anchovylove

I made brownies again, but this time I used about 1 teaspoon of espresso powder and 1.25 cups of sugar.

I wasn't sure how well this copycat Chipotle would turn out, but it was actually tasty and really easy.

Chicken: I wanted to use some smoked or chipotle spices, but I couldn't find them so I just used my standard homemade taco seasoning.

Rice: I made long grain rice in the rice cooker and threw in chopped cilantro, lime juice and lime zest once the timer beeped. It still didn't taste right, so I threw on some salt, pepper, and onion powder and fried it up with some butter.

I didn't care for the spicy Casa Chicas salsa that I bought, but the guacamole was good on the bowl (not by itself). DH reminded me that Chipotle makes their beans with bacon, so next time I'll remember to do that. I usually have lettuce on my burrito bowl, but for some reason the lettuce I bought was weird.

Anyway, DH says this one's a keeper, and I agree. It's really tasty and simple to make.

I made brownies using this recipe today. I feel like I'm baking more than ever now that I'm supposed to be on a diet. Next on the list is that amazing pineapple coconut bread from Maui.

For the brownies, I thought they were too sweet last time, so I made them with only 1 cup of sugar instead of 1.5 cups. They turned out less shiny than usual, but that's okay. They turned out a little dry, which was unexpected. Next time, I will try cutting the sugar to 3/4 cup. I was going to try subbing white whole wheat flour for half of the AP flour, but I decided to do one change at a time. I also didn't add the espresso powder like I normally do, but I should have left it in.

Corningware is amazing. I was going to buy the designated brownie pan, but I'm glad I didn't since the recipe I use fits perfectly in this one.

I've been wanting to make more butter toffee cookies for a while. The other day I set a couple of eggs out and forgot about them, so I figured I should use them today. I know technically you don't need to refrigerate eggs, but I'm a little paranoid about food spoilage. I also wanted to use baking cookies as an excuse to use the oven to heat up the apartment. The ironic thing is that I ended up having to open a door and window and turn on a fan to get rid of the nasty crayon smell that came from baking wax paper. Whoops.

Anyway, I did a couple of things differently this time. I couldn't find and was too lazy to look for my sifter, so I just gave the flour mixture a whirl with the hand beater. Then I added both eggs at once by accident. Also, a cup and a half of sugar total seems like a lot to me, and I don't need things all that sweet. I didn't pack the brown sugar and used maybe a tablespoon less than what is called for. I don't normally like to experiment with recipes because I want things to turn out good, but I figure it's time for me to get brave. Next time I will be brave and try using white whole wheat flour. I thought about it this time but couldn't bring myself to do it. Oh, and I only refrigerated for 40 minutes since I made these later in the day than last time. One thing that was the same was I had to add that 1/4 teaspoon of salt again, since I only ever have unsalted butter.

Anyway, with all these changes, the cookies came out good. I'm not sure why my cookies look so different from the ones I always bought at Mrs. Fields, but they taste delicious, so it's okay. I'm going to have DH bring some with him to work tomorrow.

I cooked up a storm today! I made siopao (steamed pork buns), leche flan, and bread. For the bread, I just threw it together in the bread machine. I hadn't made siopao in a while, and I figured spring break was a great time to do so. As usual, it took about 10 hours and turned out delicious. I should have spent more time on the filling, but the buns still turned out great.

As for the leche flan, I used a recipe my mom gave me. I haven't made it in over a decade because I'm lactose intolerant, but the flan actually didn't make my stomach as upset as I would have guessed. Not saying I'll have flan as my everyday dessert, but it's good to know that I can have it once in a while without violent illness. I had to look up how to caramelize sugar since I've never done that before; when I made leche flan as a kid, my mom's trick was to pour maple syrup into the mold. It worked well, but also altered the flavor. In any case, I really enjoyed the flan. The pic I took wasn't great, but I had to post it because this is the first time I've baked in my Corningware Grab Its - and I even got to use the lids. The Corningware dishes are a little large for single servings of flan, but since I'm a piggie, I eat it all anyway ^_^

The bad news is that I had a lot of cleaning to do after all the cooking.

I'm a little obsessed with brussels sprouts right now. DH says he's enjoying it though.

Something is growing with my strawberries. It's in the same spot as the basil was before I pulled it up, so I wonder if some of the basil roots persevered and pushed out these little leaves. I hope so!

My dwarf Meyer lemon tree looks great too. It has so much new growth and so many new buds! I did a little pruning this evening to shape it and encourage bushy growth. I also pulled off some of the buds so the plant didn't spread itself too thin with all those flowers; some article I read said that thinning out the flowers will produce better fruit and future harvests. The two lemons I left on the tree last year are growingly nicely and are about the size of ping pong balls, maybe a bit smaller. I'm really looking forward to having one of those bountiful lemon trees I keep hearing about. Hopefully its current pot will be big enough to last a while so I don't have to risk shock by repotting. Plus, the pot is too heavy for me to lift, and it's no picnic for DH.

I managed to sleep in today! As a result, we had a late breakfast of poached eggs (instead of our usual fried), Canadian bacon, avocado and plum tomatoes. This was the first time I've ever poached eggs, and I definitely need more practice. One of DH's eggs ended up being more like hard boiled - whoops!

I am notorious for not liking tomatoes, but DH introduced me to salted tomatoes, which I've never had before. Now I think tomatoes are tolerable, but still not my favorite. The recipes in the program involve a lot of tomatoes, so I figured I'd better give them a chance. If I didn't, the recipes I can use greatly decreases. Eventually, I will probably use some recipes from other sources, but for now I want to stick with the program recipes.




For lunch I made a chef salad with tuna, plum tomatoes, broccoli and a hard boiled egg (used this process for the egg). Like tomatoes, tuna has been on my black list since I was a kid, but I haven't tasted it in a while (and by "a while" I mean well over a decade), so I figured I should give it another shot. I really don't like the smell of it, but I didn't want to keep having the same things over and over for lunch this week. The tuna didn't work out like the tomatoes with salt; still don't like it from a can. Oh well, I tried.

I used a lettuce mix that I grew organically in my balcony garden. Some of the leaves were bitter, which I read is due to uneven watering. It could just be the flavor of that specific leaf or I let them mature too long. Maybe next time I will just make the salad with extra eggs instead of tuna. Also, chef salad usually has a ranch dressing, but I can't usually have ranch without getting an upset stomach. I found this hummus salad dressing at Trader Joe's that is pretty tasty. But I looked at the ingredients list while I was pouring it out, and it has some things in there that I generally prefer to avoid. I'll check out some other salad dressings to compare.

For dinner we shall have leftover turkey patties from Monday. Still delicious =)

This is what we had for dinner last night, courtesy of the JM BR cookbook. It was delicious! And I don't even like beef =)

I broke the diet twice already haha! But that's kind of my tradition. I broke my diet last time, before we went to Hawaii, and afterwards I found the resolve to stick to the diet from then on.

Today was my first day of the Jillian Michaels Body Revolution program. I'm doing the Kickstart Your Metabolism Week this week. For breakfast I had Greek yogurt with almonds, which I was not too please with. The recipe said to put cinnamon in it, but I don't much care for cinnamon. I'll have to figure something else out for the yogurt. For lunch, I had vegetable soup with poached chicken. I didn't like the chicken, but the soup was good. For dinner, I made turkey patties topped with avocado and brussels sprouts and carrots, and it was really good. I overcooked the turkey a little, but the avocado made it good. I had a little extra avocado so it wouldn't go bad; we aren't going to eat the leftovers for a couple days.

I struggled a lot today about the diet part of BR. On one hand, I love food and think it is one of the great pleasures in life. On the other hand, if I want to reach my goal, the BR couldn't've made it easier. They have recipes and meal plans for the entire 90 days. I imagine I'll still struggle with this each week. A friend suggested that I have 1 meal on a specific day that I can indulge, which sounds like a good plan. But I tend to get obsessive about these things, so I may not be able to handle that. I guess we'll see what happens and how I do with the diet part. I'm sure I'll do fine with the exercise portion, and I'll look forward to Sunday rest day every week.