Recipe Sharing: Sweet Potato Gratin

We are big fans of sweet potatoes, and I found this recipe in a recent issue of Wegman's magazine. We're having it tonight with seared scallops and salad. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Gratin
Yield: 8 servings (nutritional info below)

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 3 sweet potatoes (or yams) (2 1/2 lbs), peeled, sliced 1/8-inch thick
  
• Salt and pepper
  
• 1 cup (1/2 pint) fresh heavy cream

Directions

Use a 2-quart shallow casserole dish. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Coat bottom of casserole dish with oil; sprinkle with garlic. Cover bottom of dish with single overlapping layer of sliced sweet potatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Repeat until all potatoes are used. Pour cream over potatoes. Bake, uncovered, 30-35 min, until potatoes are tender and top browned. Let rest 5 min before serving.

Nutrition Info: Each serving (1/ 3 cup) contains 220 calories, 24 g carbohydrate, (4 g fiber), 4 g protein, 13 g fat, (7 g saturated fat), 40 mg cholesterol, and 50 mg sodium.

New Fave Shows

Lots of new TV shows have started in the last couple of weeks, so we've been sorting through them and figuring out what we want to add to our watching. I've been trying to cut back on how much time we spend in front of the TV, so this means we've dumped some shows in order to add others.

Here's what's on tap...

1. Glee - This show is great - the music is fun, the characters are likable and the stories are funny. My only beef is that it seems like most of the women on the show (the cheerleading coach, the wife of the Glee director, the cheerleader) are all schemers. Where are the nice girls??

2. The Perfect Wife - I'm a Julianna Margulies and Chris Noth fan, and I really liked the storyline of the first episode. She's balancing career with family and a screwed up marriage/husband.

3. Flash Forward - We haven't seen this yet (it airs tonight), but I'm holding out hoped since it's from the same guys who made Lost.

Of course there are the stand-by shows we'll continue to watch, like Survivor, Amazing Race and The Mentalist. I will miss ER this year!

What are you watching?

A little sarcasm never hurt

I'm not big on Hollywood celebrities sharing their political views, but I do enjoy some good sarcasm! A friend shared this, and I thought it was too funny not to pass along - enjoy!

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Catching Up

We've been pretty busy for the fast few days and I haven't taken the time to write a blog. Now I'm parked in front of the tee-vee watching the stars dance, so I'm finally getting to it.

We went on a big hike last Saturday -- 8+ miles! We were actually hunting for a few geocaches, and Rob mistakenly thought we'd be on trails the whole time. He couldn't have been more wrong! We did some major bushwacking and blazed our own path. We climbed down hills and scrambled up others. I only had a minor breakdown - I'm terrified that I can't do it with my ankle still on the mend - but we did great and had such a fun time.

I have some good recipes to share.... we've been trying out some new things, so I need to get a few in order and I'll post them here. Tomorrow night we are having sweet potato gnocchi from Whole Foods, which I'm very anxious to fix like this.

So many good TV shows starting/resuming! I'm going to have to be selective -- there's no way I can watch as much as I think I can. Thank goodness for "on demand" that allows me to catch up on shows that we don't DVR.

Off to bed!

Let 'em sing it for you

This is too funny. The radio station I listen to was talking about it this morning -- you basically type in text, and it pulls the words from songs, pieces them together and sings it for you.

I, of course, am wasting all sorts of time with this. :)

Let Them Sing it For You

First Five Minutes

Kick-back and see the first five minutes of the season Grey's Anatomy premiere...

Recipe Sharing: Baked Oatmeal

I ran across a similar recipe on another blog, made a few tweaks and served this for dinner last night with eggs and toast on the side. Super easy, and super yummy. Enjoy!

Baked Oatmeal
Yield: 6 small servings

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups oatmeal
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and mix with all other ingredients. Put in an 8x8 baking dish; bake for 30 minutes. Top with fresh berries and chopped pecans. Optional: could add dried cranberries/raisins into the mix before baking, or as an additional topping.

Charm City

Rob and I decided to head up to Baltimore yesterday for a little exploring and a fun dinner in the Little Italy part of town. Baltimore is about 50 minutes from us, so it's an easy drive.

We started at the Aquarium, which is cool, but not nearly as nice as the one in Atlanta. Of course it's a lot older, but it's a lot darker and the displays aren't as fun. Regardless, we had fun and saw lots of cool sea creatures.

We'd packed a lunch, so we sat by the Inner Harbor and ate our pb&j and other snacks, then set out on foot for some geocaching and looking around. All told, we walked 8 miles! My favorite stops on the walk were the park on Federal Hill and our cannoli after dinner at Vaccaro's. :)

Oprah's Party

This is pretty cool...

Eight Years

I've seen lots of blog and Facebook posts today commemorating the eight years since September 11, 2001.

I can't believe it's been eight years. Where has the time gone?

I remember a lot about that day. I was working for a big Internet company, located near Dulles airport. My co-worker's husband was a lobbyist for the FAA, and she came down to my office to tell me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. This was before it was online or on the news, so we headed into our office kitchen, where the TV was always on CNN. We flipped the channels until we saw something, finally landing on the Today Show.

There a bunch of us all stood, watching it happen. I remember seeing the plane crashing into the second tower and hearing Al Roker gasping. I remember another co-worker running into the kitchen, crying about the Pentagon and being so worried about her daughter who was in a daycare nearby.

I remember calling Tessa from my desk, and her telling me that the buildings were falling. I remember being evacuated (Being too close to Dulles and the hosting spot for the majority of Web transactions maybe made our giant building a target? Everyone thought they were a target that day). I remember calling my mom at school as I drove to a co-worker's house to wait out the afternoon, and mom telling me that a fourth plane had crashed in Pennsylvania.

I remember watching the coverage, seeing the posters of the missing and hearing their families' pleas to find them safely. I sat on the couch and cried.

Eight years. Wow. I remember it like it was yesterday.

PT Graduation

I finished my last physical therapy session yesterday. Hooray! I have to say that my eight weeks there (probably 15 sessions or so) have been so, so helpful in my recovering the majority of mobility. When I started there in July, I walked with a gimp and was a total chicken to try anything that might remotely hurt.

Now I can run, balance on my bad leg and play catch, jump with two feet, walk at 4/miles per hour on the treadmill and do pretty much everything else I used to do. Jumping on the bad ankle (just on one foot) is still a little tricky, since I can't really push off solely on that foot yet, but I'm working on it.

What's next? Keeping up with the stretches and exercises recommended by my therapist. She said it can take up to a year to regain everything, and she feels confident that I'll regain 90-95% of my mobility. I'm thankful for that!

New Favorite Snacks

I had about 30 minutes in Target the other day as I was waiting for my prescription to be filled. Dangerous! I was hungry, so I pursued the snack aisles and found some new goodies:


SmartFood Cranberry Almond Clusters. So good, and not bad for you at 120 cals and 2g of fat. Way overpriced, yes. But so good! I bought mine on sale, and I'll watch for the next sale. I think there are also several other flavors.







Hershey's Pumpkin Spice Kisses. If I can't have a Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte (no sugar-free option), I'll have three Kisses instead. I'm not a fan of candy corn, but if you are, there's a Candy Corn Kiss, too.





Fiber One Strawberry Oat Bars. Again, not bad for you with 140 cals, 3g fat and 9g fiber (notice I did not offer nutrition for the Pumpkin Spice Kisses). I'm a fan of pretty much every Fiber One product, and this is no exception. My only pet peeve is that I'm pretty sure they used to come six to a box, and now there are only five. And the box is still the same price. Hmmmm.



What are you favorite snacks?

Long time, no blog

I've been a negligent blogger the last few weeks. It's not that I don't have anything to say. In fact, I think of things throughout the day that I plan to blog about, but somehow I never get to it.

So Labor Day is over, which means summer is grinding to a halt. Boo! We spent this weekend at the lake with Rob's family, and we saw my parents on Friday night for dinner. We had a relaxing few days of cook-outs, walks and sitting by the lake. Despite the clouds and chilly temps, it was a fun weekend.

Work has been getting busier and busier as we approach the fall conference season. We are headed to Chicago in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to it.

We are having some friends over for dinner this week, so I tested out one of the side dish recipes I'm fixing: 5-Minute Individual Potato Gratins. Yum! It's a total winner, so easy and very good! I saw this on the Next Food Network Star and recommend you make them too.

I am in a vacation planning mood and might start looking around the Web for ideas and deals... who knows where we'll go next?