Recipe of the week and my first attempt at homemade bread

Alright. The LONG awaited recipe for the pizzafied chicken.

1/4c. crushed tomatoes
1 stick light string cheese
5ounces boneless skinless cx breast
1/4c. each bell peppers and mushrooms
2 TBLS diced onion
4 slices turkey pepperoni chopped
garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper for seasonings

Preheat broiler.
Pound the chicken until it is uniformly 1/2 inch thick. season. Bring an oven-safe skillet sprayed with Pam to medium heat on the stove. Add peppers, mushrooms, and onion and cook until soft. 4-6 minutes. Remove and set aside.

Respray skillet and add chicken. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side. (until cooked through)

Top chicken with tomatoes, string cheese(chopped) veggies, and turkey pepperoni.

Place skillet until the broiler for a few minutes until cheese is soft and pepperoni is crisp.

**DISCLAIMER: I realize it looks DISGUSTING, however it is the best chicken recipe I have found in a LONG time. Plus it's healthy so how can you go wrong?!


Next up, my very first EVER loaf of bread!!!!!! Now, I have used my beloved bread machine several times to make dough. I have never make a loaf of bread. Here is my perfectly browned and VERY YUMMY smelling bread. You know how Rachael Ray says we need smellevision I think we need smellibloggin', :) okay, so that didn't really make sense, but you get how good it smells!

Working out?! What is that!?

This week has NOT been a good week for me!!! We went out of town and I went crazy. Instead of getting back on track when I got home, I kept going! Oops. Today I took the kiddo's to the library for story time and picked out a couple of DVDs to workout to.


Now this DVD kicked my butt. After I got home I jumped on amazon and read some reviews. It didn't get GREAT reviews, but more so so ones. I had in my head this was going to be an easy cheesy workout. I read that Cardio 2 was the way to go, but I figured I would start with 1 just to be sure. WOWZA, I was OUT. OF. BREATH. after about 2 minutes. I guess I'm not as in shape as I thought.

I ended up doing 3 out of the 5 workouts for a total of 30 minutes. It was a good workout and I can definitely feel it in my arms after the upper body one. I get these for 2 weeks, then I'm going to go switch out. Our library has about 20 workout DVDs for check out, so I was thrilled to find it! :) They aren't all biggest loser ones, in fact I think this was the only one that was there.

I also check out a Valerie Bertenlli one, so we will check that one out as well. The reviews on that one were horrible! However, there are 2 different workouts on there ranging from 20-40 minutes. Short enough to keep my attention, but long enough to work up a sweat!

Menu Planning/Pantry Challenge week 1

Hello!!! Sorry I didn't post much last week, we had a little sickness going through our house and then we were out of town! :)

This month, I am working on doing a pantry challenge. I want to only spend $50 a week on groceries, toiletries, ect. This is going to be a challenge! This week, I only spent $45.00. I will have to go to the store one more time to do my freezer cooking for the meal swap, which will add about another 20-30 dollars.

However, next week, we will have 4 meals already made! :) So next week will be an easy week to do. Hopefully we will not have to go to the store at all except for fresh fruit and milk! :) *The essentials.




This week on the menu is......

Monday: Turkey sands for lunch then I have MOPS tonight

Tuesday: Pizzafied Chicken and corn

Wednesday: Roast, potatoes, carrots, and HOMEMADE bread

Thursday: BBQ BF sandwiches (on the homemade bread)

Friday: BBQ BF Pizza with the leftovers and homemade pizza dough

Saturday: Steak Fajitas

Sunday: Leftovers

Sounds like a lot of BBQ bf I know, but I wanted to try the pizza with some of the leftovers b/c that is Jeff's favorite kind of pizza. I'm starting to fall in love all over again with my bread machine, so I have cooked up a bunch of dough for the freezer, and will be using that over the next few weeks to help with the pantry challenge.

I'm debating on trying to make homemade buns for the BBQ bf sandwiches or if I just want to use the bread I make?! We'll see. I will keep you posted throughout the week. Come back soon, I will be posting the pizzafied chicken recipe!

Menu Planning

Menu for the week includes:
Monday: Chicken Taquito's with green salad

Tuesday: Chicken Pizza 9hungry girl recipe)

Wednesday: Beef Ques.

Thursday: Extreme Mega Supreme Pizza pockets

Friday: BBQ Bf cups

Saturday: Leftovers for lunch/Steak for supper

Sunday: Roast

There is the week. All the recipes are very health conscionable! I am staying steady with the 3 pound loss. I only did it for about a day in a half, then started to just watch calories. I'm pretty content with that, so we will see how it goes! :)

Cinch! Day 2

Today went a little different then yesterday. For breakfast I had the eggs, spinach, and almonds, but instead of raspberries I had some clementines. Then by lunch I was so stinkin' hungry that I ate a bowl of cereal instead of the parfait. For supper 1 piece of pizza and a salad.

I did lose 3 pounds from yesterday morning to this morning. I'm not totally naive I know some of it was water retention, but nonetheless if it helped me jump start with the 3 pounds that excites me! :) We'll see how tomorrow's weigh in goes with the different diet. ;)

I am working on my menu for next week with a mixture of the core Cinch! recipes and the hungry girl recipes that are around 200 calories. I will continue to follow the cinch just more to my style.

I would definitely suggest this to someone who likes the foods listed, or needs to get off a plateau, or even just jump-start your diet. I know it is way motivating to see results right away and with this you will. I can only imagine if I had followed it to a T for the next 3 days! The weightloss would be phenomenal!

Cinch! Day 1

So, I could sugar coat this and tell you it's fabulous, the food is wondering, and I'm loving it! That would be a lie. I knew this would be hard considering I didn't like 3/5 of the foods, however, I thought I could force it down!

By Supper I was ready to give up! I told Jeff this was ridiculous. Breakfast was good, eggs with spinach, the raspberries just hurt going down. (gross) Lunch was alright, I'm not a fan of yogurt and since it was mostly yogurt, it was hard to choke down! I chose to have the smoothie as an afternoon snack at 4 so I just finished eating my salad. The salad was actually delicious. I really enjoyed it.

I can definitely say I probably won't do this for the full 5 days. I like the variety and smell and different textures of my food. I am going to try and do 1 maybe 2 more days depending on how my variations go tomorrow.

I am changing things up a little, tomorrow I will be buying FRESH raspberries to try instead of frozen. I thought they were bad, but the kids gobbled them right up and asked for more! Guess my taste buds are definitely not normal!

I did work today and had a chance to eat a cookie and candy bars. All before NOON! Yes, I walked away! :) WHOO HOO! I drank 80 ounces of water so that was good for me!

Well, that is all I really have to report on for today, we'll see how tomorrow goes!

Cinch!

I've decided to do a book review! :) Since everyone is working on their New Year's Resolution of losing weight, I thought I'd help some of you out sifting through the different books and idea's out there. I've done weight watchers and LOVED it! They did change it recently and I'm not into going back to find out the new program. This time I did the Cinch! Core program. I'm hoping to report back everyday on my progress and let you know what it is all about and if I would recommend it!

My overall impression of this book and plan is a very positive one. It seems to me this plan would be easy to follow has emphasis on what I consider my major struggle points protein, fiber, and low sugar.

The claim to this is that you can lose up to 8 lbs during the first five days on the 5-Food Fast Forward Plan and 15 pounds in 30 days. Many readers may like the fact that she makes it MANDATORY to eat chocolate each and every day, dark chocolate once a day.

Cynthia stays away from having you count calories/points and instead wants you to place emphasis on your timing of eating and your portion control. I agree that this is eventually the key to losing and maintaining weight. Many of us don't realize how many calories we put into or body not thinking about it.

A quick run down of the 5-Food Fast Forward Plan. It is based on five foods only during that five days, spinach, eggs, plain yogurt, raspberries, and almonds. You are given four meals using these five foods that you must follow for the first five days. I myself feel for me this is going to be TOUGH mostly because I'm not a huge fan of spinach and plain yogurt.

Her overall issue is to get you to learn to listen to your body and learn to time your meals to the cues of your body and learn the correct combination which she believes is a produce, whole grain, lean protein, plant-based fat, and seasonings at each meal. The book contains several yummy sounding recipes that are suppose to be easy and quick to make.

My only concern right now is in the first five days you will experience mild to moderate hunger. I think this may make it a little harder for me to follow. I prefer to eat on a schedule that helps you to not get hungry as that seems to be when people break down and make poor choices.

I don't know, we will see how day one goes. I only purchased enough for 3 days in case I decide to jump to the core program instead of following the strict 5 foods in 5 days plan!

Tomorrow is Day 1! We will see! :)