Of course I'll have another cheddar biscuit!

RJ finally finished up his finals this past Wednesday, so we were well overdue for a good date night! It was his turn to pick the restaurant and he was in the mood for some seafood. So, Red Lobster it is!!

Before we left, I perused the menu online and saw their new Lighthouse Menu. It lists a number of dishes that are 475 calories or less with 750 grams of sodium! I ordered the  Lighthouse portion of tilapia with double broccoli for my sides. I also got a salad with my meal, but I didn't eat most of it because I was full. The tilapia was perfectly grilled and had a fantastic grilled taste!

The infamous cheddar biscuit!

He enjoyed his shrimp :)

After dinner, we made our way downtown for some dessert. I was in the mood for ice cream, so we went to Ben & Jerry's! I ordered Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup (obviosly) and RJ got a scoop of vanilla...boring I know but the boy is obsessed with his vanilla!

Overall, a great date night with wonderful company :)

Where was your last date night?

A Non-Mexican Cinco de Mayo

Happy Monday my fab friends!! I come to bring you yet another delicious recipe from my adventures in the kitchen! But first, a little recap of my weekend, shall we?

On Saturday evening, I organized a pre-cinco de mayo gathering at a yummy Mexican restaurant in town. A bunch of my friends came and we feasted on mango margaritas, burritos, and enough chips and salsa to choke a horse!

Sooo yummy..

The weather yesterday was lovely, so RJ and I took Daisy and went on a picnic in the park, followed by a long walk. It was nice to just be outside in the sunshine with one of my favorite people :)


When dinnertime rolled around, neither of us were in the mood for more Mexican food (a sin on Cinco de Mayo, I know), so I perused my cookbooks for a recipe to use up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts I had thawed. I found this recipe from a Cooking Light cookbook and adapted it to fit the things I had in my cupboards.

Ingredients

• 
  1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• Cooking spray 
• 1/2 cup chopped yellow onion 
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
• 4 (4-ounce) skinned, boned chicken breast halves 
• 1/3 cup seedless apricot preserves
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper 

1. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat until hot. Add onion; sauté 5 minutes. Combine thyme and 1/4 teaspoon salt; sprinkle over chicken. Add chicken to skillet; sauté 6 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from skillet; keep warm. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add 1/4 teaspoon salt, preserves, vinegar, and pepper, stirring constantly until the preserves melt. Spoon apricot sauce over chicken.

As you can see, this recipe was very easy and perfect for a weeknight meal. I have made this recipe before with the raspberry preserves, but I much prefer the apricot. It added a completely different flavor that I was quite happy with!

Do you ever alter recipes to accommodate what you have? Was it successful?

Swimmingly Good Date Night!

Hola, internet friends!! I hope your weekend was fantastic and I am just popping in for a Saturday recap!!

On Saturday morning I went to a diner with some friends for a yummy breakfast. In case you were wondering, I ordered oatmeal and a fruit cup. They brought out my bowl of oatmeal with a side of coffee creamers and butter. Now, I am no oatmeal expert, but do people really eat oatmeal with creamer and butter? I am more of a sweet kinda girl, and I just added some sugar to mine and gobbled it up!

After breakfast, I drove back home and met my parents at a local indoor pool to swim some laps! I know I have been talking about swimming more recently and I know some people wonder about swimming workouts. They are a great way to exercise with no impact on your knees. So if you're like me and have a recent injury or just want to give the ol' knees a break, swimming is probably the best alternative.

I want to post my usual swimming workout but I don't want to confuse anyone so I should explain something before I post the workout. One length of a standard lap pool is 25 meters. Which means if you go once up and back, you swam 50 meters. Up and back twice would be 100 meters. Get it? Okay, now on to the workout:

• 200m freestyle
• 200m breast
• 200m backstroke
• 100m kicking with kickboard
• 100m freestyle only using arms
• 100m breast only using arms
• 200m freestyle cool down

Let me just tell you, my arms we a-burnin'!!! I love feeling muscles you haven't used in a while!

After swimming, I got ready in the locker room (and what an adventure that was. Let's just say, applying mascara with a 5 year old girl staring at you is a little unnerving.) and drove back to RJ's  for date night!! We went out to a restaurant called Austin Grill which serves tex mex style food. I ordered the Chicken Silverado off their "Lite Side" menu, which are options under 650 calories:

CHICKEN SILVERADO
Grilled chicken topped with a citrus salsa, served with green rice and seasonal veggies. 

It was so good!! According to our waiter, Zach, the "green rice" is actually just regular rice with some lime juice and cilantro added for some extra flavor. I probably could have had a plate of nothing but that rice and been overjoyed. I happily ate every bite!

Afterwards, we walked around a bit and just enjoyed our surroundings. It was a lovely night and there were tons of people out walking around and having a lovely Saturday evening out!

We saw this awesome street performer using plastic tubs as drums and we stopped to watch him for a bit. He recruited some kids to help him play for a few minutes. It was so cute and you could tell the kids got a kick out of it!!

Overall, it was a wonderful night with a wonderful companion ;) I hope to do it again soon!!

Pho Fun!

Hello again, friends! I am writing from RJ's bedroom since I am here visiting him at school. I have had a lovely visit and I'm bummed I have to go home today :( Thankfully, it's nice outside today after the day of snow and rain Maryland got yesterday! I'm impatient for Spring to get here already!

Anywho, let's get to a recap of my evening last night! I got here around 3pm and RJ was working on some homework when I arrived. With little much else to do, I took a nap (Daisy was barking all night last night, so I was exhausted). When I awoke, we were both pretty hungry and decided to venture into town for some grub! 

For some reason, RJ and I have the hardest time picking restaurants when we go out. The conversation pretty much goes like this every time:

Me: Where do you want to eat?
RJ: I don't care.
Me: Well. what are you craving?
RJ: Nothing in particular, I could eat anything. What do you want?
Me: I don't really care, either.
RJ: Well, let's go to XYZ restaurant.
Me: I don't want that.
*RJ's head explodes*

After about 5 years of talking, we decided to go to a Vietnamese restaurant close by. In case you are unfamiliar, here is a blurb from Wikipedia about Vietnamese food:

"Vietnamese cuisine features a combination of five fundamental taste elements (Vietnamese: ngũ vị) in the    overall meal: spicy (metal), sour (wood), bitter (fire), salty (water) and sweet (Earth).^[1] Each Vietnamese dish has a distinctive flavor which reflects one or more of these elements. Common ingredients include fish sauce, shrimp paste, soy sauce, rice, fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables."

We sat down and I immediately knew I wanted to order the garden spring rolls. I am seriously addicted to these things. They are basically veggies, shrimp, and thin noodles wrapped in a cellophane noodle, like a traditional fried eggroll (only much healthier). The rolls are served with a peanut sauce that basically tastes like yummy peanut butter. The rolls at this particular restaurant were fantastic. The sauce had the perfect amount of sweetness and tang. I practically ate it with a spoon. 

For my main entree, I looked around for some healthy options and landed on the salad page. I expected some regular old lettuce salads but was quite surprised to see some awesome options with unique ingredients! This one particularly caught my eye (from their website): 

14.Green Papaya choice of grilled meat ( chicken, pork, beef, steam shrimp, grilled shrimp, calamari, soft or fried tofu)

Instead of lettuce, the base of the salad was shredded green papaya and bean sprouts. Cool huh? I topped my salad with grilled chicken for some protein. 

Those brown circle things on top of the salad reminded me of rice cakes texture-wise, I have no idea what they were, but they were lightly sweet and delicious!  

The salad was awesome. The papaya was perfectly sweet and tart. The chicken tasted kind of like teriyaki chicken and added a great amount of saltiness to the dish. I ate it all, and the plate was clean by the time I was finished! Overall, my meal was absolutely amazing and really hit the spot! 

Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday :)

Do you like to try food from different cultures? What's your favorite?

"Health Food"

Happy Monday to all!! Due to some personal developments, I will have alot more time on my hands in the coming weeks so expect more posts!! YAY!

On Saturday, RJ was in the mood for Chinese food so I took him to one of my family's favorite Chinese food restaurants in town. It's one of those awesome places where the owner greets everyone individually and know the names of many of his customers. When we sat down, the waitress brought over hot tea and ice water with lemon  to start. As I perused the menu for healthy options, my eye was immediately drawn to this section of the menu:

SCORE! I ordered the Vegetables with Chicken along with the
white sauce on the side and RJ ordered the General Tso's Chicken for his entree. The food came out quickly, which I was happy about since I was starving. My food came with a bowl of
rice which I quickly gave to RJ to eat. That boy can tear up some white rice.

My food was yummy! It was simple, steamed chicken and the vegetables were fresh and crisp. I could tell there was not a ton of salt in the dish which I appreciated- I tend to bloat quickly when I eat a ton of salt haha. RJ's chicken was also amazing, perfectly sweet and spicy.

Pure joy :)

Overall, we were very pleased with our meals! And I am me, we had to go get frozen yogurt after. I forgot to snap a picture, but I got my favorite soy peanut butter yogurt with a plethora of yummy peanut butter and chocolate toppings! 

How do you find healthy options at Chinese restaurants?