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 was pretty tasty. It had more of a candy-bar like feel to it than the normal Luna Bars, but I think the taste of the regular bars are better than these protein bars. Worth a shot, definitely better than the Larabar Flop earlier in the week, but I’ll stick with the regular Luna Bars from now on!
3.) Got locked out. Super.
4.) Dinner consisted of a cold leftover turkey burger (luckily I had brought this with me to work and subsequently took it with me shopping). Yes, I took the burger into the mall… Haha 🙂
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! 😉
One of my all-time favorite things to eat is caprese salad. For those who have never had it, it usually consists of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fresh basil. It’s so simple and amazingly delicious.
Mix all the ingredients (except the cheese and basil) in a bowl, then pour onto a piece of foil that has been sprayed with cooking spray. Wrap into a pouch, taking care to ensure all edges are sealed so that no liquid seeps out. Poke a few holes in the packet to let steam escape, then pop into a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, until the tomatoes have started to burst and let their juices go.
Next, I carefully poured the liquid out of the packet and topped the tomatoes with a cubed light babybel cheese round. Close the packet back up and make sure to leave space between the cheese and the foil so that the melted cheese does not stick. Cook for an additional 5-10 minutes until the cheese is melty.
When the tomatoes were finished cooking, I poured them out onto my plate and topped with fresh basil that I grew in my very own back yard! 🙂
backyard herbs
To go along side the tomatoes, I cooked up two Jalapeno turkey burgers that consisted of:
10 ounces 99% lean ground turkey
1 clove garlic
1/2 a small zucchini, grated
1/4 cup white onion, chopped
S&P, RPF, Onion powder
1/2 a jalapeno, seeds removed, chopped
Once the burgers started cooking, my nose could tell that the little jalapeno was gonna add some kick to the burger. So I decided to top the burger with some tomatoes, onion, and cool fat free sour cream atop a Pepperidge Farm 7 grain deli flat.
Sooooo tasty!
Word to the wise — use more seasonings on the tomatoes than you think you need. I’ll def bump it up next time.
Also, I definitely want to add some fresh herbs to the jalapeno turkey burger next time. Possibly cilantro or flat leaf parsley.
After exercising, I threw half of a peach onto the george foreman grill for about 6 minutes. Then I topped it with some plain greek yogurt I had sweetened with 1/2 packet of truvia and a sprinkle of cinnamon and cloves.
This was quite tasty! But let’s be honest, I was thinking about ice cream the entire time. Definitely need to give this a shot with the good stuff.
Other thoughts before bed
For those of you who have hopped on the Greek Yogurt train (gimme a whoop whoop!), and even for those of you who haven’t this FitSugar link gives a few different ideas on how to switch up your normal yogurt routine.
I’m trying out some new things for breakfast and lunch tomorrow…. this should be interesting 🙂
Oh yes! I tried the Oatmeal Luna Bar today, and thought it was pretty darn tasty!
Not my all time favorite flavor, but overall I was very pleased with my afternoon snack. It definitely tasted like an oatmeal cookie. I went to a grocery store by work tonight rather than my usual store, and they had a huge selection of Lara Bars. So I picked up a few of those to try out 🙂
QUESTION FOR ALL YOU SILENT READERS OUT THERE: Have you tried overnight oats yet? If so, did you love them as much as I do? If you haven’t tried them, what’s holding you back?
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
