One of his favorites

In our household, we make a lot of chicken. I would like to emphasis a lot. I will never tire of it. Clearly, since I’ve been eating it mostly every day for years now.

Sure I like to change it up a bit by having fish, burgers, pork or (rarely) ham. But for the most part it’s just chicken on the menu. I’ve become pretty creative when it comes to making our chicken suppers. I’m really terrible with coming up with recipes myself. Whenever I’m eating out, or my family cooks something for me, I grab their recipe. Usually it’s not measured. I also like finding recipes online especially a site that is just catered to chicken: http://Chicken.ca. Uh, heck yea.

I’ve decided to share with you another step-by-step recipe. One of my boyfriend’s favorites: Rich ‘n creamy white chicken spaghetti. Except I use spaghettini. Oh details.

My Mom made this for me when I was back home in Newfoundland during Christmas two years ago. It’s so simple. Look:

  • Milk
  • Cream Cheese
  • Chicken
  • Bell Peppers
  • Spaghetti noodles

That’s it.

I’ve started to play around with the recipe, adding in things like dill, or garlic to the mix. It basically tastes the same every time.  I don’t know why I bother making it more complicated.

Honestly I don’t measure, because I always have to add more of the original ingredient list, after the fact anyway. I’ll try my best ;)

Start heating up your frying pan, and set to medium heat.

Add in half of one tub of cream cheese. I use the light, just because the entire base is cream cheese and probably not the most healthiest meal you can eat. But it’s good. Can you believe I don’t like alfredo sauce, but I really love this? I don’t get it either. I try not to make too much sense of it.

At the same time, add in ¼ cup of milk. I use skim. You can use whatever you please.

While that’s simmering down to a sauce. Cut up some cooked chicken and bell peppers. Add in any other veggies you may want to incorporate into this recipe. Also while you’re waiting, put a pot of water on the boil, for your spaghetti noodles.

Cook it until the cream cheese melts into the milk and creates a nice sauce that looks a little like this, or until it gets bubbly. Stir occasionally, so the sauce doesn’t stick to the pan.

It may have lumps in it. I’m not a perfectionist in the kitchen. I leave them there, lol. Those black  specks are the lemon pepper seasoning I added. As I stated before, I don’t know why I try to make things more complicated because I honestly couldn’t tell the difference.

Now it’s time to add your bell peppers and chicken breast into the mix. I used one green pepper and two boneless skinless (cooked of course) chicken breasts.

Giv’er a good stir around, and put the top on your pan and let science do its thing.

Your water should be just about boiling for your spaghetti; boil spaghetti for 8-9 minutes.

The chicken and bell peppers suck up the moisture of the sauce. So now I like to go back in an add more milk, to make sure that the sauce is more creamy, instead of sticky and dry.

Ding ding ding! That’s the sound of the buzzer. It went off so now that the spaghetti is done it’s time to strain the noodles and serve your supper!

And there you have it my friends.

A #NoNakedChicken, creamy chicken spaghetti recipe. If you cook your chicken and chop your veg beforehand, your supper will be ready in 20 minutes tops. So easy, right?

Disclosure – I am participating in the Chicken Farmers of Canada program by http://ShesConnected.com.  I received compensation in exchange for my participation in this campaign.  The opinions on this blog are my own.

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Weekend recap + a recipe!

Occasionally you’ll see a weekender re-cap pop up on my blog. I usually try to take a break from updating on the weekends and focus on topics for the upcoming week. I did take a hankerin’ of photos this weekend so let’s get right to it!

I had two coupons both valued at 20% off my purchase for H&M and Sally’s. Here I am at H&M on Saturday. I thought I wanted yellow jeans. Until I tried these on. Then I tried on the colored cords. I’m still thinking about them. I ended up buying a nice cozy sweater, and pants for myself along with a few things for my nephews. They have the cutest kids clothes.

I decided to take my car off the road and arrive in style, in my beast-mobile. Do you like my new ride?

I drove over to Guelph to visit my Great Aunt.  We hung out for a bit, until we had to evacuate her building due to a minor fire! We ended up going out to supper at 4pm (oh 80 year olds!) and then I was asked to drive home so I wasn’t out after dark. Ha!

Sunday was race day at Ironman Canada (IMC). My boyfriend raced in his 4th year in a row, at IMC on a freshly healed broken foot. I was tweeting all day about it, so I apologize after the fact if I clouded up your tweet feed.

I logged into the live feed of Ironman Canada and was glued to the laptop! The bike portion of the race is 180km and takes a good few hours to complete. Rather than sit around in our apartment all day I ended up doing some shopping. I had to check the walmart flyer first, to see if there were any good sales on.

I went to Walmart food village as we call it. Because it has a full on produce and grocery section. I parked far away because I didn’t want beast-mobile to get any scratches :)

My grocery list, treats for Alfie, some sales I spotted and holy moses, they still make Pert Plus shampoo?

Pretty basic math that doesn’t add up. $2.00 for 1 bottle with 35 sheets of Lysol wipes, or $6.67 for 3 bottles of the exact same stuff. I’m confused as to which one to buy ;)

I had almost everything I needed, and was searching around the store for my favorite soy sauce by VH, they make some pretty #DeliciousSauces. But the only thing I could find was this mini display of random VH sauces. I went up and down each aisle for what seemed like 20 minutes. I decided to pay closer attention to what I was doing and not get distracted by all of the Newfoundland purity candy (great name for it, hey?). Low and behold, of course the VH sauces were just adjacent to this display. Then I had to decide on whether or not to get the low sodium, or regular soy sauce.Low sodium it is! Even that is pretty high for just one tablespoon. No wonder I’m always so thirsty after I make lemon pepper chicken stir fry. Oops.

Have you ever tried kale or baby kale? It’s a super food that is very good for you. It’s from the cabbage family and it’s very leafy! Apparently people massage kale leaves to make it more tender. I’ve only had it once or twice before, and I enjoyed it so I decided to pick it up with some other things.

When I arrived home, Alfie immediately sniffed out his treats so I gave him one and he went right to town on it, out on our balcony. Once he was content with that I decided it was time to check in on the Boyf doing his Ironman and maybe eat some nachos. Heh heh. Note to self: Montana’s chicken nachos are still way better!I even had a mini-tweet-convo with the famous Jordan Rapp who was announcing at IMC, it actually made me giddy when he replied. 

Between cooking supper and waiting for the boyf to finish the race, I was dying to go for a pee TMI! I know! For some reason, I sat by the laptop an 3 extra minutes longer and there he was. My boyfriend shown right below, coming in on a newly healed broken foot. In a finish time in under 11 hours, what a guy. The people down on the balcony below me, definitely heard me hootin’ and hollering at Scott on the screen, I was clapping like a baby seal I was so happy, ha ha!All the excitement was over with and I could finally focus on not burning my supper. What did I make? Oh, chef’s own Lemon Pepper Chicken Stir Fry. Actually, it’s not my recipe. My brother came up with this random concoction that tastes amazing and it’s a staple in out household now. Thanks broski.

Finished product, right there. Want to know how to make it?

What you’ll need:

  1. Garlic
  2. Oil
  3. VH Soy Sauce
  4. White Vinegar (my brother uses rice vinegar, does that taste the same? I don’t know sorry!)
  5. Lemon Pepper seasoning

That’s it. 5 ingredients, and then your food. Assemble it all together and you’ve got supper in no time. Especially if you’re smart like me and cooked the chicken before hand and chopped the veg!

My veg and meat:

  1. Bell peppers
  2. Carrots
  3. Broccoli
  4. Cauliflower
  5. Cooked chicken

I use the tube garlic that you just refrigerate and about a teaspoon of oil, just to get things goin’ a bit. The garlic is already minced, so it’s perfect. I always put the firmest veg (that being carrots) in first to cook it down a bit, and once the carrots have been cooking in the pan for a few minutes I add the broccoli and cauliflower (which I forgot to purchase).

After everything is a bit tender, it’s time to add the VH soy sauce! I always eyeball how much goes in. So, just for you guys today I ended up measuring 2 teaspoons of soy sauce.

It’s not supposed to be a lot of it. Just enough to give it some flavor. It’s not a soy sauce stir fry, it’s a lemon pepper stir fry.

At this time you can now add in the vinegar. I’m not entirely sure what the vinegar does to the recipe, but you can notice it, when it’s not in there. Put in 1/2 a capful of vinegar. Not much at all.

Now that everything is mostly cooked. Add your cooked chicken, and bell peppers. Top with a few large pinches of lemon pepper or 2 teaspoons and keep stirring, because you don’t want a mouthful of straight up lemon pepper. It’d be way too salty/peppery.

I love to eat the stir fry with noodles. So go ahead and boil some water and cook as many packages as you’d like of these Mr. Noodles. Keep on a boil for 3 minutes total, and strain. Serve your dinner immediately and it’s going to be SOOO tasty!!

For more photos of my weekend, go ahead and view my Google+ story.

For more information about VH, you can find them on twitter @VHSauces, VH Facebook, and the VH Sauces website.

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias, all opinions are my own. #CBias

 

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My CrossFit Journal (Year 1, week 25)

Thanks to those who participated in my poll last week. I was questioning whether or not to do a post each time I work out, or save it all for Monday’s into one big ol’ collaboration.

The short:

  • CrossFit x 2
  • Running x 2

______________________________________________

year 1, week 25, day one

Ring Dip:
max-max-max  (so annoying, I’m so bad at this) My legs were even still on the ground

Back Squat:
20 Minutes to Establish 3RM

I ended up back squatting 95lbs (!!!). We had a few minutes left and I tried to go for 105 and did one. So that’s awesome right? lol I can almost back squat my own weight, that’s ridiculous.

“Mad Cindy”
AMRAP 10:
5 Pause Pullups
10 Clapping Push Ups
15 Jumping Squats

This WOD killed my arm pits, lol.

______________________________________________

year 1, week 25, day two

15 Thrusters; 135/95lbs 55lbs
Run 200 meters
20 Thrusters; 95/65lbs 45lbs
Run 400 meters
30 Thursters; 65/45lbs 35lbs
Run 800 meters

This one was pretty tough. We just had an 18 minute time limit and I was on my last 800m run, and I think the buzzer went off just as I was coming back, finishing up my run. Not bad!


______________________________________________

year 1, week 25, day three

Didn’t go to CrossFit but ran 6k with my co-worker. PROOF!

______________________________________________

year 1, week 25, day four

Hilarious story. I was pigging out on junk food because my Boyfriend was away, and I decided to watch the documentary SUPER SIZE ME. Silly mistake. I was feeling already full and feeling like the dude was describing me as one of the folks he was talking about in the film. I had to pause the movie half way through and ended up going for a speedy 4.23km in 24:03! That’s clippin’ er. Mainly because it was almost 9pm at night, and in a sketch area of town and any random dude I passed, I pretended I had fresh legs and was feelin’ no pain. Though, I was feeling quite ill due to the popcorn and pizza sloshin’ around in my belly. It would’ve made for a “better” story had I have puked on the run. lol But thankfully I did not.

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