Dinner Idea

I was crammed for time last week after work and needed a quick and easy dinner - and it had to be dairy free - so I came up with this.

Mexican Chicken Lettuce Wraps

• One Rotisserie Chicken
• One can of pinto beans, mostly drained (do not rinse)
• One package of Uncle Ben's brown rice 90 second microwave packet
• Your favorite salsa or picante
• One package of Bib Lettuce

Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet while shredding half of the chicken.  Add the meat to the skillet and heat through for a few minutes.  Heat the rice in the microwave.  Add the can of beans and heat for another minute or two.   I added a little pepper and season salt at this point.  Add the rice and about a 1/3 cup of salsa/picante.  Stir to mix thoroughly and heat through.

Wash the lettuce leaves and keep in tact.  Serve by allowing each person to fill his/her own lettuce leaf with the chicken mixture.  Top with shredded cheese, sour cream, and/or more salsa/picante. 

My husband and I ate our fill of this and still had enough leftovers to make a dinner for me the next evening.  K-man didn't touch the stuff.  *sigh* 

Phone Photo Friday

I'm totally stealing this idea from Joanna's blog. I have no shame. 

This week's recap in photos...

Helped "Da" purchase copious amounts of plastic storage boxes in order to organize our closets.  What you don't see in this photo are all of the plastic bins K-man pulled off of the lower shelves.  I'm sure the wals-marts loves to see us coming in the front doors.

Discovered that I have reached a new level in "mindless doodling" while on the phone at work. 

Found a photo from a vacation we took a few months prior to our first wedding anniversary.  We were so rested and weighed so much less. Little did we know that at that very moment our house was flooding with water, in August, in Texas.  We would find that out about five days later.  Thus began our whirlwind adventures of home remodeling, mold prevention, and the eventual leap into pregnancy and parenthood.

I became Red Cross certified in CPR, AED, and First Aid this week. 

Ready to Pluck some Tailfeathers

Every morning this week, I have been awaked by the sound of a bird singing.  It's not on my iPhone and it's not on my alarm clock.  It is a real bird, who, every morning at 6:00, perches himself (herself?) somewhere on my front porch and commences to sing a little three-note diddy - at maximum volume - repetitively.  It wakes me up, wakes my husband up, and more importantly, wakes our 2 year old up - and this is one week that we have been sleeping in - or at least trying to.  This bird is walking on the proverbial thin ice. 

Watch it, birdie!  You woke up the wrong mama!

Spoke Too Soon

I found a bad one.  Lunch today is/was Kashi's Chicken Florentine.

This...

...is really really icky. 

Endeavoring

The Free Dictionary defines endeavoring as "A conscientious or concerted effort toward an end; an earnest attempt".  Well then, I am still endeavoring to lose weight.  As I have said before on this blog, I am a sucker.  Show me a commercial and I'll usually decide that I need it.  Whatever IT is. 

Jack Lalane's juicer?  Check!  Got it at Bed Bath and Beyond with a 20% off coupon.  I use it regulary to make juice for my little sidekick - it is one of the few ways I can get vegetables down him.

Space Saver Bags?  Check!  Bought them at Target.  Used them to compact and store pillows, blankets, and quilts.  Half of them lost their seal and fluffed right back up.

Giant ZipLoc bags?  Check!  Bought them after the Space Saver Bags failed.  Now I put it in a giant ZipLoc bag, fold it up, and sit on it to get all the air out while fumbling with the ziploc portion to close the bag.  They have, however, been a success.

The latest thing that got my attention?  Jenny Craig.  Because, after all, if people on tv can do it, I can too, right?  *crickets chirping* I said, Right???    After reading their website I was even further enamored with the idea of signing up, eating what someone told me too, and waking up ten weeks later with twenty fewer pounds.  Unfortunately, the independent reviews I read took the sparkle off the stone.  One of my favorite recipe sites is http://www.epicurious.com/.  It ranks right up there with http://www.allrecipes.com/.  They had a great review of several diet options out there including Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem.  At the end of the review, they sat down and looked at (and tasted) some of the frozen meal options available from the grocery store, and gave the highest ratings to Kashi.  So, rather than fork over a bunch of money to Jenny Craig and settle for some crappy food, I decided to try some things on my own.

Breakfast has taken some ideas from Hungry Girl's 200 under 200 cookbook.  Have you heard of this?  I borrowed it from a friend and love having some things to eat for breakfast that are super easy, not eggs, and are low on calories.  My recent adaptation has been half a toasted whole grain English muffin (75 calories) with one ounce of fat free cream cheese (30 calories), a teaspoon of avocado (no idea how many calories), and three slices of roma tomato with salt and pepper.  I love this!  It feels so indulgent with all of that cream cheese (one ounce is a lot on half a muffin!). 

For lunch, I have been having a Kashi frozen meal.  These are so freaking good, 300 calories or less, full of protein, and a hefty serving of fiber.  Sorry, don't mean to sound like a commercial, but I'm really impressed. 

Lunch today was the Pesto Pasta Primavera - soooo good and pesto-y, the pasta was al dente, the peas were fresh and popped when you bit them. I'll be having more of these for lunch. 

My downfall so far, though, is dinner.  That's tough.  My goal is salads for dinner this week - we'll see what happens.

What are your favorite foods that don't break the calorie bank?

The Itchies

Last week was the opening of dove hunting here in Texas, and the company I work for hosted a dove hunt on opening day at the company ranch.  Sounds fancy, huh?  It was hot...really hot...the kind of still hot that comes right before a bunch of thunderstorms.  I grabbed one of the girls from the office and, like a good friend, begged and pleaded until she finally relented and got her to go out there with me.  We were the only two women shooters.

Despite the heat, things appeared to be going well.  The vehicle was well equipped with guns, shells, water, and snack (all the important stuff).  We grabbed our gear and found a little spot by a water hole and waited.

Nice vest, huh?

Double checking the action to make sure it wasn't sticky.

All went well.  We waited. We sweated.  We shot.  We killed a few birds.  We ate dinner courtesy of a chuck wagon gang.  We went home tired, happy, and wet from the thunderstorms that eventually blew through.

The next day red spots started appearing on us.  That evening, we itched.  And we have been itching for over a week now.  The reason?  These.

That's a chigger - under a microscope.

Apparently where we were, there were hundreds of these - and they found us. 

Damn.