Spontaneous Moment #46: Cat Mat

As much as I love my cat, she can be a huge slob when eating her food. It's as if one of her extra curricular activities includes competitive eating. So instead of constantly having to lay down paper towels and vacuuming, I'd make a nice little place mat for her.

Speaking of my precious angel... she has also been a little terror to my yoga mat. I'm embarrassed to carry it outside of the house. She has five different scratching posts and toys sprawled around the house and yet she finds my yoga mat to be the best cat scratcher. 

So why not re-purpose my yoga mat? Two birds, one stone. Right?

My workout gear

My cat's masterpiece

My poor yoga mat

Look at the little rascal get at it

Get away from my yoga mat!

Well let's get too it. Times ticking. The yoga mat isn't getting any use just sitting there. So let's use it in some other form.

CAT PLACE MAT

Materials:

• Old yoga mat (or use cabinet liners)
• Scissors
• Xacto Knife
• Tape

Instructions:

Print off an image of the fork and knife. Cut them out place them how you'd like them to look.

Roll out your yoga mat or whatever material you'd like to use to create your place mat. Designate what are you would like to cut out.

 Place where you want to place your utensils. Make sure all the silverware is even.

 Take the tape and carefully place it under the utensils so they stay on nice and tight.

 Thankfully there were lines on my mat so I was able to cut it evenly, but make sure you measure before you cut out your place mat.

Clearly my cat is a fan already and I'm not even done.

 Grab your Xacto knife and start tracing around the utensils.

This is how it should start to look:

The final product:

 Time to put this bad boy to use:

Spontaneous Moment #45: White Bean Chicken Chili

 I'm recently engaged and wanting to feel better about my body before the wedding. Part of my New Years resolution is to eat clean. Let me tell you, after making this recipe, clean eating never tasted so good!

It's freezing outside and that means it's soup and chili season. So in order to get in the spirit of clean eating while staying warm, I cooked up some white bean chicken chili.

 WHITE BEAN CHICKEN CHILI

Ingredients:

• 6 cups chicken broth
• 4 cups cooked shredded chicken 
• 1 bag of dried white beans
• 2 cups salsa verde
• 1/4 cup chopped green onions
• 2 tsp. ground cumin 
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 pepper
• Toppings: diced avocado, fresh cilantro, and lime wedges.

Instructions:

Soak beans in water over night.

Pour beans into a crock pot. Toss in chicken broth, salsa verde, green onions, cumin, garlic and  pepper. Stir together and cook on low for 6 hours.

After six hours, put shredded chicken in the pot, stir, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve with diced avocado, cilantro, lime juice, and add some pepper on top.

Adapted from Gimme Some Oven.

Spontaneous Moment #44: Portion Control Pie

Have you ever been served a giant slice of pumpkin pie and thought "I'll just take a few bites. I won't finish it." The next thing you know, you look down at your plate and the entire pie is gone.

That's me. I get served a slice that feels like it's 1/4 of the pie and I always lick my plate clean. So here's a simple pie recipe that will feed your dessert appetite, but won't eat up your calorie count.

PORTION CONTROL PUMPKIN PIE

Ingredients:

• 1 15oz can of pumpkin (I use Libby's 100% pure Pumpkin)
• 1 12oz can of evaporated milk (I use Nestle Carnation)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, allspice, & ground clove)
• 3/4 cup sugar (or substitute it for 5 packets of Truvia)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 boxes of ready made pie crust (I use Pillsbury Pie Crust)
• Biscuit cutters (I use Sur La Table stainless steel cutters)

Directions:

 Preheat your oven to 350.

Take your cupcake pan and spray it with Pam.

Unroll your pie crust and use your biscuit cutter to cut your crust. I use the largest cutter. Press pie crust into cupcake pan.

Unroll the pie crust.

Cut your pie crust and place in cupcake pan.

Combine all your dry ingredients. Beat your eggs and then mix them in with the pumpkin in a bowl. Add the dry ingredients and evaporated milk. Mix well.

How it should look once everything's combined.

Fill pie crusts to almost full.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. To make sure they're done, poke a fork in the center of one of your pies. It should come out clean if it's done.

I like to top mine with with some frozen yogurt or a little fat free whipped cream.

Spontaneous Moment #43: Cork up your Life!

I have a small obsession with corks. I collect tons and tons of wine corks. I have multiple vases around my place just full of them. So instead of letting them slowly fill my entire apartment, I've started to put them to good use.

WINE CHARMS

Materials:

• cork
• knife
• paint (I used red, yellow, black & blue)
• stamps (I used cheese, glass, grape & wine bottle stamps)
• ink pad (I used an ink wheel that offered yellow, purple, red, black, blue & red)
• Screw Eyes Pins
• Hoops charms

Instructions:

Cut your corks like you'd be slicing a hot dog.

Also slice a few in half.

Paint your corks and let them dry.

Press really hard when you stamp your cork! Try not to get too much excess ink on your stamp otherwise it will get on the cork (as seen on a few of mine below)

Once your stamp is completely dry, tightly hold your cork and screw your screw eye into the top of your cork. The reason I wait until after I stamp is because you can always make your stamp look right if you accidentally stamp it the wrong way.

Hook in your hoop and you're good to go!

 

I also made these holiday charms:

 

You can also make cork coasters:

You just need the same corks and cork roll (you can buy at any hardware store).

 

Spontaneous Moment #42: Shakshuka!

When I was on vacation in Israel, I was introduced to this amazing, melt in your mouth meal called Shakshuka. It's a simple meal you can eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner that mainly consists of tomato and eggs usually served in a skillet.
 

Meal in Israel

So when I got back to the states, I decided to attempt this dish myself. Why not create an American version of the Israeli delicacy? 

AMERICAN SHAKSHUKA

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup green onion
• 4 cups ripe diced tomatoes, or 2 cans (14 oz. each) diced tomatoes
• 1 can 8 oz. tomato paste
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 5-6 eggs
• 1/2 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
• Shredded Parmesan cheese to taste
• Pita bread

Heat a deep, large skillet on medium. Slowly warm olive oil in the pan. Add chopped onion and saute 5 minutes or until the onion begins to soften. Add garlic and continue to saute until the mixture for 2 minutes or until fragrant.  

Toss in green onions. Add tomatoes and tomato paste to pan, stir well until ingredients are blended. Toss in the remaining spices, stir well, and allow the mixture to simmer over medium heat for 5-7 minutes until the tomato mixtures starts to reduce.

Mixing up the sauce

It should look like this after 5-7 minutes

Add salt and pepper and more cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes for a spicier dish (My southern roots LOVE it spicy).

Crack the eggs over the tomato mixture, spacing them evenly over the sauce.

I like to cook my eggs over easy so that I can dip the pita bread in the yolk. Cover the pan and simmer for 10 minutes, or until the eggs are cooked and the sauce has slightly reduced. Check on your mixture every 5 minutes to make sure that the sauce doesn't reduce too much (which can lead to burning).

Finally, garnish your sharshuka with parsley, parmesan cheese, and pepper.

A close up of the final product

I personally don't even use silverware when eating sharshuka. I just dip warm pita bread into the skillet to break everything up. YUM!