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Some Past Food and Some Future Fun

***UPDATE: I fixed my giveaway links, which I had COMPLETELY messed up this morning! Plus, soup and quesadilla picture added below! Sorry for my Friday morning absentmindedness!***

First, a couple more contests to note:
– Yet another Mix My Granola Giveaway. I keep noting these because I LOVE the idea for this product/service/website. Even if you aren’t going to enter the contest, look at all the options they have for mix-ins…so many choices!! So fun! Check out  Healthy and Sane for Elina’s Mix My Granola Giveaway!
– Bridget at Yogurt and Berries is giving away some chocolate goodies!! A great way to stay sane if I’ve ever seen one!

I don’t have any new recipes from this week, because we grabbed food on Wednesday and last night we took our leftovers from Monday and turned them into a casserole. There isn’t really a recipe for this…I literally took everything we had leftover, stirred it all together in a casserole dish and baked it for about an hour or so. The beets tinted everything this really pretty pink/red color and the French bread got nice and crunchy. I didn’t use all of the leftover gravy because there was a lot, but I put in just enough to coat everything and keep it moist. I was really pleased because it mellowed out a lot-not a lot of lemon flavor at all. It was a very comforting bowl of dinner and we used up all our leftovers! Hooray! No pictures 🙁

I do have a meal we made a few weeks ago that turned out really yummy and a nice warming dinner during the cold spell we just got over! Plus, I just realized I never posted it, even though I took pictures!

When I was growing up, we had tomato soup (Campbell’s) and grilled cheese all the time. I have known this meal as long as I can remember, and it was probably one of the first things I could make by myself. I went through a lot of grilled cheese and tomato soup stages growing up. No dipping the sandwich, dipping the sandwich before every bite, crushing Ritz crackers into the soup before eating the sandwich, finishing the sandwich before touching the crackers, the soup could only be mixed with milk, the soup could only be made with water, when I started cooking I had to use exactly half milk and half water, Ritz crackers were not good enough and I needed oyster crackers…I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. I was pretty obsessive about things like this…I would decide there was a “right” way to make or eat it, and I had to do it that way for a while, until I decided there was a new “right” way. When I was little I didn’t want crusts on my grilled cheese (which I think is a pretty common kid request), and I remember babysitting my younger cousin and being really annoyed that he would want me to cut off his grilled cheese crusts! Except that by then I loved the crusts, so after I’d cut them off his sandwich I would dip them in my soup and eat them myself…think grilled cheese sticks instead of sandwiches. One way or another, grilled cheese and tomato soup has always been one of the most satisfying things for me when it’s cold out, and I assumed that everyone identified with this meal in some way.

Several months ago I realized that Matt had NEVER had tomato soup! I was absolutely shocked…how did you go 23 years without ever having Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese? This was nuts! I quickly taught him the ways…with both Campbell’s and also some more organic, boxed brands perked up with fresh basil from our summer herb box and a few other variations. Matt has always loved grilled cheese (what’s not to love?) and he has really enjoyed pairing it with tomato soup, although he is not a fan of the Campbell’s condensed soup…maybe you have to get hooked on that when you’re little enough to not have a sense of what makes a soup “good”?

So we had a few leftover flour tortillas and cheddar cheese from our taco party, a box of Pacific Natural Foods Tomato Soup from Ken’s Market, and a variety of canned goods (I always stock up on tomatoes, beans, etc. when they are on sale). So we made a new grilled cheese and tomato soup variation! Cheese quesadillas (sprayed with cooking spray and cooked in a frying pan) and Mexican tomato soup (1 box PNF soup + 1 can black beans + 1 can diced tomatoes w/ green chilies + some red pepper for spice).

Delicious and SO easy! This obviously made a ton of soup, but I had it for lunch the next two days at work. I am always blown away by how many meals we can get out a few canned goods and some basic ingredients…it makes my thrifty side smile. Think how cheap that is per meal compared to if we had eaten out each time instead of eating that meal! I’d say the entire meal cost less than $10 and we got 2 dinners and 2 lunches out of it! Crazy!

 

Some other fun that will be coming up and I’ll have more info about:
– Blogger Bake Sale, hosted by Meghann. I’m planning to contribute something to go up for sale, so keep an eye out for more info about that! If you’re interested, contact Meghann for more info! 
– Guest post on Dori’s blog
– All new design for this blog!
– A side job doing some editing that will result in a good chunk of income, but will most likely make me super busy for a few weeks and result in a little less posting until it’s finished. Hopefully it will also result in lots to post about once I am finished with the editing!
– We’re getting artichokes in our next CSA box and I have never worked with them before! Excitement and/or chaos should be forthcoming!
– Both Dori and Santana have birthdays TOMORROW, 3/21!!! Happy Birthdays!!!

Leftovers, random snacking, Swimming Caps and another giveaway!

Today is a non-picture, boring day of food blogging.  Pretty yummy though!

– Chocolate Croissant and my twice-weekly white chocolate mocha from Fresh Flours, which we luckily live near!

– Lots of emails, conference calls and applications sent me all the way to lunch without a snack!  I was on the phone with my grandma at noon when my tummy went crazy growling at me for some food!

– I couldn’t take any more of the devil rice, so I went with curried lentil soup (w/ oyster crackers!!) and crunchy veggies (carrots, cukes, and broccoli) with the yummy homemade ranch dressing from the cafeteria. Delicious and pretty filling!

– Strawberry fruit leather after lunch to get some fruit and sweetness into the meal!     – Organic Fair Trade Hot Cocoa from Trader Joe’s (thanks to one of the other advisors!) and Sunny Bears (Whole Foods’ version of gummy bears!) for an afternoon snack!

Now I am thinking about leftovers for dinner! A casserole from Monday’s roast chicken and veggies!

I think my body is extra hungry today after yesterdays crazy swim workout!  It has been quite a while since Matt and I have done any serious swimming, and neither of us has ever done super-serious drill-type swimming, so the 45 minutes or so of straight laps and various strokes and breathing exercises and all on top of some random working out before the swim class kicked our butts.  I feel great today though, just crazy hungry!! We need to get swimming goggles and I need a swim cap.  I have horrible memories of these from being a little kid with tubes in my ears and needing to shove wax in my ears and wear a swim cap anytime I went near the water!!

One of my co-workers said she got this  cute swim cap and I have been searching online for a non-boring one! The website that seems to have lots of different choices is Headcovers Unlimited.  Any suggestions on cute ones I should try?? I wish I were a little kid so I could try some of the really cute fun ones!

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Another giveaway!! Angela at Oh She Glows is giving away some POM Coupons! I have been on a pomegranate kick lately, so this is especially exciting!

The amazing Meat Thermometer makes another great chicken breast

Last Thursday we had Yukon Gold Potatoes and ridiculously adorable tiny Baby Red Beets in our box from Full Circle Farm, so in an effort to use those this week I went with a roasted chicken dinner…a nice, comforting meal for Monday evening. I like to do something substantial either Sunday or Monday so it can be reused later in the week!

I used this recipe from Cooking Light online, but I had two chicken breasts in the freezer (bone-in, skin-on), so I used those instead of a whole chicken. Thanks to my handy dandy meat thermometer, I didn’t have to worry about watching the time too closely because I could rely on the temperature! I like to cook chicken on the bone with the skin on whenever I am doing something like roasting—it keeps so much flavor and moisture in the final product, especially if you’re dealing with white meat! I almost always take off the skin and remove the meat from the bones after the chicken rests, so you aren’t eating all of the fat with the skin or dealing with the bones when you’re trying to enjoy your meal. Having it on the bone does increase the amount of time it will take to cook, but I think it is definitely worth it. When you can monitor the temperature with a meat thermometer and pull it out a few degrees before it’s completely done and let it rest to the final temperature, it is amazingly moist. Matt is a huge dark meat guy and last night he said, “I can’t believe how moist this is! I can actually eat white meat!”

I rubbed a couple teaspoons of thyme and paprika under the skin of the chicken breast and placed a few thin slices of lemon under there as well. Both breasts went onto a rack in a deep pan and were rubbed with a tiny bit of olive oil. They then went into a 425 degree oven, covered, for 30 minutes. Then got uncovered and cooked until they got to 160 degrees. At that point they came out and rested, covered in foil while everything else finished up. The recipe calls for pan drippings to make a gravy, and breasts let off a lot less in the way of drippings than a whole bird would have. I forgot about this at first, until I opened the oven to remove the foil covering the chicken and got a face full of smoke from the very few drippings burning on the bottom of the pan…to deal with that and avoid setting off the smoke alarm, I added about half a cup of chicken broth to the bottom of the pan under the chicken.

I’m not sure if this slip up affected the pan sauce I made from the drippings, or if there was just an issue with the recipe, but when I followed the recipe straight and tasted it with Matt, it DEFINITELY needed adjusting. It was super lemony and really sweet! It tasted like candy lemon drops…not necessarily bad, but not exactly what I want with a chicken dinner! So I added a bit more broth, a little paprika and a few dashes of a chicken gravy package mix I had in the cupboard (why did I have this?!? It must have been on sale one day? I don’t remember buying it!). Eventually it got better and the flavor complemented all of the stuff on the plate, so it worked out!

Normally, when I make gravy from drippings I skim the fat, heat the drippings to simmering and then slowly add a slurry of cold broth/stock mixed with cornstarch. This is how my mom taught me (with ham gravy at Easter!), and I love it…at my parent’s house, we have a special shaker just for mixing and pouring the slurry! I usually add some herbs if necessary and some white or red wine, depending on the meat. This particular Cooking Light recipe started with flour in a heated pan, whisked with dry white wine and then called for the addition of broth, lemon juice, seasonings, the pan drippings and sugar (if I had left out the sugar, I probably could have avoided the initial candy sweetness).

This method wasn’t really any more difficult than the cornstarch method and I really liked it! I definitely won’t substitute it for my typical gravy, because the two methods result in completely different consistencies. Cornstarch lets the sauce thicken while still remaining a bit on the thinner side, while the flour will let you get to that thick thick super thick gravy stage (the kind you might make with sausage and put over fluffy biscuits for breakfast!).So hooray for adopting new gravy methods!

While all of this was going on, Matt and I peeled the beets and potatoes and cut them into tiny pieces, about 1 inch all the way around. They got tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and then roasted in with the chicken. I basically used the root veggie recipe I had made with the pork and apples a little while ago. I should have thrown them in the oven earlier, because in my opinion the beets could have gotten a little softer. I think they ended up cooking for a total of 45 to 55 minutes. They’ll get nice and soft when I use them as leftovers on Thursday! This is quickly becoming my favorite method for cooking root vegetables, and the texture of the Yukon Golds was a really nice, simple combination with the powerful sweet flavor of the beets.

We also had part of a loaf of French bread on hand that Matt and picked up this past weekend. I knew we wouldn’t get through all of it before it went stale, so I turned it into dressing! This was a really basic recipe, again from Cooking Light, that is really similar to the way I make cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving. Since I had less than a whole loaf, it was a little soggier than I would usually like, but it had such a delicious taste with just onions and sage! I didn’t have celery and can never figure out what to do with celery after I use one or two stalks since I don’t like it enough to snack on it. Does it freeze well?? Really nice and basic dressing that soaked up the not-quite-so-lemony sauce and paired well with the strong flavors on the chicken and veggies!

I think all the leftovers are going to get mooshed together into a casserole for after the gym tomorrow night…we went to an intro swim conditioning class at the gym tonight and didn’t get home until around 8pm (we had no desire to cook and grabbed Greek pita sandwiches on the way home!).  Swim conditioning was crazy intense, plus I have been pushing my limits a bit all week. Sunday we went to play racquetball and spent 25 minutes on the elliptical machines first…I usually can’t do that machine for so long, so it was a stretch for me.  Tuesday was Body Sculpting at work and I went up to 8lb weights for half of the weight portions.  And tonight we got to the gym early so I did 20 minutes on a bike, not realizing how much pain my legs would be in after finishing almost an hour of swim conditioning! I will definitely be taking it easy tomorrow, since we’ve got another day of sculpting on Friday. 

Oh! While I was moving my chicken pictures onto the computer, I realized I did have pictures of the fried rice (the death rice, devil rice or fire rice, as we’ve been calling it since then).  It looks good…full of veggies, very innocent…don’t be deceived, it was evil. The potstickers were delicious though!

Oikos Greek Yogurt and more Giveaways!

Kristina, from Stonyfield Farm, sent me some coupons for Oikos Greek Yogurt! Excitement! I have always just eaten regular yogurt-Dannon, Lucerne, etc.-since I was little, so I’m used to the thin, super sweet quality of that. Greek yogurt is a new adventure for me, and this morning I had my first Oikos Vanilla. From their website:

Called “yiaourti” in Greece, Greek yogurt is creamier than regular yogurt. Authentic Greek yogurt like ours owes its extra creaminess to a centuries-old straining process that removes the whey (liquid) from the yogurt.

For hundreds of years, Greeks have prized strained yogurt for its richness and creaminess, and because it makes a great cooking ingredient that’s less likely to curdle when heated. Today, we know that straining also makes Greek yogurt richer in protein than regular yogurt, and lower in lactose.

Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt has 0% fat, just 90 calories per 5.3 oz.-serving*, twice the protein of regular yogurt, and fewer carbohydrates. Because it’s organic, Oikos is also better for the earth. And we think it’s better for you, too!

*5.3oz. plain

The vanilla taste was nice and after eating a bit, I added some pumpkin butter (thanks to Dori!), which made it a completely addicting flavor. The texture took some getting used to-if you’re not used to it, this yogurt is much much thicker and has a bit of a fine, grainy texture to it. I finished the whole container and was overall pretty pleased. I don’t have any basis to compare it to other Greek yogurts like Chobani…for more info on comparisons, Dori has some experience! I have a few more coupons and want to try some other flavors. The main issue for me is that they are pretty expensive – where we got the first one, they are $2.50 for a regular sized yogurt! If I ate yogurt 5 days a week for a month, that is a third of our entire grocery budget! I’m not sure I can afford Oikos right now on a regular basis, but as long as I have the coupons I will keep taste-testing and I can always splurge a little bit on a treat once in a while!

After I got to work, my tummy wanted something substantial and someone had brought in some Quaker Vanilla Almond oats so I heated some of those up…blah. Not wonderful. I think I’ll try an Odwalla bar in a bit to hold me until lunch (more leftover spicy spicy spicy rice). Today’s flavor: Berries GoMega with 1000mg of Vegetarian Omega-3’s!

Last night we had a yummy roast chicken, veggies and French bread dressing meal that I’ll post with pictures later. There is a good chunk of that leftover, so hopefully we’ll turn that into a second meal on Wednesday. It makes me very happy to re-use meals and get the most out of them! Tuesday is International Dinner night out with friends (used to be “Thai Tuesday” until our Thai place started construction for who knows how long), so no cooking or dishes to do tonight-nice mid-week break!

A few more blog giveaways to note:

– Really, really, really craving that Mix My Granola? Diana at Soap and Chocolate is giving some away as well!

– Jenn at Eating Bender is celebrating her 1st blogiversary with a fun giveaway involving trivia, adorable mugs and more!

I am so very very fruity today…

A yummy organic apple pre-lunch and a Mango Sunrise Stretch Island fruit leather waiting on my desk for 2pm! Delicious Monday snacking!!

In other news, Matt and I added some cardio to our weekend racquetball, and my legs are killing me! Apparently I found some muscles in there that I hadn’t been using very much. 

In other yummy news, Missy at Missy Maintains is having a delicious MixMyGranola giveaway to celebrate her new domain name! Check it out!

And, so no one confuses me for someone who is too healthy, I am considering this meal created by my friend Daniel, which includes bacon, pasta, cheese, and salmon cakes. Mmmm.