You can find me at....

Obviously I'm not posting on this blog anymore..... BUT you can find me on my family blog which I am morphing into a family/food/exercise/craft blog, pretty much a little bit of everything that I cram into my week.

http://raisingfinandfish.blogspot.com/

Meal Plan - 10/14 - 10/21

We did a really good job sticking with our meal plan last week. We didn't make the poppyseed chicken on Thursday as I went to a Pampered Chef party at a friend's house and left Paul and Finley to fend for themselves. (I think Kraft may have helped with dinner that night ;) )

I took a few pictures of some of the recipes I tried last week and will hope to get them up this week.

This upcoming week has a few days to work around. We have small group on Sunday night so I will try to make a potluck dish for that night. Monday consists of me being gone from 7:30 am - 10:30 pm so that results in no prepared dinner. Paul is also gone until 9:30 pm on Mondays as well.

Friday: Out to eat!!! (First time in over a month!)

Saturday: Poppyseed chicken, brown rice and vegetable

Sunday: Some kind of broccoli dish, still need to find the recipe

Monday: No dinner

Tuesday: Marinated pork chops and baked beans

Wednesday: Breakfast

Thursday: Pasta primavera

What's on your meal plan?

Meal Plan - 10/7 - 10/13

New game plan.

Life has been CRAZY lately. Work is super busy. I'm teaching a course as an adjunct instructor at a local university. Track season is in full swing. I'm still nursing my plantar fascitis. Ugh...

One thing has remained constant. Meal Planning.

Meal planning has become my sanity in these crazy times. It what keeps relatively meals showing up on our table, preventing us from eating out very much and helps me feel prepared instead of frazzled when I get home from work.

My new game plan is to share my meal plan for the upcoming week each Thursday/Friday. I usually put together my meal plan for Friday - Thursday on Thursday night. Then I go grocery shopping on Friday for the ingredients I need. I will share recipes for foods that I find from the internet. Up this week:

Friday:
Hancock Mac-n-Cheese (post to come!)

Saturday:
Chicken Caesar Sandwiches on French Bread

Sunday:
Going to the inlaws for dinner!

Monday:
No cook night - I'm teaching, husband works late.

Tuesday:
Beef Tacos

Wednesday:
Breakfast Sandwiches with pearsauce

Thursday:
Poppyseed Chicken with brown rice and broccoli.

Homemade spaghetti sauce

It's been a CRAZY couple of weeks. School has started with fall practices for my husband, I have a couple big projects I'm working on at work, I've been crafting like a crazy lady for my etsy shop and for a local kid's boutique and I'm preparing to teach a night course at a local college on wellness. Needless to say, something had to go by the wayside. The blog drew the short straw.

I've still been cooking healthfully, just not venturing out and trying a bunch of new recipes. Instead, I've been sticking with the old standby's which I've probably already featured on the blog.

One staple in our household is pasta. Since our little vegetable garden gave us a few tomatoes (supplemented with fresh local tomatoes from the farm stand around the corner), I decided to try canning spaghetti sauce for the first time this year. Fresh canned spaghetti sauce is great because I control the seasoning as well as the salt and sugar. Jarred sauce can be pretty high in salt and sugar so I was able to keep them to a minimum. I didn't try any fancy recipes, just this basic one from pickyourown.org.


What are you canning this year?

Bourbon Chicken and Broccoli

Not every recipe has to be a total revamp. I want the recipe to still taste like the original recipe intended... just slightly better for me. When I came across Mel's Bourbon Chicken, it looked delicious and fit into my meal plan perfectly. I just wanted to "health" it up slightly.

As originally posted, Mel's recipe provides:

295 calories
10.9 g fat
14.7 g carbohydrate
0.1 g fiber
35.8 g protein

Not too bad. I reduced the amount of chicken used and replaced it with 2 cups frozen broccoli. I also decreased the oil by half. The result not only effected the macronutrients but micronutrients as well! The addition of broccoli made the Vitamin C content go from 3.4% to 48% BONUS!

Bourbon Chicken and Broccoli

1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 Tbsp olive oil
cornstarch for dusting

1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 c. apple juice
1/3 cup light brown sugar
2 Tbsp ketchup
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup lite soy sauce
2 cups frozen broccoli florets

Cut chicken breasts into bite sized pieces. Dust lightly with cornstarch. Heat oil in wok and cook chicken in batches in batches until lightly browned on all sides. Drain on paper towels and set aside.

In a bowl, combine remaining ingredients except for broccoli. Pour into wok and bring to a boil. Add chicken bits back to the pan, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add broccoli florets. Simmer 2-3 more minutes or until broccoli is thoroughly heated. Serve on fried brown rice, if desired.

Makes 6 servings. Per serving:

222 calories
6.0 g fat
16.3 g carbohydrate
1.0 g fiber
28.0 g protein

Fried Brown Rice

Lately I've been someone a fan of Mel's Kitchen Cafe. Every recipe on her site looks super tasty to me. And they are generally healthy as well so I don't usually have much alteration to do - BONUS!

A few weeks ago she posted some AWESOME meal planning menus which I glanced at a last week while making my own meal plan. I noticed the baked brown rice recipe and was intrigued - I have never made brown rice that way. So I thought, why not?

I was making an Asian inspired recipe (more tomorrow) and thought that I could try the baked brown rice, spice it up a bit and turn it into fried rice. Now I know that fried rice isn't the healthiest creation ever BUT I tried to add extra vegetables to the rice. In my mind, the more the vegetables take up space on my plate, the less rice I actually put on my plate. It works in theory!

Fried Brown Rice

1 1/2 cups brown rice
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup lite soy sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease an 8x8 inch baking pan. Place the rice in the prepared pan and pour in chicken broth. Stir to equally distribute the rice. Cover tightly with a double layer of aluminum foil and bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and let sit for five minutes before removing the aluminum foil and fluffing with a fork. Adjust the baking time if there is still left over cooking liquid or if it is too dried out. Set aside.

Preheat olive oil in wok or large skillet. Over medium heat, cook onions and carrots 2-3 minutes or until onions are translucent. Add garlic and cook one more minute. Add rice and turn up the heat to medium-high. Stir regularly to slightly brown the rice and coat in the olive oil and vegetables. Add frozen peas and soy sauce. Cook 2 - 3 minutes longer or until peas are hot.

Makes 8 servings (1/2 cup).

Per serving:

87.9 calories 3.9 g fat 12.0 g carbohydrate 1.5 g fiber 1.9 g protein

Lunch Wraps

A few weeks ago we had a Kids Health Day at work. Instead of having Take Your Child to Work Day back in the spring, my company held out until the beginning of August for a big Kids Work Day event. The kids could choose a bunch of different classes that they could take. We had Smoothies 101, Healthy Snacking, Kids Kickboxing, Fun Fitness Testing, Yoga, Scavenger Hunts, Chemistry experiments, etc. I taught Kids In The Kitchen. I talked about the basics of the 5 food groups and had the kids make veggie wraps and home made trail mix.

Well... we had a bunch of leftover veggie wrap ingredients and my coworker and I went to town on that food for the following week. They hit the spot so much so that I made sure to have the ingredients on hand for future wraps for lunch. They have been my go-to lunch for over two weeks now.

Here's what my wrap had:

Whole wheat tortilla (La Tortilla Factory would be awesome here)
1 Tbsp cream cheese or hummus
Protein: Black beans or turkey lunch meat
Veggies: carrots, peppers, cucumbers, spinach

Here are some other options to include:
salsa
shredded cheese
diced grilled chicken
sunflower seeds
tomatoes
broccoli
What would you put in your wrap?