Crock Pot Barbecue Chicken

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Kelly

After taking a few weeks off, I decided to bring back Crock Pot Sunday’s yesterday, and Pulled Barbecue Chicken was on the menu.  I stumbled across the recipe in the February issue of Fitness Magazine and couldn’t wait to give it a shot (tried to find a link to it online, but couldn’t).

Chop a medium onion and dice 3 cloves of garlic and add them to your crock pot with 14 oz of tomato sauce.

Add 1 Tbsp of Red Pepper flakes

Add 1/3 cup of Apple Cider Vinegar and Molasses each

And 3 Tbsp of Tomato Paste

Stir everything to combine it

Season your chicken with salt and pepper before adding it to the sauce mixture.  Cover evenly with the sauce and cook on low for about 8 hours.  Once finished, remove the chicken from your crock pot, shred, return to sauce and stir.  Serve on a toasted roll with a slice of mozzarella and piece of lettuce.

So, the recipe says it makes 4 sandwiches, but that’s bs because I can see myself getting like 10 out of this.  They must make really big sandwiches at Fitness Magazine.  The sauce is sweet, and thinner than most barbecue sauces which is cool with me because that’s the kind of sauce I like anyway.  I had this for dinner last night, and have it packed to enjoy for lunch every day this week.  I predict by Friday I will be amazingly sick of BBQ chicken.

Crock Pot Barbecue Chicken
2 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts
14 oz can of Tomato Sauce
3 Tbsp of Tomato Paste
1/3 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1/3 cup Molasses
1 Tbsp Red Pepper Flakes
1 Medium Onion
3 cloves Garlic
Salt and Pepper

Chop your onion and dice the garlic, add to your crock pot with the can of sauce and tomato paste.  Add in the red pepper along with the vinegar and molasses, stir to combine.  Season the chicken with salt and pepper and add to the sauce mixture, covering evenly.  Cook on low for 8 hours.

Filed under: Daily | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

From Me to You with Love

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Kelly

Happy Valentine’s Day my loves!  If you’re celebrating with a significant other tonight, enjoy! If not, I hope you plan on doing what I am and treating yourself to a delicious dinner of some sort and a glass of wine.  Said delicious dinner has not yet been decided on, but fear not it will be fantastic.  I finally got my shit together, so here’s the recipe I said I was going to post yesterday.  Whining about Live Fit shall resume tomorrow.

When I was younger, one of my favorite after school snacks was pizza rolls; or pizza bagels, or really anything that resembled pizza. Also, if we’re being completely honest with one another there were a few years there in college when I lived off the super sized bags of Totino’s Pizza Rolls.  Anyway, now, I couldn’t tell you the last time I picked up a box of those delicious goodies as they’re not really helpful to my ever permanent fight with my jeans to fit.

However, after my sister’s visit I was left with a plethora of ingredients that included turkey pepperoni, mozzarella, pizza sauce, and wonton wrappers, and I thought to myself, “I bet I can make my own damn pizza rolls.”  So make my own damn pizza rolls I did, and it was easy, delicious, and I’m guessing a lot more kind to my hips, thighs, and ass.

The process was relatively simple, and the only real tips I would offer up are to make sure the sides of your rolls are sealed really well so the sauce doesn’t explode out, and maybe chop the pepperoni a little smaller and DON’T OVERFILL.  This recipe made 24 pizza rolls, and I’m not going to tell you how many I ate between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening.

Better than Your Favorite Frozen Pizza Rolls
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1/2 cup Mozzarella Cheese
20ish Turkey Pepperoni
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Basil
1/4 tsp Oregano
Pinch of Pepper
1/8 cup Parmesan Cheese
24 Wonton Wrappers
Small cup of water

Preheat oven to 450 degrees, and line a baking sheet with foil/parchment paper and spray with non stick spray.  In a large bowl add the sauce, mozzarella cheese, and spices.  Cut the pepperoni into quarters (or even smaller bite size pieces) and add to the bowl.  Stir to mix all the ingredients together.  Place a small spoonful of the mixture into the middle of the wonton wrapper, wet a finger and trace a line on three corners.  Fold the wonton wrapper in half connecting the dry corners to the corners you just wet.  The water acts like a glue and seals the wonton together.  Place the rolls onto your prepared cookie sheet, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and mist with cooking spray.  These will cook for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven.

I’d tell you to wait and let them cool so you don’t scald your mouth, but I think such a warning would be pointless.  So just enjoy the shit out of them and deal with the burnt mouth later.  Smooches!

Filed under: Daily | Tagged: , , , , | 11 Comments »

For once, I wasn’t exaggerating

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Kelly

And here we are again, back to the monotony of the work week.  How is it possible that weekends when I don’t do a single thing go by the fastest?  No, seriously, the extent of my weekend activities involved throwing hot rollers in my hair and venturing to Target.  Mostly because I spent a majority of the weekend like this:

yes, that is a bag of frozen veggies on my back

Since my back looked like this:

The entire upper right 1/4 of it was too swollen to even fit in my jacket.  You can see it there, the swelling even is in my arm.  Tons of fun!  I repeated many cycles of 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off with the veggie while watching garbage on TV, and called it a night before 11 pm.

I woke up Saturday morning, and the swelling had gone down immensely, but it was still pretty tight and sore back there.  I ended up getting caught up in TNT’s marathon of motivation sports movies (Friday Night Lights, We Are Marshall, Miracle) for most of the day, before finally heading out to Target around 4 pm.

The sole purpose of the trip was to purchase groceries for the week, and ingredients to make the Baked Potato Soup recipe I’d seen floating around Pinterest.  I also happened to snag a new crock pot on sale because mine just wasn’t quite big or fancy enough.  This is the recipe I used, except I peeled my potatoes, and added 1/2 tsp of red pepper and black pepper, and I cooked it for 8 hours on low.

The smell of onions and garlic cooking all day was nearly enough to drive me crazy, and by the time 7 pm rolled around and my crock pot timer went off I was ready to eat.  Now, baked potato soup is nothing without its toppings so I quickly fried up some bacon and chopped some chives to throw on top.  A sprinkle of cheddar later, and I was shoveling this into my mouth like I hadn’t eaten for a week.

So, now I have six quarts of potato soup spread out between my refrigerator and freezer.  That’s enough to feed a small army, good thing my sister is coming to visit this weekend and has already requested I save some for her.  Don’t worry Col, you could come visit in three months and I still think there would be some left.  This soup was amazing, I don’t have an immersion blender so I put half of it in my regular blender to smooth it out while leaving the other half full of chunks of potatoes.  I can’t wait to enjoy more for dinner tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…

My back seems to be improving gradually.  I still can’t lift my arm over my head and fully straighten it, but at least now I can reach forward without feeling like something is snapping my arm back to my side.  However, I do not think any lat pull downs or hammer lat pull downs are in my future anytime soon.  We’ll see how things continue to heal.

Filed under: Daily, Weekend Wrap- Ups | Tagged: , , , , | 9 Comments »

Long Winded Catch Up

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Kelly

Well it’s raining, and it’s Tuesday, so there’s that.  I did not have yesterday off like most people, but was just really busy at work and didn’t do much over the weekend worth writing about.  We actually got out of work at 1 pm on Friday, still not really sure why, something about us being awesome hard workers during the holidays.  We’ll just pretend I wasn’t on vacation for most of December.

Getting out early allowed me to squeeze in the final workout of Week One, Phase 1, shoulders and abs.  My shoulders are amazingly weak, and I was somewhat embarrassed about the weights I was using for the exercises.  Guess I’ll need to work on that.  The best part about Phase 1 is you get the weekend off, I can definitely get on board with that.  The rest of Friday was extremely low key and involved sweats, One Tree Hill on Netflix, and a glass or three of wine.

I had every intention of taking myself to the movies on Saturday, but late Friday night I received and email from my BFF who’s getting married in May that my bridesmaids dress was in!  I decided to change my plans and venture into Alexandria on Saturday instead, to pick it up.

 It fits pretty perfectly, except in the chest area where it may need to be taken in some (shocker), and I believe it will be hemmed somewhat.  I’m really happy with my choice of dress and Megh’s choice of dress designer, and I especially love the pockets.  Four months until they say “I do”!

I got home just in time to catch Dani and Adrienne as they were heading out the door to watch football, so I decided to tag along.  I spent the next four hours at the bar drinking beers and eating a pizza, and made it home and into bed by 10:30 that night.  It was lovely.

Sunday brought more relaxing, as in I never changed out of my sweats or put a bra on, also lovely.  I scrounged around in my kitchen and found enough food to throw into the crock pot for dinner, and called it a day.  For being the last of all the food I had in the house, dinner actually turned out really well.  In my crock pot I put three chicken breasts, a pack of taco seasoning, some salsa, and sour cream and cooked it on low for 8 hours.

Once the chicken was done, I shredded it, put some aside in a Tupperware container, and used the rest to make a variation of Mexican Lasagna.  I did a layer of chicken on the bottom, noodles, chicken, sour cream, salsa, cheese, topped with another layer of noodles, chicken, sour cream, salsa and cheese.  Baked for an hour, and then dinner was served.  It was good, and I plan on eating it for lunch the rest of this week, while using the leftover pulled chicken for tacos and quesadillas at night.  I am guessing I’ll be extremely sick of Mexican food by the end of this week.

Yesterday was back to the grind, and I was way too busy for a Monday.  I still managed to fit in the first day of week 2 during lunch, chest and triceps again.  Narrow push-ups still make me laugh with how hard they are.  My triceps are hurting today, actually, I don’t think there’s a day during this past week that my muscles haven’t been sore.

That’s it from me, have a happy day.

Filed under: Daily, Weekend Wrap- Ups | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 12 Comments »

You mean, there’s a world outside my house?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Kelly

So this weekend I did a lot of nothing.  Well, I cooked a few things, but other than that I did a lot of nothing.  Friday after work I went to happy hour with a few of my co-workers, and then found myself slightly buzzed in the grocery store at 9 pm at night.  Thank god for my list and budget, otherwise who knows what would have happened.  Actually I know, I would have ended up with 7 frozen pizzas and a bag of cheez puffs.  Luckily, that did not happen.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling like complete death.  I’m blaming a 24 hour bug, because unless I all of a sudden lost all of my tolerance, there is no was 2 beers and 1 glass of wine would cause me to barf three times in three hours.  So yeah, after the third barfing occurrence I popped a Phenegran and passed out until 5 pm at night.  Apparently it was almost 70 degrees on Saturday, but I wouldn’t know since I was comatose in my bed.  Oh well, I’m still hoping for a giant snow storm at one point this winter.

Sunday I woke up feeling much better, and managed to drag myself out of bed to do something with all the food I bought on Friday night.  First up was something I’d seen in multiple places recently, and struck my interest while also looking delicious.

egg cups!

So simple!  All I did was place two pieces of deli ham in my cupcake tray (sprayed with non-stick spray) drop in two mozzarella balls, crack an egg, and season with pepper and seasoned salt.  I cooked them for 15 min, which was a tad too long, at 375 and they were still amazing.  If you like your yolk a little runnier I suggest 10-12 minutes.

While my breakfast was cooking, I got to preparing my dinner in the crock pot.  Jess posted this recipe last week, and the second I saw it I knew it was for me.  Things I did not add, Mexican oregano, cilantro (gross), corn (because I forgot), and black beans because I couldn’t find a bag of frozen veggies that had some.  It was good, but a little bland, which I suspect is my fault for omitting some key ingredients.  I remember to throw the corn in after my dinner last night, so tonight’s will at least have that.  I’ll definitely make this again, but probably use a pack of taco seasoning, and maybe some hot sauce.

Cheesy Crockpot Chicken Chili

Other than that I watched a lot of TV.  The whole first season of Homeland (awesome) some One Tree Hill, and yesterday mostly football.  Then last night I had a dream that I had a Theology test today after only going to one class the entire year so far.  Talk about dream panic.  Luckily I woke up and remembered I graduated college almost 5 years ago and there are no tests to take today.  Phew.

Hope you all had a nice weekend, and that Monday doesn’t suck too much.

Filed under: Daily, Weekend Wrap- Ups | Tagged: , , , , , | 8 Comments »

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