Crockpot Chicken Chili

First things first.  It’s beginning to look a lot little like Christmas!

Yep, that’s how last Saturday night was spent for my roommate and I…homemade chili and cornbread, putting up our Christmas tree (straight up 1950’s metallic from my grandma’s basement), movies on demand…all in our sweats.  It was glorious.

And this chili? 

AHHHHMAAAAZZZZIINNNNNNNG.  Seriously, I know I’ve said it about a lot of recipes I’ve been posting recently, but it is SO easy and delicious.  Thick, hearty, and the right amount of spice… just how I like my chili!  I also like using chicken instead of beef for a more lean option.  I adapted this recipe from skinnytaste to make it taste more like my mom’s and am so pleased with how it turned out.  I definitely am adding this to my regular rotation of crock-pot soups that I go to during the winter months!

Ingredients for crock-pot chicken chili:

1 can tomato sauce

1 can black beans

1 can chili beans in medium sauce

1 can diced tomatoes (with chilies, if you like)

1 can corn

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 packet taco seasoning

2-3 chicken breasts, raw, fat trimmed

Optional toppers:

reduced fat shredded cheese

reduced fat sour cream

corn bread (my faveeeeee!)

avocado

tortilla chips

Directions:

In a large crockpot, combine all ingredients except chicken and mix well.  Place chicken in crockpot on top of other ingredients.  Cook on high for 5 hours or low for 8-9 hours.  Remove chicken when done and shred.  Place back into crockpot and mix well.  Top with your favorite ingredients. Simple as that!!

  

Whole-wheat cornbread and honey…DELICIOUS.  Tortilla chips make good chili toppers too!

I love my crockpot.  You should love your crockpot. End of story.

Cheesy Chicken Crunchers

 

When my sister and I were kids and we’d go out to eat with our family, I can’t really remember if I had any certain pattern or tendencies to what I ordered.  My sister on the other hand, had one order and one order only.  For as long as I can remember, as long as the restaurant had her one thing on the kids menu, she was set.  Anyone have a guess to what it was?

Chicken tenders.  Rain or shine, night or day, that girl loved her restaurant chicken tenders. 

It wasn’t until we were older that our mom found the best recipe for homemade chicken tenders and it became a weekly regular for dinner.  Making them yourself may seem like a lot more work than buying the premade frozen kind, but it is totally painless and as a bonus, you actually KNOW what’s going into your chicken tenders!  WOOOOO!  Seriously, this is a super quick and easy recipe, it’s approved by all ages, and you  get to eat them with ketchup (i LOVE ketchup).  WIN.

Ingredients for Cheesy Chicken Crunchers

2 chicken breasts, fat trimmed

3 cups corn flakes

1/2 cup reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese

1 egg + 2 egg whites or 1/2 cup egg beaters

2 tbsp. low-fat milk

1/2 cup flour

dash of pepper

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Cut up chicken breasts into 1/2-1 inch strips

 

Crush cornflakes.  I throw mine in a big ziploc and crush them using my hands.  Mix in cheese.

Mix eggs and milk in small bowl. Mix flour and pepper on a plate and set aside..  I also poured the cornflake mixture onto a plate.  Place all three close together for an easy “breading station”

It’s breadin’ time! Roll chicken strips in flour.

Dip in egg wash.

Press and roll in cornflakes.

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Grease with cooking spray and place breaded chicken on the foil

 

Bake for 10 minutes, flip, and bake for 7-10 more minutes or until crispy golden brown.

 

Yummy!

Enjoy! Happy Tuesday!

Cyclone Salad

And we’re back once again!  Happy Friday, all!  I have an awesome salad for you today, inspired my favorite team of all time, the Iowa State Cyclones.

My entire life we have been die-hard Iowa State fans at our house.  So it’s about time some Cyclone love made it into my cooking.  As I went about making this salad for a Fourth of July grill out, I had extra sunburst yellow tomatoes, so I decided to mix them in.  Looking at the finished product in all it’s gold and red cardinal awesomeness, I decided this shouldn’t be named chickpea and tomato salad….definitely a cyclone salad!   This is super easy dish to put together…perfect for grill outs, tailgates, potlucks, and I think even Iowa Hawkeye fans would think it’s delicious.

Ingredients for Cyclone Salad:

1 pint red cherry tomatoes + 1 pint sunburst yellow cherry tomatoes (or you can just use all red if you want!)

2 cans garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained

5 cloves minced garlic

2/3 cup chopped fresh basil (about 40ish leaves)

2 tbsp. red wine vinegar

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp. honey

3 tbsp. olive oil

pinch of salt

Directions

Wash and halve cherry tomatoes and combine with garbanzo beans, garlic, and basil, mixing well.  Add in vinegars, honey, olive oil, and salt, mixing well once again.  Chill covered for at least 15-20 minutes before serving.  Easy, right?!

Oh, and I’ll also have you know, that my roomate and I can work a grill now!

The finished product.   Have a good weekend everyone! And when September rolls around, Go State!

Recipe adapted from Green Lite Bites.

Skinny Southwest Peppers

 

Happy Wednesday!  For today, a twist on one of my favorite dinners…stuffed peppers!  I’ve been trying to clean up my eating this week with adding more veggies and lean protein, so this was perfect.  Enjoy!

Skinny Southwest Peppers Ingredients:

1/3 lb. lean ground turkey (I used 93/7)

2 large bell peppers

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn

1/2 cup cannellini or black beans

1/2 cup salsa

1/2 cup tomato sauce

1/2 cup reduced fat mexican or cheddar cheese

1 tbsp. EVOO

Directions (makes 4 servings):

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Brown ground turkey over medium heat and set aside.  Cut peppers in half lengthwise, removing stems and seeds.  Sauté chopped onion over medium heat in EVOO for 3-4 minutes, then adding in corn and beans and sautéing for about 5 more minutes.  Stir in turkey, salsa, and tomato sauce to mixture.  Spoon mixture into peppers and place peppers into a baking dish filled with 1/2 inch water.  Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and top with cheese, and bake for 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted. 

Let cool for at least 5 minutes…I topped mine with more salsa and a dab of sour cream. 

Creamy Veggie Pasta

Lately, I’ve had a hankering for alfredo sauce.  Don’t ask me why, but I crave it allll the time! The taste that is, not the fat and calories it contains!  I’ve been trying to develop my own recipe of a “lighter” alfredo sauce. Normally, it contains heavy cream, egg yolks, cream cheese—all those culprits that are so delicious, yet so disastrous for my backside.  Last night, while playing around with leftover half and half and a laughing cow cheese wedge, I think I came up with a keeper!  Add in lots of veggies along with some pasta (a good rule of thumb-your pasta bowl should be at least half, if not more, of veggies!) and it was a nice little dinner!  Here’s the scoop.

Ingredients for Creamy Veggie Pasta:

6-8 oz. fettuccini pasta

1 yellow pepper, sliced

1/4 cup sliced onion

1 cup cooked broccoli florrets

1/2 cup chopped tomato

1 tbsp. EVOO

 

Light Alfredo Sauce Ingredients:

2 tbsp. butter

1 cup half and half

2 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese

1 skinny cow light swiss cheese wedge

Easy Lighter Alfredo Directions:

Melt butter over medium heat in a small/medium sized saucepan.  Stir in half and half and cover until boiling, letting the sauce thicken.  Reduce heat to low and stir in parmesan cheese and skinny cow cheese (i cut it up to make it easier!).  You’ll have to stir for about 4-5 minutes constantly to get everything melted and mixed in.  If the sauce is too thick, I added 1% milk to thin it out!

Please excuse the messy picture, it was culinary research at it’s finest, but trust that it is delicious!

Veggie Pasta Directions (aka puttin’ it all together!):

Boil pasta according to directions (I used leftover wine-flour pasta from my foodie pen pal).  While pasta is cooking, sauté peppers and onions. Add them to a big pot or mixing bowl.

Add cooked broccoli and tomatoes.

Add pasta.

Add 1 tbsp. EVOO and mix!

Add desired amount of sauce.  For dinner, I took a heaping one cup serving of pasta and veggies and added about 1/3 cup sauce and it was a good combo!  I had leftovers for lunch the next day with the pasta…so it would be a perfect dish for two or for those of you who hate preparing lunches in the morning!

There ya have it, super easy!   With that, I’m off to Portland for some family love! 

Speaking of that, any readers out there been to Portland?  What are your favorite foodie things and or attractions?  Would love to hear ‘em!

Rhubarb crisp for two!

In honor of upcoming Father’s Day, I thought I would get back to posting recipes and highlight one of my dad’s favorite treats….rhubarb!  When he was here a couple weeks ago, it was plentiful at the farmers market and I decided to pick up some to make rhubarb crisp.  I love making “crisps” because they are so easy!  This recipe is simple and makes a smaller batch, which I like so I am not eating it for days after I make it.  Enjoy!

Ingredients for Rhubarb Crisp (2 heaping servings!)

2 cups chopped rhubarb

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup oatmeal

1/3 cup brown sugar

3 tbsp. butter.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Chop up the rhubarb.

Add the sugar, mix well!

 

Melt butter. Combine oatmeal, brown sugar, and melted butter.

Spread rhubarb/sugar mixture into a greased loaf pan.

 

Top with oatmeal mixture!

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until very bubbly!  Serve with ice cream (highly recommended)!

On the go breakfast burritos

Alright.  I don’t know how mornings go for all of you, but I’d like to give you a snapshot of mine. 

My alarm goes off, I snooze it for about ohhh 20 minutes, then frantically decide to get up when I realize I have to be at lab or my morning group strength class pronto!  This usually isn’t a problem, as I am pretty fast at getting ready, but I often find myself scrambling for breakfast.

Insert my new best friend, breakfast burritos that you can make ahead of time, freeze, and warm them up as you need!  Breakfast in 3 minutes?  Sign. me. up.

I got the idea from Iowa Girl Eats when she posted them a couple weeks ago and decided to give them a go this week.  It took about 30 minutes on Sunday to put them together (so easy!!) and hooray! Breakfast for the week!

I halved the portions that she used and added a few different toppings, but that’s the beauty of it…you can fill ‘em with whatever you want!

Ingredients:

9 large eggs

1/4 cup skim milk (optional)

pinch of pepper

6 tablespoons reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese

6 strips turkey bacon

6 tortillas (I used La Banderita low carb tortillas)

Saran wrap

1 gallon size ziploc bag

Directions:

Scramble eggs and cook turkey bacon in separate skillets.  For the eggs, I added milk and pepper, but they can be cooked without if preferred.  Crumble bacon by hand for topping the eggs in the burritos.

Lay out tortillas and set up your fillin’ station

Divide eggs evenly among tortillas

Divide bacon evenly among burritos and add 1 tbsp. shredded cheese to each.

Next, fold up the sides of the tortilla and roll, placing the seam at the bottom on the saran wrap.  Use the saran wrap to cover the burrito as tightly as possible. 

After they are all rolled up, place them in a ziploc bag and into the freezer!

 

When you are ready for one, remove saran wrap and microwave for 1 min and 30 seconds.  Flip burrito over and microwave for 1 more minute. 

Enjoy! 

 

If you were to make breakfast burritos, what would you put in yours?

No Bake Peanut Butter Bars

Oooooh do I have a treat for you all today!  I found this recipe on pinterest from Six Sisters Stuff the other day and knew I just had to try it.  5 ingredients and no oven time? Sign me up!  I took them into lab this week and they were a total hit.  Here’s how it goes:

Ingredients for No Bake Peanut Butter Bars:

2 cups crushed graham crackers (I used my food processor, or you can just crumble them very finely in a ziploc bag)

1 cup butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 cup peanut butter

1 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions

Melt butter and let cool to room temperature.  Combine crushed graham crackers, butter,powdered sugar, and 1 1/4 cup peanut butter together until well mixed.  You can either do this by hand or with a mixer on low!

Press mixture into greased 9 x 13 pan.  I use a ziploc over my hand to press it down and to create less of a mess, then go over it with a spatula so it’s smooth!

Melt chocolate chips and peanut butter in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds.  Spread evenly on top of the bars. Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving.

Cut into squares and enjoy!  These babies are pretty rich, but your taste buds will thank you!  HAPPY FRIDAY!

Manicotti Monday

 

Who’s stoked that Monday is over?  I know I certainly am.  Although I didn’t have any classes today, I spent my day attempting to organize some diet data for my research…aka fighting with microsoft excel and pulling my hair out.  By the time I got outta there, I was forever thankful that it was still light out at 5 pm (holla!) and it was 45 degrees!  I forced my shoes on and out the door for a jog I was.  I felt 100 times better when I got back and was glad that I made myself exercise.  Motivation (or lack of) has been a huge factor for me and my work out regimen lately that I’ve been trying to step it up on.  Any tips?

Anywho, to add to this manic Monday, I’m reaching about the three week mark without buying groceries and it’s safe to say that this little game of coming up with creative and healthy dinners is becoming much more complicated.  Tonight though, I realized I had enough ingredients to make a single sized (and by single sized, I mean enough for dinner and lunch leftovers) portion of one of my favorite recipes…Manicotti!  What makes this manicotti so great?  It uses homemade shells from scratch, which are super easy to make! You can find the full size recipe here at Gina’s Skinny Recipes, one of my favorite blogs.  I usually end up having way too much, so having very little in my fridge was a good way to experiment making a smaller size!  I paired my manicotti with a half plate of veggies because I am still recovering from all the sugar I consumed (or awesomeness I experienced) this weekend.  More to come on that later…The Bachelor is on!

Crespelle (manicotti shell) ingredients:

3 tbsp. flour

2 tbsp. milk

1 tbsp. egg beaters

1 tsp. olive oil

Directions:

Mix all ingredients until well combined.  Pour enough into a small skillet in order to create a thin layer along the pan (I pour about a half dollar sized portion in the middle and then turn the skillet to get an even thin layer). Cook on medium heat or 3-4 minutes or until golden brown, flip, and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Makes 4 shells.  Find the full recipe here.

Manicotti Ingredients:

1/4 cup low fat ricotta cheese

3 tbsp. spinach (i used frozen)

2 tbsp shredded chicken

2 tbsp low fat mozzarella cheese

4 crespelles (manicotti shells)

3/4 cup marinara sauce

**Can replace chicken with more spinach to make recipe vegetarian!

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine ricotta, spinach, chicken, and half of the mozzarella cheese in a small bowl until well mixed. 

Pour 1/4 cup marinara sauce into the bottom of a small baking dish.  For this small serving, I found that using a loaf pan was perfect. Place 2 tbsp. of manicotti filling in the middle of a shell and roll up as tight as possible and place in pan with the seam side down.  Repeat with the rest of shells and filling.

Top with remaining marinara sauce, cover with foil, and bake for 20 minutes.  Remove foil and top with remaining mozzarella cheese, and bake again for 5 minutes. 

Enjoy! 

Catchin’ up Quick Chicken Tacos

 

Bahhhh, I’ve fallen off the blogging ledge again.  I really don’t have a good excuse…school starting up, lack of time to buy groceries, and little time to think up yummy dinners!  This weekend though, I was determined to break out of my rut.  I had made my usual stock of shredded chicken in the crockpot and had all the fixings for tacos.  The only problem?  No taco seasoning.  So, I attempted to make my own!  It didn’t taste like normal taco seasoning, but the flavor was great…the lime juice is sooo perfect for Mexican food.  Chicken tacos are a great meal for nights where I’m short on time…I just defrost some shredded chicken from my stocks, add some seasoning, and find all the toppings I can…within 15 minutes, I’ve got my meal!

Chicken Tacos (enough for dinner and leftover lunch the next day!)

1 cup seasoned shredded chicken (see below for seasoning recipe)

1/2 cup diced tomatoes

1/2 cup diced green pepper

1/2 cup salsa

1/4 cup cheese

3 medium sized, low carb tortillas.

Directions:

This is pretty self explanatory, but just in case…place warmed chicken onto tortillas and top with toppings, or whatever you like.  Roll up and enjoy!  I made two for dinner and took the rest of lunch the next day.  Leftovers are my life for lunch.

3 medium sized, low carb tortillas

Chicken Taco Seasoning

1 cup shredded chicken

1/4 cup water

2 tbsp. lime juice

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp. onion powder

Directions:

In a skillet, place fully cooked shredded chicken and heat on medium low heat for 5 minutes.  Add water, lime juice, and all spices.  Stir until mixed well and let simmer for 5 minutes.

Enjoy your Tuesday!