Elvis Tribute Dinner

Ok so I didn't actually realize the Elvis connection until after we'd already eaten, but it just so happens that the anniversary of his death was this Monday and he famously loved peanut butter and banana sandwiches so we'll just go with it :)


I mentioned yesterday that I just discovered Healthy Tipping Point and I've spent probably too much of my free time since then reading through it. Ty and I were talking about what to do for dinner and had thrown around the idea of breakfast for dinner (I LOVE breakfast food, and it always reminds me of elementary school when we used to have breakfast for lunch.) I'd come across Caitlin's Grilled Banana Sandwich and Banana Almond Butter Toast in my blog wanderings and thought we could probably combine these two to make something pretty good. Look at me getting all creative!


The only ingredient we didn't have was bananas so Ty had to stop by the store to pick those up (he apparently ran into one of my friends from work who is a faithful reader, hi Heather!) Since we had eggs for breakfast this morning I thought making French toast might be a little egg overkill and I really wanted to try the banana/peanut butter combination so here's what I decided to do: sauté the bananas in a little butter, light brown sugar and cinnamon (sort of a bananas foster take on Caitlin's sandwich, minus the rum) on toasted thin sandwich bread with peanut butter. If you're wondering how a girl from Mechanicsville knows what bananas foster is, the dining hall in college used to have it as a special dessert every once in awhile!


I got my ingredients together:

• 2 bananas
• light brown sugar
• cinnamon
• butter
• 2 Arnold's sandwich thins

First I sliced the bananas on the bias (thank you Alton Brown for teaching me what that is) and then I put about a tablespoon of butter in a pan and heated it up. I have burned butter before, it happens quicker than you think! Then I added the bananas and sprinkled them with about a tablespoon of light brown sugar and maybe 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. I wasn't really sure what to expect with the brown sugar, I was afraid it was going to get really sticky and burn or something so I kept the bananas moving the whole time they were in the pan. I don't think I needed to worry about it as much as I did, it melted down just fine and smelled soooo good!

I wasn't sure if the bananas would caramelize either so I just waited until the brown sugar melted and then put them on the bottom half of the bread and put peanut butter on the top half:

The Verdict: WOW. Ty was so impressed he was speechless. Well, actually he said: "I don't even know what to say about this." It was pretty fabulous, only took about 10 minutes to prepare, is relatively healthy (I'd estimate it at around 350 calories per sandwich) and was very inexpensive to make! With the exception of the bananas, all the ingredients are things you probably have around the house and keep for a fairly long time.

We will definitely be making these again, and we may go all out and try the French toast sandwich idea this weekend after my training team run. Although I seem to remember a very unsuccessful French toast experiment a few years ago...it ended in smoke and McMuffins.

Learning from others & 1/2 marathon training has started!

The past few weeks I’ve gotten really into reading healthy living blogs and I’m finding myself even more motivated to focus on making healthy food for Ty and I. It started when I met Brittany from Eating Bird Food and started reading her blog (and running with her!), through her I found Carrots n' Cake, Eat, Live, Run and my current obsession Healthy Tipping Point. I think what resonates with me is that these girls all have a similar story to my own and they take the pressure out of eating healthy. I’ve mentioned before that one of the reasons I’m not good at cooking is that I get overwhelmed by the amount of information out there about how to cook and also how complicated recipes seem to be for meals that turn out just ok.

This past week I also started training for my second 1/2 marathon! The race is here in Richmond in November. I joined the SportsBackers training team again this year and I’ve gotten off to a pretty good start, although I did skip a run over the weekend because I was enjoying some quality relaxation time at my parents’ cabin. Two things I learned from training last year: 1.) I need to strength train more and 2.) I need to think of food as fuel for my workouts. I’m hoping these two things will help me improve my time and help my legs not feel like jello around mile 12.

So what does all this mean cooking wise? Well for one thing I’ve already realized it means I need to spend more time on preparation and planning for meals. I'm famous for knowing what I want to make for dinner then deciding to pick something up or make a frozen pizza because the prep work will take too long. But another thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of these bloggers eat fresh food that requires little or no cooking - Yay!

Last night we tried a batch of chicken salad again and changed three things: 1.) Ty grilled the chicken 2.) I went easier on the mayo and 3.) we left out the hard boiled eggs (mostly because I didn’t feel like cooking them). I just had some for lunch and it was delicious! We both agreed we like grilling the chicken better than baking it, the flavor is a little different and it’s less cleanup :)

As a result of making the chicken salad I now also have plenty of diced red/yellow/orange peppers to toss on salads or in my eggs (tried that this morning, mmm) and some diced red onion. Didn’t realize how convenient it is to just go ahead and chop that stuff up! I’m also getting used to eating raw vegetables, its always been a texture thing for me and I’ve never really given myself a chance to get used to it.

I’m actually excited for my run this afternoon and even more excited to be leaving for vacation next Thursday! We’ll spend 9 days in the Outer Banks with a group of friends and then 3 days in the mountains of VA with my family and more friends. We’ve been tasked with cooking dinner one night in OBX for about 16 people...I’ll definitely take pictures and drink plenty of wine :)

Take that Ukrop's

If you're from the Richmond area you know all about the events of the past year, dubbed by many as the "Ukropalypse." If you're not from the area, Ukrop's was a locally owned grocery store known for, among other things, its rainbow cookies, salad bar, White House rolls and in my mind the BEST chicken salad on the planet. I was not a big Ukrop's shopper once I became a grown-up and had to buy my own groceries, partly because there wasn't a location convenient to me but also because their prices seemed higher and as nice as they were I didn't like their employees walking me to my car with my groceries. But I would go out of my way to get their tarragon chicken salad on occasion and the possibility that there would no longer be any of this chicken salad was my biggest concern about the store being bought by Martin's.

The other weekend our friend Jay gave us a recipe for his chicken salad (along with a fabulous cooking demonstration, mostly for my benefit because he wanted to prove that even I could make it) so we got the ingredients together and gave it a shot. The only things I added were tarragon - because I'm assuming that is Ukrop's secret weapon for amazing chicken salad - and hard boiled eggs - because Ty requested them. So here are the ingredients:

• Cooked chicken (we debated grilling it but it was somewhere around 100 degrees out so we baked it instead, seasoning it with chopped garlic, lemon juice, salt & pepper per Jay's suggestion. If you have leftover chicken of any kind, this would be a great use for it.)
• Mayonnaise
• Chopped onion (Jay uses red onion but we only had white onion on hand)
• Dried cranberries (Ukrop's uses golden raisins, so I trusted Jay's instinct on this one)
• Hard boiled eggs (I used 3)
• Tarragon
• Salt & pepper

After baking (and not burning!) the chicken at 350 for 25 minutes, I let it cool before I chopped it up. I failed to use the tips found at HowToHardBoilanEgg.com and tried to wing it with the eggs. This resulted in a very messy and frustrating fight to get the shells off the eggs, much to the amusement of my cats. At this point they're pretty used to little bits of things flying around the kitchen when I cook but it never ceases to amaze them. After some work, I went with only using the egg whites so my chicken salad wouldn't turn yellow, chopped them up and then pretty much just threw everything else in a bowl and mixed it up.

The Verdict: It may not rival Ukrop's but it was GOOD. The only complaint I got from Ty is that it was a little heavy on the mayo, probably because instead of adding a little at a time I dumped a big hunk of it in there - lesson learned.

Cucumber Salad

One of the many things I love about summer is summer salads (i.e. side dishes I don't have to cook.) I think I've mentioned before I'm not a huge fan of vegetables and neither is Ty, but I do crave fresh food when it's hot out and one thing we both love is a good cucumber salad.

A few months ago I came across a cucumber salad recipe that is so easy and impressed Ty so much I make it about once a month now. This weekend I got even luckier when one of my best friends Bekah, brought us cucumbers fresh from her garden in Franklin County. All you need is:

• Cucumbers (duh)
• Red onions
• Red wine vinegar (or whatever kind you prefer/have on hand)
• Dijon mustard (regular yellow mustard works too)
• Salt & pepper

Get the bowl your going to mix and store the salad in  preferably something with a lid (doing all the mixing and storing in one bowl = less dishes!). Put the dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt & pepper in the bowl and mix it up - I think the recipe says to whisk it together, I don't think we own a whisk so I just use a fork. Slice the cucumber and onion, put them in the container and put the lid on it. Then shake it up.

We like it best if you make it the night before and shake it up a few times while it's marinating.

The Verdict: Vegetables aren't all that bad if you douse them in something. You could change this up by adding tomatoes or feta too. Cost-wise, the only thing that could make this summer salad even less expensive is if you grown your own vegetables or have a great friend like Bekah who will give you some of theirs. I actually planted my own cucumbers specifically for this recipe but it only sprouted only 1 little guy (see below), and something ate it about 2 weeks after I took this picture!

In other news, my tomato plants are doing great and I'll hopefully be using them in some way soon!