Chicken Parm = Delicious Comfort Food

So after all the snow it was nice to wake up to sunny skies this morning.   What I am not thrilled about is the temps!   Right now it is 5 degrees outside, with a windchill that makes it feel like -2.  It’s days like these that I really don’t miss my commute to Chicago! 😀

Yesterday’s breakfast kind of looks like dog food, but trust me, it was delicious!   I diced a small baked potato and Pam fried it.  Then I added 1/2 cup of egg white and a handful of baby spinach – then splashed with Tabasco – so like a potato hash?

With a small bowl of fruit – my store sold this fruit salad for $1.49  a pound last weekend!

Lunch was just cheezy goodness!  I know Sophia will appreciate this grilled sandwich pic! 😀   I had 1 cup of my Buffalo Chicken Chili, 1/2 ounce cheddar cheese and 1 tsp. smart balance sour cream:

Then my grilled cheese!  2 oz. Polish rye, 1.5 ounce lean deli ham, 1/2 cup baby spinach, 1/2 sliced jalapeno, 2 slices 2% American cheese.  A co-worker bought and hated this fat free margarine so she let me have it.  I think the brand name is I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, but in any event 1 tablespoon is only 5 calories! I used that to grill up my sammie – so good!

And since you couldn’t tell from the above picture, there was a layer of fresh jalapenos!

I bought a bag of pears on the dollar rack – every day I touch them and they are still hard.  I decided to cut into one and its kind of like an Asian pear where the skin never gets soft – perfect way to finish my lunch.

I probably make chicken parmesan once ever two or three weeks – I just love it!  It helps that I have canned our marinara sauce so that’s always ready to go, although I used our last jar last night 🙁

I usually dip my chicken into egg whites – I don’t like whole eggs for some reason.  Last night I just used a bit of beef broth that I seasoned – worked great!  You really just need something wet to dip it in so the bread crumbs stay on.

I always use a combination of 1 tsp. real butter, 1 tsp. canola oil and spray the pan with Pam.

The last few minutes on the second side I add mozzarella cheese – love how Tony’s chicken looks like a heart!  I love you Tony! 😀

I drained the pasta but left some of the water in the bottom of the pot – I added baby spinach for a minute just to wilt before adding it to my plate:  6 oz. chicken breast, 5 oz. cooked high fiber pasta, 1/2 cup marinara and 1 oz. part skim mozzarella with a handful of wilted spinach:

After seeing the picture of the short rib grilled cheese sandwich on the cover of last month’s Bon Appetit magazine – I haven’t been able to shake the need to make it.  I bought short ribs over the weekend with the intention of having short ribs with a celery root potato puree, but after I brought them home, 3 pounds of short ribs really isn’t a whole lot of meat.

So last night I decided I was going to braise them to just make the sandwiches.  I opened the first package and damnit if they were bad!   The sell by date was February 8 – rats!

So on to Plan B!  I decided I would use the celery root and potato for my BSI recipe this week which is lemon zest!   The first part of my recipe was to make a lemon chili oil.  I put 3/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil on low heat and added dried chilis and some lemon rind that still had a bit of lemon pulp on it.  I just heated it for 15 minutes and let it cool.

I found this oil/vinegar set at Tuesday Morning for $4.99.  For some odd reason they had initials of only “B” and “M” for some reason!   Here’s my Bizzy set!

So then it was time for Part B of my BSI recipe.  Except I can’t find the celery root.  Really? How do you lose 2 pounds of celery root??  So you’ll have to wait for the second part.  This is a recipe I made up – in my head it sounds amazing, but we’ve seen where my recipe ideas haven’t had such a great outcome before! 😀

I met a new blog friend!  My friend Amanda asked if I knew this blogger because she lives near my community – her name is Michelle and her blog is here.  Nope, I hadn’t seen it before but I absolutely love it.  She has a cooking group called HBin5 – Healthy Bread in Five Minutes based on this book:

So excited to try new bread recipes from this – thanks for letting me join the group Michelle!

And a big thank you to one of my commenters yesterday who pointed out that my stats for yesterday showed 0% alcohol even though I had put in my beer that I had at dinner.  What I learned is that if the food doesn’t have a grade next to it, it doesn’t have ALL the nutritional information! Case in point, I typed in Miller Lite because that’s what I had – but they only had the calories and carbs, nothing else.  So after I typed in “light beer” it gave it a grade and adjusted my stats: so the day before yesterday was a B-

Wednesday’s stats:

I also did a 30 minute run jog on the treadmill and 10 minutes of abs on the ball – AND I held a plank for two minutes which is a record for me! 😀

Off to put together my breakfast and lunch today.  Oh, come back tomorrow – I will have had my 200,000 page view by tomorrow so I have a great giveaway to celebrate! 😀