Easy Corn Muffins!

1 cup of cornmeal
1.5 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar, or other sweetener
1 standard size can of creamed corn

Mix them all together (preferably with a mixer), and bake them off! I used a mini muffin tin and got exactly 24 cute lil muffins. I also sprinkled them with paprika before baking. They took about 12 minutes in a 400 degree oven. :)




These are 2 for 1 weight watcher points plus value, in case you were wondering (and I know you were).

Chicken Carbonara!

So, I sort of want to start a "Cooking Light" blog, but have no idea what to call it, or anything like that, so for now, I'll just add this recipe on to my old blog. If you have any ideas on what I could call a recipe blog featuring (mostly) light cooking, please give me your suggestions!!

Anyway, as requested:

Chicken Carbonara

Ingredients:

• 8 oz linguine pasta
  
• 18 oz. chicken breast
• 2 tbsp. butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
• 1 1/2 cups peas
• 1 sweet onion
• 1 clove garlic
  
• 6 strips bacon
• 1 cup fat free chicken broth
  
• 2 tbsp skim milk
  
• 4 oz reduced fat cream cheese
• 3 oz 2% velveeta
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• Basil, Parsley, Seasoned Salt, Salt and Pepper

1. Dice up your sweet onion, and get it sauteing in your olive oil, along with your garlic (chopped finely or pressed)
   
2. Once they start to get brown and fragrant, cut your chicken into bite sized pieces and add to pan with some basil and parsley, cook chicken, lightly season with seasoned salt.
3. While chicken is cooking, partially cook your bacon in the microwave (about 4 minutes in the microwave), or however you prefer. (I did it in the microwave to keep as much grease out of the picture as I could.)
4. Once your bacon is partially cooked, chop it into small pieces, and add it into the chicken. Add about 1 tsp of the bacon fat to the chicken and onion mixture- discard the rest.
5. Let everything cook together, and cook your pasta while the chicken cooks.When straining pasta, reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water. The starch from the cooking process will help thicken your sauce!
   
6. If peas are frozen, give them a zap in the microwave.
7. Make your cream sauce by melting your butter in a large skillet, and then whisking the flour into it, whisking constantly so no lumps form, making a roux. Once your roux is a bubbly paste, add in your pasta water, and continue to whisk over medium heat, until mixture thickens.
8. Add milk, whisk until thickened once again.
9. Add chicken broth- again, mix until thickened.
   
10. Add in velveeta and cream cheese, stirring and helping them to melt by breaking up. Keep heating and whisking until thick.
11. Season with salt and pepper.
12. Now, fold in chicken and bacon mixture until covered in sauce. Add peas and pasta, stir until all is coated with sauce.
13. Transfer to an oven safe baking dish, and top with bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

This has been adapted from Cooking Light magazine. I made my own changes. The bacon adds a lot of flavor, but cooking it separately and draining off all but 1 tsp. of the grease cuts calories, as well as using very little butter. The reduced fat cream cheese and velveeta also help keep the calorie count down on this recipe!

I calculated approximately 11 WW points plus per 1.5 cup serving. :) Enjoy!

love love LOVE these guys.

Thai Chicken and Vegetables

So, I just finished making this crock pot recipe, and I have to say, it's cooking right now and looks absolutely superb. I got it from a crock pot recipe book, but modified it quite a bit. Here it is:

5 Chicken Drumsticks
1/2 Can coconut milk
Fresh Green Beans
1 bag matchstick carrots
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 cup salsa
1/2 rough chopped onion
1 1/2 cups extra crunchy peanut butter
Juice from 1/2 lime (about 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp)
2 bags quick cook rice
Scallions

Take your chicken out and place them in a bowl. Pour 1/2 the can of coconut milk over the chicken legs.

Next, while those marinate, mix together 1 cup of peanut butter with the lime juice, soy sauce and salsa. Place the chicken legs in the crock pot, pouring the extra coconut milk over the chicken.

Add your peanut butter/salsa mixture to the crock pot,as well as your chopped onion. Cook 1 hour and 45 minutes on high, or until chicken looks cooked on the outside.

Once the chicken is starting to appear cooked on the outside, add in your green beans, and allow to cook for 30 more minutes.

Next, add your matchstick carrots, and cook until the chicken is completely cooked through- probably about one more hour.

If you want to do this while you're at work and can't be adding things at different times, set the crock pot to low, cook the chicken for 8-9 hours while you're gone, and then once you get home add the veggies and crank it up to high for an hour.

Serve over rice, with fresh scallions on top.

I'll post pictures when I serve it!

Update

They say once you do something for 21 days in a row, it becomes a habit. I don't know who 'they' refers to (there's a really funny Paul Reiser bit about that, actually), but I do know that it seems logical to me. To succeed for almost a whole month at doing something every day would probably form a habit for me.

So, I'm using http://habitforge.com/ to try to form the habit to write in my blog every day.

I'm totally bogged down with lesson planning and grading papers and all of that right now, but I should be able to come up with some little tidbit from my day every day, I would think. We'll see.

When you sign up at Habitforge, you'll be sent an e-mail every day asking you if you did whatever your goal was the previous day. You click yes if you did it, and no if you didn't. And that's that.

Maybe I should also start one for going to the gym...

I'm about to do that now, actually. I've lost 16 pounds in the past couple months, but I've been stalling, and it's because I've not been going to the gym as regularly as I was before. So, here goes!

NYC weekend

Spent this past weekend in NYC, visiting Beth, and it was great.

It's a long hike for me- I travel out of Boston by bus, which is about 5 hours each way with traffic, 4.5 without, but we make the most of the weekend and it's totally worth it.

This weekend, we biked around Governors Island, which is such a strange, intriguing and unique place.







You can rent nice pretty blue bikes for cheapo money (15$ per 2 hours, 25$ for four hours), and bike around the island.


(Me on said pretty blue bike)






The weather was beaut, and there was a nice breeze- biking around an island that looks like downtown Portsmouth (except with a view of the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and some mighty big buildings) with the wind in your hair...just awesome!


(Doesn't it look like Portsmouth?)


That night, we had dinner at a cute little cafe called Penelope, and saw Le Cage aux Folles, with Kelsey Grammer, who looked FAB and was singing and dancing and all of that jazz.

Great weekend! :) Trying not to get down on the fact that I watched what I ate and biked 6-7 miles and gained a pound this week :( ... I'm still down 12 total, though, which I have to remember.

My Name is Sam...and I'm a tea addict.

While moving out of my old apartment, I had a shocking revelation. I am addicted to buying tea. I don't even think I'm as addicted to drinking tea as I am to buying it. I mean sure, I drink tea almost every day in the winter and fall months...but I own so much tea it is ridiculous. A filled a whole staples paperbox with tea..and still had more tea left over that didn't fit.

I have flavored teas, black teas, white teas, green teas, herbal teas. Lots of Yogi tea, loose tea from TeaVana... I've got it all.

I definitely have enough tea to last a lifetime.