Taco Dilemma

I had the most amazing weekend. I got to spend it with my friends and my family but it took a toll on me. For 16 weeks I've done nothing but eat sleep and drink healthy and worked out. Even on my off days I've done pretty well. This weekend we joined a good friend of mine for her birthday. Dinner and dancing... Why not?! Sounds like a great idea plus by dancing I'll be able to burn those extra calories off. Well fast forward to today. It took everything in my being to get on that elliptical and pump through 45 minutes on a level that I am very much use too. But I didn't stop, I kept going trying very hard not to look at the time I had remaining. I'm focused on the tv to get my mind of how bad I'm sucking on this machine. Where the hell is my drive?! And then in that moment a Taco bell commercial appears on the screen. "Oh my! Tacos"!!! They looked so good! I see that I've burned a pretty good amount of calories already so really one taco from Taco bell won't hurt, right?! I snap myself out of this taco haze... What the hell was I doing?! I've worked this hard and the one thing I can see after this workout is a freaking taco?!? But I really really want a taco bad!

Finally done with my cardio and drooling over yet another Taco Bell commercial I decide that I will have my tacos but a cleaner and healthier version. To the store I head, on a mission, a taco mission!

I'm standing in front of dozens of tortilla options and start pondering "soft or crunchy taco... CRUNCHY"! Not only does H-E-B have their corn tortillas on sale, but they are only 80 calories a piece versus 120 for flour tortillas. I head to the meat department and of course I get the ground turkey. Red meat & I don't get along whats-so-ever so I always choose white meat instead. Now you can't have tacos with bland meat so I head to the instant seasoning in a package. Wait? Whoa? What? Pre-packaged seasoning, that's not very clean? Don't fret y'all, I just scoped out the seasoning that were in the package. Most of them I already had at home except the oregano and paprika. You can't have tacos without cheese, so I get the 2% Mexican shredded cheese. These tacos were much much better than Taco Bell and fewer calories.

Taco Seasoning:
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon black pepper

You can probably add salt to this recipe but I don't use salt so that's why it's not up there.

Turn a muffin pan upside down and place your tortilla shells in-between to slat to form a taco or a taco bowl. Heat the oven to 350 and cook or about 15 minutes.

Brown your turkey, make sure there is no pink left. Add about 1 cup of water and the seasoning. Stir together and let simmer til sauce thickens.

Now I also sautéed some bell peppers and onion because I love the flavor. Time to assemble your tacos! I also added a little salsa on top of mine. For tacos like mine, the caloric intake is about 195 calories. Just remember if you add more condiments, add those calories to it! My tacos 195 calories, a supreme taco from Taco Bell 220 calories.

Mini Pizzas

Here recently my daughters have gotten on a pizza kick. Instead of spending money on a carry out pizza from our local pizza chain, I decided to make my own. I knew my husband made pizzas once on a camping trip and I was going to try and re-create it. All I needed was the unsliced pita bread. I headed to my local grocery store. I wandered the bread aisle, frozen food section, and even bakery but pitas were no where in site. That got me thinking, what else could I use as a base, the very foundation of a pizza but without the tedious process of making pizza dough. I wanted something small enough that my girls could handle. Back to the bread aisle I went. Looking at the many round options I had, tortillas, sandwich bread rounds, bagels, and English muffins. So let's start narrowing down our options. Tortillas... Big NO! That would not work, the tortilla would burn before the sauce, cheese, and pepperoni would melt into a ooey gooey goodness. Sandwich rounds... Eh maybe but again I didn't want the bread to burn before it all heated up. Bagel... Yes, eh maybe but it would be too hard after toasting and my girls would have a hard time biting through it much less chewing it. English muffin... YES!! That would be perfect. So I looked around at my options on the bread aisle and saw the prices... Who wants to spend $3-$7 on four English muffins. I knew I had to come up with something else. I wandered over to the pop-can biscuits and next to them at the very bottom I see the grocery store brand of sourdough English muffins for... $.99 for SIX!!! SCORE!!! I got the other few items I needed to make this lunch and headed home.

So let the assembly begin, I slice the English muffin in half, spread 1Tbs of pizza sauce on it, layered my cheese, and popped on three pepperoni because that's all I could really fit on there. I ventured outside to hit up our propane gas grill. Once it was warned up, those little round pizza goodness were placed on the grill that was set to low. I let them cook/warm up for about 10 minutes. You can probably do this in the oven but I wanted the taste of the grill in the pizza. The bottom of the English muffin gets crunchy while the middle stays nice and soft. Needless to say, the mini pizzas are a hit and are made at least once a week.

For those of you moms that want the caloric value of these mini pizzas, you are looking at about 575 for two slices (one whole English muffin).