Szechuan Chicken

I thought this chicken was good, I would recommend adding more crushed red pepper if you like things spicy. I served it with Pioneer Woman's Simply Sesame Noodles, which were also delicious, but I didn't get a picture of them.

Szechuan Chicken
Points: 4
Servings: 4

* 1/4 cup chopped green onions
* 1 1/2 tablespoons less-sodium soy sauce
* 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
* 2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
* 2 teaspoons brown sugar
* 1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
* 1 teaspoon grated, peeled fresh ginger
* 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
* 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts



1. Combine first 8 ingredients in a large ziploc bag. Add chicken to bag; seal. Marinate in refrigerator 8 hours or overnight, turning occasionally. Remove chicken from bag. discard marinade.
2. Cook in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes or until no longer pink.

WW Quick Posole

This is my favorite Weight Watcher recipe! There's just something about it that I cannot get enough of. I think it's the taco seasoning, I like any recipe that calls for taco seasoning. Greg thought the recipe was alright. It's not one of his favorites, which is fine, more for me! :)

Quick Posole
Points: 4
Servings: 5

* 1 pound lean ground pork
* 1 package taco seasoning
* 1 (15.5oz) can white hominy, rinsed and drained
* 1 (14.5oz) can zesty chili-style diced tomatoes
* 1 (14oz) can fat-free, less-sodium beef broth

1. Cook pork in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Drain, if necessary, and return pork to pain. Sprinkle pork with taco season, and cook, stirring constantly, over medium-high heat for 30 seconds.
2. Stir in hominy, tomatoes, and broth. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Ladel into bowls.

Philly Cheesesteak Quesadillas

Inspired by our recent trip to Philly, I made some Philly Cheesesteak Quesadillas for dinner last night. Greg loves quesadillas, so I thought it would be a fun, different twist on his traditional chicken and cheese quesadillas. They turned out really good. This is not a healthy recipe by any means, but I've been trying a ton of Weight Watcher recipes lately, so it was nice to try something different.

Philly Cheesesteak Quesadillas

* 1 small box of Steak-Ums Slice Steak
* 1 onion
* 1 green pepper
* mushrooms
* mozzerella cheese
* hot sauce



Saute onions, green peppers, and mushrooms until soft. Remove from pan. Cook steak according to package directions. Remove from pan. Place tortilla in pan, add cheese, steak and onion/pepper/mushroom mixture. Cook until cheese is melted and tortilla is slightly brown. Remove from pan. Add hot sauce. A big thing in Philly is Cheez Whiz on their cheesesteaks. This quesadilla would be delicious with Cheez Whiz drizzled over top, or on the side to dip the quesadilla in.

Philadelphia

Greg and I took advantage of the Columbus Day weekend and went to Philadelphia to do some sightseeing. We had a lot of fun. We did a lot of walking and saw a lot of things. Of course, we went by the Liberty Bell and got some pictures with that. We also toured the East State Penitentiary, which was the first penitentiary and was were Al Capone stayed when he was locked up. It was very interesting and a little eerie.

We did the daytime tour, they offered a nighttime haunted house, which I thought would be fun, but we didn't want to worry about trying to catch a bus at night. We had enough of a time trying to figure out which bus took us where in the daytime. Parking is super expensive there, so we got a special deal-book a room for two nights, and get hotel parking for free, and we just left our car in the parking lot the entire time. We walked most places, but some we had to take a bus for and we got quite lost. The bus drivers there are really sweet though and helped us get back to our hotel.
We went to some bars both nights that we were there. According to one website I researched before the trip, Philadelphia is the "beer drinking capital". They have several local breweries and almost everything on tap was nothing we had ever heard of, so we had fun going from bar to bar trying different beers out. And of course we had to have a Philly Cheese Steak. It was good, but honestly, I like my dad's better. We also met some fun people at our hotel bar, a girl who just got out of the Navy, her sister and her dad, we had some drinks with them and really enjoyed hanging out with them our last night there.

I love going on trips, it's one of my favorite things to do and I love having a trip planned for the future so I have something to look forward to and plan for. I'm not sure where we're going to go next (I'm not counting trips to see our families over the holidays, that's not sightseeing trips) I'm thinking of Boston, Niagara Falls, or Chicago. We'll see. Check out the pictures from a our trip. You can see all of them at our Shutterfly website.

The penitentiary was especially creepy because of the cloudy day we were having.





We had to get an authentic Philly cheese steak while we were here.


Greg, drinking a local beer.

Taking a soco and lime shot. There were advertised at every bar we went to, so I thought maybe it was a local favorite.

Crunchy Italian Chicken

I've been wanting to try Panko for awhile now. I've seen it on Paula Deen, Rachel Ray, and in several cooking magazines. Panko is Japanese breadcrumbs. When I found a recipe in my Weight Watcher cookbook that called for panko, I had to try it. I goofed up and bought plain panko when the recipe called for italian, so I seasoned the panko with garlic salt, oregano, and Italian seasoning. I liked it. I tasted very similar to ordinary bread crumbs but seemed to coat the chi ken a little better and not clump up so much. I liked this recipe. Greg liked it but thought it was a little plain. Also, I skipped the step where it called for pounding the chicken, because I thought it'd be easier to just cook the chicken a little longer.

Weight Watcher Crunchy Italian Chicken
Points: 6
Servings 2

* 1/3 cup Italian-style panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
* 1 tablespoon grated fresh Parmesan cheese
* 2 (6 ounce) skinless boneless chicken breast halves
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* cooking spray
* 1 cup grape tomatoes


1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Combine panko and Parmesan cheese in a shallow bowl; set aside
3. Place chicken between 2 sheets of heavy duty plastic wrap, and pound to 1/2 inch thickness using a meat mallet or heavy skillet. Sprinkle chicken with pepper. Dredge chicken breasts in panko mixture, pressing mixture onto chicken, if necessary.
4. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan, and cook 3 minutes. Coat top of chicken with cooking spray; turn and cook 3 minutes
5. Transfer chicken to baking sheet, and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 450 for 5 to 6 minutes or until done.
6. While chicken bakes, add tomatoes to hot skillet, and cook over medium-high heat 5 minutes or until tomatoes begin to burs. Serve tomatoes over chicken.



I got this out of Weight Watchers 20 minute recipes

Songs I'm Loving Right Now

There are so many songs out now that I'm absolutely loving! I spent an embarrassing amount of time the other day on the Billboard website seeing what songs were out right now. I never listen the radio in my car, I listen to my cds, so the only way for me to find out what songs are out are to look it up. Here are some of my favorites that are out right now. I wanted to post a video of all of them, even if it wasn't an "official" video, just so you wouldn't have to go to another website to hear them, but some of the videos on youtube disabled the code to copy and paste them on your blog, so I just uploaded the lyrics video. As you can see from the videos below, I like every type of music--rap, r&b, pop, country, dance, etc.

"Meet Me Halfway" Black Eyed Peas


"Watchu Say" Jason Derulo


"Down" Jay Sean featuring Lil' Wayne


"Sweet Dreams" Beyonce
See the real video Here




"Cowboy Casanova" Carrie Underwood
See the real video here



"Love Your Love The Most" Eric Church


"Hotel Room Service" Pitbull
See the real video here


"Party In the USA" Miley Cyrus


My favorite group right now is LMFAO. I went and bought their cd and absolutely love it. I like almost every song. My favorites are "La La La", "Yes" and "Scream My Name"

Apple Festival

The weather was so beautiful this weekend. I love fall, it is my favorite time of year. I love being able to have the windows open. We took advantage of this great weather and went to an Apple Festival at Carter Mountain Apple Orchard. They had hay rides, food, crafts, wine tasting, pick your own apples, etc. The wine tasting was fun, we ended up finding some new wines that we really liked. We have several apple orchards around, so I'm going to try some new apple recipes this month. I have some homemade applesauce cooking in the crock pot right now, if it turns out good, I'll post the recipe on here. I can't wait to do more fall activities like this. Every year we go to a pumpkin patch and try to go to a corn maize. We've been doing it ever since we started living together in Tucson, when we had to drive over an hour to get to the nearest pumpkin patch.

Here's some pictures from this weekend.