Red Chili for a Redheaded Girl

Over the years, I have grown a deep love for all things spicy.  If asked what I would eat if I had to eat the same meal every day for the rest of my life, on a good day I would say chili.  On a bad day, I would say celery because I would be feeling less-than-pretty and eating celery actually burns calories!  But anyway, I’m here to talk about the good days.  Chili is one of my favorite foods because it is many things:

• Colorful (which is fun and by default means somewhat healthy)
• Flavorful
• Protein-packed (beans and meat?!)
• Hearty
• Hot (in temperature and flavor)
• Red (like my head)

Because I’m such a chili-lover, Mr. Converse Sneakers set out to make the best chili ever.  He’s a great hubby – he loves cooking for me and hearing what I think about his cooking.  I love that man so much (even more than chili)!

A few of you suggested that Mr. CS make an appearance here from time to time to talk about manly things.  Well, he has his own blog, so I thought whenever he writes about something you might like reading about, I’ll link to it.



Today, he’s talking about my new favorite chili that is low in calories (made with ground turkey) and betcha-by-golly-wow full of flavor.  He adapted a recipe and his posted it on his blog.  Check it out here on Obviously Cheddar.

Let me know if there is anything else you would like his input on around here!

Acorn Squash Apple Soup

A couple weekends ago, my parents came up bearing gifts.  One of the gifts consisted of two beautiful acorn squashes from their garden.  On Sunday, we finally got around to making something with one of the squashes.  My mom gushed to me about how amazing acorn squash apple soup is, so we decided to give it a try using this recipe as a guide, though we strayed from it.

The recipe calls for:

1 small onion, diced

1 acorn squash, peel seeded

1 carrot, peeled and sliced (we used a bunch of baby carrots)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/2 cups apple juice

2 cups vegetarian broth or 2 cups chicken broth (we used chicken base with water)

1 apple, peeled cored,and chopped (we use honeycrisp from a local market)

1/2 cup heavy cream

salt

white pepper (we used black pepper)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 pinch of fresh grated nutmeg (we left this out – don’t have nutmeg on hand)

1 teaspoon brown sugar or 1 teaspoon maple syrup (we used brown sugar)

yogurt or sour cream (to garnish) (left this out)

grated nutmeg (to garnish) (left this out and garnished with cinnamon)

The recipe is incredibly easy!  The hardest part was prepping everything.  It involved a good amount of chopping.

Of course, Mr. Converse Sneakers steps in to chop everything because I have delicate hands!  Ha, yeah right!

Just a tip, use a very good knife when peeling and chopping an acorn squash.  One person in the photo above may or may not have almost cut his or her finger off . . . He or she is okay though. :P

After all the goodies were chopped, in to our pot they went for about two minutes.

Then, we added the juice, stock, apple, and seasoning, adding the heavy cream once everything became tender.

We then poured it all into our blender and took ‘er for a spin.  It was loud and I thought at one point the blender might explode, but what we came away with was this:

OOOO-EEEE!  Let me tell you, this soup is DELICIOUS!  I’m the kind of girl who usually only eats stews and really thick, hearty, chock-full-of-goodies soups, like minestrone, beef stew, chili (loaded to the top with meat and beans).  I like soups I can dip things into and come back up with a heaping pile of food on my bread/cracker/chip.  This soup is not like that, but somehow it was able to woo me.  It’s the perfect blend of sweet and salty.  The texture is really nice and a little thick.  It’s a wonderful soup for the fall and I’ve eaten it every day since!

Now, we still have another acorn squash to use up – any suggestions?

Eating Our Way Through Our Marriage

As a newlywed, I am learning a lot of new things about marriage, compromise, trust, love, yadda yadda, so on and so forth.  Okay, I know all of these are important things, but lately I’ve been thinking about the shift in my eating habits.  Now that’s an important topic, right?  Well I think so!  It’s not something the priest talked to us about when we were going through premarital counseling, and nobody said anything to us about it when we were asking for advice about marriage.  What gives, people?

Eating takes up a large amount of time every day.  Think about it, eating is one of the main things we must do to live.  Think of all the time spent planning, thinking about, actually eating, cleaning up after eating, planning some more, and then doing it all again the next day.  That’s a lot of time spent for each meal and snack every day!  This is an important topic.  I demand it be included in premarital counseling programs across the world!

So, what exactly am I talking about?  Well, picture Mr. Converse Sneakers, a wonderful man who loves to eat.  He wakes up, thinks about food, eats breakfast, thinks about lunch, goes to work where he cooks food, comes home, thinks about dinner . . . I think you get the point.  This man lives and breathes food.  He even has a blog if you would like to check it out that is mostly about food, fittingly called Obviously Cheddar.  He likes to cook every meal, and he likes the food to be good.  He loves hearty comfort foods and man foods like burgers, potatoes, flavorful hotdishes (yeah, that’s what we call casseroles here in the land of 10,000 lakes), and steak.

Case in point:

He wouldn’t be as adorable eating a salad every day.  It wouldn’t be right.

Then you have me, who spent my senior year of college eating fruity flaxseed shakes for breakfast, a healthy veggie-packed sandwich for lunch, and lean cuisines or small bowls of pasta for dinner.  I love the same foods as Mr. CS but I also like eating healthy, balanced meals.  This was my favorite dinner of the summer:

Grilled Caesar-Vinaigrette Salad.  Insane.

Getting married has put a strain on both of our eating habits.  As much as we would both like to be healthy all the time, Mr. CS needs his manly burger-y foods in order to feel manly, or something.  I don’t understand men, but I’m sure there’s a good reason for it.  He loves the flavor.  He is willing to work out harder if it means he can have a delicious dinner.  He is less willing to sacrifice for healthy food like I am.  I would rather eat something semi-tasty with little splurges here and there and make my workouts count for more.

What does this mean for me?  Well, considering he has taken on the role of head chef here at our happy casa, he wins the food battle most of the time.  I no longer eat meals like this every other day:

Instead, we’re whipping up hotdishes, grilling pizza, and doing not-so-belly-friendly-things with our diet.
But, we’re working on it.  We are trying to introduce a lot healthier foods like brown rice, whole wheat pasta, lighter dressings, ground turkey breast, and other healthier alternatives to our favorite foods.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes down the road.  It’s been a struggle changing my eating habits, but food makes my hubby smile, so I’m willing to pack a few more calories into each meal for that.

How did your eating habits change when you got married?

State Fair Calorie Counting

This week has been full of Minnesota traditions!  First, it was the Renaissance Festival with my parents, and now the state fair with none other than my favorite hubby man, Mr. Converse Sneakers!  I sure love our county fair back home where both Mr. CS and I grew up, but we REALLY love the MN State Fair.  Why?

The food, duh!  If you want to know anything about our marriage, it is that it is food-driven.  Sure, we love each other and all, but we really love food!  Ha, of course I’m kidding just a bit, but we seriously spend much of our time together talking about food-related topics.

I thought it would be fun to tease you all with photos of the delicious treats we shared, and while you are drooling over each one, you can try to guess the calorie count.  I have no idea how many calories were in any of these, nor do I ever want to know, but I thought it would be fun to play along.

Let’s go!

Numero uno . . .



Ginger soda and ginger beer.  I guess 250 calories (we only had the soda).

For breakfast we had number two . . .



A HUGE cone of chocolate chip cookies.  I guess 1,500.



Numero tres was called “Puff Daddy On-A-Stick” which was Asian sausage rolled in puff pastry and drizzled with peanut sauce.  Hmm….400 is my modest guess.

We’re up to 2,150 calories guessed so far!



We had to have the caramel apple funnel cake which I think weighs in at least at 1,000!  It was huge!



Mr. Converse Sneakers had to have more beer at what I will guess is 200 calories.



Square cheese curds?



Nope . . . SPAM curds!!!  I only eat Spam at the fair, and boy was it delicious!  I guess 700.  I sure hope I am over-guessing.



One vendor was selling a kit to make frozen wine.  I normally don’t like wine unless it’s the really cheap, sweet stuff, but this was delicious!  I ‘d guess 90 calories in that little sample.



Chicken fried bacon was a must, especially with the cinnamon maple syrup sauce!  Definitely gotta be close to 700 here.

And now we’re up to 4,840 predicted calories!

But that’s not all!





Deep fried oreos!  I guess another 800.  I don’t even know what to base these predictions off of!  I’m sure I’m way off – but it’s fun!  You should play, too!





This raspberry malt from the dairy building was my favorite of the day.  The raspberries were so fresh and the vanilla malt was out of this world.  Mixed together, they were heavenly!  I’d say 500.



And lastly, the Australian battered potatoes.  YUMMY!  They were so good covered in nacho cheese and ranch.  They have to be pushing 1,200 calories, don’t you think?  They were huge!

So, I finished with an estimate of 7,340 calories eaten!  Well, we split everything but the beer, so it was more like 3,670 per person which is not horrible since that is all we ate all day, only putting us about 1,000 over our daily limit.  Only?  Haha, all for the sake of tradition.  But these were all guesses.  What’s your guess?

I also wanted to share some photos I took of the fun-filled day:



Apparently, I’m not the only Minnesotan who loves the fair.



Of course we had to check out the home improvement buildings!



Such pretty colors!



How many calories would you suppose is in a head sculpted out of butter?



How many calories . . .  Oh, heck, I’m just kidding!  Pigs are one of my favorite animals. I’ve always wanted to name one Disco.  These little ones were just a day old and oh so cute!  One was trying to shake his ears off his own head.  Darling!



We’ll end this post with a shot of my studly man who likes to wear those red sneakers.  I love him so!

What fatty foods do you love to indulge in?

What was your final count of how many calories we ate?

Pssst....Mr. CS also posted his version of the day.  Check it out on his blog here.