Cupcakes!

Now, I do not pretend to be the cupcake aficionado like my friend Laura, but I decided to try these out. These cupcakes have 166 calories per serving. I love chocolate. Right now my family is doing a fitness challenge, and I'm trying to walk/run/swim eight miles a day, so I figured I could spare a few calories for a much needed chocolate break.
After a long/short day of cleaning houses, I wanted a bite of chocolate. I bought the ingredients for these cupcakes while planning for my meals this week, and I waited a whole day before I made them.

First, in a small bowl I beat 4oz of fat free cream cheese, 1/3 cup of sugar, and egg product for about a minute.

Next, I mixed the batter in a large mixing bowl. It contains 1 cup of sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. SO GOOD!

Finally I spooned the batter into a cupcake pan, and topped it with the cream cheese topping and granola.

They tasted good, let me tell you! They are not pretty, but they came out okay. Now I'm going to work-out for about two hours to burn everything off.
Tonight, we eat creamy chicken enchiladas!

Oregano Chicken and Vegetables

A few days ago, after a frustrating experience finding only enough chicken to make dinner for my husband, I decided that it was time to come up with a dinner plan for the week. So, I went to the bookshelf and picked up the cookbook I bought from Borders a few months before I got married (over a year ago). It's called Healthy Meals, and I had never used it before. After a few minutes I compiled a list of meals to make over the next week. First, I looked through my cabinets to see which ingredients I needed to buy, and then I made a grocery list (I categorized the list into the different sections of the grocery store so that I won't have to back-track. It saves me time at the store).

So last night I decided to make Oregano Chicken and Vegetables. The ingredients (I bought them at Aldi), cost me about $7.75. This is including the dried spices I had to buy for my cupboard.

First, I thawed two chicken breasts, and sprinkled them with salt and pepper before putting them in a skillet over medium heat for 15 minutes.

Next I added 1 clove of minced garlic, half of a thinly sliced lemon, half of a chopped large tomato, 1/4 cup chopped onion, 1/4 cup parsley, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1/8 teaspoon of crushed red pepper, 1/4 cup white wine (you can use chicken broth instead, I happened to have some white wine in my fridge), and 3/4 cup chicken broth to simmer for fifteen minutes.

After fifteen minutes, I added 1 medium green sweet pepper and 1 red sweet pepper (oh my goodness, I love red peppers). I also added the rest of the tomato, and cooked it covered for seven minutes.

Ta-da! I served the chicken concoction over brown rice. My camera is not great, and I don't have good lighting in my kitchen; but I think it turned out okay. The food tasted great. I did add a little salt to the finished dish.

This meal took me about 45 minutes to prepare, but it's because I haven't cooked with vegetables in a while. I didn't think I could buy vegetables without breaking my budget, but I found that if I bought as many of the ingredients as I could at Aldi, I could afford to buy good vegetables (from Kroger).
This is my first post, so please forgive the boring monologue. I'm very excited about this blog, and I hope you'll enjoy it too.