One More Food Post

Korean Grilled Chicken Breasts is a Skinnytaste Recipe. All her recipes are very good and for the most part, lower calorie. These chicken breasts were very good. Not the normal dry icky chicken breast lol.  162 calories

and Summer Vegetable Tian. I've seen these recipes floating around for awhile so finally made it.It was really good! I imagine that if you had fresh out of the garden tomatoes it would be even better than these sad winter grocery store ones. 107 calories for 1/6th of the recipe.

One Pot Paprika Chicken Thighs. Oh my gosh this recipe is so good! This is the 2nd time I've made it and I ran out of paprika so subbed in a little chili powder and it was still delicious. Obviously this time I also used chicken legs instead of thighs (and skin removed). I was going to make another recipe with this meat and then realized it was supposed to marinate over night so here was plan b. This was 309 calories for the chicken and potatoes/carrot mixture all together. 

Petite Lasagnas. I've made these a bunch of times. Totally easy, the whole muffin tin meal which gives you the portion sizes and anything that uses wonton wrappers is fun! They are 181 calories each

Skinny Salisbury Steak with Mushroom Gravy and Skinny Garlic Mashed Potatoes is another Skinnytaste recipe. I always sub ground turkey for any ground beef recipe. No one ever knows the difference. I've made this recipe quite a few times and it's SO GOOD. The meat part is 218 calories and the potatoes are 132 for about 1/2 a cup.

Another Skinnytaste! I was going through her website looking for recipes one day. I've also made this recipe a few times. The picture looks like crap but is really good! Skinny Shepherds Pie is 287 calories for 1/6th the recipe.

Slow Cooker Chili with Black Beans and Corn. This is one of those recipes that looks SO GOOD on Pinterest. It doesn't disappoint! It comes out to 242 calories for 1/10th the recipe

Sometimes I don't use a recipe! I know, you wouldn't think that with all my recipes going on here lol. This is my basic beef stew that is loosely made off how my Grandma taught me. 274 calories I always like to have corn bread or corn muffins with stew. It just seems to complete the meal. I just use the cornbread recipe out of my old Better Homes and Garden's Cookbook. I've been buying the Bob's Red Mill Cornmeal. I just noticed when I was looking it up they have different consistencies like fine, med, coarse. I need to order some of the fine because sometimes I think it's too grainy. The corn muffins here are 140 calories each.

Taco cupcakes! I made some bean-less ones for the kids this time since they don't really like the beans in them. I keep having about half a pack of wonton wrappers left so then I look for another recipe with them to use them up. Then it's not going to be enough so I have to open a new pack. Not too bad of a problem I guess, since something good comes out of them! 128 calories

And last but not least, we have Turkey enchiladas. Which was actually a beef enchilada recipe that I of course changed. I always use La Tortilla Factory tortillas which cuts down the calories quite a bit! These were 213 calories for 1/10th of the recipe.

Pinterest Recipes Made Up!

More food!

I got one of these Veggetti Pro's for Christmas. This is the first recipe I made with it. I ended up over cooking my "zoodles" a bit I think, but it was still good!

Chicken Zoodle Lomein. One thing to notice for this recipe is that it is for TWO SERVINGS. Yeah should have noticed that before I made it so I could have doubled it lol. 313 calories and even Scott liked it. Oh also it's supposed to have bok choy in it. I could have sworn I bought bok choy, I remember putting it in the bag? But it never made it home with us. So mine is bok choy less.

Cilantro Lime Chicken Thighs. This recipe is the bomb (also see my sauteed zucchini and carrots in the back there lol). The meat was so so tender. The left overs were fantastic too. I did remove the chicken skin because, ick. I'll make this again sooner than later. 262 Calories

So I made these Egg Muffins. They are supposed to be made in ramekins but I don't have those so I decided I'd just make them in muffin cups. I think I should have adjusted my time for the smaller "cups" but I didn't and I didn't check on them while they were cooking. Imagine my surprise when I opened the oven and saw this! I also used ground turkey instead of ground beef. 

I ate them for breakfast for 2 days and then decided I didn't like them so I need to toss the rest. Probably if they weren't over done they would be good. I was imagining a nice running yolk, but yeah that didn't happen. 120 Calories each

These Ham Quiche Cups though, I've made them a couple times now and they are really good! I used pepper jack cheese in mine. I buy the larger slices of ham and just cut them in half for each cup. 94 calories each

Herb Roasted Chicken Thighs with Potatoes. I thought this recipe looked really good but I didn't take into consideration how much grease was going to be coming off those thighs into the potatoes. Which, yeah it tastes good but it's kind of greasy and all. The skin was removed before cooking. I had 9 pieces of chicken so I made it 9 serving for 159 calories a serving. It was good but probably won't make them again.

FOOD FOOD FOOD

I'm a total Pinterest Recipes junkie. I make my menu for each week with recipes from Pinterest. Then I make a shopping list and go buy everything I need. It works out great for me because that way I don't eat out and I don't really have an excuse not to cook dinner (other than being tired!). I usually do a breakfast recipe that I can take to work for the week and I try to do a soup that can be a filler for lunches or snacks. I'm going to do a few posts to catch up what I've done so far this month and then I'll try to actually do a "weekly" one with my shopping list and all. I do spend quite a bit at the grocery store each week but by not eating out like we used to it actually saves a lot of money. I also try not to buy very much "packaged" food so that makes our grocery bill a bit higher. You know, since real food isn't cheap.

Here we have "Bacon and Egg Cups". Every one in my house actually likes these and I made them for a weekend breakfast. They are really good warmed up too. I think next time I make them I am going to put the bacon in the oven for a bit and then add the egg mixture to make the bacon just a bit crisper. Mine come out to 105 Calories each. I also used pepper jack cheese in mine, which gives it a nice kick.

Buttery Garlic Parmesan Chicken. This recipe has a lot of garlic in it! I picked up my mom after I made it and she got in the car and said "whew garlic!". Apparently I was smelly lol. I think I made this before I got back to calorie counting so it's not in my log of how many calories it came out to be. 

Caramelized Baked Chicken Legs. So this chicken didn't turn out like it was "supposed to" and that's entirely my fault because when I was figuring out how many calories it was going to be I was like OMG that's like all of my dinner calories for one piece of chicken! So I started cutting down how much I was using of the higher calorie ingredients. Which ended up with nice tasting chicken but it wasn't caramelized. Maybe some day I'll make this again when I'm not worried about how many calories I"m eating. 274 calories for that one piece of chicken.

The salad, Best Ever Broccoli Salad, I also cut some of the ingredients back but it turned out fantastic. I'll definitely be making that again. My store was actually out of grapes when I went shopping so those were missing but it was fine without them. 188 calories for a cup

I was totally starving all week and came up with this celery and Laughing Cow Cheese snack. Pretty good and those light Swiss ones are only 35 calories each and celery is almost no calories.

Chicken & Cheese Lasagna Roll Ups  I love all these lasagna roll up recipes. They let you have lasagna but it's portion controlled so you don't have to figure out how big the serving is. These are 248 calories each.

Oh and the muffin tin meals are great too. This one is Chicken Parmesan Wonton Cupcakes These are 105 calories each. I always use some whole grain bread crumbs instead of croutons for the topping. Works out just fine!

Animal Love

Happy Saturday!

Originally I was going to go hiking today on Angel Island with  a bunch of people but then the forecast kept saying RAIN RAIN RAIN so I backed out of going and now the whole thing looks to be rescheduled for some other time. I've never actually been to Angel Island so I was looking forward to going.

So now today looks to be laundry day! I'm down to the fancy under ware so it's time lol. Melissa usually washes clothes but she's hasn't done it lately so now I'm stuck doing it I guess! Load two is in the washer now. One hundred to go!

I've been working on organizing my pictures on my computer so I can back them up and then take them off the computer (you know, just in case it decides to die soon). I know most of you that actually read here are animal lovers like me so here's my latest babies :)

Buster pulled my sweater off the back of the kitchen chair and covered himself up. So cute! I woke him up so he's got the angry eyes.

sweet baby

Doesn't Lucy look evil here? She's like why aren't you filling my bowl human!?

Because all of a sudden you are very large...

This cracked me up

This is Rusty at the foot of my bed in the morning. He sleeps under the covers.

Morning "talk" before the chase game

Ahhh never a cold lap around here

Time to change the laundry!  It's raining and windy out there. Sounds like a good day to watch movies.

New Year Life

So along with the rest of the world I've started back on my fitness journey for the new year. Counting calories on the Lose It app and doing this running plan. Zero to Half Marathon. I don't even have a half marathon picked out I just feel the need to have a PLAN lol.

Scott is actually doing it with me so far. We start on week 2 tonight. He's already freaking out about the one minute change and OMG two minute change last week. Never mind he used to run 8 miles or so with me before. We just need to get back to it. I was really worried I wouldn't be able to run for two whole minutes the first day but I did it. All week!

I actually ended up GAINING 3 pounds the first few days of the New Year but now I feel like I'm finally on the right track and I have lost those 3 pounds haha. I swear our bodies are so weird sometimes! Back out of the 180's and GOD I hope I never go back up but all I have to do is eat the wrong thing and it will show up again tomorrow. I need a bit more distance from that number! That is probably what is helping fuel me to be better. I actually didn't eat any donuts at work today! Progress!

I signed up for a 10k that's probably going to kill me in 2 weeks but I figured I could walk it. Nothing wrong with walking. It will get me out of the house and I just donated almost all of my running shirts so I'll get one to start filling up my drawer again. (They hardly ever fit right)

Melissa finished her first super long scarf that she made with the loom kit we bought, it's super nice! She even changed colors. I know at least one of her teachers was talking to her about making them one lol.

Scott won this bike for ONE DOLLAR on eBay. Isn't that crazy? We had to drive about 3 hours round trip to get it but once we got home we rode it over to my friends house and back. I thought for sure it would need a tube in a tire or something. Nope! Of course he wants to fix it all up nice and was talking about maybe even selling it but I think it's super fun to have to ride around here.

New Years Day I never got dressed but I finished one scarf and made a whole other one! This is the first one I had started making and then ran out of yarn. I just "winged it" when I was making it (actually started one way and then tore it all out and then did another) I really like the colors.

This one I did this pattern. It was super easy and fast and I just used 3 skeins of yarn. It's chunky and warm and I love it! I think I want to make another one with the same kind of yarn (not sure what it was lol) but a different color.

I did try to do another kind of scarf but couldn't get the pattern figured out so after spending hours putting it in and taking it out I gave up and went with the above one.

I also spent the whole weekend while I was making those watching  Making A Murderer. If you haven't heard of that you probably live under a rock. It was SO interesting and I felt like I was probably totally annoying Scott by the last day I was watching it but I didn't care really. Did you watch it yet? Do you think he did it?

New Years Eve

I'm sure everyone is so sad I haven't talked about my New Year's Eve yet!

I spent several days working on the photo boards for the hall. I got them in a black trash bag and changed them into these. Any of the collage ones were already done by someone else at one point,  I just remounted them.

I worked for 1/2 a day on NYE and got asked to see if I could find some balloons to add to the hall decoration on my way home. I got lucky at the first dollar store I went to and found these silver, white and black stars. I got FORTY balloons and then put them in my car and drove home lol.

and then into the hall, so fun!

The hall looked really pretty

One of my photo boards are on the left there

Love the tables. I didn't help with any of the table set up, since they did it while I was working.

We had a silent auction, Ginny put the things to be auctioned together and a lot of them had her artwork in them. (She's the gal in my book club that has the awesome house that is all painted)

I would have loved to have this one but they were too expensive for me lol

Between taking the balloons and the photo boards down and the actual party I came home for a bit and hung out and also made the kids a pizza ring for their dinner. The recipe is HERE. I didn't eat any but it came out nice!

Then it was get dressed and down to the club! Here's my friend Traci and I in the awesome glasses I got at the dollar store when I picked up the balloons!

and one where you can see our faces

Scott got voluntold to help cut the meat for the dinner. That is the last time that is going to happen I think. He was a nervous wreck haha. Bev, the one who did the cooking is a bit of a terror when it comes down to crunch time (and I'm saying that knowing she'd agree if she read this lol) and had Scott totally stressed out. The knife he had to cut the prime rib with was totally dull so he had a hard time of it too!

This is my friend Phyllis waiting for her meat while Scott saws off a piece. I made sure to get him a shot and a beer for when he got done. Also half my meat and removed his brussels sprouts from his plate I got for him so he wouldn't want to kill haha

Our friends Craig and Rick

Us

Ginny and Irene (the one who stole my keys)

Joanie (book club friend) and Bob

Friend Sheryl and Trish

These two were cute dancing

Band "Still Breathing" made up of people who live here

Craig getting a bit of butter

Dinner

Us again

Carol K, my buddy from book club and life. She is currently doing chemo treatments for lung cancer

They brought out these hand painted glasses for champagne

Kind of during dinner between the band and people dancing they did a skit. That's my friends Craig and Tom and their arms are Heidi and Traci. Not sure if it will load or not since it's kind of long and I don't know how to edit things like that.

After the "New York" midnight we moved over to the kitchen & bar area and danced and hung out in there for awhile. About ten minutes before midnight I felt like utter shit and declared it was time to go home lol. Scott and Trevor counted down and I went to bed!