All About Food, My Diet, and A Couple Recipes

 We'll start with the little guy.  He's eating really well these days and packing on the pounds.  He wants very much to be included with every mealtime.  We now have the preschool table in the house, and he has a seat that attaches directly to the table.  He loves being right there - as opposed to at a high chair of his own.  He's eating everything he's allowed to - in this picture above he was having pork (from my crock pot recipe in the last post), peas, and cucumbers.  He's allergic to eggs, dairy, wheat and nuts, (and we now suspect melons) so there is a lot he can't have, but everything else, he loves.

 He loves mixed veggies - and anything else he can pick up by himself.  He eats anything we give him, but especially loves things he can use his fingers for.  The other day he had Kronski's (for those of you who don't know, those are polish sausages made in the town 100 miles away.) 

 How's this for a diet dinner?  Looks like a cheeseburger, right?  Not.  It's half a pound of lean ground beef grilled, with mustard and dill pickles, and two cups of grilled asparagus.  YUM.  For those of you who don't know about my diet, I'm doing Ideal Protein.  It is honestly the easiest diet I have ever been on, and it's been very successful.  So far I've lost 39 pounds (since June 25th).  That's 49 total pounds so far, because I had lost 10 before beginning the official diet.  My goal is to lose 120 pounds by Christmas.  I'm on track for it. :)

 Here's a recipe that I'm sure you could have done without my help - ha.  I made my husband a bunch of breakfast burritos the other day and froze them so he can just grab a couple and microwave them each morning.  This is just scrambled eggs with a pound of pork sausage.  (I cooked the sausage first).  I think I used 2 1/2 dozen eggs.

 While it was cooking, I made a stack of aluminum foil pieces and got my tortillas out and ready.

 Once the eggs were done, I was ready to assemble the burritos.

 I put a small scoop of the egg mixture on the tortilla, sprinkled on some cheese...

 placed it on the foil, folded in the ends ...

 and rolled it into a burrito shape.  Please disregard the wings on the end of my burrito - I was trying to hold it with one hand and take a picture with the other.  They were normal looking burritos, I promise ;)

 Then I tightly rolled up the burritos in foil, and put them in a bowl.

 I ended up with 36 burritos, but could have made a bunch more if I had more tortillas.

 See how much was left?  It didn't go to waste.  I fed it to the daycare kids, covered in cheese.  The mixture was watery - as I'm sure you can see.  Too much milk in the eggs.  I just tipped the pan up by placing my kitchen knife under one side, and let it drain away.

 I placed them on a cookie sheet so they would freeze evenly, and stuck them into the deep freeze.  Now my husband can have a hot breakfast in the mornings when he sometimes has to be to work by 5 or 6 am.

 My next project was to make some cookies for the final program of our VBS at church.  My eight year old wanted to make them, so he did most of this with help from me.

 These cookies are called Cherry Chocolate Kisses, and I found the recipe on Pinterest.  You can find it at the original source here.  It is made with marachino cherries.  This is honestly the first time I ever remember making cookies and not tasting the batter or the cookies, so I can't swear to how good they are but I was told they were amazing.  The recipe calls for sprinkling sugar on the dough balls, but I just rolled them in sugar because I didn't want it to burn on the pan if I sprinkled it.

 Once they were rolled in sugar they went on the cookie sheet.

 The eight year old had the job of unwrapping all the Hershey's kisses ... and test sampling a few.

 The next step is to press a dip into the middle.

Then bake.

The kisses are added when the cookies come out of the oven.

Here's the full recipe:

Cherry Chocolate Kisses
Servings: approximately 36 cookies (we ended up with 32 cookies, using a cookie scoop leveled off)

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, softened, but still cool
1 cup powdered sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons maraschino cherry “juice”
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup maraschino cherries, chopped
Granulated sugar, for sprinkling the cookies
36 milk chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. In the bowl of your standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute.
3. Reduce the speed to the lowest setting and slowly add the powdered sugar and salt.
4. Add the cherry juice and the almond extract until combined.
5. With the mixer still on low, slowly add the flour, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
6. Increase the mixer speed to medium and add the cherries.
7. Shape the dough into 1-inch balls, and place the balls on a baking sheet, approximately 2 inches apart.
8.  Using your thumb, gently press each cookie in its center until the cookie is about 1/2-inch thick.
9.  Sprinkle each cookie with a little granulated sugar.
10.  Bake the cookies until the bottoms are lightly browned, about 14 minutes.
11. Once removed from the oven, immediately press a chocolate kiss into each cookie’s center.
12.  Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.