Penne Noodles and Creamy Carbonara with Shredded Chicken

I love pasta always have and always will. I am trying to make my favorites more healthy. I may not make my pasta noodles from scratch, but everything else I am trying to make from scratch so I can control my in take of fats, carbs & sugar etc. I love creamy carbonara's. It is very delicious and usually loaded with salt if you buy the pre-made sauce. I also like the versions out there with chicken mixed in as well. So what I did was made a simple white sauce most people call it bechamel. Bechamel's can be turned in alfredo sauces or the starting base for bisque's, chowder's and cream sauces to pour onto fish. It is endless for the ways your can prepare it. So I am going to stop babbling on and just go straight to ingredients.

Sauce:
2 TBSP Butter
1 TSP Salt
1 TSP Black Pepper
1 TSBP of Flour
2 Cups of Milk (I used partly skimmed, since I am watching my weight)
2 TBSP of Epicure's Bacon Salad Topper (I like the bacon flavor in carbonara's so felt this was great for this meal)
1 TBSP of Bacon Fat (Every time I cook bacon I pour the fat into a mason jar in my fridge)

Meat:
Two Pieces of Boneless Skinless chicken.

Noodles:
1 1/2 cup of Penne Noodles

Topping:
Chunks of bread (2 slices)
1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese (shredded)

Start by bringing to boil water in a pot then add your noodles. While your noodles are cooking I then heat my frying pan and melt the butter along with adding the salt and pepper to the mix then add the flour and stir then add bacon fat. Then add the milk in a little bit at a time. This helps the sauce from burning, because if you pour the whole 2 cups in at once it will burn and also get lumpy. For each time I would add more milk I would a sprinkle of the bacon salad topper from Epicure's spice. I always tasted as I went and sometimes would have to add just a pinch of salt. Once you have finished adding all the milk bit by bit and it has thickened. I turned off the stove, put it on the back burner with a lid on top.

During the time of making the carbonara sauce the penne noodles were already finished. So I drained them and put them aside in a bowl.  Then I cooked the two pieces of chicken up into shredded pieces. Then I put the noodles into the pan with the sauce and also added the chicken and gave it a good stir, then poured the whole batch into a baking dish. Then I topped it with the chunks of bread and shredded cheese. I put the dish in the oven for 15 minutes just to warm it up and allow the cheese to melt and the bread chunks to get crispy.

The whole family loved it! Jonathan never compliments my meals often and when he does, that means he is really impressed. He took his first bite and first thing that came out of his mouth was "Mmm this is delicious." and my little girl took a lick of the sauce off her spoon first and as soon as she realized how tasty it was she ate it all up and with each mouthful she would say out loud "Good num (yum)."

2014 Goals

Wow this is my first post for the new year for 2014. I am not like others and like to complain about unfinished goals and blah blah blah. I will say that I made a new years resolution about 3 or 4 years back and I still kept it. Which was to never make new years resolutions and there you have it. I kept it, all I do now is make realistic goals, because sometimes people list off a bunch of things that aren't achievable with in a twelve month period. Some goals which I actually didn't post on here from last year was to have my daughter more interactive with other kids and more talkative and that she will get use to using her own hands for gift opening and drawing with out help. And to also get her familiar with the alphabet, which she does know most of them, but not all. I did start to potty train her a bit in November of 2013 and I want to by the end of 2014 have her off the diaper and into 'big girl' underwear. Of course if I could do it I would like to put the goal of losing at least 30 pounds of my pregnant weight, but not going to happen when you are a Mom that has more priorities to worry about than your weight.
Besides Jonathan and I had tried to conceive on Christmas day and I am waiting until the 7th of January to take a pregnancy test to see if I am pregnant first. It's not healthy to work out and diet while being pregnant. Anyways so here's to hoping that I am and if not, then it wasn't time for us to have another one. Either way if I am not pregnant I want to get my body weight down the a more healthier weight, not too skinny, just a perfect healthy size.
By this time next year I would like to be out of the house we're renting, because it is too small and the basement is not finished and we don't have rights to the part being renovated they want to rent it out to a single person. So in that case we have to share the laundry. I want a full house with maybe an extra bedroom and also have more storage. These are just mere goals, not a resolution, I have more things I would like to accomplish, but don't want to overwhelm myself. Just to main important ones, and as one by one gets crossed off my list of goals, I will added another.
I have a neat idea that I saw on pinterest which I am going to try to keep. Basically you have a jar and for each week you raise up a dollar more than the last week and put it in the jar. So first week of the new year is $1 and the last week of the new year is $52, and also if you have spare change as well to just throw it into the jar. It would be nice to have a bit of money saved up. Here's to hoping that I can save up that money with no car troubles this year, because as soon as we have over $1,500 in the savings account a car trouble always happens which ends up depleting our account, and I am staying positive this year with this and not going to allow that to happen. I trust in God's hedge of protection over our lives in this new year.
May you all be blessed this year and if you do goals or resolutions may you accomplish the main ones and then some!

Christmas and Mystery Shopping

Today Jonathan, Aaliyah and I went out and did a few mystery shops through out Alberta. Some in Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan and also in Camrose too! Once we got all of that out of the way we went to Wal-mart and Shoppers and got our Christmas shopping out of the way FINALLY!! I didn't think we would get any of it done at all, but we did. I am so late this year with all things Christmas, we don't even have our tree up. I am usually one of those people who have it up in November. Gee Christmas is only four days away and we don't even have the turkey either. I guess I can some what blame my being behind on doing way too many mystery shops. That is all Jonathan and I do on our days off is do them, because for one they pay good if you're signed up with the right companies and two we do lots of hotel jobs which they fully reimburse and also pay you a fee for the job, along with travel fair if it is outside of Edmonton. What's cool about it too is we always look on the job board to see if there are other shops to be done for smoke shops or restaurant jobs in the city and we set as many up as we can, just so we aren't wasting our trip there.
So, that is to blame, because we keep putting off Christmas shopping and decorating just to make as much money as we can, but I don't want to complain either, because to a degree I like doing it, because if you saw what we have saved up in the bank just from shops we have done last month alone you'd be surprised. Now it is not lucrative to the point of making you a millionaire, but for a regular working family, what we have built up in the bank is AMAZING to us. Every dollar counts for us in the Morin house so any extra money we can save up is great.
Well I am going to go for now, because I need to get some moisturizer on my hands, because the winter weather is so drying on the skin and my knuckles are bleeding because of the weather.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Wow! Can you believe that it is going to be 2014? I can't this year has gone by way too fast for me. Well have a good evening everyone.

Under The Weather

Today I am home from work sick. UGH!! If only you all knew how bad it was. I won't go into extreme details, but I will say this much of the matter. I been up since 1:00 am running back and forth to the bathroom, being sick out of BOTH ends. The worst part is the fact that I can't trust a fart (if you know what I mean). Okay too much information on the fart topic, so I am sure you get the idea now.
So I am sitting here at my lap top on my couch, so tired, but can't get any rest now that the sun is up and keeping me awake. I just wish I could sleep, but no point, because Jonathan is asleep from working his over night shift and someone needs to be up with our daughter. As sick as I am, I certainly am enjoying my time with her. I have myself wrapped up in my blanket like you would wrap up a flatbread for a burrito. I am freezing at the moment, but that will change in about twenty minutes, then I will start to get very hot.
Since I am awake Aaliyah and I are sitting her at my lap top about the watch some documentaries. Then later on I am going to go make some homemade chicken soup (mainly for me cause I am sick) although Aaliyah will eat a bowl as well, because she just LOVES chicken.
I best be on my way offline now. I am off to spend some quality time with my little princess.

Facebook & My Birthday

So facebook is down for now. I don't know if it is just for me or for everyone, but when I went to sign in this morning I got a notice saying that the site is down for some maintenance. I really find stuff like this annoying, to be honest. Facebook is my main and pretty much only source of communication to my family that live so far away. Although, I guess I could use less facebook, because I am sometimes on it when there are no messages or posts on my wall and I just browse and browse for what seems only like a few simple minutes, but in reality a good hour passes by.
So yesterday was my 25th birthday and it was good. I may not have got to spend time with my family down home, but Jonathan, Aaliyah and myself went to Earls restaurant, because it is my all time favorite place to eat out to. Plus we have the best waiter in the world. His name is Matt, he's a pretty cool guy and very friendly, bubbly and he feels like family or like an old friend that you've grown up with. His service is great, he knows what we all choose for our meal, plus he knows our appetizer's and also knows how many refills of our pop to give us. So I couldn't see myself eating any where else for my birthday. I definitely haven't had great service like that at any other restaurant.
Near the last hour of my shift yesterday at work it came out about my birthday accidentally really only because I was bragging that Jonathan was taking me to Earls for my birthday. So, Jomilyn (my co-worker) had made a trip to target to buy her candles and some gum, then pulled out a box of Ferrero Rocher's. Which at first I just thought 'oh she is having a chocolate craving,' then she passed the box to me and wished me a happy birthday. Which was really nice, because no one had to do anything. I don't expect it from my co-worker's to buy me anything, but she did. Well it is nearing quarter to 9 her by my clock and I need to be at work for 9:30 and it takes about 25 to 30 minutes to drive and I am not dressed or have make-up on my face, so I better go now.

Tassimo

I have nothing worth writing about lately so I have been avoiding my blogger. Sorry everyone. :(
What I will mention though is that I got a tassimo bosch brewer. It is an early birthday present (my b-day is tomorrow, in case you're all wondering) Oh and I will be quarter of a century old, in other words that means I'll be turning 25. So anyways the tassimo is great for me. Less mess, brews one cup at a time and don't have to wait for twenty minutes for a quarter of the pot to brew. I never usually  brew a full pot, because I won't drink that much so I only brew about less than half which will give me about a good cup and a half, but even doing so, I have to wait for twenty minutes. The tassimo on the other hand only takes a whole minute!

I do wonder though if I got the right system, because when I mentioned that I got a tassimo for my birthday to the pastor's wife at church last night she said I should of got the $300 Nespresso. Well I don't know, they all taste great to me. I actually walked by a demo of the Nespresso and it tasted just as good as my tassimo, but anyways Debbie (my pastor's wife) kept talking up the quality of Nespresso. But she is only talking it up I feel, because she works the demo stand for one and she has been working it for a while and it also helped her pay her way to real estate school. So her main job is real estate and on the side she does the Nespresso demo at Home Outfitter's in Skyview. Her main spiel to me was 'you get what you pay for,' kind of thing, because tassimo was only about $59 and the more expensive something is the better the quality. Who knows really?

It is my first time with one of these things so I will try it out for myself and when the day comes that my tassimo needs to be replaced and doesn't work anymore, I might try the Nespresso, or I might not, I might try the Keurig. Anyways I only have a two more sips of my wonderfully made coffee left and I am going to finish it off and go put on my make-up for work.

Oh and as for my writing I have been working on something, but nothing ready to be shared with the world. Although, when it is ready it will likely be on wattpad.com

Halloween

Soon enough I am going to be having some scary people coming to my door at the end of the month and how to get rid of these people is shew them away with candy! So I was at the Super Store today getting my thanks giving turkey and my eyes fell upon these nice treat baggies only 20 for $2, so I grabbed three packages. Along my way of shopping I found candy corn. So I scooped about 4 or 5 giant scoops into a plastic baggy. I am getting all excited as memories from my childhood come back to me.
I've had some good treat years and bad treat years. One year all I got were suckers (which I hate the most, because they are hard on the teeth), I am more of gum chewing girl and chocolate bar girl and I love the old fashion kisses even though they are hard on the teeth, but I loved taking them and putting them in the microwave to soften them down a bit.
Oh gosh I spent most of my halloween years with my cousin Lori. I at one time lived in Oshawa Ontario when I was 8 until I was 11. So our first year together Lori, Megan (her friend) and myself were dressed up as cows (thanks aunt Rita... NOT). My aunt had an obsession with cow patterns and cow anything. And her whole kitchen had cow printed walls, cow patterned apron, cow clock (I think you get the picture, right?) So when she was shopping one day for costumes she stumbled upon cow costumes and bought them. When she got home she called my parents to tell them not to worry about the costumes this year and that she had it covered. Which erked all three of us, because we all had major plans of dressing up as the SPICE GIRLS.... Oh there I go now, flash back moment of all three of thinking we knew all the dance routine to each song.
As halloween drew near and we were all getting ready at my place and getting our pillow cases ready (in case some of you never used one, we did to put our candy in it was more durable then the other trick or treat bags). We were all embarrassed of our costumes and were very upset at the end of the night, because we all had crushes at the time. And they saw us and made 'moo-ing' noises at us. Oh how funny it is now that I am older thinking back on it.
The following year we did get the be the 'spice girls' I was ginger spice, Lori was baby spice and Megan was posh spice.
Now I have Aaliyah and she is a toddler and loves everything disney so every year she dresses up as a new character. She doesn't talk as much to be able to say trick or treat so she is my little treat distributor for when I have treaters at the door. Last year I dress her up as tinkerbell and the year before that she was a fairy princess. This year we got this cute little bat girl outfit (which has nothing whatsoever to do with disney, but she likes it). She may not be trick or treating yet, but I buy lots of candy which if I didn't have her will go to wastes anyways. So here's to hoping that we have some fun this year. I am also going to be picking up glow sticks at the $ store to pass out to every treater, just in case. It gets very dark this time of year. I am feeling in the mood for some Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas movies.