Ketchup, Peanut Butter and Corn

This week has been tough. With an impending foreclosure, I find that it is getting tougher and tougher to make it through each day. The wonderful thing is that I have a wonderful fiance who brings me up when I get down. Friday we decided to splurge and go to CornDawgs, a cute corn maze and pumpkin patch. That should let you know how bad off we are. We consider spending $26 a splurge. The idea of going was more to save our sanity, rather than just for shits and giggles. We got to spend some much needed time with each other without our minds totally focused on the mortgage or the mound of other bills.

We were lost in the corn maze, so I decided it was the perfect time for a picture.

Saturday I decided to make Chilaquiles Casserole. At only 243 calories per serving, this dish is a wonderful mexican inspired meal. It is wonderfully healthy too. It has zucchini, corn, tomatoes, onions, black beans and corn tortillas. My favorite part is that the zucchini is worked in there and you would never even be able to tell. So, all you do is prepare the veggies and saute the onions until soft. Then throw everything in the pan until it is heated through.

After that, layer it as if it were a lasagna. Spray a casserole pan with nonstick spray, put the tortillas down, layer with vegetable mix, then enchilada sauce and finally cheese. Repeat and cover with foil.

Bake at 400 degrees fahrenheit for 15 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes. I like to throw it in the broiler for a couple of minutes to brown the cheese. And voila!!

This dish is the kind of dish that gets better with age. After you layer it, you can pop it in the fridge overnight and have a quick meal ready to go. You will notice that the first time you eat this will taste completely different than when you eat the left overs. Since it is just me and my fiance, this lasts us days and it just gets better and better. Also, it is not super spicy so those of you who are sensitive to heat will enjoy this mexican inspired dish without the repercussions of a spicy meal. To those of you who are carnivores, this dish would work wonderfully with ground beef or ground turkey. To add, just brown the meat while you are cooking the onions.

Sunday I got up and decided to make some whole wheat pancakes. I had originally promised them to my fiance for Saturday's breakfast, but that turned into the Chilaquiles Casserole for lunch since it was starting to get late. So, I made the pancakes on Sunday. When I first started looking for a recipe, I was not looking for anything in particular. Then I found one that included fat free yogurt and since I had a bunch left over from last week's healthy cornbread I decided to use it. The recipe orignally calls for fat free vanilla yogurt, but all I had was plain, so I just added a little extra vanilla. The other thing I liked about this recipe was that it included lemon juice. A while ago, I read somewhere that adding some lemon juice to pancakes makes them extra savory so I was delighted to see it included in this whole wheat yogurt pancake recipe.

Mix the ingredients as directed.

Pour into lightly greased pan by 1/4 cupfulls.

Okay, to some of you this might look completely revolting, but I like ketchup on my eggs and peanut butter on my pancakes. Call me crazy.

I would say the taste of these pancakes *with the addition of peanut butter and syrup* was excellent. They were very moist and, to me, somewhat resembled the texture of oatmeal. They obviously were not mush, but they were moist and the whole wheat flour made the inside a little chunky. I did try a bite of one without anything on it and I was not impressed nor enthused by the taste. Again, they were very moist, but as far as actual taste was concerned, no good in my book.

Sunday evening we went to Alex's parent's house. It is so funny how even on weekends we do not plan to go out there, we somehow still end up there on Sundays. Alex's mom made baked ziti and she even took the time to make me my own little vegetarian baked ziti. She is the best future mother-in-law a girl could ever ask for. I am writing about this because it kind of led into a little hiccup in my efforts to abolish my emothional eating habits. Although I have failed pretty miserably the last couple of days, I still need to be honest with myself. Yesterday and today were pretty bad as far as eating when I am full. But, that is quickly becoming yesterday and I can start new whenever I want. It isn't what I do when I fail, it is how I handle that failure and what I do afterwards. Ta-ta for now.