World... Meet Mr. Quesadilla *cues angel choir*

Ok, so that might be a little dramatic, but seriously this quesadilla needed it's own post.

First though, sorry for the long absence! It seems that once my children get a stomach virus, their little bodies hold on to it for over a week... but that is the ONLY thing they hold onto if ya get my drift. So, I thought I would pop on for a quick post in between catching up on more laundry than one house should ever go through in the history of ever. Ok, that was a little dramatic too, haha.

Onto the food! So I made up this recipe on late afternoon when I realized I hadn't eaten lunch, had a hankering for Mexican food and two kids napping AT THE SAME TIME. With this rare time on my hands, I decided to listen to my tummy and here is what I came up with. Any time I use chipotle peppers in adobo sauce for a recipe, I always freeze the left overs but it's hard to figure out what to do with them. So I started there. (FYI, a whirl in the food processor with some ketchup makes a great dip for sweat potato fries from my last post). I will try my best to estimate amounts, but I never really measure anything. Like I said, follow your tummy!

Black Bean Quesadilla with Guacomole and Chipotle Sauce

Ingredients:

1 wheat tortilla (like Smart & Delicious low carb ones for only 80 cals each!)
1 can low sodium black beans
1 can diced green chiles
1/2 cup frozen sweet corn
low sodium vegetable stock (about 1 cup)
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 small onion (white or yellow) diced
1 lime (cut in quarters)
cilantro chopped up (about a handful after chopped)
1 ripe tomato diced
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 avocado
salt & pepper
1 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (use to taste, but around 1-2 peppers and 1 Tbsp sauce)
1/4 cup light or fat free sour cream
1/4 cup fat free plain yogurt (use 1/2 c sour cream if you don't have this)
olive oil
olive oil cooking spray
shredded 2% low fat sharp cheddar


Directions:

Black Bean Filling-
In a small saucepan on medium heat, put in beans, green chiles (substitute some more chipotles if you want it spicier), corn and pour in vegetable stock until the mixture is just covered. Add a half a handful of diced onions, a squeeze of 1/4 lime, 1 clove of diced garlic, chili powder, cumin and salt & pepper to taste. Mash together with potato masher or wood spoon until the consistency of a lumpy paste. Let simmer for a few minutes. Remove from heat and let thicken up.

Guacamole-
Add a handful of onion, 1 clove diced garlic, diced tomato, chopped cilantro and juice of 1/2 the lime into a bowl and mix together. Half the avacado, throw out core, and hold one half in palm. Score a criss-cross pattern with a sharp knife, turn upside down over the bowl and push the skin inside-out to remove all the cut chunks. Repeat with second half. With a fork, mash the avacodo together with the salsa mixture, adding salt & pepper to taste.

Chipotle Sauce-
In a small food processor, blend about 1 or 2 chipotle peppers with about a TPSP of adobo sauce until mixed well. Squeeze in a quarter of a lime's juice, add sour cream, yogurt and a little chopped cilantro. Add salt to taste and blend well. Put this mixture in a small plastic baggie. You will cut a small hole on one corner to add to top of quesadilla.

Assembly-

Heat a large pan, grill pan or panini maker on medium heat.
Take the tortilla and spread about 1/3 bean mixture on half of it. Add a little cheese on top of that and close.
Either brush outsides of tortilla with olive oil or use a olive oil spray.
Cook quesadilla in pan or grill on both sides until golden brown. Add EVOO to pan if neccessary, or spray.
Remove, put on plate, let cool. Slice in 1/3rds.
Top with Guacamole, and drizzle Chipotle sauce over each slice.
DEVOUR! YAY :D

*you can either make an extra and freeze it for later, or just freeze extra ingredients for easy assembly later.

This is a great dish for meat eaters or vegetarians (in my opinion anyway). You can play with the ingredients to your own taste. Sometimes us mom's have to take a little extra time to treat ourselves! This might take longer than a quick slice of the kids' pizza, but it will be loads more satisfying PLUS good for you. I'm still figuring out how to upload the menu plan I made but stay tuned for that soon. Happy cooking! <3

Step away from the sweatpants, and no one gets hurt.

First of all, welcome all one of you (Hi Mom)! So, I'm Courtney, I have 2 kidlets (Jackson is 3, Eliza is 1) and I have been married to my husband Kurt for 5 years now. This may be one of eleventybillion blogs about moms and fitness out there, but let me break it down to you why I'm doing this.

I'm a stay-at-home mom who gained a ginormous 50+ lbs in my first pregnancy, hated myself for 2 years while losing about 30 of it, got pregnant again, stayed super healthy to a point of never giving into cravings and exercising all the time... still gained 43 lbs. That felt like the ultimate failure to me. Here I am trying to stay healthy, doing everything right and I still gained a lot on a frame I wasn't happy with in the first place. Neither one of my children took to nursing, and I wanted to punch every person in the face that said "You should really breastfeed. It burns like 500 cals a day". People can make light of "baby weight" saying you'll lose it eventually, but at a certain point you find yourself with kids who are far from newborns and you still have the weight. This can seriously screw with your psyche, adding guilt about even thinking about yourself because we think we should focus all our energy on these new tiny people. Add sleep deprivation, stress of a completely different life, blah blah, we've all been there.

And there I was, not knowing what to do, or where to start. I always thought I was a fairly healthy eater and went to the gym semi-regularly before kids. But I had never been in a size 16 body, and I felt like it wasn't really mine. I didn't want to look in the mirrors, avoiding them except for the 5-10 mins I would take on my makeup and hair a day. I stopped taking any time on myself, even if I did have a spare few minutes during overlapping naps. I lived in my 2 to 3 pairs of sweatpants and baggy shirts, not wanting to buy clothes unless there was an occasion I HAD to attend that did not include cotton lounge wear. We're talking someone had to die or get married occasion. Every time I thought about all this, I'd be racked with guilt for feeling sorry for myself when I was "suppose" to be worrying about my children and their lives. So stuck in this vicious cycle, dangerously close to some serious depression, I had to do SOMETHING.

So I did. And that is what I will be writing about for the most part. I went from a size 16 at my heaviest, to a 8 where I am now. I've lost probably 55 lbs total in this yo-yo coaster so far. It's still a journey for me, but I wanted to write it down for myself and hopefully for others to be inspired. I will tell you my own stories, share exercises that work into the mom at home lifestyle, give menu ideas and recipes I've found or created, but most of all hope to get you all involved. In this day and age, there seems to be no community foundation for encouragement and support. Everyone keeps to themselves and gone are the days of the neighborhood mentality. Sometimes it takes a village, and if you can't physically have that, I hope to facilitate that here. So I hope you come back and I look forward to chatting! I have to warn you though... I'm a smartass and have a little bit of a mouth, so I should just apologize ahead of time ;).

Before (MY EYES! OH GOD MY EYES!)


After (In Progress)