Finally - she returns!

For the handful of you who still check in to this blog - thank you. So sorry it's been a few months since I've posted anything - I ran into a few problems at the beginning of February. To make a long story short, I've been diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer. That this has been a huge shock is an understatement - our lives have been totally turned upside down. I'm currently going through chemotherapy and am doing very well - the treatment seems to be working! I am very hopeful at this point and have received so much love and support from family and friends. Also, please forgive any glaring errors in grammar and coherency because there really is a thing called "chemo brain" (although my husband thinks it's just my new convenient excuse :-) At any rate, my life has been crazy since then, but the good news is I finally have the time and energy to blog again!

So, earlier this year, I had decided to devote this blog to healthy, diet-friendly foods. Ha - forget that now. I may eventually rejoin the Tuesdays With Dorie gang (if I even can), but for now, I'll just check in with them now and then and make some super delicious treats once in a while. One thing about being blessed with all those wonderfully caring friends and family - my family and I have been well fed. It's a well-known theory around these parts that enormous amounts of food can cure cancer. Good thing my mother bought us a freezer - we've already got enough in there to feed a small army. We won't have to worry about any kind of swine flu quarantine - we're set to eat like royalty for weeks! Needless to say, I haven't been cooking much since all this started. In the future, I think I'm going to feature some of the yummy things I've been getting.

Since yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, my sister made us her famous chicken tacos and I thought I'd start posting with that. Oh my, are they muy bueno!

Chicken Tacos

1 lb boneless chicken chicken breast

2-3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice

1-2 tablespoons pineapple juice

3/4 cup terryaki sauce

fresh corn tortillas

vegetable oil

condiments: chopped tomatoes, chopped onions, lettuce, cheese, guacamole (recipe below), black beans (recipe below)

Combine first six ingredients into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to 4 hours.

Cook on the grill.

Meanwhile, fry the tortillas in a small amount of vegetable oil using tongs to hold the tortillas open (fry one side at a time).

You can always just use store bought corn tacos, of course (you could also use flour tortillas). When the chicken is done, slice thinly and serve with the toppings. Enjoy with a large margarita!

Guacamole

2 ripe avocados

1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro

1/4 finely chopped onion

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

salt to taste

Mash all ingredients together and serve immediately.

Black Beans

1 can black beans, drained

1-2 teaspoons dried cumin

1/2 - 1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 - 1 teaspoon chili powder

salt and pepper to taste

Mix together and heat. All of the spices are to taste - if you like spicy stuff, you can add some red chili pepper instead of the chili powder.

Lighter Chicken Parmesan

After I get back form Walt Disney World, I plan on really starting to watch what I eat (there's really no point while you're on vacation, right?). I've decided to use WeightWatchers.com and see how it works out. WW doesn't have any meeting places close to where I live (I'm spoiled now, living in a small town and think 25 minutes is just too far to go for a meeting, or anything else for that matter) so I'm going to track my points online. I'll try to include the points values for the recipes I post, but I can't promise I can get to every one. I'll also be tracking my weekly workouts which will hopefully be 4 runs and 2 cross trains. I've got the best of intentions don't I?!

Anyway, here's a recipe that's really easy and is a kid-pleaser too. Sorry, I don't have the points value for this dish yet, but the nutritional data is at the bottom of the recipe.

Baked Chicken Parmesan

1.5 pounds boneless chicken breasts (about 6)

1 tsp olive oil

1 cup seasoned bread crumbs

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 cup low-fat mozzarella cheese

1.5 cups prepared tomato sauce (for a time-saver, I like to use Bertolli or Newman's Own)

1/2 cup egg substitute (or two eggs, beaten)

Preheat oven to 375°. Spread olive oil in the bottom of a 13x9 pan. Pat chicken breasts dry and season with salt and pepper. In a shallow bowl, mix bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Put eggs in another shallow bowl and set the bowls side by side.

Here's my assembly line:

Dredge each chicken breast in eggs, letting excess drip off, and then dredge in bread crumb mixture. Set each breast in the prepared 13x9 pan.

Bake for appx. 20 minutes until the chicken starts to get lightly browned.

Remove pan from oven. Cover the chicken with the tomato sauce and top with mozzarella cheese.

Bake an additional 10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and is starting to brown.

Nutritional Information (by Nutritiondata.com)

6 Servings

219 Calories

8g Total fat

4g Saturated Fat

26mg Cholesterol

369mg Sodium

18g Total Carbs

2g Dietary Fiber

17g Protein

I like to serve this with a side of pasta and I really like the Barilla Plus line (extra fiber and protein) - but if you're watching carbs, just serve it with loads of veggies!

Enjoy!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming....

Food blogging, that is.

We had our parish pastor over for dinner over last night - he's always such a treat to feed and so appreciative. For me, I love to cook for other people, so it's a win-win! He's extremely easy to please, as long as the meals are simple (not into fancy-shmancy gourmet food). So here's the menu (I'm trying to make it sound fancier than it really was - I realized only in hindsight that this meal was very rustic French. Shhhhhh don't tell the hubby - he's not a fan of anything French, but he did enjoy this meal):

Roasted Chicken with garlic and thyme

Garlicky Potato wedges

Fresh Green Beans

Peach and Raspberry Galette

En Francais:

Poule avec Ail et Thym

Pommes Frite Camagnard

Hericot Vert

Galette de Peche et Framboise

Anyone who visits this site and actually speaks French will laugh hard at this, I know - I had to look for the translations online and I'm sure the grammar is all wrong. It just sounds so much nicer in French though, n'est pas? Sorry, it's like once you start, you can't stop!

First, the bird. I got a whopper of a chicken at the grocery store (7 lbs.) because I always try to send a lot of left overs home with Father. He has confided in me and let me know that he usually eats a hotdog and canned veggies for dinner - seriously, ick. Makes feel like I should invite him over much more frequently (does this count as Catholic guilt?).

Anyway, all I did was rub the chicken down with olive oil, salt (don't be stingy with it either - use a good couple of teaspoons or so), freshly ground pepper, garlic and dried thyme and then shoved about 5 small pieces of butter under the skin of the breasts and legs. Truss the chicken and roast in a 425 degree oven (can someone please tell me how to put the degree mark at the end of the temp, it's bugging me not knowing - thanks!) for 20 minutes and then reduce the temp to 350 for about 1 1/2 hours more (depending on the size of your chicken, this may only take 40 minutes more) - or until the an instant-read thermometer reads 165 when you check in the thigh (the temp will raise another 5 degrees while it rests). Let rest for 10-20 minutes before carving. You can learn how to truss a chicken here.

And here's that lovely chicken all nice and roasted. (The house smelled so good!)

Since this post has gotten lengthy already, stay tuned this week as I blog the rest of the meal.

Bon Appetite!

What's for dinner tonight, Mom?

This is what I made for dinner last night. The recipe is from Kraft (for the Food and Family magazine) and was very easy to do and the kids generally love kabobs (meat on a stick - fun, right?). The most difficult part is trying not to puncture your fingers during assembly (trust me, I speak from experience, this really hurts!).

The husband really liked it (but he likes almost everything, so his vote is always kind of taken for granted) and the youngest kiddos liked it (ages 3 and 1) - me and the older 2 (ages 10 and 8), not so much. I really think the chicken should be marinated and I got a great marinade recipe from my sister last month which uses terryaki and pineapple juice that I will try. I guess I thought it was only ok - but really, I should know by now (because I've tried quite a few of these Kraft recipes, some pretty good, others, eh) not to expect great flavor from something that only calls for BBQ sauce and OJ concentrate. But anyway, it was fast and easy and they sure looked nice. That red pepper, on which I spent (and I hate to even type this, because it is so ridiculous) $2.50 for (yes, on just one!) really makes the kabobs look so purdy, don't you think. And I just love grilled red pepper - yum! (this is Kraft's picture, as I forgot to snap one of mine when they came off the grill, but they looked pretty much the same)






Here's the recipe:

http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/sweet-bbq-chicken-kabobs-92092.aspx

Substitutions: The recipe calls for Kraft BBQ sauce, which I am not particularly fond of, so I used Sweet Baby Rays; and I used canned pineapple chunks instead of fresh.

PS (are there ps's in blogging?): I sure wish I knew HTML and could write the words something like this :

You can find the recipe here

where when you click "here", you go to the website above. Someday, and someday soon, I hope to learn how to do that!