Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

Thank you for all your comments on yesterday’s post!  I have yet to respond to them personally, but I will in the next couple days.  I love you guys!

In an effort to turn my frown upside down, I decided yesterday that I would pick just three things throughout the day that made me happy and smile.  First off, I LOVE singing in the car.  No one to care if I am slightly off key (you’re a little pitchy dog!) and it makes me happy, and it just so happened a couple songs came on that I knew all the words too and belted them out like I was on stage without a microphone.  Second, some of you know behind the scenes about my job, which I won’t go into detail here, but Tony listened to me bitch, again, and calmed me down.  And I ended the day with meeting Tony to get our free flu shots.  I am proud of Tony because he hates shots, and had to do his weekly blood test so he got poked twice yesterday.  Um, I gave myself four shots of insulin yesterday, so suck it up man!  (Ha – just kidding Tony!).

On Sunday night, I made a beef roast with baked potatoes.  Tony wasn’t very hungry, so I turned his half of his potato into the base of my breakfast.  I put the mostly scooped out potato half under the broiler while I cooked my egg whites, spinach and ham in the microwave, to get a crispy skin.  Then stuffed the egg mixture inside, topped with shredded Swiss cheese, and finished it up under the broiler.  Delish!  These black grapes are amazing too – no seeds and have such a strong grape flavor.

Over the weekend when Tony and I went grocery shopping, there were tons of stuff on the $1 rack.  For any new readers, the $1 rack is a produce rack at my grocery store for items that are SUPER ripe and have to be bought and typically used within a day or two of buying them.  My record?  18 bananas for $1!  This time I got two packages of cherry tomatoes and 6 red peppers for $1 each.

I decided to make roasted red pepper soup!

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I knew I wanted to take the soup for lunch, but decided that I need to kick it up a notch.  It wasn’t until I saw blog reader Christine’s comment about making meatballs out of the pork posticker filling that I decided that was what I was going to do.  I had leftover cooked pasta, and chopped baby spinach – a meal in a bowl was born!  I simple cooked off 8 marble size pieces of the pork filling and pan fried it, just enough to brown the edges, but not cook all the way through, because I knew I’d be heating it up at work.

This was so filling and delicious, even if the picture kind of sucks ass.  I use an empty office to shoot my meals and I was hungry after my 2.75 mile walk at lunch.  I only took four pictures!

Last week when I was meal planning, I sent this link of Lindsday’s hoisin pork with rice noodles and said “would you eat that?”   He replied “if you made the noodles crispy I would.”   There is a place we go for Chinese food that has a pan fried noodle dish that Tony likes, so this made the menu this week!

I ended up using one 8 ounce pork chop for the two of us.  Tony doesn’t like thick cut meat anymore, so I sliced the pork really thin.

So a few things about this recipe.  I wish I would have read the comments because Lindsey suggested making more marinade, but keeping it to the side and tossing it with the pork and noodles once the dish was completed.  I couldn’t add the other things she suggested like thai chili sauce, or sriracha to Tony’s dish because that’s too spicy for him.  Second, I overcooked the pork.  For slices that thin, a minute tops would have been plenty.  But I was cooking the pork in batches, and I thought by resting the pork on the veggies would help, but they still were a bit dry.

Hello sucky kitchen light picture!  I ended up adding carrots, red peppers, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, cilantro and chopped peanuts to mine.  I did add sriracha to mine, and I actually LOVED the flavor of this dish, just wish there was more sauce.  And no matter how I tried, I could not pan fry the noodles, so there was no texture to the noodles that Tony would have liked.  I told him that we should just stick with his famous chicken fried rice!  Check out his video here on how he makes it.

I was able to sync up my fit bit – glad to have a few more fit bit friends!  I love all the smiles I get when I hit 10,000 steps!

I got my steps in and then some!  I have to tell you, I am more conscious of my steps when wearing the fit bit.  I would make several trips to the copier, etc., and with my walk at lunch, it added up!

I have to get this show on the road – I am in the process of making blueberry pancakes, I still need to take pictures of a dessert I made for a recipe contest (that Tony said turned out amazeballs!) and shower and leave the house, all in 20 minutes.  No problem!

Make it a great day!