Oven Baked Chicken Tacos

So after I made the roasted lemon chicken (go back a few entries), I had a lot of chicken left over. Saturday night, I decided I was going to make some delicious chicken tacos. Now, in my household, tacos are what some people call "tacquitos". Rolled up corn tortillas that are either baked or fried (usually fried). Mexicans call them flautas, but whatever. Whatever it is that you call your tacos, these rolled up and baked vessels of deliciousness were very good.

Undressed taco deliciousness.

Oven Baked Cheesy Chicken Tacos

Pre-heat your oven to like.. I dunno, 400 degrees. That's what I went with because I was experimenting (I've never baked my tacos before, sooo). 

Now, tear up one of your chicken breasts into strips and bite size pieces and set aside in a bowl. 

In a saute pan, with a little bit of oil, sautee some chopped onion, diced green pepper, garlic, and salt. Sautee until softened. Add in some petite diced tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes if you wanna roll that way), fresh chopped parsley, fresh chopped cilantro, little more salt, pepper, ground coriander, ground oregano, a few sprinkles of some chicken bouillon powder, some ground cumin, and a few splashes of chicken stock or broth. 

Add in your chicken and mix well, adding more chicken broth to get all the flavors incorporated as you see fit. You don't want the chicken sitting in a lot of liquid - just enough to keep it moist and spread out the flavors. 

Assembly:

Get yourself some corn tortillas and a couple of baking pans or cookie sheets, or whatever makes you happiest. 

Now corn tortillas are a bitch to roll if you ask me. Maybe its because we keep them in the fridge, I don't know. So what we do, is we take a couple of paper towels, place one on the bottom of your microwave, place about 3 corn tortillas on top nicely spread out, and place another wet/damp paper towel on top of the tortillas. Shut the microwave and heat the tortillas up for a little longer than 1 minute. It'll make the tortillas nice and soft and pliable for filling and rolling. Your welcome. 

Anyway! Spray your pans/sheets/whatever with some cooking spray and pull out a warmed tortilla. Add a nice spoonful of your chicken mixture into the tortilla, sprinkle with some shredded cheddar cheese, and roll it up. Place it on your cookie sheet, seam-side down and keep going until you run out of chicken filling. 

Bake them in the oven for however long you need to until the tortillas have browned a little bit and are noticeably tougher/crunchy on the outside. (The picture above shows you what they looked like out of the oven.)

Sauce:

Now my mother and I like to top our tacos with shredded cabbage, some salsa or hot sauce or your own homemade tomato-based sauce (my mom makes a ketchup-based, sweet salsa that I adore), and grated Parmesan cheese. Exhibit B:

Trust me, you want these in your mouth.

You can go ahead and do whatever it is you want with your tacos, but I promise you if you don't mind fresh shredded cabbage, this is an excellent way to serve them. 

And there you have it! Delicious, relatively healthy chicken tacos. You won't be disappointed. 

A Little Self-Control Goes a Long Way

I won't say that I'm completely back on track because I tend to sabotage myself the second I try to convince myself that I am. But I've been doing pretty good food-wise this week. Today I did alright, and most of the week I've been using fresh ingredients and making big batches of deliciously healthy foods.

This was my dinner tonight:

Lemon-thyme roasted chicken and honey thyme roasted carrots that I linked to in my meal planning post, and herbed couscous because I felt that I needed something more than just the meat and veggies. Everything was delicious, healthy, and super filling.

I ended up with 4 very large chicken breasts, which is way more meat than I thought I would end up having. All that means is that I get to rearrange some of my meal planning for the week and push a few recipes back a day or two. Tomorrow I'll eat this again for dinner, and then on Saturday I'll have some for lunch and then make chicken tacos for dinner. If I remember, I'll post some pictures of the tacos or whatever it is that I make with the remaining chicken.

I haven't made it to the gym yet... one thing at a time, right?

Strawberry Banana Dessert for a Sweet Tooth

So tonight I made the pork tenderloin and the ginger carrots that I linked to in my previous post. I'm telling you all right now, you need to try out those recipes. The pork was moist, tender, filled with flavor and super delicious. The ginger carrots paired really well with the pork and the soy sauce marinade, and I threw in maybe half a cup of rice pilaf from last night's dinner.

Of course, dinner was over, and as usual my sweet tooth started to rear its ugly head. I started picturing chocolate, caramel, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter chips, cookie dough.... My brain is a disaster when I crave sugar and sweets. So I went online and started to browse some dessert ideas, but most of them require more effort and energy and dirty dishes than I'm willing to deal with at 9:30 at night.

Then I found a fantastically simple dessert idea floating around, and if I knew who posted it originally, I would provide some credit. It was bananas, honey, and cinnamon. I thought that sounded pretty perfect but I really wanted an extra layer of flavor, so I added some strawberries that I bought yesterday. Easy, light, sweet, and delicious!

Quick and Easy Strawberry Banana Dessert

Ingredients:

1 ripe banana, sliced
4-5 strawberries, sliced
A few drizzles of honey
A few sprinkles of cinnamon

Directions:

Place fruit in a bowl or dish. Drizzle with honey. Sprinkle on some cinnamon. Eat.

Seriously. It doesn't get much easier than that.

Try it out and let me know how you like it. I think it's definitely my new favorite dessert/snack.

The Trials of Menu Planning

So I've never been one to plan my weekly meals in advance. I go to the store, I buy random things, I put them in my fridge and pantry. When dinner time rolls around, I look at what I have, I sit and think for an hour or two or look up a recipe, and then I make dinner on the fly.

This system has worked for me mostly, but lately I've been getting annoyed with trying to figure out what to make without proper planning. I've started to look online at Pinterest and a few other blogs and websites that talk about meal planning and having set meals for specific days. I don't know that I have it in me to plan a month's worth of meals just yet, and I have a hard time knowing what I want to eat today, let alone tomorrow or a week from now - so this is a game of trial and error.

Today I planned meals for the next week, with 2 "flex meals" that I'll swap out in case I decide to not eat one of the planned meals. I went to the store and I bought all the things needed to make said meals, without too much extra stuff. If it weren't for the fact that I was running low on a lot of my spices, cooking wines, and other miscellaneous items that caused me to go over-budget, I do believe I saved quite a bit of money tonight with this approach.

We didn't get back home till about 8pm, so it was too late to cook tonight. We bought some fresh honey BBQ wings at the store and a package of some frozen macaroni and cheese and we're going to eat like fat kids tonight.

Here's what I've got planned for the week:

Tuesday:
Pork Tenderloin with Pan Sauce
with
Seared Ginger Carrots

Wednesday:
Leftovers

Thursday:
Lemon Thyme Roasted Chicken Breasts
with
Honey Thyme Roasted Carrots

Friday:
Leftovers

Saturday:
I've given myself two options for tonight. I'm either doing a shrimp stir-fry, or blackened fish tacos. Both of which don't really have a recipe. The stir-fry I will throw together and make up as I go. The fish tacos is a mixture of like two or three different recipes I've come across. If I make them, then perhaps I'll post a recipe and some pictures. We'll see.

Sunday:
Pesto Ranch Crockpot Chicken Thighs
with
Mashed potatoes

Have you done meal planning before? How do you manage it? Does it work for you?

Let me know!

Do One Thing Every Day....

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

Today that "thing" was stepping on the scale. I've been avoiding the damn thing for weeks now. Shoving it as far into the darkest corners of my tiny bathroom as possible, hoping I could continue to ignore the fact that my pants have been getting a little bit tighter, my shirts a little bit smaller.

But I did it. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, stood on that stupid white plastic contraption and braced myself for the digital number that would stare back at me and shoot me straight in the ego like a wild and evil medusa.

4 pounds.

I've gained 4 pounds in the last few weeks. Now that may not seem like a lot to some people, but when you're in that 'awkward stage' between sizes, 4 pounds is a lot. I've been doing poorly with my water consumption, drinking too much coffee, eating larger portions that I know will do me no good, and grazing at night. I had a wedding this weekend and topped it off with pub food, Chinese take-out, and beer. Today for lunch I ate my leftover Chinese food in an effort to save some money. Thankfully, my mother has eaten the rest of it, so now I'm back to home-cooked food.

Tonight I eat some home-made beef stew with a small serving of rice and a VERY TALL glass of water.

I'm putting myself back on track.

What did you do today that scared you?

It's simple...

After a lifetime of losing and gaining weight, I get it. No matter how you slice it, weight loss comes down to the simple formula of calories in, calories out.
Valerie Bertinelli 

I've read a lot of articles, tried out a few diets, and watched my fair share of videos that like to point out that it really isn't this simple when it comes to weight loss. But truth be told, when I start to think about all the other hundreds of components involved with weight loss, fat burning, muscle building, "bulking", "cutting", or any of the other terms flying around out there, I get overwhelmed. I know that refined sugars are bad for you, I know that excessive amounts of carbs aren't good for you, I know that sitting on my ass all day and being a sedentary and sad excuse for "a body in motion" is terrible for me. But when you simplify it, and you tell me that as long as I can burn X amount of calories in a week from moderate exercise, so long as I don't eat more than Y amount of calories in a day, I understand it. 

Let's be clear: I HATE counting calories. I can't think of a less exciting way to spend my time. I don't measure things when I cook, so calorie counting is a nightmare for me. But when I am conscious of what I'm making, and I do my best to "guesstimate" what the portions of everything are, I do pretty well. What I lack is discipline. 

How do you convince yourself to stay disciplined? Motivated?

That is my current struggle. 

Delicious Frozen Rump Roast

I haven't posted in a while, and I'm only a little bit sorry about that. I'm working on a few projects right now, and am trying to figure out how exactly to integrate both into one venue. More on that at a later time.

Fall is here! I love Fall more than any other season and people will frequently argue with me about it. I don't care about bathing suits, or sundresses, and I get cranky when the temperature rises above 75 degrees. Give me a nice chill in the air, 70 degree weather, a hoodie, some sneakers, and a hearty meal and I'm happy.

I had a 3 pound rump/round roast in the freezer and I didn't want to wait the 8 hours to cook it in the crock pot and I didn't want to wait for it to defrost either. I decided to go ahead and try to cook it, still frozen, in the oven and see how it would do. The results were fantastic! It was moist, tender, fully cooked through (and evenly cooked I might add), and flavorful.

Frozen Rump Roast

2-3 pound roast, frozen
Brown gravy packet
Italian seasoning packet
Hidden Valley Ranch packet
Minced garlic
Potatoes, cut up into medium-sized pieces
Carrots, cut up into about 2" long sticks
Onion, sliced thin
About 1/2 to 1 cup of water.

Directions:

Remove your roast from the packaging and place it into your baking dish. I used a oval shaped ceramic dutch oven with a lid. Add your water and try to get the outside of the roast a little wet to adhere your ingredients.

In a small bowl, mix the three seasoning packets together and sprinkle it evenly over your roast. Try to massage it into the meat a little bit to get a good coating.

Wash and cut up your veggies listed above and add them around the roast into the pot. Don't forget the garlic!

Set your oven to 300 degrees, and cover up your pot. The lid on mine is a bit uneven, so I put some foil over it before adding the lid and filling in some of the gaps with the foil. You want it to stay nice and hot and moist in that pot so that the meat cooks slowly and doesn't dry out.

You can check it after an hour or two for the proper temperature for the doneness that you want. My mom is a bit picky when it comes to red meat and won't eat it if it's still pink, so I cooked mine for a lot longer to make sure it was cooked through.

When it's where you want it, pull it out and pull the roast out to let it rest on a cutting board for about 10-15 minutes. You'll notice that in the pot you've got a delicious mixture of cooked veggies and a very tasty broth that you can thicken up if you wish to make a gravy.

Slice up your meat, serve with veggies, and enjoy! We had leftover the next night and made some rice to go with the meat, veggies, and broth. Tonight, we're going to use the remaining meat to make some delicious Reuben sandwiches.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures before or after everything was cooked, but you'll have to trust me when I tell you that it looked and tasted amazing.

Don't hesitate to pull a frozen roast out and make some magic happen in the same night. It's definitely worth it!

Lazy

Some days you just can't handle eating super spicy leftover sausage deliciousness... so you go to the store and get buttermilk fried chicken, broccoli cheddar poppers, heat up some mashed potatoes you had in the fridge, and call it a night.

At least I was good the rest of the day, right? A nice turkey sandwich on 7 grain with a slice of american cheese, a small salad with tons of veggies and only a little bit of Italian dressing, grapes, and a small handful of those peanut butter pretzel nuggets because they're in the office and they beckon me.

Don't judge me.

Italian Sausage, Cabbage & Angel Hair Pasta

When I was on the 4HB diet a couple years ago, one of my quick and tasty go-to meals was sauteed kielbasa sausage, onions, garlic, brussel sprouts, and brown mustard. It was simple, delicious, and filling. I've been meaning to make the same dish again, but always forget to buy kielbasa when I'm at the store. 

Lucky for me, my boyfriend's mother had a decent amount of sausage leftover from a package that she used to make some crab sauce and gave it to me. I gladly took it off her hands and planned to make it for dinner tonight. I didn't have any brussel sprouts on hand, and I'm pretty sure we just ran out of brown mustard (we need to go shopping this weekend), so I decided to improvise. Brussel sprouts are like little baby cabbages, right? So regular cabbage should be a fine substitute. Onward!

What I didn't realize until I started to cut into the sausage links, was that it was spicy Italian sausage. Now look - I like spice and I like spicy things.... to a point. I need to be able to still taste my food and enjoy it without the chemical burn in my mouth ruining the whole experience. I decided to take my chances and hoped that the crimson-fleshed links wouldn't turn out being too hot to my liking. 

Well it was too hot. I'm pretty sure I have third-degree burns in my mouth right now. 

Anyway, if you like spice and you're a brave soul, then use the spicy Italian sausage. I will be using the sweet Italian sausage next time I make this meal. 

Italian Sausage, Cabbage & Angel Hair Pasta

Italian sausage, sliced (Sweet, Mild, or Hot - whichever you prefer, I had 8 links on hand)

Frozen chopped onion, about 1 cup

Minced garlic, about 2 tablespoons

Cabbage, about half a medium head

Salt

Pepper

A few sprinkles of parsley

A splash of vinegar (just trust me on this, it helps to bring out the natural sweetness of the cabbage)

A few sprinkles of powdered chicken bouillon (you can use chicken broth if you're so inclined)

Angel hair pasta (I used maybe half a pound)

Optional:

Parmesan cheese (but seriously... is cheese really ever optional?)

Slice up the sausage into bite-sized pieces and cook them over medium heat in a non-stick pan until lightly browned. While they cook, chop up your cabbage into thin slices until you have a nice heaping pile of it. When the sausage is browned, add in your garlic, onions, cabbage, salt, pepper, and parsley. Cover the pan and reduce the heat just a little bit and let the veggies sweat it out. Take a peek every now and then and give it a good stir if the cabbage doesn't fuss too much about it. 

Once the veggies are all wilted down and you can stir without it being awkward, add in a splash of vinegar and some bouillon and start cooking your pasta. Keep the sausage and cabbage concoction on a slow simmer so that they get almost caramelized and delicious. Turn off the heat when it looks to your liking. 

When the pasta is done, throw it in a bowl and add some of the cabbage mixture to it to coat. Serve up some pasta in bowls or plates or whatever makes you happiest and add an extra little scoop of sausage and cabbage on top. Sprinkle with some Parmesan cheese and enjoy!

Sausagey, cabbagey goodness!

My mother and I both loved this dish, but we were both making crazy faces and required tissues to get through it. Perhaps your senses are more resilient than ours. 

A Little Gluttony Goes a Long Way

So I hope everyone had a safe and relaxing Labor Day weekend. I had a good weekend, but it surely would have been better if it was a few days longer. I don't know about what the rest of you did this weekend, but I ate. I ate quite a bit, and today I am fat. My fat pants were on and fully filled out today.

I ate sticky rib tips, lobster mac and cheese, delicious Belgian beer, smoked barbecue pork ribs, a lobster tail pastry, pignioli and hazelnut gelato, pistachio frozen yogurt and all the fixin's, Chinese pork buns, an awesome three egg omelette, home fries, homemade breaded fried chicken, and god only knows what else. I'm pretty sure I blacked out after the gelato, so those calories don't count, right?

Listen, whatever you did this weekend - it's over now. Get back to the grind tomorrow and cut your losses (and gains). I'm prepping myself with some unsweetened iced tea for now, and tomorrow I'm going to pretend that none of this ever happened. 

The real challenge will be making sure my pants get that same message. 

Sorry I'm not sorry.

Today I Made: Pesto Shrimp & Pasta

I don't have a fancy camera, but I promise you it looked (and tasted) good.

So today I had a craving for pasta. I haven't eaten very much pasta in the last 6 months or so - mostly because I just seem to have lost the nagging desire for it (this is a good thing, I promise you). I don't get cravings for pasta too frequently, so I decided to pay it some mind tonight instead of shoving it under a rug. 

I had some shrimp on hand, a bag of frozen broccoli florets, and some fresh mushrooms, so I went to work. The result was a satisfying and delicious meal that didn't take a whole lot of time or effort. I'm going to warn you now that I'm sort of a "make it up as I go" cook so I don't measure anything unless I'm baking or trying something that I'm completely unfamiliar with. So in my recipe write-ups you should expect a lot of ingredients with a lot of fairly inaccurate guesstimates of amounts of ingredients used. But if you're comfortable with eye-balling things yourself, then you should have no problem making my "recipes" taste as good as I intended them to. Let your hungry little heart guide you.

With that in mind:

Pesto Shrimp & Pasta

1 pound peeled, deveined shrimp (I used the pre-cooked shrimp)

Olive oil

Frozen chopped onions, about 1/4 to 1/2 cup 

Minced garlic

Fresh mushrooms, sliced

Frozen baby broccoli florets (I used a bag of the Pictsweet)

Angel hair pasta (I would have used whole wheat, but I was out)

Your favorite jar of pesto (I used maybe 2/3 of a bottle)

Salt

Pepper

Parsley (I used dried)

Parmesan cheese (optional)

Put some water in a pot to boil for the broccoli and pasta. Add some salt - it's the only chance you got to flavor the pasta while it cooks! You don't need oil in the water, I read somewhere that it doesn't actually do a thing for you, just stir the pasta after you add it to avoid sticking. 

Anyway! Water on the stove to boil. 

While the water is doing it's thing, you want to make sure your shrimp are clean and devoid of any tail/shell pieces. I peeled off all the ends and gave them a good rinse. Set those aside for right now. Add a splash of olive oil into a non-stick pan so you can sautee your ingredients. Add the frozen chopped onion (I hate cutting onion and will avoid it at all costs - I'm not sorry) and a few generous squeezes of minced garlic (I am also guilty of using bottled minced garlic when I'm lazy... again I'm not sorry). Add some salt and cook that over medium heat until the onion turns translucent. Slice up your mushrooms into quarter-sized pieces and toss them into the pan with the onions and garlic. Add some ground black peppers and dried parsley to the party.  

The mushrooms will initially suck up all the moisture in the pan, but don't panic! Give it a minute and they'll ease up and stop being selfish. Don't add any additional moisture, you really won't need it!

Cook all the ingredients until they're acceptably soft (always taste your food!) and toss in the shrimp and a generous amount of pesto. At this point, your water should be boiling. Add the bag of frozen broccoli florets and cover to return to a boil. Cook the broccoli just for a couple minutes, remove from the water with a wire skimmer and toss that into the pesto concoction. Give it a good stir, cover and let that simmer while you cook the pasta. 

Add the angel hair pasta to the pot of boiling water, and cook for about 2 minutes or al-dente. Remove from the water and add into the shrimp pesto pan (try not to get pasta all over the stove like I did tonight. Proper tools are key.)

Stir and mix it all up until the pasta is coated. Add more pesto if you need it, simmer it for another couple minutes to marry all the flavors and enjoy!

Top with some Parmesan cheese if you're into that sort of thing and eat the hell out of it. 

My mom inhaled her bowl of pasta and nearly choked... that's how I know she liked it. She's a far fussier eater than I am, so that's a good sign.

My (Un)Healthy Obsession With Tea

So I have to say that my biggest issue with controlling my weight and maintaining weight loss has always been drinking enough water throughout the day. I love water as much as the next person, but day after day it just tastes so... plain. I know a big rule about being able to shed pounds is "don't drink your calories", but with so many other seemingly "healthy" drinks out there that taste so good, it's hard to remember to stick to my guns and drink my water. 

And then there is tea. 

Do you see that? That's only some of the tea that we have in this house.

Tea is pretty excellent. It adds a scant handful of calories at worst if you're using some fancy, naturally sweet tea blend, and it makes your water interesting again. It works for me anyway. In the summer I drink mostly iced teas, but in the winter I will easily drink more than a normal person's fair share of hot brewed tea throughout the day, if only to try and keep the chill away. There's something so comforting about tea...

When I'm being lazy, I like to head on over to my local coffee shop and get a nice 32 oz size of unsweetened iced tea with lemon. It'll get me through most of the work day and it'll keep me hydrated. When I go home I'll switch to plain water, or brew my own. 1 family size Cold Brew Lipton Tea bag for a 32 oz Nalgene bottle will serve me well for the rest of my day, and I'll get my 8 glasses in. 

Now I know some people will say that tea is a diuretic and will make you pee a whole lot and may even dehydrate you, but I'm over that. If it makes me pee, well I just think of it as my body's chance to get all the bad stuff out faster. Not very scientific of me, I know. I don't really care though - I feel hydrated and I feel less hungry throughout the day so I'm going to stick with it. If you don't want or like black tea then try some greens, whites, reds, herbals, or tisanes.

Explore the vast world of tea and see if it helps you out with your water intake goals/habits. 

When your "Fat Pants" Become Your "Every Day Pants"

For years I have struggled with my weight. Since 5th grade when the hormones started raging and now until my late 20's I have bounced my weight around back and forth like a cheap yo-yo you might find at a tag sale or a vending machine. You know the kind. The kind of yo-yo made with cheap string that frays and tangles, where one bump against the ground or some other solid object causes the whole thing to fall apart until you get so frustrated you say "screw it!" and find something else to distract yourself. 

That kind of struggle. 

I've never been a particularly active person. Sedentary describes me pretty well - but that's just such an ugly word, isn't it? I don't like to run, the elliptical makes me crazy, and I'm overwhelmed by weight machines and aerobics classes. I like using my 15 pound kettlebell, but convincing myself that I should do some swings tonight, or any number of other acrobatics with the painted cannonball is always a test of strength in and of itself. 

I like to eat. I grew up half Italian and half Hispanic. Pasta, rice, cheese, tortillas, cream sauces, MSG. The combinations of foods that I ate routinely did nothing to help me maintain a "normal" weight, and I always ate in excess. Why? Because I learned from a young age that food is comforting and social and an "all-day" event. This was often the case on Sundays when my Italian grandparents would prepare a feast where we would lazily graze from 2pm until about 6 or 7pm when coffee and confections were served. There was no such thing as portion control or mindfulness. You ate because it made you happy, and turning down food from your grandparents just wasn't something you did. 

And so I ate. 

And ate.

And ate some more. 

And then I went to college. 

I bet you can imagine what happened there. Freshman 15? Try Freshman 25.

I tried, time and again, to convince myself that I was going to go on a diet, and that I was somehow going to succeed. No plan, no real knowledge about what I was doing. I set myself up for failure a number of times and always gained whatever handful of pounds I had lost. 

When I got to graduate school I tried the 4 Hour Body Diet and lost about 40 pounds (38 if we're going to be fussy). I was back to my high school weight and I felt great! But I got sick of the restrictive eating plan and decided to try and go it alone. Well I decided to try and do my own thing around the holidays. Thanksgiving, a couple of birthdays, Christmas, New Year's and then my birthday. Between November and February I packed on maybe 25 to 30 of the 40 pounds that took me almost 2 years to lose. 

Well now here I am. 

I'm not really sure what to make of this blog. I'm not sure where it's going or what I'm doing. All I do know is that I need a place where I can write. A place where I can vent, share my struggles, celebrate my successes, and talk about food. Glorious food. 

I've made a concerted effort to be mindful about what I eat. Don't drink your calories (unless it's Happy Hour, then the calories don't count), eat this - not that, portion control, more veggies and fruit, fewer carbs (but don't cut them out because they're good for you!), lean(er) meats, legumes, multivitamins (when I remember to take them), lots of water (I prefer a teabag in my water - lemon is also delicious), less fat, etc. 

This is where I will post recipes, food ideas, struggles, exercise attempts and failures, weight loss milestones, whatever.

This is my new safe place.

I hope I can inspire some of you to try something new for yourself, and maybe you can inspire me or help contribute to this page. I've lost about 7 pounds in the last month with my newest approach, so I must be doing something right - right?

Here goes nothing.