Meals to Love: Sausage, Egg & Cheese Burritos

I'm taking a break from the health related posts to introduce a new feature: Meals to Love.  A couple times a month, I'll post a meal we love to eat.  As many of you know, I love to cook, bake and talk about food.  (This blog did used to be called For the Love of Food, after all.)

Sunday we had one of my favorite meals: homemade sausage, egg and cheese burritos.  I love this meal because it's hearty, filling, simple and cheap.  One day I came home for lunch and we didn't have many left-overs.  Steve and I didn't want to get fast food and pulled together this meal based on the ingredients in our fridge.  Are you ready for the recipe?  Here it is!

Sausage, Egg & Cheese Burritos

1 lb ground sausage

7 eggs

tortillas

shredded cheese (taco or cheddar)

salsa

Brown up the sausage and transfer to a bowl.  In the same frying pan, scramble the eggs.  Warm your tortilla for 10 seconds in the microwave.  Put some sausage down the middle of the tortilla and then some eggs.  Top with cheese and salsa.  Roll up your tortilla and eat!

How simple is that?!  For the kids, we skip the tortillas.  They're a little too little to hold them properly.  We put the eggs and sausage on their plate.  Katherine does not like the sausage and egg mixed together.  We found that out the hard way the first time we made these.  With Sean's dairy allergy, we skip the cheese for him.  We've also made it with green peppers.  It's a very easy meal to customize to your tastes.  Add some fruit on the side and you have a complete meal.  The whole meal takes about 20 minutes to make.  I love fast, simple and delicious meals.   

That Was A Bad Idea

OK, so... I sorta fell off the goal wagon last week and I can totally tell.  Both of my kids were sick (not with the same thing and thankfully, not with the stomach flu) and I felt like I was getting sick.  I threw my goals out the window and that was definitely a bad idea.  I felt like crap because I was eating junk and not exercising; I also gained some weight.  Not a lot of weight but I don't want the trend to continue.  April's goal is to eat a salad with lunch every day.  Do you know what makes that really difficult?  Not having any lettuce.  I didn't buy lettuce the last time I went grocery shopping because I thought I already had a bag.  Turns out that bag went furry waiting for me to eat it.  We fed it to the garbage.  I'm recommitting to my goals this week.  I had an orange with my breakfast and am stopping by the grocery store on my way home to get some lettuce.  I'm refocusing on my water goal and have a plan to walk tonight.  This is normally the time when I let go of my New Year's resolutions.  But I'm determined to not do that this year.  I want to be a healthy, fit, non-stressed out person.  To achieve that, I need to stick with my goals.  I have noticed when I'm really sleep-deprived, drinking a lot of ice water actually gives me more energy than drinking a lot of pop.  I keep reminding myself that even though it's a little thing, it's a sign I'm on the right path with my health.

What's Holding Me Back?

Earlier in March, I was reading Shape magazine and one of the articles made me really think.  The article talked about kids always moving and being active but at some point, we stop moving.  It might be when we're adults, preteens or teens.  The article made the statement that we need to figure out why stopped and then we go forward with our fitness goals.  This statement stayed with me.  I had been an active child, attending dance lessons once a week in addition to running around the farm and playing on our swing set and later riding horses.  I did a lot of thinking.  Why did I stop?  I had always enjoyed being active.  What made me stop?  It finally hit me.  I stopped when being active was no longer fun.  In seventh grade, I quit dance to participate in sports.  I didn't have the natural sports ability that I had with dance.  As a result, I was placed on the D team for volleyball (we always played last), sat on the bench for most basketball games and really, really hated track.  I went out for only volleyball in eighth grade and then nothing in high school.  Being active was no longer fun.  I did ride horses on our farm and was very good at it until my horse went wild while I was riding him and bucked me off.  After an ambulance ride to the hospital, my only injuries were a jammed hip and a slightly scratched up face.  (I landed on my hands and knees and somewhat my face on hard gravel.)  I still loved horses but now I was afraid.  (Please no helpful advice about how I should have gotten right back on.  I know that and I regret letting my fear hold me back from an activity I truly loved.)  So what does all of this mean now?  I need to find ways to make fitness and being healthy fun.  It's the only way I'll stick with it.  I had always enjoyed walking, which is why I made it one of my early goals.  Yoga is an activity I enjoy.  It's even better when done with a friend so I plan to do that at least once a month.  (Yoga is also good for me because it's low impact.  The high impact activities seem to aggravate my hip and knee.)  Later, I'd love to incorporate some kind of dance or aerobics into my fitness routine.  It might need to be years down the road.  I don't have a ton of free time to devote to a fitness class right now.  Currently I squeeze fitness in when I have a free moment, which isn't always the same time every day.  Katherine mentioned needing to learn to jump rope.  My immediate thought was we need to get jump ropes for her and me.  I plan to continue to look for ways to make fitness fun.

April's Health Goal: eat a salad everyday with lunch  (this can be a large salad as my lunch or a small side salad)

March's Score Card:  For the most part, I did OK with my goals in March.  I created a simple chart to track my progress with my goals.  This way I can't fool myself into thinking I'm doing better than I actually am.  I still struggle with drinking enough water.  Most of my goals I hit practically every day.  A few times I walked longer than 10 minutes because I had missed the day before.  Overall I'm happy with how things are going.

St. Patrick's Day Health Goal

Last Friday was St. Patrick's Day, my favorite holiday.  My hometown has a huge celebration lasting the entire week.  I love it.  I didn't go home this year.  Every year I don't go home, I'm homesick.  I see people's pictures on Facebook and just miss it.  There are other St. Patrick's Day celebrations outside of Emmetsburg but there's just something special about Emmetsburg's celebration.  I decided we are going home for next year's celebration.  Our kids are old enough that they will love the parade and all of the kids' activities.  I also saw pictures of one of my high school friends' sister and their mom after completing the O'Round the Loch Run and decided I want to do that too.  The O'Round the Loch Run has been around for ages but I've never participated.  I'm not a runner or much of an athlete.  In high school, my cousin was the athletic one and I was happy to be her cheerleader (unofficially).  However in an effort to be healthier and more physically fit, I decided I should participate in a 5K.  Initially the plan was to do a mud run with my husband.  After all what could be more fun than a mud obstacle course?!  I might still do a mud run with Steve but I think my hometown's 5K would be nice as my first 5K.  I have no idea if I'll be able to run the entire thing or if I'll half-jog, half-walk it.  But that's my goal and it's out there now.  I do know I need to work a little harder to be ready for a 5K in a year.  I'll have to take up the dreaded sport of running.  (I seriously hate it.)  This Year of Health is about changing my mindset regarding my health overall and I hope I can change my mind about my athletic abilities.  I don't think I'm nearly as uncoordinated and clumsy as I've told myself I am.

March Health Goals Update

Here is my health goals update.  I promise I'll think of better blog titles going forward.  Well, friends, life has happened.  I've realized I need something visual to keep track of my goals.  I'm working on creating a chart so I can mark when I meet a goal.  I'm a visual person so a chart will work wonderfully and it'll also relieve me of having to mentally keep track. My water needs to be upped a bit but it's not horrible.  My water bottle at work holds 24 ounces.  If I want to meet my goal, I need to finish at least two and a half water bottles.  Finishing 3 water bottles would be fantastic but I'm not there yet.  Right now, I usually finish 2 water bottles.  I'm not walking hardly at all.  I need to start walking on my lunch hour.  I think it might be the only way I can fit walking into my day.  Previously I was walking while Steve gave the kids a bath or after supper but that doesn't seem to be working now.  I don't walk after the kids are in bed because I'm usually pretty tired and am getting things prepped for the next day.  I'm doing pretty well with March's goal of eating fruit with breakfast.  I missed a few days but have met the goal more days than I missed.  I'm counting that as a win.  Also a small health move I made was to give up candy for Lent.  I did slip up last weekend when I bought a candy bar on my way to West Des Moines.  However, by the time I remembered, I was back in the car and on the road.  I ate the candy bar anyway but have not any candy since.

I'm hopeful I can improve my walking and stick to my goals a little better going forward.  I knew the physical fitness goals would be the hardest to implement.  If you have any health goals, I'd love to hear about them so we can cheer each other on.

Health

Health.  Such a simple word with such a huge definition.  It's also the word I picked for 2017.   (I picked up the trend from the blogging world of choosing one word to define your year.)  This year I want to focus on my health.  I want to be healthier and feel better than I currently do.  This is not about losing weight; although losing 5-7 pounds would not be the worst thing in the world.  This is about taking care of myself so I can play with my kids.  This is about not feeling exhausted every single day.  This is a desperate measure to try to sleep better.  It's about making healthy changes to keep my increased health risks at bay (diabetes, high blood pressure, etc).  It's about being properly hydrated so my skin isn't so dry and my hands don't crack and bleed in the winter.  (Yes, that happens.)  This is an attempt to not be a stressed out frazzled mess.  It's also an attempt to get proper nutrition instead of eating junk.  This is not a diet but a lifestyle change.  But most of all, it's about making myself a priority.  I want the changes I implement this year to be long-term changes.

How am I accomplishing this?  I'm picking one healthy habit to implement each month with the idea that each month will build upon the previous month.  My goal for January was to drink 68 ounces of water every single day.  Am I doing this perfectly?  No, it's something I still have to work on.  I do best when I'm work with my water bottle on my desk.  I do worst when I'm at home chasing after my kids.  I've pulled out my home water bottle which holds 20 ounces and plan to use that on the weekends.

February's goal was to walk 10 minutes every day.  I think I hit that goal about half the month.  Not so great.  I'm still working on fitting walking into my schedule.  When it gets nice out, I plan to walk during my lunch break.  Steve and I also plan to do family walks in the evenings when it's nice out.  For now, I've been walking in my house for 10 minutes or on the treadmill in the basement.  A bonus with the treadmill?  I watch a Spanish-language show on Netflix and the time flies by.  Later in the year, I plan to increase the length of my walks and eventually add some strength training.  I'm a wimp and I'm a tired of being a wimp.

This month's goal is to eat a piece of fruit with my breakfast every morning.  So far, I'm doing great with this goal.  I didn't eat fruit for breakfast yesterday but I had crabby kids in the morning.  I opted to snuggle with them and eat only a piece of toast.  Eventually I would like to be eating the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables every day.  I'm not saying this is the only piece of fruit that I eat each day but it's the one I'm guaranteed to eat.

April's goal will be to eat a salad with lunch every day.  It doesn't have to be a large salad but I plan to have at least a side salad at lunch.  I also plan to set a goal of flossing every day later in the year.  Perhaps, that'll be May's goal.  I floss but not as often as I should.  I don't have all the goals planned out but that's OK.  I'm tweaking this every month to do what works for me.

So, the purpose of this blog post?  I realize I need some accountability.  I plan to post my progress each week.  If you would all be my cheerleaders, I would love it.  However, this is not a request for advice.  Please realize I've given this a lot of thought.  If my plan doesn't seem like something that would work for you, that's OK.  Slow, steady, gradual changes are what work best for me.  Please realize, I am a healthy person.  I don't have any health conditions that you need to be concerned about or worry about.  I simply want to feel the best I can and be as healthy as I can be.  If you would follow along, I'd love it.

The Mom I Never Wanted To Be

I am the mom I never wanted to be.  I'm the mom no one wants to be actually.  It's a sad thing to think but it's true.  I'm a preemie mom and a food allergy mom.  No one wants to be either of those but yet, here I am owning both titles.

Katherine was born prematurely at 33 weeks ushering me into the Preemie Momma club.  It took me a long time to accept what happened.  My body had failed us.  You're supposed to carry your baby to term.  You're supposed to take your baby home with you when you leave the hospital and not leave her there in the NICU to be cared for by nurses and not her mom and dad.  And most people succeed at doing so and don't bat an eye.  But not me.  My pregnancy with Katherine morphed into a life-threatening situation that at times, I still can't believe.  I can't believe how fast everything went wrong and I can't believe how lucky we are that I lived and that Katherine doesn't have any lasting effects from her premature birth.  I had planned to have a completely natural unmedicated birth because it's what I always wanted.  (Absolutely no judgement regarding other people's choices.  Our births are our births and our preferences are our own.)  Everything went south when my atypical preeclampsia went into full swing and an emergency c-section was needed to save our lives.  My lungs were filling with fluid from all of the swelling.  Had I not gone to the hospital the night Katherine was born, I would have drown to death.  Just typing that is mind-boggling.  But we made it through it.  Katherine lived in the NICU for 28 days.  The majority of the time she lived there, I stayed there.  I slept in her NICU room on a cot provided by the hospital so I could be present for every feeding.  I don't regret staying there.

Sean is highly allergic to peanuts and allergic to dairy thus my title of Food Allergy Mom.  We're at the beginning of our journey with food allergies and how to manage them.  We've made mistakes but we've also gotten a lot right.  The scary thing about his allergy is not being able to let my guard down about his food for a second.  The one time I didn't think and gave him a cookie at a community event, it was a peanut butter cookie and he had a reaction.  Not an anaphylactic reaction (thank God) but a reaction none the less.  We've made our home peanut-free under the advice of his allergist.  When asked if we should do this, the allergist's exact words were "I'd sleep better at night if you did.".  Another direct quote from Sean's allergist, "This is the real deal peanut allergy.  I don't like giving these diagnosis but this is very serious.".  If hearing those words about your own child doesn't strike fear into your heart, I don't know what will.  The scary reality for Sean is if we don't monitor all of his food and read all of the ingredients, he could have a life-threatening reaction.  Before he was diagnosed and we suspected his reaction, I didn't sleep at night.  I was afraid we had given him something he was allergic too without knowing it and he went into anaphylactic shock while he was sleeping.  Is this insane?  Probably.  We were very careful with his food once we suspected his allergy but I was uneducated about his allergy and terrified for my child.  There is a possibility he could outgrow his allergies.  It's more likely he will outgrow the dairy allergy than the peanut allergy.  Outgrowing a peanut allergy is possible but not very many people do.  We're praying he outgrows it but not getting our hopes up.  I struggle with the idea that he'll have this condition for the rest of his life.

The thing I've discovered about both of these titles is there's a sisterhood that comes with them.  All preemie mommas remember the date they brought their babies home.  We welcome each other into the group; even though we don't want new members.  There's an understanding when you find another preemie mom.  There's a strength in preemie moms because we've been through so much at the beginning of our mom journey.  There's also comfort in numbers, I've found.  I've found comfort in meeting other Food Allergy Moms because they get it.  They get what it's like to read food labels, to be afraid of anaphylactic shock and of not being able to relax about your child's diet.  We understand about asking what oil is used in food fast restaurants and leaving a restaurant if the oil contains an allergen.  We understand debating if you should pack your child's lunch or let him eat the hot lunch provided by school.  This is an easy decision for non-allergy moms but one that takes up a lot of mental space for food allergy moms.  Any food allergy mom (or food allergy individual) I've met so far has been willing to share their experiences and coping mechanisms.  And for that I am grateful.  Some day I'll be on the other side of this journey and comforting a new member of the Food Allergy Mom club but for now, I'm taking the comfort of the moms who have been there.

And while it is sad to bear mom titles no one wants to bear, I wouldn't change anything (ok, I'd make Sean's allergies not life-threatening but that's it).  These titles have made me a stronger mom and a better mom.  I'm grateful I'm the mom I never wanted to be because it's exactly the mom I'm supposed to be.