The older I get, the cooler and cooler my mom becomes.
Let me clarify – my mom has always been cool, and I’ve always known that fact, but I feel the older I get the more and more I appreciate what a cool lady she actually is. Why is it some things can only be appreciated with age? Fine wine, gourmet cheeses, black coffee…
My birthday is coming up, so in honor of that momentous occasion I thought it would be fun to have dinner with my mom and my friend Tracy tonight. Mom suggested she make her paella — which is one of the dishes she used to make when I lived at home and that I always really really liked.
Paella is a Spanish rice dish that includes sausage, chicken, and shrimp. Reminds me of the jambalaya I made a few weeks back. You just know any dish that includes three types of meat is going to be amazing.
One GIANT paella:
One birthday cannoli 😀
Ninni’s Bakery makes THE best cannolis, Italian cookies, and lemon ice. Hands down.
Super excited to have the leftover cannoli with my morning coffee tomorrow 🙂
Dinner tonight was Chicken Couscous Salad Salad (the food so good they name it twice, right? 😉 )
I stumbled upon this Cooking Light recipe a while back and it sounded really tasty, but I wanted to try and make it a little healthier. Luckily, I had a great find at the grocery store! Rice Select Tri-Color Couscous with Sundried Tomato and Spinach, which has about 70 less calories per serving than the whole wheat couscous I compared it to.
I decided to make up 2 servings of the salad so I’d have something for lunch tomorrow, so I cooked up 1/2 cup of the couscous in 1/2 cup free range chicken broth. Once the couscous was finished, I fluffed it work a fork and dumped in a bowl to cool down.
Meanwhile, I got to choppin. Here’s what I decided to throw into the salad:
That’s:
4 ounces chicken breast (which I cooked up last night with McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning)
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1 roma tomato
1/2 a chopped cucumber
1/4 cup chopped parsley
For the dressing, I mixed up the following:
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 clove garlic minced
Tossed everything together and put in the fridge to chill out while I cleaned up my kitchen. I’m one of those people who just makes an absurd amount of messes while cooking… Good thing I like to clean 🙂
This recipe made two big servings of yummyness:
This was really tasty! I love vinegars, so I especially liked the dressing. I think I’ll actually try some out on a salad later in the week. Another great thing about this couscous recipe is you could throw pretty much any vegetable into the mix and it would taste great! Two thumbs up!
Stats on the chicken couscous salad: 277 calories, 40g carbs, 4g fat, 17g protein, 4g fiber
Last night I was apparently in the mood to try 3,000 new concoctions. I found this recipe for Protein Cakes the other day. They are super simple to make and work out to less than 100 calories each (before you add toppings) so I decided to make two different kinds to try out for breakfast #1.
Protein Cake #1
1/2 scoop chocolate protein powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 packet truvia
1 tbsp sugar free applesauce
1 egg white
1 tsp choc chips
Protein Cake #2
1/2 scoop vanilla protein powder
2 drops vanilla extract
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 packet truvia
1 tbsp sugar free applesauce
1 egg white
1/4 cup fresh blueberries
They only take 1 minute to cook in the microwave!
Cakes in the mugs:
Check out the height on the chocolate cake:
As you can see, one of these cakes is not like the other. One of these cakes just doesn’t belong…
Apparently the blueberries had a negative effect on the vanilla protein cake. BUMMER! (PS, that one got tossed, it was just gross looking).
BIG FAT FLOP #1.
This morning, I was really excited to try the surviving chocolate cake. I heated it up in the microwave for about 15 seconds, and took a big ole bite. I guess since they have “cake” in the title, I was expecting something moist and delicious. But this was super dry and not very tasty. I put some blackberry preserves on top, but still ended up throwing most of it away.
BIG FAT FLOP #2.
Because I’m such a smarty pants, I had planned ahead for such a catastrophe by bringing a Peanut Butter Cookie Lara Bar. This is the first time I had tried a Lara Bar. What really intrigued me was the mere 3 ingredients:
Gotta be honest, I wasn’t super happy with it. If it weren’t for the ingredients list, I probably wouldn’t buy it again. Maybe some of the other flavors I picked up will be better–but as of now I’m not sure when I’ll be trying them.
Any of you prefer Lara Bars to Luna Bars? Looks like I’m a Luna girl…
BIG FAT FLOP #3.
OVERNIGHT OATS!!! YAY! 😀 😀 😀
No let downs here! My oats today consisted of:
1/2 cup oats
3/4 cup almond breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 packet stevia
1 tbsp PB2
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
fresh strawberries
These were coldy, creamy, and delicious, as usual!
Stats on the oats: 219 calories, 36g carbs, 7g fat, 9g protien, 8g fiber
Lunch
After the flops I had for Breakfast #1, I was kind of anxious for lunch. I have always really enjoyed chicken salad with grapes in it, so last night I decided to whip up my own healthified chicken salad using Oikos plain greek yogurt:
Ever since I saw the recipe for Cajun Jambalaya in the July 2010 issue of Clean Eating magazine, I’ve been dying to try it!
Luckily, I already had some leftover grilled chicken from last week and leftover turkey sausage from the “corn dog” I made over the weekend, so there wasn’t a ton of prep work for me to do. You could definitely use raw meats though–everything is chopped into bite size pieces so it cooks through pretty fast.
I can’t believe how ridiculously easy this was! Basically, I mixed the following list of items together in a bowl:
Sprinkling of S&P, onion powder, red pepper flakes
1/2 cup dry brown rice
1/4 cup low sodium chicken broth
Then I layed out a big piece of foil, sprayed it down with olive oil cooking spray, and dumped everything onto the foil:
Then you just wrap it up like a Chipotle burrito — making sure that the edges are sealed tight so the liquid doesn’t leak out. Pop into a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes, and VOILA!
JAMBALAYA!
This was spiiiiiiicy! I loved it! And it made a TON of food. One note for next time — some of the rice that was sitting on the top of the pile got a little crunchy. I think this can be fixed by either soaking the rice in water before putting it in the mix, or by adding more liquid to the pouch.
I’m in love with this foil pouch cooking method!
Stats on the Jambalaya: 384 calories, 46g carbs, 8g fat, 30g protein, 5g fiber
