What’s better than a dinner that only takes 15 minutes to get into your belly? A dinner that only takes 15 minutes AND is healthy AND tastes delicious!
Lately, I’ve been craving bread. Buns, muffins, bagels, pizzas, you know the deal. So tonight, I thought I’d make a healthified chicken parmesan sub.
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
This week is just F-L-Y-I-N-G by. Can’t believe tomorrow is Friday already!
Breakfast #1
This morning I was craving something warm and peanut-buttery for breakfast. I pulled a Mama lupe low carb tortilla out of the freezer to let it thaw out. Then I topped it with 1 tbsp Trader Joe’s Crunchy Almond Butter and some sliced strawberries.
I wrapped it up into a little burrito and put on the george foreman grill until it was hot and the shell was crispy. Then I wrapped the little guy up in foil and stuck him in my purse.
I got to work about 20 minutes later, and the wrap was still nice and hot and gooey.
ooey gooey love
This was just delicious. So simple, and so delicious!
Side note: If you are obsessed with freezing things like me, before you freeze the tortillas put a piece of parchment paper or wax paper between each one. That way you can easily grab 1 tortilla from the freezer at a time (and they won’t all be frozen into one tortilla blob).
I typically use quick oats when I make overnight oats, but this time I tried them with Bob’s Red Mill Thick Rolled Oats instead. Last night I threw the following into a bowl in the fridge:
1/2 cup Bob’s red mill thick oats (uncooked)
1/2 cup Almond breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 tsp brown sugar
cinnamon
This morning, I topped the oats with strawberries and blueberries:
The rolled oats have a different consistency than quick oats. They really keep their oat texture and are somewhat chewy:
These were sooooo yummmy. If I had to choose, I’d pick quick oats over rolled oats, but I’d be happy to eat either one 🙂
For dessert, I had a little unsweetened applesauce with some cinnamon. When I say little, I mean about 2 spoonfuls.. 🙂 (Leftovers from the big fat flop protein cakes I made)
Good news! I think my phone is almost fully recovered! 🙂
Tonight, I had a craving for gyros. Mmmmmm…. Can’t remember the last time I had one of those.
The task at hand: satisfy this craving as healthfully as possible.
I decided to go with ground turkey for the meat to stuff my gyro. I combined the following ingredients and formed a meat “log” which I cooked on the george foreman grill for about 7 minutes.
5 ounces 99% lean ground turkey
sprinkling of dried oregano, S&P, garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, red pepper flakes
Then I sliced the meat into long strips and placed atop a Joseph’s Low Carb Pita:
And topped it off with the KEYcomponent of any gyro: Tzatziki Sauce! I mixed up the tzatziki sauce about an hour before grilling the meat. It consisted of:
I used some of the leftover cucumber to make a small cucumber salad (sliced cucumber, dill weed, white vinegar):
YUM!!! This really hit the spot! I do want to note that the meat was a little on the dry side. I personally didn’t really mind because I doused it in the yummy Tzatziki sauce. Next time, I’ll either add some of the shredded cucumber to the meat or try shredded zucchini and/or onion.
Stats on the gyro: 278 calories, 24g carbs, 4g fat, 39g protein, 7g fiber
Despite this delicious dinner, the night did not end on such a happy note:
What’s that, you ask? Ohhhh… that…. Whelp, that’s my iPhone, chilling in some rice, because I apparently dropped it on my way in the door and let it sit outside in the rain for three hours. 🙁
Hopefully this rice trick I found on google with do the trick and suck all the water out!
QUESTION OF THE EVENING: What was the dumbest thing you did today?
P.S. to respond to this question click the little blue button that says “Leave a comment” … look right below this line… just a little further… You can do it! 😉
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:
