The night before last when we went to bed, our room was so hot.  We knew the temps were going to drop later on in the night, so Tony set up a fan at our bedroom door facing out, and opened our bedroom window to pull in the cooler air.  I had my alarm set for 6:00 to go to the gym, but when I woke up to turn it off, I was in heaven.  I’ve said before that Tony doesn’t like to sleep with the window open – he’s always cold and I am always hot.

I had a gorgeous breeze blowing over my face, my pillow was perfect and I didn’t want to waste that feeling by getting up.  I slept another hour and it felt great!  When I did get up, I posted my blog post, jumped in the shower, put my lunch together, talked to Tony for a bit when I realized I never put anything together for breakfast.  I had to leave because construction is making my commute about 20-30 minutes longer than it should be – it took me 65 minutes to drive to work yesterday morning when it should only take me about 35 minutes.

So I did a quick stop by McDonald’s and while my brain was saying “can I have a sausage McMuffin with egg and a hash brown?”  My mouth actually said “I’ll have the blueberry oatmeal.”  By the time I got to work I had to reheat it – it was okay – the blueberries were juicy.   This comes in at 290 calories, 8 fat, 49 carbs, 5 fiber and 6 protein.

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I ended up running errands again at lunch – one of my co-workers doesn’t have a car, so we ran to Target and T.J. Maxx.  I bought these amazing chips at T.J. Maxx – I’ve never heard of them before, but they are made from flax, chia seed, quinoa, radish and broccoli seed – and a serving only has 95 mg of sodium.  Slightly spicy and supa crunchy.  I’ll definitely buy these again.

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When we got back I put my lunch together – more leftovers!  The final remainder of my orzo salad, I chopped up some more greens, added shredded carrots and then 3 ounces of leftover chicken.  The chicken was dry, so I had some tzatziki sauce and sriracha and tossed the chicken in that and put it on top of my salad.

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Um, this tasted like ass.  The tzatziki/sriracha combo tasted awful, and my greens kinda got too wilted.  I ate about 2-3 bites of this and called it a wash.  So I went to see if I had anything to scrape together a lunch and I had a slice of ham, American cheese and 1 slice of rye bread to make half a sammie.  On the side was a 1 oz. bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos.  Quite possibly the best snack on the planet.

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I am in charge of replenishing our pop fridge at work.  A couple months ago, one of our local grocery stores had a sale, buy two 12 packs, get 3 free!  I kind of went hog wild getting all different kinds of flavors.  Um, turns out everyone mostly just wanted diet Coke and diet Dr. pepper, so I am stuck with LOTS of pop I am sure will be in there for ages.  As I was restocking the fridge I saw a can of root beer.  I wondered if I could make a sweet and spicy glaze for our grilled chicken.  I googled it a bit, and in the end mixed a bunch of recipes together to come up with this.

O Olive Oil Sweet & Spicy Root Beer BBQ Glaze 

makes 1 cup of glaze, or 16 tablespoons – per tablespoon:  25 calories, 2 fat, 6.6 carbs, 0 fiber and 0 protein.

  • 1 can regular root beer
  • ¼ cup O Olive Oil white balsamic vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons O Olive Oil Clementine
  • 1/8 cup brown sugar
  • ½ jalapeno, cut in half
  • juice of half an orange
  • 1 tablespoon sriracha
  • zest of half an orange
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • Pinch of salt

Put all ingredients into a sauce pan.  Let cook until reduced to 1 cup, then depending on your heat level, either remove the jalapeno pepper, or puree the glaze with the jalapeno.  Put glaze on meat of choice during the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.  The sriracha really kicked this glaze up, so I removed the jalapeno.

I was lucky enough to be picked by Dave at eRecipe cards to participate in a recipe contest using O Olive Oil products.  The other day I received my two bottles free directly from the company.

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I was a bit worried about my glaze recipe because they state:   “HINT: these are tasting oils/vinegars, not really meant for cooking and certainly not for frying. Best ideas will be salads and vegetable dishes that show off the unique aspects of the oils as finishing a dish.”

But this turned out delicious – I love a sweet/savory combo, so this was a winner for me – I ended up using about 2 tablespoons of glaze on my bone-in chicken breast.  Thanks Dave and O Olive Oil for letting me participate in this event!  I’ll soon have a link on eRecipecards.com where you can vote for my recipe if you like – there is prize money people! Open-mouthed smile  Momma needs a new pair of shoes.  (Helen – insert link – I thought you would like that!).

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I think next time I’ll even marinate the chicken overnight with some of this glaze as well as a finishing sauce.  You could taste the slightly citrus flavor from the orange olive oil and I love the bite of the white balsamic vinegar.  See that piece of chicken on that plate?  The only thing left was a tiny back bone and I think I licked that too before giving it to the dog! Open-mouthed smile

I am going to Chicago today!!  Meeting up with Hannah and we plan on hitting up the Green City Market in Lincoln Park, then HOPEFULLY get into Rick Bayless’s new restaurant Xoco for lunch (insert link) and then check out the French Market in the train station.  Should be a fun day!  Well, I think pretty much any day not at work is a fun day!

Show of hands who’s been to Chicago?!  I used to live about 15 minutes from the City.  Now that I am 90 minutes away, I hardly go down there anymore – so sad I have like one of the greatest cities in my backyard and don’t take advantage of it as often as I should.  Make it a great day!