I was back to the good ole egg/cheese/ham sammie for breakfast yesterday – except this time my cheese of choice was pepper jack.  My store had it on sale for $1.99 a pound!!  So spicy and good šŸ˜€

with 1/2 a Fuji apple on the side

Does anyone subscribe to Bon Appetit?  I am actually really starting to like this magazine.  In the front they have people write in asking for recipes they’ve had at restaurants or bed and breakfast places.  This months issue included a roasted red pepper soup, which I absolutely love.  I adapted it though, because I didn’t do the anchovy topping, and I used more vegetable broth.

luckily I bought 5 red peppers, it only called for three but I bought a couple extra for the week for snacks – two of them were rotten – and you couldn’t even tell from the outside – doesn’t this one look perfect?

I also used canned diced tomatoes – since I knew I would be using my stick blender to puree the soup, I left the red pepper in pretty big chunks.

lots of garlic too! šŸ˜€

After I added the vegetable broth and let it cook down some, I tasted it and it was . . .boring!  So I added a tablespoon of this:

And it was perfect!  Best part – this makes six 2 cup servings for only 145 calories, 12 fat, 5.8 carbs, 1.5 fiber  for two cups!

Red Pepper Soup (adapted from Bon Appetit)

3 red peppers, chopped
14 ounce tomatoes, diced
32 ounces vegetable broth
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup hazelnuts
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions

Put everything in a pot, let simmer for 30 minutes. Using a stick blender, blend until smooth. Makes six 2 cup servings.  Biz Note:  I could have reduced the olive oil to 1/8 cup and easily left out the hazelnuts – you really couldn’t taste them. Still, I think 145 calories for 2 cups of soup isn’t bad!
I had a ham and pepper jack cheese sammie in a low carb wrap on the side:
With a generous amount of this mustard – OMG, so good!  The apple part of this mustard is actually apple cider vinegar – so the punch of the vinegar with the spiciness of the ginger was an amazing combination.   Oh how I love mustard!   Thanks again Karena for the mustards!!
My afternoon snack was a handful of almonds.  I am slowly getting used to them not being roasted or salted!
Dinner was so quick to put together.   I made my Cincinnati chili – its literally ready in 20 minutes!
2 tablespoons of chili powder may seem like a lot, but its perfect
While I normally make chili three ways over pasta with cheddar cheese, we had veal hot dogs that needed to be eaten.  These are from our deli and THEY ARE HUGE!  (that’s what she said!)
I boiled them while the chili cooked
I weighed mine, and it was six ounces, so I cut mine in half.  My bun is 2 ounces, I had 2 ounces of chili, 3 ounce hot dog, 1 ounce cheddar cheese, 2 ounces of kidney beans and an ounce of potato chips on the side.
and sliced fresh jalapenos!
this was difficult to eat, so I ended up using a knife and fork!
Stats for Monday:

 

 

Exercise: 30 minutes elliptical, 15 minutes upper body strength train, 5 minutes abs on the ball.
Time to jump in the shower – I can’t wait for lunch – Thai basil wraps in baked wontons and a vegetarian pho soup!  Marissa, I think you’ll like it – I’ll post the recipe tomorrow.
Oh, and I ran across another food porn site!  It’s called www.refrigeratorsoup.com – you can submit pictures much like Tastespotting and Foodgawker!    I am still waiting for Healthy Yum to come back – maybe by next week?
Not sure who won BSI last week for cocoa powder – so I’ll hopefully announce this weeks host tomorrow.