Less Meat Monday: Sweet Potato and Black Bean Tacos {with Chicken}

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

“Less Meat Monday” admittedly doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Meatless Monday“, but it’s a huge step for some members of this household (read: Andrew :)). Last week he acknowledged that he should probably be eating a little less meat and a little more fiber for his overall health, and he gave me the green light to try some new dinner recipes in which meat is not the star.

Naturally, I was thrilled—as Andrew puts it, I always have one foot firmly in the vegetarian camp. Now, we are not going vegetarian, but I am planning to make Mondays “Less Meat Mondays”, and try new recipes in which I can cut the amount of meat significantly with beans, lentils, or some other form of plant protein.

Here’s what was on the table last night:

Sweet Potato & Black Bean Tacos {with Chicken}

2 15 oz cans black beans, drained and rinsed
½ lb chicken, cooked and shredded*
2 medium sweet potatoes
½-1 c salsa
olive oil
chili powder
cumin
salt & pepper
mixed greens
lime
cilantro
goat cheese
corn tortillas

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Chop sweet potatoes into ½-inch cubes. Put in bowl, and toss with olive oil, chili powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. 2. Spread sweet potatoes on a pan, and place in oven for 30 minutes, stirring/flipping halfway through. 3. While the potatoes are cooking, combine beans, chicken, and salsa in a pot, and heat on low. 4. When potatoes are done and beans are hot, place in tortillas with greens, cilantro, lime juice, goat cheese, and/or whatever sounds good :).

(*I actually cooked the chicken in a skillet as soon as I put the potatoes in the oven; there’s plenty of time to do this and heat the beans, but if you have leftover chicken you want to use, this is a great way to do it!)

The tacos were a hit! Andrew said he did not miss the extra meat—typically we use 1- 1 1/2lb of meat for any given dinner, which will last us two nights, so only using 1/2lb of chicken was a significant drop for us. You can also leave out the chicken entirely, and I doubt you’d miss it.

Happy eating to all! 🙂

-Do you observe Meatless Monday?
-Any recommendations for high-protein, meatless (or less-meat) dinners that I could try in the coming weeks??

Vegetable Lentil Soup {with Bacon}

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

I don’t always cook with bacon, but when I do… it’s delicious. 😉 Yesterday we had about 1/2 lb of bacon that we needed to use (leftover from a Thanksgiving dish), and we’d picked up some green lentils at the grocery store this weekend, so I decided to create a new recipe. The result was fanstastic. I don’t want to oversell it, but this was a real winner for us.

Vegetable Lentil Soup {with Bacon}
1 1/2 c green lentils
4 carrots
3 celery ribs
4 Roma tomatoes
2 c spinach
2-3 garlic cloves
6 slices bacon*
6 c chicken broth
Salt, pepper, & red pepper to taste

(*I used a natural, nitrite-free bacon. When I sliced it, the last 1/2-1 inch was pure fat (as opposed to the other pieces that were half fat, half meat), and I couldn’t justify using it, so I tossed it out. This recipe is actually 6 slices of bacon minus 1/2-1 inch of fat from each slice. :))

1. Chop carrots, celery, tomatoes, and garlic (minced). Cut bacon into 1/2 inch pieces. 2. In a large Dutch oven or stock pot, cook bacon over medium-high heat until cooked through. 3. Add carrots, celery, and tomato, and saute for 3-4 minutes. 4. Add garlic (move other veggies and make room on the bottom of the pot so it can actually cook), and saute for about 1 minute. 5. Add chicken broth, lentils, and seasoning; bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer with lid tilted for 25-30 minutes (until lentils are soft). 6. In the last 5 minutes add spinach.

Again, at the risk of overselling it, this was a fist-pump-because-I’m-so-happy-I-made-something-so-tasty meal. The bacon just gives it so much good flavor! It worked well for us because there was enough meat that Andrew didn’t feel deprived, but a sufficiently small amount of meat that I wasn’t picking around anything in my bowl (which sometimes happens; chicken is very hit-or-miss for me). Most of the protein (13g per serving) came from the lentils, which I love.

When we bought the lentils, Andrew noticed the very high fiber content–15g per 1/4 c dry serving. After we’d tasted and determined how good this soup was, as we were ladeling it into bowls, I had to remind Andrew that eating multiple large servings might have some undesired effects. 😉 He appreciated the reminder and held himself back a bit.

If you don’t have a Stewsday meal planned for tonight, give this recipe a try, and let me know what you think!

How often do you cook with bacon?

Thanksgiving and the Beginning of Christmas

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

Hello, friends. I took a little blogging break over the last week and a half–not intentionally and not for any real reason. I simply didn’t feel like blogging. Anybody else ever have a period like that? I am back now, and here’s what we’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks:

Thanksgivings
Andrew and I spent the weekend before Thanksgiving with his mom’s side of the family in Northern Virginia. Andrew was in Heaven because, due to lots of food allergies in the family, everything on the table was gluten-free dairy-free (or had a GF DF equivalent), so he could eat anything and everything!

We made a Pin-spired vegetable turkey with the cousins:

And went for a tractor/wagon ride between dinner and dessert:

And because blogging was so far out of my mind, those are the only photos I took. It was so great to visit with family, eat good food, and relax!

We spent Thanksgiving day with my family at my mom’s house and, as is customary on Thanksgiving, ate too much. 🙂 I love my family, and it’s always so good to spend time with them and laugh–usually at something one of the nieces said.

For example, while we were all sitting around the table, sweet little Lauren (4) looked at me, then Andrew, and said, “Umm, you guys were supposed to get a baby when you got married.” 😀 I couldn’t tell if her tone was suggesting that we were cheated or that she was cheated (out of a cousin), but it was very funny. Thanks, kiddo. 😉

Once again, I took very few photos Here’s the sweet potato casserole that we made and a plate of the leftovers I had for lunch Friday:

turkeyday1

Yum 🙂 My absolute favorite Thanksgiving food is my mom’s broccoli casserole. So cheesy. So delicious.

Christmas Tree Farm
Yesterday Andrew and I ate brunch and went Christmas tree shopping with our good friends Amanda and Diron.

As it turns out, we were way too picky, and neither couple found a suitable tree, but we had an awesome time walking around, taking a hay ride, and drinking hot cider. 😀

It’s going to be tough to go back to work today after the long, relaxing weekend! Have a great Monday!

Question for WordPress users: A couple of weeks ago my computer decided to stop letting me use Google Chrome to write blog posts (in the visual mode), and I have since been confined to using Internet Explorer (which randomly deletes paragraphs, resizes photos, reformats the post, etc. It’s pretty awesome.) Has this happend to anyone else with Chrome? Is there any way I can fix it??

Thursday Thoughts: Denver-Bound

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

Some random thoughts from the week on this cold Thursday morning:

1. It’s currently 4:53 AM. Andrew and I are flying to Denver early today to visit his sister, Jenny! You can follow our adventures on Instagram: #storeytime. 😀

2. Last weekend the cold weather finally killed our pepper plants–they held out far longer than we expected. We harvested the peppers that were still growing, and this was our haul:

Isn’t that crazy?? We’ve already eaten some, given away a few, and stored the rest in the freezer for the winter. Heck. Yes.

3. Speaking of things that are at least a little bit granola, I had the strange opportunity to wear this to work one day this week:

The pants were my mom’s in the 60’s/70’s–aren’t they awesome? I sent my mom this picture and said, “What do you think: was I born in the wrong decade?” and she said, “Oh, I am sure of it!” 😀

4. We made this meal this week: jerk pork with mango salsa, garlic-sauteed green beans, and the most delicious oven-roasted potatoes. Yum, yum, yum.

5. This sandwich-hater has been attempting sandwiches this week, and I think I found one I can handle:

Dark chocolate peanut butter and banana on Ezekiel whole grain bread. I’m still not sure about the whole bread thing, but overall this sandwich is pretty tasty. 🙂

Well, those are my random 5 AMish thoughts for today. Have a great Thursday!

Fellow sandwich haters: are there any sandwiches that you actually do like?
Have you ever seen so many beautiful peppers in your life? 😉

Chicken, Kale, and Black Bean Soup {Stewsday}

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

Around midday Tuesday, snow flurries landed on my face.

Shortly after that, my Facebook news feed exploded with posts declaring that it was, in fact, snowing in Richmond in November. We Richmonders poke fun at ourselves for our level of freaking out at the first sight–or suggestion–of snow. For a single inch of snow, school is often cancelled, the grocery store shelves go bare, people forget how to drive faster than 10 mph… It’s hilarious. 😀 Nothing stuck to the ground this time, but it was still fun. 🙂

With strong gusts of wind and near freezing temperatures (okay, they weren’t that close to freezing… but low 40’s feels cold!), it was a gross day to be outside, but a perfect day for stew. Conveniently, it also happened to be Stewsday. 😀

Here’s what I threw together last night:

Chicken, Kale, and Black Bean Soup

1 lb chicken (cooked & shredded)
Diced tomatoes
Kale (a few large leaves torn into small pieces)
1 can black beans
2 c cooked brown rice
1 qt chicken broth
1 1/2 c water
1 1/2 tsp each: cumin, garlic powder, chili powder
salt, pepper, red pepper to taste

I first made a version of this soup after Thanksgiving last year with leftover turkey–if you have leftover poulty you’d like to use, this is a great way to use it. I did not last night, so I cooked the chicken in a skillet with some olive oil first, then started the rice (1 c dry) in the rice cooker. We have lots of bags of veggies in our freezer from our garden this summer, so I used a quart-sized bag of sliced tomatoes. I’m not sure what the canned equivalent would be–one 15 oz can, perhaps? Either way, they break down and blend in with the broth, so you aren’t eating huge chunks of tomatoes.

Put everything except the black beans and rice in a large pot (I used the same one in which I cooked the chicken), bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer. Add the black beans and rice (when it’s cooked), and let simmer as long as desired–the longer it all sits together, the better it will taste!

So hearty. So nutrition-packed. So delicious. Perfect for a blustery ~~winter~~ fall day.

-Did you celebrate Stewsday this week?
-Kale: do you eat it, and if so, what is your preferred method of consumption? (I don’t love the stuff raw, so putting it in soup works well for me!)

Spousal Miscommunication and The Resilient Fish Tacos

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

Have you ever had a meal in which the individual components tasted just okay, but the combined result tasted rather fantastic? Food synergy. We had such a meal last night–one that was almost disastrous thanks to a spousal miscommunication (spoiler alert: it was Andrew’s fault).

Fish tacos. Simple. Small pieces of fish, seasoned and baked + coleslaw + mango salsa. I put Andrew in charge of the fish because he’s good at seasoning food, and I hate working with raw meat; I started the mango salsa, which we typically make with mango, red bell pepper, cilantro, lime juice, and a little salt–just something to sweeten the tacos. We have a lot of tomatillos from our garden in bags in the freezer, which I thought would make a great addition to this salsa.

I mixed all the ingredients, ate a spoonful, and…

“This just does not taste great.”

“Really?

(Andrew takes a bite of the salsa and makes a funny face.)

“Yeah, that’s not good.”

“Right? I thought the tomatillos would taste so good in this.”

“That’s just not how tomatillos usually taste… Oh. Uh oh.”

“Uh oh, what?”

“Umm, I think you may have used unripe tomatoes.”

“Why are there unripe tomatoes in our freezer?”

“I didn’t want to waste them!”

That’s right–when we said goodbye to our tomato plants in September, Andrew couldn’t bear the thought of wasting the green tomatoes still on the branches, so he picked and froze them. Why? How would we use them? Friends, I have no idea. Unripe tomatoes and perfectly ripe tomatillos look dangerously similar, but taste very, very different.

Because I couldn’t bear the thought of wasting the mangos and red peppers we’d already put in the salsa (and because I have just a touch of OCD…) I picked out all of the little green tomato pieces, rinsed what was left in a colander, and added actual tomatillos.

<Sigh.>

The fish was a little bit dry, the salsa tasted okay, but I couldn’t get the memory of the original batch out of my head, and the coleslaw tasted like mayonnaise. But together? Together they tasted awesome. Beautiful food synergy, in which the end result was greater than the sum of the individual components. They even managed to survive a serious spousal miscommunication.

You go, fish tacos.

-Please tell me any hilarious miscommunications you’ve had with your significant other.
-Now that I know we have unripe tomatoes in my freezer, does anyone know how we can use them (if at all)?

Holiday Season Wellness Goals

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

Confession: I’ve been hitting the leftover Halloween candy pretty hard this week.

As we move into the holiday season, where the sweets become even more abundant and most of the vegetables are cooked in cream-of-something soup, I’ve decided to set a few goals to stay focused, healthy, and feeling well. Now, I’m a firm believer that wellness is the sum of the good stuff we do for ourselves rather than the absence of the bad stuff. Along the same lines, I also believe in not depriving yourself if you really want something! The following popped up on my Facebook news feed a couple nights ago, and I laughed and felt disgusted at the same time:

Really, Health.com? That’s the saddest little dessert I’ve ever seen. That’s a garnish for a dessert, in fact. There’s no way, if someone were craving pineapple upside-down cake, that that would satisfy the craving. I commented, “#notdessert”. 😀

But I digress.

Therefore, my wellness goals for the holiday season are cumulative and non deprivation-based. If you count yesterday (when I intended to write this post) and Christmas day, there are 50 days until Christmas!

That means that I am aiming for an average of 6 servings of produce, 30 minutes of exercise, and just one dessert daily (my dessert goal is to not exceed 5o servings.) The beauty of the cumulative goals is that they allow flexibility: Run for an hour one day? Take a rest day. Enjoy a few desserts on Thanksgiving? Forego a sweet somewhere else in the week. A few days of poor eating here and there won’t wreck a person; these goals will help me make sure a few days don’t turn into the whole holiday season. 🙂

After day one, these are my stats:
-Fruits & Veggies: 6
-Exercise: 1 hour
-Desserts: 1

Be good to yourselves, friends! And for the love of all things delicious, please don’t ever eat a pineapple garnish for dessert.

Do you have any wellness goals for the holiday season?
What would you add to my three categories?

The Halloween Post

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

The doorbell rang. Then the doorbell rang four more times in a row. As we hurried down the front hall with a bowl of candy, we saw the door slowly open and a young boy with Down Syndrome peek around the corner, grinning as he took in the sights. From outside his dad laughed and said, “No, you have to wait for them to open it!” It was adorable. 🙂

The other trick-or-treating highlight from last night was when Andrew opened the door, and a boy looked up at him and said, “Whoa, you’re tall. Like really tall.”

Halloween in the suburbs is great. 😀

While we didn’t dress up in costumes, we did celebrate the holiday in other festive ways:

Just in case there’s any confusion, Andrew carved the scary face, and I carved the owl. Ambitious? Maybe. Awesome? I think so.

I also perused Pinterest for some Halloween dinner ideas, knowing that while Andrew wouldn’t necessarily appreciate a themed dinner, he would humor me. Now, I thought I did well with what I made, until I looked back at the original ideas. Let’s just say, the website Pinterest Fail exists for a reason.

The inspiration:

The reality:

Not the most handsome mummy meatloaf I’ve ever seen, but he actually turned out closer to the original than these mashed potato ghosts:

The inspiration:

The reality:

Bahahaha… I can’t stop laughing at this. Oh man. Hey there, lumpy ghosts!

Andrew got pretty into the themed dinner by the time we were ready to eat; he was actually disappointed that I didn’t have anything cool planned for the broccoli, so he gave his ghosts hats:

He also doused them with ketchup/blood, but we didn’t get a decent photo of that.

For the meatloaf we found a basic recipe and used gluten-free bread and almond milk in place of the gluten/dairy ingredients. We made the mashed potatoes with Earth Balance buttery spread, almond milk, and Silk coffee creamer instead of butter and cream. Both dishes tasted great–the ingredient swaps were undetectable as far as I could tell!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Did you make any Halloween-themed food? Did it turn out as wonderfully as ours? 😉
Did you wear a costume??

Thai-Style Chicken Pumpkin Soup

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

True story: This morning I told Andrew I thought our refrigerator was broken because when I opened the door, I didn’t feel the usual rush of cool air. I quickly realized that the fridge is working fine, but the temperature in our house had dipped into the 50’s, so the difference in temperatures wasn’t that great. In related news, we turned on our heat this morning. I’m hoping to be able to remove either the blanket or fleece jacket I am wearing by the time I finish breakfast and this post. 😉

What goes hand-in-hand with the coolness of fall? Pumpkin everything, apparently. I like pumpkin-flavored things just fine, but I don’t get crazy about the stuff like many of you do. Pumpkin seems to be working its way into a lot of food items this season (Exhibit A), but I’d pick banana bread over pumpkin bread any day, and I’ve never had a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

However, as one who loves most things containing the word “soup”, I was intrigued when Andrew found a recipe for a Crock-Pot Thai-Style Chicken Pumpkin Soup.

The recipe came from the Slow Cooker Bible, and because I’m feeling a tad lazy, I’m including a picture of the recipe page rather than typing it out myself. 😉

In place of the heavy cream we used Silk coffee creamer (original, not flavored), and we left out the onion completely (Andrew put the green onions on his at the end). We also added sliced mushrooms because we had some on hand that needed to be used.

The soup was incredibly flavorful, and as is the case with most things pumpkin, I liked it, but I was not crazy about it. I think anyone who really enjoys pumpkin would love it though! It made for a warm, hearty meal over the last two cool nights (and there are still leftovers). If you are a pumpkin-lover, give it a try, and let me know what you think!

Well, you may be pleased to know that the thermostat in our house now reads 61 degrees; I have removed the blanket and am beginning to thaw. 😉

Stay warm, everyone!

Pumpkin-flavored items: Love them or hate them?
What’s the weirdest pumpkin-flavored food you’ve seen in stores or tried?

Autumn River Run + Crock-Pot Pho

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Catherine @ A Two Storey Home

Yesterday was one of those ridiculously beautiful autumn days, and I decided to skipped my morning run in favor of an afternoon run by the river near my office.

As you can see from the photos, it ended up being a fantastic decision. 😀 I love the soft trails with the crunch of the fallen leaves underfoot, the sights, the tranquility, and (near) solitude. I paid no attention to speed or distance, but rather just ran because it felt good. It was an awesome way to break up the work day.

<Sigh>

On a completely different subject, we made Vietnamese Pho in our Crock-Pot Sunday, and I am really excited about having the leftovers tonight for Stewsday! The food I desire most when it’s cold and I am lazy/tired/sick/(or not) is noodles and broth. Not chicken noodle soup, not vegetable noodle soup–noodles + broth. I love it. When Andrew suggested making a large batch of noodles and broth, I simply couldn’t say no. (Yeah, there’s some chicken and vegetables in there too, and I muscled them down for good measure. ;-))

The recipe was easy and probably didn’t actually require the Crock-Pot. We put 2 quarts of chicken broth + a pound(ish) of cooked, shredded chicken in the pot on high. After a few hours, when we were close to being ready to eat, we added a box of brown rice noodles, bean sprouts, a sliced jalepeno, sliced mushrooms, chopped basil, cilantro, and lime juice. As soon as the noodles are soft, the pho is ready. It was, pho real, a delicious batch of soup. 😉

Enjoy the lovely fall weather and all the delicious foods that go with it today!

Do you prefer running on trails or on the road?
Have you ever tried and/or made pho?

A Two Storey Home

Where Marriage and Healthy Living Meet

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