Stuffed Green Peppers

Another recipe from our snow days! This is a recipe I grew up with and absolutely love! It's not the healthiest recipe, but it is SO VERY delicious! Since the majority of my kitchen is Pampered Chef, everything I used in this recipe is from their line.

Ingredients

• 4 large green peppers (6 medium)
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 6 ounces sour cream
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 2/3 cup cheddar cheese
• Dash of garlic powder

1. Cut off the tops and scoop out the insides of the green peppers
2. Boil the peppers for 10-12 minutes
3. Cook the ground beef. When I'm in a rush I microwave the ground beef in my batter bowl. Dump the meat in the bowl. Microwave for 2 minute intervals. In between I break up the meat using my mix n' chopper. It takes my about 3 intervals to fully cook the meat. Then drain the fat. I love my PC drainer for quick and easy draining of meat from pans or bowls.
4. In the same bowl, stir together sour cream, cheese, onion, and garlice powder (Leave enough cheese to top the peppers). You will notice the bowl of chopped onions. Since we use onion in so many recipes, I chopped it up and store them in these prep bowls. They last well, plus it saves time, and dishes.
5. CAREFULLY pull out the peppers with tongs. Place them in a small container that will keep them upright. If the container is too big the peppers will fall over. My PC round covered baker is the perfect size for four peppers.
6. Spoon the mixture into the peppers and top with cheese.
7. Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes
8. Enjoy!

Quick way to drain grease: fill a cup or bowl with aluminum foil, drain fat into aluminum foil. When the grease cools wrap it up in the foil and throw it out. No clogged drains, no mess!

 Eat and enjoy! I paired mine with a delicious fresh salad. 

xoxo,

Erin

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NASP Convention 2014

This past week I had the opportunity to attend the National Association of School Psychologists conference right here in Washington DC! It was a wonderful experience. This was my fourth time attending the conference, but my first time attending not as a student.

Photo Credit

The theme for the conference was Collaborate, Advocate, and Lead. These are all big parts of the school psychologists role. Even though the conference was only a few blocks away from the zoo, my days were so jam packed with sessions, workshops, and commuting, that I didn't get a chance to go see baby Bao Bao or the new tiger cubs I have been dying to visit. Another trip to the zoo will be in our near future! 

Having fun with the cardboard cutouts in the exhibit hall

It was great visiting with friends and professors from graduate school! The area around the conference was not well equipped to handle 5,000 psychologists running around. Which is surprising since the hotels have frequent conferences. The restaurants were over-crowded, overwhelmed, and couldn't keep up with the lunch rush. Lines were extremely long! We went out to eat one day during the conference and couldn't get into the restaurant we hoped for. We tried a place just down the block that was able to seat us! That should have been an indication that something was wrong. The service was terrible and while we were waiting on our food, a roach crawled across our table! Yep, I lost my appetite immediately. Needless to say we left! 

The sessions I attended were wonderful, especially an all day workshop on memory interventions. I learned so much! I am fascinated by the human brain, which is probably why I am a psychologist. 

Photo Credit

I also want to share the amazing MapQuest app for your phone. I usually use the iPhone maps app or Google Maps, but MapQuest out shined them all this week by navigating me through rush hour traffic in DC in record time. I hardly hit any traffic!! It updates immediately when traffic is detected ahead and automatically reroutes you around the traffic. 

This week I return to real life! Between the snow days, weekends, holidays, and the conference it's been 11 days since I was at work for a full day. I've been working diligently at home and in the evenings at the conference to not fall behind, but I get thrown back into the swing of things with a very busy week. In the meantime, I am off to enjoy my weekend! 

xoxo,

Erin

Snow Days!!

Happy Snow Days! With 16+ inches of snow on the ground, we have been been huddled up warm inside all day cooking, cleaning, watching movies, playing board games, and of course getting our fill of the Olympics.
It gives me a chance to catch up on some blogging and share some of the recipes we've been loving lately.
First up, this morning for breakfast I whipped up another round of our favorite breakfast-on-the-go: Egg frittatas. These are great to make ahead and quick to grab for breakfast on a busy morning. They are filling and have sticking power. When I eat these for breakfast, I often forget about a mid morning snack and stay full until lunch time.

The best part they are easy to make and easy to personalize with your favorite ingredients. I'll share our go to favorite and basic recipe today, then add updates for new variations later on.
Ingredients (the amounts listed are estimates of what we use! they can be adjusted to taste.)

• 10-12 eggs
• 1/2 pound turkey sausage or 6 slices of turkey bacon
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup spinach
• 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 TBSP milk
• 2 TBSP flour

1. Cook the sausage and bacon. We have tried both microwaving and cooking the turkey bacon in the oven. By far the crunchiest is in the microwave.
2. Sauté the onion with a little bit of olive oil until translucent
3. Chop spinach and bacon and place in mixing bowl. Salad choppers work great for this task!
4. Add sausage, egg, flour, and milk. Mix until yolks are broken up. We have tried scrambling the eggs and milk before adding to other ingredients and noticed no difference, so why dirty another bowl.
5. Scoop into greased muffin pan about 3/4 full.
6. Top each one with a pinch of the shredded cheese
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes

We let them cool, then place them in ziplock bags (two to a bag). To reheat, just throw them in the microwave for 1 minute. Enjoy!!
A few weeks ago, Nick and I picked up funfetti cupcake mix as a special treat for the next big snow day! We made those today, which made the snow day that much sweeter!

For dinner I cooked up some stuffed green peppers, recipe to follow.

xoxo,

Erin

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Maui Part 2

Back again to share more about our time in Maui. I had read on a blog about this local breakfast spot. As soon as I read best cinnamon buns they'd ever had, I was hooked! I mean come on, who can pass on cinnamon buns! It was a short drive from our resort. It was a very small spot with a very long line.

I have no idea what Nick got and excuse the camera cord. It looks delicious though. I'm guessing it was some spicy sausage and egg mix. 

We split a cinnamon bun (and by split I mean Nick got to have one bite)

My banana macadamia nut french toast

Once back at the resort, we headed to the pool/beach area. Nick likes the pool and I liked the beach. We switched between the two. We decided to take out the kayaks and explore the cove around the resort. As we are out on the water, Nick hesitantly says "Erin what is that?" His first thought was a person floating in the water. I started to tell him "it's just the top of a rock," but realized there were no rocks out this far. It didn't take us much longer to realize it was a sea turtle. As soon as we saw the first one, we immediately recognized a bunch more floating around. We paddled back into shore, I ran to grab my camera, and we booked it back out.

There were a number of sea turtles swimming around. They floated quite close to us and would pop their heads up to breathe. 

Nick's favorite picture: "That's my butt and that's a sea turtle."

Looking back at our resort.

Earlier in the week, we ate at a cafe at our resort. We saw the special dessert they offered after stuffing ourselves to the brim! Instead of making ourselves miserable, we vowed to come back! That night we returned for a light dinner and a big dessert. We also busted into our champagne!

Fresh plumeria that I found on the ground on the way to dinner

Chicken, brussel sprouts, and spaetzle. It was one of the best things I ate on our trip.

Nick ordered french onion soup

Time for the main event! 

On the way back to our room, Nick found a mango on the ground in the fresh fruit garden.

 Coming next, Nick's birthday including snorkeling at Molokini Crater and then our last day in the islands.  Until next time!

xoxo,

Erin

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The Valley Isle

To continue our journeys in Hawaii we move over to the island of Maui-The Valley Isle. Maui is an island made up of two volcano's creating two mountain ranges and a large valley in the middle. We stayed in Wailea which is on the South-Western side of the island. The West Maui mountains are one of the rainiest spots in the world, but the valley had nothing but sunshine and clear skies. In the afternoon, you could see the rain clouds coming down from Haleakala, the Eastern volcano, that stood behind our resort. The rain never fell though. It rushed quickly out to sea.

While at our resort in Maui we could see the islands of Molokai, Lanai, and Kahoolawe. Photo Credit

 We set off for our short island hopper flight. This was one of the scariest experiences of my life. We were warned by a Hawaiian native in LA about the rough winds flying into Maui. When we got dropped off at a trailer for our flight I started to worry. Then they had to weigh all the luggage and all the passengers. The flight held about 8 people and thankfully was short. Flying over the islands was breath taking. The views were incredible! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera out. As we began our descent into Maui, I began my panic. As many experienced fliers know the descent is usually smooth and gradual. Ours was nothing like that. The plane would just make huge drops at a time and bounced around like Mexican jumping beans. We made it safely. We grabbed lunch at the Hawaiian restaurant Zippy's and stopped by Walmart to pick up snacks for the week. Interesting fact-Hawaii has banned the use of plastic bags to save the environment!

When we arrived at The Grand Wailea we were blown away by it's beauty. Lush flowers and waterfalls greeted us. We checked in and received a complimentary upgrade. Our room wasn't ready, so we sat down for a drink at the lobby bar. Who should be drinking across from us? None other than Randy Johnson, the famous pitcher! We ran into him later in the week and got his autograph for my uncle, a huge baseball fan.

Randy Johnson is sitting off to the left in this picture

I drank plenty of my favorite drinks, pina colada, but switched to drinking lava flows-pina colada's with strawberry mix poured in first to look like lava flowing through the drink.

The view from dinner. The first island you see is Molokini Crater, where we went snorkeling later in the week. The large island right behind it is Kahoolawe-the only uninhabited island in the chain.

Hawaiian sunset over one of the pools

I know it's weird but check out how amazing the bathroom was in our room!

The breakfast at the Grand Wailea was unbelievable! We indulged our first day and purchased the buffet to try everything that was available. Afterwards we selected a la carte.

The view at breakfast

We headed out to the aquarium our first morning there for a break from the sun. It was fascinating learning about the fish and wildlife, we'd see later in the week and learning of my husbands love for sea turtles. We returned and split our time between the beach and pool before heading to dinner.

At dinner at Alan Wong's Amasyia, Nick order many small dishes while I ordered sushi. When one of his dishes arrived, a tomato soup, he exclaimed "Erin take that cracker off, underneath there is a yin yang, right?" Surprised that he was correct, I inquired how he knew that. He shared he had seen this exact dish on an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate on the Food Network. Pretty cool! It was delicious.

The next morning, we headed to the famous spa. All spa treatments come with Terme Hydrotherapy and a sugar scrub treatment. You have access an hour before to enjoy the ammenties. Thinking Nick would be bored in the men's side, I reminded him to bring a book and suggested he go to the lanai to read. When I went to meet him, I had to have him called up. I couldn't drag him away and he went back for another hour after our treatment. It's not hard to imagine why! Check out the amazing pictures below! Since I couldn't take pictures myself, I pulled some of the promotional pictures to show off the incredible amenities.

The entrance to the spa. Photo Credit

The main area in the spa with the Western hot tub. The Eastern room based on Asian influences is not pictured.Photo Credit

My favorite the different sea salt baths of the different Hawaiian islands. Each one had different fragrances that were special to the different islands. Photo Credit

The waterfall showers (Nick's favorite) Photo Credit

We enjoyed our couples massage very much and left incredibly relaxed. We lounged on our lanai reading for the afternoon until our luau that evening.

I got Nick VIP seats for the show, knowing this was what he was looking forward to the most. He bought me this gorgeous and fragrant fresh lei. The food was delicious (except poi-but it's how the first Hawaiians survived, so I had to at least try it). The show was spectacular and informative.

I think this is long enough for now. I will finish our visit to Maui in the next two posts :)

xoxo,

Erin

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