Try this!!!

EASY bean dip

1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed well.

somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of your favorite salsa.
Puree together in a food processor (I used a hand blender) until smooth.

I warm this up and top it with a bit of reduced fat shredded cheddar. It is really good and filling.

The monkeys took one look at it and declared that it looked like something in the bottom of their cages and refused to even try it. Silly monkeys, that means more for me :)

On a separate note, it was really good to see everyone on Sunday. It was nice to be able to visit and watch the bowlers. I was able to stay away from the cake but not the pizza. I ate only one small square of cheese pizza and it was good. When I was really wanting the cake, I had some grapes instead. Thanks for bringing the grapes, Jill - they were a life saver!!

Kristy and Jerri are making me jealous talking about their "Walk Away the Pounds" successes. I'm going to have to dig out my dvd's and give them a go.

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins

Let me apologize for not having pictures of this recipe. I was taking them out of the pan when I realized I didn't take any pictures! I know, I am slipping!

These muffins are really good and not bad nutritionally either. All three of the monkeys like them and so does my fellow zookeeper :)

Ingredients:
1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 cup non-fat milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 egg whites
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt ( I omit this)
1 tsp cinnamon
raisins or nuts (optional)

Directions:
Soak the oats in milk for about one hour. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray the muffin pan with cooking spray. Combine the oat mixture with the applesauce and egg whites and mix until combined.
In a separate bowl, measure and whisk the dry ingredients together. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until just combined. Add nuts or raisins if desired.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until done.
Remove from pan, cool and enjoy. These can be frozen and reheated in the microwave.

Number of servings: 12

Nutritional information:

Fat: 0.5g
Carbohydrates: 20.5 g
Calories: 93.5
Protein: 2.9g

If you are looking for a filling idea for breakfast, try these. Seriously. I usually have a glass of orange juice, 1 muffin and a lowfat cheese stick at about 7 and I am comfortable until noon.

Better Late than Never - Alyssa's Dance Pictures

Sorry I am so late in getting these pictures on here. We have had some serious router issues at the Monkey House this weekend. Let's just say that I am soooo glad to work for a computer repair company :)

I took these pictures with Alyssa's camera, so they really could be better but at least you can get the idea. MY BABY HAS GROWN UP!! Lordy, it just hurts my heart to look at her, she is such a beautiful young lady... but right when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, she belched like a man and I felt better. She also wore sweat pants under her dress. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that, but she wouldn't let me. Spoil Sport!

Enjoy the pictures :)

It's Purty Darn Cold Out Dar

Geez! Does anyone have warm feet? If you do, I want your secret!! My feet have been cold for the last week and I just can't get them warmed up (probably because Jason has been in Indy and I don't have his back to put them on - that always warms them up quick like)!

I have a quick question for anyone who reads this silly ole blog. I wanna know two things actually. Ready?

1. What is your favorite childhood winter time memory.

Mine is ice skating at my Grandma's house. She lived on a lake and it really only got cold enough one time to freeze it solid enough to skate on (that I remember anyway). I remember Grandpa testing the ice before he let us go out on it. He took a big ole concrete block out to the center of the area where we would be skating and held it up over his head and slammed it down with all of his strength. He didn't fall in so he let us skate. That was so much fun!

2. What is your favorite go to winter time recipe. It doesn't have to be healthy, just something that you only make in the winter that is a favorite of yours.

Mine is taco soup.

In a slow cooker layer the following ingredients:

2 bonless skinless chicken breasts (frozen)
1 envelope of taco seasoning
1 envelope hidden valley ranch dressing mix
1 can rotel tomatoes & green chili's
1 can black beans, undrained
1 can great northern beans, undrained
1 can light or dark kidney beans, undrained
1 can Bush's vegetarian baked beans
1 can corn, undrained

Do not stir. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Before serving, remove chicken breasts and shred. Serve with sour cream and shredded cheese. This soup freezes well.

So there you go, you have my answers, now it is your turn. So get to answering. Seriously. Start Typing.

Thanks and have a wonderful evening :)

Homemade Pizza Rolls

I was messing around in the kitchen not long ago, trying to come up with a way to use an extra package of egg roll wrappers that I had taking up space in the fridge, when I stumbled upon something relatively low fat and super yummy :)


I just love these things...I buy them in the produce section at Super Wal-Mart.

I have always just used them to make egg rolls because I am not all that imaginative. But, if you look at the back of the packaging, they have some really creative uses for them. Anyway, I was looking for something to stuff in them that the monkeys would like when divine inspiration struck and I came upon the idea of stuffing them with pizza filling. What could be more monkey friendly?

So, does anyone want to make pizza rolls? I do and since this is my blog, here we go!!

Start out by browning one pound of turkey sausage.

Throw in some pepperoni that has been roughly chopped up. I put mine in a little food processor and gave them a quick whirl. Then I added about a 1/2 cup of pizza sauce and removed it from the heat. I then added about 4 ounces of skim milk shredded mozzarella cheese.

Now we are ready to wrap it all up. I just follow the directions on the cardboard insert in the egg roll wrapper package. It shows you step by step how to fold the wrappers. It is super easy.

Once you get them all wrapped up, dip your finger in some water and seal the seam up. See, piece of cake (or pizza roll!)

Now we have two different ways to go here. You can deep fry them or bake them. The monkeys are not fond of them when they are fried because they are just too greasy. We prefer ours baked. Just preheat the oven to 400 degrees and spray a cookie sheet with nonstick spray. Line your pizza rolls up and then spray the top of them with the cooking spray (just a light little spritz). Bake for 10 minutes and then turn your broiler on and let them sit under the broiler for about a minute. Watch them closely because it would stink to get this far and then burn them.



The monkeys love these. They tear through them like bananas! I haven't sat down and worked out the nutrition information because frankly, I just don't have that kind of time but they can't be too bad as they are made with turkey sausage and turkey pepperoni, and low fat mozzarella.


Come over sometime and I'll fix you some!!!

Sunday Morning Pancakes

My sweet monkey, Jilian asked me to make her pancakes this morning. It didn't matter that everyone except her and Jason and eaten already, she wanted pancakes. So, being the good mother that I am said NO. Go away little monkey. It's Sunday and I don't want to make pancakes. I want to finish reading my book and then lay on the couch and do nothing all day. Has anyone out there ever been "mommed" to death? You know what I mean, don't you? Mom, please. Please Mom. Mom, Mom, Mom until you think you are going to go crazy! Well, she Mommed me until I gave in and made her pancakes. Look how happy I made her...

Of course, I didn't let her eat all of those pancakes by herself, this picture was for demonstrative purposes only :) I was however, concerned about making pancakes and then having to nag at Jason not to eat them because they would be full of sodium (and who knows what else Bisquick puts in their mix) so I set out to find a healthy pancake recipe. The trick is not to make something healthy, any old Joe can do that. The trick is to make something healthy that the monkeys will eat. I have to admit that as far as monkeys go, mine are not all that picky. They definitely prefer to eat junk food because it tastes so good but if they are presented with supper (for example) on a take or leave it basis, they generally take it :)

Anyway, my recipe (which I found on the Internet and cannot take credit for):

100% Whole Grain Pancakes

Combine in a small bowl:

1/2 cup Oatmeal, 1 cup Skim Milk, and 2 tsp. lemon juice. Let this set for while mixing the dry ingredients.

In a different bowl, combine:

3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour, 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. baking soda and 1/2 tsp. baking soda. Set aside.

Whisk into oatmeal mixture the following:

1 egg, 1 tsp. vanilla, 1 TBS. Unsweetened Applesauce, 1 TBS. Honey.

Add the oatmeal mixture to the dry ingredients and mix with a spoon until just combined.

I know I took a picture of the batter but when I went to download it, it wasn't there. Hmm.. picture trolls again! So use your imagination. It is light brown with little flecks of oatmeal in it :)

I cooked my pancakes in a nonstick skillet sprayed very lightly with cooking spray. I scooped 1/4 cup of batter into the pan..

I waited until the batter set up a bit and then added some chocolate chips...Monkeys like chocolate chips (so do zookeepers for that matter!)

As you can see, I didn't use a lot of chocolate chips, just enough to give the impression of chocolate. The thing with these pancakes is that they don't do the bubble thing like regular pancakes. You just have to kind of eyeball them and peak on the underneath side to see if they are brown before you flip them. Don't worry I am sure you can tell when they are ready to flip. I have faith in your flipping ability! Just use the force, you'll be fine young Skywalker.

This is the finished product. Don't they look yummy? Jason and Jilian loved them. The other two monkeys and myself had already eaten, so we did not try them. I actually made two batches of these (6 per batch) so I have some to send to Indianapolis with Jason and a few to eat for breakfast tomorrow. Oh yeah, I served them with sugar-free syrup ( I didn't tell them they were eating sugar-free and I don't think they noticed - I am so sneaky).

If you get a hankering for pancakes, give these a try. The monkeys liked them!

Sushi Fun and Basketball

Okay, it wasn't real sushi but it sort of looked like it :) See...

These are real sushi rolls...

And these are mine...

Pretty close, eh? I made these for the monkeys for their lunches today. I wish I could have seen their little hairy faces when they opened their lunches and saw them. To be honest, I did a trial run with them earlier in the week, just to see if they were any good (and they were!) But the monkeys were expecting their usual sammies today and they got sushi instead. :)

They were really easy too. I bought some flat out bread at Wally World and stuffed it with turkey pepperoni, turkey ham, turkey turkey, spinach and laughing cow cheese. I assembled them like so...

Then just roll them up really tight and then slice. I think they would be really good with honey mustard too, but the monkeys don't like honey mustard. Try them some time, they are yummy!!

Alex played in his first basketball game since being cleared by the doctor...It was a butt-whoopin and he didn't get in until the fourth quarter when the score was like 40 to11 but he did get to play, God love him :) He said the only thing he had credited to him for the whole game was a turn over. His dad told him next time to try really hard to pass the ball to someone who was wearing the same color uniform :) I tried to take his picture a couple of times but I was just not fast enough. He is all over the court. If I am going to catch this kid I am going to need a much faster camera. He was just a streak of white in every frame.

Jason went to the doctor today (Friday) and found out he needed to have some more tests done. He was also told to drastically lower his protein intake as well as sodium. I'm going to be searching for and trying lots of new recipes and I will post the good ones (Lord, I hope there are some good ones) on here and I might even get a little crazy and take some pictures.

Hope you all have a blessed quiet evening. Peace Out.

Welcome to the Monkey House

Welcome to the Monkey House! Please don't tease the monkeys as it agitates them and we all know that there is nothing worse than agitated monkeys (unless it is agitated zookeepers!) I'm not sure what I am going to do with this blog but it is sure to be absolutely entertaining or completely boring. You just never know :)

The kids and I are "single" for the next couple days. Jason is working in Indy and staying at Cherie's house (thanks Cherie!!)

We woke up to a snowy start :) There was a light dusting at 6 when I dragged myself out of bed and it was still coming down. Alex had basketball practice at 7 so I had to get him out of bed and moving earlier than he likes. Highway 61 was really slick and nasty. We followed a friend from the team out to school and watched them go around a curve sideways. When I dropped Alex off his friend was getting out of the car and I heard him say, "Did you see us Koby?!!!!" Alex was like "Man that was cool"! Kids. Anyway what is normally a 15 minute drive ended up taking about 30 so by the time I got back home, I had about 10 minutes to put together my breakfast and lunch and then we had to leave again to take the girls to school! Geez! The great thing is I got to do it all again in the afternoon!

It was 6 by the time I got the monkeys home and they were starving. My first inclination was to order a peanut butter and banana pizza but as I am trying to slim down a bit (the zookeeper should be smaller than the hippos) I decided to fix the little sweeties supper. I made a lovely scrambled egg and lean turkey sausage concotion. This was accompanied by some tasty whole wheat toast with homemade apple butter and some apple slices. They all promptly turned up their cute little monkey noses. They are just precious!! It doesn't look that bad does it? When they were informed that this was supper, take it or leave it, guess what? They ate it. 1 pound of turkey sausage, 1 dozen eggs, half a loaf of bread and two very large apples.

Sometimes the zookeeper has to just stand firm and tell the monkeys how it is. So that was today in the Monkey House. Pretty exciting stuff, eh?