Thursday, 2/24/2011

We enjoyed more Smoky Chicken Tortilla Soup, minus the tortillas, for dinner tonight.  I spooned some of the soup broth over the top of rice for Katie's dinner.  She also ate some cheddar cheese.  

Katie loves to eat fruit, but it wreaks havoc on her poor little bottom.  Since she's had too much fruit in the last couple of days, she had to stick to a plain, boring meal of rice and cheese for dinner.  In other news, here's a photo of her outside in our front yard this morning next to the snowman we made.  What fun!  

Wednesday, 2/23/2011

All day long we have been expecting snow.  And, all day long, each time I checked the weather forecast, the snow was expected to arrive two hours later than the last time I checked.  Even without snow, it is cold.  So, we enjoyed hearty bowls of Smoky Chicken Tortilla Soup, minus the tortillas for dinner.  Don't get me wrong, I love the tortillas in this soup.  The problem is that you can't buy a small bag of tortilla chips.  You are required to buy a bag big enough to feed a family for a week, and I end up eating all the extras.  In an effort to curb my unnecessary chip crunching, we did without the chips in our soup.  The soup was fine without them. 

Tuesday, 1/11/2011

We finished the marinated flank steak tonight with a Southwest salad on the side.  I made the salad with leafy romaine lettuce, corn, crushed Tostitos Artisan Fire Roasted Chipotle chips, and Marie's creamy chipotle ranch dressing.  I've been looking for this dressing for months and finally found it at the Fred Meyer's in Redmond.  What a lucky find!  The salad was very tasty.  The only thing that could have made it better was bacon:)

Sunday, 11/14/2010

Katie is the only one in the house who ate dinner tonight.  We had our good friends Melissa, Dave and Lucia over for a big lunch after church.  It was so very nice to catch up with them.  The last time we saw each other was Easter weekend.  Yikes...that was a long time ago.  For lunch, we recreated the delicious bacon, chicken sandwiches we made a couple months ago.  We couldn't find the same marinade mix at the store, so we opted for a carne asada chipotle marinade.  It said it was good for beef, chicken, or pork.  Thankfully, it truly was good for chicken:)  We made a banana, mandarin orange, and mango fruit salad to go with the sandwiches.  

For dessert, we had butterscotch, orange oatmeal cookies in bar form.  The directions said to bake the bars for 18-22 minutes or until golden brown.  Well, after 18 minutes, they were quite golden.  Unfortunately, they didn't set up very well.  Luckily, they still tasted delicious and held together better a day later than when relatively fresh out of the oven.  

Oh yes, dinner.  Ben and I just weren't hungry for dinner after such a large lunch.  We snacked a bit, but had nothing formal.  Katie was hungry around 5pm.  She had chicken nuggets, dipped in ketchup, of course;) After a quick Skype with my parents, we took her to bed.  Hopefully, an extra hour of sleep tonight will make up for the missed nap today. 

Monday, 10/25/2010

Just like yesterday, today didn't go as I planned.  Our internet connection went down yesterday afternoon and still wasn't back today.  I waited around the house this morning for a call regarding the service appointment that never came.  So, our morning grocery shopping trip was postponed until this afternoon.  The technician showed up about 10 minutes before I was going to put Katie down for her nap.  She was so excited to have the tech in the house, that there was no way I could get her down until he was gone.  She kept saying his name, Jason, and "fix it" over and over again.  It was pretty cute:)  She also kept trying to make sure he knew that there was a vacuum in the room with him by saying "vacuum" repeatedly too. 

When our connection was re-established and Jason said goodbye, Katie finally went down for her nap.  We weren't ready to go grocery shopping until 4pm.  I looked out the window and saw a sheet of rain outside.  Great.  I called Ben and offered to pick him up from work so that he wouldn't have to come home via the bus in that weather.  He was kind enough to accept my offer and then go grocery shopping with us.  Katie had been asking to be in the car cart at the store all day.  When we got to Fred Meyer, the car cart was already claimed by another family.  Fortunately for us, the dad offered us the cart since his son had been in it many times.  His son was not very happy about it.  In fact, we "drove" past him once and he glared at us.  Oh well.  At least Katie was happy! 

When we got home, we broiled chicken breasts that I had marinated in Grill Mates Chipotle Pepper Marinade.  The chicken was moist and delicious.  Ben and I really enjoyed it.  We had iceberg lettuce wedge salads with the chicken.  Katie would not even touch the chicken to her lips tonight.  Instead, she ate half a hot dog, dipped into ketchup, and drank water with ice and a little diet lemon/lime carbonated water in it.  She was a happy girl:)

Monday, 9/13/2010

This might be my easiest, quickest post yet.  Tonight we had the same chipotle chicken sandwich that we had last night.  The only difference was that we used cheddar cheese instead of provolone.  Katie still isn't interested in this chicken, so she had a hot dog dipped in ketchup and some grapes.

Sunday, 9/12/2010

Ok, if last night's chicken was great...tonight it was fan-frickin-tastic!  I mentioned in yesterday's post that the chipotle pepper marinated chicken was of pub sandwich quality.  So, tonight we made our very own pub sandwiches.  Here's how we made them:

Marinated chicken breast- We sliced one left over breast in half, making two thin-cut breasts.  After being reheated in the microwave, I topped each piece of chicken with a slice of provolone cheese. The heat from the chicken helped to melt the cheese. 

Bread-  We purchased heavenly Panino Rolls, made by The Essential Baking Company in Seattle.  We sliced two rolls in half, buttered them and broiled them until golden brown. After they were broiled, we spread Boar's Head Savory Remoulade, Cajun Style Mayonnaise, on one half of each roll.

Bacon-  The bacon just made this sandwich.  I pan fried four slices of thick cut bacon until crispy.  We used almost two slices each.  The remainder we shared with Katie and had as dessert;)

I am pleased to know that we have enough ingredients to make these sandwiches again this week--can't wait!

Saturday, 9/11/2010

A couple days ago I put four chicken breasts into a chipotle pepper marinade.  My original intention was to use it that night, but we ended up having other things instead.  Tonight we needed to have dinner in a hurry and grilling the chicken was our fastest option.  I learned a valuable lesson...marinate chicken for a long time!  The chicken was awesome--the kind you hope to find on a pub sandwich.  This was the first time we have used this flavor of Grill Mates marinade.  We were both really impressed.  We served it with a caesar salad.  

Katie wouldn't even touch the chicken to her mouth.  She opted for a "ha dahg".  That is toddler speak for "hot dog".

Wednesday, 8/11/2010

Tonight I made the Southwest salad I planned to make last night.  It turned out just okay.  I tossed romaine lettuce, shredded rotisserie chicken, and corn in Briannas Chipotle and Cheddar dressing.  I had high hopes for the dressing, but actually think it was a bit too sweet and was definitely lacking heat.  Instead of breaking up tortillas into the salad, I decided to eat them separately so that I could down some salsa;)  Previously, we used Marie's Creamy Chipotle Ranch for this salad and loved the dressing.  I went to three grocery stores this week and can't find it anymore.  Maybe there is still hope, since it is still shown as a product on Marie's website.