QC&H: Veggie Chips

Today, I saw on pinterest to make chips out of veggies like carrots and cucumbers. Well, I had produce that was quickly going bad. I had to do something with them. I love salty snacks such as chips and other snacks like that. So What the hay. Why not give it a try.

1. I already had cucumbers cut up in a dish from earlier this week. I laid them out on a cookie sheet and brushed on a little bit of vegetable oil on both sides. I then put them in the oven for 10 minutes at 350. Then 5 minutes on broil. 
2. I then took them out of the oven and flipped them over. I sprinkled garlic salt over them and put them back into the oven for 15 minutes on 350 degrees. 
3. When I pulled them out of the oven I flipped them over and let them cool. I think they taste really good. I hope they dry out more and they become more crunchy. 

I followed the same steps with the carrots. Instead of using the brush with the carrots, I threw them in a bowl with oil and garlic salt. Then put them on a cookie sheet and bake the same as the cucumbers. 

Don’t they look good! (:

This is a great alternative to snacking on chips and other fatty foods. I love these pinterest meals and snacks. They make eating healthy easier and some of them are kind of fun to see how they will turn out. I like eating some of them and most of them turn out pretty good.

And! for an even better plus, Sean likes the carrots a lot. “if we kept this stuff around, I would be set.” Welp, Sean said it best.

Also!

A bag of carrots cost.. 1.66 at walmart.
A Cucumber costs … .78!

So you can’t go wrong because it is so much cheaper than a bag of chips!

QC&H #1: Hamburger Casserole

   Okay, so weekends are always a little crazy, but this one has definitely been up there with the craziest! Last night Sean and I got home and we were STARVING! We had been at work all day and went to his brother’s gonna be house. (Long story) Anyway. I was helping Josh fix and clean up until around 8 and Sean was easily there until almost 9. Well when I got home I was definitely not in the mood to cook, and knowing that drill is two weeks away and I need to start watching weight to get to were I needed to be, I was not set out on eating out again.
       I went into our kitchen and tried to come up with something. I decided to make the low carb version of our Hamburger Casserole that Sean and I have made a couple times. We try to rotate our recipes pretty frequently and we are always looking for more, but this is a go to recipe when we are out of ideas.

     It’s pretty good and it was about 220 calories per serving. I ate an apple and an orange with it. so my supper calories were right at about 300 last night (Which is typically what a meal should be and not a whole lot more.

      Sorry, I was so tired last night that I forgot to take pictures of each step. I thought I had taken a lot more pictures than I did until I went to upload them and realized I had taken the uploaded one and one of a tomato. I failed on that. Sorry!!
Here is the greatness:

Ingredients:
1 lb of hamburger
1 whole pickle (I think I only used 3/4)
1 whole tomato
Diced onion
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tbsp mustard
6 slices of cheese

First brown the hamburger. Drain. 

While you are doing this you should dice up the tomato, pickle, and onion into small bits. There is about the sizes I used, but that is up to the cook.

When the hamburger is browned add the pickle, tomato and onion to the hamburger and let it mix together in the pan. I usually stir it around for about 5 minutes..

Then I add the mixture into a casserole dish. I add the ketchup and mustard into the dish and stir it well, trying to evenly coat it the hamburger. (Last night was the first time I did it this way and it turned our really good)

Then smooth it out and add the cheese slices to the top of it. Bake it at 350 degrees for 5 minutes to melt the cheese. 

Simple meal in about 20 minutes. 

You can also add crescent rolls to the top of the casserole and make it even more like a cheeseburger, but that adds up the calories and the carbs. (But it is still very good)

I know one of my friends is always looking for recipes that are quick, easy, cheap, and good for a person who can burn macaroni. (: That’s my goal is to find recipes that don’t cost too much, are still healthy, and don’t take a million hours and a lot of know how to make them.

Here is recipe number one of a series of Quick, Cheap and Healthy!    

Here is the cost of this meal:

1 lb Hamburger:
 (We buy in rolls of ten @ 2.49/lb.)      

 = 2.49

Jar of pickles:
     Kept in the fridge for a low cal snack(Probably cost around
        2 Bucks a jar for 6(about) pickles)

  =.33

Tomato:
   I believe they were priced matched this time around

=.99

Ketchup and mustard were kept in the fridge. 

       For what you use ( Just a guess on it.)

=.25

Kraft singles

   @1.99 for 16

     For 6 of them

=.75

4.81 For the entire dish and it serves 6. That makes it at just about .80 per serving. Now. I know that you may not have everything in the house (pickles, ketchup, mustard) so it will be a little more than that. 4.81 is a heck of a lot less than eating fast food. 

Lets use McDonald’s (Just because I know the prices and I want to prove my point about fast food.) 

The price of our lowest meal, the number 6, is 3.84 after tax. That is 7.68 for both of you.

(assuming you are feeding you and one other person like I am.) But it is hardly ever ordered. 

Our highest priced meal, Angus meals, is 6.20 after tax. That would be 12.20 for two.

That averages at 9.94 (7.68+12.20 /2) 

So even if you did have to by pickles at 2 bucks and I know you can get a bottle of ketchup for 1 dollar.

That still only puts you at 7.81 for this entire meal. You will save $2.13 and you will have leftovers unless you are feeding more than 2. 

So there you go. This is why eating at home saves money. Thanks for reading through all of the math (which is probably over doing it and for the rest of the series I will just post the prices of each item and the total meal and per serving) I just wanted to show how it worked.

Juicing

            Woo! Thank you dad for this awesome juicer!
      Today, I wanted to share about Sean’s and my latest “healthy lifestyle change.” I hate calling them diets because to me that means short lived.. except most of our tries have been short lived… so… Oh well.

      How many of you readers have Netflix? Probably most of you, Right? Okay. Well I recommend you watching the documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.”  My dad recommended it to us, and now I am suggesting it to you.

    It is about a guy who has a very rare disease, but is also overweight. I believe he starts at 370ish lbs. (Don’t quote me on that part… Its been a few days since I watched this..)
     This documentary is about his trip cross country during his 60 days of detoxing cleans by JUST drinking juice. He has a juicer in the back of his van and he goes around to farmer’s markets and different places talking to  people about juicing. Along the way he meets a ton of people that say they could never be able to do it, as well as two or three people who actually commit to doing it for the 10 day challenge.
    Not to ruin the ending, but he loses a ton of weight and is taken off all of his medication for the rare disease. *GASP*

      So.. After watching this and talking to my dad, (and my dad giving us a juicer) Sean and I decided that we would start to replace just one meal with it. Breakfast is the easiest because the fruit juices are so much better than all of the vegetables.

Here is my breakfast:

(A big handful of Purple and green Grapes, 1 Orange, 1/4 of a tomato)

Now, I am sure you are thinking that looks really gross. It’s actually not! The tomato left almost no flavor it the final product so it tastes like orange and grape juice. Yum.

Plus, it leaves you with a TON of energy and leaves me feeling full after I finish it.

I have drill this weekend for the National Guard, but as soon as I get back from drill Sean and I are hoping to start the 10 day challenge of only juicing for ten days, with no actual food. *Fingers Crossed!*

Okay, so my next post probably won’t be until Sunday night, unless I decide to do it from my phone tomorrow night in the barracks, but I probably will just crash tomorrow night after a full day of who knows what I will be doing tomorrow! 

Birthday Pancakes!

          Sorry Everyone! I have been sick the last two days. I have the worst headache/ sinus infection. But today is Sean’s birthday, so I had no choice but to get up and to get outta bed. I have made huge plans for his birthday.
    Last year I made fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. It failed. The chicken was slightly raw, the potatoes were kinda lumpy.
   I’m not really that great of a cook. Actually.. I hate cooking. It is because of websites such as pinterest that give me a picture of what it should look like at the end. Well.. My food never looks like the picture.

So this year for his birthday.. I tried to make Birthday Cake Pancakes from this Blog. 
http://penniesonaplatter.com/2012/08/15/birthday-cake-pancakes/

Well.. They didn’t turn out looking anything like those ones. 
And THIS. This is why I hate cooking.. 

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cake mix (homemade or the box kind)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1/2 cup milk
2 Tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup (1.75 oz bottle) sprinkles

Okay. So first you are suppose to mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. (Except the sprinkles) Then pour the wet ingredients in with the dry ones, and after well mixed fold the sprinkles into the batter.

<<<<Like this 

Then cook like normal pancakes.

So in the end, they turn out looking like this. 

Cute I guess, but you can’t tell the sprinkles are even in them. Nothing like the picture. 

And I would just give up hope on the icing, because ours turned out really gross. 

Maybe just use frosting?

On the plus side, the sausage was really good, But other than that I would call this Pinterest idea another fail. Sorry Sean, other birthday meal failed, but that’s okay. I still have supper tonight to hopefully make up for it. (I’ll let everyone in on what I did for that tomorrow.)