Day 3

The morning was a little hairy. It doesn't seem to matter if I wake up 45 minutes before scheduled departure or an hour and 45 minutes before...I"m always running late during the week. This is why I try and do as much as I can to prepare the night before.

Last night I prepared our salads. I took out our pre-packed lettuce and took stock of what I had left in the fridge. I had defrosted a little chicken, so I tossed that on the George Foreman. That took like 7 minutes but I had that cooking while I was putting everything else together. I cut up the other half of my cucumber, divided that into 2 containers, peeled 2 hard boiled eggs, removed the yolk and cut one up for each container, cut up 2 roma tomatoes and put one in each, put some slivered almonds into a mini container so they wouldn't get mushy and waited for the chicken to cool so I could put that in too. Here's the 1/2 way completed salad sans chicken and dressing. I put the dressing in a mini container as well so hubby wouldn't have to carry an entire bottle back and forth.

I also packed him a snack baggie of carrots, one serving of yogurt covered pretzels and some fresh strawberries. For breakfast, he ate a banana and a cliff bar

For my snacks, I went with the 1 serving of Triscuts and cheese again, carrots, and strawberries. My breakfast today was another green smoothie. I thought it tasted good again, but a little watery. I wonder what it would taste like with a little nonfat plain yogurt??

Last night I also pulled out the crock pot. Wednesdays and Thursdays going forward WILL be crock pot meals or something like we had last night that can happen really quickly. Once I pulled the crockpot, for this chicken chili recipe that I got from Pinterest, I pulled the ingredients

I guess I forgot to put the taco seasoning packet in there... As you can see I have the chopped onion in a bag that I chopped while prepping the broccoli/onion recipe. And the chicken is in the fridge....where it should be...not contaminating the air with it's rawness. I'm going to make cornbread to go with it. We have sour cream and cheese if needed also. I'm not sure of the calorie content, but I do know that I'm glad I didn't make all 5 days of packed lettuce for salads for me because there is going to be A LOT left over!

Chicken nuggies

I sometimes feel like hubby thinks I make the same ol, same ol food week in and week out, so this week I decided to try some new recipes. Recently I've been following http://blahtota-daa.blogspot.com/ They have some really great recipes and I would try all of them, but I have to be sort of choosey since hubby won't eat just anything, you know!? I mean...he will, but you should see the look on his face when "whole wheat" and "pasta" come out of my mouth in the same sentence. He lets me know that is SOOO not Italian! I'm dying to try that veggie pasta, but I have to wait until I can eat dairy again because I know I'm going to have to hide the veggies under a bunch of cheese in order to get a bite past hubby's lips!

Tuesday night I decided to try out a chicken nugget recipe found on From Blah to Ta-Daa. My plan was foiled right from the start. Somehow my mommy brain pulled through to block the fact that we have NO OVEN! Back up plan: I'd use the toaster oven. I would just have to either make a small batch of fries and nuggets followed by another small batch of both, or I could make the fries first, then the nuggets. Hubby decided I should go with the latter plan.

First, I pulled up the recipe
http://blahtota-daa.blogspot.com/2010/04/healthy-homemade-chicken-nuggets.html
Second, I started the toaster oven, sprinkled out some waffle fries, and gave them an extra kick by tossing some seasonings on them.

Next, I began to cut up the chicken which was really no big deal as everyone likes to tell me I dissect chicken breasts so much that all that is left are nuggets...Instead of using 6-8 breasts, I only used 4. I tossed some apple sauce in one bowl and did the seasonings with bread crumbs in another. Not sure if my bread crumbs were "dry" but aren't they all dry? I'm so naive. I changed up the breadcrumb to seasoning ratio also, using a little more on the seasoning side. Coating the nuggets with applesauce then the crumbs was pretty messy, but the pain didn't last long. Only 15-20 minutes (exactly how long the fries needed to cook thankyouverymuch!)

I proceeded to put the fries on a plate (pre warmed in the microwave) into the microwave to keep them warm. Then I started my first batch of nuggets. I suspect if I were using a regular baking sheet, I would have only had to do 1 round in the oven, but I was using the toaster oven and had to go with 3 different batches. S'ok...I think had I used any more breasts, I would have had to use 2 baking sheets for sure. The breading wasn't really crispy when they came out - it was still a little soggy, but I'll tell you what. We were starving. We had already walked the 2 dogs and the baby to the dry cleaners to pick up clothes, continued on to CVS for batteries, fed the baby...twice...gotten him back to sleep...twice...

We managed to gobble down the first batch in no time flat. Like I said, the outside wasn't crispy like I'd like and we even tried to hit it on broil for about 5 minutes but it didn't make any difference. Even with the sorta soggy exterior, hubby considered giving it 5 spoons (using Blah to Ta Daa's rating system) but gave it 4 instead. In the last batch, there was a small nugget that came out crispy.

The moral of the story is that we really liked the HEALTHY :) nuggets and will try them again - it may become a staple once le bebe can eat foods like this (may be when that happens, I'll have enough time to make homemade fries to make it even healthier). I feel this was a budget friendly meal as well. Chicken breasts are often on sale (so I hear - I've never noticed it though!), but I buy the mega pack for $10. The fries are often buy 2 for a bargain price, however it would be even less expensive-o to MAKE your fries, and I nixed any greens this time. Life got in the way of my salad endeavors. Next time I think we will make the nugget size smaller and may be using an oven instead of a toaster oven will make a difference. All in all, it was healthy and pretty delish. I used the leftovers on a big, fat, delicious salad for lunch yesterday to make up for my lack thereof Tuesday night.

One of these days, I'll post pictures of my steps like all of the other fancy people do, but for now just refer to the picture in the recipe link. Mine looked almost exactly like that! TA-DAA!!!