Baked Spaghetti Squash with Beef and Veggies

This is the recipe I was telling y'all about yesterday. It is very easy, and both healthy and yummy which is always a good thing in my book.

Baked Spaghetti Squash with Beef & Veggies

Ingredients:

• 1 spaghetti squash, halved and seeded
• 1 pound lean ground beef/sirloin
• ½ cup diced green bell pepper
• ½ cup diced red bell pepper
• ¼ cup diced red onion
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 can Italian-style diced tomatoes, drained
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 ¼ cups shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Slice the spaghetti squash in half, and place "meat" side down into a 9 x 13 casserole dish. Fill the dish half full of water and place in the microwave for 10 minutes.
3. After 10 minutes, take a fork and rake it along the squash to remove all of the pulp, place in a bowl and set aside.
4. In a skillet over medium heat, cook the ground beef until evenly brown. Drain, and mix in the green pepper, red pepper, red onion, and garlic.
5. Continue to cook and stir until vegetables are tender.
6. Mix the shredded squash and tomatoes into the skillet, and season with oregano, basil, salt, and pepper.
7. Cook and stir until heated through.
8. Remove skillet from heat, and mix in 2 cups cheese until melted.
9. Transfer to the prepared casserole dish.
10. Bake 25 minutes in the preheated oven. Sprinkle with remaining cheese, and continue baking 5 minutes, until cheese is melted.

Makes 6 servings.

If you use the Weight Watchers shredded cheese (or something similiar in calorie/fat content), then each serving of this casserole is only 4 points!

Enjoy!

I've Been Lazy!

I have no reason for not posting this past week, other than sheer laziness. I had very important things to post about. And by very important I mean poorly lit, kind of fuzzy, pictures that I took with one hand while drinking a glass of wine with the other. Proceed with caution. Last weekend, Pops and Jackie came to visit. It was a very important trip because Pops wanted to go to Spec's. They don't have those around where they live. Such a shame! And Jackie wanted to go to Hancock Fabric, so we had a very important weekend planned. So, Saturday, we spent all day driving around Houston and shopping. We ate Kolache's for breakfast and then went to the big Spec's downtown, the woodworking store, Hooter's for lunch, Hobby Lobby, two tool stores, Ross, Hancock Fabric, Barnes & Noble, Starbucks and then Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Do you know how hard it is to be "good" on Weight Watchers with a day like that? We were completely worn out when we finally got home, so we weren't up long before we headed to bed. Sadly enough, Jackie and I were too tired to try what I got at Spec's:

Hallowine!

Its an apple wine with cinnamon and nutmeg.

I just loved the bottle - wouldn't that be cute for a Halloween party?

Sunday, Pops and Darren took down the old light fixture in the half bathroom and put up my new one while I made some lunch.

This is what the old one looked like.

This is the new one, and the new hole I have in the wall that Darren now gets to fix.

I asked Darren if he could rip out the existing counter and put in the new on that we bought. I bribed him with a tasty home cooked dinner and he agreed. So, as he started in the bathroom, I got started in the kitchen. First, I pre-heated my oven to 350. Ok, wait - first I poured myself a glass of warmed Hallowine (the bottle suggested that I drink it warm). I honestly wanted to warm the whole bottle but I thought that might be a little tacky, so I just heated up a glass. Then, I heated up the oven to 350! Then, I chopped up an onion, some celery, carrots, cut up some baby white potatoes and minced some garlic. I took out my trusty Le Creuset dutch oven and put it on the stove, added some olive oil, took out a beef pot roast, seasoned it well with salt, pepper and garlic powder and then seared it well on both sides over medium high heat.

Then, I took the roast out and layed it on a plate while I added a bit more olive oil to the pot, threw all the veggies in and cooked them until the onions were clear. Then, I pushed them around the sides and stuck my pot roast back in. I poured about 4 cups of beef broth over the roast, put the lid on and stuck it in the oven.

Then, I went to go help Darren. And by help, I mean, I stood behind him asking important questions like "what are you doing", "do you need help", "how did you learn how to do that", while drinking some more of that Hallowine because honestly - its just like spiked apple cider and what's not to like about that? Darren ran in to a few problems in the bathroom, so now, our bathroom looks like this:

The biggest problem that we encountered - the walls aren't square! How lovely is that? The base of the counter is attached to the wall, but the top isn't. The best thing that we can think to do is to rip that counter out and Darren will build a new one and put it in, then the new sink/counter and the new faucet. Hopefully, before we have guests for Thanksgiving. Since that didn't work out and I was out of questions for Darren, I went to check on the roast. I added a little red wine and let it cook a bit longer (about 2-3 hours total), and then we sat down to enjoy a nice dinner together. This is what it looked like all done:

The roast was so tender and juicy, it just completely fell apart. Needless to say, it was delicious!

Even after all of that good food and company, I lost a little less than a pound when I went to Weight Watchers this week, so I am down 12.4 total.

This past week was pretty unventful. I made a new recipe - I'll try to post that sometime this week, because its so easy and delicious - I think y'all will like it.

Hope all is well with all of you!

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie Cake

Sunday, Darren asked me to make him something sweet and since I had all of the ingredients handy, I decided to make this cookie cake I saw on the Pillsbury website. It is so easy and so delicious, you will have to try it out! I took pictures to show you how easy it is - don't judge me on my (lack of) photography skills.

Ok, you just by getting out your pizza pan/stone. I use the Pampered Chef medium round stone with handles. The more you use it - the more it gets seasoned (thats why its discolored). Anyhow, grab your pan and start with packaged (the big roll) of chocolate chip cookie dough, and start pressing cookie dough down to form one large round cookie.

The easiest way to do that, is just slice the dough and then place it around and press it down with clean fingers! Emphasis on the clean part!

Just keep on going until your cookie looks like this.

Bake it at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or so. Check on your cookie - some ovens take longer. You want it golden brown but not crisp. It will look like your cookie is raw inside - don't worry - you are not removing this cookie from the pan, so it will continue to cook.

Let it cool. Warning: When your husband realizes there is a giant cookie cooling in the kitchen, your cookie might turn out looking like this and your husband might tell you that he doesn't know how that happened.

No worries - you're going to trim around the cookie and make it a little neater.

If you are going to take it somewhere, you can carefully lift it with a cake lifter, and tranfer it to a platter now.

Then, you are going to break out the creamy peanut butter and your all-purpose spreader and start going to town!

It should look like this when you are done.

Then, throw a few peanuts on there. I used dry-roasted, lightly salted peanuts.

Then, throw on some Reese's Pieces.

Then, heat up some vanilla icing in the microwave (about 30 seconds), and drizzle over the top. You can do it sloppily like I did, or you can make it neat. You can do it in circles, across, etc.

Then, enjoy. It's delicious!

I cut it like a pie, to get Darren a piece and then quickly changed my mind and cut it into sqaures because with that peanut butter, all I wanted was a little piece.

I'm thinking about switching out the Reese's for mini M&M's (in Christmas colors) for Christmas. I think it will be a nice red and green treat for the kiddos!

Enjoy!

Thankful Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago, I entered a Christmas Ornament Swap for the first time. I am so excited by the way. Last week, our swap partners were announced and I got paired with the lovely Melissa from Melissa's Heart & Home (a beautiful one I might add). Anyhow, Melissa is celebrating her 1 year blog anniversary with a giveaway. She is so thankful for the love and support of all of her fellow bloggers that she has created a Thankful giveaway - that you can use in your home, for Thanksgiving. Wonderful how this is all working out, isn't it? She has some terrific things picked out for her giveaway, so go on over to Melissa's and show her some love and get entered into that giveaway. You'll be thankful you did!

Halloween - Recap

Friday at lunch, I ran to Kirkland's to look around and I stumbled across some pet costumes (they only had Jack-O-Lanterns) and some little felt bags for trick-or-treating. They already had them 50% off, so I decided to pick one of each up for Coco, instead of going to Wal-Mart or Petsmart to get something for her.

Isn't this adorable? It was normally $15, but I wound up getting it for $3 and the bag was normally $4 and I got it for $2, so with tax and everything - $5.95 for the whole kit and kaboodle!

I went to a Halloween Party at a friend's on Friday night while Darren was at work and then when he got off, and was able to sleep some, we got up and took Coco to the Howl-O-Ween Festival that Bridgeland was having. A dear friend of mine is the Recreation Director there, so we wanted to make sure we could stop by and support her.

Here is Coco, in her Jack-O-Lantern outfit!

Here is my dear friend Elizabeth, and her dog Kahlua.

And The Fountain Family!

We took Coco to Petsmart afterward so that she could get a treat because she was so good at the festival. We got her some treats, took her home and dropped her off and then Darren and I went and ate at the Texas Roadhouse and then ran over to Hobby Lobby. We made it back home about 8:30 and he quickly changed the porch light so trick-or-treaters would know we were in business. Since we got home so late, we only had about 10 kids come by and that was in a big group of like 8 and then 2 more kids. I hate that we didn't get any more than that. Next year - we will have to make sure we are home earlier. All in all, we had a Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween!

Hope you all have a Happy and Safe Halloween!

The Bragging Mommy - Tiny Prints Giveaway

The Bragging Mommy is hosting a Tiny Prints Giveaway and let me tell you - you want to join in. I promise! If you have never visited Tiny Prints, stop what you are doing and head over there. Well, if you have some time to spend there. They have the-most-adorable cards and stationary there! What a great resource for custom party invitations and holiday cards. You will love everything - I do! Anyhow - The Bragging Mommy is giving away a $50 Gift Card to Tiny Prints, and wouldn't that be nice - to be able to pick out, customize and order your Christmas cards, from your couch and all for FREE! Does it get any better than that?? Have fun browsing!