Behind starburst eyes

Dec 3

If You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again!

by starbursteyes

For my weekly weigh in and measurements this week, I’d lost a total of 9.6lbs since I started 3 weeks ago, and 1.5inches off my waist!

Then I had a rough day, I’ve gone back to university, so I have papers due because it’s nearing the end of the term, I was struggling to write one of them. Add in being scared about going for a CT Scan for the lump on my sternum and I made the bad decision to eat my feelings.

For the last 2 days I have enhaled carb filled, processed crap. I’ve also gained back 2lb cause when I go overboard, I’m damn good at it! So, I’m back up 2lb but I say it was a bad choice not a terrible one because I’m learning. I’m learning how deeply I really connect food with comfort. I am reminded of how many times that special time with my mom who passed away almost 3 years ago included “special foods”. I’m learning how vital it is for me to have at least a couple of pre-made comfort style keto foods frozen for myself.

To that end, I’ve found a delicious keto friendly chicken pot pie recipe, that at 3g net carbs means I can have 2 servings if I feel the need to do so without sabatoging my hard work!

The delicious recipe below is the creation of Kasey Trenum who you can find cooking up all kinds of fantastic recipes on her blog: Kasey Trenum

Ingredients
For the Chicken Pot Pie Filling:
2 tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup mixed veggies could also substitute green beans or broccoli
1/4 small onion diced
1/4 tsp pink salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 garlic cloves minced
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup chicken broth
1 tsp poultry seasoning
1/4 tsp rosemary
pinch thyme
2 1/2 cups cooked chicken diced
1/4 tsp Xanthan Gum
For the crust:
4 1/2 tablespoons of butter melted and cooled
1/3 cup coconut flour
2 tablespoons full fat sour cream
4 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup mild cheddar cheese, grated
1/3 cup Mozzarella Cheese, grated
1 1/2 tsp parsley (to sprinkle on top)

Instructions

  • Cook 1 to 1 1/2 lbs chicken in the slow cooker for 3 hours on high or 6 hours on low.
  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  • Sautee onion, mixed veggies, garlic cloves, salt, and pepper in 2 tablespoons butter in an oven safe skillet for approx 5 min or until onions are translucent.
  • Add heavy whipping cream, chicken broth, poultry seasoning, thyme, and rosemary.
  • Sprinkle Xanthan Gum on top and simmer for 5 minutes so that the sauce thickens. Make sure to simmer covered as the liquid will evaporate otherwise. You need a lot of liquid for this recipe, otherwise, it will be dry.
  • Add diced chicken.
  • Make the breading by combining melted butter (I cool mine by popping the bowl in the fridge for 5 min), eggs, salt, and sour cream in a bowl then whisk together.
  • Add coconut flour and baking powder to the mixture and stir until combined.
  • Stir in cheese.
  • Drop batter by dollops on top of the chicken pot pie. Do not spread it out, as the coconut flour will absorb too much of the liquid.
  • Bake in a 400-degree oven for 15-20 min.
  • Set oven to broil and move chicken pot pie to top shelf. Broil for 1-2 minutes until bread topping is nicely browned. Sprinkle dried parsley on top.

Nutrition

For 1/8 of the pie: Calories: 297kcal | Carbohydrates: 5.3g | Protein: 11.6g | Fat: 17g | Fiber: 2g

keto

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Aug 4

Step 3: Kill it with fire

by starbursteyes

Every blog posting about buying a used trailer to fix up will tell you that more work is needed than you think.

Naively, I ignored the myriad of warnings 😦 and I ended up finding this:

While I knew from the back that one small section of floor would need to be replaced I had no idea how bad it actually was or the real reason why.

I’d been told the back corner ripped when it was moved as a deck was attached to it and not properly unattached before they moved it, the real truth was much, much worse:

Carpenter ants, hundreds of them living and swarming throughout the entire inside of the walls and floor. The more we removed hoping it was the last “bad” section the more we found 😦 Was it hard on the kids and I to realize we wouldn’t be travelling this summer and that our plan for this trailer was not going to go anything like we’d thought…yep!

But as we took the entire trailer apart, separated each type of material, recycled what we could and brought the rest in multiple loads to the dump, I was able to help them to see that even though we plan, life doesn’t always go according to plan and we have 2 choices: Give up or give it all we’ve got to create a solution.

For this specific case we simply started again but from the ground up lol. Which meant our new first step was cleaning any loose rust from the chassis and then treating it with tremclad.

Now the real building begins! With just over 5 weeks left until I begin University again and the kids start their homeschooling year again the race is on! Do I think the whole thing will be finished in 5 weeks, no I truthfully don’t. BUT we’ll have the floor, walls, and roof done at least and that will give us more time to work on the inside of it on weekends as it gets cooler.

As we build a tiny home now instead of fixing up a trailer we’ll learn lots, work hard, and grow a dream and memories together. Wish us luck! 😀

Family Fun mom life Mommyhood: Fake it till you make it Secret Garden

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Jun 7

NOT leaving on a jet plane

by starbursteyes

Awhile back I stated I wanted to take a figurative big leap, and I did, well I started too…I bought 5 plane tickets to Portugal, and then plane or bus tickets to 15 more countries for a trip spanning 4 months. I researched different places, museums, historical sites, UNESCO World Heritage sites, different travel sites innumerable “top 10 places/things to do” downloaded walking tour apps, street and local transit maps for each place we’d go to, and booked places for us to stay. I was SO excited!

Then Covid-19 struck the world 😦 As of writing this over 100,000 people have lost their lives to this pandemic…I can’t even begin to express my sorrow for the families of those who have passed from it.

Over the past two months our family has attempted to adjust and get through this time of uncertainty, fear and social distancing. It hasn’t always been easy or pretty. I chose an apartment because I didn’t want to pay more for a house with a big backyard when “the world was our backyard”. Instead we went and did all sorts of things, played at parks, used our local libraries, went on nature walks at conservations, and so on. But for many weeks now all of those options have been closed to all residents of our province (as they are in many countries worldwide).

Slowly the cancellation emails came from the airlines, only 2 flights have received refunds, the rest are credits for future travel. While there have been many messages back and forth for various Airbnb stays 3/4 of the reservations have been refunded to us, and I’m still attempting to receive the rest at least as credits.

So now what? Our grand adventure has been put on hold for an indefinite period of time, and we’re in an apt with no backyard of our own for the kids to run around in.

Well now a new adventure begins, because I can curl up and cry about our cancelled plans (okay I might have already done that a time or 2) or I can do something else. Stay tuned dear readers for my next wild plan!

Family Fun Mommyhood: Fake it till you make it Secret Garden

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Dec 29

Cream puffs and Cannoli’s

by starbursteyes

While nowadays it’s common advice for a husband to NOT give his wife kitchen appliances for special occasions, in my house that advice is false. Here, I love to cook and bake, and adore all the gadgets out there that help to make it easier to make even more creations. To that end my husband bought me a deep fryer this past week and I LOVE it. I’ve made far too many deep fried foods and had a blast doing it!

One of the best parts about my gift is that I am not the only one that adores using it. My kids are all interested in cooking and baking and I encourage them all to learn such a valuable life skill as culinary skills are! While I realize that knowing how to make perfect cannoli’s or cream puffs or even breaded deep fried stuffing patties are not essential to their lives, it certainly doesn’t hurt to know how 🙂 I know my eldest loves to bake more than cook, so he’s been thrilled with the baking we’ve doing, (as well as his new camouflage print apron I made him for Yule and his own set of piping tools.)

Me, while I love the baking, it’s the memories we make together, and the conversations we have as we go that I love the most. For example, I’d never made cannoli’s before, and so while I’d found a recipe online I didn’t have cannoli tubes, so I improvised. Some of my ideas were great and worked wonderfully, if a little large, but others were disasters. As Mr. C was trying so hard to make me feel better with encouraging words about how they weren’t “that bad” and that they “looked great!” I smiled and let him in on a secret. I don’t mind that they weren’t perfect from the start. I only mind if I give up before I get the hang of it. I believe that with enough effort and attempts, with perseverance I’ll succeed. He looked at me with surprise and asked “But aren’t you mad that you didn’t make them right, right away? Doesn’t it make you upset that one’s burnt, and that one’s totally flat?” and so I told him “No, I know that cannoli’s are said to be tricky, and even if they were thought of as easy I’d still be okay with needing time to master them. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to mess up and have terrible results, as long as you don’t give up, as long as you don’t quit.”

I wanted him to know that it’s okay to mess up, we all do, at least if we’re really living we do. When we’re fully immersed in life, in our life, it’s a messy, convoluted, upside down, right side out tilt a whirl experience. I don’t want him to be afraid to fully live because he thinks he’ll get it wrong, I want him to smile and learn from his mistakes cause eventually the cannoli’s will turn out great 😉

 

 

P.S The recipe I used for the cannoli’s was: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cannoli-2/ 

The cream puffs: http://www.andtheycookedhappilyeverafter.com/2013/06/15/grampa-murphys-boston-cream-donuts/

However the breaded deep fried stuffing patties was all my idea 🙂 I used a half bread half potato stuffing as that is what I had on had as it’s the only stuffing any of my family ever makes. Our grandpa used it, and our parents all learnt it and used it and now my brother and even some of our cousins still use this one recipe for stuffing. I think a bread only stuffing wouldn’t have held together as well in the deep fryer as well as one that was thicker from the potatoes added, so be careful what recipe you choose if you’re going to make those 🙂

Autism; second verse same as the first

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