Burger, Burgers & More Burgers; a GIVEAWAY!

It's been a busy week, folks. And this week seems to have a theme to it: hamburgers. I got hooked on reading blogs a while back that rated hamburgers in the Houston or Texas area and I wanted to try a few different places and rate them myself.

.
Eating out is not usually Weight Watcher friendly. Eating hamburgers and fries is almost never Weight Watcher friendly. So how can I try new restaurants, eat a burger and not feel guilty?! My plan: eat healthy and exercise all week and have the weekends "off." Eh, it may or may not work out. We'll see. I just hate guilt feelings while I'm trying to enjoy something. Know what I mean?

.
Let's begin the week's tour, shall we?
.
Monday:
We were supposed to go to Latin class but Rachel was not feeling well. So we stayed home and didn't do much.


A while back a company contacted me and asked if they could send me some sauce to try for free. They said the magic word (FREE) so of course I said "yes."


Along with this sauce called Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce came a recipe booklet. We tried the one for the hamburgers.
These were truly some of the best burgers I've had. I don't generally like to order sauces online. I don't want to pay shipping and there are so many sauces at the grocery store. But Chuck told me that I needed to order some more of this stuff to keep on hand. It's sooooo good! I can see where you could use this in a lot of your savory dishes. I'm going to experiment with it. But trust me: it's VERY good. And it's only 25 calories per tablespoon and no fat. The ingredient list says it's "all natural."


And because I'm so sweet (and Country Bob sent me an extra bottle) I'm going to GIVE AWAY a bottle and recipe booklet to YOU! Just leave me a comment telling me that you'd like to have it and I'll have a drawing next Sunday and post the results.
Tuesday:
Rachel had a class for high school homeschoolers (though she's in 8th grade they said it would be fine for her to attend) at the Houston Museum of Natural Science about the Terra Cotta Warriors (since they're having an exhibit right now) and Chinese culture. The museum was even bringing in a professor from Texas A&M to teach some parts of the class.
.
The weather was terrible that morning and I even went through some high water but we got there in time. It took the professor 3 hours to get there! Poor lady.
.
The class was awesome. She learned some Chinese, culture and painted a replica terra cotta warrior.

Rachel also won a Chinese lantern in a trivia game!
As part of the China study we did at home the kids painted "Ming" vases. Well, they're actually bowls.Wednesday:
Meh, nothing much going on except a big load of school work.
.
.
Thursday:
We all went on a 1 night stay to San Antonio. Just because. We had planned on going to homeschool day at SeaWorld but it turned out not to be such a great deal so we just went to San Antonio to hang out.
.
Ever hear of the TV show called Man vs. Food? Well, he went to this restaurant in San Antonio called LuLu's Bakery and Cafe so we decided to try it.
The building and atmosphere don't look like much. They have a sign out front that proudly boasts that they have been voted to have the best chicken fried steak in town.
Sooooo.........here is a visual of the SMALL chicken fried steak that I ordered complete with mashed potatoes (some of the best I've ever had), fried okra and a roll. All for under $10. And it really was some awesome chicken fried steak.
Afterwards we went downtown where we were going to go on a ghost tour but our guide stood us up. The kids were ticked off.
.
Got to see the Alamo. It's so pretty at night. Stirs something in the heart of this Texas girl.

We also took a carriage ride and got to hear legends and some false information about San Antonio. I guess the driver/guide didn't count on these tourists researching the info she told us. :) But it was a great ride and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
.

After the ride we had to check out one of the most haunted hotels in America: The Menger Hotel. It's just gorgeous inside! Look at this lobby from the 1800s. Famous folks such as Teddy Roosevelt, Roy Rogers and Bill Clinton have stayed there. That's just a few of the names on the guest registry. There have been countless tales of sightings at the hotel. The kids took many pictures and looked everywhere but were disappointed not to see any ghosts. I'm a skeptic so I didn't expect to see anything and was not disappointed. ;-)

Got back to the hotel and the kids couldn't stop cracking up about the pool sign that had obviously been violated so that it read "Poo Hours."

Friday:

Every one slept late.

Then it was off to a very late breakfast /almost lunch at LuLu's for their legendary cinnamon rolls that weigh in at 3 pounds each! On Man vs Food he at one of the cinnamon rolls and then the large order of chicken fried steak. It's just not human. Something has to be wrong with him. I mean, look at the size of these things!!

That's just ONE cinnamon roll.

Time to head home. On the way we stop at The Snake Farm. Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs did some work here for his show. Let me tell ya, the smell just about knocks you out when you go in. They have a viper pit filled with rattlesnakes that burns the hair in your nose. It's pretty bad. They did have a large variety of snakes.

Here are some Burmese pythons they have.

This cobra was nice enough to sport his hood and pose for the camera.

Outside were a variety of animals including alligators, birds, monkeys, lemurs, a wolf, tortoises, hyenas, a fox and more. Chuck fell in love with a hyacinth macaw.

There was also this geeky looking llama in the petting zoo.

It was nice to get home and sleep in my own bed. It felt like we had been gone for longer than a day. Every one slept hard that night.

.

Saturday:

Chuck had an IDPA shooting match this morning and I had a difficult time waking up to go with him.

He did pretty good coming in third. He was moving slow and must have been pretty tired too.

.

For lunch we went out for some of the best sushi at Little Tokyo.

.

Afterwards, Chuck and I went home and slept until 5pm. I guess all of that activity catches up with you.

.

For dinner we tried a place in Sugar Land called Original Eats. We got there at 7:45 and they closed at 8pm. Whew. Just made it.

.

This goes along with the idea of wanting to try new burger places. Chuck and I split the buffalo burger on sweet sourdough with a side of sweet potato fries. The folks there were even nice enough to cut our burger for us and split the meal.

.

The burgers here are awesome! I loved it. They have small condiment bar where you can fix your burger however you like.

Saturday night was time to unwind. I made up a pitcher of ritas and Chuck had cream rum. Wish y'all could come over for a rita. They were good!

Sunday:

It felt good to sleep late until 9am. That's late for us. :)

.

The kids had their first Aviation Education class at the 1940 Terminal Museum near Hobby airport. It actually backs up to Hobby.

The kids learned how an airplane works and then made paper airplanes to fly while they watched different types of planes land and take off including some antique planes and private jets.

Afterwards it was time to check out another burger joint: Niners Grill. I ordered a burger with bbq sauce, cheddar & bacon. The burgers are enormous but they just weren't a favorite with any of us. Chuck only ate half of his and I didn't finish mine either. The onion rings are great though. The best burgers so far are the ones that Chuck made using Country Bob's Sauce.

That brings us up to Monday. Today starts my 30 day Challenge with Rachel. As I write this, she is working out.

The challenge: work out for 30 days straight using EA Sports Active on level medium or harder. If we are out of town then we can choose another activity of comparable intensity. For each day we exercise we earn $1. If we complete all 30 days we earn another $30 bonus!

.

That should get us back on track!

.

I have several new healthy recipes that I'll be trying this week. I'll report back next week with the results and the recipes if they turn out ok.

.

Have a terrific week! **And don't forget to leave a comment to win a bottle of Country Bob's Sauce! It's really good. :)**