Garlic Galore (how to have bad breath for a week)

I love garlic.  At least, I think I do.  At some point, I seem to have lost the ability to taste or smell it.  Common reactions when people eat my food are
"Wow, there's a lot of garlic in this"
"Like garlic?"
"This is really garlicky"

It would be so much easier for me to use an appropriate amount of garlic if I could taste/smell it for myself...

Or if I bothered to measure.

This is where I am getting my garlic from at the moment, although I'm also a huge fan of garlic powder.

Now, a sensible person would probably grab a spoon, put it in the jar, take out a little bit of garlic, and add it to the food.  Somehow, I'm too lazy to grab a spoon.  I prefer gently shaking garlic straight from the jar onto the food.  The result?  About 10xs more garlic than needed to add garlic-flavor to a meal.

Maybe next time I won't be so lazy...

Good thing I was cooking for myself last night, not sure anyone else could have survived.

Mango-Lime Chicken

Never bought mangoes before...but they were 2 for a dollar in Kroger yesterday, so I thought I would try them out.  Turns out they are unbelievably tasty :)

Clean 1 B/S chicken breast and put in in a skillet (preferably one with a lid)
Slice 1/4 of a lime, squeeze slices over chicken, then drop slices in skillet
Sqeeze some mango juice over the chicken (after I cut up the mango, I discovered there was a ton of flesh/juice on the pit, so I squeezed it over the chicken)
Put lid on chicken and cook on medium heat
When the chicken is almost done, add some mango chunks to the pan, let them cook with the chicken until it is done.

Mango-Lime Chicken, Zucchini, Pasta

And the drink of the evening...perfect with the chicken: Mango Margarita

(Tequila, Triple Sec, fresh squeezed lime, mango chunks, splash of OJ)



Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients
2 sweet potatos
3 carrots
1 parsnip
1/2 - 1 c heavy cream
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
herbs/seasonings* and garlic to taste
water (if you remember, save the water that you boil the sweet potatos in...I usually forget)
*I used tarragon, oregano, rosemary, and mustard powder

Directions
Boil sweet potatos
While they are boiling, chop veggies
When potatos are almost done, steam veggies with butter and salt
When veggies are soft, add garlic, herbs, and 1/2 c heavy cream
Stir as needed, it's ok for the cream to boil, but you don't want anything to burn
Mash the sweet potatos and add them to the pot
Stir well, add more cream and/or water until desired consistency is reached

Insanity Cookies/Bars

Named for the vast multitude of extra ingredients I added to the standard chocolate-chip cookie recipe.

note: strange ingredient amounts are due to the fact that I cut the original recipe in half. 
ingredients listed in the order I add them to the bowl

1 egg, beaten
1 stick butter*, melted (I don't have a mixer...this is the easiest way to make sure the butter gets blended in)
1/2 c brown sugar
1/4 c sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp milled flax seed
1/2 c quick oats
3/4 tsp vanilla
1.25 c flour (I added a little bit extra flour since I made bars instead of cookies)
approx. 1/3 of an 11 oz bag of butterscotch chips (sorry...I didn't measure them, I just poured them into the bowl til it looked like a good amount...)

* sometimes I use 1/2 stick butter and 1/4 c vegetable oil, instead of a whole stick of butter

cookies: bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes
bars: bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes

Apple-Chicken Quesadilla

2 whole wheat tortillas
shredded colby/monterey jack cheese
chicken, cut into small pieces
1/2 apple, cut into small pieces

guacamole : avocado, garlic salt, lime juice, diced tomato

Tomato Mac N Cheese

Today is definitely a two-post kind of day. 

I don't drink milk, so I only buy it when there's something I want to put it in, like mac n cheese or potato soup.  However, even when I buy a really small bottle, most of it always seems to end up going bad.  So I'm always looking for substitutes.  I use juice in my pancakes, ranch dressing in my mashed potatos.  Tonight, I really wanted to make mac n cheese, but I didn't have milk and didn't want to bother with buying some just for my dinner.  So, I decided to try using tomato soup.  I always have a stash of campbells soup-to-go tomato soups on the shelf. 

The end result is delicious.  Maybe I'll stick to this recipe from now on and not need to buy milk anymore... (I really only started buying it when I started making mac n cheese)

For tonight's dinner, I also made meatballs and a mix of steamed veggies.  The meatballs were about the same as the ones I usually make (maybe I'll divulge my secret ingredients some other time...) but today I also added 2 tbsp flax seed, for extra healthy-ness.  Veggie mix was cabbage, radishes, and parsnips.

Breakfast Hash

Well...it's not the Irish Pub's Corn Beef Hash, but it's not too bad!  Beef, potatos, and radishes.  And today I threw in some apple pieces that I had leftover from the pizza the other night.  Fry it up in a lil olive oil, throw it on a plate next to some scrambled eggs, yum.

Apple-Chicken Pizza

for the crust:
1 pkg yeast
1 c whole wheat flour
1-2 c white flour
1/2 tsp salt
herbs
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 c warm water

for the sauce:
mix alfredo and marinara in a bowl

for the toppings:
cook some chicken
chop up an apple or 2 (I used 2 red delicious)

cheese:
shreddded colby/monterey jack blend

bake at 450 for 20 min

let it cool a bit before you try to cut it, otherwise all the cheese comes off.

yummy pizza by itself.  also good dipped in ranch or honey mustard....

Snack Time!

Well...my original plan was to spread some spinach hummus on a rice cake.  But the rice cake crumbled to bits when I tried to take it out of the bag.  So, spreading wasn't gonna happen.  I put all the rice cake pieces in a bowl.  And I thought about the delcious-looking strawberries I got at the grocery store this morning. (No idea what I'm going to do when I can no longer find beautiful, delicious, cheap, strawberries in the store.  It will be a very sad day.)
  So, I chopped up some strawberries.  Put a couple spoonfuls of hummus on top of the rice cake bits.  Dropped the strawberries around the hummus blob.  Pretty.  And not bad tasting either, I might add.  Another healthy-snack WIN.

Tuna Sprouts

I made sprouts out of tuna.  Wait. What?

Since I have run out of meat and I'm trying not to go grocery shopping til the weekend...it's a tuna sandwich day for lunch.  Spinach wrap, tuna salad (today's variety: tuna, thousand island, relish.  translation: creamy and delicious), and sprouts.  (I bought the sprouts cause they're healthy...and I was hoping I would like them.  I don't.  So the sooner I eat them, the sooner they'll be gone?  Unfortunately, I'll probably buy them again anyway.  What happened to the days where I didn't eat foods I didn't like?)

Verde y Anaranjado

Today's dinner is reminiscent of my 2 favorite colors when I was a little kid.
Although, I doubt I liked too many foods of these colors back then.  Heck, I hardly like very many of them now, it just doesn't stop me from eating them anymore.

The last piece of the rosemary-tarragon chicken I made a few days ago, mashed sweet potatos, sprouts/spinach, steamed carrots, and 1/2 an avocado.  Perhaps the chicken is a bit out of place in the middle of all this green and orange...

Here's another angle...I'm getting tired of photographing everything from above.

Avocado

Today's post is dedicated to my favorite food.  When you think avocado, you might think of guacamole.  Guacamole is delicious, especially when it's my personal recipe.

(ingredients: cream cheese, avocado, garlic salt, lime juice, diced roma tomato)

However, avocados really don't need to be made into guacamole.  They are delicious on their own.  I have been known to cut an avocado in half and use a spoon to dig the fruit right out of the skin and into my mouth.  Plain.  No salt, no lime juice, no tomato.  Just pure, delicious, avocado.  Sometimes I spread it on my homemade bread.  Sometimes I scoop it out of the skin with a corn chip.  Sometimes I dice it up on a salad, or in my pasta dish.  Sometimes I use it as a sandwich spread.  I even made avocado bread one time.  (although, I will admit, it just tasted like...bread.) Sooooo many delicious choices. 

And besides tasting good...avocados are a great source of potassium.  And, as a runner, I can always use more potassium. :)

in a pasta dish (this one is my "chicken-avocado-pasta delight"

(also very good with shrimp pasta)

 on top of a salad (spinach, carrot, tomato, avocado)

or, tonights avocado-preparation of choice: on top of tortilla chips w/fresh diced tomato



Spinach Hummus

Delightfully green, and rather tasty.  (says someone who doesn't really, actually, like hummus)

This recipe saw the debut of my new food processor...and let's just say I'm so glad I bought it!  Last time I made hummus I tried to use my blender, which is so old and dull it did absolutely nothing.  So I had to use a fork, and a potato masher, and a fork again...it took forever, and the hummus was still super lumpy.  This time: nice and smooth :)

Chop 2 cups of fresh, raw, spinach leaves.  Cook 1 15oz can of chick peas, add the chick peas to the spinach, and some of the juice.  I put in about 10 tsp at first, and then added some more after I mixed it for awhile.  Add more or less depending on how thick you want your hummus.  Add about a tsp of minced garlic.  Add seasonings to taste.  I added garlic powder, onion powder, mustard powder, and salt.
(and for the record...I use garlic so much I can hardly taste or smell it anymore...)

chop everything up in the food processor until it's smooth.  You might have to stir a couple of times. 
makes almost 2 cups of hummus.

the finished hummus

triscuits w/hummus and colby/monterey jack cheese and strawberries