Two Very Different Cooperative meals and a MUCH better swim day!

On Wednesday we went to the gym and took our second Swim 101 class…SO much better than last week.  Last Wednesday, the instructor was a sub and she had no patience for 2 people brand new to the class who had never done swimming drills before.  It was pretty intimidating!  This week the normal instructor was back and she was spectacular!  She figured out what level of swimming we were on and tried to teach us some basic things to help us get down our stroke, breathing and body movement through the water rather than throwing us into a bunch of drills of strokes we’ve never heard of.  I definitely felt more comfortable and can’t wait to keep working on it and get up to the point where we can do all the different strokes.  It’s such a great workout and even though you don’t feel it as much while you’re swimming because it is so low impact, afterwards your body is totally exhausted.  My shoulders and legs are feeling nice and sore today!  This weekend we’re going to get to the gym both Saturday and Sunday to spend a day doing some cardio and racquetball as well as a day in the pool.  I also have an appointment with a trainer to set up some weight-training stuff and just get an intro session for free because I’m a new member! Hooray for gym time!

The last couple days, Matt and I have been on the ball working together to make dinners.  After the gym in the evening, it is SO tempting to grab something to eat on the way home, but we had eaten out on Tuesday (delicious Afghani food…review hopefully to come soon!) and we really need to work on saving our eating out expenses.

So, Wednesday night Matt was taking the lead on dinner…before I moved in, he had a fairly steady diet of sausage and baked beans.  Not my idea of a meal I want to eat all the time, but something I’m really familiar with because my dad was also a huge fan of beans and kielbasa, hot dogs, or other sausage in the crock pot.  

Matt seared up some Chicken and Garlic Sausage and threw in a can of baked beans to heat up.  In order to get a little non-protein going on, I threw together a green salad with cucumbers, and used our last ciabbata sandwich roll to make some Texas Toast slices for us. I made a balsamic vinaigrette and used that and a bit of ranch dressing on my salad.  Matt had bleu cheese (this is not at all a shock).  It was yummy and very quick and satisfying after a late workout!

Tuesday was our latest box of CSA produce, and we wanted to put a lot of that to use over the first few days.  Half of the cucumber went into our salad on Wednesday night (the other half is in the fridge at work, waiting for my mid-afternoon snacking this week).  A bulk of the produce was set aside right away for some stock/soup making!! I don’t make homemade stock very often…mostly because I can get pretty good organic, natural, low sodium boxes and stockpile (Matt will enjoy the pun) them when they’re on sale.  But this week bone-in chicken breasts were Buy One Get One Free, and we were getting a lot of basic veggies in our CSA box!

So Wednesday morning, Matt took Santana for her AM walk so I could work on the stock…two chicken breasts (bone-in, skin on), carrots, celery, onion, some herbs and water went into the Crockpot to cook all day.

While Matt was working on his sausage and beans, I strained out the solids, pulled the skin and bones off the chicken, stored the chicken in the fridge and put the stock back in the crock and into the fridge to chill.

This morning was another morning of Matt and Santana outside and me in the kitchen!  It definitely throws off our normal schedule to make things that take some morning prep, but I do enjoy getting some cooking time in first thing in the morning.  

First thing, I skimmed the gorgeous layer of fat off the top of the stock and got rid of it.  Then some peeled and roughly chopped potatoes and onions went into the stock, along with some random herbs and spices.  This went on low heat to cook from about 7am until 2:30pm.  

After that got on the heat, I worked on chopping up some vegetables.  Our original idea was to do a chicken corn chowder, but when I saw all the yummy vegetables in our CSA box, I decided to turn it into a Chicken Confetti Chowder with lots of colorful fun! 

I finely diced/chopped some more onions, celery and carrots, along with zucchini and red bell peppers.  Chopping vegetables is extremely relaxing for me…a great start to the day!  These went into a container in the fridge to wait until this afternoon!

Matt was working from home today, which was perfect for my plan!  I gave him some detailed instructions:

1. Chop chicken and make sure I didn’t miss any little bones!
2. Use stick blender to blend potatoes and stock until creamy.
3. Add chopped chicken, diced veggies, and 1 can of drained corn to crock pot.
4. Add some boxed stock if there isn’t enough liquid.
5. Cover and let it cook on low until I get home.

Around 3pm I got a call at work with some minor chaos, because the veggies and chicken nearly overloaded the Crockpot and there was no room for the corn! When I got home I ladled out one small serving of soup and added the can of corn. The important part was getting those veggies (especially the carrots) in there to get cooked through! I tasted, adjusted the seasoning a bit (added some cumin and red pepper)and turned it on high to get it bubbling for an hour or so. It’s currently still cooking, but here’s what it looks like now:

I’m excited for dinner!! My taste test for seasoning was pretty good, and I think I’m topping mine with a few crackers and a tiny bit of parmesan cheese! Can’t wait! Will have updates tomorrow of how wonderful it was :) 

A great giveaway (on a really fun blog!): Tina at Carrots ‘N’ Cake is in the middle of a Pure Bar giveaway, which I am of course really excited about because of my recent cravings for bars during mid-morning snack lull at work!

Another fun fun giveaway over at Nikes and Ponytails—a crazy bunch of goodies that are way too tempting NOT to enter the contest!

Good luck!

Coming soon:

• Guest post on Dori’s blog (finally!)
• Two restaurant reviews!
• A link to Santana’s upcoming review of her birthday toy
• Butternut Squash Ravioli….hopefully 🙂
• Meghann’s Blogger Bake Sale starts on Monday April 6th and I’ll be contributing something wonderfully fun, but I’ve seen the list of others’ contributions and they are tempting!! Definitely mark your calendars so you can get your hands on some great homemade goodies and help Meghann with a wonderful cause!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Fun, interwebs, Life, Matthew, Puppy, Workouts, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.