Recipes

Chipotles in adobo don’t mess around

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Since I had a post-work meeting today, I was amazingly proactive last night 😉 .  Not only did I cook up my dinner ahead of time but I also packed a Berry Almond Luna Bar to hold me over til dinner:

This was pretty tasty, and the berry flavor was really strong.  However, the blueberry bliss Luna bar tops this bar hands down.  That is for darn sure!

For dinner tonight, I tweaked and further healthified a recipe I found in this month’s Cooking Light for Spicy Shrimp Salad.  The recipe called for two ingredients I had never used:  bibb lettuce and chipotles in adobo.

For those of you who have no idea what bibb lettuce is, it looks kinda like a little bouquet:

I was just going to use romaine, but this little guy was so cute I decided to give it a shot.

Last night, I grilled up one serving of medium sized shrimp seasoned with salt and pepper.

Then I tossed the shrimp with:

  • 2 tsp lime juice
  • 1 tsp fat free mayo
  • 1 tbsp chopped chipotle in adobo
  • 2 tbsp chopped red onion
  • 1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin

After my post-work meeting, I heated the shrimp mixture up in the microwave and threw it on top  a bed of bibb lettuce and added some tomatoes.  I tasted a bit, and realized it was pretty spicy, so I topped it off with a dollop of fat free sour cream to cool things off.

I consider myself a lover of spicy foods.  Case in point, I put black pepper, red pepper flakes, and franks red hot on  pretty much everything but my yogurt and overnight oats.  Despite my love and affection for hot foods, about two bites into the salad I literally felt like my entire face was on fire!  Chipotles in adobo seriously do not f’ around.

After my mouth cooled down, I tried to give it another go, but one bite in and the insane heat was back in full fury.  I quickly downed half a tomato trying to calm the fire engulfing my face.

Needless to say, I didn’t finish the salad.  I think this could have been really tasty if I cut the chipotles back to 1 tsp and also used a different type of lettuce.  The bibb lettuce was kind of soft and didn’t have much crunch to it.  I prefer a crunchy romaine for my salads.

Stats on the salad I wasn’t physically cable of eating:  205 calories, 20g carbs, 3g fat, 21g protein, 5g fiber

Upon some deliberation of my freezer inventory, I decided my back up dinner would be a Gardenburger black bean burger on a Joseph’s low carb pita with onion, tomato, ketchup, and mustard.

boring

It was ok… but I was really craving shrimp.  Maybe I’ll make a smoothie later to compensate 🙂

Stats on the burger:  210 calories, 36g carbs, 5g fat, 12g protein, 10g fiber

 

Chipotle Peppers on Foodista

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What I ate

Canada, Greece, Repeat.

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Around the world and back again in three short meals 🙂  Geesh, I need a vacation…  Luckily, only two weeks til my Char-Char-cation!!!  (Charlotte/Charleston/Vacation 😉 )

Breakfast #1 = Canada

Canadian Bacon Eggins! Last night, I decided to whip up some eggins and use some of the Canadian Bacon I picked up at Trader Joe’s over the weekend.

I sprayed a muffin tin down with cooking spray, and plopped one piece of the Canadian bacon in each of 6 muffin tins.

Then I mixed together 9 egg whites, splash of water, S&P, red pepper flakes, franks red hot and poured it evenly into the 6 muffin tins. (Word to the wise – if you use a container with a spout it makes life A LOT easier 🙂 )

I cooked them for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

I had three of these little guys for breakfast with a dollop of ketchup.

Stats for 3 Canadian Bacon Eggins & ketchup: 147 calories, 6g carbs, 1g fat, 26g protein, 0g fiber

 

Breakfast #2 = Greece

1/2 cup Trader Joe’s nonfat vanilla greek yogurt with 1/4 cup each strawberries and blueberries.

Trader Joe’s greek yogurt was so tasty.  It’s not overly sweet, which I really liked.  I think I could have ate about 3 more servings of this 🙂

Stats: 133 calories, 23g carbs, 0g fat, 9g protein, 2g fiber

 

Lunch = Repeat

Leftovers from last night’s Chicken Couscous Salad!

So tasstttyyyy…

 

Last night’s smoothie

Since lunch was a repeat, I thought I’d showcase the lovely little smoothie I made last night. Everyday, I have a mid afternoon snack and a late night snack, each of which are around 100 calories. They are usually something simple like an apple or a bowl of low-cal cereal and almond milk, and don’t typically make it into the blog.

Last night, I was feeling up for a smoothie so I put the following into the blender:

  • 1/4 cup Oikos nonfat plain yogurt
  • 1 packet Truvia (Stevia)
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened Almond Breeze Vanilla Almond Milk
  • 1/4 cup each of frozen fresh blueberries, strawberries, and black raspberries

All blended up:

This lil guy was quite tasty, and he is quite the looker too 😉 !

Stats on the berry smoothie: 92 calories, 18g carbs, 1g fat, 6g protein, 4g fiber

 

Get those comments on the PB2 Giveaway page!  Pssst… you don’t have to create a blog to get a wordpress account!

Also, check out this Chobani Greek Yogurt Giveaway courtesy of Hillary at Foodie on the Run!!!

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Recipes

Chicken Couscous Salad Salad

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Dinner tonight was Chicken Couscous Salad Salad (the food so good they name it twice, right? 😉 )

I stumbled upon this Cooking Light recipe a while back and it sounded really tasty, but I wanted to try and make it a little healthier.  Luckily, I had a great find at the grocery store!  Rice Select Tri-Color Couscous with Sundried Tomato and Spinach, which has about 70 less calories per serving than the whole wheat couscous I compared it to. 

I decided to make up 2 servings of the salad so I’d have something for lunch tomorrow, so I cooked up 1/2 cup of the couscous in 1/2 cup free range chicken broth.  Once the couscous was finished, I fluffed it work a fork and dumped in a bowl to cool down. 

Meanwhile, I got to choppin.  Here’s what I decided to throw into the salad:

That’s:

  • 4 ounces chicken breast (which I cooked up last night with McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning)
  • 1/2 cup chopped green onion
  • 1 roma tomato
  • 1/2 a chopped cucumber
  • 1/4 cup chopped parsley

 

For the dressing, I mixed up the following:

  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp black pepper
  • 1 clove garlic minced

Tossed everything together and put in the fridge to chill out while I cleaned up my kitchen.  I’m one of those people who just makes an absurd amount of messes while cooking… Good thing I like to clean 🙂

This recipe made two big servings of yummyness:

This was really tasty!  I love vinegars, so I especially liked the dressing.  I think I’ll actually try some out on a salad later in the week.  Another great thing about this couscous recipe is you could throw pretty much any vegetable into the mix and it would taste great!  Two thumbs up!

Stats on the chicken couscous salad:  277 calories, 40g carbs, 4g fat, 17g protein, 4g fiber

 Don’t forget to check out the PB2 giveaway!!!

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Ramblings

PB2 Giveaway!!!

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In an effort to get all you silent readers out there to post comments on my blog (so I don’t feel like I’m blogging to myself 😉 ) I decided to do a PB2 giveaway!

PB2 is a powdered peanut butter product.  Basically, all the bad-for-you-ness is sucked out of the peanuts.  All you have to do is mix with water, and you have a healthy PB on you hands!

So here’s the deal:  post a comment on this PB2 Giveaway blog post by midnight Sunday July 4th.  I’ll use a random number generator to select the lucky recipient!

So get to commenting!  I’m interested to hear what you all have to say 😀

Pssst… to comment on this post, click the blue “comment” link below.

Good luck!

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Fitness, What I ate

Running in the Rain

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I started this lovely Monday morning off with Day #2, Week #2 of interval training.  It looked pretty grey outside, but after consulting the local radar on my weather channel app, I determined I could definitely get 30 minutes in before any rain approached.

Whelp, I was about 15 minutes off on my calculation…  Half way through  my normal route, a torrential downpour started to erupt from the sky!  Running in the rain is actually pretty fun, and I would have kept right on going had I not JUST got a new iPhone to replace the iPhone that suffered water damage last week.  So, I threw my iphone in my sports bra to keep it dry and took shelter under a nearby tree for about 15 minutes until the rain let up.  Standing under the tree in the rain was actually pretty peaceful and relaxing!  I’m sure I looked like a creeper though 🙂

Breakfast #1

I’m really loving the grilled fruit and nut butter wraps I’ve been making for breakfast.  Today, I made one with half of a banana and Smucker’s Organic Peanut Butter atop a Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla.  I wrapped everything up and threw it on the george foreman for about 5 minutes.

(I’ll have to post the pic later.. left the stinkin cord for my old camera at home!)

Soooo delicious!

Stats on B#1:  218 calories, 23g carbs, 11g fat, 10g protein, 7 g fiber

 

Breakfast #2

I was still pretty hungry after B#1, so I decided to overload my overnight oats.  Last night, I put 1/2 cup quick oats, 1/2 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze Almond milk, 1 tsp brown sugar, and some cinnamon in a bowl in the fridge.  This morning, I overloaded the oats with blueberries, strawberries, the other 1/2 of my breakfast banana, and some Barbara’s Bakery Peanut Butter Puffins for crunch.

Yum-o.

Stats on B#2:  308 calories, 61g carbs (hello excessive carbs), 6g fat, 8g protein, 10g fiber

 

Lunch

After all the carbs at breakfast, I was glad I packed a salad for lunch!  Today’s salad consisted of romaine lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, a sliced up Trader Joe’s Spinach Fontina Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage, with 2tbsp Hidden Valley fat free ranch dressing.

Couldn’t get the flash to go off for the life of me… haha… need to spend some time playing with the camera! 🙂  I’m really liking the Trader Joe’s sausage!  I wish I would have picked up more than one kind… oh well, guess I’ll have to go back 😉

Stats on Lunch:  239 calories, 22g carbs, 8g fat, 19g protein, 6g fiber

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