Brand Loyal: Yay or Nay?

So I tell you that I'm going to be better about staying caught up and then I end up getting behind again! Gah! Where is the time going these days?!? It seriously feels like it's flying by!

Sometimes when life is going by so quickly I just feel like doing this all day long:

Which is exactly what I did yesterday (Sunday) pretty much all day long! It was so nice. Other than church and going to lunch, I read like 150 pages from my book and then took a nice 2 hour nap. Bliss!

But needless to say I ran out of time to catch up on blogging. Oh well! Here we go...

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So Thursday night I went to a farewell party for my husband's unit's family readiness advisor (that's a mouthful) or "FRSA" for those of you who speak Army.

I neglected to take any photos but the food spread included chips & queso/guacamole, cinnamon pita chips with fruit salsa (AMAZING!), veggie tray, pizza, peach & balsamic salad (that I made), and lots of desserts.

I ate TONS of the cinnamon pita chips with fruit salsa, quite a bit of chips dipped in guac & queso, a few nibbles of veggies (but who wants veggies when you have all that other deliciousness?!), one piece of pizza (had to use major restraint on that one), and a chocolate chip cookie. Oh and a glass of white wine!

All in all, not the healthiest night but also not as bad as I could have been (and wanted to be). :)

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Friday night I was exhausted after an extremely crazy workday so we kept it low key.

Hubs heated up a frozen Kashi margarita pizza for dinner which he spruced up with extra toppings (extra cheese, pepperoni, jalepenos, etc.) a la Shelby at Eat, Drink, Run....

If you're new here, yes we usually eat at the coffee table. I know it's bad but we dont' care. :)

It was our first time buying the Kashi frozen pizza and he said it was just okay. The size was way smaller than it appeared in the box and the crust was extremely thin. I tried a couple bites and agreed with him on it just being "meh". I doubt we'll be dying to purchase any more Kashi frozen pizzas in the near future.

For my dinner I first enjoyed some liquid relaxation to help wind down from my crazy day...

And then made myself a delicious salad with hummus and pita chips on the side...

Bright and beautiful, don't you think? It was a nice light summer meal.

The salad consisted of:

• Spring Mix bagged salad
• Romain bagged salad
• Avocado chunks
• Carrot chunks
• S&P
• Newman's Own Light Balsamic dressing (see below)
  

Really good dressing! Probably my favorite bottled Balsamic dressing I've had. Two thumbs up!

As far as the hummus, I went with the only pre-packaged hummus that I will buy these days....

SABRA!!! It's way better than any other packaged hummus they carry at my grocery store. If you haven't tried this brand, do it now. So good!

One last look at the colorful dinner spread:

Do you have certain brands of food that you are loyal to? I'm not usually much of a loyal person (I like to try new things) but with certain products I'm extremely loyal (like Sabra hummus).

P.S. Katie at Health for the Whole Self is hosting a fab giveaway for a $50 gift certificate! Oh please oh please oh please let me win! :)

Weekend Recap

This weekend has been fun but also super busy! But first let's start where we left off:

Thursday night was another Fajita Bowl night because we just weren't feeling up to doing any real cooking and we still had plenty of fajita meat to eat through. I think we're finally almost done with the fajitas though! :)



Friday night Alex's parents came into town to stay with us so we cooked up a nice meal:

-Grilled Mahi Mahi with Basil Lime Butter
-Chickpea Panzanella with Capers
-Whole Wheat Orzo


It was a light and summery meal that we all really enjoyed.

I got inspiration for the fish recipe from this Cooking Light recipe for Grilled Grouper with Basil Lime Pistou. However, we subbed Mahi Mahi for the grouper and also ended up subbing butter for the olive oil because we ran out. The basil lime butter was delicious and added just enough zing to the fish.

Here's the link to the Chickpea Panzanella with Capers salad which was a BIG hit with everyone. The only change we made was to sub baby spinach for arugula, because that's what we had on hand.

Saturday we all headed to Austin for Alex's cousin's wedding. My camera battery was dead {which I didn't realize until I went to turn it on} so I got zero pictures but they served BBQ at the wedding. We all probably drank a bit too much but it was fun night and I enjoyed getting to know some of Alex's family better!

Sunday This morning we had breakfast at one of my favorite Austin restaurants, Kerbey Lane Cafe. If you're ever in Austin I highly recommend you eat at this local haunt. It's nothing fancy, but it's super delicious and open 24 hours. I got the Mushroom, Artichoke & Spinach Omelet with Raspberry Pancakes which were both SO GOOD. I'm totally planning on recreating that omelet at home...mmmm!

Life is Like a Bowl of Fajitas

Tonight's dinner was an attempt to use up the mountain of fajita meat that we had left from last night's dinner. Alex smothered his fajitas with tons of provolone cheese and topped them with buffalo sauce....I find this to be extremely odd {the buffalo + beef fajita combo} but he assures me that it was delicious. And it MUST have been since he had two giant servings of it!

My dinner, however, was much more sophisticated. I decided to make mine into a Fajita Bowl of sorts:

That would be a bowl with a base of baby spinach which was then buried under a dollop of refried black beans, guac, beef fajita meat, sauteed fajita vegs and a small handful of crushed tortilla chips. After the photo I also added some salsa to the bowl.

SO, SO, SO GOOD! Like, perhaps even better than the fajitas themselves GOOD! I think I might eat my fajitas like this from now on whenever possible!

Here it is all mixed up:
Not quite as appetizing looking is it? But I assure you, it's still JUST as tasty as it looks in the pretty picture! :)

Back to Reality

I'M BACK! The girl's trip to the lake was wonderful! I accomplished all of my goals mentioned in the previous post, and then some! I also found a new love for kneeboarding and managed to make my entire upper body extremely sore from all the effort.

It was a great little break but now it's time to get back to reality. I came home this evening to my hubs cooking up some delicious ground chicken taco filling. I decided to eat mine as a taco salad because after all the indulging I did the past 4 days I needed something lighter.

What's for Dinner? 6/8/2010

-Chicken Taco Salad {for me}, Chicken Tacos {for Hubs}
-Refried Black Beans


To make the filling, he just cooked ground chicken in a saute pan until cooked through. Then he added a sprinkle of chili powder, cumin & salt.

My salad consisted of romaine lettuce, fat-free shredded cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, salsa, and I had black beans on the side.

Alex's tacos consisted of all the same as my salad, only it was served in whole wheat tortillas.


Glad to be back home with the hubs, but definitely missing the lake!

Busy Week Recap & My Mom's Famous Chicken Salad Recipe

I've been MIA this week because it was a crazy busy one! Here's a recap:

MONDAY:
I went to the grocery store after work and quickly realized that it was a BAD idea to grocery shop on a Monday evening. The place was crazy! It took forever to get through the store and the checkout lines. By the time I got home we were starving so any plans we had to cook a "real" dinner went out the window. Luckily I had just purchased a rotisserie chicken so we plopped some chicken on a plate, microwaved some veggies and warmed up some dinner rolls. Definitely not what I had planned but it worked in a pinch.

TUESDAY:
I got word earlier in the day that my BFF had her baby girl! We had plans to head out their way after work to see the baby (they live about 45 minutes from us). However, when the time came around Alex wasn't feeling very well and we didn't want to expose the baby to any potential illness so we didn't end up going. We didn't have the energy to cook dinner so we went out to Cheddar's.

WEDNESDAY:
After work we did actually go out to visit Kim, Ricky and their new baby girl, Audrey Grace. She was so beautiful! We ate dinner on the way out there at a place that specializes in "Chicago style stuffed pizza". It was quite tasty! Here are some pictures from our visit with the baby:

Me with Baby Audrey

THURSDAY:
Thursday night I hosted Bunco at my house! I kept the food simple and made my mom's "famous" chicken salad (recipe below) served on mini croissants and Copycat La Madeline Tomato Basil Soup (click the link for recipe).

Mom's Famous Chicken Salad
Source: Mom

1 rotisserie chicken, deboned & chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
½ onion chopped
1-2 Cups of red seedless grapes, slice in half (to taste & color)
¼-1/2 cup of toasted & chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts)
2 packets of Splenda
Salt (to taste)
Fresh ground pepper (to taste)
¾ cup light Helmann’s mayo (adjust to your taste)
Juice from half a lemon

Combine all ingredients…I usually chop by hand…but, you can also put in food processor for finer chopping if you’re making finger sandwiches, etc.

FRIDAY:
Date night! After the crazy busy week we had Alex and I were needing some time to reconnect. So we went out to dinner and then to a movie. We saw the movie Date Night and it was really cute!

SATURDAY:
Game night at our friend's house. They served brats & burgers and we played several games throughout the night. Game nights are ALWAYS fun and intense with our group of friends!

Phew!! I'm exhausted just typing all that out! Thank goodness this coming week looks to be a little less busy (knock on wood).

What's for Dinner? 2/25/2010

Oh man I am SO GLAD this work week is over. I had one major event on Thursday and then another event on Friday night so it's just been non-stop for me all week. I've basically only come home to sleep at night and then get up in the morning and do it all again.

So Thursday night we had this Slow Cooker Pot Roast recipe on the menu. Unfortunately because of the crazy pace of my morning I forgot to put it in before I left for work at the crack of dawn. Alex was able to put it in the slow cooker at about 2pm when he got home but then we had to kind of rush it along and put it on high for 2.5 hours and low for 2.5 hours. We later realized that maybe the high setting at the beginning of the cooking process was a bad idea because the roast got cooked but it just wasn't falling apart like a pot roast should. It was sadly very tough. :(


Alex ate it anyway and said it would have been good except for the tough meat texture, but I just wasn't feeling it. Instead I made myself a salad:


It consisted of baby spinach, fat free cheddar cheese, light ranch dressing and a Morningstar Grillers Prime Veggie Burger with a side of bread & buttah. It was quite delicioso!

And pretty much directly after I ate this I passed out on the couch at about 8:00pm. Sweet.

What's for Dinner? 1/28/2010

Hubs is out of town tonight so I was on my own for dinner. He went to a bourbon tasting with my dad and is staying the night in a hotel there {since it probably wouldn't be a good idea to drive 2 hours home after a BOURBON tasting}. I would have gone with him but some of us have to WORK tomorrow. Hmmph!

Anyway, back to the point of this post! So since I was on my own for dinner and I stuffed myself with Mexican at lunch, I decided to go for a light dinner. I had no idea what I was going to make but I ended up throwing together a delicious salad and a twice baked potato {from half of a leftover potato}. It ended up being such a perfect dinner and it REALLY hit the spot.


1/28/2010
-Peach & Spring Mix Salad: Consisted of spring mix salad, white peach, pecans, blue cheese crumbles & balsamic vinaigrette. SO GOOD!
-Twice Baked Potato: All I did for this was take a baked potato and scoop out of all the "meat" and mix it with sour cream, cheese & green onions. Mix it all together well and then place back in the potato "shell". Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes.


{It's weird being home alone again for the first time since hubs got back from deployment. Brings back a lot of memories. And although it's nice to be able to eat whatever I want and catch up on all the TV shows that he hates, it also reminds me how GRATEFUL I am that he is home. Life is just so much more complete when he is around. /End of mushiness.}

What's For Dinner? 1/4/2010

Today I had to go back to work after a week and a half off for Christmas and New Year's. My husband, however, did not have to work. Being the amazing husband that he is, he did things like laundry, dishes and grocery shopping all day long. Then, to top it all off, he cooked dinner for me.

What's that you say? Why yes, I am the luckiest woman on earth. I have a husband who is handsome, helpful, caring AND the boy likes to cook {and he's really good at it}. Cha ching! I hit the jackpot. ;-)


Seared Skirt Steak with Balsamic Cherry Tomatoes
Here's a link to the recipe on Men's Health.

Pico de Gallo Stuffed Avocado Halves
He just bought a container of pre-made pico de gallo and stuffed it inside the avocado halves.

This dinner was SO SO SO SO SO delicious!!! I couldn't stop raving about it!! And suprisingly, I actually didn't think I was really going to like it....but oh my goodness. YUM. And Alex said it was super easy to make, too. I've already told him that this one needs to hit the regular rotation every now and then.