Turkey Sloppy Joes

My mom makes the best sloppy joes ever. I think that sloppy joes are great, because they are a comfort food. Usually comfort foods aren't that healthy. I think that we made them a little healthier by using ground turkey instead of ground beef. 

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of ground turkey
• 1/2 c. ketchup (you can also add a little barbeque sauce to this for a spicier taste)
• 2 TBSP vinegar
• 1 TBSP dried onions (or 1/4 to 1/2 cup of finely chopped onions)
• 1 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
• 2 TBSP sugar
• 1 T. mustard

Directions:

1) Cook ground turkey and onions until brown, drain off fat.

2) Add the rest of the ingredients; you may need to add a little water, too. 

3) Stir well

4) Simmer for 1/2 hour over low heat

Turkey Meatballs and Laughing Cow Chicken

We bought 5 pounds of ground turkey (on sale). It's supposed to be healthier for you than ground beef, and I am trying to eat a minimal amount of red meat (for health reasons), so we tried out a few different recipes. 

This recipe for turkey meatballs turned out great. They were a little garlicky, though. We ate them with a vegetarian version of this spaghetti sauce. 

We also made ground turkey taco meat. We haven't eaten it yet, though, because we froze it. We used our normal taco seasoning recipe. 

Finally, the "Laughing Cow Chicken" recipe had been posted on several cooking blogs that I read. I love Laughing Cow cheese, so I decided to try this recipe out. It was okay; I don't know if I just did a bad job of cooking it or what, but I didn't love it. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't my style. 

Shiny Happy People

This weekend, Becca was in town, and we (Becca, E & I) ended up driving to visit Andy; he lives close to the town where the three of us (Becca, Andy, and I) grew up.

It was so nice to be around my closest friends. My life has changed so much in the past 3 years; law school, moving to suburbia, getting married, and having surgery. These changes have been for the better, but it was still so nice to hang out with my old friends. They are so positive and they take risks (like being a freelance photographer or creating art for gallery displays) and they do what they love and love what they do. Lawyers are often referred to as being deal-breakers; part of a lawyer's job is to think about things that might go wrong and to advise their clients about how to prevent those things from happening. A lot of people in my field are negative. For the past three years, I've attended school with people who were also being trained to think negatively. So it was GREAT to be around my friends who really don't care about law school related things. I felt like myself again. It's so great to have friends that you can go months (or sometimes even years) without seeing, and when you see each other again, it's like no time has passed. I'm so lucky.

People used to say that I was a "free spirit". I don't think that I ever really was that much of a free spirit; I have always liked to plan things and to have goals for myself. I worried about things a lot; I still do. I've always wanted to know where my life is heading. However, I would like to take some of this "free spiritedness" (or whatever it was) with me into my career. Obviously I need to be able to advise clients about what they should and shouldn't be doing, and unfortunately this advice can sometimes be negative. But I still want to be a fun person to be around; someone who encourages people to be happy and to do what they want with their lives. It's so easy to get caught up in negativity; I think that I need to shut out some of these negative influences from my life. I think that this might be easier said than done, but I'm going to try it.

Crockpot Dried Beans

In an attempt to lower our sodium intake and to save money, I made pinto and black beans in our crockpot. It worked out well. A bag of dried beans costs about $1, and it makes about 3.5 cans worth of beans. That's a good deal :) I made 2 bags worth of black beans and 2 bags worth of pinto beans (on separate days). Then I divided them up into freezer-friendly containers, and froze them.We have the equivalent of 14 cans of beans in our freezer. It wasn't too much work, and it saved us money AND it is also saving our health. We are going to use 3 cans worth this week for our dinners, so we're not hoarding too much food :) 

I used this recipe: Cooking Dried Beans in Your Crockpot

I followed the recipe exactly when I made the black beans. When I made the pinto beans, I turned the crockpot up to "high" and cooked them for 5 hours. They turned out, and the 5 hour cook time worked better for my schedule that day. 

Graduation & Psychic El Caminos

Last Sunday I graduated. Thank God law school is over! Of course the day after graduation we started bar prep courses, so I didn't get too much time to enjoy a school-free life :) I definitely will enjoy not having school after the bar exam, though. 

I've spent most of the holiday weekend with a cold/allergies. I even had an asthma attack during church on Sunday. I need to go to the doctor so I can get a new prescription for my inhaler because this one is almost used up :) 

My boss took all of next week off from work, so that means I get the week off too. I'm really happy about that. I love my job, but I need a week to get reorganized after finals, graduation, etc. I will still have bar prep class every morning, but at least I will have the afternoons free to get things done.

In other news: E got all of his transfer documents completed, and he is officially a junior in college! That is great news, because that means the end is in sight. I'm so proud of him :) Depending on how this semester goes, there is a good chance that he will be done with his undergrad degree by the end of the Fall semester of 2011. He's a little nervous about whether he will like his classes and be able to keep up with a heavy courseload while working. I know that he will have no problem. 

Yesterday, at Target, we bought some lounge chairs for our deck. We drove E's car (a Chevy Aveo). We weren't really thinking about how we were going to get those chairs home, I guess. We got the chairs out to the parking lot, and tried to fit the chairs in his car. No luck. Suddenly, I had a thought: I knew that it was Sunday and a lot of people had probably just been at church. After all, we had just been at church (until my asthma attack). I knew that someone would offer to help us out, and my thought was that it would probably be someone who had just heard a sermon at church and wanted to help out a stranger. Maybe their pastor had discussed Hebrews 13:2 during the sermon; who knows? :) 

Right after I had this thought, a man who was driving an El Camino approached us. He asked us if the chairs were going to fit in our car. E said, "No. We're just going to go home and pick up our other car." I wondered if these chairs would even fit in our other car; a small Saturn.

The man looked at me and said, "I can put the chairs in the back of my car if you would like. I will follow you to your house; is it far from here?"

I looked down and saw that he was wearing a cross necklace. I decided that I must be psychic :) 

The man and his wife helped load our chairs into their car and then followed us to our house. They dropped off the chairs, we thanked them and we offered them a drink. They declined and they left. E was embarrassed, but I felt like the whole thing was supposed to happen. I don't know why it was supposed to happen, but it was a nice coincidence. I'm very grateful; an El Camino is perfect for hauling lounge chairs :) And we really enjoyed our lounge chairs yesterday; it was perfect deck weather. 

Tacos, Tostadas, Toffee Bars, and Chicken

I just finished a take-home final, and now I only have 2 more to go until I graduate! I'm taking the rest of the day off to regroup and re-motivate. 

We haven't been doing a ton of cooking because of final exams; instead we've been cleaning out our freezer. We have some frozen soup, frozen mac and cheese, and a frozen pasta dish that are ready for us for dinner this week. I also have some unhealthy frozen mini pizzas to get us through final exams :) 

Tacos:

Last night we had tacos for dinner. We make our own taco seasoning instead of buying the packets from the store. I've noticed that the packets from the store either have too much salt (bad for E) or MSG (bad for me). We have a ton of spices & seasonings at home, so making our own is pretty easy. We use this recipe, but we cut the salt in half. We usually buy whole-wheat tortillas. Then we shred up some monterrey jack cheese, buy pre-shredded lettuce, and then serve with taco sauce or salsa, fresh tomatoes, and maybe some sour cream.

Tostadas:

To use up the shredded lettuce and cheese, we try to make tostadas within a few days of making tacos. We buy pre-made tostadas, and then either make refried beans out of pinto beans, or just buy a can of refried beans (not that healthy - oops!). We also either buy guacamole at Chipotle or make some at home. A typical tostada for us is: tostada shell (warmed in the oven), refried beans (warmed on the stove), guacamole, sour cream, salsa, cheese and lettuce. They are really easy to make & it's a good way to use up some of the taco fixings. 

Toffee Bars:

We had a potluck in my last law school class ever. When my cousins and I had a girls night about a year ago, my cousin brought over the ingredients and recipe for chocolate toffee crescent bars. They were delicious, and pretty easy to make, so I decided that they were a good thing to bring to a potluck :) Here is the recipe that I used. Just remember to let them cool for a while; otherwise the chocolate will make a big mess :)

Chicken:

A few months ago, I made chicken stew with white beans and spinach. When I made it, I froze 3 slices of bacon, 4 chicken thighs, a diced onion (you have to freeze this in a ziplock bag inside of an airtight container so it doesn't stink up your freezer!), 2 TBSP. of tomato paste, and a cup of chicken broth, so I could make it again another time. I made it again this Thursday, and only made one change: instead of adding oregano (I really don't care for oregano), I added 1/2 tsp. of dried basil. It was delicious. The best part was that thanks to my obsessive meal-planning and freezing, I had all of the ingredients except for the beans and spinach, so it was really inexpensive to make :) 

A Little Late to the Party

E & I Netflixed the movie Hotel Rwanda and watched it during a study break on Thursday. Holy cats! I put that movie on my "to think about list" whenever I am feeling sorry for myself. We were "a little late to the party" because that movie came out in 2004 or 2005, and it's 2009. 

I also had my first day of work on Thursday. It went well. My boss said that he will be very flexible about my schedule while I am studying for the bar; that it will just be a good time for me to get "trained in" and to learn the ropes. I feel a lot better knowing that it will not be high pressure in the beginning. I think I will really like working with him and with our clients. 

We celebrated my birthday yesterday. I started the morning off by trying to study at a coffee shop. I over-caffeinated and had a hard time concentrating, in part because it was my birthday :) E & I went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was nice; it was good for E to take the day off from going to doctor's appointments with his dad, and it was just a lot of fun. 

We also went furniture shopping. We need to move E's closet into our bedroom so that way we will have a true home office for me to use. We were considering buying all new furniture for our bedroom, and found a set that we liked. But we just couldn't get past the price. We decided that we are just going to buy a cheap (maybe used if we can find one) white or cream dresser/cabinet for our bedroom, and stick with our current non-matching furniture theme. It's more "green" of us to not buy new furniture too :) 

We had been toying with the idea of going on a post bar exam vacation; we have quite a few airline miles saved up, and they will be expiring soon. We booked a vacation this morning, but we won't be going until later on in the year. The cost of this vacation is about 1/3 of the cost of buying new bedroom furniture; it wasn't a tough decision :) We have also used up about half of our airline miles now. So we will probably be taking another cheap trip in the near future :) It is TBD.