Mini Eggplant Parmesan

So when I went to the grocery store on monday I was wandering through the fresh produce sections trying to find good zucchini to pick when I saw eggplant and I thought "hm why I have a never tried to cook with eggplant before" and So I picked my self up a baby eggplant and spent the week contemplating what i should do with it. Now eggplant parmesan is the usual that would come to mind but I wanted throw in a kick to it change up the usual and so I thought of other ways I could work with it, eventually I stumbled on the idea of making it like a bruschetta and her I am. 

Ingredients: 

- 1 baby eggplant 

- 1 Can of Diced tomatos ( I got the green pepper and onion one from Delmonte)

- 1 egg

- Kraft Fresh Take Parmesan and bread Crumbs 

- Low Fat Mozzarella Cheese

So Kraft makes these nifty things for the person who is short on time they are genius! Shake and bake your way to plenty of opportunities with these babies and there are multiple flavors. 

Directions:

- Pre heat oven to 350 degrees

- Peal the eggplant and Slice it in to decently thin slices

- Egg the Slices of Eggplant then add them to the bag provided with fresh take and shake away

- Lay the breaded slices flat on a cookie sheet

- Bake for 30 minutes

- While the Eggplant is baking prepare the tomatos, Pour them in to a small sauce pan over low heat I like to add garlic powder or dried basil but thats up to you

- Once the Eggplant are baked take them out and scoop out a few tomatos to place on each slice of eggplant sprinkle on some shredded mozzarella 

- bake for another 5 to 10 minutes 

ENJOY! 

Let me know if you try out this style of eggplant parm and what you think! 

Stephaniexx

Take Me Out to The Ball Game

Yesterday I got to experience my first Yankee Game! it was so exciting and they ended up coming back to win by 1 in the eighth it was a great game. 

The reason I wanted to do a post on my experience at the Yankee game is because it can be a great date night idea or even a great trip with the family. Now maybe not to Yankee stadium but your local major or minor league game. Our tickets were only 6 dollars online and there was truely not a bad seat so even though we were up in the top section it was an amazing view and we could see everything clearly. 

So along with this post I am gonig to give you a few of my tips for a great game day with your significant other or your family. 

5 Tips for a Great Baseball game experience

1. Get there early!! we got to the stadium about an hour and a half early which was great because we had plenty of time to find our seats and get to watch some batting practice which for you kids can be alot of fun to watch them practice 

2. Now we didn't do this but if you have kids I would recomend getting bleacher seats, that way when home runs are hit your kids can have the chance to catch one, also durring batting practice they are thrown pitches to hit not to trick like in a game so durring batting practice there are alot more balls hit out to the bleacher seats and you have a better chance of catching one. 

3. If your local stadium has a museaum check it out the museaum at yankee stadium is free and was really cool they have photo ops through out lots of cool memorabilia

above are jus a few things that you can see at the Yankee museaum

4. Do your research on transportation, origionally Eddie and I planned on driving but I am so glad we decided not to. Besides the fact that not driving ment that we could both have a beer, we were both pretty tired after the excitement of the last few innings and the mass of people trying to get out of those parking garages was crazy!! So we opted to take the train which for yankee stadium is perfect we were able to take the train from about 10 min from our appartment and the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven lines all have special scheduals for game days so we got on one train and it took us right to the stadium and then right back to our local train station after. 

5. Eat before you get there!! stadium food is crazy priced I caved and bought some onion rings and they were 6 dollars for about 10 of them! However, to avoid any more caving from either of us we got subway and ate it on the train once we were about 20 min out from the stadium and it held us really well (until I saw someone else with onion rings I just couldn't resist) Same goes for buying apparel, and alcohol, visit your local sporting goods store the week before I can almost garuntee it will be cheaper. Also beer was really expensive our trick was to save up our change from the last few weeks and we went to a coin star right before we left and used our left over change as our beer money. 

we went alittle selfie crazy

I hope you enjoyed my tips for a great experience and consider taking a night out at a ball game for a great family outing or date night idea. I know we had fun and I am sure you will too! 

Stephaniexx

Chicken Pesto Pizza Bites

Tonight I decided to try something new, and one of my favorite foods to eat is chicken pesto pizza, but seeing as I have made the pizza before I was looking to do something alittle more creative with it. So after deliberation I came up with these. They are cheesy and delicous pizza bites. I did both pesto chicken bites as well as two with pasta sauce and cheese. 

Ingredients: 

- 3 flower tortillas ( I used Tostitos0 

- 3 chicken breasts grilled

- Pesto you will end up using like 5 tbsp atleast 

- Mozzarella cheese about a cup 

- If you want to make the regular pizza one you will need some type of pasta sauce 

Directions: 

- Grill Chicken with seasoning of salt and pepper, I do this on a george forman but you could do it on a regular grill also

- While the Chicken is grilling cut out the tortillas by using a large mug and cutting around it in a circle shape, if they arent perfect thats okay

- spray a muffin tin with cooking spray and place the circle tortillas in it.

- the tortillas will not fit perfectly, and will likely rip but don't worry they will still turn out okay just try to avoid the tearing of them

- Once the chicken is done cut them in to small cubes

- Combine the small cubes with pesto and mozzarella in a small bowl mixing them thuroughly

- Line the tortillas in the muffin pan with pesto a very thin layer

- Then fill the tortillas with the chicken pesto and mozzarella mix

- Sprinkle some mozzarella on top after you add the chicken

- then bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees

If you want to use just regular sauce then I put a small layer of mozzarella on the bottom of the tortilla and then added about a tablespoon of sauce and topped it off wiht more mozzarella 

I hope you try out this recipie and truly enjoy it. Let me know if you like this recipie and how it came out if you decided to try it for yourself! 

Stephanie xx

Oatmeal Apple Muffins

I am and always have been a baker I love being in the kitchen its relaxing and I love creating something delicious to share with my family and friends. Now in my health persuit baking really is a difficult task and with a limited pantry I struggle even harder. So these muffins were really a trial and error for me I wanted a healthy yet great tasting food that I could bake. So this churning in my head for a few days what to make what to try and how to do it. This gem is what I came up with, and I can promise you its good because eddie ate it and he is the pickiest sweet eater ever he doesn't like cake I mean come on who doesn't like cake? So anyway I can atest to the wonderful taste of these muffins and heres how to make them!

Ingredients:

- 1 6oz container of apple cinnamon chobani

- 2 packages of Quaker Instant Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal

- 1/2 tsp. baking powder

- 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract 

  Combine all the ingredients and distribute evenly in to a cup cake pan, make sure you use the paper cupcake things the mix is very sticky so would likely stick horribly to the pan if you didn't have them i think it would be horrible to get them out of the pan. 

Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Most important Do not remove them from the paper until they are cool! This is important becase they will fall appart if you dont let them cool and seal together. The ones that I ate this morning for breakfast came out of the paper 10 times better than the ones I ate last night so I really recomend patients here. 

Let me know in a comment below if you try out this recipie I would love to hear if it works out as well for you and what your opinions are on the muffins

Stephanie xx

Review of Lush Cosmetic Warrior Face Mask

Now I wouldn't say I have bad skin and at the same time I wouldn't say I have perfect skin so for me cleaning my face and using face masks is essentially to keep my face healthy help prevent minor break outs and prevent black heads. The one area that I do see trouble with my face is the area around my nose commonly had black heads and in my mind big pores. 

I have now used the cosmetic warrior face mask from Lush twice, and as it is supposed to I have found that it decreases the number of break outs and black heads that i have. As well as that I have found that it decreases the amoung of redness on my face and makes my skin very soft and smooth. In the last two weeks that I have been using it eddie has commented on the softness of my skin atleast three times. 

The one thing about this product that I have trouble with is its smell, it really doesn't smell that great and I know Lush has a few better smelling masks which I may try next time ( I know quite superficial of me but I like to smell happy things when I am treating myself). 

Application and Step by step feelings: 

I like to have a damp face to apply I usually apply right out of my bath, but wetting your face with a washcloth would work just as well. 

Apply a generous amount to your face avoiding eyes and mouth, now it does have peices in it which feel weird at first but you get used to them. 

Let it sit for about 10 minutes without it getting completely hard, youll start to feel it hardening but according to Lush you dont want the mask to completely harden. 

After the 10 min or so, take of the mask with hot water. 

After taking the mask off my face just feels cleaner, and smoother and the feeling after taking the mask off is probably the biggest reason I have for wanting to re purchase the Cosmetic Warrior. 

I hope you enjoyed this review if you would like to read more posts like this reviewing products let me know in a comment below! 

Stephaniexx

Brown Rice Chicken Stir Fry

Now going on with my healthy food kick I made stir fry with brown rice and vegetables. This is probably one of my favorite meals right now to make, its very simple, doesn't take much time, and is delicious. I also will make enough so that me and eddie will get more than one meal out of it (which by the way it taste pretty good cold too so I was able to take the left overs to eat for lunch the next day) 

What you'll Need: 

- 2 cups of rice

- 1 medium zucchini

- half a red pepper

- one medium onion 

- about a quater cup of teriyaki or stir fry sauce 

- 3 peices of chicken 

First grill the chicken I used my george forman but you can use a normal grill, while grilling the chicken start making the rice as instructed on the box, also chop up the zucchini onion and pepper for the peppers I like to cut them in to cubes and I use thin slices of zucchini becaus they cook quicker when they are thinner, then the onions I chopped into alittle smaller than the pepper (or should I say Eddie chopped because lets be honest I can not chop and onion with out crying and when I say crying I don't mean a few tears but a hysterical cry. I really hope I'm not the only one). 

I then put the vegetables in to a frying pan on meadium heat with some olive oil, I cover it with a lid to let it seam and leave it alone for about 3-5min after that I check it periodically stiring around the vegetables until they are all cooked thuroughly. 

Once the vegetables are all cooked I add the chicken and the Teriyaki sauce and let it simmer for another few minutes. I also add a little bit of teriyaki to the rice. 

Then mix together the rice and the Vegetables and Chicken in a large bowl and serve, I usually will take about half out before I serve and put it in to a tupperware container so that I already have that out and saved  to put in the refrigerator for the next day. 

If you have any suggestions for other ways to make a stir fry or different vegetables that you use let me know in a comment below, I am always willing to try new things! 

Stephanie xx

A day of Healthy Eating

For the past few weeks I have really been trying to eat healtheir and consistantly healthy throught out the day , yesterday I had a particularly good day of eating (probably because I was at school from 8:30 to 6:30 which doesn't leave much room for snacking) so I decided that I would go through what I ate. I came up with this idea because I was thinking about what snacks to bring for my day and I really struggled, so in this struggle I thought there must be other people who experience the same feeling. So here I am to give some of my snacks and meal ideas to those who are contemplating what should I eat today? 

Breakfast

8:00 AM

- 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites scrambled with some pepper

- 3 large strawberries 

Mid Morning Meal

10:00 AM

- Pear Chobani

and alittle abnormal psychology 

Lunch

12:00 PM 

- Spinach Leaves, half a cucumber, about a handful of low fat feta cheese, and low fat italian dressing

sorry the pictures blury

Afternoon Snack

2:30 PM 

now you may question my palette on this one

- Peanut Butter and Carrots 

I use JIF because they come in nifty little packs :) but I understand people may not be fans of peanut butter and carrots so if you want replace with your favorite carrot dipping condiment, or go just plain carrots which I do some days. 

Dinner

6:30 

- Stir fry with Chicken, Brown Rice, Zucchini, Red Peppers, and Teriyaki Sauce 

Hopefully you can take away a few ideas for you meal and snack plans, let me know if you like this idea/ style of posts in the comments below!

Stephaniexx