Ugly, Delicious Stuffed Peppers

Being able to pull random, fresh ingredients out of your refrigerator and create a delish meal for yourself and others is the greatest thing about being in the kitchen. I have always been a little fretful while cooking, measuring out every little ingredient and worrying that I'm taking too long, stressing that whatever I make won't turn out...Or if it does turn out as expected, what if the person/people I'm cooking for hate it? Ugh, insanity certainly can take the joy out of the simplest things!

Since moving back home, I've been cooking incessantly in an attempt to mitigate the tension I feel for something so joyful and creative. I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by girlfriends who not only like my cooking, they will let me cook them multiple meals in a day and just hang out waiting patiently to be fed. (That sounds weird in writing, my friends are not drooling hyenas). I have fallen back in love with cooking anything and everything, and it feels so good! Especially with a glass of vino in my hand.

After hiking today, I remembered I had mini sweet peppers in my fridge that were begging to be stuffed. So I got home and made my new favorite recipe, which we shall call Cheesy Mini Peppers! These are not the prettiest meal/appetizer, but they are so darn good it doesn't matter once they hit your mouth. Here's the recipe for the adventurous:

If you're semi-fast at chopping, preheat your oven to 350°F, and pour yourself a glass of Pinot Grigio (cannot be responsible for missing fingertips and such).
You can cut the tops off your peppers, remove the seeds and pith, and stuff them as one; or cut them in half to add stuffing to. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil for easy cleanup, and lay your peppers out. Even better, if you have a mini muffin tin, you can ensure your whole peppers don't tip over!
Take two handfuls of fresh spinach (because that's how I measure things), and chiffonade (just roll the spinach and cut it into thin-ish strips). This should be about 1 cup.

Chop 1/4 of a small onion (any color) and 2-4 slices of cooked bacon (2 slices work just fine, but 4 would be divine).
Heat 1 Tbs. of EVOO into a skillet at medium heat and add onions, then minced garlic (about 1/2 Tbs), cook for about 3 minutes. Add spinach and bacon. Cook for a few more minutes until the spinach is fairly wilty, and add a little splash of Pinot Grigio if you're feeling frisky. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

While the spinach mixture is cooking, measure into a medium bowl 1/3 cup of cottage cheese, 1 tsp Italian seasoning, and nearly a cup of shredded cheese (I have an obscene amount of cheese in my home, so I used 1/2 Monterey Jack and 1/2 Mozzarella).

Add your spinach mixture to the cheese bowl and mix well.

Spoon your delicious spinach-cheese mixture into your peppers, and bake for about 10 minutes, until the cheese is bubbly.
Remove from oven, turn heat up to Broil, and sprinkle more shredded cheese on top of each pepper. Broil for about 3 minutes, until cheese is golden brown.
Let cool slightly and shove any runaway cheese back into those little pockets.
Eat, and try not to lose your mind!

On my last pepper, I actually considered cutting it into tiny little pieces so I could make it last forever,
like the last McDonald's french fry.

Here's to New Faves

I am terrible at making side dishes exciting. Usually, all my energy is spent on the main course, and by the time I think, "Hey, I might need a little somethin'-somethin'," it's late and I'm starving. So I'll forgo the side dish completely in favor of stuffing my face immediately. On this particular occasion, I was intent on making a thank-you dinner for my sister and brother-in-law, so I figured it was a meal that was side-dish appropriate. After some pretty intense Googling, I found this recipe from The Kitchenista Diaries: Chicken & Mango Fried Rice. Color me tickled, I was all in!

There were a couple things that thrilled me about this recipe: First, all the ingredients are crazy fresh, it was like there was a little rainbow of healthy on my cutting board. Second, this was my first time cooking with Coconut Oil, which I'm now completely addicted to.

I used Boil-In-Bag brown rice, which helped speed up the entire process immensely. While the rice was chilling, I started working on the Bulgogi main dish, with the help of some pretty classity Pinot Grigio which may or may not have come from a box. :)

I was amazed at how the Coconut Oil lent a subtle coconut flavor, and I omitted the chicken since we were having beef as the main dish. I half-expected to hate this recipe since I'm not a huge fan of coconut; but I could seriously eat this every single day. Plus, it was a hit with the fam. Amazing!

Korean Flashback

Can I just say, I love me some Korean food! My sister was looking for some creative menu ideas for her catering company, Foodies, and I remembered that I kind of knew how to make Bulgogi from my brief stint as a Korean man's bride. So we made it, and it was fabulous! Here's my pics, and I followed this recipe from mykoreankitchen.com.

Crazy Note Lady

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge proponent of therapy. I love the fact that I can pay someone to listen to my insanity (this is not a therapist=approved term), and they can't judge me (but that last piece is not true, according to my anti-therapy mother). I get to chatter away to this stranger about anything from my recent terrible salon experience to not wanting to have kids. And we concentrate on mindfulness, and I cry. A lot. That's how I know I've found a great therapist: How many times can I have a meltdown during our session? One is good, two is great, three or more is utterly fantastic! All this to say, I found an utterly fantastic therapist this weekend, and I plan on becoming a dangerous force of...something...in the near future. :)

One of the things that I love to do, which I learned from my virgin therapist experience years ago, is positive self-talk. I used to put little notes to myself all over my apartment and car where I would be forced to read them every day. It looks weird to outsiders, and it feels weird at first, but the funny thing is, you start to believe what you feed your mind every day. It's like everything else that you encounter on a daily basis: Odds are, if you feed yourself positivity, you'll become a more positive being. Just like eating healthy and working out instead of binge-drinking and eating fast food does wonders for your body, the things you allow yourself to ingest in terms of how people treat you and how you talk to yourself makes all the difference. It simply takes time. I heard somewhere (probably from a Billy Blanks workout video), that you didn't gain the weight overnight, so it's not going to come off overnight. Same goes for your brain. We are all so messed up, but it just takes time (and sometimes, sweat and tears) to make things right again. Everything is fixable!

My new, fabulous mind-trainer gave me a couple homework assignments...The first is to sit for five minutes each morning and just be. Let thoughts come and go, noticing how each thought makes me feel. The second is to stop "disclaiming". I tend to disclaim everything, as in, "I'm just in insurance," instead of owning the fact that I worked my ass off to become an Account Executive. Or, "This is so stupid, but..." instead of just telling a story and not worrying about what the other person thinks. And the third project I gave myself: Positive notes.

Currently, I have scribbled on my bathroom mirror five sentences (because I spend WAAAAY too much time in there, lol). It's embarrassing to know that anyone who comes into my apartment will see the things in plain sight that I feel the most self-conscious about; but those who judge me probably aren't worth having around, anyhow.

I also like to angrily stomp up The Incline until I can smile all huge again!

Meat in My Mouth

I'm a dirty carnivore. I love red meat so much, but everyone knows that for my heart's sake, switching it up every once in a while is necessary. Enter these most amazing chicken meatballs!

As always, I only loosely followed this recipe, and made sure to add extra bacon and shredded cheddar cheese to my mix. I rolled my balls into tiny ones for apps, large ones for sghetti, and placed on a foil-lined pan for baking (and easy cleanup).

These freeze well, so go ahead and make a bunch for lunches and lazy-dinner nights. I also discovered from my wonderfully talented sister that if you add chopped Roma tomatoes and avocado, along with a drizzle of aioli, you can transform these delicious chicken meatballs into a fancy meal! (Alas, I forgot to snap a pic of THAT before it was gobbled up!)Enjoy!

Seize the Day!

"Carpe Diem" is absolutely my favorite phrase. Taken from a poem in the Odes, this translates to "Seize the Day"; and it is the perfect expression to illustrate my life today. It took a long time to get here, and if I hadn't had such strong influences in my life over the past few years, I don't think I could have embraced this thought fully.

If you were to look into this Latin gem a little further, you'd find that in the poem, advice is being given to make the best of today to ensure a brighter tomorrow, because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Death is not something we enjoy thinking about: it's scary, there is an unknown even if you have the strongest of faith or no faith at all, you will someday be forced to give up everything and everyone you hold dear, and you have absolutely no say in the When.

The rest of the phrase that is usually omitted for the sake of simplicity (and the fact that most of us probably can't pronounce the words) is "quam minimum credula postero", which basically says that you can't trust that tomorrow will come, but you can live fully in case it does. If you live every day like it's your last; making positive impacts in the people around you, treating your body like a temple, and pursuing your goals and hobbies with fervor; things will fall into place eventually. The fact that life can end at any second is what makes it so precious, and so scary at the same time. Even if I do everything right, nothing is guaranteed. I could be charitable, loving, never take a risk, drive the speed limit, exercise and abandon carbs...and then not wake up from my sleep one morning. On the flip side, I could be a total asshole and everything might fall into my lap and I could live to be 100.

Every day is a gift to be cherished and also abused; an opportunity to make ourselves better, and the world we live in a better place. Long story short, I woke up at 4am, and I'm excited for what today will bring. Happy Friday!

Being Everything

Just a note: This gets a little ranty, and I don't care...Enjoy!

I am SO SICK of seeing all these articles about how this star-or-that lost their post-baby weight and "have their body back". Why do we as a society allow this lie to persist? Real women, living in the real world, with jobs and families and relationships; not to mention cooking, cleaning, raising your children and loving your S.O.; can't possibly live up to this standard.

It is just one of the many ways women are expected to be everything. Be successful, but not more so than your man. Be strong, but not bitchy. Be sensitive, but definitely don't cry (like, ever). Be happy and level-headed, cram some pills down your throat to keep an even keel. Be classy but also a freak. Be smart, but stay quiet. Let the boys be boys, and don't nag. Be independent, but not so much that you'll emasculate the men. Fight for your believes, but don't call yourself a Feminist. Smell dreamy, keep a smile on your face even when you're exhausted, exude love and patience and understanding, and put everyone else's needs ahead of your own. Be a caregiver first, even when your career is exploding, or all you want to do is take a GD nap. And the best, worst, expectation facing mothers everywhere: look the same post-pregnancy as you did pre-baby. Um, WTF?

There is this insane idea out there that because stars (who frankly, are paid to look good) can lose their baby weight crazy-fast, that regular women should be able to, as well. Google the term "celebrity baby weight loss", and there pops up article after article of celebrities who have lost 10 pounds in 10 days, 20 pounds in 3 weeks, 60 pounds in 5 months...What nutritionist in their right mind would advise losing more than 2 pounds per week as safe? That is 8 pounds per month, max. Even going to the grocery store is an assault on the self-esteem of real women. Literally every single magazine has on their cover some sort of blurb about losing weight. This has got to stop. Good for the celebrities who can quickly maintain their pre-baby bod so they can continue to book gigs and make money. But how about helping the rest of us out instead of making women feel like crap for having priorities other than our outside appearance?

I would lovelovelove to hear your stories and see your pictures of true beauty, post-baby. The only way we can combat this is to be the change we want to see.

XOXO,