Another PSA

I have seen this mistake made so often lately that I have taken it upon myself to do another grammatically-themed public service announcement. No need to thank me.

Lose vs. Loose

Lose is a verb. It has several uses, for example:

-the opposite of win

-to misplace

Loose is an adjective. Examples:

-She has a screw loose.

-He lost weight so now his clothes are loose.

Squash-Adult Edition (Rated PG)

Tonight, we went out on a limb and had the spaghetti squash I prepared on Sunday afternoon. The verdict: it was DELICIOUS! I don't mean it was pretty good for health food "delicious," I mean, I would eat this on a regular basis and not feel like I was dieting at all delicious! Since you're wondering, though, a serving (one cup)of spaghetti squash has between 30 and 45 calories* (depending upon the calorie counter you're using, apparently, as I looked at a few nutritional websites and they each had different numbers). Real spaghetti has about 220 calories per cooked cup.

*That does not, of course, include the calories and fat that are in the olive oil I suggest you use, but olive oil contains healthy fats, so fear not.

I would highly suggest this tasty alternative. Here's how to cook it:

This is what it looks like in the store

Cut the squash in half, length-wise. It is no easy feat, so be careful that you don't sever your fingers in your attempts to cut calories.

Scrape out the pumpkin-like seeds and strings and dispose of those "guts."
Once the squash is clean, coat your hands with olive oil (you don't need much) and rub the squash down with the olive oil and minced garlic. (You can also spritz the squash with olive oil, but I did not have an olive oil spray dispenser). I was told to be really generous with the garlic and seasonings and it did not disappoint, so I will tell you the same thing...use a lot of garlic. Then sprinkle the squash with salt and pepper. Again, be generous. Finally, lightly drizzle with olive oil again.

Set the squash halves face up in a baking pan with about an inch of water. Bake at 375 degrees for at least 50 minutes. The squash should be coming away from the wrinkling skin a bit when it's ready, so don't take it out too early.

Once the squash is tender, let it cool. I will say this again. Let it cool. Otherwise, you may burn your hands and that would suck.

Using a fork, scrape the squash strings out into a bowl. Scrape as much as you can one way

and then flip and scrap the other way.

This is what it looks like

Since my spaghetti squash had been sitting in the fridge for a few days, I tossed the squash again with a bit of water, garlic and parmesan cheese and heated it up and topped it with some chunky spaghetti sauce.

Yum. It was seriously SO good. Billy agreed. Spaghetti squash may have to make the regular rotation here in the Holt kitchen. It was definitely worth the time it took to make it, and it is a great, low calorie substitute for the real thing.

Bon appetit!

* I learned how to cook this squash on The Daily Garnish (dailygarnish.com). Emily from the Daily Garnish gives great tutorials on cooking vegetables, especially ones that are a little tricky and intimidating like spaghetti squash so check her out!

Run for the Border Indeed

I am sure that by now, many of you have heard of the scandal that has recently hit America's favorite fast food restaurant. A lawsuit was recently filed claiming that Taco Bell's "beef," served in their beloved tacos, nachos, burritos and other products is, in fact, barely beef at all. It is actually only 35 % beef (*allegedly). Yes. You read that correctly. The allegation is that Taco Bell beef is made with 35% beef and the remaining 65% is made of fillers and what have you. Is anyone else completely shocked and disgusted? I mean, I am not expecting the top beef cuts when I frequent a fast food establishment, but good grief! I at least expect the meat to contain MEAT, for pete's sake! If these allegations are true, Taco Bell's "beef" doesn't even meet USDA standards, and that is really saying something, considering the ATROCITIES that the USDA allows in the meat industry. It makes me want to gag just thinking about it.

*Note-Taco Bell's mouthpieces are vehemently denying any and all allegations regarding their meat food products. Really, though, where there's smoke, there's fire. Or in this case, Fire Border Sauce to cover up those meat fillers. No wonder they keep coming up with more sauce choices. Perhaps if they make the sauce hot enough, no one will taste it if they completely eliminate all of the beef from the "seasoned beef" that is in virtually every item on the menu.

Shame on you, Taco Bell. Your company makes PLENTY of money off of drunk college kids late night binge eaters American consumers. Do you really need to save money this way? Seriously shameful. Even more shameful that the hot mess that was the "Taco Bell's Drive-Thru Diet," claiming that if people ate off of the fresco menu, they could lose weight. Taco Bell and YUM! Brands Inc. should be hanging their heads in shame.

It's funny that their ad slogan is "Why Pay More?" Perhaps TB should shell out a bit more just to repair its image, although I bet the sales will barely take a hit. People will eat anything. (I am not claiming that I do not love a Taco Bell treat now and then, but I am not sure I will be able to eat there again with this knowledge. It's probably for the best. TB is definitely not clean eating).

Will this news deter you from eating at Taco Bell?

Adventures in Squashland-A How To

This weekend, as I mentioned earlier, I bought a new food processor. I am sure you will soon grow sick of me talking about it because I am in love with it. In addition to the sweet potatoes I made for C on Friday, I made him some butternut squash and carrots on Saturday. I won't bore you with the carrots (chop, steam, puree), although I will give you a warning: When you cook the carrots, DO NOT use the water you steamed them with to add to the puree because there are some potentially harmful nitrates involved. I read that. Otherwise I wouldn't know it. It may or may not be true or a big deal, but I am not a doctor, so I used regular water to thin out the carrots.

Now to the butternut squash. For those of you who don't know, this is what a butternut squash looks like. It is the coolest of the squash family because it has the funniest name. It is like the Conan O'Brien of squash: slightly orange and unattractive, but funny and tasty so people love him it anyway.

Here's how to cook it:

Cut the squash in half, length-wise

Use a spoon and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits in the bulbous section of the squash. It is much like a teeny pumpkin, only WAY easier to clean.

Place the squash face-down in a baking pan with about 1/2 inch of water in the pan.

Preheat oven to 400 and bake for about 40 minutes

The skins should start to wrinkle and the squash should be relatively soft

Scoop out the "meat" of the squash. You should be able to get almost all of it out, leaving only the skins.

Put it in the food processor or blender.

Puree until smooth.

Add water, if necessary, to thin the puree a little more and you will have baby worthy butternut squash! Yum! You would not believe the color. This camera/picture cannot do it justice. It looks so good I might eat it. I froze the butternut squash and carrots because C was still working on the homemade sweet potatoes. I plan to add some green stuff to the mix, as well as apples and bananas, so that my little man doesn't turn orange with all of these orange foods!

While I was cooking for C-Note on Sunday, I cooked a little something for Billbo and me. I cooked the brown rice and black beans necessary for my Paradise Island Bean Burgers. I talked about them in a previous post and I decided to show you how delicious they look.
With a spinach salad with homemade Tahini dressing? Yes please!

I also tackled the spaghetti squash this weekend. We haven't had it yet, but don't worry. Pictures and review to follow!

For those readers who do not have babies and who do not give a flying flip how to cook a butternut squash edible by a 6 month old, I promise, I will not babyproof every post. I am just so embarrassingly obsessed with the food processor that I could not wait to use it. I am pretty sure that soon, no one will believe I was ever cool with as much as I want to stay at home and hang out with my kitchen appliances lately. Loser. Sorry Bilbo. At least the family will have tasty purees and homemade dressings for a while.

(Un)healthy obsession

I think I've mentioned it before, but I have developed quite the girl crush on Mama Pea from peasandthankyou.com. It's pretty much an obsession. I love her humor, her obvious love for motherhood and her children, and the fact that she was once a lawyer, but in her words, she's "over it." I feel ya, Mama Pea.

Anyway, she is vegan and her kids and husband are vegetarian and she posts all kinds of interesting and delicious-looking vegan recipes on her blog. She seriously makes being vegan totally do-able and delicious. I have to remind myself regularly that she is a stay at home mom, which gives her the time at home necessary to create these vegan masterpieces. Although, I am not sure even if I were at home that I would be able to find the time to do these things.

I decided I would try one of her recipes and post the results. I made BBQ Kale Chips. I am not going to post the recipe because it's Mama Pea's and you can find it on her blog, but they are "chips" made from baked Kale.

Wash the Kale and tear it into "chip" sized pieces.

Pour spices into bowl.

Mix spices up

Sprinkle on kale "chips" and bake.

The Verdict: They were surprisingly good. I mean, they don't taste like chips, of course, but they are satisfyingly crunchy and have good flavoring. Even Billbowski liked them. He tried to force them on our friends last night when they came to visit. They weren't ready for my adventurous Kale chips, but Billbo is used to my strange cooking ways.

Next up: Spaghetti squash and Brussels sprouts.

Clean Mama

I decided that since my real purpose for trying to clean up my eating habits was to set a good, healthy example for the little nugget and to introduce the healthiest and most nutritional foods to him at an early age to hopefully shape his appetite into a healthy one, I needed to clean up his foods, too. I have been buying organic baby food, but I kept thinking that if I made my own baby food, I would KNOW for sure that the food I feed to him will be clean, fresh and free of any unwanted additives.

The next question was whether to buy a BabyCook (which I had heard lots about and REALLY wanted) or to buy a food processor (which I also REALLY wanted). Truth be told, I really wanted BOTH a BabyCook and a food processor, but as I didn't have an extra 300 bones laying around, I decided to make myself an informed consumer and headed to Williams Sonoma, where both BabyCooks and food processors are sold. I went to the W-S outlet and they didn't have any BabyCooks. I looked at the food processors and decided that I didn't need the nifty steamer/processor in one that the BabyCook provides. Plus the food processors were on sale. I got an AWESOME food processor. It's a Cuisinart Prep 9, 9 cup food processor. I am totally obsessed with it. I already made Carter some sweet potatoes and green beans. Yummy, nutritious, organic and made with love. Cheesy? Yes. Good for baby's health? Without question.

Without further ado...

Sweet potatoes. Peel, Chop, Cook until tender

Puree

Save the nutrient-rich water in which the vegetables are cooked to add to the pureed mix if necessary.

Add a little bit of the cooking water to thin out the puree a bit more and voila! Baby food!

Fresh green beans

Snap the ends off the beans and wash

Steam until very tender

Puree, adding water from steaming process, if necessary and you will have green beans fit for a prince. A 6 month old, hungry, drooling prince.

Do any of you make your own baby food? If so, I'd love some tips. I am going to go get a book so I will know what to do when he starts eating more tricky things (which is SOON) but I would love your input!

Six Months with a Mean Mommy.

Today, I took C-LO for his 6 month checkup. I took a few pictures of him before we left the house and while he still loved and trusted me.

Here he is, smiling and unsuspecting.

Here we are at the doctor's office...still thinking all is well. C weighed in at 17 lbs, 11 3/4 oz and stretched to 27 inches long. Our little baby is growing!

Then, some mean lady came in and gave him shots. And I let her. In fact, I assisted by holding his hands down. He was not a happy camper. See?

I finally calmed him down with a bottle but as you can see, he is still eyeing me with those suspicious eyes. I'm sorry, buddy. It's for your own good.

On a positive note, C seems to have forgiven me and has not been cranky or tired today after having his shots. Knock on wood...

A case of the...Wednesdays?

The way today started, I had to look at my calendar multiple times to reassure myself that it was not, in fact, Monday. First, my ill-behaved puppy woke me up multiple times by spastically jumping on our bed in this morning before my already earlier than normal alarm went off. Not a happy camper. Berry was lucky to escape with her life.

I had to be in court this morning and I needed to be there early to tie up some last minute details so that meant I had to get up and get going MUCH earlier than C-Money and I are used to getting going. I made it to the babysitter in time, however, to make it down to the courthouse at my desired arrival time. On the way, of course, my annoying gas light pinged on to notify me that I had reached dangerously low levels of gas. I swear, it is programmed to go off only at the MOST inconvenient times. Like when I am in a hurry. Or in a terrible neighborhood. Or with a screaming baby. Or when it is pouring rain. Come to think of it, I never really want to stop and get gas. It is a hassle. I need one of those electric cars. Who am I kidding? I am sure I would forget to plug it in and would be in even worse shape than I am when I have a pinging gas light while driving through a hailstorm in the ghetto with my screaming baby.

I went on to court (without getting gas, because I am a rebel like that) to get one of my clients divorced. I had not heard from his wife since around September, so imagine my surprise when she showed up today in court. Grr. I was annoyed as soon as she walked in the door. I knew she would be trouble. I was not wrong. I got through the questioning of my client and his witness and the judge was ready to grant the divorce. The wife never answered the divorce complaint that I had filed, so she technically had no right to voice her opinion today in court. That did not deter her from standing up and acting a fool, basically embarrassing herself, and more importantly, me. She probably wasn't embarrassed, now that I think about it. She should have been, but she wasn't. I, on the other hand wanted to crawl under the table. Or knock her out. Either way. She proceeded to complain to the Court about her husband being a liar and how she couldn't get anyone to help her and she didn't understand what was going on and it wasn't fair what was happening to her...you get the picture. Luckily, the judge was having none of her nonsense. Then, wife began to question my integrity in front of the judge and the other lawyers in the courtroom by LYING to the court and saying I never gave her notice of court hearings, etc. Funny, since she was standing there in court today. I guess she just guessed her court date. At that point, my desire to knock her out was a lot stronger than my desire to crawl under the table. What is wrong with people? By the way...she didn't get a raw deal AT ALL. Seriously. There was nothing for her to complain about. She was an ignorant fool, though. A loud, annoying, lying ignorant fool.

I was reminded, yet again, how much I love my job Need to win the lottery so that I can retire at the age of 30.

Sidenote on possible career opportunity: I saw that Frayser High School's pregnancy outbreak made the Today Show this morning. I thought about it on the way to Court this morning as I passed the exit for Frayser and decided that I should use my juvenile court experience to do one of those scared straight shows and talk to high school kids about the financial and other repercussions of teen pregnancy. Would they pay me to do that? I seriously think I could convince some of those kids to at least practice safe sex if I told them exactly what the next 18 years of their lives were going to look like. It ain't pretty, kids.

Delicioso!

Yesterday, I decided that I needed to get rid of some ground turkey that I had in the freezer for a while, so I opted for turkey taco salads. Yum. It wasn't totally "clean," but I was using up old groceries so I am going to say what I actually made and then ways I would make it in the future to "clean" it up.

Meal: Turkey Taco Salads with Mexican Rice

I started by browning the ground turkey and cooking the Mexican Rice. In the future, I'll probably use brown rice and just add spicy seasoning to it to give it that south of the border flavor while keeping with the clean theme.

After I browned the turkey, I added a package of taco seasoning. Again, in the future, I'll probably just use chili spice and whatever other seasonings to spice up the taco meat, but I already had a taco seasoning package.

Then, I added about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of salsa to the ground beef and let it simmer, covered for a few minutes until the salsa soaked into the meat.

I put down a big bunch of shredded lettuce and topped it with a spoonful of the rice, then a spoonful of the ground turkey, and finished it off with a little shredded cheese. YUM! It was really good and I think with the above changes, it would be a really great "clean meal."

With all that said, however, I could not help but think of my newfound information regarding the food industry when I was cooking the ground turkey. I would be lying if I said it didn't gross me out a little bit. I wonder if I will ever be able to eat meat again without thinking of the source of the meat and what might be in it. I still ate it, though, and I ate it again today for lunch.

I still really want to make some additional changes to the food we eat, including eating less meat and making sure the meat we do consume is locally grown/raised and not factory farm, ammonia washed, disgusting chemical-laden meat.

On that note...happy eating!

Snow Day!

Well, the weather men were right! We fell asleep to the snow falling and woke up to this!

My neighbors looked out their windows to see this idiot taking pictures of her house in her holey sweatpants...

We decided we needed to get bundled up and let the puppies play outside. C-Money was not excited about the layers of goofy-looking clothes we put on him.

The puppies loved playing fetch in the snow. Well, Buster plays fetch. Berry plays, grab the ball and run with it.

C Money's FIRST snow!! He wasn't sure what to think, but his BFFs, Buster and Berry said it was cool, so he got down and gave it a gander.

Daddy-O and C-Note having fun in the snow.

Billbowski did his best to try and take a family self portrait. This was attempt #3 and at least this time, all three of our heads are visible!

After the snow, we needed some soup to warm us up. Luckily, I made that delicious black bean soup yesterday. It hit the spot! Doesn't it look yummy?

One last tip: Don't eat yellow snow (read: don't eat any snow in our backyard now that the puppies have been out a few times!)

I hope you're all enjoying your snow day as much as we are!