chimesblog

I found this recipe for Skinny Chicken Parmesan from Feeding My Temple on pinterest a while back. It annoys me when I see “skinny” in the title of recipes, but it’s a fast way to know that somebody’s made an attempt at making a healthy dish.

As per usual, I made some modifications.

The recipe is simple: Bread your meat, pour sauce over it, top with cheese and bake. And for you people counting points, it’s 7 points + per serving — her recipe makes 8 servings.

Since I can’t eat gluten, I used our trusty food processor to crush up some corn flakes and rice krispies to use instead of bread crumbs.

Also, I don’t use fat free cheese. When they make fat free and reduced fat things, they add filler. Usually filler is something you don’t want to eat. Unless there is a MAJOR difference in fat or calories, I always choose the real deal.

I also recommend buying the bricks of cheese and making your own shredded cheese. Why? Two reasons: It’s cheaper and there’s less preservatives and salt in it that way. When they prepackage shredded cheese, all sorts of junk goes into the cheese to keep it from clumping together or drying out.

Okay, now that I’ve preached to you about the dangers of reduced fat, fat free and fake stuff, I’ll share a secret with you. The real reason we shred our own cheese (well Mark’s real reason anyway): We add a clove of garlic to it. Adding a clove to the cheese while shredding it pretty much infuses the cheese with the garlic.

He might kick my butt for sharing this secret … he seems to think it was HIS idea. But I bet there are other garlic lovers out there who’ve been doing this or something similar for years.

Ah, yes. Garlic cheese.

Bread your meat … put it in the oven with some sauce and cheese over it, and bake.

YUM.

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Meet my latest obsession: Quinoa.

[ look how pretty it looks with some black and white mixed together! ]

It’s nutty. It’s different. It’s filling. It’s awesome.

Mostly eaten with savory foods, quinoa is often overlooked for breakfast.

But look at this? Doesn’t this look yummy? Trust me. It does.

And it’s gluten free. Which is a bonus. I have an issue with gluten and sometimes oatmeal bugs me, and I was REALLY missing oatmeal this winter.

I found this great recipe on pinterest [ of course ] from Martha Stewart [ who else? ]. But of course I added some extra flair.

chimes’s Breakfast Quinoa [ modified from Martha Stewart's recipe  — 7 points + per serving ]
Ingredients:
2 c unsweetened almond milk [ or milk of your choice — moo works too ]
1/2 c white quinoa, rinsed
1/2 c black quinoa, rinsed
2 T honey [ or sweetener of your choice ]
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground nutmeg
1 c frozen blueberries

Directions:
Bring milk to a boil in a small saucepan. Add quinoa, and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer, covered, until three-quarters of the milk has been absorbed, about 15 minutes. Stir in honey and spices. Cook, covered, until almost all the milk has been absorbed, about 8 minutes. Stir in blueberries, and cook until most of their water has been absorbed. Serve.

Makes 4 servings.

Of course, you can mix things up. If you don’t like cinnamon or nutmeg, use cocoa [ cocoa and blueberries go together really well ], add peanut butter, use all black or all white quinoa. Go nuts! Add nuts? It’s really good cold over greek yogurt too.

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So a long long time ago, I had a birthday party. Yes. In October.

Regardless, you’re getting a recipe, so ignore the un-timeliness of this post. As you may know, I’ve been obsessed with everything spicy. Including chocolate. Chipotle chocolate to be precise. So for my birthday I made a spicy chocolate flourless cake. Because, as you may also know, I quit eating gluten in hopes of fixing my tummy troubles [ it worked ].

I used the Chipotle Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe from Simply Recipes. But there was one major problem: I couldn’t find chipotle anywhere. Apparently WalMart has it [ for future reference ]. So instead, I ground up about a teaspoon of crushed red pepper in the coffee grinder and added that.

Also, this is the easiest recipe ever. It’s basically 1 bag of chocolate chips [ semi-sweet or darker ] + sugar + butter + 5 eggs + any spices you want to add. And the end product? It’s like a slice of chocolate that’s the consistency of cheesecake.

[ melt the chocolate and butter together ]

[ stir up the eggs and sugar ]

Did I mention Danielle helped me bake? She’s my favorite baking partner-in-crime and we live so far apart we hardly ever get to do this anymore. My yearly birthday get-togethers are usually when we do such things. Last year we made Guinness Cupcakes.

[ grind up the spices ... or use chipotle ]

[ mix all together ]

[ bake in a springform pan ]

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[ serve! ]

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