Our V-Day Extravaganza and Other GREAT Lunch & Dinner Recipes!!

Well our V-Day extravaganza was a success!!  Mike and I left last night around 7:15 for a night out at the Mayo Hotel.

This is the same place we got married 5 & 1/2 years ago...

It's crazy how much they changed since we got married there.  It was just an old, vacant hotel in 2006 and now it's completely renovated hotel with lofts!  It's absolutely beautiful. 

 We started out at Trula with some drinks and appetizer.  Then we went up to check out the penthouse bar before our 8:45 reservations at Palace Cafe on Cherry St.  Dinner was AMAZING.  They have completely renovated Palace Cafe and made it double as big as it used to be.  The best part?  They had a whole vegetarian menu!  Many chef's don't know how to do vegetarian dishes real well.  My meal was SO good!

 I was in heaven!  It had a bed of lentils, topped with butternut squash "hash", surrounded by sauteed kale, and with my favorite thing in the world: fried goat cheese!!!!!  I can't say enough about how delicious it was! 

 Mike had the lobster ravioli and it was really good!
We made our way back to the hotel and enjoyed dessert in the room: some organic strawberries with whip cream (I brought from home) and some homemade Reese's truffles.  Dessert was definitely not "healthy", but very good!  I had been planning all week on "splurging" on my diet Friday night, so I didn't feel too guilty ;)
Other than the fact that my stomach didn't feel great after eating like that.  I'm used to eating really good most of the time and not eating before bed, so it was a little hard on me.

This morning we slept in until 10 AM!!!!!!  OMG it was awesome!!!  We went down to Topeca coffee and had coffee and breakfast!

 I had a large mocha and blueberry scone.

It was awesome.  Topeca is my absolute favorite coffee shop (other than Starbucks) and I love to go there when I'm downtown Tulsa!

OK, so enough about V-Day.  I have some awesome recipes I need to get caught up on for you all.  A couple days ago I made a great lunch for myself.  As you may know I basically have the same lunch every day:

A HUGE organic veggie salad with my homemade goddess dressing.  I do switch the veggies up depending on what is in season, to keep it fresh.  But, I wanted something different the other day.  Here is what I whipped up:

It's a veggie, bean, hummus "pizza"!  I used my brown rice tortillas, although you could use regular whole wheat tortillas.  I topped the tortilla with my homemade hummus, baby spinach, chopped grape tomatoes, and black beans.  You could really switch this up however you like.  You could use romaine lettuce, cucumbers, and any kind of beans: kidney beans, great northern beans, even chickpeas would be great.  I cooked it at 350 degrees in the oven for 10 minutes.  No sauce needed!  The tomato juices saturated the pizza.  It was juicy, sweet, and salty all in the same. 

Since I had the tortillas out already, I decided to make up some lunch for the kiddos in the same fashion

Brown rice tortilla with my homemade spaghetti/pizza sauce and some organic shredded mozzarella cheese.  Of course I chopped up some organic strawberries too!  They loved it and my husband gobbled up the leftovers after work as a snack! 

That night, I made clean "hamburger helper" and the family loved it

Here's the recipe:

Clean Hamburger Helper (adapted from Eating Well)

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• • 3 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
  • 2 medium carrots, cut into 2-inch pieces
  • 1 large onion, cut into 2-inch pieces
  • 1 pound 90%-lean organic grass-fed ground beef
  • 2 teaspoons dried thyme
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 14-ounce can reduced-sodium beef broth, divided
  • 8 ounces whole-wheat elbow noodles, (2 cups)
  • 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup plain low fat organic greek yogurt

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Instructions  

Fit a food processor with the steel blade attachment. With the motor running, drop garlic through the feed tube and process until minced, then add carrots and process until finely chopped. Turn it off, add onion, and pulse until roughly chopped.

Cook beef in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until no longer pink, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in the chopped vegetables, thyme, salt and pepper and cook, stirring often, until the vegetables start to soften , 5 to 7 minutes

 

 Stir in water, 1 1/2 cups broth, noodles and Worcestershire sauce; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is tender, 8 to 10 minutes. 

 

Whisk flour with the remaining 1/4 cup broth in a small bowl until smooth; stir into the hamburger mixture. Stir in the Greek yogurt. Simmer, stirring often, until the sauce is thickened, about 2 minutes. 

 The kids actually loved this dinner.  I served it with my roasted green beans since I had another bag left over from the bunch I got at Sam's a while back and they needed to be cooked.  

 The babies each had 2 helpings of green beans with the hamburger helper and big kids just had 1 helping.  They all loved the pasta dish.  It was creamy and a great comfort food dish.

 

Well, that's about it for now...I know this about the longest blog ever.  I still have my homemade pizza recipe I will post for you tomorrow. 

(Oh yeah, I went there.  V-Day themed homemade - super easy - whole wheat pizza!)

 

Just too much to add it to this blog and baby Chris is about to wake up from his nap.  Thanks for reading!!!