Here’s a bit of a mish mash post for you.

Hooray for another heat wave – not!  It’s sad when you have to turn the AC on in the morning because the temp rises so fast.  It’s not raining, though.  At least there is that right now.

I did get out for an early ride to beat the heat…sort of.  Here is your moment of zen:

Must keep this pic in mind.

Work has still been crazy pell-mell.  It’s nonstop and behind.  It’s like trying to climb up a muddy hillside.  Slogging up the hill almost to the top and sliding back down.  They are hiring some new people, so hopefully that will help, but it gets stressful to be so behind for so long.   I already work 2.5 times the minimum requirement by the company, so I can’t really do much more.

Ever since Phoenix was here, Pixie has made the upper cupboards her new hang out spot.  We were putting away groceries and there she was.

This is the shelf to put stuff out of my reach – note the cereal up there 🙂

We had that one cooler day on Saturday and I was able to get out and weed the garden for the first time in a while.  With all the rain it is looking good!

Now it will get weedy again this week with the heat 😀

I finally tried a really easy meal fix that I have been meaning to do for a while.

Salsa Chicken!

It’s so easy.  You just need a jar of salsa and chicken breasts and a crockpot.

We tried this salsa:

I only used about half of this jar.  Maybe a cup and a half of salsa.

• Salsa of choice – 1 to 1-1/2 cups
• 1.5 pounds of boneless chicken breast
• 1 crockpot

Add half of the salsa to the crockpot. Then add the chicken and cover with the rest of the salsa:

Cover and cook on low for about 3.5 hours.  These were fresh chicken breasts, so they didn’t take long.  I think if you use frozen you could do about 6 hours.

Shred the chicken and return it to the pot.  I decided to use a little cornstarch and water to tighten up the salsa.

Served with cheese and sour cream:

John put his in some flour tortillas.

Then I had some more on a baked potato with a laughing cow wedge for lunch today:

It’s very tasty! You can make it as hot and spicy as you like by the salsa you buy.  I bet it would be good with a fruity kind of salsa, too – like peach!

It’s nice because it makes extra and doesn’t heat up the kitchen, and with it being super easy – what’s not to love?

I hope things are finally going to slow down a bit for me after today.  It has felt hectic and I have been working on the weekends  and doing the soap.  Phew.  It’s hard to do meal planning because the last thing I want to do when I sit down is to think about next week’s meals!  I do like reading cookbooks and stuff, but it is time consuming.  John and I have been talking over some pre-planned meals when eating our Sunday bagel (there are 2 Bagel Days weekly, in case you didn’t know).  This is before grocery shopping, so it works well.  We are just planning a few meals  for the week.

I don’t know how you all do it that plan for an entire week.  I admire you!

There was a lot going on today, so I did this slow cooker recipe I found on Pinterest and did a few changes to lighten it up a little.   You could easily do this on the stove if you wanted, but you all know how I have been loving the crockpot lately.    This is a very easy recipe, too.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of boneless chicken breasts, frozen **
• 1 can (15 ounce) of diced tomatoes – do not drain.
• 1 can (15 ounces) of beans, your choice (I used small white beans) – drained and rinsed
• 1 can (2 ounces) of diced green chiles.
• 1 cup of frozen corn kernels
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1/2 packet of dry ranch dressing mix.
• 1 teaspoon of chili powder
• 4 ounces of neufchatel cream cheese

Not only was I trying to reduce the calories in this dish, but the sodium.  The original recipe called for canned corn and a whole packet of ranch mix.  I used no sodium added tomatoes as well.

Put the chicken breasts in the bottom of the crockpot.  Then add all of the other ingredients except the cream cheese.

Sort of stir that around to mix and then place the cream cheese on top.

Cover and cook on low for 6 hours.  If the chicken breasts are really thick, it may take longer. Mine were 4 ounce size, so they were done at 6 hours.  If you think about it, stir the mixture after a couple hours to start to incorporate the cheese.

When it is done, remove the chicken and shred it.  Then place back in the slow cooker and stir to mix in.

Voila!

This was really, really good, I have to say. I was a bit skeptical of the ranch, but it was very tasty.  Now to find a ranch mix that doesn’t have MSG. I can’t imagine using a whole packet, either.  Would have been way too salty.

Definitely a keeper!

I divided this into 6 portions.  What I do for food like this is to weigh all the ingredients.  So, I weighed my empty crock pot liner.  Then after all the ingredients were in there, I weighed it again and subtracted the difference to find the total weight of the batch.  (You don’t lose much moisture in crockpot cooking, so I was fine weighing this before cooking.)  Divide the weight by 6 for the amount of servings I wanted.  Each serving is 8 to 9 ounces with my mixture – A very generous cup.

Calories per serving based on 6 servings:

Calories 218, Fat 7 grams, Carbs 21 grams, Fiber 5 grams, Protein 23.5 grams.  

As always, calories are based on the specific ingredients I used and your mileage may vary.  I think the beans probably will be the biggest calorie variant.  The beans I used had 80 calories per serving (3.5 servings per can).  So if you use a bean that is 110 calories a serving, you will add maybe 20 calories to each serving.

This is definitely a keeper!

Notes:

**  If you use fresh chicken, just cut the cooking time down to about 2 hours or so.

– To do this on the stove top, just cook the chicken breasts until mostly done, then shred and add all the ingredients to a saucepan and simmer until the cheese is melted.

–  The original recipe called for a can of Rotel tomatoes, but we already had several cans of diced tomatoes, so I just got a can of the green chiles to use to make it Rotel on my own.  FYI, you could leave out the green chiles and use the  Rotel.

– I don’t know if I would even try a fat free cream cheese and I doubt it would melt.  And it’s icky anyway, so neufchatel is a nice option.

I had seen baked chocolate donuts flying around the internet lately and wanted to give some a try.  I finally settled on this recipe from Prevention RD, although I didn’t use the glaze.  In fact, she has about a billion baked donut recipes to try on this page.

I halved the recipe as well because I only have one donut pan and didn’t need a dozen donuts in the house, baked or not.

Ingredients:

Dry:

• 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon (my addition cause I love cinnamon in everything)

Wet:

• 1/4 cup almond milk (or regular milk)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1.5 teaspoons oil
• 2 Tbsp unsweetened applesauce

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Spray your donut pan with cooking spray and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients and mix to blend.

In a separate bowl, add all the wet ingredients and beat together thoroughly.

Add this to the dry ingredients and mix until the flour is absorbed.

Divide the batter into your donut pan. This is actually the perfect amount of batter for this donut pan to fill them just right. Serendipity! I love it!

Bake for 7 to 8 minutes. They really don’t take much time at all.  See how perfectly they rose?

Pop out to cool on a rack while you make the glaze.

For the glaze, I combined 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder and 1/3 cup of powdered sugar with 2 teaspoons of milk.  It helps if you sift the sugar and cocoa powder to prevent lumps.  When the donuts are cool, dip the tops in the glaze:

Then let them harden up just a bit (or not!)

Each donut without glaze is about 100 calories.  Glaze will add about 50 calories or so.  I need to double check the numbers.

The verdict? Yum!!  This was the closest to a cake style donut that I have tried yet for a baked donut. I think the base of this recipe without the cocoa powder could be pretty versatile for other styles of donut.  I bet instead of glaze that using some PB2 would make a delicious topping!

I am glad you all enjoyed the stray kitty post yesterday.  If any of you end up with kitties, don’t blame me!! 😀

Wednesday is usually Bagel Day, right? Not today.  Got up and it was snowing steadily and the roads were sloppy.

So, we decided to stay home.  I made up some pumpkin oat bran.

Then worked for a while before going out and shoveling.  It was actually supposed to taper off in the late morning, but pretty much snowed all day.  Way to go Weather Channel! 

I had a small snack after shoveling of half a protein bar.

Anyway, today was official weigh-in day.  Marylou showed me some love and I was down today!  Finally.  First scale movement of the year.  I didn’t change anything except for 1 thing.  You know I have been trying to wrack my brain about how to find some way to stand while doing transcription.  I have tried sitting on a balance ball, which didn’t seem to make much difference as I braced myself to be absolutely still.  (I have to be still to do all the typing).  I tried standing, but it is too hard to work the foot pedal for my audio while standing. It also made me stand tilted and bothered my hips and back.  Well,  I figured if I can’t do something *while* I am working, I can do it when I am not working.  I am standing in the evening while watching TV or playing my Playstation games or even Kindle reading instead of sitting on the couch.  I have been getting an hour to an hour and a half of standing in each day this week and maybe that little bit made the difference.  D’uh! Such a simple solution and I just needed to approach it a different way. 

Lunch today was some greek yogurt with apple cranberry topping – plus about a tablespoon of granola.  It kind of looks like dessert, doesn’t it?

Packed full of protein, though!

I also tried out my new mug I got for Christmas. My in-laws gave this to me and it is so cute – and perfect for a latte. 

It’s an owl, if you can’t tell. It’s so cute!

We made another crock pot meal for dinner.  I did this at Christmas and it was so good we made it again.  Crockpot Ziti!  If you have a 4 quart or smaller crockpot, use this amount. If you have a larger crock pot – double the ingredients or it won’t cook right.

• 8 ounces of ground turkey
• One 25 ounce jar of pasta sauce of choice
• 7.5 ounces of part-skim ricotta cheese
• 2 ounces of part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
• 8 ounces of uncooked ziti (we used whole grain)
• 1 ounce of shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese (for topping).

In a sauce pan, brown the turkey until it is no longer pink.  Add the whole jar of pasta sauce to this and remove from heat. 

In a small bowl, mix together the ricotta, parmesan and the 2 ounces of mozzarella cheese.

Spray the liner of your slow cooker with  cooking spray.   Add a few spoonfuls of sauce to the bottom of the pot.  Add half of the pasta on top of that, spread evenly.  Next take half of the cheese mixture and drop it by spoonfuls on top of the pasta.  Spread it a little bit if you can.  Then add about half of the sauce on top of this.  Top that sauce with the rest of the pasta, then the rest of the cheese mixture (trying to spread it). Top with all of the remaining sauce.  Make sure no pasta is sticking up or it won’t cook.  Then turn the crock pot to low and cook for 3.5 to 4 hours.  If you double the batch, it will need 4 to 4.5 hours.  Check the pasta for doneness and it is done and you aren’t ready to eat, turn the cooker to warm so you don’t burn the pasta.  When ready to serve, sprinkle the last ounce of mozzarella on top and let it melt for about 5 minutes.

I still cannot believe that dry pasta will cook this way!  It is sooooo good, too.  This makes 4 very large servings of approximately 475 calories.  I don’t want to give a concrete calorie count on this because it will depend a lot on the type of sauce you use.  Ours had 70 calories per serving (the jar has 6 servings).  Plus the pasta can vary a bit as well.  I need to try this with a gluten free pasta and see how it comes out.  It’s very filling, too.

Ever have those weekends that go by and you wonder “What the heck did I do?”  Yep, one of those.  It is gone and not a lot happening.

We did make some good soup, though!  Crab and Corn Chowder.

Not the fancy crab, but this stuff:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon of chopped garlic
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 pound of russet potatoes, diced small
• 1/2 red bell pepper, diced small
• 2 cups of corn kernels
• 2 teaspoons of Old Bay seasoning
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 cups of vegetable broth
• 1/3 cup of half and half (could use fat free if you want)
• 2 cans of crab meat

Sunday was cold, but sunny and not windy, so we just couldn’t resist getting out on the bikes for one last hurrah.  My bike pants are knicker length, so I had to borrow a pair of John’s socks to pull up and cover my calves.

I love how the feet part of his socks come up to my ankles. Yes – I do go out in public like this.

Just a short ride today of almost 7 miles.  It was cold LOL! I had on a technical turtleneck and 2 jackets. My body was warm, but my face was freezing and my thumbs were cold, even with gloves on.  It was nice, though.

The forecast coming up just isn’t looking any warmer and it is time to face the inevitable of bringing the bikes inside. Wahhh!!!  After this ride, we brought them in, although I haven’t hooked my bike to the trainer just yet.  Still fighting 

Total outdoor miles for 2012:

Not too shabby!