Stuff Your Face Sunday

I apologize for the lack of posts last week.  Was having the worst week of my professional career.  Utterly miserable.  Though I am happy to report that I never found myself blacking out and waking up covered in Cheez-it dust, so I'm proud of myself for that!

Anyhow, time for this week's Stuff Your Face Sunday.  This week's menu was pretty quick to put together, which is always appreciated.  After venturing out to my personal idea of hell, Trader Joe's on a Sunday, it only took me maybe an hour and a half or so to actually cook.  Ingredients were simple, prep was easy, and cook time was only 15-20 minutes per dish.  All around win.

I like bowties on my men...AND my pasta.

I started off with this lemony chicken made with cream of chicken soup.  I realize that cream of chicken soup is straight out of the trailer park but I LOVE IT.  It's salty and creamy and chickeny, what's not to like?  The recipe is so simple and it made the house smell great.  I put it on top of farfalle (my favorite) and though I would've preferred to have had whole wheat pasta, unfortunately TJ's was out of it for some reason.  And they call themselves a health food store....

I'm hopeful it tastes as good as this looks.

Next we had this savory salmon recipe.  I apologize, I have no personal photos of this dish because, frankly, my fish looked like a flat turd.  Charming huh?  I used a white-ish frozen salmon filet and that combined with the marinade made for terrible presentation.  Fair warning: if you're using minced garlic keep an eye on the stove and cook it at a LOW heat.  That stuff burns fast and then you'll have a really dark brown marinade.  I haven't tried it yet but I worry the balsamic may be a touch overpowering considering that it was making me cough when I was inhaling it's fumes during cooking.  I'll report back on this later in the week.  In the meantime, this is what it was supposed to look like.  Thank you allrecipes.com for taking nicer photos than I do!

Yes, I eat my pudding out of a champagne
glass with my initial bedazzled on it.
Don't judge me.

So those are the major meals and now, for the all important snacks.  For my morning snack I'll be repeating last week's slice of whole wheat bread with cream cheese, spinach, and turkey slices.  Delicious, nutritious, easy to put together, travels well.  BUT for my afternoon snack, I got a bit fancier.  OK, not really fancy but a lot more exciting for my tastebuds.  I dusted off an old recipe I used to eat ALL the time during my obsession with weight training and eating protein.  I call it simply Protein Pudding and it's brainless: take cottage cheese and blend til smooth, add a little milk if needed to thin it up BUT bear in mind it gets a bit thicker after you refrigerate.  Then, take whatever flavor instant fat free sugar free jello pudding powder that you prefer and mix in to taste.  When you eat it, you can add fruit like I did or not.  So this fancy looking "dessert" is actually sugar free AND protein packed!  Genius!  I used cheesecake flavor which goes very nicely with strawberries, but I've also done chocolate (sometimes with protein, sometimes not) which is equally delicious.  I think I'll try freezing these this summer and see if it works as a popsicle, mmmm.

So there we have it.  Now I'm downloading new music for my MP3 player (I'm one of 3 people in the world who doesn't own ANY Apple products) and making myself a new running mix for my workout tomorrow.  I'm ashamed to admit I just added a Demi Lovato song into the playlist.  And yes, I am almost 30 years old.

Have a healthy week!

Stuff your face Sunday....on Monday.

Well, my first attempt at my food photo filled post was a big fat FAIL.  Spent so much time cooking that I ran out of time for posting yesterday so here ya go: healthy food porn to start your Monday (err...Tuesday by the time many of you read this) off right!  I promise I'll try to be better.  I love alliteration so Stuff Your Face Wednesday is just not as pleasing to my inner grammar nazi.

So!  One of my "secrets" to healthy eating during the week is to cook a bunch of food on Sunday.  I pick out 2 major meals that I'll eat for lunch and dinner all week, make a bunch of it, and voila, I don't have to make any "big" food decisions til the weekend.  (I always eat breakfast, I just tend to eat the same thing over and over so that doesn't vary much.)

Here are this week's culinary adventures:

Cheese + chicken = happy mouth, tiny butt

String cheese chicken!!  Find the recipe here.  This is my favorite meal this week.  Melty mozzarella cheese, chicken, and a psuedo fried taste thanks to the bread crumbs.  I made a few modifications: didn't use sun dried tomatoes or paprika because I don't like either, but I dipped it in tomato sauce when I ate it.  It tastes like a pizza minus the carb coma.  For a side dish I made flavored cous cous with pine nuts.  Easiest recipe ever:

Herbed Cous Cous (make as much or as little as you want)
Whole wheat cous cous prepared according to package but using chicken broth instead of water
parsley flakes or whatever green spices you want to use
toasted pine nuts

To round it out and get a fruit/veggie serving, I had a bowl of strawberries which are coming back into season in California.  Boom.  Done.

Have salmon, will travel.

Dinner was what the recipe called "melt in your mouth salmon."  You can get the recipe here.  However!  Let me warn you: I definitely modified this recipe so it probably wasn't as melt in your mouth as originally intended.  But we can't all be Paula Deen and get a seven figure paycheck for getting diabetes so I strongly advise against ANY recipe that calls for 1/2 cup of butter.  I used about 2 tablespoons so my marinade was more vinaigrette-y than thick gravy.  Trust me, my thighs thank me for it.  I actually made this to take to my man friend's house for dinner and while I didn't think it was my best effort he couldn't stop talking about how much he liked it.  This could be because he's a bachelor and lazy so rarely cooks anything for himself that takes more than 5 minutes, this could be because he wanted to get in my pants, or it could be true.  Try it, and you be the judge.

Oh and don't forget your veggies!  I kept it simple for my man friend and myself: fresh arugula with olive oil and coarse sea salt.  It was a really light and delicious dinner and with enough arugula you can get a good 2 veggie servings in without going to bed feeling like a beached whale.

I like to eat so I always have snacks on hand.  I was very excited to try this one: Cheesy Quinoa Bites!  Again, I modified it.  I only used 1/4 c of parmesan cheese.  I figured between my string cheese chicken and this, that was more than enough to hit my cheese quota for the week.  I like it as much as the next girl but I also know I don't want my ass to start resembling a big squishy chunk of brie.  I also used egg beaters instead of real egg.  Fair warning: this makes a LOT.  Be sure to have enough mini muffin cups on hand.  I threw half of them in the freezer for that week in the future when I'm busy having a Sunday Funday and mimosas are more of a priority than cooking quinoa.  They are a little bland and I haven't figured out the dipping sauce that will most perfectly complement them but I have to disagree with the author: I definitely don't think it will be anything in the honey mustard family.  I may try some warmed olive oil with minced garlic in it.

And when you're all done, hopefully you have something, or should I say someone, like this to help with the clean up.  Happy chewing!

The Conehead: not so effective for cleaning, highly effective for entertainment.