chicken mixture plus another 2 tablespoonsish of sauce. Repeat alternating layers- both the sauce and cheese on opposite layers help this stay stacked. End with final fifth tortilla and pour over remaining sauce and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake at 375 for ~20 minutes, or until sauce around the bottom edges is bubbling. Let sit at room temperature for a few minutes. Slice up and serve with a nice blob of Greek yogurt.

Don’t take heart if your looks like a hot mess. Just call it enchilada jumble…or whatever floats your boat. Just remember- I GET TO PUT THE SANTA ON THE CALENDAR.

Makes six servings. Per serving: 380 calories, 45 g carbs, 10 g fat, 32 g protein

Non-significant goings on

We are (still) in the midst of redoing our kitchen. Next up is new flooring. Which of these is the least chintzy looking vinyl tile?

Have I mentioned I'm cheap thrifty?

Speaking of thrifty, I bought Mac a new-with-tags-but-how-old-is-this-turtleneck from the thrift store the other week. It has a hockey print on it. 

How adorably 80s is this look??

In better news, I made a really reeeeeally REALLY good meal this week. Don't want to overhype it, buuuuuut it's the best thing I've made. Ever. EVERRRRR. 

Have I mentioned I'm pregnant?

If I called this a one-pot dinner (why did the font change?), I’d be lying ever so slightly (I can't figure it out). Sorry, ya need a pot and a bowl. Does it help that this is still minimal prep and cleanup? And it comes together in under 30 minutes? Yes? Ok cool.

Chicken & Poblano Hotdish

-3 poblano peppers, roasted, peeled, and seeded, and diced

-1 teaspoon olive oil (or a sliver of unsalted butter)

-1 medium yellow onion, diced

-1 fresh clove garlic, minced, or ½ teaspoon jarred minced garlic

-2 Tbsp unsalted butter

-2 Tbsp all purpose flour

-1 1/2 cups skim or 1% milk

-Salt and pepper to taste

-4 oz shredded Monterey Jack cheese

-2 cups cooked diced chicken (I just used a rotisserie chicken)

-1 package Jiffy brand cornbread mix

-1 egg

-1 cup cream style corn

Quick tutorial on how to easily roast & peel poblanos: Heat oven to broil on high. Arrange poblanos on a baking sheet. Roast for ~30 seconds, or until tops get bubbled and browned. Rotate poblanos until all sides are bubbled and browned. Turn oven down to 375 degrees and remove poblanos, immediately placing them in a paper bag. Fold top to seal in steam. The steam will help the skins peel off nicely. After ~10 minutes, or when cool enough to handle, remove super thin outer skin, remove inside seeds, and dice- set aside.

In a Dutch oven over medium heat, add oil or sliver of butter. Add onions and saute until lightly browned and tender. Add 2 Tbsp butter. When melted, whisk in flour for a minute. A chunky paste will form (mmmMMM). Whisk in milk and continue cooking over medium heat. Mixture will start to thicken up. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, followed by shredded cheese, diced poblanos, and lastly, chicken. Cover and turn heat to low.

If you’ve had time to sneak this in while the onions were sauteeing, cool, but if not, it’ll only take a minute. In a medium mixing bowl, combine cornbread mix, egg, and creamed corn. Spread over chicken and poblano mixture. Bake uncovered for ~20 minutes, or until cornbread is golden brown. Insert knife to ensure cornbread is fully cooked.

Makes 5 servings.

Mama's little helper

Is it weird that my toddler spends most of his time at home in the kitchen? His favorite thing is to help make “offee.” Our Keurig is apparently built like a tank ‘cause he whips it open and slams it close 87 times a day.

He’s also really good at taking alllllll the teabags out of the box and cramming them in a single mug while I’ve got my back turned for 1.3 seconds.

He’s also reeeeeally good at cramming sweet potato peels in the Keurig. More…vitamin A in your latte?

He was my sous chef last week when I made a new dinner recipe. Sampling the lemons? Have at it. No scurvy for this dude.

Lemon Chicken Pasta with Asparagus

-8 oz whole grain angel hair pasta

-1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, pounded to about ½ inch thick (leaving the chicken at room temp for ~30 minutes makes it easier to pound)- I cut mine into 4 separate 4 oz breasts.

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1/2 teaspoon pepper

-1/3 cup all purpose flour

-3 tablespoons butter

-1 teaspoon jarred minced garlic, or 3-4 cloves fresh, minced

-1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

-1/2 cup 1% milk

-1 lb fresh asparagus with tough bottom stems trimmed 1-2 inches

-Juice of one lemon

-Zest of one lemon (about 2 teaspoons)

-1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

So at the outset this might seem complicated, but it comes together quickly and easily. Get your large pot of water to boiling for the pasta. While that’s heating up, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. While that too is heating, sprinkle chicken with the salt and pepper. Add the flour to a shallow dish and dip the chicken in it, coating each side. Add it to the now-sizzling butter and cook on each side, cooking about 3-5 minutes each side. Check the internal temp to make sure it reaches 165. Put on a plate and cover loosely with foil to keep warm.

By now your water is boiling- get that pasta going. Cook according to package directions, then drain. Set aside. In the same pan that you cooked the chicken, add the remaining butter and heat that back up over medium heat. Stir in garlic- cook for about 30 seconds. Add cream and milk. Add asparagus and cover for about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat, add lemon juice and lemon zest. Stir in parmesan cheese.

Serve a scoop of pasta with a chicken, 1 breast, a generous amount of asparagus spears, and a scoop of sauce on top of it all.

Per serving (makes four): 675 calories. Definitely not a “light” meal, but compare this with the chain restaurant versions that pack over 1000 calories.  

Now, who wants some of that sweet potato peel tea?

Things that taste better than they look

I am well aware that when I plan meals or think of recipes, I try to find the common denominator between cheap, easy, yet nutritious. I’ve came up with a winner, but be warned- it kinda sorta maybe looks like something your dog regurgitated. ON THAT NOTE…

 

In early pregnancy when I was feeling like, well, dog regurgitation, I would hit up the hospital cafeteria for most of my lunches. One of the dishes in their rotation is a creamy Spanish rice and tomato stuffed chicken breast. It always was pretty good. I figured why not try and recreate it? Only stuffed chicken is more work than I want to do. Cooking the chicken and rice side by side makes it 283% less fancy and pretty, but it tastes exactly the same.

And the bonus? It cooks in just one pot.

 

One Pot Cheesy Chicken and Rice (makes 4 servings)

2 cans diced tomatoes + chiles (such as Ro-Tel)

8 oz block Neufchatel cream cheese, cut into 1” cubes

2 cups instant brown rice

3 cups low sodium chicken broth

1 lb chicken breasts, pounded to ½-1” thickness (I cut mine into 4 4-oz pieces, just to make for easier serving and leftovers packaging)

Pinches of pepper and cumin, to taste

 

In a large Dutch oven or oven-proof pot, heat up diced tomatoes with cream cheese. Stir over medium heat until cream cheese has melted. Add rice and brown. Stir for a minute to combine. Add raw chicken. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Dish is done when internal temp of chicken registers 165 degrees. Serve one chicken breast with 1-2 scoops of rice mixture.

 

Now THAT’S the kind of photography you missed during my absence, right?

 

Per serving (4 oz chicken + 1 1/2 cups rice mixture) is 404 calories.

Asian Invasion

A weird perk of spending a truckload of money on infertility treatments over the past few years is that we've accumulated a ton of airline miles on our credit cards. With Mac being a reasonably easy age to babysit and both our parents willing to do so, my husband and I planned a ten day trip to Asia. We strategically planned the timing, knowing that we were doing a frozen embryo transfer late July- I would be in my second trimester and probably feeling fine, and on the flip side, if the transfer didn't work, it would something fun to look forward to and get our minds off baby stuff.

First up was Hong Kong. I've blogged about it before, but I'd been to Hong Kong five years ago and knew my husband would love it. Hong Kong is so unique in that it's a mix of Western and Asian influences with a mind-boggling population density and beautiful jungle-ish mountains.

View from the our 31st floor hotel room.

View from the top of Victoria Peak, with the city in the background. 

To get to Hong Kong Island, you either take the subway or the old-timey Star Ferry boats.

For the record, we did not eat at KFC.

For the record, I did not eat any street vendor spicy octopus....

...but I did have some shrimp burger.

If you're ever there, a trip to Sai Kung, a fishing village 20 minutes out of the main city is well worth it. Tons of dockside restaurants keep tanks filled with fresh crab, shrimp, grouper, lobster, and critters I couldn't even identify.

After two days in Hong Kong, we flew to Phuket, Thailand. We arrived at midnight and our boat/kayak tour was picking us up at 5:45 the next morning. Ughughugh travel. Turns out that this boat tour was one of the best things I've done in life.

Two Sea Tours is amazing. My Trip Advisor obsessing paid off big time. They limit the tours to a max of 14 people so that there was plenty of space on the immaculately clean boat. Other tour boats we saw were jam packed and looked to be in nasty condition. They had breakfast waiting for us on the boat along with coffee and tea. One of the breakfast items was a caramelized coconut-and-rice thing wrapped in a banana leaf. Tasty. 

We set off for our first destination- kayaking the sea caves. They have it set up so each couple has a guide to paddle. That left us free to take pictures and also not freak out about bad steering.

Inside each sea cave were shallow lagoons with mangrove trees and monkeys. 

"Really? We're going in there?" 

Sleep deprivation does not become me but the rest of the pic is cool. Hi Dep, our guide 

One of the island's beaches had tons of monkeys. We might have seen two of them doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel...

I still can't believe I got to go to the kind of places you only see on Google Images.  

After paddling around two islands, we went to James Bond Island, named after the 2 minute scene that featured it in..."Gold something..."

I'm so happy to be there I couldn't even keep my eyes open. 

While we toured this island, the cook on the boat prepared us an awesome meal for the ride back to Phuket. We were both super hungry. What! Watching other people paddle my kayak makes me hungry.

The last stop was a secluded beach for some swimming in the Andaman Sea and plates of fresh fruit paddled ashore by our guides. Don't be fooled by my belly- it's half fetus, half watermelon. 

The rest of our time in Phuket consisted of snorkeling (wish I would've brought an underwater camera), beaching, pooling, and eating.  The snorkeling was super cool- a guide at our hotel drove us to a tiny beach on the southern end of the island. We saw huge pink and blue starfish, puffer fish, those blue-and-black-and-yellow-tail-fish, and many other critters. 

We went to the main market in Phuket, which had the Bizarre Foods-type stuff. I can't even blame it on pregnancy, but I really did not have interest in eating street meat or roasted insects or fish chunks.

I wish we also would have taken our camera on our day trip to the beaches on the west side of the island- clear blue-green water and beautiful sand. And one random 16" jellyfish. Eeeeek. 

All in all it was a great trip- the travel portion was intense. 14 hours on a plane is no joke. The experiences we had were well worth it though.

Goodbye, Phuket.

Crusty, moldy, mildewy

...all the above describe the state of this blog. Holy shamoley it's been awhile, BUT, for kinda sorta good reason.  I am pa-reg-nant! And I've been feeling completely barf-tastic since mid-August. Even if I would have had the energy to post, no one wants to hear how I ate a box of Rice-A-Roni for dinner eight nights in a row.

A leetle background though because I cannot not acknowledge the efforts of many that went into this pregnancy. Two years ago when we did our first round of IVF, we had a total of five embryos. Two were transferred at that time, one stuck, and that's how we got Mac. With three leftover embryos, since frozen, and no "oh it always seems to be the case that after IVF people naturally get pregnant" a la Charlotte-York-from-Sex-And-The-City-type surprise, we went back for round 2. Sort of. Round 2 was much less difficult drug-wise, as my body didn't need to produce eggs- just had to be ready to receive.

We elected to transfer a single embryo, and were are incredibly fortunate that it stuck as well. I'll admit to having been a bit of a downer in that 10 day wait. The statistics were still not really on our side- 47% success rate for frozen embryo transfers at our clinic. Much like the majority of our total infertility treatments, I felt I should keep my hopes low so as to minimize the disappointment of a failure. The power of a positive attitude? Nah, not me. But in any case we have since learned that it is another boy. This is one tough dude though- imagine spending the first two years of your conception frozen in a test tube.

It has been a rougher pregnancy for sure, with much more sickness. In hindsight I chalk that up to the estrogen supplements I had to be on (not necessary with a fresh embryo transfer, like our first round). I've also been having issues with my body not producing enough progesterone to support the pregnancy, so it's been 136 nightly butt injections. Don't get me wrong- I am not complaining. Like other moms who have had infertility or pregnancy complications, I will do whatever. it. takes. I no longer care if I'm that pain in the butt patient at my OB office. Whatever. No one is going to be proactive for my baby on my behalf.

I'll end with an interesting story that proves how heartbreakingly uncommon infertility and pregnancy complications are. Two weeks ago my husband and I took a 10-day trip to Asia. On our way home we had a daylong layover in Seoul. The airport sponsors free cultural tours into the city, so we signed up as a fun way to kill time. Of the 14 people on the tour, two were a young couple originally from Minnesota. They now live in Montana, but explained that they still rent out their home in MN and visit often.

After a tour of Gyeongbokgung (yes, I had to Google the spelling) palace, our tour took us to a restaurant. The couple asked if they could join us at our table. Our small talk continued and the husband mentioned that they were in the process of trying to have kids. I could read between the lines there and I piped up that we went through IVF to have our son. That really opened the conversation, and it turns out they will be doing a frozen embryo transfer this month at our very same clinic with our very same doctor.

Halfway around the world, and we find a connection with infertility. Not to get all Disney, but it really is a small world....after all.

Burns So Good

You can make anything into pizza. Taco pizza? Of course. Cheeseburger pizza? Oh yes. Greek pizza? It’s definitely a thing.

I went to college in Northfield, home of Basil’s pizza, which is super tasty, but never less than 547 degrees. I consistently gave my mouth 2.5 degree burns every time I ate their gyro pizza. Worth it of course.

I made my own version of Greek pizza last night- minus the extreme temperature and mouth suffrage. I made a super easy Tzatziki sauce too, if you so happen to be the type who likes extra business on your pizza.

Greek Pizza

-2 thin crust whole wheat pre-made crusts

-12 oz your favorite pizza sauce

-2 tablespoons fresh chopped oregano

-1 large purple onion, very thinly sliced

-1 lb ground lamb (our grocery store only has frozen, so check there if you can’t find fresh)

-2 cups baby spinach

-2 cups shredded mozzarella

-8-10 oz crumbled feta (I found ‘peppercorn feta’ at Aldi’s)

Easy Tzatziki

-Combine shredded cucumber with plain nonfat Greek yogurt + pinch of garlic powder. 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Saute ground lamb until fully cooked. Break up any large chunks of ground meat. Soak up any liquid fat with paper towels. Set aside.

Spread sauce evenly between the two crusts. Layer onion, chopped oregano, ground lamb, spinach mozzarella, and feta (in that order) between the two crusts. Bake 12-15 minutes, or until desired doneness. Makes 8 servings.

  He ate an entire footlong cucumber down to the nub!

Not really.

Per 1/4^th pizza: 450 calories, 30 g carbs, 22 g fat (lamb is fairly fatty), 32 g protein