Recipes

Chili Yam Fries

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I had an appointment to get my hair cut this evening FINALLY.  Is it just me, or is there a thin line between being happy with your hair and your hair looking like the coat of a baby wildebeest?  Same thing goes for cutting my nails–one day they are a fine, respectable length, and the next day they’re so long I feel like a neanderthal 😯

Hmmm.. hair and fingernails… not exactly the best segue to dinner, are they?  (PS – no clue that’s how you spell “segue” til I googled it)

After the hair appointment I headed to the grocery store.  A couple times a year, our local grocery store has a huge meat sale, and I kid you not, it is literally the talk of the town.  And I don’t mean just for the week of the sale, it’s a highlight throughout the year.  You can be at a cookout several months later, and the BBQ’er will proudly announce “got these here ribs at the meat sale (insert head nods here).  Buy one, get one free.  Can’t beat it.  Just can’t beat it.”

Case in point, check out the text I got from my friend Tim this evening:

 

At the grocery store, I picked up a random assortment of veggies and all the meat I could carry 🙂

It was already 7:30 by the time I got home, and I have a ton of work to get done tonight so dinner was a hodgepodge, albeit a tasty hodgepodge.

I picked up something new at the grocery store:

 Chili Garlic Sauce (found in the Asian food aisle).  I also picked up a yam.  I recalled seeing a recipe somewhere for chili yam fries so I figured I’d give that a shot tonight.

I scrubbed up the yam and chopped it into big bite size pieces, then tossed with:

  • 1 tbsp chili garlic sauce
  • 1 tsp reduced sodium soy sauce
  • S&P

Into the bowl:

I sprayed down a cookie sheet, tossed the yams on topped, and cooked in a 415 degree oven for 25 minutes, stirring once.  The chili garlic sauce smelled SPICY.  I had a momentary flashback to my brief encounter with chipotles in adobo….  My face hurts just thinking about that!

Meanwhile, I sprayed down another cookie sheet and threw 6 halved brussels sprouts on it.  Then seasoned with S&P.  These also roasted at 415 degrees, but only for 17 minutes.

While all that was going on, I peaked in the fridge and found that I still had a grilled chicken breast from last week and some classico fire roasted tomato sauce that I had defrosted.  So, one thing lead to another, and here’s what I ended up with for dinner:

Two thumbs up on the chili yam fries bits:

 Roasted brussel sprouts rock my world:

More brussel sprouts for good measure:

Stats on the hodgepodge*:  325 calories, 40g carbs, 5g fat, 29g protein, 9g fiber

*hodgepodge consisted of 4 ounces chicken breast, 1/4 cup classico fire roasted tomato & garlic marinara, 1/2 of the chili yams, 6 roasted brussel sprouts

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What I ate

The great salad extraction…

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Before we get into my salad debacle, let’s recap breakfast!

Breakfast #1

While getting ready for work this morning, I realized I wanted NEEDED eggs for breakfast.  I was already crunched for time, and considered passing on my fav B#1, but then it dawned on me.  EGGINS. 

“Eggins” are baked eggs that I cook up in a muffin tin.  Get it?  Egg + Muffin = Eggin 😉 (bear with me… it is Monday after all). 

I had 9 eggs in the fridge, so I decided to go with 2 whole eggs and 7 egg whites.  I mixed these up with S&P, Frank’s Red Hot, and a splash of water, and then evenly distributed them into 6 regular size muffin tins.  I also threw 2 cups of broccoli into a pan that I had sprayed down with cooking spray.  I seasoned the broccoli with some S&P, then threw everything into the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes while I continued getting ready for work.

2 breakfasts in < 5 minutes prep.  Bada bing, bada boom 🙂

I had 1/2 of the above ingredients at work today with some ketchup, of course:

Stats:  171 calories, 12g carbs, 5g fat, 21g protein, 2g fiber

Breakfast #2

Blueberry Chobani + Strawberries:

Mixed into a fruity frenzy:

Tasty!

Stats: 163 calories, 26 g carbs, 0g fat, 14g protein, 2g fiber

Lunch

Now we get to the salad debacle.  Yesterday, I went to my sister’s for a cookout and brought a huge salad.  There was a ton leftover, which meant lunch for today 😀

Sad story:  the lettuce in the salad was EXTREMELY wilty and soggy this morning.  If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s soggy lettuce (and olives–not that there were any olives involved in this story but I just want to make sure we are clear 👿 ). 

Wilty and yucky:

I’m not one to waste food, so I decided to perform a salad extraction.  In preparation for this procedure, I brought a bag of lettuce from the fridge at home.

My saviour:

Piece by piece I sifted through the salad pulling out any of the soggy pieces.

Icky bits:

Icky on the left, crispy on the right:

So fresh and so crisp, crisp:

I also had a Jennie O Turkey Sausage on the side with some mustard:

I may or may not have spent some time playing in the paint program over lunch…

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What I ate

Oats worth waking up for

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Yesterday was a fully-loaded Saturday.  I had a wedding shower and a housewarming party to go to, and I felt a tinge of tiredness all throughout the day.  So when I got home around 11pm I was really looking forward to hitting the hay.  I layed down, closed my eyes, deep breath in, deep breath out….  Deep breath in, deep breath out…. and then my eyes opened and I laid on my back looking up at the ceiling.  I was wide awake.  Completely, 100%, ready-to-go awake.

I contemplated watching TV at first, but then decided to put my newly found energy into getting some work cranked out.  So I sat typing away on my laptop until 3:30am when I decided it was time to pull the plug.

Needless to say, I was less than enthusiastic about waking up this morning.  9:30 am rolled around (which is about 2-3 hours later than I usually sleep on weekends)… and suddenly a glimmer of excitement washed over me.  I remembered the amazing overnight oats I had prepared the night before.  Now I was more than amped to get up and tackle my interval training.  All I had to do was keep visualizing the cool creamy oats….

Check this out:

These are not your ordinary overnight oats.  This jar of JIF had about 2 tbsp of peanut butter left in it, so I mixed up my usual overnight oats in the jar and left them to hang out in the fridge overnight.  This morning, I topped the oats off with some blueberries and strawberries:

I COULD NOT WAIT to dive in to these:

Jealous??

Worth waking up for:

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Recipes

Blueberry Crumble for One

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Fruit cobblers and berry crisps are one of my most favorite desserts–especially when topped with some ice cream!

A couple of weeks ago I saw a post on the Heather Eats Almond Butter blog about blueberry crumble.  Heather tried out a recipe for the crumble that she found on Yoga is Yummy.

I’m a sucker for a simple list of ingredients, so I was instantly intrigued.   I wanted to scale the recipe back a bit to a single serving that I could fit in a mini ramekin, so I only used the following:

  • 1/2 cup blueberries
  • 1 tbsp Hodgson Mill oat bran
  • 1 tsp Trader Joe’s Crunchy Salted Almond Butter
  • 1/2 tsp Honey
  • 1 drop vanilla extract

First, I sprayed a mini ramekin with cooking spray then dumped in the blueberries.  I added the remaining ingredients to a separate bowl:

Next, I mixed up the crumble and plopped it onto the blueberries little by little to ensure even distribution. 

Popped this baby into a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, and VOILA:

Y-U-M:

This was yummy!  Couple points though — if you are looking for a sweet tasting crumble, you will need to make some modifications as there is no sweetener in the recipe above.  A couple of options for sweetening things up include sprinkling a packet of Truvia over the blueberries and/or using a sweeter peanut butter (as we all know I still love and adore JIF peanut butter to this day).  Of course another option would be to add a big scoop of ice cream to the top….

Stats on the mini crumble:  115 calories, 21g carbs, 4g fat, 4g protein, 5g fiber

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