Stuffed Peppers

One of my guilty pleasures is reality tv. Along with that, one of my favorite reality tv stars is Bethenny Frankel who started on the Real Housewives of New York. She now has her own show and website. She is quickly becoming famous for her "skinny" recipes. On her website are a ton of delicious modified recipes that are super easy and super delicious. A few of my favorites are the stuffed peppers, the turkey reuben, the baked chicken wings, and the skinny girl margarita (of course). The stuffed peppers are my absolute favorite because even though they look hard to make they are so easy and will wow just about anyone! Below is the recipe for stuffed peppers.

http://www.bethenny.com/2010/08/10/stuffed-peppers-recipe/

Skinny Taste

Over the past couple weeks, I have began searching the web for lighter recipes and ran across a great one. The name of the website is Gina's Skinny Taste (the URL is www.skinnytaste.com). On this website, a woman named Gina has created and reinvented many favorite recipes to be "lighter" and healthier. One of my favorites is her lightened chicken parmesan that is baked and only 220 calories per serving! Another of my favorites is her chicken quesadilla recipes which is super easy to add and remove whatever you like or don't like. She has a large variety of different types of food and especially some great comfort foods! If you like to cook, but are looking for a lighter option you should definitely check out this site!

Spinach Lasagna Rolls

In order to get my body prepared for spring break (along with almost every other college student over the last few months) I have started making healthier recipes. Recently, my sister sent me a new weight watchers recipe I really wanted to try. It's for spinach lasagna rolls and they were delicious. They were also extremely filling and not that bad for you! I invited my friend Jenn over to be a taste tester and she also really enjoyed it. Below is the recipe if anyone wants to give it a shot! I used fresh spinach and welted it in a skillet instead of frozen spinach (highly recommend).

Spinach Lasagna Rolls

9 lasagna noodles, cooked

10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and completely drained

15 oz fat free ricotta cheese (I like Polly-o)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg

salt and fresh pepper

32 oz tomato sauce

9 tbsp (about 3 oz) part skim mozzarella cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 350°. Combine spinach, ricotta, Parmesan, egg, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Ladle about 1 cup sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 12 baking dish.

Place a piece of wax paper on the counter and lay out lasagna noodles. Make sure noodles are dry. Take 1/3 cup of ricotta mixture and spread evenly over noodle. Roll carefully and place seam side down onto the baking dish. Repeat with remaining noodles.

Ladle sauce over the noodles in the baking dish and top each one with 1 tbsp mozzarella cheese. Put foil over baking dish and bake for 40 minutes, or until cheese melts. Makes 9 rolls.

To serve, ladle a little sauce on the plate and top with lasagna roll.

Omelets

I like to consider myself a pretty good cook. I can make a lot of different entrees and I certainly know how to make most basic items. However, for some reason I cannot for the life of me make an omelet. The cooks in Harcombe freshman year were absolute pros at making omelets, but not me. This week, I decided to look up an instructional video and found one on YouTube. In this particular video, the man explaining how to create an omelet uses a stove and an oven (which is just too much for a couple of eggs). He begins by cooking the omelet over the stove and once the bottom has solidified, he puts the filling on top and sticks it in the broiler to keep cooking. In my opinion that is just too much trouble. No one wants to take that much time cooking breakfast, let alone eggs. I tried this recipe and technique myself and still had no luck. I guess omelets are just not for me. From now on, I will be sticking to the normal scrambled eggs. Below is a link to the video I looked at:

How To Make the Perfect Omelet

My Cooking Background

As a kid, I always enjoyed being in the kitchen and helping my mom cook. No matter what she was making for dinner, I wanted to be her "helper". As I've grown up some, I have started to cook more on my own. I recently realized it is something I really love to do. In college I have had the opportunity to learn more on my own and try different recipes. Most of the skills I have I learned from my mom, grandma, and of course the Food Network. Whether I'm cooking for myself or family and friends I found that cooking truly makes me happy.

Mediation Paper

The last assignment in English 103 this semester was to do a mediation paper. A mediation paper is when you pick a topic that is controversial and explain both sides of the subject. You are to give the pros and cons and defend both of them, without being bias to one or the other. Once that part of the paper is completed, you are supposed to come to your own conclusion and help think of a solution to the problem while incorporating both views. Since we are college students, I thought the topic I chose was both relevant and appropriate. I chose to talk about the drinking age and its increase from eighteen to twenty one in 1984 under The National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Although most states had a choice, almost all states made the decision to raise the drinking age. This was because a few years ago Congress started tying highway funds to the drinking age. Unless a state raised it to twenty-one, then it would lose a percentage of the federal gasoline taxes its citizens had paid. The United States is currently the only country where the drinking age is twenty-one; it is also the highest. The most common drinking age for other countries is eighteen years old. The second most common drinking age is sixteen years old, followed by no minimum. In order to address all of the issues associated with the drinking age, I first had to identify why people agreed to it. After this I had to find out why people were opposed to it. Our teacher actually cut our paper down to one draft because we didn’t have enough time for two. In my brief, I basically outlined the purpose of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and why it worked and why it didn’t work, very ‘briefly.’ Then I used that as my outline to help write my actually paper. In the rough draft, I used about six sources and ended up with about six pages. It was a little rough because I wasn’t sure if my paper made sense organizationally and it I had enough citations or possibly too many. We did peer revising in class and then our teacher took the papers home to make a few marks. The next class he went over our papers individually with us which helped a lot. Some classmates helped me reorganize a few paragraphs that didn’t flow as well as others. My teacher helped correct a few citations that were wrong and some other mistakes with grammar, etc. After that, we got to fix our papers before turning them in for a final draft, which is due Friday, along with our learning record. All of the revisions helped shape my final draft by correcting small mistakes and reorganizing some things. I didn’t end up adding anything to my paper or taking anything out. I liked the information in my paper; it just needed a little tweaking. Overall, I was very happy with my paper and thought I did a thorough job and put a lot of effort into making this last project really count.

A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama's speech, "A More Perfect Union," was awesome. I listened to him when he came to Clemson so I already knew he was a good speaker. I enjoyed his speech at Clemson as well as this one. He knows exactly what to say and does a good job of addressing more than one group of people, like some other candidates. This type of speech was needed and I think it might be a deciding factor for some people to be a supporter. I think his speaking ability is his best asset and one of the reasons he is where he is today. He is very blunt on his opinions on race and gets right to the point. I find Obama to be very intelligent and articulate. I don't necessarily agree with all of his views but for the most part, I love him!