Recipes

Chicken Couscous Salad Salad

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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

 Don’t forget to check out the PB2 giveaway!!!

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Giveaway, Ramblings

PB2 Giveaway!!!

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In an effort to get all you silent readers out there to post comments on my blog (so I don’t feel like I’m blogging to myself 😉 ) I decided to do a PB2 giveaway!

PB2 is a powdered peanut butter product.  Basically, all the bad-for-you-ness is sucked out of the peanuts.  All you have to do is mix with water, and you have a healthy PB on you hands!

So here’s the deal:  post a comment on this PB2 Giveaway blog post by midnight Sunday July 4th.  I’ll use a random number generator to select the lucky recipient!

So get to commenting!  I’m interested to hear what you all have to say 😀

Pssst… to comment on this post, click the blue “comment” link below.

Good luck!

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Fitness, What I ate

Running in the Rain

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I started this lovely Monday morning off with Day #2, Week #2 of interval training.  It looked pretty grey outside, but after consulting the local radar on my weather channel app, I determined I could definitely get 30 minutes in before any rain approached.

Whelp, I was about 15 minutes off on my calculation…  Half way through  my normal route, a torrential downpour started to erupt from the sky!  Running in the rain is actually pretty fun, and I would have kept right on going had I not JUST got a new iPhone to replace the iPhone that suffered water damage last week.  So, I threw my iphone in my sports bra to keep it dry and took shelter under a nearby tree for about 15 minutes until the rain let up.  Standing under the tree in the rain was actually pretty peaceful and relaxing!  I’m sure I looked like a creeper though 🙂

Breakfast #1

I’m really loving the grilled fruit and nut butter wraps I’ve been making for breakfast.  Today, I made one with half of a banana and Smucker’s Organic Peanut Butter atop a Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla.  I wrapped everything up and threw it on the george foreman for about 5 minutes.

(I’ll have to post the pic later.. left the stinkin cord for my old camera at home!)

Soooo delicious!

Stats on B#1:  218 calories, 23g carbs, 11g fat, 10g protein, 7 g fiber

 

Breakfast #2

I was still pretty hungry after B#1, so I decided to overload my overnight oats.  Last night, I put 1/2 cup quick oats, 1/2 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze Almond milk, 1 tsp brown sugar, and some cinnamon in a bowl in the fridge.  This morning, I overloaded the oats with blueberries, strawberries, the other 1/2 of my breakfast banana, and some Barbara’s Bakery Peanut Butter Puffins for crunch.

Yum-o.

Stats on B#2:  308 calories, 61g carbs (hello excessive carbs), 6g fat, 8g protein, 10g fiber

 

Lunch

After all the carbs at breakfast, I was glad I packed a salad for lunch!  Today’s salad consisted of romaine lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, a sliced up Trader Joe’s Spinach Fontina Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage, with 2tbsp Hidden Valley fat free ranch dressing.

Couldn’t get the flash to go off for the life of me… haha… need to spend some time playing with the camera! 🙂  I’m really liking the Trader Joe’s sausage!  I wish I would have picked up more than one kind… oh well, guess I’ll have to go back 😉

Stats on Lunch:  239 calories, 22g carbs, 8g fat, 19g protein, 6g fiber

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What I ate

Sunday Sum-up

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Whelp, I didn’t do much cooking this weekend.  I did get a new digital camera and new (free replacement) iPhone though!  WOOOHOO!

I contemplated getting a digital SLR camera, but in the ended I decided to go with the Fujifilm Finepix S2550HD, which is a higher end point and shoot camera.  Down the road I may invest in a digital SLR camera, but I felt I needed to learn more about photography before taking such a big (financial) leap.  Ok, I’m cheap.  🙂

Here’s some random pictures I have taken so far with the camera.  I’m still learning how to use all the functions but I especially liked how these turned out.  I’m looking forward to my free class at Van’s Camera to learn everything!

This weekend was pretty action packed.  And by action packed I mean lots of shopping, driving around, nonstop errands, and eating foods that I didn’t cook 🙂

For breakfast this morning I had a Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla, blueberries, and Trader Joe’s Crunchy Almond Butter that I cooked up on the george foreman grill:

Tried the Vanilla Almond Luna Bar and the Nuts over Chocolate.

Both were pretty tasty (Luna never lets me down apparently), but I wouldn’t rank either of them at the top of the pack because I wished the flavors were stronger in both bars.

Also tried a Pecan Pie Larabar… I ate one small bite and tossed the rest.  Bummer.  I’ve got some good feedback from you guys though, and it looks like Key Lime Pie, Cherry Pie, and Coconut are the flavors I need to keep an eye out for!

After getting my iPhone replaced, we headed to Tropical Smoothie Cafe at Legacy Village for lunch.  I ordered the Jerk Chicken Wrap, apple, and a Very Berry Green Tea Smoothie.  Jarrod got the buffalo chicken wrap and a Muscle Blaster smoothie.

We both loved everything we ordered and definitely want to try the cafe out again since their menu had a lot to offer.

After lunch we hit up Trader Joe’s!  Here’s what I picked up this time:

I had one of the chicken sausages for dinner along with some of Jarrod’s special oven baked cajun potatoes:

Delicious!

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Recipes

Grilled Brussel Sprouts

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Today, I decided to try out brussel sprouts on the grill.  Using this recipe from food network as my guide, I microwaved 5 brussel sprouts for 3 minutes.  Then topped with a tiny bit of olive oil, S&P, minced garlic, tiny bit of cayenne pepper, and some paprika.

I stuck the sprouts on a skewer and put them on the george foreman grill for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, I assembled a turkey wrap sandwich consisting of 1 lite Flatout italian wrap, 3 ounces turkey breast, tomato, onion, banana pepper, a 1/2 tsp fat free italian dressing, and a few drops of Frank’s Red Hot.

After the sprouts had cooked for five minutes, I flipped them to the other side, threw the wrap on the grill, and cooked for another five minutes. 

Lunch is served!

Stats on the wrap, sprouts, and grapes:  306 calories, 39g carbs, 7g fat, 27g protein, 14g fiber

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