Day 15: Random Chicken Meal

Today I had to work a double, so Allison decided to make an old meal we used to make every once and a while. We called it Random Chicken Meal (not because the chicken was random, but because we randomly decided the ingredients). It is basically parmesan noodles with bacon, chicken, and a medley of veggies sauteed in whatever sounds good that day. Let me tell you, the bacon with the noodles will blow your taste buds through the roof.

Allison also chose to use extra lemon herb oil from the other night with a lot of this dish. We ran out of olive oil, so this helped add flavor and make everything easy to cook!

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Random Chicken Meal

Hands-on prep time:

Cook time:

Serves:

Sauteed Onions, Mushrooms and Baby Spinach

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons of minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon of lemon herb oil
• 1/4 cup of sweet white wine
• 1 medium white onion, sliced
• 1 package baby portobello, sliced
• 1 1/2 cup of baby spinach
• Salt and pepper
• 1 tablespoon of basil, sliced

Directions

1. Add the garlic, lemon herb oil, white wine, and salt and pepper into a large skillet, bring to a simmer. Add the onions and sweat them until they are soft.
2. Once the onions are soft, then add the mushrooms. Continue to simmer.
3. Then add the baby spinach, sautee until soft. Serve!

Just as a note, I have been known to make these veggies with sherry vinegar instead of using the lemon herb oil and white wine. That tastes pretty delicious also!

Pasta Roni Parmesan Cheese

This is a pasta dish that is made straight out of the box, but we make a few changes to make it even better!

Ingredients

• 1 box of Pasta Roni Parmesan Cheese pasta, plus ingredients on the back of the box (this includes margarine, water and milk.)
• 4 strips of bacon, cooked
• 1 teaspoon fresh chopped parsley

Directions

1. Prepare the pasta according to the instructions on the box.
2. Add the bacon and parsley at the same time as you add the pasta and the seasoning mix.
3. Enjoy!

Chicken

Ingredients

• Boneless, skinless chicken breast
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons lemon herb oil
• Salt and pepper

Directions

1. Put the garlic, salt, pepper and lemon herb sauce on the chicken, put in a baking dish and bake for about 30 minutes at 450 degrees. Easy enough!
2. In the past, when making chicken for this dish, we have breaded it and pan fried it.

How was it?

We really love this dish! It is pretty cheap, and if done in tandem, very easy to make. Unfortunately, I was working all day, so Allison was left to do it alone. Allison also chose to have shrimp marinated in lemon herb oil and mix them in with her vegetables instead of having chicken. We also had some garlic bread to go with this.

Day 14: Hot and Sour Soup

Although this hot and sour soup is not the most authentic soup you’ve ever seen, it’s a easy dish for a lazy Saturday. Although, today isn’t much of a lazy day for us. It also doesn’t take a whole lot of time. Kris is a little disappointed in the un-authenticity of the whole thing, because in high school he worked in a oriental restaurant, and expects the real deal.

On a unrelated note, I changed our layout of our site today. I think this is a little easier to read, let us know what you think in the comments!

Executive Decisions

• The store was out of dried shitake mushrooms so we bought fresh ones. This make the reconstituting phase of the recipe (the first part) not nearly as important, although it still does let the flavors blend together a bit.
• We also chose to go with dried ginger instead of fresh. We have found that fresh ginger can be a dangerous thing, if you over do it, there’s really no salvaging the dish in our opinion. We prefer to play it safe.
• We chose to go with tofu rather than chicken. We just thought it would be a nice change. Tofu is something you should definitely give a shot once in your life. It’s kind of a scary ingredient, but it’s really healthy for you. It basically takes up the flavor of whatever you cook it with, and is super easy to cook.
• Instead of using mushroom-flavored soy sauce, we just used normal soy sauce. We thought we didn’t have enough opportunities to use mushroom flavored, and it seemed like an impractical buy.

How was it?

Unfortunately, this was our first flop. I think our proportions were off at some point because it was over-poweringly sour, and not hot at all. The tofu tasted all right, but almost all of the broth cooked out, and it just was flat out bad. We each took about 3 bites, and had to stop. Good thing we made egg rolls for the side. It was pretty, but no bueno.

Things We Would Change

• We grossly underestimated how much chicken stock to use. We thought 4 cups for the two of us would be plenty, but we were completely wrong. Our meal turned into tofu with sauce. So we’d probably go with 6 cups of stock next time, and also cover the soup as it’s simmering for the 30 minute portion of the recipe. We also probably wouldn’t simmer it for quite as long. Anything to help keep the broth around! You can see how little broth is here, and that was before it was even done simmering.



• We would definitely add more spice at the beginning. As I said above, it was waaaaaay too sour, it tasted like you were biting into a lime. This may have been because of how little broth we had when the lime juice was added.
• Also, we probably would add less lime juice.
• In addition, we probably should have gone with a much more authentic recipe, which is probably what we wanted in the first place. (Kris says, “Stupid Emeril Lagasse and his Louisiana Hot and Sour Soup!”)

Day 9: Herbed Beef Kabobs

What Father’s Day is complete without some grilling, even if Kris is only a dad to our puppies, cats and rabbit? We just finished grilling Herbed Beef Kabobs (#5 in the link). This is a great low-carb dish (ahem to commenter, Drew!).

Executive Decisions

• We added some more flavors to our marinade for the beef. We added half a lemon’s worth of juice, half a lime’s worth of juice, pepper, and green onions.
• For the fresh herbs, we chose parsley and chives.
• Also on our kabobs, we had red bell pepper, mushrooms and red pearl onions.

How was it?

It was pretty good, but we both agree that the beef could have more flavors.

Things We Would Change

• We would probably put cayenne in the marinade instead of red pepper flakes.
• Also, maybe a more acidic liquid base for the marinade, the olive oil was just a bit ordinary.

Day 3: Golden Onion Pizza Squares

Today’s recipe comes from Weight Watchers: My Turnaround Program Cookbook. Any Weight Watchers recipe is a great way to eat a lighter, but with great flavor! Don’t be afraid of the books just because of the words “Weight Watchers,” one of my favorite recipes is from WW. I make it to entertain all the time, and no one is the wiser. (Look for that recipe later!)

This recipe can’t be found online, so I’m including it in here.

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Recipe for Golden Onion Pizza Squares with Tomato and Goat Cheese

Hands-On Prep: 25 min

Cook Time: 40 min

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 Vidalia onion or 2 yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons butter
• 8 plum tomatoes, chopped (about 3 1/2 cups)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 pound prepared fresh or thawed frozen pizza or bread dough
• 4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
• 10 nicoise or other small oil-cured black olives, pitted and chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and salt; cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is golden, about 15 minutes. Transfer the onion to a plate and set aside.
2. Melt the butter in the same skillet. Add the tomatoes and sugar; cook, stirring frequently, until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 10 minutes. Add the vinegar and simmer about 1 minute.
3. Meanwhile, arrange one rack on the bottom rung of the oven. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
4. With floured hands, stretch and press the pizza dough onto the bottom of a 10 1/2 x 15 1/2-inch nonstick jelly-roll pan. Spread the onion mixture onto the dough. Spoon the tomato mixture on top. Sprinkle with the cheese, olives and thyme.
5. Bake on the bottom rack of the oven until the crust is golden and the cheese is slightly melted, 15-20 minutes. Cut into 6 squares and serve at once.

Per serving (1 square): 310 Cal, 10g Fat, 5g Sat Fat, 0g Trans Fat, 18mg Chol, 623mg Sod, 45g Carb, 10g Protein, 128mg Calc. POINTS value: 6.

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Executive Decisions

• We switched reduced-fat feta cheese for the goat cheese, feta is one of our favorites, so we went with that.
• We added parmesan right on top of the crust for extra delishiness.
• We replaced the olives with mushrooms since we had them around the house.



• I opened up my sugar container and found that someone had all but licked it clean, so I had to leave it out.
• We followed the times and temperatures of the pizza dough, rather than the recipe.
• We bought this kind of pizza dough:

How was it?

Much better than expected. We were afraid that there were going to be enough ingredients or flavors to cover the pizza dough, but it turned out perfect. If there would have been any more, the dough wouldn’t have been as crispy as it was.

Things We Would Change

• I would have added shredded chicken to it, just to make it more of a meal. Kris, however, would have added low-cal turkey lunch meat (he likes how easy it is to just cut it up, and throw it on).
• Would have added a salad on the side.

Day 1: Orzotto With Chicken

Kris and I are addicted to the Food Network and Cooking Channel. Most people watch the shows to get full recipes out of them, we typically look for techniques that we can replicate, and then make “executive decisions” to their recipes to make it work for us.

Today, we made a variation of a recipe from “Kelsey’s Essentials” on the Cooking Channel. We absolutely love her show because it breaks down some of the more complicated techniques you see all across cooking shows.

The recipe we worked off of was for Orzotto, which is basically Orzo, a rice-shaped pasta, cooked like Risotto. Naturally, it takes a lot less time than traditional Risotto, making it much more “real-life” friendly.

Our Executive Decisions (as we like to call them)

• Instead of using basil, lemon and peas that she used in the show, we substituted chicken, portobello and shiitake mushrooms, asparagus and corn. We added the chicken to make it more of a full meal, instead of a side dish, and the other vegetables because they just sounded good. Plus I don’t like peas.
• Sauteed the chicken in extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper
• Sauteed the mushrooms in pre-minced garlic and a splash of dry white wine (Barefoot Chardonnay to be exact)



• Chopped and blanched the asparagus
• Added the chicken right before the stock
• Used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth
• Switched heavy cream with half and half to save some calories

How Was It?

We really liked it! It made for a lighter dinner, which is good because of how late we ate it. The dish was creamy, and had a good variety of flavors from our vegetable choices.

Things We Would Change

• Would have chopped the asparagus into smaller pieces, along with the chicken.
• Would have added garlic bread on the side, simply for added yummy-ness.