Lightened Sweet Potato Casserole

Ok, just a disclaimer... I'm so not a chef or anything! This is a variation of Cooking Light's Traditional Sweet Potato Casserole, which looks brilliant! After looking at the already lightened version and reading the comments, I decided to lower the amount of brown sugar and omit the marshmallows. It shaves about 50 calories, for a serving that's a little bigger too! So, here it is!

• 2 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Brummel and Brown Buttery Yogurt Spread
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans, divided

Preheat oven to 375°.

Place the sweet potatoes in a Dutch oven, and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 15 minutes or until very tender. Drain; cool slightly.

Place potatoes in a large bowl. Add sugar and next 3 ingredients (through vanilla). Mash sweet potato mixture. Fold in 1/4 cup pecans. Scrape into an even layer in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup pecans. Bake at 375° for 25 minutes or until golden.

Serves 12 (Or not. Maybe less if you have very hungry people. Or if you have a HH around to test for poison, correct spicing, to make sure the nuts are properly chopped and mixed in, etc.)

Classic Southern Dinner*

Fried chicken in the W house?! Ha, fat chance! Nope, just a fabulously Southern feeling dinner for (faux) fried chicken, (extra lightened) sweet potato casserole, and garlic green beans! Delish!

Fooled you for a sec, huh?


In the tradition of health-i-fying foods in our house, we made oven 'fried' chicken with ground up Fiber One cereal. Apparently I'm the last person in the world to learn about F1 cereal and using for everything except just eating it. (Because, really, who just eats cereal with milk anymore? Oh, wait, I do.) But anyway, so you grind up the cereal, add your spices and whatnot, dip the chicken in egg substitute, and coat in that, then bake! Genius. And crunchy outside, good texture! I think this one will be a keeper after some more spice experimentation with it. It actually turned out so well that we're eating the leftovers tonight, rather than it meeting the fate of some of my other culinary experiments... aka ending up binned.

Nope, not even any for the Gizmo - no matter how pretty she sits!


The sweet potato casserole was good enough to go on my holiday menu (yes, I'm already planning and experimenting to surpass last year's feast) and I might even throw the recipe up here tomorrow!

Water fun

Something a little less, um, deep after the last post...

HH showing off the new skills

Can you tell I was petrified about trying this?!

Two handsome dudes - my favorite knuckleheads!

crash.

And the lake isn't that deep! :-)

The In-Between

I think we all have times in our lives of in-betweens. I think everyone must have these times. Maybe many of these times. And sometimes they're exactly what we need. I'm very much in an in-between transtition - yeah, riddle that one out - right now.

Many changes are coming in the W Fam, and good ones, I think! No, no sprogs, so don't let your mind wander there! Still working on a sister for Gizmo before those happen!

So, when all of the upheaval in April happened, HH asked me what I wanted to do with my life. "I mean, really" he said, "what do you want to do? What makes you happy?" Hard but good questions when you're emotionally spent. After taking a couple of weeks to attempting to just be, I thought back to athletic training and all of that... which led to PA school? Maybe. Or not. Or maybe chiropratic? Or maybe Gizmo needs a stay-at-home mom? Or maybe HH needs dinner on the table every night at 6:30? (For the record, he does not. Another one of HH's astoundingly cool attributes is an ability to go with the strange flow my cooking takes. And he makes mean pancakes.) What did I want to do???

Next step was information gathering, big surprise there, and throwing myself into working out with the best girls in the world with vigor. And attempting to just be. Which is hard to do - just being. I'm even reading a book right now about just being. (Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - I'm only 1/3 of the way through it and am LOVING it.) From information gathering, I went to community college for a summer class. Talk about fun. Seriously! I heart school. I just do. But I got even more answers there.

As I continue taking this meandering path to wherever it is I'll end up, I'm doing my best to enjoy the journey. There are times, such as earlier this week, where I feel lost - but as another great friend told me recently: Everything turns out ok in the end. If it's not ok, it's not the end. (Have I mentioned that I have some genius friends out there?! It's true, I do - and I'm so blessed to have them!) I'm also finding out that it's ok to be a little lost - so long as I don't just give in. Lost is part of the journey, right? Yes. And what was it that Mr. Datsun said? Lfe is a journey. Enjoy the ride. Remeber him? The nice man in sunnies sitting on the billboard with the white dog. :-)

This section of the in-between is slated to change to the something part in September when I start at Parker, where I'll spend this fall term working on my remaining pre-reqs for chiropractic school. Yay! I'm super stoked, but am also trying to enjoy the in-between that is the next 3ish weeks. I'm also really realizing that I don't do "not much" too well!

But it also means I can have random afternoon swim parties! Any takers?!

A movie review.

My wonderful HH, in another fit of sensing that I'm in the middle of a transitional funk (more on that in a minute), sprung a movie on me last night. We went to see Julie & Julia - which was fantastic !!! Seriously - awesome.

Ok, quick synopsis... Based on Julia Child's life in France (among other places), her story gets mixed into blogger Julie Powell's story of cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. Wow. It goes between the two stories and intertwines them perfectly! Meryl Streep as Julia is genius. Without giving anything major away, Julie flips her stuff on the path to self discovery (which is pretty cool in itself anyway!), and you learn a little more about how Julia became JULIA. Very good. Go see it.

Or, pick up the book, which is HI-larious!