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Smoky and Roasty

Happy Wednesday!

I’ve come to really enjoy Wednesday evenings because I know that there are only two more wake-ups until the weekend! I hate that Adam has class so late, but I get to watch garbage TV for a few hours, read quietly, or cook stuff I’m not sure he’ll like. Usually, that ends up being something like the stuffed kabochas from last week, or something with an inordinate amount of vegetables and mushrooms.

Today’s dinner though, I thought might be a risk since it’s pretty tomato-y, but there’s no doubt that the leftovers will be consumed soon.

I had no idea how this would turn out. I had some idea in my head of what I wanted it to be, but I didn’t know if it would work…

Oh did it work!

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Smoky Chili Chicken
Serves 3

Ingredients
3 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces
4 strips bacon, cut into small pieces
1 large can whole tomatoes
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. red chili flakes

Directions
Heat a saucepan and add the bacon. Allow it to cook until crispy, then add the chicken and stir well. Then, add the spices, stirring to coat the chicken. Let the spices sear onto the chicken a little, then add the can of tomatoes and stir well. Cover and simmer about 45 minutes, then uncovered for about 15 minutes to allow it to thicken.

HO-LY-GOODNESS this was delicious. I seriously almost typed “Serves 1″ in the recipe because I want to go eat the rest of it. The bacon lent a smokey flavor to the chili powder and tomatoes, which almost tasted like chiles in adobo. I topped my bowl with some aged white cheddar, sour cream, and half an avocado… oh I want more now! I’m really glad I need to type recipes out for you all, because otherwise, I don’t know that I’d remember what I did! Like the recipe? Don’t forget to Spring It!

I also made some roasted asparagus that were apparently alive on their little plate because EVERY picture was blurry. This was the best I got:

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See? They were moving, I swear!!

They were delicious though… moving or not.

Make sure you enter the SkinMD Natural Giveaway! It runs until Friday and as of right now, your chances are pretty good!

Also, I just want to give a special shout out to my OpenSky fairy, Lindsay… HI LINDSAY!
Look for more OpenSky posts in the next couple days!!

Have a great rest of your night, and a fabulous Thursday!

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Steak House? No! Our House!

Today was one of those days that made me realize how lucky I am to be a part of this wonderful blogging community. Who else can say that they have friends from LITERALLY all over the country, many of whom they’ve never met in person??

I started my day bright and early by meeting up with two of my favorite bloggers, and girls who have been loyal readers and commenters pretty much since day one of this little blog of mine: Jenn and Caroline! We met up with each other at a childhood favorite restaurant of mine, Walker Brothers Pancake House, and as usual, the line was out the door. Luckily, they got us in and seated quickly!

I got a mushroom omelet, fruit, and a side of bacon. I only ate the strawberries out of the fruit cup…

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Walker Bros. was the first place I ever remember going that had amazingly fluffy baked omelets, instead of the flat and folded over ones of so many greasy spoon places. The bacon was, well, bacon…so it was awesome! The best part though was the company and conversation. Thanks so much for a great morning!

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From left: Me, Jenn, Caroline, and Caroline’s cousin

I’ve made an executive decision: all the bloggers I’ve met need to move to Chicago so that we can hang out on a regular basis.

Since I was so close, I stopped off at my mom’s house to show off the new camera, and of course, the lovely Stella was thrilled to be the subject of an impromptu photo shoot!

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She’s been watching Top Model!

I came home and vegged out for a while, because its Sunday…and then set out to the grocery store with my EnviTote for a few days worth of produce and ingredients for dinners. Much to my surprise and delight, 3 lb. bags of baby spinach were on sale, buy one get one free for $3.99! Needless to say, I then needed to stock up on Green Monster ingredients too… I had a very specific dinner in mind, hence the trip to the grocery store.

Last weekend for Valentine’s Day, I bought a bunch of ingredients for broth/bouillon fondue after we ate our cheese, and found that we were too full after the first course. The ingredients went into the freezer, and I wanted to use them today. What were these ingredients? Jumbo shrimp and filet mignon!

The steaks needed a simple preparation: just a sprinkle of salt and fresh ground pepper, then a quick sear in a pan and then a few minutes under the broiler.

The shrimp though, got the royal treatment… they got Scampi-fied!

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Shrimp Scampi
Ingredients
1 lb. peeled raw shrimp
2 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 c. dry white wine
juice of 1 lemon
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped

Directions
Heat a saucepan over medium heat. Add the butter and olive oil, then the garlic. Cook a few minutes, then add the white wine. Reduce by half. Add lemon juice and shrimp and cook until shrimp are done, about 6 minutes. Add parsley, stir and serve immediately.

In addition, I made a batch of the same creamed spinach I made recently. In all, this was, as Adam said, like Wildfire at home. Remember Wildfire? We went there at the end of my first week of camp this summer, and it’s one of our very favorite steakhouses! To hear that I successfully recreated at home a similar meal as we enjoy out was one of the best food-related compliments I’ve gotten!
All together now:

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So, with a full belly and a sleepy head, and thoughts of snow days lingering in the back of my brain… I bid you good night!


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Put a Stick In It

Hey, get your mind out of the gutter!

Today’s gadget is not a new one by any means, but it is one that I believe everyone should have! My mom bought this for me over two years ago, and I’ve loved every minute of using it. It’s one of those “I could make this recipe but I don’t have…”

What is it? An immersion blender! I have this one:


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Since it sits in a drawer when it’s not being used, the red doesn’t stick out too badly. I’ve used this lovely gadget for soups, smoothies, milkshakes, and tons of other recipes, but my very favorite thing to use it for is whipping eggs into oblivion for a fritatta. A fritatta is made with using many eggs (and in my recipe, half eggs and half egg whites) blended well and then cooked both on the stovetop and in the oven. Whipping by hand, at least for me, got tiring and I never got the froth I like when making fritatta. I like when there are lots of little bubbles to help the egg get in between the pieces of potato and vegetables… but I’ll get to that in a minute. I had a couple people tell me on my mandoline and rice cooker posts that they are afraid of using a stick blender… so a few key things I’ve found in my time using mine (Kristin! PAY ATTENTION!):
  • Make sure the entire rounded end is completely submerged into whatever liquid you’re blending. Sometimes, when making smoothies, this means putting the blender in the cup before the ingredients!
  • Pulse the blades first before running it consistently. This gets the ingredients up into the rounded part, which minimizes splatter.
  • MAKE SURE the blades are COMPLETELY stopped before pulling the blender out. It only takes a little bit of motion to cause your soup, smoothie, or eggs to go flying all over the kitchen!
  • Keep the blender moving, yet close to the bottom of the cup or bowl as you blend. This allows for even blending.

So, in keeping with gadget week, I made a fritatta recipe with my immersion blender. I followed the procedure found in my fritatta recipe page, but the ingredients were:

  • spinach
  • broccoli
  • chopped bacon
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 and a half baked potatoes, diced
  • 5 eggs
  • 5 egg whites
  • 1.5 c. low fat cheddar cheese

The bacon added a great dimension of flavor we don’t usually get in our fritattas, but the key here was the bubbly eggs. I whipped them up until they were a light lemon color, added half the cheese, and then blended that in as well. I topped the whole pan with the remaining cheese, and came out with this masterpiece:

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See how the egg got in between the spinach and potato? With regular egg beating, I find that the eggs sink and don’t fill in the gaps that well. This was absolutely delicious, and of course, I ate my piece with fat free sour cream.

Please check out Dori’s Charity Auction happening today! All proceeds go to a very worthy cause!

I’m cutting this short here, as today is a fairly sad day… 3 years ago today my grandma passed away. She’s one of the reasons that I learned to cook (along with my mom, my main influence), and I miss her every day. I’m going to cook a “tribute” meal tomorrow, full of dishes that she both cooked and taught me to love… so my question today: Who taught you to cook and/or love food?


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Blended Smooth

Yup! You guessed it! Tonight’s gadget is our handy-dandy, amazingly powerful, super-shiny Cuisinart blender!

I’ve been a blender snob for years now. Working as a barista at Starbucks (Store #246!) for 6 years (on and off) and being employed there the summer after the Frappuccino was introduced, I experienced many different blenders. Eventually, Starbucks moved away from the smaller blenders to the higher-power, higher-tech BlendTec electronic blenders that I fell in love with. I know many bloggers love their VitaMix blenders due to their high capacity and high power and well, their general fabulousness, but when registering for wedding gifts, I had a hard enough time asking people for specific things, let alone a $400 blender! Upon researching, I found that Cuisinart made a very powerful, high-capacity digital push-button blender that just happened to match the rice cooker… so we registered for it. Adam’s cousin and her husband were nice enough to give it to us, and tonight, we broke it in.

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See? It’s shiny, and has a super wide mouth which is great for savory dishes that need blending, such as tonight’s Split Pea Soup. My issue with other blenders I’ve had is that the narrow base and wider top were deceptive. They were tall, and I always overestimated what I thought they could hold. This one though doesn’t cause that illusion, and the super-clear glass allowed for easy measuring. I absolutely can’t wait to make a smoothie, or better yet, a piña colada or other mixed drink in it, because I have this feeling that it will crush ice like a champ!

On to what I made with this lovely blender after much prep and a great conversation with a certain macaroon-making friend:

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Split Pea Soup with Bacon and Homemade Croutons

Ingredients
For the soup:
2 c. dry split peas, picked over for pebbles
4 slices center cut bacon, diced
2 medium onions, cut into chunks
3 carrots, cut into chunks
2 ribs of celery, cut into chunks
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
salt
water

For the croutons*:
3 slices Italian bread, cut into bite-sized pieces
olive oil for drizzling
parmesan cheese
garlic powder

Directions
In a large pot, cook the bacon until crispy and the fat is rendered. Drain the bacon and set aside, saving about 1 Tbsp. fat for cooking. Add the onions, carrots, celery and garlic and cook a few minutes until onions are softened. Add the split peas, and then enough water to cover by about 2 inches. Generously salt the water, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer and check every so often, adding more water as the peas cook. Once the peas are cooked and veggies are soft, puree in the blender one batch at a time until very smooth. Top with reserved bacon and croutons (recipe below).
Croutons*:
Pre-heat the oven to 375*. Place the bread chunks onto a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Stir to coat. Sprinkle generously with parmesan cheese and garlic powder, and bake until browned and dry.
*Please note, the word “crouton” must be pronounced “crowten” a-la Bud from The Cosby Show.

OH WAS THIS GOOD! It’s cold here and I’m getting a cold, so soup was what I wanted… and did this ever hit the spot! I wish I’d salted the original pot of soup more, because I ended up salting my bowl, but whatever! It was great!

In other news: I’ve been given TWO blogger awards! The amazing (and a role-model of mine) Roni of Roni’s Weigh and other fabulous blogs gave me the Happy 101 Award, and Melissa of Melissa Likes To Eat gave me the Beautiful Blogger Award!

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Both of these awards require that I share formerly unknown facts about myself (10 and 7 respectively), and then pass them on to other bloggers (also 10 and 7 respectively). I’m not going to do 17 things… I’m just not that interesting! BUT I’m going to do 8.5 things, which means 8 interesting/formerly known things and one notsointeresting thing. Here goes:
  1. I watch way too much TV. Really.
  2. I have a MOUNTAIN of clothes in our 2nd bedroom from various stages of weight loss and gain, yet I can never find anything to wear, because honestly, nothing looks right.
  3. If I ever have under $5 left on a gift card for anywhere besides Starbucks, I pass it on to the person behind me. At Starbucks, if it’s under $2 I pass it on. Someone once did that for me, and I thought it was the nicest thing!
  4. I used to have exercise-induced asthma for which I took an inhaler. To this day, any time I get a bad cold, that tightening in my chest comes back and I am terrified that I’ll have to take an inhaler.
  5. Anything having to do with my eyeball freaks me out. It’s a miracle I can get my contacts in and out!
  6. I begged my mom for a perm from the time I was about 10 until I was about 13. Then, magically, one time I showered and didn’t dry my hair and BAM, it was curly. Now I flat iron it most of the winter.
  7. I have no idea what color my hair really is (speaking of hair). I started dying it when I was about 12, and I have no clue what it would be if I let it grow. I’m thinking of dying it chocolate brown though, just for fun. (thoughts?)
  8. At one point growing up, we had 6 cats, a dog, 14 fish, and a frog. The cats were of varying ages from about 2 years old to about 20, and they were all strange in some way. Timmy had extra toes, Roger looked like he’d swallowed a watermelon, Casey thought the couch was his mother, Pico played fetch… yeah, they were fun
  9. (no, 8.5, remember?) I have a canker sore under my tongue and it hurts to talk

And I honestly have no idea who has gotten any of these awards, so I’m going to take the boring way out and give them to YOU…yes YOU, all of you, my glorious and wonderful readers. So, in the comments, leave me one interesting fact about you!


You’re the reason I blog each night, and the reason I have a (in the words of my Bostonian friends) wicked awesome giveaway coming your way this weekend. Seriously, it’s a great one!!! Might even be better than the cheese party giveaway from this past fall! But you’ll have to wait and see…

There might be other big news too… maybe :)

Have a wonderful night!


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Bernie’s BBQ Sauce (With a POM Twist)

So I got this case of POM juice last week, and in my email from Janny, he asked that I try to cook with it and see what I can come up with. I was at a complete loss. Sure, I could’ve put it in oatmeal like some bloggers did, but since I do a dinner blog, it wouldn’t be featured. I could make a cocktail, but I don’t really drink… so I ran my dilemma past my best sounding board: my mom!

She suggested that I use a bottle of the POM juice in what was my grandfathers “famous” BBQ sauce. I think I said “wait, hold on, I can MAKE BBQ sauce? Doesn’t it just come in a bottle?” Of course, my mom laughed and proceeded to tell me how to make it, and where to incorporate my POM juice . Without any further adieu, for the first time on the internet, my grandfather Bernie’s BBQ sauce:

Just like Papa used to make.

Just like Papa used to make.

Papa’s BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

5 slices center cut bacon, diced

1 onion, diced

1/2 green pepper, diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes

1 Tbsp. chili powder

2 tsp. Worscestshire sauce

1 c. ketchup

8 oz. POM Wonderful Juice

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

Directions

Heat a large pot, and add the bacon and onions. Cook until the bacon is very crispy and the onions are near caramelized. Add the green peppers and cook ten minutes. Add ketchup, hot pepper, Worcestershire sauce, POM Wonderful juice,  chili powder. Mix well, then stir in brown sugar. Bring to a simmer, then lower heat and cook until it tastes like BBQ sauce. Puree with a stick blender, and serve with your favorite meat.  Makes at least 10 servings, only 1 Point® per serving.

Just like my mom had said, most bottled BBQ sauce has a fake smoke flavor. This one though, has the subtle smokiness of the bacon, combined with the sweet and tart flavor of the POM, and the spiciness of the pepper. I’m really glad that I have a bunch of extra servings of this, mostly to try it on other meat, and on actual outside grilled steaks! I couldn’t believe how easy it was to make my own BBQ sauce… it’s hard to say if I’ll ever buy bottled again!

You couldn’t have noticed the 2 side dishes with my heavily sauced chicken. One of them was pan-roasted cauliflower and broccoli and the other was something that’s sure to be a new favorite.

dscn2037I roasted some frozen butternut squash, sprinkled it with reduced fat coconut (just found it yesterday and I’m a HUGE fan!0 and a little Splenda. SUCH a good treat! I can see how something like that could be a great breakfast as well.

My BSI Announcement was my 100th post, and I had all these plans for a cool giveaway for my 100th post… alas, you will have to wait until TOMORROW for my cool giveaway post! In the meantime, be sure to check out Beadie’s giveaway! She’s giving away a bottle of Country Bob’s all-purpose sauce… looks like good stuff!

Make sure to keep those BSI entries coming!

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All Natural, WONDERFUL Meal!

MY OH MY am I feeling better!! My appetite came back with a vengeance today, and I was desperately craving protein!! It made me realize exactly how little I’d eaten in the last few days…

Adam and I decided to go to the health food store, The Fruitful Yield to see if we could find anything for dinner. This particular store has not only the vitamin aisles, but also a full frozen food section and dry goods section, so our odds were good. Since I really wanted protein, we got a pound of lean ground buffalo to make burgers. I’d never cooked it before, and thought that worst case, we know buffalo tastes good! I mixed the buffalo with my usual hamburger recipe, but omitted the buns. In an attempt to be even more adventurous, we got rice cheese to top the burgers with.

We also found this microwave-in-pouch brown rice and quinoa blend with garlic as a side dish.

Delicious!

Delicious!

I started cooking dinner, and Adam discovered the package of center-cut bacon leftover from last week’s chicken carbonara.  He suggested we cook up the remaining strips as an “appetizer” and I happily obliged. After 4 days of eating super light, I’m a little anxious about what this dinner will do to my stomach… but it was SO GOOD!

no veggies here... oops!

no veggies here... oops!

I did leave out vegetables… oh well. I can eat vegetables tomorrow. I think this all-natural, mostly organic, amazingly delicious meal more than makes up for my not-so-natural eats of last week!

In other news, the health food store had the seasonal flavors of Clif bars, so tomorrow’s breakfast will be a pear-apple strudel bar! AND, Saturday morning at my weekly Weight Watchers meeting, I weighed in at my lightest weight in nearly 6 months, hit my over 50 lb lost mark, AND am under 200 lbs…GO ME!

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Non-vegan, Not-So-Natural dinner

CAUTION! THIS IS NOT AN ALL-NATURAL VEGAN, VEGETARIAN, RAW, OR VEGGIE-FULL MEAL! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! :)

OY did I have a long day!! I won’t go into details, but lets just say that a trip to the grocery store after work was NOT top on my list. I went though, as we needed supplies for dinner, and I desperately needed a snack. I went into the store having NO idea as to what dinner was going to be. I wandered down the health food/organic aisle, and what did they happen to have? LARABARS!!! AT MY NORMAL GROCERY STORE!!! 4 for $5!!! SO EXCITED!

Ok, no more caps. Anyway, once I knew I had a car snack, I could think about dinner, and the first thing that came to mind was chicken carbonara. Don’t know why, but it was ALL I wanted. I went through the store, grabbing what I needed, and then hurried up to check out. The result: HUGE HIT! (And fairly low-Point® too!)

Trying the "close-up"...what do we think?

Trying the close-up, what do we think?

Cheapo Chicken Carbonara

Ingredients

2 chicken breast halves, cut into small pieces

1 small onion, diced fine

2 tsp. olive oil

1 can peas, drained

1 can cream of chicken soup

1/2 c. fat free milk

5 strips center-cut bacon, cut into small pieces

1 lb. high-fiber or whole wheat pasta, cooked

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil and add the onion. Once the onion is transluscent, add the chopped bacon and cook until crispy. Then, add the chicken and cook until nearly done. Stir in the soup and milk, and then add the peas. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and then stir in the cooked pasta. Serves 6.

The one problem with this recipe is that now, I have over half a package of center-cut bacon in the fridge. Luckily a) I love bacon and b) center-cut bacon is much lower fat than regular bacon! I also have though, 2 new Larabars to try!

QOTD: What have you bloggers found is the most effective way to increase blog traffic? Some days I have over 400 hits, and other days, barely 200… I don’t get it! Any hints you can offer would be great :)


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