Portobello Mushroom Pizza

Ingredients and their Calories:
Mushroom (100g) 26 calories
Ham 1oz, 30 calories
Motzerella Cheese, 1/3 cup shredded, 90 calories
White Sauce, 2-3 spoonfuls, 30 calories
Pineapple Chunks, just a few, 20 calories
Total: 196 or close to it

Use one large Portobello Mushroom cap and flip it over. Cut off the stem.  The upside down mushroom cap is the pizza crust.  Genius!

Spread white sauce or tomato sauce or pesto, or whatever sauce you choose. It will drip down into the mushroom. Yum yum yum!

Put the toppings on.  I used a couple of bites of ham and a few chunks of pineapple.  I also love to use tomatoes, spinach, bell peppers.

Cover with cheese. Sprinkle some Italian seasoning on top for taste.

Place it on foil and curl the edges of the foil up to catch any mushroom juice. Bake till done. I usually put it in the convection oven for 15 - 20 mins at 425. 

I just love this little pizza. It tastes great and the kids do not want a single bite!  How often can a mama enjoy a meal all by herself? This is one of those rare meals that does not get toddler slobber in it while you are eating. Gotta love that little bonus!

Another bonus: hardly any calories.  Probably burn off all the calories just chewing and swallowing.  This of course means you can have 6 soft peanut butter cookies for desert. Now, those you will have to share with the runts.

I've been Marathon Momming

I'm not gone, and I haven't forgotten my little blog.  But, I've been super busy with my mom duties!  It's just been a marathon of momness for the past couple of months. 

The oldest moved home from South Carolina at the end of September. Then she found a house to rent and moved in with her air mattress, a towel and a saucepan and spoon that she "borrowed" from my kitchen.  After a week in her empty lonely house, she flew to Connecticut to spend a couple of weeks with her husband.  He will be stationed out here beginning in December.  Katie will be back in San Diego next week. Yay!  We're going to pick her up at the airport and then "camp out" in her empty house.

Lexie and Charlie have been home more frequently, in fact, they stayed here all week this week. So nice to have them around more!  But, three little kids is sure a lot of work!  They exhaust me and I love it.  I'm so glad I get to babysit my grandson while my daughter works.  Since she's been working till midnight more often, she just spends the night instead of waking Charlie just to take him home.  Plus, since she doesn't have a car I would have to wake up the girls for the ride too.

Gracie and Libby are having so much fun!  Libby just had her birthday and then it was Halloween and then Thanksgiving, yikes, it's almost Christmas now!  It's really going that fast.  I've been taking them on lots of outings since it is cool out and has been kind of rainy, if I don't get them out they feel too cooped up. Besides, outings are fun.  We tried to get in as many outings as we could on nice days, just in case we didn't get another nice sunny day for a while. My mid-western mentality kicks in every fall.  Must hurry and get out before we are stuck at home all winter! I still forget that life in Southern California is different and I'm never really stuck at home.

My husband has the whole week of Thanksgiving off from work.  As soon as he was home from work on Friday, he packed up and headed out.  Off he went for a hunting trip to South Dakota.  He should be back Sunday evening.  Of course, he won't have any time to catch up on sleep before he goes back to work on Monday.  I imagine next week if we see him, he'll be snoring. 

If all of those excuses for not blogging more aren't enough, there's this:  I'm working on changing my blog.  It will include a name change and new pages.  Hopefully it will be more manageable for me and you all won't lose me when I shift it all over to the new one.  Exciting changes for my Momathon Blog!  I want to work on it a bit more before the unveiling. Stay tuned.

Yellow Dress

Yellow dresses are totally IN right now for a certain 2 year old who lives in this house.  It does not matter that it is November and there isn't a yellow dress to be found in any retail store or online.  She wants yellow. 

Luckily, she has two yellow dresses. We are rotating them with one on and one in the wash.  I don't dare get behind in the washing of the yellow dresses. 

I've been shopping and shopping for another yellow dress, and I told anyone who asked that she wants a yellow dress for her birthday (which was in September).  So far, nada.  It's a spring color and we are still a long way from spring.  By then, she'll probably want a brown dress.

I did find some yellow fabric at Walmart recently. It  is pretty cute - all yellow with bumblebees printed on it. I'm going to whip up a little dress for her and add one more dress to her wardrobe.

When a two year old wants to wear yellow in November, the social rules of fashion do not apply. Mom and her sewing machine to the rescue!

All Fenced in

I got the wires on my braces.  My teeth are all fenced in now!  And I can't say I am enjoying it much.  It doesn't hurt, it's just uncomfortable. Getting the wires on was quite an ordeal!

I got the brackets glued on two weeks prior to getting the wires.   Felt like I had a mouthful of cactus, but I guess my cheeks got used to the abrasive feel of the brackets.  They also stuck little rubber "spacers" between my molars at that time.  I really didn't like the feel of constantly having something stuck between my teeth, but it is what it is.

This trip to the dentist, oh, I suppose I should call him the Orthodontist, but whatever... anyway, this trip I was to get the spacers out and wires put on. Sounded easy enough. I am slowly realizing that nothing is ever easy at the dentist office.  The dental assistant, real job title unknown to me so I made that one up for her, yanked out my rubber spacers.  Oh joy.  She used this fishhook on a stick as her spacer removal tool. My teeth are very tight together and the spacers didn't ever get any wiggle room, so pulling them out was no easy task.  She pulled with all her might and her fishhook on a stick slipped sending the sharp instrument up into the roof of my mouth.  I was stabbed!! Stabbed at the dentist office!   It freaking hurt like crazy!  I flinched and winced and hopped right up out of the chair and said "Oh My God!  I'm bleeding and everything!"  She looked at me like I was over reacting and then told me the spacers didn't move my teeth very much.  Yeah, I understand that.

After she got the rest of the spacers out, without stabbing me, she put metal rings on my back molars.  Wow, that was not pleasant at all!  I'm not sure what she had to do to get them on, but it felt horrible! She used some sort of pinching tool and she pinched the inside of my cheek in her tool.  Seriously?  Is this her first day?  I'm being abused here!  Plus the rings were painful and felt just awful. She told me I would get used to it.  I was ready to just call it quits right then and there, so she did some more adjusting and it felt a lot better. 

I asked her how long she'd been doing this.  She said since 1991.  Well, if this is 20 yrs of experience, I'm sure glad I waited and wasn't her first patient. Can you imagine?

The orthodonist came over and gave the nod of approval for her work.  Apparently, he didn't notice the gaping stab wound on the roof of my mouth.  Ok, now I am ready for wires.  At this point, I decide to just be a pest and request unscented gloves for the rest of my work. I was tired of holding back my gag reflex with those disgusting scented gloves right under my nose. I've suffered enough.  They had to go hunting for some unscented gloves but it was worth it.

Clumsy experienced assistant lady is ready to continue her work.  First, she yanks off a ring.  I bolted up, "what are you doing?  He said they were ok!"  She says she has to put the glue on. Are you freaking kidding me?  I said "so you have to do this twice?  Really?  Twice?"  She again gives me this "you are over reacting" look, but dang, I was just mad.  So, we start all over again, this time with uber disgusting glue.  Once the glue set she says she has to chip off the overflow of glue and that it will wear off over time.  Ewww!  Honestly, I no longer know why I'm doing this!

Finally, time for the wires.  She gets them on without too much trouble but I was pretty concerned when she stuck wire cutters in my mouth.  After the wires were anchored down she added little rubber bands to each bracket and tied the teeth to the wire.  She couldn't engage every tooth because they are just too crooked.  I asked her if it will be this uncomfortable for the duration or just a few days.  She says to get used to it, that's just how it will feel until we are done and I get them off in 2 yrs.  I will always feel like my face is being pulled off.  Great.  I'm just gonna cry now.

Then she adds that I will only be able to eat soft food, and I won't be able to bite with my front teeth.  This is normal and I'll get used to it.  I am now screaming inside and fighting the urge to say really bad words out loud.  The orthodontist never did come and check the glue and wire job so I hope it is done correctly.  My teeth ached like crazy for three days and now they are just fine.  I'm biting and chewing with care, but I'm doing it.  It's really not bad.  My fishhook wound is healed now too, and my pinched cheek.  I'm hoping for a different assistant next time.

Just think, in two years my teeth will line up like chicklet soldiers!

Happy November!

Can you believe it? It's November already! I'm not sure how that happened so fast. Next thing you know, I'll turn around and November will be gone too. The months have just been flying by this year.

We started November off with a trip to the zoo.  The girls were so funny, each with their own map telling me which path to take.  I did find a path I'd never walked on before. Kiwi Trail is pretty much a free fall and very challenging to walk on the meandering steep slope with a stroller and kids.  The whole way down, I was thankful that I wasn't going the other direction!

The girls had fun and we saw some animals. When we go to the zoo I take it easy and we only see one part of the zoo.  If we wander all over the entire place, I get too tired. Plus, this way the zoo is different every time we go!  Today we saw the zookeeper let six macaws out of a cage and they flew across the zoo.  We got to see them take off and soar into the air, very pretty birds!

After the zoo, we went to Katie's new house.  It's pretty empty inside!  So far, she has one chair, an airbed, her guitar, and a saucepan.  That's pretty much all she owns. The little girls sure had fun running and screaming in the empty house. The moving truck should arrive with Katie's furniture and things in mid to late December. I told her to go to Ikea and SuperTarget in the meantime. 

From there, we went to a pizza place to eat.  We just tried to find anything and that's where we ended up. It turned out to be a sports place with tvs everywhere.  The whole place would burst out in cheers every now and again.  They were playing a baseball game on every tv, apparently the world series was going on?  eh, whatever it was, people sure got loud in short bursts. The pizza was fantastic! We ordered fried zucchini for an appetizer and then we had a tomato, spinach and goat cheese pizza.  It was delicious!  I sent the leftovers home with Katie since she didn't have any food at all.

We finally got home at 9pm.  Much later than I thought we would be out, but it was a fun day. We were all so tired from Halloween and then kicking off November with an outing was fun but exhausting.  Ok, for me it was exhausting! The girls weren't phased one bit, neither one of them slept through the night after all of that.