My food meltdown

I’ve yet to get to that point where I want something to eat so badly that I completely melt down….that was until Friday night.

Ben was working on the floors and I was too tired to make dinner so I decided to run around the corner and pick up some takeout. They have these yummy chipotle chicken burritos that I cannot get enough of.  So I go on my way and place the order.  I specifically said chicken only, not jalapenos or beans. 

While waiting on the food I started to get very dizzy. I was tired and I think my body was ready for food.  Finally dinner was ready, I brought it home, snuggled into bed and let Ben serve me my glorious takeout.

And it had beans on it. and jalapenos and everything else I didn’t ask for. Chicken only!!

And so I cried. An ugly cry. Ben told me I was acting like a 10 year old and to get a grip.

 So I called to let them know what happened and to ask them to make me another. I would just go get a new one. But their phone wasn’t working. I was pissed, I didn’t want to go up there and have to wait 30 minutes for them to make my dinner.  Ben was still working on floors and I was so mad I wasn’t going to let him handle it.

So I drove my ass back around the corner, crying, to get a new chicken chipotle burrito.  I cried and told them I was sooo hungry and 7 months pregnant and basically made myself look like a fool. But the burrito I got was new, and perfect, and stuffed with more chicken than I’ve ever gotten before…..so yeah.

That was my story. Good huh? Ben always says I’m a terrible story teller, why I have a blog I do not know.

Chicken Vermont Soup

I don’t know where this soup gets its name. My grandmother used to make it all the time and it became a staple for me while in college. It was easy and inexpensive and I always had lots of leftovers to freeze and reheat when the mood hit me.

I don’t know where you live, but where I live its damn cold right now, so when I was planning my meals for the week soup was on the top of the list!

I had a big heaping bowl of it last night when I got home from my workout and it hit the spot. I instantly fell asleep. Like for real. I ate the soup in bed while watching the Bachelor and crashed with a full belly.  You’ll notice the picture is taken from my bed, and part of Ratchet is visible.

Chicken Vermont Soup

Grandma Caperna original

1 - 46 oz can of tomato juice

2 - 46 oz cans of chicken broth (I just used bullion cubes)

1 box of frozen chopped spinach

1-2 pieces of chicken

Baby carrots

2 - 14.5oz cans of diced tomatoes – plain no spices added

Pastini noodles – about ½ box

Season with s&p

Parmesan cheese

Basically you just throw all this stuff in the pot and let it cook.  I start with the juices and then throw in the spinach. It can be frozen, it will break apart quickly.  Cut about ½ small bag of baby carrots into bit sized pieces and dump into the soup. Add 2 cans of diced tomatoes.  Let simmer on cooktop for about 30 minutes.

Cut chicken up into bit sized pieces and you can just throw them into the soup raw. They’ll boil really quickly.  Let soup simmer. Once carrots have softened (just try one!) bring soup to a boil and add about ½ box of pastini. Be careful when you do this, they’re going to get bigger so don’t think that because you’re putting small pasta in the soup you need more!  I do this all the time and wind up adding more chicken broth to the pot.  When you’re at the supermarket just look for the smallest noodles you can find! I generally like Stelline but Ben requested something a little bigger this time around so I picked up some Ditalini Rigati and it worked nicely! don’t be overwhelmed by these names, see the below chart or just buy the smallest pasta you see in aisle. season with salt and pepper as necessary.

image from barilla pasta's website

 

Once pasta is cooked, spoon yourself out a bowl and top with some parmesan cheese! Enjoy. 

Quick story: one time when I was making this at school I had mentioned to a friend that I felt like I was gaining weight (yeah right, I weighed 112lbs, ha!) and she suggested that I not add parm to the top of my soup. I told her to fuck off. For real people, cheese makes even good things better!



Buffalo Chicken Pizza

I have had a serious craving for pizza lately, but who wants to spend $15 on a cheese pizza…or have to wait for a delivery man? Not me. 

Ben and I used to make a homemade pizza every Monday night for dinner and at some point we fell out of that routine, but I’m happy to say I’m quite ready to pick it back up!  For New Year’s Eve I decided to make 2 pizzas. The first would be a more traditional pizza with red sauce, leftover taco meat, and mozzarella cheese.  The second pizza (yes, I needed 2 pizza’s!) was a buffalo chicken pizza.

I hopped on pinterest to check out my options and I’m very happy with the one I found!  The sauce isn’t a traditional sauce rather cream cheese with ranch seasoning sprinkled on top of it before all the other ingredients are loaded on. I added a decent amount more cream cheese on the crust than the recipe calls for and I was very happy with my decision to do so!  I also didn’t make my dough I just bought some in the freezer section of the supermarket.  It works just as good!

Check this yummy pizza out here, and look below for the mouth watering goodness:)

Avocado Chicken Salad

I found this recipe on pinterest and thought I would give it a try. I was really really yummy and something that I can see holding up in the refrigerator for a couple of days.  I’m constantly looking for healthy low carb recipes that we can have for dinner, but also have as leftovers for lunch.  I would be happy to eat the same thing for lunch every day but Ben requires variety.

The nice thing about a dish like this is that you can eat it on bread, in a salad, alone in a bowl, over chips….and that’s just what I can come up with off the top of my head.

 

Can you please ignore the fact that I spelled avocado wrong on my recipe….kthanks.

 Avocado Chicken Salad

1 large avocado
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
½ cup red onion
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Grill chicken. Cut into small pieces and cool.  When I made this last night I cut the chicken into small pieces, put them on a plate, and stuck it in the freezer to get it to cool down enough so that we could have a cold chicken salad for dinner.

In a separate bowl mash up avocado.

In another bowl combine chopped onion, lime juice, salt and pepper, and cilantro. Mix together.

 

Add cold/room temp chicken to onion mixture.  Stir until combined. Mix in avocado. 

 

 

I ended up adding a little more salt and pepper to the mixture, which I think was needed.  I'm sure you could also add in some tomato, but i'm not sure leftovers with the tomato would last nearly as long as without.

Enjoy!

Mini Eggplant Pizza’s

In our quest to expand our low carbohydrate menu and to use up food we have coming out of our garden I did a bit of online searching and came up with my version of eggplant pizzas.

It was so easy, and I used only stuff I had in the house to make this delicious appetizer.  My sister wouldn’t touch them and Ben ate 5 before I could ask if he liked them.

He clearly did.

I don’t really have a recipe for this but I’ll give you a step by step and you can modify to your own liking.  If I was to plan on making this dish I would have had a different kind of cheese on hand, and probably actual tomato sauce…but this worked!

 

Mini Eggplant Pizza’s

Eggplant
Tomato paste
Sharp Cheddar Cheese (maybe use mozz. next time?)
Garlic powder
Cheese
EVOO spray

 

Step one, slice the eggplant thin. You want the pieces to be thick enough that you can hold them once cooked without them being too flimsy.

Place into 350 degree oven for 7 minutes and then flip and cook for another 7 minutes.

I did this in order to try and crisp up the eggplant. It didn’t really work.

Take eggplant out of the oven and cover with tomato paste, garlic powder, and shredded cheese.  As noted above I used shredded sharp cheddar because that’s what we had in the house.  If I had planned on making this I would have most likely gotten mozzarella cheese, or a pizza cheese mix.

 

 

Throw back in the oven for 15ish minutes.  I would just watch them. Honestly I forgot about mine and don’t know how long they were in there, but because the eggplant doesn’t really get too crispy you couldn’t tell at all that they had been forgotten about.  I mean don’t judge, I was cooking this and got sidetracked.

 

And so did Mabel…she was all about what was cooking in the kitchen last night!

 

Anyways, back to the eggplant.  They turned out wonderfully and I’ll certainly make them again….maybe next time with actual pizza sauce, the right cheese, and pepperoni if I have it.  but honestly even with makeshift ingredients they were fantastic!

 

 

Enjoy!

Prosciutto Stuffed Chicken

Remember I told you we’re back on the low carb bandwagon, well that means a whole new lot of recipes for us! and this recipe was a winner!

This was actually very easy to make. I’m not even going to make a list of ingredients.

Pound a piece of chicken until its quite thin. I cut my this pieces of chicken breasts into 2 pieces each so that we would have smaller portions.

Layer on the chicken a piece of provolone cheese and then 2 pieces of prosciutto.  You could also use ham or turkey, I mean fill it with what you like!  I actually had a couple pieces of genoa salami in the refrigerator so two of my pieces of stuffed chicken we also filled with that.

 

Roll the chicken and put a couple of toothpicks through it so it doesn’t all fall apart. I sprinkled the top of ours with garlic powder and some other random spice called sandwich sprinkle and called it a day. I was not really in the mood to be in the kitchen, I wanted to be finishing my book.

 

Bake in oven on a foil lined sheet at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. And voila! Dinner!

 

Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

Last night we had family dinner at our house.  My in-laws are out of town and someone needed to take over the big task of cooking for 13 people! And that task was left up to me.  Really I enjoyed it, I love cooking, but that is a lot to do on a Tuesday night!

I decided to make a recipe that my mom used to make for us when we were growing up, Chicken and Broccoli Casserole.  And this recipe didn’t disappoint.  My sister said that out of all the things I’ve cooked for her since she’s lived with us, this is one of her favorite dishes.  Apparently she doesn’t recall ever eating it when we were growing up.

Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

4 split chicken breasts

1 small can of chicken broth

1 tbsp butter

1 can of cream of chicken soup

1 medium chopped onion

1 package of frozen broccoli

½ cup of mayo

½ tbsp. lemon juice

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

½ cup cracker crumbs (I used Ritz crackers)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place chicken in casserole pan.  sauté onion in butter until translucent, add frozen broccoli and cook until tender.  Add soup, chicken broth, mayo and lemon juice. Make sure when you go to sauté your onions that you’re using a big enough pan to add all this stuff into!

Pour over chicken

Top with cheese and cracker crumbs.

Cook for 1 hour.

I didn’t get a photo of this chicken after it was cooked because I had 13 people in my house!  But I’m certainly going to make it again soon and will take a picture of it then.

*** I’ve made this dish and frozen it before and it turns out just as yummy.  So just store it in a foil baking dish and cover once cooled with foil and store in a ziplock bag in the freezer.  I generally will take this out of the freezer before I leave for work on the day I want to make it for dinner.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

I saw this recipe two weeks ago and immediately wanted to make it.  I decided I would put it on the menu for the following week and picked up all the ingredients for it at the supermarket.  Then we went to the in-laws for Tuesday night dinner and mother in law made waaaay too much chicken for dinner and sent everyone home with enough leftovers that lasted us through the end of the week.  So I didn’t get to try this recipe! 

Last night I decided I had to make it.  Tuesday night is family dinner again and if I didn’t make it last night I wouldn’t want to make a chicken dish again until Thursday.

Let me tell you this turned out sooo yummy!

You can’t tell me that the cheese you seeing oozing out of the chicken doesn’t make your mouth water.

I didn’t make any changes to the recipe so here is the direct link – Chicken Cordon Bleu

I served this with steamed veggies and it was the perfect amount of food for both Ben and I.

Crock Pot Chicken Cacciatore

So..I love to cook.  Quite some time ago I thought that I would share my cooking adventures with you. But I’m terrible at remembering to take photos and explaining what I do when cooking.  So I think I’ll just share with you what we’re eating, a photo if I remember to take one, and our thoughts on the meal.

So Crock Pot Chicken Cacciatorie from SkinnyTaste.com is the first recipe I’ve decided to share (mainly because I remembered to take a pictureJ).  I love Gina’s food.  It’s healthy and yummy and sooo not boring.  A lot of healthy eating blogs are the same food over and over again, but Gina creates recipes that are your favorite foods but healthy.  So mac and cheese or  cheesy appetizersJ  you know all the stuff you want to eat but tell yourself you shouldn’t?  she takes the guilt out of it.

Overall we loved it!  I didn’t have a bay leaf so maybe that was missing?  And I used 3 chicken breasts instead of the chicken thigh….and I added garlic and a can of diced tomatoes to ours also.  That said there are a ton of leftovers! Holy moly. I’ll have to freeze some of them.  I served it over pasta last night, and today I  had some over a salad and both ways were wonderful.  I could actually see myself using the chicken to make a calzone too.  Hmmmm that sounds yummy…

So here’s my picture. Taken on my phone. So stop judging.   And try this STAT!

p.s. book update coming soon! It’s been soo long, sorry about that!