chicken taco quesadillas

I'm very late in posting this, but better late than never, right?

I made chicken taco quesadillas last weekend.  It's a good way to use up some odds and ends I had hanging around in my fridge and cabinets.  It also helped me to start working my through my industrial-sized container of taco seasoning.

These were delicious, although a tad bit messy.  I would have like some sour cream for dipping, but I didn't have it and didn't feel like running to the store.

I was able to eat two wedges, or half a quesadilla.  Guess who got the other two??


Chicken Taco Quesadillas
Makes 4 whole 6-inch quesadillas

8 oz. ground chicken
1/2 a medium onion, diced
3 Scallions, sliced
1 cup black beans, rinsed
8 6-inch flour tortillas
Shredded cheddar cheese or Monterey Jack, whatever amount you want

Directions

Filling:

Lightly spray a large skillet with non-stick spray.

Over medium-high heat, brown ground chicken with the onions.  Mix in 1/3 cup water and taco seasoning.  Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer 3-4 minutes until thickened.  Add the scallions and black beans and heat through.

Quesadillas:

Heat a clean non-stick skillet (don't spray with cooking spray).  Heat for a minute or two over medium heat.

Put one tortilla in the skillet.  Add shredded cheese to cover.  Add the filling on top.  Put more shredded cheese over the filling.  Put another tortilla on top to cover.  As an alternative you could top one half of the tortilla and then fold it over and cook.  That's the way they do it in the restaurant, but either way is fine.

Cook for at least two minutes and then carefully flip to cook the other side.  The idea is to brown the tortilla and melt the cheese.

Once finished, move the quesadilla to a cutting board and cut into wedges.  Assemble and cook the remaining quesadillas.

  

today's lunch

I'm not much of a soup eater, but this is today's lunch.

I'm embarking on a project:  to completely cook through and ear through everything in the cabinets and freezer.  I find that I routinely forget about things I have in the house and end up throwing them away because they're expired or freezer burned.  I figure I'll save money and and it will force me to cook more often.

So in an effort to reduce waste and economize, which unfortunately is necessary right now, I've decided to finally eat for lunch one of the many cans of soup I own. It's Progresso Light Chicken Corn Chowder. And I'm using my new special soup container I bought a few months ago. The soup is pretty good. A little skimpy on the chicken, but good overall. I'm having some crackers with it. Can't have soup without crackers.

I'm hoping it will fill me more than it used to. Before surgery it seemed like soup just wasn't filling enough so I usually avoided it. But my stomach is smaller now so I should feel full for a bit. Hopefully.

gnc lean muscle meal

While I was put this weekend I decided to stop in at GNC. I don't usually go there, but I had to return something to another store in the plaza and that store wasn't open yet.

Much to my delight they had a cold case with individual protein shakes. I figured since it was the weekend and would probably forget to drink my protein shake (what the heck is it about the weekends??) I'd buy one while I was there. It's convenient and I can try something new without buying a whole package. I ended up with the store brand Lean Muscle Meal, which we $2.99. If I were a GNC member it would have cost something like $2.79 I think. 

I didn't really like this shake all that much. I've gotten used to drinking shakes that are very low in sugar and don't contain any artificial sweetener, so this tasted very artificially sweet to me. It tasted a lot like Pure Protein, which I don't buy anymore because it's too sweet. The consistency was fine, though.

Bottom line is I wouldn't buy this again unless there was nothing else available.

I was happy to see Quest protein bars so I grabbed some. Expensive though... $2.99 a piece!

loving my fairlife milk!

I'm very excited:  Walmart carries the big bottles of Fairlife milk!  And it was only $3.98.  Yes, that's a lot for a half gallon, but it's not as bad as some other brands.

Coca Cola recently launched Fairlife milk. It's an ultra filtered milk.  They filter regular milk into it's different components and then recombine the components in different quantities.  The result is a milk with half the sugar of standard milk and lots more protein, which is great for a post-op who really misses milk.  People are saying it's fake milk, Frankenstein milk, science milk, etc. Whatever.  It's regular milk.  And it tastes exactly like it's supposed to taste.

I commented on one of Fairlife's posts on Facebook and some guy went through each and every comment and posted about how people shouldn't be eating or drinking dairy at all, but if they do they need to be drinking raw milk, stop buying science milk, etc.  He even went so far as to tell me, personally, that if I had eliminated dairy that I wouldn't have needed weight loss surgery.  Yeah, OK buddy. Because I take advice from random Internet whack jobs.

Anyway, I bought the fat-free variety.  I used to hate skim milk, but this actually tastes good. It doesn't taste watery to me.  I made a protein shake with Click Mocha Espresso Protein Drink, about 6 ounces of fat-free Fairlife milk, and about 6 ounces of water.  Yummy!!  Click has 15g of protein on it's own, but I bumped it up to 25g of protein by using Fairlife.

great article about hunger

I found a great article today about post-op eating.  While some of it doesn't apply to a non post-op, the hunger scale is a great tool for anyone. Check it out.

http://www.bariatriceating.com/2015/02/09/the-bariatric-guide-to-portion-size-portion-size/

sunday breakfast

Today I tried something different:  baked eggs.

I've seen them on the Internet and it looked quick and easy, so I decided to give it a try.  I had a ton of turkey bacon in the freezer so I decided to defrost it.  I cooked some for Bob's breakfast and used the rest for the baked eggs.  There may have been some snacking in between...

The baked eggs came out good, but next time I will partially cook the bacon first; it was too soft for me and created a watery bottom.  I cooked them for about 16 minutes, which is about 4-5 minutes more than what the recipe called for.  I found after 12 minutes the eggs were more like a sunny side up and I'm not into that.  I even broiled them for a couple minutes after the 16 minutes of baking.  It produced a semi-cooked yolk, which was thick, but still a bit runny.

Bob got the leftover chicken taco mix I made last night.  (I made chicken taco quesadillas, which I'll post soon.  It's ground chicken, taco seasoning, chicken broth, scallions, and black beans.)  I put it into an egg omelet with cheddar cheese, toasted an English muffin, and gave him a few strips of turkey bacon.  The omelet was HUGE!

Baked Eggs
Makes 6 eggs

6 pieces of cooked bacon (I used turkey)
6 eggs
2 TB milk
Salt and pepper
Shredded cheddar cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 325.
2. Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.
3. Line each cup with one piece of bacon.
4. Crack an egg into each cup.
5. Pour a little milk over each egg.
6. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
7. Sprinkle with shredded cheese.
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes for sunny side up.  I baked them for about 16 minutes, which set the whites on top.
9. Serve immediately, or store in the fridge for use in egg sandwiches.

Bob's breakfast.  As you can see, there's big difference in our meal sizes.

please support the Stratford Cat Project

The Stratford Cat Project is having it's annual Dine for the Cause at Uno's in Milford.  Just present this coupon when you dine-in or take-out and 20% of your check will go to the Cat Project.

From the Cat Project:

02/26/15 - Fundraising Event at Uno's Chicago Grill - 12:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Please join us at Uno's Chicago Grill located at 1061 Post Road, Milford for a fundraising event.  Have lunch, dinner, take-out or bar, and a portion of your check will be donated to SCP.  All proceeds are to benefit Riley's Second Chance Fund, for kitties with extraordinary medical needs. You must present a coupon to your server.

Here's the coupon you can download and print.

Here are the cats I adopted from the Cat Project:

Thelma and Louise, sisters

Riley, RIP buddy!

chicken taco egg muffins

I seem to have a bit of an obsession with buying eggs lately.  Just about every time I go to the store I end up buying eggs.  Usually because I'm planning on making egg muffins, or I'm planning on making Bob's weekday breakfasts ahead of time.  Anyway, I've bought so many eggs that I had about 5 dozen in the fridge,  Yes, 5 dozen.  I'm a sucker for the 2 1/2 dozen packs they sell in Walmart.  I've been trying hard to spend less out of necessity and this is usually the best deal.  It's not like I won't use the eggs, so why not buy them?

I haven't made egg muffins in awhile so I decided this weekend I would make some. I didn't want to make sausage and goat cheese again since I already have a ton of those in the freezer.  I wanted something different, preferably with ingredients I already have on hand.  I also wanted something that uses taco seasoning.  When I moved to the new house I bought a monster container of it at BJ's Wholesale.  Six months later, I have no idea why I thought I needed that much and now I need to start using it.

I ended up making up my own recipe and I'm calling it Chicken Taco Egg Muffins.  I browned half a pound of ground chicken, then added onions and scallions.  Once that was cooked I added taco seasoning and water.  Once thickened it mixed in black beans and then added the mixture to beaten eggs.  I poured it all into a muffin tin and topped with shredded cheddar cheese.

They were pretty good, but next time I might add some corn, or maybe put chunks of cheddar in the mixture.

Chicken Taco Egg Muffins

8 oz. ground chicken
1/2 a medium onion, diced
3 Scallions, sliced
1 cup black beans, rinsed
10 Eggs
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese or Monterey Jack

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°.  Lightly spray a 12-cup muffin tin with non-stick spray.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, brown ground chicken with the onions.  Add the scallions and black beans.  Mix in 1/3 cup water and taco seasoning.  Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer 3-4 minutes until thickened.  

In a large mixing bowl, whisk eggs.  Mix meat mixture into the eggs.  

Pour mixture into muffin tin and top each cup with cheese.  Bake for 25 minutes.

Pop them out of the pan within 10 minutes so they don't stick to the bottom of the pan.
 
You can top these with some sour cream and salsa if you want to.

These taste best when warm from the oven, but they will chill or freeze and reheat just fine for at least 4 to 5 days.  If using the microwave to reheat, use 60% power so they don't turn out rubbery or hard around the edges.  100% power might kill them.

breakfast pizza!

This is what I had for breakfast yesterday.  It's just a small tortilla topped with a scrambled egg, turkey breakfast sausage, a few bits of hash browns (snatched those from hubby's breakfast), and some shredded cheddar. I popped it in the toaster over for about 6 minutes.  I then splashed on a few drops of Tabasco sauce for kick. I made sure not to go overboard.  Sometimes my post-surgery tummy doesn't like spicy foods.  I don't get sick, but it causes my stomach to burn a little.

I was able to eat about 3/4 of it. Hubby got the last piece.  I think he likes that I got the surgery, because he usually gets my leftovers.

today's lunch

I haven't barbecue chicken pizza in a long time, so I decided to use up the Perdue Shortcuts Southwestern Style chicken and make one for lunch.

All I do is spread about a tablespoon of barbecue sauce (I LOVE Sweet Baby Ray's) on a small tortilla, top it with the chicken, and then put some shredded cheddar on top.  I bake it at 350 for 12 minutes and viola!  Pizza!

I am happy to say I can finally finish one of these, although the last bite was tough and I kind of ate faster than I should.