Meat – Page 3 – Fervent Foodie

Jambalaya. Jealous?

November 1, 2010 9 Comments

Every time I think of New Orleans, I hear the Zatarain’s rice commercial in my head. You know… Zatarain’s! (Said with much sass and flavor while jazz music wails in the background). Even before my trip to the Big Easy, I had this funny mental quirk.

This thought popped into my head tonight when I began to think about what to make for dinner. I was presented with the following challenge: what do you make when you’ve got leftover meats out the wazoo?

JAMBALAYA of course! It seems like ages since I last made Jambalaya! Well at least four months anyway. I had some chicken leftover from last week’s lunch and the turkey sausage was leftover from my Zuppa Tuscana…

Lucky for me, I keep frozen shrimp in the freezer at all times in case of emergency. So whipping together a 3-meat entre was easy peasy tonight!

3 meats, one dish:

The meats were ready to roll, so I heated the oven up to 400 degrees and got to choppin 2 roma tomatoes, 1/2 a white onion, and 1 green pepper:

I tossed the veggies into a bowl with:

1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp onion powder
2 tsp minced garlic

I gave everything a good toss, then added:

1 cup brown rice
1 cup low sodium chicken broth

I intended on using 1.5 cups of brown rice, but I ran out! Ooops! That’s what happens when I grocery shop without taking inventory first! Dangit!

I divided the mix up evenly among three foil packets that I had sprayed down with some nonstick cooking spray:

One for my dinner, one for my lunch, and one for the BF’s lunch because I’m clearly dabomb.com.

I popped the packets into the oven for 30 minutes, and VOOOOILLLAAA!

Oh so spicy, and ohhhhh so delicious!

Yes, the jambalaya we had in New Orleans (and again) was a teensy bit tastier than my healthified version, but I’d like to see NOLA try and stack up to these stats:

Stats on 1 serving: 314 calories, 33g carbs, 9g fat, 27g protein, 3g fiber

Jambalaya Ingredients List (serves 3):

6 large shrimp, tails removed
2 links Jennie-O Hot Turkey Sausage
3 ounces grilled chicken
1 green bell pepper
2 plum tomatoes
1/2 a white onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp onion powder
1 cup reduced sodium low fat chicken broth

Restaurants, Travel

Big Easy – Part 1

October 15, 2010 9 Comments

Here’s a recap of our first day in the Big Easy:

Jarrod almost fell down the escalator in the airport. Sadly, I did not capture this on video.

We hopped in a cab and headed to the hotel, which is right on the border of the business district and the French quarter.

Our hotel is super old and super charming:

After we cleaned up, we headed to the French Quarter and stopped in at the first restaurant that caught our eye: Jean Lafitte Bistro… though oddly that wasn’t the name on the front of the building… Peculiar…

View from restaurant balcony:

Dinner!

This pasta sauce was RIDICULOUSLY amazing (though both of us weren’t impressed with the sausage).

I love the old-world charm of all of the buildings here:

After dinner we headed to drinks and some live music at the Blues Club:

Then drinks at the Beach:

Hello Bourbon Street!

Next stop, the Bourbon Street Blues Company

Cheese!

Annnnnd then we went back to the hotel and passed out! Long day of fun in the Big Easy!!

What I ate

Loaded Joetato

October 8, 2010 5 Comments

When I first graduated college and entered “the real world” cooking was not exactly my forte. Typically, I’d pick one to two meals for the workweek, purchase all the ingredients on Sunday, and then eat the same thing for dinner for the next five days. Can we say blasé?

Add this lack of knowledge in the cooking-for-one field to my pure disgust for all things raw-meat and you end up with a meal plan that looks something like this:

Spaghetti with red sauce and garlic bread
Chicken quesadillas (using pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, of course)
Ravioli with red sauce and garlic bread
Egg salad
Macaroni and cheese (and garlic bread if I was feelin festive)
Ice cream
Anddddd repeat.

After a few months of this monotony, I started to branch out…. to every local restaurant within walking distance that is. The food was FABULOUS, and the weight gain was… well… FLABULOUS.

Fast-forward a few years. I started to realize that Olive Garden take-out wasn’t the best option for my wallet. And while the Chop House in Cleveland has THEE MOST AMAZING MASHED POTATOES and Fat Fish Blue has fried pickles with hot sauce that rock my friggin socks off, these weren’t the best options for dinner every night of the week.

Dangit.

I love multi-purpose ingredients, but I HATE eating the same foods day in and day out. So how the heck do you eat healthy delicious meals but avoid having to eat the same foods over and over and over again? This is about the time I started batch-cooking basic ingredients to have on hand throughout the week to toss into whatever random concoctions I decided to make each night after work. Additionally, I changed my approach to grocery shopping. Rather than buying ingredients for a specific recipe (that undoubtedly made 6+ servings), I simply started purchasing fresh produce and ingredients that LOOKED tasty and then worked on incorporating those things I really liked into as many different concoctions as I could.

And I FORCED myself to get over my repulsion for raw meat. At first I handled all raw meat with two sets of tongs… Even this method led to sporadic dry heaving… Can you picture forming a hamburger with two sets of tongs?! Trust me… it ain’t easy.

In my house, Sundays are for cooking. Every Sunday, I cook up breakfast for the entire workweek, wash and chop veggies, batch-cook chicken breasts or turkey sausage, and roast up some veggies. Not only does this make healthy eating during the week super easy, but it also cuts down on my work-week cooking time.

Hallelujah.

So where does this lovely story take us? It takes us to a Loaded Joetato. Feast your eyes on this puppy:

This Loaded Joetato consisted of my leftover healthified sloppy joes atop 1 medium sized potato topped off with some fat free sour cream and chopped onion leftover from my chicken quesadilla and some roasted broccoli leftover from my Sunday cookfest.

Ohhhhh Joe.

What I ate

Back to the normal routine

September 22, 2010 3 Comments

Even with the big tax deadline behind me, my schedule is crazy hectic. What’s up with that??? Wednesday for instance is a VERY busy day for me because I go straight from the office to the university for the class I teach. This requires ample food-planning on Tuesday nights because I have to pack 6 meals. 6 meals?!? Yes 6. Take today for instance, here’s what I packed last night for the day ahead:

B#1: Scrambled eggs & roasted broccoli
B#2: Overnight oats + chopped strawberries + blueberries
Lunch: Big ole Salad + Jennie O’ Turkey Sausage
Snack: Granny smith apple
Dinner: Chicken & hummus wrap + cucumber salad
Snack: 1/2 of an 18 Rabbits granola bar

I like to travel with food apparently 🙂

One thing I’ve been craving the past few weeks is getting back to my normal foods routine!

You know what that means:

EGGS for breakfast #1!

Last night, I cooked up a batch of my scrambled eggs:

I also roasted up some broccoli which I enjoyed at 8am at my desk with a dollop o’ heaven Ketchup:

Of course, this was followed up 2 hours later by none other than my overnight oats for B#2:

Yesssssssss.

My lunch salad consisted of romaine lettuce, 1/2 a large cucumber, 1 baby roma tomato, some red onion, banana pepper and Ken’s steakhouse Lite Italian Romano dressing:

I also had a Jennie O’ turkey sausage on the side…

Is it just me, or does that sausage look really sad?! … A sausage with no bun is like a bird with no wings eggs with no ketchup! Luckily I had a monster Italian sausage sandwich over the weekend 😀

After the 2PM doldrums pass, it’s time for a snack! My usual afternoon snack is a granny smith apple:

Usually my snacks go unpictured. But today, I’m snapping everything that goes into my mouth 🙂 Uh oh.

Fun fact about me and apples: I REFUSE to buy an apple unless the stem is still attached. An apple sans stem is a clear indicator that a worm has crawled inside…. I’m pretty sure my sister told me that as a child, and it has stuck with me through the years. I may look funny in the produce aisle as I pick up one apple after another to find one that still has the stem attached, but guess who WON’T be looking funny when they bite into a worm? It won’t be me, that’s for darn sure! 😉

For dinner, I packed some cucumber salad:

And also a La Tortilla low-carb wrap consisting of 2 ounces grilled chicken, onion, and 1 tbsp Trader Joe’s original hummus:

Come to think of it, I probably should have avoided so many onions right before class… Oh well, they don’t call me the Onion Lady for nothin’.

Last my not least, I packed 1/2 of an 18 Rabbits granola bar (thanks Dorry!) for my late-night snack:

Whew! That’s a lot of food!

Happy Eating and Happy Hump Day!

« Previous 1 2 3