Oatmeal Cottage Cheese Pancakes (A preview of February's breakfast menu)

I tried this high protein pancake recipe and lets just say its like a french toast pancake.  This will be a definite freezer breakfast recipe that I want to keep on hand.  The recipe made 8 pancakes. They are only 2 weight watchers + points per pancakes and are very satisfying.

 This recipe was adapted from The Biggest Loser Recipe for Oatmeal Pancakes.

Ingredients:

6 egg whites
1 cup rolled oats, dry
1 cup fat free cottage cheese
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

In a blender, blend all ingredients until smooth. Heat a griddle or large non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Spray with non-stick cooking spray. For each pancake pour 1/4 cup of batter onto griddle. Flip when they start to bubble. Cook until golden brown. Repeat with remaining batches, spraying the griddle as needed. Makes about 8 pancakes.

Number of Servings: 4

Nutritional Info Per Serving: 2 WW + Points
181 Calories, 2.7g Fat, 10mg Cholesterol, 361mg Sodium, 20g Carbs, 2.8g Fiber

Freezer instructions: Flash freeze (see my post about flash freezing here) pancakes laying separately on a bakers sheet for about 1 hour. Place 2 pancakes in a quart size freezer bag. Label and freeze.

Serving day: Remove pancakes from freezer bag and place on a microwave safe plate. Place in microwave for 1-2 minutes until warm. Enjoy!

Reality bites: Breaking cars

Of course I could not be lucky enough to have a few nursing pay checks under my belt before things started breaking. My Escape is not drivable  right now and it is going to cost a bunch of money to fix so DH and I are down to 1 car that has no working heater in it.  The Escape made this horrible grinding noise as I was driving down the street to go to work yesterday. Nothing was dragging underneath, it was just grinding.

We will eventually have to get the Escape fixed but for now we are just going to drive the car with the broken heater and uses a lot of gas. It's Indiana..who needs heat in the middle of winter when you have fun and stylish gloves to wear?

We were planning on replacing a vehicle this year anyway. However, it looks like we will be buying a new car a little sooner than anticipated. But hey, that's my reality so I am going to just take it and make the best of it.

Crock-Pot Haven

My Crock-Pot Haven

So this is what it looks like when you are cooking a whole lot of food in just one day. I used 2 Crock-pot slow cookers. One was used to make a breakfast meal, Bacon, Egg, and Taters Casserole.  The other was used to make the Chicken Bacon Ranch Mac and Cheese.

Getting started with freezer cooking

This months cooking adventures involve a lot of bacon which is why I chose these recipes. My awesome husband just LOVES bacon so what better menu to start my kitchen adventure of freezing multiple meals than one that will be for sure hubby approved?

Here is a good lesson in reality: It really does help to read all of the recipes first and truly understand what needs to be chopped/cooked before assembly.  I made the mistake of getting cook and chop happy and accidentally cooked 1 pound more hamburger than I should have.  It's ok though because I can use the chopped hamburger for one of the other recipes and do double the amount I was originally planning (bacon cheeseburger puffs). I definitely planned on getting a lot more recipes made today but I am a little slow since I am just getting started.


 I did get to use my new RED Kitchenaid 13-Cup/3.1L Empire Red Food Processor to chop all of the bacon and chicken I needed for my recipes.  Lets just say my food processor became the ultimate bacon annihilator (bacon-ator!).

I have cooked and chopped over 3 pounds of meat so far today for meals like Chicken Bacon Mac and cheese (slow-cooker meal), Bacon Egg and Taters breakfast (slow-cooker meal, pizza puffs, and bacon cheeseburger puffs.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog.  I just graduated from nursing school with my BSN and will be taking (and hopefully passing) boards later this month. To take a little focus off the stress of studying for the biggest test of my life, I am starting this blog. I will be working as a cardiac nurse as soon as I pass boards and I am looking forward to the challenges that will come as I learn to juggle being a wife and full time nurse.  Also, my husband of 5 years and I will be trying to add to our family this year.

I am going to be writing about how I manage life and all of its craziness while working full time.  Life isn't perfect and I will be blogging about my perfectly imperfect life and how I find happiness even in the crazy times.

Tomorrow I am trying my hand at once a month freezer cooking.  I spent $160 at Wal-mart today and will be cooking up a storm tomorrow. I look forward to posting pics from my experience and writing about it tomorrow.