Saturday, January 28, 2012

Skinny Soup



Okie dokie...the holidays were fun and all but it's time to stop the party already! In a desperate attempt to drop those party pounds I came up with this soup recipe. I shared it with a friend who stopped over the other day and she really liked it. I told another friend what I'd been eating for lunch and she wanted the recipe... I guess we're all thinking along the same lines. My recipe collection is getting a little out of control and I can't seem to locate them in a hurry, the blog is a pretty safe place to keep it...and to share it of course.


Skinny Soup


4# Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (or thighs for more calories)

3 large Yellow Onions, quartered and sliced

2 Red Bell Peppers, diced

4 stalks Celery, diced

4 tsp dried Rosemary, crushed

2 tsp Kosher Salt

1 tsp Crushed Dried Red Pepper

1/2 tsp Paprika

1 tsp Black Pepper

4 cups Chicken Stock or Broth

Steamed Broccoli, about 8 cups


Put the chicken in the bottom of a crock pot, cover with the onions, red bell pepper and celery. Grind the crushed red pepper in a mortar and pestle to break them up a bit, add the crushed red pepper and the rest of the herbs and spices to a food processer and grind them up a bit...then add to the crock pot, add the chicken broth - you want it to cover all of the ingredients - you may add more chicken broth or use water if you need to. Cook for 10 hours on low, or high for 4-5 hours, I plug it in when I go to bed and it's done in the morning. Remove the cooked chicken from the crock pot to cool, then shred or dice. I steam the broccoli after the soup is ready to go, then I put 1/2+ cup of the shredded chicken into individual containers, top with 1/2 to 1 cup of broccoli - then top it off with the veggie broth.


Label and pop into the fridge or freezer, this really helps me stay on track when I'm trying to think thin - half the battle of dieting is having healthy options ready to go. I've been having this for lunch, just pop it into the microwave and add some sliced green onion or cilantro...it's good and good for ya!




Saturday, January 21, 2012

Wax and Water Woes

Who knew...it takes a flood to get a lazy blogger to get back on track. I'm not whining...life is good...messy...but good.
The Party Barn was a gigantic kiddie pool yesterday, the blowing snow clogged the ditch and all that water had to go somewhere - the path of least resistance was the field, then the back yard and right through the Party Barn.
Oh my.
I don't want to go out there and sift through my soggy icy belongings...whatever is gone is just that...gone. I know there are books and pictures and Christmas decorations that are dumpster bound. I told myself this morning that there will be no sadness over any of it...but craaappp...my cherished case of 8-track tapes was bobbing in my barn/lake! Go ahead and laugh...granted, I no longer listen to them, but it was always fun to pop open that case because it brought back a flood of memories of high school, dates with my hubby and grand adventures with old friends. I shall bid a fond farewell to Carly Simon, Dan Fogelberg, the Guess Who. We've had a lot of laughs over the years about those tapes...why can't we get rid of them? It's time to move on...seriously.

While I've been avoiding the barn today I've been working on a couple of paint projects. A lot of the project girls out there are having fun with the Annie Sloan paints...of course I had to jump in and try them.

Here's the first one...a close up of a little drop front desk that I bought for forty bucks back in the eighties...yikes...that's a long time ago. I remember the day I bought it and that I crammed the thing into the back of a corvette...heck..who needs eight track tapes to remember stuff?!?
The big selling point of the paint is that you don't have to prime, but I'm not really sold on that - I put two coats of the color Old White on this desk and I could throw on a third... I'm not going to but it sure could use it. Next up I put on the wax that they sell to seal the paint, I used the clear wax and it changed up the color quite a bit...lots of yellowing but that's fine. I bought the dark wax but I don't think I'll use it on this one.
Sorry for the poor photo quality but I wanted to show how two coats doesn't really cover.Here's the little desk, not quite finished but it has a couple coats of wax and I'm thinking I can start putting a few things away - too bad I can't find the hinges for the lower shelf door, they'll turn up eventually....I'll just make sure that whatever I put on the bottom shelf looks nice...it could be months before I find 'em.

The next project is a lingerie chest that I'm painting in Annie Sloan Graphite, so far I've waxed the drawers with cheesecloth instead of the waxing brush that they recommend...that was dumb. I read somewhere on somebodys blog that cheesecloth was a great way to apply the wax, uhhh - not so much.
Now my grey drawers have little white fuzzies stuck in the wax, do not do as I do...spend the 35 bucks and buy the brush. ;-(