What I ate – Page 20 – Fervent Foodie

Fajitas & Guac succeeded by Cold Oatmeal

June 20, 2010 11 Comments

Jarrod and I wanted something delicious for dinner, so we decided to try this recipe for Chicken Fajitas. We followed Skinny Taste’s recipe to a T, except we also made some brown rice to mix in. The recipe doesn’t say how long to marinate the chicken, so we let it go for about 30 minutes.

We both felt what threw this meal over the edge to amazingness was the guacamole we made to go with it.

My recipe for guacamole adapted from my Chipotle days in college:

I kid you not, this recipe post-it has been on my fridge for over five years. I’ve moved from apartment to apartment to house, and this puppy is ALWAYS displayed on the fridge 🙂

We each had 1 Mama Lupe’s low carb tortillas that I had ordered from Netrition, and we threw everything that couldn’t fit into the tortilla atop a bed of lettuce. We also had some fresh salsa we had picked up last week, so we drizzled a little on top.

One giant plate of food:

Yes, I cleared my plate. Yes, I contemplated licking it clean.

Skinny Taste chicken fajitas + chipotle inspired guac = best dinner we’ve made in a long friggin time!

BTW, I told Jarrod he is now required to plate all foods before photo sessions. That plate looks absolutely beautiful!

Side Note –

Yesterday on the way home from the hair stylist, I tried the Chocolate Raspberry Luna bar. The bar had been in the hot car for a little while, so it was slightly melty and absolutely divine tasting!

Breakfast

I hadn’t had cold oatmeal (or “overnight oats” as food bloggers call it) in quite a while. After reading about Leashieloo’s recent success with overnight oats, I decided to make some up last night.

Here’s what I threw in:

1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 cup almond breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 tsp peanut butter
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp choc chips (which was like 4 chips, but I figured what the hay that’d give me four chocolately delicious bites)
A sprinkling of cinnamon

I stirred up the oats and popped them into the fridge to hang out for the night. This morning, I added some chopped up strawberries.

Oatmeal is great for you, but who the heck wants a steaming bowl of oats in the hot summer months? Most people think cold oatmeal sounds appalling. To those people I say quit being so cantankerous and give it a shot! What’s most fun about overnight oats is you can mix in ANYTHING you want. Seriously, just give it a shot already! And let me know how they turn out!

Stats on overnight oats: 233 calories, 36g carbs, 8g fat, 7g protein, 6g fiber

On the agenda today:

Day 1 of walking/running interval training
Father’s Day!
Wine, food, family time!

Recipes, What I ate

The best guacamole recipe EVER

June 20, 2010 16 Comments

Jarrod and I wanted something delicious for dinner, so we decided to try this recipe for Chicken Fajitas. We followed Skinny Taste’s recipe to a T, except we also made some brown rice to mix in. The recipe doesn’t say how long to marinate the chicken, so we let it go for about 30 minutes.

We both felt what threw this meal over the edge to amazingness was the guacamole we made to go with it.

My recipe for guacamole adapted from my Chipotle days in college:

What I ate

Early bird catches the corn dog

June 19, 2010 1 Comment

It’s Saturday, and you know what that means. Yard work!

You’d think for as much time as I devote to my yard, it’d be in pristine shape…. Oh what a pain in the ass homeownership is the joys of home ownership 🙂

There is one specific area of the yard that I leave completely untouched. You can see I have quite the crop of poison ivy growing:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — area of infestation

I hit up the Home Depot this morning to pick up some spray to (hopefully) help with my poison ivy. Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am??? I leaned this little nugget of information when I called them at 7am to see when they opened. 6am? Those customers must be hard-core home improvers.

Before I got to work in the back yard, I cooked up my favorite egg breakfast: 1 dippy egg & 3 egg white scramble with S&P, Red Pepper Flakes, and Frank’s Red Hot. I always add a splash of liquid (usually skim milk or water) to the egg whites to help them stay fluffy. Also, toasted up a Thomas’ multi grain english muffin on the side.

Stats on breakfast: 218 calories, 28g carbs, 6g fat, 22g protien, 8g fiber

After chowing down, I headed to the yard.

Until last summer, I was one of those people who thought I wasn’t allergic to poison ivy. Well, that is until I accidently weed wacked some of it. I really didn’t know what poison ivy even looked like, so I was unaware of the horrible mistake I had made and basically let myself marinate in the poison ivy juices all day while I worked away in the yard. This resulted in what I will call a immobilizing infestation of poison ivy all over my legs. Since then I will not go near the stuff.

Today, I put on pants and long sleeves (despite temps in the mid 80’s) just so that I could approach the “infested area.” My luck, I’ll get poison ivy on the only part that was left exposed: my face 🙁 I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about that tonight!

I’ll have to post some before and after shots once I get it all finished (which will be never sometime soon).

After all the yard work, I was starving!

Sometimes I just get cravings for weird foods. Case in point, today I had a sudden craving for a corn dog! I can’t remember the last time I had one, but something triggered the corn dog eating machine deep inside me. So, I decided to try and make a healthified version of a corn dog. Even typing “healthified corn dog” makes me scoff. How ridiculous sounding is that?

I had some frozen Jennie-O turkey sausages in the freezer and also some Joseph’s Lavash bread, so I pulled them out to defrost before hitting up the yard early this morning.

I cooked up 2 turkey sausages – 1 for the “corn dog” and 1 for a healthified jambalaya recipe I’m going to try later in the week. Once cooked, I wrapped 1 turkey sausage in 1/2 a Joseph’s Low-Carb lavash bread, stuck in on a skewer, and threw it back on the grill.

Ridiculous, I know…

Once the lavash was crispy, I pulled it off the grill and served it up with a big squirt of mustard.

Ok – so it’s not exactly a corn dog, but eating it off a stick sure made it seem like one and it definitely hit the spot 🙂 I’m a BIG fan of Jennie-O’s hot turkey sausage.

Corn dog stats: 210 calories, 7g carbs, 12g fat, 22g protien, 3g fiber

BTW – yesterday while volunteering I had a Smores Luna Bar – and I wasn’t a big fan. It wasn’t bad tasting — just didn’t remind me of a smore AT ALL. Definitely the least favorite of all the flavors I have tried to date. I also had a few bites of a Chocolate Cherry Bear Naked Grain-ola Bar. It was OK – but again, I wasn’t super impressed. Apparently I was hard to please yesterday…

What did hit the spot, however, was the Gioniono’s pizza we had for dinner:

Still trying to decide what to cook up for dinner tonight… Suffering from foodie’s block.

Recipes, What I ate

Just trust me on this one…

June 17, 2010 No Comments

Breakfast #1

I think we all know I adore eggs for breakfast. No arguments here. Bad news is I sometimes can’t find the time in the morning to whip them up. I’ve been wanting to try cooking eggs in the oven for a while, so last night I decided to give it a go. I mixed up my typical scrambled egg mixture: 1 egg, 3 egg whites, S&P, Red Pepper Flakes (RPF?), and some Frank’s Red Hot. I poured the mixture into two miniature ramekins, and popped in a 350 degree oven for 26 minutes.

They look like little egg muffins! Little eggins! 🙂

This morning, I decided to turn the lil eggins into a wrap. So I pulled a Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla out of the freezer, heated that puppy up, and topped it all off with some ketchup.

That looks like an eggin massacre…

Portable and delicious!

These eggins are just so cute! What I really like about this cooking method is you could make a whole muffin tin full of lil eggins! If you had friends over for brunch, everyone could toss in their mixins of choice! Love this idea! Who’s ready for a brunch party? 😀

Breakfast #2

Recently, it was brought to my attention that peanut butter may make an amazing mixin for greek yogurt. Today my friends, I put this to the test.

I mixed up 1 Dannon vanilla greek yogurt, 1 tbsp JIF peanut butter, and 1/2 a serving of crushed Emerald’s cocoa roasted almonds.

The result?

Friggin’ deliciousness! This reminded me of a peanut butter cheese cake for some reason. Some crushed up nilla wafers on top would have been fabulous. Let’s just say I licked the container clean, and it’s not exactly easy to reach the bottom of a yogurt container with your tongue. But I made it happen. 🙂

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Lunch

Alright… Here’s where the just-trust-me factor comes in.

Let me preface what’s about to go down on my blog with the following: I wanted to try something new for lunch today.

Repeat it with me: I wanted to try something new for lunch today.

I’m going walking with my sister after work, and knew I was packing a chicken sandwich for dinner. Soooo, I was leaning toward the other white meat AKA tuna fish for lunch (NOT a fan of pork, and therefore it is NOT the other white meat in my life). You may recall that I have a long jaded relationship with fish (case in point: my fight with fish). Tuna happens to be the only fish I have found to date that I actually enjoy.

So Tuna it was.

I subsequently noticed I had some cottage cheese in the fridge that was nearing the end of its useful life.

I decided to google tuna + cottage cheese + recipe just to see what might turn up.

I clicked on the very first link: Tuna Salad Sandwich Recipe

Internal debating ensued.

Do I really want to try tuna fish mixed with cottage cheese? Could it possibly be good? I was hesitant, but I decided to give it a go.

Into the bowl:

1 5 ounce canned solid white albacore tuna, drained
1/4 cup fat free cottage cheese
salt, pepper, dried parsley, celery seed, dried dill
small squirt spicy brown mustard
1/2 tsp lemon juice

At this very moment, you are probably disgusted thoroughly intrigued by this concoction.

I added some chopped up tomato, red onion, and banana peppers right before serving. In an effort to keep my carb-tooth (located directly next to the sweet tooth) under wraps, I served the tuna salad up in a red pepper instead of your typical sandwich:

Me and the tuna pepper:

Up close:

I know those cottage cheese chunks look a little funky, but rest assured my friends, it was down right tasty!

Stats on the tuna pepper: 218 calories, 18g carbs, 2g fat, 36g protein, 4g fiber

What I ate

Taco salad does the trick

June 16, 2010 4 Comments

This morning started off on the right foot: Trader Joe’s coffee for the road as I headed to a breakfast meeting for Akron’s Knowledgeable Network of Women.

Check this guy out, he thinks he lives at my house:

I also have a stray cat who calls my side porch home. I’ll take these guys over the possum who had a brief stint in my backyard :-/ Ugh, possums are so creepy!

On my way to the breakfast meeting, I started to recall the days where I loved breakfast/lunch work meetings. The more the better! Bring on the free food! Pass the rolls! Dessert? I’ll take one of each, thank you! Nowadays I dread them. It’s so hard to make healthy choices when you have no idea what the restaurant is actually putting in the food. Unless I’m at a chain restaurant that posts the nutritional data online, I have thee hardest time picking out the healthy choices on the menu. It can be downright frustrating!

Today’s meeting was at a small locally owned restaurant, so I was left to fight the battle on my own. I went with a plain english muffin (no butter, thanks) with blackberry preserves and a bowl of fruit. What I REALLY WANTED was the strawberry stuffed french toast… Maybe I’ll attempt a healthified version this weekend 🙂

Check out the KNOW by clicking here. I always encourage people to get involved and do something that is outside their comfort zone. That’s exactly why I joined the KNOW a few years back. I HATED networking events and always felt uncomfortable entering a room full of unknowns. I’ve made drastic improvements since then.

For breakfast #2 I decided to go with my newly declared indulgence: Dannon Vanilla Greek Yogurt, blackberries, and 1/2 a serving of Bear Naked Maple Pecan granola.

Stats of B#2: 190 calories, 31g carbs, 2g fat, 15g protein, 3g fiber

Lunch

I really didn’t have a plan of attack for lunches this week. While scrounging around in the freezer looking for hidden treasures, I found some frozen lean ground beef I had cooked up with taco seasoning a while back. So I decided to make a taco salad using romaine lettuce, tomato, onion, banana peppers, and black beans (STILL trying to use these up from the stuffed peppers I made last week!). Topped it all off with some hot sauce and some fat free breakstones sour cream.

The best part of eating salads for lunch is you can consume an enormous amount of food and still feel good 😀

Stats for the taco salad: 326 calories, 32g carbs, 10g fat, 29g protein, 9g fiber