the miracle worker

Raising a kid with aspergers means forever finding new carrots to dangle... today I found a new carrot and I'm delighted with the results! Austin cleaned his room. I mean... really cleaned it. Like never before in his whole life. And all it cost me was a pack of Yu-gi-oh cards. Entirely worth it.

That was the first miracle. The second was that I had a kid not only EATING whole grains but liking them today. Here are my two miracle meals:

"Freezer" Burritos
(read this online and it sounded like a great idea)
I cooked one bag of dry pinto beans in the crockpot with an onion, a bell pepper, a few cloves of garlic and some cumin and salt until they were mushy.
I mushed them up further with about an ounce of fat free cream cheese (to make them creamy).
I shredded about 1/2 a cup of sharp cheddar (Austin's favorite) and mixed that in the bean mixture.
I put one half cup of this mixture into a whole wheat tortilla... wrapped it in a damp paper towel and microwaved for thirty seconds.
Austin says they're awesome. I rather liked them myself.
I wrapped them individually and froze them.
The recipe says you can wrap them in a damp paper towel and reheat in one minute from frozen. We haven't tested that yet so I'll let you know how it works out.
They're about 3 weight watchers points per burrito.... really filling too.
Austin asked if that could be on his menu every week along with his standard frozen burgers and his requested turkey veggie loaf.
Makes it really easy for me to eat healthy when he's got his own easily accessible food. I'll experiment a little with some additional proteins but the bean version ends up costing less than fifty cents per burrito.

The other thing I cooked was "Green Pasta"...
I cooked whole wheat penne pasta with broccoli and shredded carrots (tossed the veggies in the pasta water as the pasta cooked)... mixed that with two cups of sauteed broccoli rabe, pesto, goat cheese, fat free cream cheese (because I ran out of goat cheese - it's a nice sub), parmesan cheese...
Despite using whole wheat pasta, Austin thought it was great.

He was not interested in the Bulgur Salad I made, however, because i used a ton of cilantro (which I love and he hates). I used 3 cups of "cooked" bulgur. (the cool thing about cooking bulgur and one of the reasons it's my favorite salad grain is because all you have to do to prepare it is cover it with boiling water for about 20 minutes) Once the bulgur was ready, I added 2 cups of chopped tomatoes (although, unfortunately, not the beautiful colored heirloom tomatoes i've been enjoying this summer because it was raining too heavily yesterday for me to go out to the farm) plus one cup of red onion and one cup of diced jicama. I mixed all of that with 1/3 cup of red wine vinegar and a tablespoon of olive oil. Oh... and about a cup of cilantro. It's fabulous! It's not the traditional taboule that I usually make because that calls for mint and lemon juice... and I had neither... but it's really good and will make for a yummy lunch in my brand new....

Tinkerbell lunch bag! I had wanted an insulated lunch bag and with back to school in full swing, I found an adorable little lunch bag for me! I'm so excited!

So the laundry is done, the meals for the week are done, the dishes are done and all I have left to do is cut my canary melon...

And I even worked out. Productive weekend! Yay!