Once again, I’ve been absent from the blog for awhile (minus the DWTS post yesterday – I am still so sad that Chuck is gone!) and once again its for a very good reason! I am finally all moved into the house and had my first houseguest over the weekend so I spent all of last week getting things ready for company! I had one friend coming in on Thursday night and another on Friday so Mon – Wed was major crunch time! Usually I am in bed on a ‘work night’ by 11 pm at the latest but last week it was all 1 am or later for me. I was cleaning, decorating, unpacking, organizing – everything! I am very pleased with the way things turned out though and glad to have that process behind me so that now I can enjoy everything and not continue working when I get home at the end of the day.
(I was going to wait to post this until I had taken some more house pictures but thought you all might want the recipes (since they were all mexican food) if you were planning on anything for Cinco de Mayo –I will post house pics in a separate post next week!)
My friend Tiffany was in town last week from Austin for work and came by on Thursday. We got to catch up over a bottle of wine and some Texas Caviar – a recipe I got from the Four Fat Chicks. Its not often that I get to see my girlfriends when we have the time to just sit and talk without some other ‘event’ going on so it was so great to spend so much time just chatting and hanging out. I miss the times in college when that’s pretty much all we did! Its sad that we’re all so busy these days!
Here’s the recipe for the yummy Texas Caviar that we had for ‘dinner’!
(I was going to wait to post this until I had taken some more house pictures but thought you all might want the recipes (since they were all mexican food) if you were planning on anything for Cinco de Mayo –I will post house pics in a separate post next week!)
My friend Tiffany was in town last week from Austin for work and came by on Thursday. We got to catch up over a bottle of wine and some Texas Caviar – a recipe I got from the Four Fat Chicks. Its not often that I get to see my girlfriends when we have the time to just sit and talk without some other ‘event’ going on so it was so great to spend so much time just chatting and hanging out. I miss the times in college when that’s pretty much all we did! Its sad that we’re all so busy these days!
Here’s the recipe for the yummy Texas Caviar that we had for ‘dinner’!
Texas Caviar
(makes a LOT)
1 can corn (drained)
1 can pinto beans (drained)
1 can black beans (drained)
1 can Ro-tel (I don’t drain this very much)
½ cup chopped green bell pepper
1 clove garlic (minced)
1 16 oz bottle fat free Italian dressing
Mix and serve!
Some recipes call for more Italian dressing so feel free if that’s the taste you’re after!
I find this to be especially yummy with Tostitos Baked Scoops and that it is better once it has had some time to chill in the refrigerator……
On Friday my friend Meredith came in town from San Antonio to stay for the weekend. I lived with Meredith in college along with another girl, Molly, who also lives here so she came over for dinner on Friday as well. It had been a long time since the three of us got to catch up together!
Meredith is not a fan of fruit (crazy, right???) but Molly and I enjoyed some pomegranate margaritas before dinner.
Photo Courtesy of The Food Network
Pomegranate Margaritas
(serves 2)
¼ cup lime juice
2 shots POM Wonderful juice
½ cup tequila
¼ cup triple sec
Serve over ice with a squeeze of lime.
And for dinner we had Chicken Tamale Casserole from Cooking Light. I first saw this recipe on Elizabeth’s Edible Experience and had made it once before. I made this using her advice on the recipe to leave out the creamed corn in favor of just regular corn and it works great. I read some reviews online and some people complain about the ‘too sweet’ taste but I think this must be cured by the normal corn because this does not seem too sweet to me. Also, some people have used green enchilada sauce instead of red and really liked it so use whatever you prefer!
¼ cup lime juice
2 shots POM Wonderful juice
½ cup tequila
¼ cup triple sec
Serve over ice with a squeeze of lime.
And for dinner we had Chicken Tamale Casserole from Cooking Light. I first saw this recipe on Elizabeth’s Edible Experience and had made it once before. I made this using her advice on the recipe to leave out the creamed corn in favor of just regular corn and it works great. I read some reviews online and some people complain about the ‘too sweet’ taste but I think this must be cured by the normal corn because this does not seem too sweet to me. Also, some people have used green enchilada sauce instead of red and really liked it so use whatever you prefer!
Head over to Elizabeth's blog if you would like to see step by step pictures - you'll also find lots of other yummy recipes over there!
Photo courtesy of Cooking Light
1 cup (4 ounces) preshredded 4-cheese Mexican blend cheese ( I used reduced fat 2% blend)
1/3 cup fat-free milk
1/4 cup egg substitute
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
1 (14 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn ( I used regular corn - I hate cream corn)
1 (8.5-ounce) box corn muffin mix (I used Jiffy)
1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
Cooking spray
1 (10-ounce) can red enchilada sauce (such as Old El Paso)
2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast (I used a rotisserie chicken and used more than 2 cups…) 1/2 cup fat-free sour cream (optional topping)
Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Combine 1/4 cup cheese and next 7 ingredients (through chiles) in a large bowl, stirring just until moist. Pour mixture into a 13 x 9–inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.
3. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until set. (I had to cook mine about 20-22 min) Pierce entire surface liberally with a fork; pour enchilada sauce over top. Top with chicken (When I made this recipe the 2nd time I poured some sauce over the bread, just to coat it and then mixed the remaining sauce and the chicken together in a separate bowl and then placed that mixture on top of the bread);sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese.
4. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven; let stand 5 minutes.
Cut into 8 pieces and serve. YUM!
Our plan for the rest of the night was to watch the Sex and the City movie because Meredith had only seen it once – can you imagine? – but of course we ended up talking with the movie on in the background. We had a great night full of girl talk!
Saturday I proved to my hard core workout friend Meredith that walking really is a workout! I knew she thought I was crazy and even wore her heart rate monitor to see if she was getting a good workout – I was actually a little worried at what the official stats would be but luckily the walking workout got a good rating! We walked about 4.5 miles in just over an hour so we were moving!
That night we met some friends for sushi had a great time catching up and having some great food. That was pretty much the end of our girly fun-filled weekend. After Meredith left on Sunday I caught up on a LOT of tv (I am loving having my DVR back!) and ran some miscellaneous errands. This week has actually been pretty nice thus far and I’ve been able to work out and just relax in the evenings now that most of the house stuff is out of the way. I’m so glad I got a lot of that done last week so that now I can just enjoy it!
I tried a new Jillian Michaels workout dvd this week that I’ve had on Netflix for about a month now, “Banish Fat Boost Metabolism” – it’s a good one! I’ll post a review after I’ve completed it a few more times, so far I would recommend it though!
Tonight we’ve got our book club meeting for “Straight Up and Dirty” by Stephanie Klein – I’m looking forward to a fun night, and then the weekend is almost here!
1 comment:
yumm yumm! can i come over for dinner?=) Wish you and tiff could have joined us in dallas for our 4 Fat Chicks weekend!
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