A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Easy Apricot Jam Baked Chicken

What do you get when you baste baked chicken with Auntie Miranda's homemade low sugar carrot cake jam?  One DE-lish-ous dinner!  Super easy too. In the oven inside 10 minutes. If you skin the chicken, it's also a great diet recipe as well.

Gene said "You can definitely make this again!  You had me scared when you put jam on the chicken but this is GREAT!"   Love it when I scare him...but then make him happy. 

I used Auntie's carrot cake jam but most fruit jams would work (maybe not grape, so much) but apricot, peach, or pear would all be wonderful.  The olive oil keeps the chicken from drying out and the jam adds a nice but not overly sweet glaze.

 

Stuffed Pepper Soup (Two Ways)

 

Our friends, Jeff and Dee, gave us this recipe a few months ago and, for the first time, I had all the ingredients in the house at the same time.  Well, let me be honest, I'd lost the actual recipe so I made this based on what I remembered which is basically all the ingredients for stuffed green peppers plus beef broth so that's how I made it.  I did make two substitutions from what I remember of the original recipe: brown rice for white rice and a small red and yellow pepper for the green pepper, simply because I love the slightly sweeter taste.

Let me share one lesson I did learn from this little kitchen project:  if the recipe says "cooked" rice, pre-cook the rice!  I remember Dee and I saying, when we discussed the recipe, that using a separate pan or rice cooker for the rice was a pain in the patoot.  Yes, but if you don't pre-cook the rice, for some reason and I'm not at all sure what the chemical basis is, the rice either will NOT cook or it takes forever to do so. It's simply easier, even though it shouldn't be, to pre-cook the rice in a separate pan or a rice cooker.  Learn from me, my friends.  Or, make the same mistake I did, confess to Dee, and she'll make fun of you like she did me, which was funny too.

2017 Glenna's Dose of Reality Diet Meal Plan (Week 9) March 3rd-March 9th338

One pound lost this week and having a great week.  I took a day of vacation this week so this weekend I'm going to really do some spring cleaning while Gene's slaving away over a hot radio mic.  Looking forward to it. To be honest, last year was such a bad year for my health that I let a lot of things slide.  I still have some low energy days but I'm determined to feel better every day.  I thought about taking some before-and-after photos of closets, dressers, and THE ROOM, which happens to be our guest bedroom that basically serves as my personal walk-in closet....but I'm not sure I'm strong enough to share those messes.  Grin. We'll see. 

Have a great week everyone. Eat well and be well!

 

THE WAY IT WORKS:

The way I work my plans is the opposite of most meal plans. This is not a concrete day by day, meal by meal, snack by snack down to the minute food plan. What works for me is to prepare for the week a pot of soup, bread from scratch, a sweet of some kind, and have readily and easily available the ingredients for a specific salad, breakfast, snack foods, and six dinner menus for the week. I add the salad and/or soup to many meals each night to add veggies to our day.  I have shopped for the groceries and prepared any veggies I need to like washing and cutting up carrots and celery for snacks, greens washed for the salad and its components in baggies in the crisper so that grabbing and throwing these items together is a snap.  My meal plans for dinner can be made on any night of the upcoming week as we want them and have time to prepare them.   Having soup, salad, homemade bread, and a sweet made in advance round out nightly dinners, make great lunches, and don't leave me scratching my head wondering what to pull together each day and ordering a pizza instead of eating in. My goal is to have a variety of from scratch "clean" foods easily fixable so we don’t get bored, and also to make the most of nutrients, without specific calorie counts, but including good oils, quality protein, and plenty of fiber from complex carbs. 

Because of my job, I work 12 hour overnights and those are usually clustered around the weekend so I look at the grocery ads on Wednesday, shop Wednesday or Thursday, and prep Thursday or Friday.  But that's just because of the way my work days fall. Anyone else following this idea would want to shop/prep/cook more heavily around their days off, whether that's mid-week or the weekend.

(Recipes that are here on my blog that I will be using have links.)

Week :

 Weekly Prep:

Breakfasts:  Peanut Butter, White Chocolate, and Cashew Energy Bites, Cheerios & Milk

Soup:  Copycat Olive Garden Toscana Soup     

       

Salad: Subway Veggie Salad (will have Gene pick up every other day on his way home from work and make our own dressing: Ranch Dressing  or Red Wine Vinaigrette

Snacks: Carrot & celery sticks w/all natural peanut butter, oranges & bananas, no-sugar-added applesauce

Lunches: Tuna Salad Sandwiches (on Bread of the Week)

Breads:  "Working Towards Whole Wheat" Bread

Sweets:  Girl Scout Cookies: Shortbreads (only 2 per day)

Meal 1:

Chicken and Veggie Quesadillas

Subway Veggie Salad w/ my Homemade Red Wine Vinaigrette

Meal 2:

Gene's Slow Cooker Pork and Beans over Sweet Potatoes

Subway Veggie Salad w/ Homemade Ranch Dressing

Meal 3:

Scrambled Eggs w/Mushrooms and Onions

Ham Steak

Sliced Tomatoes

Toast (from bread of the week)

Meal 4:

Cod Filets (or any firm white fish)  w/Balsamic Syrup

Steamed Broccoli

Bread from Bread of the Week

Meal 5:

Grilled (Indoor Grill) Pork Chops

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Winter Squash Sautéed in Olive Oil

Meal 6:

Swedish Meatballs with Mushroom Sauce

(freezer meal--I made a full batch on Valentine's Day for Gene but froze half to use later on.  Guess what? It's now "later on". This will be a great easy meal)

Served over Grits

Subway Veggie Salad w/ Homemade Red Wine Vinaigrette

Chicken and Veggie Quesadillas

Quesadillas are one of those Tex-Mex restaurant dishes that's just as good, if not better!, made at home. Perfect for a family, they're easily customizable, delicious, and both quick and easy to make. Anyone can make these and I'm talking to you, Aunt Kay!  All you need is some kind of already cooked meat (or skip it and go vegetarian!) and at least a vegetable (or not and go carnivorous) and a hot skillet.  But since the goal is to eat healthier and get in those 5 servings of veggies a day, I went with the cooked chicken breasts that I had simmered in the chicken and orzo soup I made earlier in the week, and the onions, mushrooms, and red and yellow peppers that magically appeared in my crisper. By magically, I mean that Auntie Miranda found on sale at Aldi's and was kind enough to pick up enough for both of our homes since they were so cheap--thanks Auntie! 

 
 For those who know what a Girl Geek/Trekkie I am, is it really a surprise to know that my pizza cutter is in the shape of the Enterprise?  Yeah, I thought not.  Makes me smile every time I use it.