Sausage Lentil Soup

It snowed tonight for the first time this year! Yay! Snow is my favorite thing! I love sweaters, boots, fires in the fireplace, the quietness after a big snow, and I especially love soup. It makes me happy.

Tonight I had my weekly Mary Kay meeting. That's right. I am a Mary Kay girl. I subbed in a classroom for one day and decided I didn't want to go back to teaching right now. It is just too stressful and too much work for me to be a successful teacher and mother. And since being a successful mother is really my life's ambition, I needed to choose a different career. But guess what? I couldn't be happier! I love my job. I am stoked every time I facial a new client. I love talking about it, wearing it, sharing it and playing with it. I feel like I did when I was a little girl and would go to work with my mom. She worked at Gates Rubber Co. in a small town in Missouri. At the end of each year, she would get so bogged down with inventory work that we would have to go to her office at night while she worked. I loved it! I would sit at the desk next to her and type (before computers were commonplace) and use all the fun stamps, staples, tape and other office stuff I could get my little hands on. It was the best! That is how I feel with my job every day! It has been very uplifting.

Anyhow, I digress. After preschool drop off and pick-up, jr. high PTO, a volleyball game, picking up a highschooler who spent the last 2 days in Blue Hole, NM getting scuba certified, and watching both older girls get another stripe on their green belts in karate, we had to eat! I threw together a yummy sausage lentil soup that pleased all and was quick in the crock pot. Then off I was to my Mary Kay unit meeting. What a day! I think I will head to bed now, after I peel my preschooler out of my spot and snuggle her back into her own bed.

1, 12 ounce package of Mulay's bulk Italian Sausage (I prefer spicy)
1/2 med white onion, rough chop
12ish fat baby carrots, rough chop
3 celery stalks, rough chop
6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 1/2 cups dried yellow lentils, rinsed and drained
1 Tbs fresh rosemary, chopped

• I pulsed the onion, carrots and celery in the food processor until smaller in size 
• Sauté sausage and chopped veggies until sausage is cooked through, breaking up the sausage into smaller chunks
• Once sausage is cooked through, add broth and rinsed lentils and rosemary and transfer to the crock pot
• It's ready once the lentils are tender, about 4 hours in my crock pot

Burrito Bowls

My poor hubby came home from work feeling sick tonight, which is very rare! He soaked is achy self in a hot tub, sipped 2 cups of green tea and filled his tummy with a bowl of spicy burrito fillings. He's feeling better today :)

2 chicken breasts, sliced into smaller bite-sized pieces

oil for sautéing

1/4 medium white onion, chopped

1, 25 ounce can of Westbrae Pinto beans, drained and rinsed

2 roasted green chiles, stemmed, seeded and diced (about a 4 ounce can)

1/2 cup sliced black olives

1 tsp chile powder (I like straight red chile powder rather than the mixed kind)

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp cayenne if you like it spicy

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 lime

1/2 avocado chunks

sliced scallions or chopped cilantro (optional)

• Saute chicken and onion over medium heat
• When onion is soft and chicken is no longer pink, about 7 minutes, add beans, green chiles, seasonings, olives and heat through2-3 more minutes
• Remove from heat and stir in lime
• Serve in bowls and top with avocado and cilantro or scallions



Time to Change

What a crazy diet it is in the life where food sensitivities never cease to change!

Once again, my diet has taken a crazy turn. I have been diagnosed with increased intestinal permeability, or leaky gut syndrome…Nice, huh? So my mission now is to heal my intestines with healthy doses of probiotics and an anti-inflammatory diet. Fun for me! Just when I thought I figured out my diet, it drastically changed. Again.

Right now I’m on day three of my Clearvite cleanse. So far so good! I’m trying to simplify my tastes in food a bit. This is the first time I’ve really kicked the cheese out. It was by far my favorite food. I love cheese. And chocolate. And coffee. And wine. I guess I definitely know I am at a place where I just want to feel better because I am really okay with forgoing the cheese this time around, along with my other food loves. Maybe someday we will be together again.

But for now, I am finding new food joys and feeling sooo much better! As it turns out, I was also extremely low in B12, D and protein as well. So now I’m on a customized vitamin regimen and high protein diet.

One more thing discovered is my blood sugar seems to be on a crazy roller coaster all day when I don’t avoid sugar and cheap carbs, so I am now using stevia almost exclusively. Good news is I might actually drop a pant size. Go Me!

Like I said, it’s been interesting here in the food department.

Here are some new ingredients that have made dining life better these days:

Almond and Cashew Milk

I use this in smoothies, banana bread, tea, chocolate bark, and more! So good!

The Chai Green Tea is especially good with the above two ingredients! Yum! I barely miss coffee now.

So goodnight for now, but new "crazy diet" recipes are to follow. We had burrito bowls tonight that me and my hubby really enjoyed!