Monday, April 30, 2012

Sweet & Sour Chicken

This is a cheap go-to meal that is often made at our place. While the prep time normally does take at least 30 minutes, the fact that the entire meal is normally under $10 makes it worth it!

Sauce:
2T ketchup
2T Vinegar
2T Low Sodium soy sauce
2T fresh grated ginger root
Juice from can of pineapple
Pepper

1. Mix sauce ingredients together
2. Throw some olive oil on a skillet and brown the chopped chicken breast
3. Remove chicken, cook peppers until tender-crisp
4. Add chicken, pineapple, and sauce mixture to peppers on skillet
5. Simmer until chicken is cooked fully and sauce is thickened
6. Serve over rice or quinoa

Serves 6.

Chop a red pepper. I had both kinds, so I did half red and half yellow. Yummers. 
The cheapest boneless, skinless chicken I've found around here sells for $1.79/lb. But this is a pretty good deal, too. If I have some extra $ in the food budget, I try to get organic. 
Chop up your chicken. 
Drain your pineapple into a separate bowl. When it's on sale, I love to use fresh pineapple. So yummy!
Brown your chicken. 

Remove chicken, and add peppers until they're tender/crisp. Add in the chicken again and pour your yummy mixture over it all. Cook for about 5 minutes until the sauce thickens. 

The original recipe called for rice, but I had some quinoa on hand that I was able to use. In moderation, it's a healthy alternative to brown rice. 

The final, yummy product! 

After entering the ingredients into myfitnesspal.com to track my calories, I thought I'd share the data for this meal:
Per serving:
Calories: 332
Carbs: 31g
Fat: 9g
Protein 38g

Thursday, April 26, 2012

So I've Lost Some Weight




This cool little gizmo will automatically update itself every time I update my account on myfitnesspal.com Here's my current weight loss!!!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Looks Can Be Deceiving


My goal this week is to count calories every day. Every. I've been falling away from the habit, and just relying on estimating. I guess I just had too much confidence in myself, which is obvious from today's mistake. Read on....

Here's a question of the day: 

Which of the following has the most calories? 

A. One cranberry-orange club sandwich

or...

B. Three McDonald's cheeseburgers






Yes, you probably saw it coming. The correct answer is A. Dumb. So annoyed.

To my surprise, today at work we were catered in really yummy sandwiches from a local sandwich shop. Yes! Free lunch, and it's semi-healthy, too! 

...Or so I thought.

As I went in to my online calorie tracker, I was absolutely horrified. One sandwich. Actually, I only ate about three quarters, but one club sandwich had 976 calories. 976 calories!!!!! Three McDonald's cheeseburgers don't even have that many calories combined!

Ok, so I'm not advocating that the burgers are more worth it than the sandwich, but I guess this scenario made me learn the lesson (once again) the hard way. Just because I think something sounds or looks healthy, doesn't always mean that's the case. Sounds elementary, but this incident was one I really wasn't planning on, and I guess I'll try my best to learn the lesson for once and all.

That being said, my calories are all used up for today. So excited to eat celery for dinner.



nutritional info provided from: http://www.mcalistersdeli.com/nutrition/