Favorite Meal

Jeff and I always try to eat healthy at home. That's the problem... We do it at home - but the past year have started eating out constantly. I was so busy, tired or because we wanted to -whatever the reason, we ate out a lot. So our goal of the new year was to eat out only one time per week. We always make that Saturday because we are running around or plan an activity away from home. Jeff has been taking his lunch, we eat steel cut oats for breakfast and since before Christmas, we have only eaten out once a week. Wow, we have really saved some money!

One of the dinners that we have eaten a lot are black bean tostados. We discovered we really liked them and they are really healthy! A few people asked for the recipe, which I don't have one since I just "made it". But here is what I do...


BAKED BLACK BEAN TOSTADA
Shells
Brush corn tortillas LIGHTLY with olive oil. You can skip the olive oil, but they don't get as crispy. But just use a small amount. In a pre-heated oven at 350, place them directly on the rack. Flip often - wait until they are golden brown to pull from the oven. But be careful - they will go from nice and golden to nasty really quickly.

Beans
I used canned black beans. Rinse them well. All of the starch settles at the bottom which is just added calories. Smash the beans with a potato masher and add milk to make it a refried bean consistency. (Whatever you like) I add a little cumin, garlic powder, onion powder and salt/pepper. Let beans heat up and simmer for a few minutes.

Top with Lettuce, Tomato, onion and cheese if you want.

Variation:
We do everything the same except we add sauteed chicken with onion and red bell peppers. Season similar to a fajita.
Place chicken on top of beans & top with lettuce, tomato and cheese.

We calculated 135 calories per tostada. This is the bean only tostada. It will vary depending on the amount of cheese you add, the brand of beans, the shells etc.

2009

This past year has not been an easy one... I am going to journal the last two months and END THE YEAR!

Thanksgiving - we usually go to my Aunt Celeen's for Thanksgiving. We LOVE going. My aunt Laurie and her family come as well as my Aunt Ann. We LOVE going and have so much fun. We play games, laugh, wrestle, and the SHOP the following morning. We love it. This year, sadly, we weren't able to go.
The morning before Thanksgiving my sister and mom woke us early banging on our door. (never happens). My mom was home alone all night. Around 4am, two armed men broke into her home and robbed her. They tied her up, pushed her to the ground and she laid tied up for two hours while they cleaned her house out of any valuables. A very horrifying experience. So we stayed home and had Thanksgiving at our house at the last minute.

Christmas - Christmas eve we had a ton of snow which "ruined" our Christmas Eve traditions. But we were so excited about the snow, we didn't care. It was beautiful! We stayed home and just hung out together, which was awesome. Christmas morning came fast and how fun we had opening gifts with Ethan! He is such a little man and was so excited for everything. He would open it, take the box to his aunt Sarah and then tell her to open the box. Then he would run to the next gift to open. He had so much fun! I loved watching him learn about Christmas presents.
Shortly after opening his gifts, my dear sweet little boy was attacked by our dog. Yes, our dog. She was old and I think senile. Thankfully my sister Sarah was sitting with them and she was able to open the dogs mouth while I pulled Ethan out from her grip. She bit and wouldn't let go of his cheek. We are SOO grateful that she missed his eye, nose and ear. She got only his cheek. Unfortunately, it was a rather deep bite and so the wounds were worse than they looked. We rushed him to the ER. Well, tried to rush. Because of the snow, we were snowed in and couldn't get our van out. Our neighbor, who we have never even talked to, came running out to help and they tried to shovel, dig, push the van but we couldn't get it out. We called a friend that has a truck and was pulling people out, but we were so distraught and it felt like he was taking forever. (He really wasn't -the blood just made it seem that way!) The neighbor said we could take his car (after we got it out of the snow) and so we took off to Mercy. Our neighbor can't know how grateful we are that he let perfect strangers take his car in the snow to take our baby to the hospital.
We spent a good chunk of the day at the hospital. But since Ethan had eaten, they couldn't sedate him so they cleaned his face and bandaged it. We were told to come back the next morning and the surgeon would repair his cheek. The poor little guy couldn't eat or drink after midnight and he didn't have his surgery until almost noon. I felt so bad for him. He was so hungry and in so much pain. The Dr (despite being a MAJOR JERK) did a great job on his face. Ethan had over 20 stitches on the outside and inside. So far he's been back to his office and had the stitches out, but has to wear the steri strips on his face for 4-6 weeks until it heals. We have to ATTEMPT to keep Ethan from crying or playing so that it can heal. He's become quite the spoiled guy because we are trying to keep him from crying. So if he wants something, he gets it. When he's done healing, the poor guy is going to have to go through baby boot camp. Hahaha

Jeff went to the basketball game with James Eddleman and friends for New Years Eve. Ethan and I spent a WONDERFUL evening home alone watching Wizard of Oz, eating pizza and going to bed early.

The last few months of 2009 were difficult to say the least, we are hoping for 2010 to be so much better!