It’s Recipe Time, Guys!

Unbelievable!  I went out on my daily quest for 10,000 dollars steps and it was -8C!!  Practically a heatwave out there!  And sunny too!  What a perfect day for a walk, I tell ya!  It has been soooo many years since I was actually thought that -8C was “somewhat mild”!  I lived for so long in a land where 0C was practically armageddon.  It was an awesome feeling, breathing in cool, refreshing air and feeling the sun on my face…inspired me to walk even further than I had planned.

Waterfall in the park I walk through. The front is frozen and the water is falling behind the ice.  So pretty.

After exploring lots of paths, I made myself come back to reality, face responsibility and head to the supermarket.  Or the suupaa.  Or the grocery store.  Or the depanneur.  Whatever floats your boat. And I stocked up on lots of fresh goodness to make my food!  This is it!  Organization is kicking in somewhat!  Going to make meals for the week.

I came back home, ready and rarin’ to hit the floor, get my crunches, squats and pathetic push-ups out of the way.  Then I remembered I was going to use the slow cooker and had to get my butt in gear with cooking or I would be stuck eating my creation at 3am (<–perhaps a slight exaggeration)

Here is what I have achieved so far:

I have made a super-duper impressive version of something Mom used to make when we were kids (my brothers and I; not my mom and I…we weren’t actually kids together).  She used to bake chicken pieces in the oven after having marinated them in Catalina salad dressing and bbq sauce.  Yeah, you read that right.  And it was awesome!  I decided to get all adventurous and recreate it as a slow cooker dish (remember…multi-tasking, kids!  Slow cooker takes care of one thing while you do other stuff).  It is all very experimental at the moment and I really don’t have measurements to give you.  I just sort of throw in what I think will be enough.  If there is not enough of something, I add more of it.  If there is too much of something, I add more of something else to distract people from the first something.  Pure genius!

The ingredients are:

• Catalina dressing
• Bbq sauce (more Catalina than bbq.  Don’t ask me the ratio because I will just tell you that for this recipe, the ratio of Catalina to bbq is, “more”)
• 3 or so cloves of garlic, minced  (I am a garlic fiend.  I actually used 4 cloves…find your comfort level.  Mine, apparently is to be immune to vampires.)
• Grated ginger.  As much as you feel like putting in.
• Fresh cilantro, chopped.  Again, whatever you want.  I guesstimate I put in about 1/4 cup.
• Some onion.  How much?  I dunno.  I cut up some and you know…taadaa.
• Saute the onion and garlic with a bit of extra virgin olive oil in a pan first.  Just to soften them up and bring out the flavours.  Throw all that stuff in the slow cooker.  Then add the chicken and kind of cover it with the sauce so it gets fully marinated as it cooks.  Oh yeah!  Squeeze the juice from half a lime…or a whole one.  (Hell, three if you want…sky’s the limit!)  Add that to the sauce too.  You can do that before adding the chicken, so that you get everything mixed properly or you can do it like I did:  About an hour after into the cooking, think to yourself, “Hey!  I have limes in the fridge!  I bet some lime juice would be yummy in that…why didn’t I think of that at the beginning?”, then add it, awkwardly trying to stir it around the chicken breasts so the lime flavour is distributed evenly in the sauce.  Maybe.

Turboed up version of my mom’s old recipe.

I have no idea yet if this is going to taste any good or if I completely buggered things up.  I will let you know, if I survive it.  And if it does turn out to be good, I will make it again and actually measure stuff so I can call it a recipe.  I might even give it a name too…I can get fancy that way sometimes.

The other thing that I made so far was from an actual, real recipe.  Yeah, I have been known to do those.  Until I get used to them, then I don’t bother with all the pesky measuring nonsense anymore.  Measuring cups and spoons?  Pfft…those are for wimps.  (Ok, really, I don’t have a dishwasher and will cut corners where I can.)

My friend sent me the link to a blog that perhaps some on here might have heard of…I was probably the last on Earth to know about it:  Skinny Taste.  It is sooo well done!  It just might have more recipes than there are human beings on the planet.  Every recipe has the nutritional value breakdown, as well as the WW points from both the former system and the new one!  I love it.  It was an amazing find.  (Am I allowed to share my love of something that is not on WordPress??  I hope so, because I believe in sharing the love!)  What was really exciting was that the recipe called for mango and I had one.  That never happens, ever.  Those suckers are expensive but it just happened that last week, there was a sale on mango, so I actually had one just sitting around in my home!

I am so proud of making it, that I am posting my own pic of how it turned out.

Taadaaa!!

Well, I have more to make but now that I have gotten that far, it is time to tone my tush, flatten those abs (someday, someday!), and try to regain some semblance of strength in my arms (I miss teaching little kids, I had pretty good endurance and strength from running around chasing them and having to pick them up all the time, no gym required).  Working hard to hopefully see a couple of more pounds gone when I jump on the scales in a few days!

I would love to get fitted with new abs. Galvanized ones.