Crock Pot Chicken Chili

Once fall came into full swing and we got super busy, the crock pot came right out. And let me tell you, I was so excited! I love making crock pot creations, and this one was new to me. Can you believe that I'd never had chicken chili? I guess I've always been more of a red meat chili kind of girl. This dish turned out great and we had leftovers for a week! There are a few different ways of serving it, and when you're eating it often, it's nice to change it up a bit. Each time, I topped it with salsa, sour cream and shredded cheese and served it over rice, in a tortilla or just plain! Simple, cheap, and delicious!

Crock Pot Chicken Chili
Adapted from Skinny Taste

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
1 16-oz can black beans
1 16-oz can kidney beans
1 8-oz can tomato sauce
10 oz package frozen corn kernels
2 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes w/chilies
1 packet taco seasoning
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp chili powder
24 oz (3-4) boneless skinless chicken breasts
chili peppers, chopped (optional)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Directions:

Combine beans, onion, chili peppers, corn, tomato sauce, cumin, chili powder and taco seasoning in a slow cooker. Place chicken on top and cover. Cook on low for 9-10 hours or on high for 4-5 hours. Half hour before serving, remove chicken and shred. Return chicken to slow cooker and stir in. Top with fresh cilantro if you wish. Also try it with low fat cheese and sour cream. 

Wendella Boat Tour

I took a little hiatus from blogging as my life got pretty hectic for a while! Marathon training really ramped up with 20 mile runs on the weekends and 8 or 10 mile runs during the week. Finally, I'm in taper mode, so my long runs are not as long. The marathon is a week from this Sunday and I'm getting excited! I'm taking an online nutrition class that is proving to be much more time consuming than I originally thought it would be. However, I am enjoying it a lot!! Another hiccup in the mix was that I had to study for and take the GRE. I started studying lightly in August, but intensified my studies in September. I'm very glad to have that over with!!!

Have no fear, I'll catch you up on everything! First up, we went on a Wendella Boat Tour with Bryan's parents when they were in town a couple weeks ago! We've lived in Chicago for 3 years now, but we had never taken the opportunity to go on one of these boat tours! I'm so glad we did! It was very informative, and we got to see some great views!! Our tour guide was well experienced, quite witty and pretty interesting. We chose to do the combined river and lake tour to get some great views of the Chicago skyline too!

Trump Tower

Marina City (aka Corn Cobs)

Willis (Sears) Tower

Navy Pier

Hancock Building/River North

Chicago Skyline

The boat tour was very fun and I highly recommend it!!!

Quinoa Stuffed Bell Peppers

I had a craving for quinoa last week and decided I’d try out a recipe that I saw recently for quinoa stuffed bell peppers! This recipe is easy to throw together, and I was able to get a lot of things done during the simmer phase and the bake phase. Yay for productive evenings! The best part is that I had lots of leftovers! I kept the recipe for the quinoa the same, but only used 2 bell peppers for Bryan and myself, with the intent of keeping leftover quinoa as filling for another night! You could also reserve some of the quinoa as filling in an enchilada or burrito!

This recipe turned out great! We added salsa on top of our peppers because it just seemed like it needed a bit of a twist and kick. Perfection!

Quinoa Stuffed Bell Peppers

Adapted from Sweet Pea's Kitchen

Makes: 8 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
• 2 ribs celery, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons garlic, minced
• 1 8-oz. package mushrooms, stems removed, caps sliced very thin
• 1 (15 ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained, liquid reserved
• 3/4 cup quinoa
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup frozen corn, thawed
• 1 1/2 cups grated Pepper Jack cheese (we used cheddar because it was on hand)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 4 large red bell peppers, halved lengthwise, ribs removed

Directions:

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook 5 minutes, or until soft. Add cumin and garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Stir in mushrooms and drained tomatoes. Cook 5 minutes, or until most of liquid has evaporated.

Stir in quinoa and vegetable broth. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 20 minutes, or until quinoa is tender. Remove from heat and stir in black beans, corn and 1 cup cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Pour reserved liquid from tomatoes in bottom of baking dish.

Fill each bell pepper half with heaping 3/4-cup quinoa mixture, and place in baking dish. Cover with foil, and bake 40 minutes. Uncover, and sprinkle each pepper with 1 tablespoon of remaining cheese. Bake 15 minutes more, or until tops of stuffed peppers are browned. Let stand 5 minutes. Transfer stuffed peppers to serving plates, and drizzle each with pan juices before serving.

Grilled Brats, Potatoes with Veggies and Black Bean Salad

I'm so happy to have my grill master back!!! I think we'll be grilling all week since neither of us grilled in the past two months. We have to make up for lost time! Sunday night, we though about doing a little surf and turf with grilled shrimp and steak, but it just seemed more like low key kind of night, so we decided to keep it simple with grilled brats and veggies!

We got a very cool gift from my in-laws called a grill wok. It's a very handy piece of equipment for the grill! It has a removable handle so that you can close the grill on the pan and let your food get the full smoky flavor. You can grill all sorts of things with it! We've stuck to potatoes and veggies so far, but I'm sure we could do shrimp and other small items that you might worry would fall into the grill. We've had great luck with our veggie combinations - they always seems to turn out well! Last night, we did potatoes with red peppers and onions seasoned with a little olive oil, garlic, Italian seasoning and salt and pepper.

Alongside the brats and grilled veggies, I decided to serve a bean salad because I wanted something light and flavorful, but full of protein and fiber to help refuel after my long training runs this weekend. This bean salad was out of this world delicious and I'm pretty sure it will be gone by tonight and I'll have to make a double batch to get through the week! I adapted the recipe for what I had on hand, and it was perfect in my opinion!

Black Bean Salad
Adapted from Food Network

Prep time: 10 minutes, plus cooling time

Ingredients:
1 can black beans, drained
1 can cannelli beans, drained
1 (15 oz) can whole kernel corn, drained
2 Roma tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup diced red onion
1/4 cup diced green onion
4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon lime juice
3 tablespoons honey
Season with salt, pepper and cumin to taste

Directions:
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and cool until ready to serve (refrigerate for one hour or pop in the freezer for 15 minutes like I did :) ).

Homemade Toaster Strudel and Mini Egg Pies

I had a special breakfast planned for Bryan's first Saturday back at home. We love to make a big breakfast and have lazy Saturday mornings every now and then, and this was sure to be one of them!

We made some egg pies with our mini pie maker (one of the best gifts ever!) out of eggs, baby bella mushrooms, spinach, onion, a little cream and cheese. All we have to do is mix the ingredients, fill the pie doughs and pop them in the pie maker for about 8 minutes! They are so delicious!

To go with the savory egg pies, I decided I wanted something sweet. I recently saw a blog post with homemade toaster strudels and they sounded like a perfect side to the egg pies. I never grew up with toaster strudels in the house, but I remember enjoying them at friends houses the morning after sleepovers or for afternoon snacks. I remember they were so delicious and there was never enough toaster strudel to satisfy my appetite for them. That's where these homemade toaster strudels come in. They are bigger and better than the Pillsbury boxed version! All you do is take a pastry sheet, cut it into 4 strips, top it with some jam that was thickened with corn starch, fold over and crimp the edges together and pop in the oven for about 10 minutes, and voila, the best breakfast dessert one could ask for! The only downside is that we used homemade frosting that didn't get very thick, so you can't really see it in the photo. It ended up being more like a glaze, but went perfectly with the strudel.

Homemade Toaster Strudel
adapted from 1 Cup Awesome

Prep time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4 pastries

Ingredients:
1/2 cup blueberry or strawberry jam (we used blueberry!)
1/2 tablespoon corn starch mixed with 1/2 tablespoon cold water
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 to 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a small saucepan, bring the jam and cornstarch mixture to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook stirring for 3 to 4 minutes. Set aside and let cool to room temperature.

Lay 1 sheet of pastry on a board and cut it into 4 equal strips.

Put a heaping teaspoon of cooled jam in the middle of the upper part of the dough and fold over the bottom part. Seal the edges with a bit of water and crimp with a fork.

Arrange the pastries on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake until golden about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the pastries from oven and allow them to cool completely.

In a small bowl, add the powdered sugar and whisk in, 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice at a time, to make a thick icing consistency. Drizzle the icing over the pastries. Allow the icing to set for about 15 minutes before eating.

To see a step by step guide, click here.

Sushi Wabi

I welcomed Bryan home last Friday, after he spent two months doing away clinical rotations for medical school. It's so nice to finally have him back! For his homecoming, I brought back the infamous frozen chocolate peanut butter pie! It was just as good as the first time!

The pie served a second purpose as well. On Saturday, we had plans with friends celebrating one of their birthdays, and knowing Bryan and I couldn't (and shouldn't) eat the whole thing by ourselves, we brought it along for dessert and it got rave reviews by all!

Saturday night's plans involved going to Sushi Wabi with the group. I had been craving sushi and was happy to finally satisfy the intense craving. I think Bryan and I chose a great variety in our rolls, and we were really happy with the choices. They were so incredibly delicious! We ordered the Godzilla: tempura shrimp, avocado, orange tobikko, cream cheese, masago, mayo, green onion, chili sauce, tempura crumbs, eel sauce, wasabi mayo and sesame, the Spider: soft-shell crab, cucumber, masago, mayo, pepper vinegar sauce and sesamie, and the Spicy Shrimp: boiled shrimp, green onion, chili oil, red tobikko, masago, mayo and sesame.

It was so fun to hang out with a great group of friends celebrating a birthday, a homecoming, taking boards, and beginning an exciting new school year!

Rock n Roll Chicago Half Marathon 2011

This morning I ran my second half marathon ever - the Rock n Roll Chicago Half Marathon! It was a very fun race and I was so happy to see my friends Jessica and Mae along the course! The weather was great too - partly cloudy skies and around 70 degrees! It even rained lightly on us during the race, which felt really good!

Unfortunately, this year, I'm not able to document the race with photos. Last year, Bryan rode his bicycle around the course and took photos of me and the course. But he's in Cleveland at the moment, so you're stuck with my review in words :)

The first mile was very fast and fun. The next 4 were hard for me. I ended up getting a massive stomach cramp (I never get those!!!), but was able to run through it. Before I knew it, I was at mile 7 and feeling much better! I tried to keep a decent pace through another major stomach cramp around mile 8 and sooner than I thought mile 10 was upon me! I pushed it hard to the end and felt good! My goal was to finish in under 2 hours, but unfortunately, I finished just over that. My full marathon training has been focusing on distance rather than speed, so I didn't feel like I could push myself to the max the entire race and keep the pace the whole time. I guess I was mentally running a marathon race and should have been focusing more on speed. I am very proud of myself for knocking about 20 minutes off of my time in this very race last year. That's major progress! Overall, the race was very fun and the course was awesome!

Now, I'm sitting on the couch drinking Gatorade and water with my compression socks on and massaging my quads with my running stick - and eating my favorite post-race snack... Lays sour cream and onion potato chips. And I don't feel bad about it at all!

Pre-Half Marathon Dinner: Pasta with Salsa di Noci

I love having a savory pasta dish the night before a race! I've actually cooked a very similar meal prior to another race (you can view the recipe I generally followed here), and I thought I'd do something similar with what I had on hand. I didn't have my usual Pappardelle Pasta that I love prior to races, but I did have some whole wheat bow tie pasta made with tomato and spinach. Salsa di noci basically means walnut sauce, and and to make it, I toasted the walnuts in butter and garlic until the garlic is lightly browned and the walnuts are heated thoroughly. Then I removed the contents from heat and added the mascarpone cheese until it melted. I mixed in the cooked noodles and topped with grated parmesan cheese and freshly cracked black pepper. It was awesome! Next time I think I might add some mushrooms! Served with a large salad full of veggies (not pictured because I ate it too fast!) it was a perfect pre-race dinner.

19 miles in Chicago

Today I ran 19 miles for my marathon training! It was long and hard, but I did it!!!

I completed my run in the evening so that I could spend time with Bryan this morning before he went to Cleveland. I waited until just before 5pm so that the temperature would decrease as I ran. It was actually pretty pleasant out compared to many recent runs!

My long run last week was extremely difficult and I hit a major wall with 3 miles left to go. I could not finish and it was miserable. I was determined to not let that happen again! With these long runs that I've been doing, I've discovered that I'm a very salty sweater! Anytime after mile 10, if I rub my arms or legs, they have a thin layer of exfoliation (solidified salt crystals from sweat) all over my skin. When I do these long runs, the salt builds up so much and that means that my body is totally depleted of electrolytes and that is the very reason why I bonked and hit a wall last week. This week I tried Nuun tabs (electrolyte tabs) that dissolve in water and I was thoroughly impressed! My legs got tired near the end of my run, yes, but the rest of my body felt great, which I had not yet experienced after 14 miles yet. What a nice feeling knowing that you have the mental energy to keep going, even if your legs are killing you!

The majority of my run was along the lakefront and it was a beautiful evening for a run! After I came home, I enjoyed leftovers from our date night at Market last night. MMM! Good food in my belly! Now I'm sitting with my compression socks on and taking intermittent breaks to massage my legs with my stick!!!

Market

Bryan and I were able to enjoy a date night while he was home for 30 hours! We decided to try a restaurant near us on Randolph called Market. It's in a fun location and has a rooftop, sports bar, beer garden and patio. The food and drinks were absolutely amazing! We split a caesar salad and an appetizer of mac n cheese mini muffins topped with a sweet BBQ sauce that were to die for! Bryan had a burger with ham, onions, cheese and a fried egg and I had a turkey bacon avocado burger. Both were huge and delicious. Needless to say, I have plenty of leftovers to get me through tonight no problem!!