It’s Back

The American Flag oats are back!

I made these back for Memorial day and I just couldn’t resist. I had to make it with blackberries instead of blueberries, but I think they are even better that way

Dinner

Back tracking to last night:

Two pieces of watermelon, corn, grandma’s homemade macaroni salad (made with whole wheat macaroni and 1/2 mayo and 1/2 greek yogurt mix–a nice compromise) and a french steak with yummy beef and shallot sauce.

I’m in love with this recipe, however the sauce is fairly unhealthy. It’s beef broth, butter, salt, and shallots. I want to healthify it, however I’m scared to mess with the richness of this French recipe. I could use natural beef broth, Earth Balance instead of butter and sea salt instead of Kosher salt.

Later

I’ll be updating my goals for the week and my neighbors are supposed to be doing a fireworks show tonight. Lets hope they still have some, after setting some off all night last night (which makes Grant a nutcase naturally). I still have only seen the sun one day this summer, but the forecast for next week shows that there is supposed to be sun.

Do you think I should try to healthify this French, Barefoot Contessa recipe?

The All-American Twist

I hope everyone had a great Saturday! Today kind of flew by for me.

Good news though, my little bug seems to have been halted for now. I was able to make it to the grocery store and cook dinner without any more nauseousness or light-headedness. Hopefully with adequate sleep tonight I will wake up feeling good.

Dinner

Since I’m cooking for my parents and my dad was raised on a very meat-heavy diet, I have to really think about the meals I am going to cook for them. I want them to obviously like it, have the recognize the food but still introduce some new foods, as well as have it be healthy. Kind of a big load to put on a young chef without her laptop full of recipes.

I went with a twist on the All-American for tonight’s dinner:

• Spicy Cajun Chicken Burgers
• Corn on the Cob
• Sweet Potato rounds
• Chef salad

Funny story about the chicken burgers. They were supposed to be turkey burgers, but when I reached for the meat I accidently grabbed the ground chicken which sat right above the ground turkey. Whoops! It didn’t matter too much though, I prefer chicken burgers anyways

I didn’t have my usual recipe for sweet potato fries, so I just made it up as I went along:

I cut the sweet potatos (yams) into 1/4″ thick rounds

Coated them with unmeasured amounts of olive oil, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, pepper and flax seed meal. Placed them on a baking sheet and tossed them into the oven set at 450 degrees  for 20 minutes, flipping half way through.

They come out of the oven and your mouth will start watering

My dad got really excited when he saw these. Apparently he loves sweet potatoes, but we just don’t normally cook them in our household.

Side note, while I was digging through the pantry I found a bottle of olive oil that expired in 2001.

Apparently my mom and I missed this when we cleaned out the pantry almost two weeks ago. Whoops!

Anyways,

I love how easy corn on the cob is to make. Just let the water boil, turn off the heat, and let the corn cook for 7 minutes. Easy peasy (lemon squeezy)!

And a quick chef salad with TJ’s Champagne Pear vinagerette

Soon after, the main attraction came off the grill.

Spicy Cajun (Chicken) Burgers stuffed with onion, red bell pepper, cajun seasoning, salt, pepper and hot sauce.

My plate:

For some reason, in my family, whenever we make “burgers” we never actually use buns. We just go for the patty!

My parents absolutely loved the meal. My dad said that I was hired as our chef

Later

I’ve got a super-secret project to attend to once the parentals go to sleep. Muah ha ha

What is your favorite All-American meal?

Why Cereal

So I think I might have a serious problem. I’m in love with late-night cereal.

This. Times two.

Why is cereal so much better when eaten close to midnight?

Why is cereal better when eaten in the kitchen leaning against a counter instead of sitting down?

Why must I always eat two bowls full?

Why cereal…

I will never get your ways, but I do love you.

Dinner

I had a whirlwind dinner last night. Between the hours of 8AM and 10:30PM I was only home for 1 1/2 hours and that was to eat dinner and catch up on blogging.

Leftover Cajun burger on spring salad mix with ketchup and dijon mustard, cantaloupe and a corn mix.

The corn mix consists of corn, diced tomatoes, lime juice and it’s supposed to have Cilantro. But Safeway did not have any cilantro

The spring mix wasn’t very fresh. At all. So that part was pretty disgusting. But other than that it was quite the tasty dinner.

Snack

Right before dinner I couldn’t contain myself and wanted a snack. I was overly exciting to try Great Harvest’s sunflower millet bread.

Toasted a bit and some guava jelly spread on it. It was fantastic! It’s dense but springy. This has got to be my new favorite bread.

What is your favorite bread? Or are you a big late-night cereal eater?

A Splurge Night

Morning bloggies!

I woke up at 6:15 AM this morning…for a 10 o’clock class? Yeah, my alarm was set for 8:30 but I woke up WAYYYY earlier.

I filled my morning with catching up on reading some blogs, zumba and working on my grocery list. I swear grocery shopping is the highlight of my week. I mean new, fresh foods and fun recipes come out of it! What’s not to love?

Breakfast was a mix of cereals: about 1/4 c. Special K Fruits & Yogurt, 1/4 c. Life cereal, 1 1/2 cups puffed millet splashed with 1% milk. I had to borrow my roomie’s milk, since I’m completely out of almond milk.

It was still fairly good, but it definitely made me realize how much the almond milk compliments the rest of the cereal.

A few minutes later I followed it with a semi-dry orange

For some reason this picture reminds me of a pile of bones. No wonder my mom was so shocked over spring break how I would devour a cut up orange, look at what the final product is!

Anyways, what was this splurge night?!

Well we had formal dinner, aka we have our super nice house boys bring out our food to our tables that is filled with our nice dish ware. Kinda like a restaurant.

Tonight was Mexican night filled with a romaine salad with a light coating of a vinaigrette with enchiladas, rice with some kind of tomato mixed in, refried beans and corn with red bell pepper and other sorts of veggies mixed in.

I first filled myself up on about 2 cups of salad.

Enchiladas are my absolute weakness. They were served in portions about the size of a typical cell phone. I only got one portion and by the time I had seconds, they were all gone. Oh, darn

The rice was just alright so I had about 1/4 c. of that, about 1/2 c. of refried beans which were fantastic, and about another 1/2 c. of corn. The corn wasn’t particularly good, but I mixed the beans, rice and corn up so it tasted alright.

Afterwards dessert was grasshopper pie! It has oreo cookie crumbs for the crust, mint ice cream for the filling and topped with hot fudge and whipped cream. There was a TON of whipped cream on top so I scooped off half, but I devoured the rest and savored every bite!

It was definitely a splurge night, but I don’t feel too guilty about it. The only thing I felt really sorry for was my stomach last night that was a little bit angry with me. Oh well.

Despite these clouds, today will hopefully be a good day. I have a ton of homework to do that’s stressing me out a bit, but I’ve made a plan how I will tackle it and I should be fine.

My question of the day: How often do you have a splurge meal? Usually Monday nights are the biggest splurge meals, and I’ll usually have another meal at my sorority during the week, but I eat a little bit healthier at that one. I usually always pass up dessert, but you can’t really pass up grasshopper pie

Double trouble

I hope everyone is having a great Sunday evening. My day was spent running errands and studying.

First we have to back track to yesterday.

I snacked on the blueberry goat cheese that I got yesterday at the farmer’s market on top of some Mary’s Crackers.

Dinner was eaten shoveled in my mouth at 4:00 due to having to be at my sorority at 5

A goat-cheese & guava quesadilla (recipe from Barefoot Contessa), with Baja-style corn leftovers and a baby salad beast filled with avocado, red bell pepper and tomato with pear dressing from Trader Joe’s.

The quesadilla was the real star here. It tasted sweet and decedent like a crepe! Absolute LOOOOOOVE.

After the sorority function, we went back to the sorority house and chilled for a while. The sorority house isn’t filled with very healthy eats, lets just say. However apples and oranges are always available so I cut an apple (with a plastic fork), sprinkled some cinnamon and tossed it into the microwave for 45 seconds. I actually had two guys stand behind me and say how hot I was for “cooking” and not just top ramen. Wow. Anyways, everyone wanted a taste of it and loved it! I’m so sad I don’t have a picture of it, but just imagine apple slices with cinnamon on it. If I’m making this again I’m demanding at least a metal butter knife.

This morning’s omelette was posted earlier, so it’s time now for some lunch-action!

No, ladies and gentlemen you are not seeing double. I had another guava jelly & goat cheese quesadilla and a baby salad beast. I can’t get over how much the quesadilla tastes like a crepe!!! It’s so fantastic

I ran off to do some errands. Stopped at Target to pick up a few things but at the check-out line realized that I had forgotten my wallet. I had to run back to the apartment then run back again to Target to actually buy them. I swear my shopping trips can’t ever go right.

I also stopped at Trader Joe’s where I kept in mind the two parts of my grocery shopping goals. My first goal discussed earlier today was to Limit the Bill, by only spending $75 a week on groceries. The second part of my goal, Eat It, Not Buy It, is making me eat the food I already have stocked up instead of buying a lot more.

I have a very limited food storage space that includes half a cabinet for foods I use most often and two small boxes in my bookshelf for foods I don’t use as much.

Yeah, that’s all the room I have. Oh, well and some floor space for cereal boxes.

I apologize profusely for the horrendous camera pics, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

Anyways, so in order to make room and not have food shoved in every nook and cranny I’m going to try to eat what I have, and limit what I buy.

In that case, my haul wasn’t very big from Trader Joe’s

Turkey breast, Oatmeal bread, and Indian Fare’s Jaipur Vegetable and a reusable bag.

I’m very, very, very excited to try the Jaipur Vegetables

I had to rush off to a meeting, which wasn’t bad for once. Hoorah! It tends to help when I’m active in the conversation.

But after I was starving for some stir fry.

I grilled a turkey cutlet season with salt and pepper, and put it off to the side. Then sauteed frozen stir fry vegetables while washing the noodles.

And finally I combined the turkey, stir fry, noodles, 1 T of olive oil and 1 1/2 T of Stir fry sauce over low heat to come up with this beautiful sight.

It was all pretty good except for the turkey which was really tasteless.

I used these noodles

I didn’t even realize the calories on this guy until after cooking them! 20 calories per serving, so 40 total. Holy cow!

I just calculated up the calories on my meal and I’m honestly astounded. I’m not a usual calorie counter, but here’s the stats:

Noodles: 40 cals

Veggies: 45 cals

Turkey: 70 cals

Olive Oil: 20 cals

Stir Fry sauce: 30 cals

Total: 205 calories

Holy smokes! That is nothing for how big and satisfying it was! It’s been 3 hours and I’m still full.

Wow. Well it’s off to bed for me soon. I hope you all get some rest for the week ahead

Are you a calorie counter? Do you just watch them a bit, or not at all?

I tend to as what I call it, “know what I’m eating.” I look for what a serving size is and the sodium and sugar levels as well, plus scanning through the ingredients quickly.

Detox Lasagna

Happy the-week-is-over-halfway-done!

Tonight’s dinner was Detox Lasagna from one of my favorite blogs Healthy Hoggin’

I was super excited that I didn’t burn or undercook it!

I had some mixed thoughts on it, but I’m going to blame all of the con’s on the squash.

1. I’ve always loved the smell of squash, but I’ve never liked it in a dish

2. It is at the very end of squash season, so the squash wasn’t the best anyways.

Otherwise I loved it! I was hesitant about the zucchini noodles, but they turned out really well.

My plate:

super small salad with a hard boiled egg, a couple of carrots (which I didn’t end up eating), and a new recipe from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook: Baja-style corn. I could see it as the perfect summer side dish.

And there most definitely is an mini Reese’s I just consumed waiting for pictures to upload unpictured ;)

Hope everyone has a great night, we’re almost done with the week

Do you guys love or hate squash, or maybe somewhere in between?