Sunday was our last day in Charleston. For breakfast, we nibbled on some of the goods we had brought from home, then headed to the Folly Beach Pier.
We layed out on the beach for a while, then headed to Locklear’s for lunch.
Jarrod got a chicken wrap and I ordered the shrimp burger wrap:
I’m still not entirely sure what a shrimp burger is made of, and I don’t think my belly was very fond of it! That’s ok, that left more room for hushpuppies 🙂 The food wasn’t stellar, but we were really there for the view anyway:
After lunch, we strolled along the pier.
Then back to the beach so Jarrod could catch some rays:
And I could lay under the pier in the shade: Haha…
And then I got pooped on… Second time time that has happened to me. It’s supposed to be good luck, but I don’t know about that. Getting pooped on is pretty crappy in my opinion 😉
1/4 cup Classico Fire Roasted/Tomato Garlic spaghetti sauce
Sprinkling of garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, dried oregano, black pepper, and red pepper flakes
1 ounce thinly sliced grilled chicken (leftover from the batch I grilled up sunday night)
1 light babybel cheese sliced into four super thin discs
1 tbsp fat free ricotta
thinly sliced red onion
a couple thinly sliced cherry tomatoes
Popped it into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then, I topped it with some chopped basil from the back yard garden:
I served the pizza up with a side salad that consisted of romaine, cherry tomatoes, red onion, banana peppers, and 2 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Northern Italian dressing with Basil and Romano:
The salad was delicious. That Ken sure does know a thing or two about dressings 😉
And the pizza was.. in a word… Umm…. YUM. Ok, that’s two words, but regardless this pizza really hit the spot:
Soooo goood!!! Why don’t I make pizza more often?!
Check out this huge banana pepper I’ve got growing in the back yard:
He might have to go on my next salad 🙂
Stats on the pizza: 197 calories, 20g carbs, 6g fat, 20g protein, 5g fiber
Stats on the salad: 97 calories, 13g carbs, 5g fat, 3g protein, 4g fiber
All together now: 294 calories, 33g carbs, 11g fat, 23g protein, 9g fiber
I’ve previously eluded to the fact that I’m a messy cook. Given the simplicity of my dinner tonight, you’d probably assume that my kitchen would be in pretty good shape. Whelp, you’d be wrong!
Take a look at this monstrosity:
I wish I were kidding. Can you imagine the disasters I could create if I had a big kitchen?
After dinner, I couldn’t wait for late-night snack time to roll around. I decided earlier in the day that I’d make up a green monster smoothie for my snack to give me lots of energy for my run in the morning.
Threw the following into the blender:
1/2 cup Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond Milk
1/4 cup Oikos plain Greek Yogurt
1 packet Truvia (stevia) all natural sweetener
1/2 cup fresh frozen strawberries
1/4 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup fresh SPINACH
3 ice cubes
It’s green. It’s delicious.
Mmmmm…
Thankfully, the green monster gave me the energy I needed to clean up that disaster kitchen:
Stats on the green monster: 105 calories, 18g carbs, 2g fat, 9g protein, 5g fiber
Blog Updates
I recently updated my About Me page to incorporate some comments I had posted on the blog. I also added a Foodie Q&A page where I plan to keep a running list of questions readers ask. And as always, I am continuously linking all my recipe posts to the Recipe Page. This page is actually getting pretty long, so I think I’ll be reformatting it in the near future.
It’s Saturday, and you know what that means. Yard work!
You’d think for as much time as I devote to my yard, it’d be in pristine shape…. Oh what a pain in the ass homeownership is the joys of home ownership 🙂
There is one specific area of the yard that I leave completely untouched. You can see I have quite the crop of poison ivy growing:
area of infestation
I hit up the Home Depot this morning to pick up some spray to (hopefully) help with my poison ivy. Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am??? I leaned this little nugget of information when I called them at 7am to see when they opened. 6am? Those customers must be hard-core home improvers.
Before I got to work in the back yard, I cooked up my favorite egg breakfast: 1 dippy egg & 3 egg white scramble with S&P, Red Pepper Flakes, and Frank’s Red Hot. I always add a splash of liquid (usually skim milk or water) to the egg whites to help them stay fluffy. Also, toasted up a Thomas’ multi grain english muffin on the side.
Until last summer, I was one of those people who thought I wasn’t allergic to poison ivy. Well, that is until I accidently weed wacked some of it. I really didn’t know what poison ivy even looked like, so I was unaware of the horrible mistake I had made and basically let myself marinate in the poison ivy juices all day while I worked away in the yard. This resulted in what I will call a immobilizing infestation of poison ivy all over my legs. Since then I will not go near the stuff.
Today, I put on pants and long sleeves (despite temps in the mid 80’s) just so that I could approach the “infested area.” My luck, I’ll get poison ivy on the only part that was left exposed: my face 🙁 I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about that tonight!
I’ll have to post some before and after shots once I get it all finished (which will be never sometime soon).
After all the yard work, I was starving!
Sometimes I just get cravings for weird foods. Case in point, today I had a sudden craving for a corn dog! I can’t remember the last time I had one, but something triggered the corn dog eating machine deep inside me. So, I decided to try and make a healthified version of a corn dog. Even typing “healthified corn dog” makes me scoff. How ridiculous sounding is that?
I had some frozen Jennie-O turkey sausages in the freezer and also some Joseph’s Lavash bread, so I pulled them out to defrost before hitting up the yard early this morning.
I cooked up 2 turkey sausages – 1 for the “corn dog” and 1 for a healthified jambalaya recipe I’m going to try later in the week. Once cooked, I wrapped 1 turkey sausage in 1/2 a Joseph’s Low-Carb lavash bread, stuck in on a skewer, and threw it back on the grill.
Ridiculous, I know…
Once the lavash was crispy, I pulled it off the grill and served it up with a big squirt of mustard.
Ok – so it’s not exactly a corn dog, but eating it off a stick sure made it seem like one and it definitely hit the spot 🙂 I’m a BIG fan of Jennie-O’s hot turkey sausage.
BTW – yesterday while volunteering I had a Smores Luna Bar – and I wasn’t a big fan. It wasn’t bad tasting — just didn’t remind me of a smore AT ALL. Definitely the least favorite of all the flavors I have tried to date. I also had a few bites of a Chocolate Cherry Bear Naked Grain-ola Bar. It was OK – but again, I wasn’t super impressed. Apparently I was hard to please yesterday…
What did hit the spot, however, was the Gioniono’s pizza we had for dinner:
Abundant vegetables to make me feel better about eating pizza, amazing Gionino's pizza, pool of hot sauce goodness 🙂
Still trying to decide what to cook up for dinner tonight… Suffering from foodie’s block.
Before we get into that matter, let’s recap lunch and dinner:
As posted earlier, I was ill-fated this morning so I decided some pizza for lunch would help me come around.
Lean cuisine cheese pizza with leftover gionino’s hot sauce… Pretty darn close to the real thing:
If you haven’t tried hot sauce on your pizza, I am begging you to give it a try!!! Soooo good!
On to dinner. Things just keep getting better! I don’t mean to brag, but hot damn my dinner was good! (said with midwest hillbilly accent while simultaneously throwing in an arm jab)
I had a leftover turkey burger from the weekend I wanted to use up, but I wasn’t feeling the typical ketchup and mustard fixins. So I decided to make a quesadilla burger — and let me tell you it was glorious!
Here’s what went into the quesadilla burger:
quesadilla burg fixin's
The sauces I used were 1 tbsp fat free breakstone’s sour cream, 1 tsp (AKA all I could scrape from the container) of Trader Joe’s Jalapeno Cilantro Hummus, and some Frank’s red hot. I threw it all in between a Mama Lupe’s Low Carb tortilla I had ordered from Netrition.
I also decided to take a second stab at turnip fries. This time, I cut them into larger wedges and cooked them at 450 degrees for 35 minutes.
I threw the quesadilla burger on the waffle iron (that’s right, waffle iron) to crisp up the tortilla and heat everything through. Why dirty the george foreman when the waffle iron was just sittin there begging to be used?
All together on the plate:
Not the most appealing photo, but trust me this quesadilla burger was awe-inspiring.
The turnip fries still didn’t have the fry texture I was shooting for. Crunchy? No. Tasty? Yes. I actually preferred the smaller skinny fries we made last time over these. Could be because the larger fries reminded me of the rooty texture of you know what.
On to what you are all really here for: the confession.
About a week ago, I discovered what may be the most amazing cereal on planet earth. I have secretly been enjoying sporadic handfuls of this glorious cereal since then, yet I have not posted anything about my discovery on my blog!
Usually on Friday nights, my BF (AKA man candy) and I order up some Gionino’s pizza with hot sauce. This week, however, we’ve got big plans for dinner Sunday night ( 😉 😉 Tim), so we decided to go the healthy route tonight.
The BF follows a strict diet and workout plan, which I have declared the “Road-to-Ultimate Fitness.” He eats the same meals every day. Day in and day out. I would never succeed on the road to ultimate fitness. I love food far too much, and get bored far too easily to do such a thing.
Although the plan was to eat healthy tonight, there were no pizza sacrifices on my behalf! I whipped up a flat bread pizza using a Joseph’s Middle eastern Bakery Lavash bread, some Classico Fire Roasted Tomato & Garlic sauce, leftover grilled chicken, thinly sliced tomato and onion, and a random assortment of cheeses that have accumulated in my fridge.
pizza makin goods
It’s real easy to go over board on the cheese – so I made sure to measure everything out. 1 tbsp Kraft Italian Style Five cheese blend, 1 tbsp Athenos Reduced Fat Feta, 1 tbsp Digorno Shredded Three Cheese, and 2 tbsp fat free ricotta. That’s ten — count ’em — ten cheeses 😀
pizza into the oven
Some people hate ricotta cheese but I adore it. I feel it adds a layer of delicious decadence to any meal. (Which reminds me — I’ve been wanting to try out this recipe for Lemon Ricotta Cookies)
So back to the main event–THE PIZZA. I seasoned the pizza up with some garlic salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and some dried parsley and baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Served up with some leftover cucumber salad.
For a person whose favorite part of a pizza is the crust, I was extremely happy with how this turned out! The flavors of the cheeses and seasonings were perfection! Only item to modify for next time will be to put the Lavash in the oven for a few minutes before topping it — that will give it time to crisp up so the sauce doesn’t make it soggy in the middle.
Stats for the whole lavash pizza (and I was only able to eat 2/3 of it): 431 calories, 35g carbs, 13g fat, 48g protein, 10g fiber
I do want to make side note of my afternoon snack — I had an afternoon meeting so I grabbed a Peanut Butter Cookie Luna bar to take with me. I’ve heard mixed reviews on this specific flavor, but I thought it was downright tasty! Though, it did remind me more of a peanut butter rice crispie treat than a cookie, but I’m content with that!
Luna on the keyboard so I wouldnt forget her 😉
After the pizza eatin’, I decided to mix up a breakfast cookie. I follow a few different food blogs, and I kept seeing this “breakfast cookie” popping up so I decided to look into it. According to her website, Fitnessista is the brains behind the breakfast cookie. I’m pumped to give this one a go!
My cookie consisted of oats, optimum nutrition chocolate whey, Trader Joe’s crunchy Almond butter, skim milk, some mashed up blackberries, and little brown sugar.
