Why Glee is Just Awesome.

We are now in the third season of Glee and if anyone met me during the first season, it was basically all I could talk about.  It's just a great show if you love music in general.  Scott and I started dating while we were in show choir together, so show choirs, musicals, etc. hold a special place in my heart.  Glee does their own renditions of a lot of great songs and there are some that are so redone, you wouldn't even recognize them unless you heard the lyrics.  This is one that was on tonight and I can't stop listening to it- "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

Recipe: Properly Prepared Spaghetti Squash

Man, don't you wish you could just eat pasta every single day for every meal? Ugh so good.  Too bad it isn't that great for you otherwise, that is for sure what would be happening in this here household. For sure.  I was trying to think of some healthier alternatives for these tasty pasta dishes and I immediately thought of spaghetti squash.

The first time I made spaghetti squash was back in our first apartment in Omaha after being sent home with some from my grandparent's garden.  My dad told me to put some brown sugar on it, pop it in the oven and we had ourselves a sweet treat.  Very good! I hadn't thought much about this spaghetti squash until recently and decided to bring it back into our life. It's ridiculously easy to make, fairly cheap, versatile, and an extremely low calorie option.  A cup of cooked spaghetti squash according to livestrong.com, is 41 calories. FORTY-ONE CALORIES. And it fills you up almost like pasta does.

 I decided to do a search and came across this number and decided to try her out for myself.  And it was delicious.  It's basically death by garlic meets spaghetti squash.  It allowed about three days worth of leftovers which was awesome for us and it actually tasted better as the days went on.  Totally worth trying this dish. Your waistline will thank you. 

Recipe courtesy of www.food.com

Restaurant: The Green Apple

Scott and I wanted to take part in Small Business Saturday today as we know how vital small businesses are to our economy and decided to eat at the newest restaurant in Gretna, The Green Apple.  And man, did we make the right choice!

We had seen this place come to life as we would go through the drive thru to Runza on occasion and it boasted healthy sandwiches, soups, etc.  We were very excited to not only have a new place to eat in Gretna, but a healthy one at that!  We have a lot of fast food places, but not a lot of healthy, good options.  Their location is great as it is right next to Anytime Fitness and we saw a couple people come in after their workout to grab one of their yummy looking smoothies.

We walked in to a bright green decor and a small quaint little eating area. We found our spot in the corner and I ordered a garlic herb wrap with turkey and cheese inside and Scott had a beef wrap.  We both REALLY enjoyed them! We decided to do the combo with the potato salad, but we probably wouldn't do that again. Not that it wasn't delicious, but it was such a small portion and the combo didn't come with a drink that I would just stick with the wrap itself. It was plenty of food!  They had terrific service and we even shared a single scoop of Butter Pecan ice cream at the end.  Had to treat ourselves a little bit. :)

Can't wait to go back and hopefully we will be able to come here with family the next time so they can try this little Gretna jem!

Click here for The Green Apple's facebook page with their menu and pictures!

Recipe: Artichoke Bread

I have been inhabiting Pinterest for a little while now and have come across some amazing recipes that I hope to make in the near future. One of these recipes, artichoke bread, was the first victim.  When I saw it I thought it would be perfect to bring to Thanksgiving this year as an appetizer while the rest of the food is cooking.  I guess on Thanksgiving everything is sort of considered an appetizer. GRAZERS.

Now, I could tell you everything went right with this dish. It came out perfect and the whole thing tasted amazing.  But, then I would be lying to you.  When making a recipe, make sure you follow the instructions. Make sure when they say to put foil on top of it and not below it to be sure the pan doesn't get dirty, you just do it.  There were about 50 things in the oven going at the same time so when we opened it and a little smoke came out, it wasn't the bread of course, right?  Just close it and let it cook a little more.  Well a couple min later we decided to take it out and my brother-in-law, Rob, tilted the beautiful looking bread on top to show a complete black smoky underside.  I thought the whole thing was ruined. Just RUEEENED.  Then, my beaver like instincts kicked in.  Why don't we just gnaw the good part off the top?  And it was delicious.  The two people brave enough to try it besides me said it was "Really good, all things considered."  I thought it was great to be honest and wish more people would have tried it.  Apparently having to gnaw on your food isn't attractive or something.  Look at the picture though, it looks amazing!

I would definitely make this again and do exactly what it says to next time.  The combination of the different cheeses with juiciness of the artichoke make the top of it very very good.  Its like artichoke dip already on the bread-what could be better?

Recipe courtesy of www.closetcooking.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I have a lot to be thankful for this year and one of the main things is currently sitting on my lap doing everything possible to keep my hands from typing.  And typing some things on his own: 'p;m ,00 (Nolan says hi).  We will be practicing his typing skills.

When one thinks of Thanksgiving, the first thing they think of is FOOD.  I know I do.  I was watching the Today Show yesterday and they stated that the average amount of caloric intake on Thanksgiving is 4500 calories. THAT is a lot of calories. But if you think about all the snacking you do up to the meal, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th trips you take during the meal and the slew of pies consumed afterwards, it makes sense.  I would say either plan to do about 3 hours of intense cardio tonight or just be more cognizant of what you are eating all day.  Maybe think of taking a little less of something you would have normally had.  Or just enjoy the day cause afterall, it is Thanksgiving.

While I am currently finished with my Nutrisystem as of yesterday, Scott still has some left so I have been eating some of his for him.  We were discussing last night how we didn't understand how someone could do this for more than two months as the food, especially the suppers taste worse over time. Scott had two entrees last night that he could only describe as tasting like cardboard and dirt.  MmmmMmmm.  Needless to say, we will be enjoying REAL good amazing Thanksgiving food today.

I will be making something for Thanksgiving today that I found on Pinterest and I hope it tastes as good as it looked in the picture!!  Can't wait to try her out!  I will be sure to share the results!

So, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We have been so blessed this year with the arrival of our little nugget and we are so thankful for all of the blessings He has given us and for everyone in our life.  A quote I love that always comes up on Facebook and Pinterest is: What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?  Happy Thanksgiving!

Comic found here.

The Wheeler Life

As we draw towards the end of our weight loss goals, I realized that besides recipes, I'm not going to have a lot to talk about!  So, I decided to change things up with a new look and a new site name and talk about more than just food.  What else that might be, I'm not sure yet.  Maybe just life.

Topic: Supreme 90 Day

I'm sure most of you have had your nights where you stay up late and watch infomercials only to wake up with your head on the keyboard and a message on the computer saying "Thank you for your order!". Ok, well maybe just the first part. I love infomercials and I get sucked in like a turtle's head.  One of these said informercials is P90x stating that you will go from flab to muscle man in just 90 days.  Does it work?  Are those really the results?  Those people said that they did it, so it should work for me too right?  Only 17 small payments of 29.95?  Oh that doesn't seem bad.  Oh wait...until you realize that those 17 small payments  could probably go towards something else you need, like ya know, living.

Enter in a trip to Dollar General's As Seen on TV section and seeing Supreme 90 Day. What is this you say?  Compared to P90x? Only $20? Well, what do we have here...  I leave Dollar General empty handed as this seems too good to be true.  I go home and do what I do with everything I buy- look at reviews. And if you don't believe that I literally look at reviews for everything, just ask me what some of the reviews for Charmin Basic Toilet paper said.  They are hilarious.  Charmin Basic, by the way, is super cheap and very good toilet paper!  Just saying.

ANYWAYS, the reviews of Supreme 90 Day were so awesome!  People said they got better results quicker than they did with P90x and for only $20, what is there to lose?  We even used a $5 off coupon at Bed Bath and Beyond and it was only $15!  Seriously!  You get 10 DVD's, a chart on which days to do what workout, eating plan, etc.  You only need dumbells and a stability ball, unlike P90x where you would also need an over the door pull up bar...which I would never trust.  I'm not gonna spend more money replacing my broken door frame.  No thanks.

We have done 2 weeks so far of the Supreme 90 Day (you have 6 days on and 1 day of rest) and I would say the results are great!  It's all about muscle confusion and challenging your muscles so you will get great results.  A lot of the reviews state that this isn't your weight loss ticket, but more of a strengthening program which I would say to be very accurate.  We already lost a good amount of weight with Nutrisystem, so the way to sustain the weight loss and now build up those muscles is a program like this.  I would definitely say that we have gotten stronger.  Day one, I could barely do one push up with my knees on the ground and we are at the beginning of the 3rd week and I can do about 20 regular pushups in a row.  Not a lot, but a definite improvement!  Scott and are I seeing muscles in our arms and legs start to form like when were in high school when we were both in sports.  And Nolan feels lighter too! That's a HUGE plus!  Especially when he is teething and the only thing he wants in the world is to be held.

So, so far, I am seeing my weight loss start to slow down a bit, but it's still dropping, so I'm ok with that. Another good thing about this program is that you stretch really good at the end of each workout.  According to my Turbo Jam instructor, we should be doing stretches 7 days a week to keep blood circulation and flexibility in a good state.

So, in all, I'm really excited about this. You have to be committed though. You will be so sore and not want to do it the next night, but you have to push yourself. Thankfully I have Scott doing this with me so we can push each other. 

Photo courtesy of here.

Topic Nutrisystem- Should be done, but we aren't! ;)

So, today should have ended the Nutrisystem era at this time in our life, but low and behold, we still have a ton of food left.  I am officially out of breakfasts, so I at least had one of those everyday like a good girl.  We got an extra week of food in there so that adds to the amount and Scott went a whole week without the food, so there lies the excess.

Things are still going quite well- Scott was losing so much weight he didn't think it was healthy anymore, so he has started eating two entrees at each meal to kind of catchup with me on what I have left.  Also, I am officially under my pre-pregnancy weight! Woohoo!!!

This week, we started a new workout routine called Supreme 90 Day and it is going great so far!  I will do a different post about that later!

Now, for the weight loss results after 8 weeks:
Scott:  -22 lbs              2 lbs ABOVE weight loss goal
Jessica: -14.8 lbs         8.2 lbs away from weight loss goal