1. Where the heck did August go?? Tomorrow is September 1st. How’d that happen?!
2. Oh man, I really hope the Sneaky Snake Shelly goes home on Big Brother tomorrow night!
3. My Keurig order of coffee finally arrived this afternoon. Tomorrow morning will be full of bliss.
4. I was about ready to toot my own horn for having ZERO coffee today. Then I remember that I had 2 Sugar Free Red Bull’s today instead.
5. My DVR box is crapping out on me. My remote (yes, I changed the batteries!) and the guide menu are all funky. The tech support guy told me that I needed to swap it out for a new DVR box. But that means I’ll have to reset/re-find the recording for all the series that I watch!!! What if I forget to record The Good Wife or Dexter when they start up again???
6. If these are the “problems” I’m faced with, then I lead a pretty good life. 
Breakfast: I haven’t had one of my beloved egg sandwiches in awhile! Egg on a 100 calories sandwich thin with some cheddar cheese, peach, and hot tea.
Lunch: leftover tuna fettuccine. I knew that it would be dry after microwaving the leftover. So, I added a 35 calories Laughing Cow French onion wedge, creamy goodness! I added sprouts on top for some crunch. Odd, I know. But I love sprouts!
Snack: an undocumented Kashi granola bar with a smear of PB…and those 2 Redbulls I mentioned.
Dinner: A mishmash bowl of things! I cooked up a chicken sausage link. (I was tempted heat up 3 sausages links and devour them and call it dinner. This is where blogging WIAW’s saves me.) So, instead I just cut up one sausage link and served it over a bed of brown rice, mixed veggies, some chickpeas, and diced tomatoes.
It’s several hours later and I’m still satisfied from dinner. I’m usually having mental battles with myself come 9 pm over whether I “need” a snack, so this dinner was a good decision!
Have a lovely evening!! I’m hoping the 2 afternoon Red Bull’s don’t keep me up tonight!!
The last 1-2 years that I lived in Charlotte are filled with memories. Memories of hanging out with 2 of my favorite people in the world….my BFF’s Chris & Sarah.
Aren’t we cute?
My favorite times with Chris & Sarah were Sundays. Chris & I would head over to Sarah’s around 10 am. Sarah would make us breakfast while I’d read magazines and Chris would surf the Internet. We would plan the next concert we would go see together. We’d rehash Saturday night and whether we drank too much. We’d see if there was a movie we wanted to see that afternoon. We’d make our way through watching episodes of Arrested Development. We’d watch in awe of how much Sarah’s cat, Gary, was in LOVE with Chris. We’d make snarky comments about anything and everything.
Sundays also often meant Sarah would make us peach cobbler in the afternoon.
This Sunday, Sarah, Chris and I will be together again for a day up in Lawrence for a charity event. I.can’t.wait. We haven’t been together in about a year and a half. Although there won’t be peach cobbler, it will feel like home on Sunday.
Peach Cobbler
Recipe from Food.com (this is the one Sarah uses!)
Serves 12. 277 calories per serving.
Ingredients:
For the batter:
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup room temperature milk (I used skim milk.)
1 room temperature egg
For the filling:
1 (28 ounce) can sliced peaches, drained
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon (I used a HEAPING teaspoon. I heart cinnamon.)
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Instructions:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
In a 9×13 inch baking dish, melt your butter. Set baking dish aside.
In a bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in your milk and egg. Pour your batter mixture in your baking dish over the melted butter. Spread evenly with a spatula.
In a separate bowl, combine your peaches, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Spread the filling over the batter. Do NOT stir the filling into the batter.
Bake for 35-45 minutes under golden brown. Through the magic of science, the batter will rise over the top of the peach filling as it bakes!
Serve warm with vanilla bean ice cream. Try to not to dig in so fast that you burn your mouth on hot peach filling! I speak from experience. 
Mondays are not often oh happy days. They’re just…Mondays. Today was a pretty darn good day though.
I did a little shopping before heading home to make dinner.
Dinner was:
fettuccine
1 can Healthy Request cream of mushroom soup
2 small cans low-sodium tuna, packed in water
salt & pepper to season
scallions for garnish
Serves 4. 290 calories per serving.
It was tasty!!
After dinner, Haley and I went for a walk and to get the mail.
What’s this???
Yes! It’s the giveaway I won on Julie’s Eats and Treats. It’s the first blog giveaway that I’ve ever won.
I received 2 Sunflower potholders, tongs, a berry colander, and a peeler. I was just looking for my peeler last week and couldn’t find it either. Score!
This berry colander is super cute too. Thanks again, Julie!!!
I also got a book in the mail today that I ordered.
I’ve heard so many wonderful things about Plate to Pixel. It’s no secret that I need HELP (and some inspiration) with my photography. And since I can’t hire Helene to be my personal food photographer, her book is the next best thing.
Finally, The Sporkful is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to on iTunes. They gave me a shout out on their blog today too. I’m pretty sure that I scared Haley when I started squealing tonight when I read it.
I must make some iced coffee to celebrate with tomorrow.
In lieu of baking, I can post about what I’ve been watching. That’s exciting, right?
Don’t worry. I have Snickers Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies in the oven right now.
Do you have Netflix? Recently, you had to decide whether to stick with mailed DVD’s and Live Streaming, but for a higher monthly fee. I decided to forgo the DVD’s and just go with the streaming option. This choice seemed the best since my DVD player stinks and it’s hit or miss whether a newer DVD works in it anyway. But I’m finding that popular newer DVD’s aren’t always on the streaming option. Boooooooooooo on that!!! Is Limitless with Bradley Cooper any good?? I wouldn’t know since it’s not on the Netflix Watch Instantly. Argh.
I did enjoy these recently though.
The Young Victoria was so beautiful. I thought it was just lovely. And I don’t usually like period time pieces.
Have you seen (or even heard of) Peacock??? I don’t remember why I added it to my queue, but I’m so glad I did. This movie went straight to DVD, not sure why…..I thought it was AWESOME!! Cillian Murphy is fantastic in it. Two thumbs up. I don’t want to give anything away, just watch it.
A Matter of Taste is a documentary about Chef Paul Liebrandt. It was an interesting look about a chef in NYC who kept trying to find the right fit for his style in different restaurants. Critics and restaurant owners seemed to love or hate him. The documentary followed him through several years until he finally lands at Corton.
And finally, I watched Hot Coffee. This documentary was so interesting! I really had no idea what it was going to be about. I actually thought it was going to be a documentary about frivolous lawsuits. Isn’t that we always heard about the lady who spilled McDonald’s coffee sued?? Oh no…you think you know what happened, but you don’t!! Watch and decide for yourself.
So, as I mentioned on my Facebook, I haven’t felt like baking. Oops. I will rectify that soon. I wish that Wichita had online grocery shopping. I loved living in Charlotte and grocery shopping online at 1 am and then going to pick it up the next day. So easy!
In the meantime, here’s some randomness for you.
My favorite meal of late consists of heating up some kidney beans, chicken, and diced tomatoes. Serve that over a bed of spinach leaves and top with blue tortilla chips. Delicious!
I’m really loving Food Network Magazine. Just started getting it.
Every time I see the Old Navy “Only in my jeans” commercial, I get the Debbie Song song stuck in my head!
I’m going to Austin over Columbus Day weekend in October to visit family. I’ve been reading about some of the food trucks and different parts of town. I.can’t.wait!! A quirky music and food city…sign me up.
Were you Team Debbie Gibson or Team Tiffany?? I was Team Debbie Gibson all the way. Oh excuse me….she’s Deborah now. Geez.
I’m out of coffee. How did this happen? I only have Orange White Tea. My Keurig order won’t come until early next week.
Can I go the whole weekend without coffee???
Heck no, I can’t! Starbucks to the rescue…with some perfect oatmeal for extra measure.
I paid for the lady’s coffee that was behind me in line too. It’s nice to put out some good karma every now and then.
Haley always sleeps completely submerged under the covers. I sometimes come in to uncover her head. She then gives me a look that she’s disgusted at me for disturbing her. Seriously…how does she BREATHE with her head under the covers??
Do you ever pay for a stranger’s coffee at Starbucks?
If you have a dog, does your dog have strange sleeping habits too?
Have a lovely Saturday morning!!
I need help. I can’t stop playing Zuma Blitz on Facebook. Stupid game. I hadn’t played it for quite awhile since most of my online time is spent reading blogs now. But I clicked on the devil again recently and I got sucked back into the time waster. You’d think that since the game is only 1 minute long that you wouldn’t spend much time playing. But NO that’s how they get you. You tell yourself, just one more minute, just one more game….then an hour later you’re still playing! Now usually, you only have about 10 “lives” before you run out and have to wait for more. But this weekend, they offered a free 24-life. Twenty-fours free to play without stopping! Ha. I’m pretty sure I wasted about 3 hours over the course of the weekend playing. My hope is that I’m so sick of the game now that I won’t want to look at it for a long time!
Did I seriously just write a whole honking paragraph about a Facebook game?
I just blogged about making pizza yesterday.
And now I’m blogging about going out for pizza.
Hey, I heart pizza.
Knolla’s Pizza has been around Wichita for a long time. I never lived close to one of the locations until this last time I moved back to town. I’d recently been talking to a guy that used to work there. He explained that the restaurant has really changed over the last few years as one of the owners got divorced and the ex-wife got a big chunk of the restaurant. Said ex-wife married into the family and no one else in the family liked her. Supposedly she fired all of the family members on her ex’s side that worked there. DRAMA. At the time, I thought the guy was just exaggerating. But if you look under the History part of the restaurant’s website, it certainly alludes to something….
I love a juicy story.
Knolla’s (East Central) has a small dining area. It’s easier just to get your order to go. But then you miss out on the people watching. I most recently went there on a weeknight. There were families. There were kids playing video games. There were co-workers still dressed up from work getting together. There were middle aged men wearing softball shorts and t-shirts. There was an old lady wearing her housecoat, yeah. Good people watching!
On to the food….you can get thin New York Style crust or Deep Deep Chicago style. I opted for thin.
One slice of The Works: Italian and pork sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, and black olives
I took off the olives as you can tell. I do not like olives, at all, ick blah. And I’ve decided that I don’t like Italian sausage either. Something in the seasoning just turns me off. I feel like I have major dragon breath after eating Italian sausage.
One slice of the Cheeseburger: beef, onions, diced pickles, mustard and cheddar cheese
THIS CHEESEBURGER PIZZA WAS SO GOOD!!!!!! I don’t even like pickles on my real cheeseburgers. But somehow this pizza just works. Seriously, so yum!!!!!!! I definitely recommend the cheeseburger pizza at Knolla’s.
I only tried the cheeseburger pizza because Kristen had recently commented on seeing pickles on pizza on a menu recently. Now I can say, yes Kristen it IS good. Try it!
After dinner, I had to get rid of my Italian sausage breath though. I could have come home and brushed my teeth. Or I could get ice cream. Decisions, decisions.
I opted for a small Strawberry Blonde, which is strawberry ice cream, graham crackers, caramel, strawberries, and whipped cream. YUM! I live within walking distance of a Cold Stone and this was the 1st time I’d been in the 2+ years of living here. (This is a good fact, people!)
After reading through this post, I probably should hit the gym!!
I wish that I could tell you about some really awesome adventure that I went on this weekend.
Oh wait, back up….let’s talk about my use of the word “awesome”. Last weekend, my friend, Amy, and I were at a random bar on Saturday night after dinner having a drink. An obnoxious guy came up and asked how we were doing. I said Awesome! He proceeded to tell me how much he hated the word “awesome” and how “trite” and overused the word is.
Okayyyyyyyyyyy, see ya buddy.
He proceeded to come back around 30 minutes later to offer to buy us shots.
No no, sir. Shots are too trite for me, but thanks.
You know what’s ever too trite for me? PIZZA!!
Peach and Gorgonzola Chicken Pizza
Recipe from Cooking Light, May 2011
Ingredients:
10 ounce pre-baked thin pizza crust
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat mozzarella cheese, divided
1 cup shredded cooked chicken breast (or rotisserie chicken breast, shredded)
1/3 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
1 unpeeled thinly sliced peach
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400.
Place your pizza crust on pizza stone or cookie sheet sprayed with nonstick spray. Brush olive oil over pizza crust evenly. Top the crust with half of your mozzarella cheese, chicken, Gorgonzola cheese, and slices of peach. Top with the remaining half of your mozzarella cheese.
Bake for 12 minutes or until the crust browns.
Yields 4 servings, Calories: 384 per serving
I also enjoyed the toppings the next day sans crust. For a variation, I scraped the topping off the crust and heated them. Then I served the cheese/chicken/peaches over a bed for spinach for a nice salad. It was…awesome.
I did order the jewelry stand from Urban Outfitters. I’m proud to say that’s the ONLY thing I ordered from Urban Outfitters though.
I wish that it was taller, but it’s a good size to keep the pieces that you tend to wear regularly. I’ve seen that some people keep their jewelry stand’s in the bathroom. NO WAY, JOSE!! I don’t want to get hairspray and make-up and gunk all over my jewelry. Bleck.
Book Review
The Jewel Box by Anna Davis
“I’m not a Good Girl. This is patently clear to all regular readers of this column. I stay out late. I like the company of men. I’m vain. I wear too much makeup. I’m economical with the truth when it suits me. I never refuse a cocktail…”
The Jewel Box is set in London in the roaring 1920′s. It follows Grace Rutherford who writes a gossip/girl on the town column under the pen name of Diamond Sharp. Grace’s life and her alter-ego’s life collide when she falls for a man she’s slated to interview for her newspaper.
I wasn’t drawn into the Diamond Sharp portions. I was a lot more interested in the real Grace. This book had real potential. There ends up being a really good back story about Grace and her sister and two boys they grew up with. I wish the author had just wrote that story!!! These chapters were the ones that saved the book for me.
Perhaps Anna Davis should write a prequel to The Jewel Box. I would read that book!!!!!!! I can’t in good faith recommend The Jewel Box though.
The Jewel Box: 2.5 stars out of 5 stars
About a month ago, I was having dinner with my family. I was talking to my wonderful sister-in-law, Jennifer. We were talking about a healthy option to order for dinner at the restaurant. We talked about exercising. We talked about using MyFitnessPal app to keep on track. (Which it’s been a huge FAIL for me on that one.)
So, after talking about dieting…..we talked about candy bars!
It’s completely logical.
The candy bar conversation eventually came around to Butterfinger. I shared with her that when I’m finished eating a Butterfinger, I clamp my teeth closed tightly for about 10 seconds. I told her that I get a weird kick out of the Butterfinger flaky center sticking to my teeth and I like un-sticking my clenched teeth. (I’m a dentist’s dream.)
I expected my sister-in-law to give me a “You’re crazy!” look. But instead, she leaned in and said, I DO THAT TOO!!
It’s fate that we’re related.
Frozen Butterfinger Pie
Recipe from Cooking Light March ’99
Ingredients:
40 chocolate graham cracker (10 full sheets of graham crackers)
1 & 1/2 tbl butter, melted
1 large egg white
4 cups fat-fee vanilla frozen yogurt
3 tbl light corn syrup
3 tbl reduced fat creamy peanut butter
1 tbl skim milk
1 Butterfinger, chopped (or you can use several fun-sized Butterfinger)
Calories per serving: 230
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9 inch pie plate with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.
Place graham crackers into your food processor. Pulse graham crackers until crumbly. Add your melted butter and egg white into the food processor. Pulse until moist. Press your graham cracker crumb mixture into your pie plate. Bake for 8 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Then place the pie plate in the freezer for 15 minutes.
While your crust is in the freezer, remove the fat-free frozen yogurt from the freezer. Let it stand at room temperature for 15 minutes to soften. Spoon half of the frozen yogurt onto your graham crust and spread.
In a small bowl, combine the corn syrup, peanut butter, and skim milk. Whisk until smooth. Put half of the peanut butter mixture on top of the frozen yogurt. Lightly use your whisk to swirl it around.
Sprinkle half of the chopped Butterfinger on top of the peanut butter mixture.
Repeat the layers with the 2nd half of your frozen yogurt, peanut butter mixture, and chopped Butterfinger.
Cover your ice cream pie with plastic wrap. Freeze for 3 hours to firm up before serving.
Does anyone else do the Butterfinger eating/teeth clenching?????
