Easy Cowboy Cornbread Casserole
I saw this recipe on Facebook last month and it’s been on my mind ever since. I’ve been waiting on the weather to get a little cooler since cool weather and cornbread go hand in hand! I’m pretty sure that this isn’t low carb, but sometimes you have to live a little! This was well worth the wait! Where has this been all my life!?
Ingredients:
Corn Bread
2 packages of Mexican Cornbread Mix
1 can of Cream Style Corn
Jalapeño slices
Eggs
Milk
Center
2 lbs Hamburger Meat
2 cans rotel
1 can Ranch Style Beans
Chopped onions
Bag of shredded Cheese
Brown the ground beef, drain the grease….add ro-tel, onions, and ranch style beans. Simmer for 10 minutes.
Make the cornbread according to directions on the back of the bag, add Can of Cream of Corn, jalapeños and half of the bag of cheese.
Grease the bottom of the 8×12 casserole dish. Pour half of the cornbread mix to the bottom of the pan. 
Add the meat mixture, then put the other half of the cheese on top.
Cover the meat mixture with the other half of the cornbread mixture.
Cook in the oven at 400 degrees for 45 minutes or until you can poke a toothpick in the middle and not get any mix on it.
Serve and eat!
Low Carb Vegetable Medley
I am so excited about my new toy for this week. My friend at Definitely Leopard has been bragging about loving her new fitbit and I resisted buying it for about a month. But, now that school has started back and I have been running from car to car to get students to the right car, I started wondering how many steps I’m taking. Turns out I’m taking anywhere from 10,000 – 20,000 steps a day!! I also can track my sleep patterns, no shock here, I wake up a LOT at night. I also like that I can see how many steps my friends that have one take. You can pair it with endomondo, but since I do a monthly challenge based on time, it wasn’t fair.
Well, seems like every time I do a blog I’m talking about getting back on track. Looks like this week will be no different. Tomorrow, I will recommit myself to eating healthy. I went to the grocery store and bought all healthy food. I’m sticking with the low carb diet since it worked really well the first week I did it.
Ingredients:
2 zucchini
2 squash
Box of cut mushrooms
2 cans of diced tomatoes
2 cups of hot sauce
2 bags of frozen okra
1 bag of cut broccoli
1 package of dry hot sauce mix
generous amount of lemon pepper
Paprika
(Usually I put in chicken, but they didn’t have any left at the grocery store today)
Cook on high in the crockpot for 4 – 6 hours
Low Carb Burger
I’m still attempting to do a low carb diet, although the Labor Day Weekend set me back a little bit. I’m pretty sure Blue Bell ice cream has no carbs these days, so I may be ok! The best thing to do when you get off track, though, is to get right back on track.
The hard part of doing a low carb diet is that you really can’t have any bread. This usually means no comfort food like hamburgers. One of the worst things about eating a hamburger is that after you eat it, you feel all bloated because of all the carbs in the bread. Today was the day I decided to fix that problem. I thought I’d attempt to pair my low carb bread with a burger. I was so excited when it tasted MARVELOUS! I don’t think I’ll ever eat a burger on regular bread again. The low carb bread didn’t get all soggy or anything!!
I might also want to mention that I made the pre-made burgers from Krogers on my George Foreman Grill!! What a winning combination!
Ingredients:
Hamburger
Low Carb Bread
Cheese
Lettuce
Mayonnaise (This probably wasn’t a great choice, but I like mayonnaise)
Dallas ISD Chess Pie
Dallas ISD had the best cafeteria food in the 80’s. Almost everything was made from scratch. Even with the good food, I used to get a chocolate bar from Mr. Lancaster’s class and get two $.10 rolls with butter for lunch. Some of my favorite school cafeteria food, (when I ventured off from my lunch of champions), were Fiesta Salad, Rectangular Pizza, and Chicken Fried Steak!!! I even liked those fried fish squares with tartar sauce.
I think DISD was most famous for Chess Pie, but when everyone started to worry about childhood obesity, pies were off the menu. My friend, Flo, has been trying to recreate the recipe, and he thinks he has it!! Since this is a little more than my skills will allow, someone has to try to make this and let me know how it turns out!!!
Photo by The Merry Gourmet!
DISD Chess Pie
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons Cornmeal
1/2 Cup Melted Margarine
3 Whole Eggs
1 Teaspoon Vinegar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
1/4 Cup of Milk
Mix sugar and cornmeal. Add melted margarine and mix thoroughly. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each. Add liquids and mix well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until done.
Trader Joe’s
There is nothing I hate more than grocery shopping. I try to avoid it at all costs. That’s a little impossible since I like to eat, but I try to only have to go once a week. Oddly, though, I LOVE to go to new grocery stores to check them out. I’ve been hearing about Trader Joe’s for years. Apparently, it’s all the rage in California, but now we have our very own here in Dallas at 2001 Greenville Avenue. To kill some time, I made my mom take me there while we were waiting for my car to get an oil change. It’s a pretty cool little specialty grocery store. They had really pretty flowers as you walk in. They had the cutest little shopping carts for little kids that had a sign that said “Customer in Training”. From there it looks like a mini Whole Foods. I don’t really shop organic, so I probably won’t be back, but I’m glad I went.
Chicken on the Inside Grill
I started my low carb diet this week. The key to being successful is being prepared. I planned out what I would eat this week and made all my lunches on Sunday. I went and bought a George Foreman Grill at Target so I could have grilled chicken. The thing I like best about the George Foreman Grill is that it is built on an angle, so all the fat drains to a little cup that you put at the bottom of the grill opening. So far I have made sausage and chicken on the grill. Both have tasted great! I’m happy to say that the diet seems to be working, too. I’ve already lost 4 lbs! I don’t think I’ll lose that kind of weight each week, but it’s good to get some of that summer weight off!!!
Lemon Pepper Chicken
Ingredients:
Chicken
Lemon Pepper
Apply lemon pepper on the chicken generously and put it on the George Foreman grill until cooked!
Low Carb Bread
I’ve had a great summer so far. I’ve gotten to do a lot of fun stuff like the Perot Museum, George W Bush library, Arboretum, Katy Trail, Rangers Baseball Games, Swimming, Playing with the CUTEST two kids ever, and much more. All this activity has helped me to decide it’s time to go on a low carb diet. I say I’m going to try to lose weight every week, but today I actually bough the food to do it. I’m not really a bread person, but when I CAN’T have some type of food, that’s when I NEED it. I found this recipe on facebook, so I don’t really know who to credit.
No carb bread
6–8 depending on size.
Ingredients
3 eggs
100 grams (3.5 ounces) of cream cheese
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder or cream of tarter (can be excluded)
Separate the eggs, with the egg whites in one bowl and the egg yolks in another.
Whip the egg whites together with the salt until very stiff. You should be able to turn the bowl over without the egg whites moving
Mix the egg yolks and the cream cheese well. If you choose, 1tsp of cream of tarter or baking powder (this makes the Oopsie more bread-like).
Gently fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mix – try to keep the air in the egg whites.
Put 6 large or 8 smaller oopsies on a baking tray.
Bake in the middle of the oven at 150° C (300° F) for about 25 minutes – until they turn golden.
Sprinkler Party
My niece is TWO!! My sister had a great party for her. She always has really creative birthday parties for the babies. I’m always so proud when she can pull it off. My favorite part of the parties is when I get to baby sit them so she can get it ready. This time we went to Monster Yogurt in Casa Linda where they get to eat yogurt and play on the indoor playground. They were crying that they didn’t want to go home when it was time to go, and then didn’t want me to leave to go home myself once we were home!! My niece and nephew rock and I’m glad their parents plan special days for them everyday and not just on their birthdays!! 
Flip Flop Birthday Cake
Use sand buckets for the party favors
2 year old birthday shirts can be bought from H&B Promotions!
Nutter butter flip flops: icing and mini m&ms
Backyard Set up
I work out!!!!
I’ve been trying to mix up my workouts each week so I don’t get stagnant with exercise, but my motivation has not been very good lately. The proof of my laziness is the lbs. on the scale and the way my clothes are fitting me. I know exercise isn’t the way that you lose weight, but it has what keeps me successful keeping off the weight. I ordered a new series of kettle bell workouts from Amazon this week and it showed up today!!! Kettleworx was a good way to get started with kettle bells, but after six weeks, I am tired of all the bad editing and repetitive work outs. I can’t wait to get started on Kettlebody by Brook, but I think I will be one of those people that starts things on Monday because I’m off to the Katy Trail to get my six miles in today!! Happy exercising!!
Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Casserole
I haven’t posted a blog in a while! I have been so busy that I have gotten a little behind on things. I haven’t even been walking, which is really starting to affect my mood. I’ll get back going with that next week and maybe catch up on my blog. I actually have two more recipes to blog about, but since I made this one tonight and had my phone camera there, I thought I’d post a picture of this first!
This was supposed to be enchiladas, but I didn’t feel like making little rolls of chicken.
Ingredients:
Chicken (I bought a pre cooked chicken from Krogers)
Corn Tortillas
Chopped Onion
Green Chiles
Sour Cream (I used sour cream light)
Mozzarella Cheese
Colby Jack Cheese (only because I didn’t have enough Mozzarella Cheese to cover the Casserole)
Spray Pam on the casserole dish. Put corn tortillas all over the bottom of the dish. Put ripped up chicken on the tortillas. Spread chopped onions on top of the chicken. Cover with tortillas.
In a bowl mix sour cream and chiles. Cover tortillas with mixture. Top with cheeses. Place in the oven for 30 minutes at 350.
Fabulous after FIFTY 