Hot Tea for a Warm Winter

I live in the Midwest, and we have had an extraordinarily warm winter.  Hardly any snow or sleet has fallen, and many days had high temperatures in the 50s and 60s.  It has not exactly been a winter for cozying up under a blanket with a hot cuppa anything.  Nevertheless, I am still drinking hot tea at least a few times a week. Drinking tea is not just a way to keep warm. It is a relaxing way to ease into or out of the day. 

The soporific effects of chamomile tea are well known—at least to me. One cup before bedtime, and I am practically sleepwalking while brushing my teeth.  My herbal tea sleep aid comes in handy any time of year, even in the heat of an Indiana summer.  I will not give up on chamomile or any other tea, even with the weatherman predicting more days in the 60s. The weather does not dampen my enthusiasm for hot tea and probably never will. I wonder if other tea drinkers have the same feelings.   

Still, I wonder if I will tend to drift away from hot tea as the days lengthen and the weather warms up. Juice and water beckon, as always. On occasion, I drink pop.  (Carbonated beverages are called pop in these parts.  Not soda.  Not soda pop.  Just pop.) Tea will always be there, bags of it in the glass canister, at least three varieties to choose from, all of them suiting a mood or a feeling as wanted and needed.  

Use Salad Dressing to Flavor Chicken


When I was younger I had a friend who always poured ranch dressing on the side of her plate when eating chicken. She would dip each piece of chicken in the ranch dressing before eating it. At the time I thought this was strange, but I guess it‘s no different than dipping a French fry in ketchup.

I decided to try dipping my chicken pieces in Italian dressing and found it to be quite delicious. Then when I was visiting my sister and we had to cook dinner for our children, we came up with a new way to flavor the chicken using salad dressing.

The first thing we did was cut our boneless chicken breasts up into little bite-sized cubes. You can, however, cut the chicken into strips or even leave it as a whole breast. After that, we poured salad dressing in one bowl and bread crumbs in another. I used plain bread crumbs because I wanted the flavor to come from the dressing, but you can use flavored bread crumbs if you want.

To trap the flavor of the dressing in the chicken bites we first dipped them in the dressing, and then into the bread crumbs. We heated up vegetable oil in a frying pan and then added the chicken bites. I have since tried this recipe with olive oil, which is much healthier, and loved it.

You’ll need to cook the chicken bites until they are golden brown on all sides. I have to say that this dish was well received by all of the kids. I have tried the recipe using Italian dressing, Caesar dressing, and Ranch dressing. All were delicious. I imagine other dressing flavors would be just as good.
 

Ten Minutes To A Better Body

I could opt to throw out another low-fat or fat free recipe, given that the primary goal of this website is to do just that. Reality is, finding low or fat free recipes is only half the battle. We can eat healthy every day – watch our caloric intake, monitor our sodium intake and reduce or eliminate a chunk of the fat from our meals. Chances are, we will see positive results. We may slim down, have more energy and overall be in the process of obtaining and maintaining a healthier lifestyle. And to some, they may be good enough.

For me, I want all of those things. Yet, a plateau always manages to creep into my life – a moment where my efforts roll to a standstill. The moment where I have conquered a portion of my weight loss and health goals, but a decent amount remains. And no matter how healthy I eat, I stay exactly where I am.

If you speak to anyone in the health and wellness world, they always note that nutrition plays a significant role and exercise becomes the next. I have tried gym memberships and group classes. All are great on some levels – however, I have been striving to find something that would work with my schedule, provide results, and essentially help me reach my fitness goals.

Most people have heard of P-90x. A large chunk of people have tried it. I being one of them – and honestly, I cannot deny that it was a great work-out. My only struggle is the amount of time needed to complete the work-outs. There are numerous days that time is not on my side. I recently ordered the 10 minute work-outs from the same individual who created P-90x. Work out for 10 minutes – believe me, that is a work out I can commit to.

If you are like me…have a schedule that makes it hard to give yourself a great deal of time in the gym…these work-outs can be a lifesaver. For me, kicking out a little bit of money for these was a minor investment. Hopefully, weeks from now…I can say that my goals have been met with a little help for ten minutes a day.

Early Morning Oatmeal Muffins

Oatmeal for the bowlless

I've always been the type to build a morning ritual from which I absolutely cannot stray. Skip those beginning steps and my whole day is off. These days, I need at least an hour at the start of every day in which to brew coffee, make stovetop oatmeal, and read most of the internet. I'm not one of those people who can just skip breakfast and jettison off to work at a moment's notice. If I don't get my caffeine and cereal, it's going to be ugly.

Still, I welcome small variations to the familiar groove. Instead of homemade oatmeal, I might do granola, yogurt, or just some whole fruit. And sometimes I go crazy and bake my usual oats into delicious, compact muffins. It's essentially the same concept as my normal bowl--oats and fruit and other tasty stuff--only there's no spoon and it can be prepared in advance if I know I'm going to be pressed for time in the coming days. 

If you're one of those on-the-go types, you can always pack up one of these muffins to eat wherever you happen to find yourself in the mornings. But even those who take their mornings lazy like me can appreciate the moist, bready texture of these tasty cups. They're great for rushed weekdays and slow Sundays alike.

You're going to need:

  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I like to use melted coconut oil for its light, sweet flavor, but olive is good too)
  • 1/4 cup applesauce or mashed bananas
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 eggs (substitute another mashed banana if you're going vegan on this)
  • 2 cups whole milk (or non-dairy substitute)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 3 cups old-fashioned oatmeal
  • 1/2 cup raisins, dried cranberries, freeze-dried blueberries, or whatever strikes your fancy

In a large bowl, cream your sugar with your oil. Beat in the applesauce/bananas and eggs, then the milk.. In a small bowl, combine baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt, then add all to wet mixture. Finally, stir in the oatmeal and raisins until everything is sufficiently coated. Pour batter into an oiled muffin pan lined with baking cups. Top each cup with a little sprinkling of brown sugar and cinnamon. Bake about 25 minutes or until a fork inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Enjoy on frosty mornings with sauteed apples, maple syrup, hot cooked blueberries, nutella, or whatever sweet goop you've got around the house.

Homemade Chocolate Covered Pretzels


I have a weakness for chocolate covered pretzels. Unfortunately, I find them quite expensive to purchase. This meant that I had to learn how to make them for myself. I was excited to discover that it was not that difficult, and there are plenty of ways to add extra flavor that you won’t get from a bag in the grocery store.

I prepare for my homemade chocolate covered pretzels by coating a few cookie sheets with wax paper. The pretzels come off of the wax paper easily after they harden in the refrigerator.

I always use Hershey’s chocolate bars to make my chocolate covered pretzels, but you are free to use any brand you wish. You can melt the chocolate bars in the microwave, or over a double broiler. I’m lazy, so I use the microwave. Just break the bars up into chunks and microwave in increments of 30 seconds.

Use a small pair of tongs to dip your pretzels into the chocolate. Once you have completely coated the pretzel set it on the wax paper. Repeat until you have coated as many pretzels as you can.

Now comes the fun part. My kids love to sprinkle jimmies over the pretzels, but I like to drizzle some melted caramel. Butterscotch would also work, as would hot fudge. As soon as you finish decorating your pretzels, stick them in the refrigerator. Don’t remove them until the chocolate and toppings have become hard.

I should also mention that several people I know prefer to use white chocolate. I don’t particularly care for white chocolate, but it is an option. Of course, dark chocolate bars can also be used to substitute the milk chocolate bars. I do like dark chocolate!

You also don’t have to stop at the jimmies. You can use sprinkles, M&Ms, or even small bits of crushed walnuts.
 

Happy Pancake Day!

(Or Was It Last Week?)
There is some debate about what day, exactly, is Pancake Day. But honestly, whichever day you choose to celebrate is probably the right one!
 
Shrove Tuesday is probably the most traditional, and therefore most correct, Pancake Day. This is the day preceding Ash Wednesday, which kicks off the beginning of Lent. Traditionally, Shrove Tuesday has been a day to live it up before Lent starts, which is why it's also known as Fat Tuesday, a.k.a. Mardi Gras.

 
However, IHOP (the American chain restaurant devoted to pancakes) considers February 28th to be Pancake Day, regardless of the date of Ash Wednesday. Frankly, my guess is that someone up at Corporate wanted to have a Shrove Tuesday promotion, but someone else was worried that it might look too religious and alienate the non-Catholics, so they compromised on a nearby date.
 
Regardless of the specifics, you should eat pancakes!
 
There are several decent pancake mixes available. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we swear by Snoqualmie Falls Lodge pancake mix. Elsewhere, Bisquick is popular. But I'm telling you, it's easy to make pancakes from scratch. If you have a reasonably well-stocked kitchen, you probably have all the ingredients at hand. And they taste so much better than the stuff from a mix!
 
My favorite recipe originally hails from a Metafilter comment. "1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 T oil, 1 t baking powder, 1 t sugar." Mix it all together, but don't over-mix it. Then pour into a heated, greased pan.
 
The first pancake always turns out badly. That's just how it goes. For subsequent pancakes, I wait to flip until the browning has crept up halfway up the side of the batter. By this time, bubbles should have started to appear on the top of the batter. And the bottom should be browned enough that it has released itself from the pan. Just another minute or two on the other side will do the trick!
 
The biggest problem with pancakes is the timing. Unless you want to feed everyone one pancake at a time, you will have to keep them warm. I have had the best luck with putting them on a cookie sheet, layered with aluminum foil, in a 200 degree oven. At this temperature they will hold for about 20 minutes before they start to dry out. That should be enough time for you to whip up a decent-sized stack for the whole family. 
 
Butter, syrup, and enjoy!
 

Doritos Dinamita: Chile Limon

Dinamitas are basically big Doritos chips, but rolled into a cylinder. Why reserve this technology for the Hispanic market?
Here is what it is like to eat Doritos Dinamita chips:
 
Chip #1: Mm, this is pretty tasty! And it's so much easier to eat a tube than the usual triangular chips.
 
Chip #2: These have a really great lime flavor, and a nice little spicy kick.
 
Chip #3: OH MY GOD I'M DYING CALL 911 GET ME A SODA OR SOMETHING HELP HELP HELP

 
I first encountered Dinamita chips at a Winco Foods store last night. Winco Foods is a local chain of bargain grocery stores, many of which stock a lot of Hispanic foods. (It's where I encountered delicious Bimbonuelas.) Most of the Dinamita packaging is in Spanish, although a few bits are given in English (below the Spanish bits). I love multicultural snacks! And why aren't these an Anglo thing? Because they really are pretty tasty.
 
Apparently the snack manufacturers have decided that only Hispanic people like spicy foods. Witness the Tapatio co-branded Doritos and Ruffles chips, which are as difficult to find as they are delicious. I particularly like the Tapatio Lime flavored Ruffles, which is kind of what I was expecting from these.
 
I should walk it back and explain that I'm not a COMPLETE wuss when it comes to spicy foods. I usually order Thai food with 2-3 stars, and I use Sriracha sauce on a lot of foods. This makes me a boss spice lover to 50% of the population, and a complete wuss to the other 50%. If you are the other 50%, then you will really like these chips, because DAMN THEY ARE SPICY.
 
My first impression came when I picked up the bag, which is surprisingly heavy. That is because it is mostly full of product. We're so used to Doritos bags which are 95% air, it seems weird to heft one that is actually 3/4ths full.
 
My next impression was that "Dinamita," a name which uses sticks of dynamite for the two letter Is, is probably descriptive of the effect that these have on your colon. The package shows two Dinamita chip sticks apparently being blown out of a fiery explosion, which caused my friend to remark that "At least it's truth in advertising, because I'm pretty sure that's what your butt is going to look like."
 
Dinamitas are basically big Doritos chips, but rolled into a cylinder. Why reserve this technology for the Hispanic market? It makes them easier to eat (no more jabbing the roof of your mouth with an errant corner!) and they seem to be crispier as well.
 
Seriously, though. Have a Coke or a beer handy the first time you try them. WOW.
 

Substituting Spaghetti Squash for Pasta



When I was in Florida, my mom substituted the normal pasta used to make spaghetti and meatballs with spaghetti squash. I was surprised at how much my kids enjoyed eating it. I was determined to serve this for dinner at my house when I got back home.

Spaghetti squash takes a lot longer to cook than pasta, so you’ll have to keep that in mind when you are ready to prepare dinner. I like to place mild sausage links in my crock pot with Prego pasta sauce. I do this first thing in the morning and turn the heat setting to low.

About an hour before its time to eat, I’ll slice my spaghetti squash in half and drizzle a little butter over the top of each half. I place them cut side up in a baking dish and bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for a total of 45 to 60 minutes. The spaghetti squash is done when you can pull it apart with your fork.

After I get all of the spaghetti squash strands out, I place them in a serving dish. Then, I drizzle some of the Prego sauce from the crock pot over the top. I don’t pour to much on spaghetti squash because I prefer my guests to decide how much sauce they desire.

You can also make homemade garlic bread to go with your meal. Simply chop up some garlic and mix it in with some melted butter. Spread over slices of Italian bread and bake until slightly crispy. Sometimes I’ll even shake a little parmesan cheese over the bread before I bake it.

The Atkins Diet: Bacon and Eggs for Breakfast

The Protein DIet: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly



A few years ago everyone in the northwestern part of the United States over the age of 47 was on the protein diet; people loved the Atkins Diet. Why wouldn’t they? The basic diet consisted of a bacon and eggs breakfast, hamburgers without buns for lunch, and steak minus the potatoes for dinner.

I think the fad ended when Dr. Atkins died. Not necessarily because of the Atkins diet, but it did tend to make people wary of the diet. (Read this article from Snopes for the complete scoop on whether or not Dr. Atkins’ death was tied to a heart attack or not.)

I never got the idea behind the diet so much, but I did see several people actually lose weight from the Atkins diet, which made carbohydrates the number one bad guy food in the United States.

I think that the biggest reasons that people lost weight on the diet was that they cut out all of the crap from their diets. (OK, most of the crap. If you can forgive the fatty sides of beef that people ate on their diets.)

Hello, did it not occur to anyone before the Atkins diet that Big Gulps of Coke were not healthy or that huge bags of Doritos were not good for weight? Because I’m pretty sure that chips and potato chips are not the lowest calorie foods around and that cutting them out of a diet would make a tremendous difference in someone’s life.

Or is the idea that eliminating chips and other carbohydrate processed crap from the diet was the major factor for weight loss completely crazy? Or did the people that lost weight on the Atkin’s diet really lose weight just because they stopped drinking fruit juice and avoided bananas altogether? (The sugar factor is also a key element of the Atkins diet.)

It’s really hard to say what worked and didn’t work, just as it’s hard to determine whether or not Dr. Atkins did in fact die of heart-attack related causes. It is easy to question the healthiness of the Atkins diet in terms of the long-term health risks of eating too much fatty meat--long thought by the medical community to be a definite bad thing--but again, it’s hard to quantify the Atkins Diet formula to determine the exact health risks of such a strange diet.

Have you ever been on the Atkins Diet? What did you think about it?

 

McDonald’s Brings Back the Shamrock Shake

I still remember being a kid and wishing that McDonalds would have shamrock shakes year round, but alas they are only available for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday. This year, however, McDonalds decided to take the shamrock shake to a whole new level. They introduced the green milkshake nationwide.

Over 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants now serve the holiday shake, whereas only select restaurants had it available before this year. According to CNN Money, the shamrock shake was first introduced in 1970, and even had its own mascot-Uncle O-Grimacey.

Although the shamrock shake is simply a vanilla shake with a bit of mint and green coloring added to it, it is still desirable by children and adults alike. This is especially true for me because it brings back so many childhood memories.

Each year the shamrock shake becomes available toward the last half of February, and can be purchased all the way up until March 17th. After March 25th, the delicious Irish inspired shake completely disappears until the following year. I make it a point to purchase two or three shamrock shakes for my kids each year as something fun to do together. I want to instill those same fond childhood memories in my children that I have from when I was young.

Since I homeschool, I decided to take a day to review the origin of the holiday with my daughter, complete a few St. Patrick’s Day crafts, and then head over to McDonalds to finish the day off with a shamrock shake. Public and private school teachers can implement this as well by having a parent pick up the shakes and deliver them to the school.

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