Broccoli Quinoa Cakes

Trying to come up with new HEALTHY things for the kids to eat is super easy. HA HA HA!!! I was very happy with these broccoli quinoa cakes, and so were the kids!

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
1/2 onion
1 cup broccoli florets
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
1/3 cup shredded cheese
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs

Cook quinoa per directions, let cool.
Dice the onion (I used a red onion) and sauté until soft, let cool.
Cook the broccoli (I bring to a boil, and then turn the water off immediately), dice and let cool.

Combine quinoa, onion, broccoli, breadcrumbs, cheese, salt & pepper and mix thoroughly. Add eggs, making sure all ingredients are incorporated.

Heat olive oil (I also add a bit of butter for flavor) in a pan and drop by spoonfuls into the pan. I use an ice cream scoop so they are all the same size :) Then "smush" them down to make a patty. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side until golden brown.

This will make about 8 cakes.

Home foot soak

I just did a home foot soak. It's been awhile since I've had a professional pedicure, and since I have 3 kids at home, I can't just go get one during the day. So I decided to try the mouthwash/vinegar foot soak that I've been seeing online. I Googled some "recipes" and after reading all the variations, I decided to tweak it to make it easy to remember:

2 cups mouthwash (I used Listerine Original)
2 cups vinegar
4 cups water

I soaked my feet for 10 minutes and didn't see anything in the water. My feet are pretty well taken care of so I wasn't expecting to see anything major, but I had read some people had a lot of dead skin floating around. Ew. So then I took my foot scrubber thingy and scrubbed all my rough spots. I did both feet and then noticed my pinky toe. The cuticle was kind of sticking up. I was able to just rub it off with my finger. WOW. So I just went over all the areas that looked like the skin was loose and rubbed it a little. Sometimes all it took was my finger but in a few stubborn spots, I needed the pumice stick. At the end I did see that the water had dead skin in it, but it was so fine I didn't notice it at first. That combined with what I sloughed off was not pretty. Blech.

After I dried my feet, they felt cool, probably from the mouthwash, but it definitely felt good! When I was putting lotion on my feet, I noticed that they were really soft! I am pretty impressed with this soak, and I think if I do this regularly my feet will be in pretty good shape!

Fish Fingers

I made fish sticks for dinner last night. It was so easy and healthy since they are baked. The kids really liked the "Fish Fingers" as they insisted on calling them. It was a little salty, so I would say you can cut down or even cut out the salt in the breading because you'll get probably enough from the sauce/ketchup. My husband and I used a sweet chili sauce and it was quite tasty!

Honey Lime Green Chile Enchiladas

Apparently I started to blog it and I was just waiting for myself to upload a photo. Here's the recipe! : )

Ok, so it took longer than I intended for me to post this, but I am doing it! :) here is a recipe for some yummy enchiladas with a twist. Any kind of meat works, even just boiled chicken breast. I used leftovers from the pork I mentioned in the previous post and it was DELICIOUS! The only thing is, you have to remember that the meat needs to marinate. It really makes a difference.

Ingredients:

Marinade:
6 T honey
5 T lime juice
1 T chili powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Enchiladas:
1 lb chicken, cooked and shredded
8-10 flour tortillas
1 lb Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded
19 oz can green enchilada sauce
1 c heavy cream

Directions:
Whisk the first four ingredients and toss with shredded chicken in a Zip-Loc bag. Let it marinate in the fridge for at least a 1/2 hour, but preferably a half day or so.

Pour about 1/2 cup enchilada sauce on the bottom of a 9X13 baking pan. Fill the tortillas with chicken and cheese, saving about 1 cup of cheese to sprinkle on top of enchiladas. Put rolled tortillas in 9x13 pan as you go. Mix the remaining enchilada sauce with the cream and any leftover marinade (I usually don't have any left). Pour sauce on top of the enchiladas. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. At this point you can freeze the dish or bake at 350* for 30 minutes, until brown and crispy on top. ENJOY!

Genious!

Ok, ok! I promise I *will* get around to posting that enchilada recipe. I have to find it first. We're in the middle of moving across the country. We made it to the other side but now we're stuck in corporate housing while we find permanent housing so I don't have any of my stuff. Stuff that I didn't realize how much I loved until I didn't have it. Like my kitchen stuff. Ok, so maybe I knew how much I loved that stuff ; ) Anyways, my daughter got a puzzle. She's 3. She's not very good at keeping things together like my older son. I think the system I have been using for his puzzles will come in handy for her. We've never had to actually use it for him. I know she's going to mix all the pieces together and won't it be oh so fun to sort them all out??? Here's my solution.

So we assign each puzzle a number, letter, symbol, word... whatever they want. Then we write that on the box and the back of the puzzle pieces so if (when) they all get jumbled together it's not an impossible task. Simple but SO useful! : )

Whoa! Has it REALLY been that long??

So I'm looking at my last post and I see that it was nearly 1 1/2 years ago. Whoops! Well, I'm back. We have 3 children now, and we are also dealing with a coast-to-coast relocation which has left me as a single parent for 6 months now. Ok, so I'm done making excuses as to why I haven't blogged. It's just been busy :) I'm proud to say that I am still cooking "real" meals for my children, even though it would be SO easy to get away with chicken nuggets and grilled cheese. This week I only cooked twice and it lasted me 4 dinners. Here's how I started:

On Tuesday, I made shredded pork wraps in the slow cooker. This is by FAR the easiest meal. You need a 2 lb pork tenderloin, 2T corn starch and 1 cup of salsa. Mix the 2T corn starch with 1/4 cup of the salsa. Spread in the bottom of your slow cooker. Place the pork on top of that and pour the remaining 3/4 cup of salsa over the pork. Cook on low for 6-8 hours and shred with 2 forks when done. Serve with tortillas and any fixings your family likes. I cut up bell pepper and avocado and also served with shredded cheese and more salsa.

I discovered the beauty of the slow cooker bag this week!!! Omigoodness, where have I been??? I cooked the shredded pork in a slow cooker bag. When it was done, I lifted the bag out of the slow cooker and just shredded the meat while it was still in the bag. The only thing I had to wash was the slow cooker lid! I immediately went out and bought 2 more boxes of the bags so I'm sure to not run out :)

My next blog will be about how I turned the shredded pork into honey lime green chile enchiladas. YUMMY!!