Greek Chicken and Potato Pancakes

I was going to walk a bit before work yesterday, but it was raining.  Although this morning I thought to myself “why didn’t you just put a jacket on with a hood on and suck it up?!”  Ha!

Breakfast was two blueberry lemon pancakes and two pieces of sausage – so quick and delish.  I love that you can make a whole batch of pancakes over the weekend when you have time and then just grab and go on a weekday morning.

I went to test my blood sugar before working out – damn.  111.  Perfect, but not high enough.  I ate a cup of cantaloupe and honeydew melon, drank a 10 ounce bottle of orange juice and did a Sam’s Club run to let that do it’s work before working out.  One of the orange juice packages I bought a couple weeks ago for the office expired in July and had a nasty dark color to it, so I did a quick run to return and replace it.  By the time I got to the gym my blood sugar was 190 – nice!

Not nice?  Seeing Christmas decorations and hearing the holiday music piping through Sam’s Club!

I am back to strength training.  I am back to Bite Size Fitness – this time for her 12 week strength training program.  On tap yesterday was chest – which took me 15 minutes to complete, then finished off with a 2 mile walk on the treadmill while watching Rachael Ray.  I have to say, I never really watched her program before because it didn’t come on during lunch time, but she seems just a bit fake to me on her show – do any of you guys watch it?  It was like she was forcing herself to laugh at the guest – it was just kind of weird.

You know what a Pinterest and Instagram whore I am.  Over the weekend when I was meal planning, I realized I had spring roll wrappers on the top shelf of our pantry.  I went to Pinterest and quickly found Damn Delicious’s shrimp and quinoa spring rolls – yum!  How good do these look?

I didn’t follow her recipe exactly, because while she roasted her shrimp, I used my tried and true shrimp cocktail recipe to cook the shrimp.  I had a packaged quinoa so cooked that up while I get everything in place to make the spring rolls.  Um, now I remember why the shrimp roll wrappers were on the top of the pantry.  I suck and rolling them.  I tried not softening up the wrappers too much, and while they were able to roll up, the texture was all wrong.  Then I decided to soften them up a bit more, only to have them tear and break and fall apart.  After several minutes of trying, instead of throwing them on the top shelf of the pantry, like I am sure I did before when I failed, I threw them straight into the garbage.

So I made the filling into a stirfry!  Just added some bean sprouts, and called it a day.

I had some chicken breasts and needed inspiration.  I stumbled upon this new to me blog called The Sugar Hit!  Love the photography, the quirky attitude this woman has to cooking.   She had a recipe for Chicken Slouvaki with herbed feta fries with a mustard aioli – doesn’t that sound fricken delicious!

I adapted the recipe a bit though.  First off, while I would love to have potatoes IN a pita bread with all that ooey goey aioli, that would definitely put me way over the carb department for a single meal.  So I took inspiration from her dish.  I did follow her instructions for the chicken.  I marinated it for over 24 hours, and holy balls was it flavorful.  The lemon and oregano just popped – so flavorful!  I ended up grilling that on our cast iron indoor grill.  Then I decided to make potato pancakes and drizzle herbed feta over the top, with sliced cucumber and tzatziki sauce on the side.

Super Simple Potato Pancakes

• 2 potatoes that are already baked and shredded *
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon flour
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper

Mix all the ingredients together.  I used our deep fryer, but you could use oil in a skillet.  I made my pancakes on the small side – just about bigger than a golf ball size before I flattened and cooked them.  These took just about 2 minutes to cook in my fryer.  I’d say to cook about 1.5 – 2 minutes a side in the skillet.  Because the potatoes are already cooked, you are just heating and crisping them up.  I ended up with 15 mini potato pancakes.  * over the weekend I always bake up 2-4 baked potatoes and stick them in the fridge – makes for a quick weeknight side dish – you can make pancakes like I did, or stove top chopped potatoes with rosemary, or twice baked potatoes – the possibilities are endless.

I like how the potato shreds and leaves the jacket behind.

And I wish I had a better picture of dinner, but this was so good.  The chicken was so tender, juicy and flavorful.  The pancakes were crispy and just that hint of herbed feta was delicious and I loves me some English cucumber – no peeling!

My blood sugar was on the low side before bed, so I had a few handfuls of pretzels – and it was 119 before bed, and this morning it was 108.  Perfect!  Louise, I think you’ll be happy with those numbers!

And even though I am trying to watch what I eat, not eat cookies at the office, etc., I do have a guilty pleasure Instagram person I follow called Food Beast and he posts the most ridiculous foods – check out this peanut butter and oreo sandwich??!!

That actually does nothing for me, since I don’t have a sweet tooth, but when I showed this to Tony he said “why didn’t I ever think to dip oreos into peanut butter?!”  Well, maybe it’s because we don’t keep oreos in the house, and neither of our parents had that kind of shit in our pantries growing up.

I almost forgot to add – got all my steps in yesterday!

My food is all packed, and I have 35 minutes before I need to leave for work, so I am going to squeeze in a quick 15 minute walk to the river and back before hitting the road.  I made a broccoli cheddar potato. . . souffle? last night for breakfast this morning.  I put everything in the food processor, so it’s really puffy, so it’s not really a quiche.  If it works out I’ll post the recipe tomorrow.

Make it a great day!