Pinterest Foodie Project: Valentine's Day

Having had the day before Valentine's Day off from work, I decided to spend the day doing a little cooking. I had found a recipe for preparing chicken for chicken tacos and decided to try it out. It involved my crockpot, which was why I waited until my day off (I'm still not comfy with leaving a crockpot on for almost nine hours while I'm at work). I chose to cook the chicken for enchiladas instead of tacos, since tacos would have involved having to buy veggies and I was a little low on money (surprise, surprise). I only used three chicken breasts, so I halved the other ingredients as well. I cooked the chicken on high for about two hours and then low for another two and a half. With about an hour left in cooking time, I added a little enchilada sauce to the chicken. Once the chicken was ready, I basically just used the recipe on the can of enchilada sauce to prep my enchiladas.

The enchiladas were definitely a hearty dish, but came out a little spicier than I expected considering I just used a medium sauce. Also, I chose a red sauce instead of green, as you can likely tell from the above photo.

In celebration of Valentine's Day, I thought dessert was fitting. Naturally, Pinterest had many Valentine's themed desserts. I opted for something I already had ingredients for: brownies! A lot of the recipes I found contained actual chocolate, but I wanted to utilize the cocoa powder I already had. I did have a few chocolate chips leftover from other baking projects, so while the chocolate in the brownies was mostly from the cocoa powder, I did throw the chocolate chips in for extra measure. I also wanted to make the brownies look more...Valentiney, so I made a mixture of powdered sugar, milk, and red food coloring and drizzled it atop the brownies after they came out of the oven. You can find the brownie recipe I used here.

I did have to cook the brownies a little longer than the recipe called for, but that was because I used a smaller dish. (My 9x13 was being used for the enchiladas.) I baked both dishes at the same time and they both got done relatively close to one another, so it worked out well. The brownies were delicious, if not as fudgy as the recipe would have hinted, and after I had a couple for myself, I took them to work and shared the rest with my co-workers. Generous? Yes. But I did it mostly because I'm trying to diet and couldn't have a dozen of brownies lying around the house tempting me.

Pinterest Foodie Project: Tuna with a Kick

Taking a cue from a Martha Stewart recipe I found on Pinterest, I recently tried my own version of a spicy tuna melt by mixing a can of tuna in water with a few teaspoons full of medium salsa.

With the tuna on a piece of wheat bread, I drizzled a generous amount of monterey jack cheese on the top and toasted it in the oven until the cheese had browned. Trying to stay low-cal, I ate my melt with a single dill spear. Delicious!

Pinterest Project: Healthy Pizza

Lately I feel like I've been spending more and more time experimenting with recipes from Pinterest. Over the last several weeks, I have really hit the "get healthy" thing hard. I've had fried food once in the past three weeks, and I've tried to cut down on "treats". In addition to working out, of course. A couple nights ago, I had some chicken tenders defrosting in the refrigerator and couldn't think of anything to do with them. I was searching for things to do with BBQ chicken, as that is a sauce I always have on hand, and found several things including cauliflower. This reminded me of the concept of the cauliflower crust pizza that I had seen recipes for before but never tried. I got it in my head that minute that that is what I would make for dinner. I found this recipe for the crust, and decided on pineapple as additional topping (gotta hit that food pyramid). The only problem: I had no cauliflower. So after I got off work, I headed to Kroger, and went ahead and completed my bi-weekly shopping so I wouldn't have to go back again after payday.

Cut to an hour later, and I'm finally at home with my supplies. I first put my chicken in the oven, slathered in barbecue sauce, so that I could be working on my crust while that was cooking. Let me just warn you if you have never grated cauliflower before: it takes FOREVER. I never use a grater. I never had the reason to own one either, since it's really just recently that I've really gotten into cooking. So, stupid me, I start grating by moving the florets from side to side across the grater. I felt like I was getting nowhere. I mean, I was still going when my chicken was done baking. Then I realized it was more efficient to move the florets up and down, and the grating went much quicker at that point. I only had to have one cup of cauliflower, but it took me about 30 minutes and I had very few florets left at the end. (The recipe I had stated one head of cauliflower should be enough for 3 cups. This is a lie!)

Then it was time to mix the ingredients.

I did not have garlic salt, so I left this out, and I also did not brush the crust with olive oil prior to baking, mostly because I was afraid of using too much and affecting the texture/taste of the final product.

The crust browned around the edges very quickly, but the center was a little sticky, so I left it in for a while longer. I would say in hindsight that my crust probably could have been a little larger, but I was afraid of having thin spots and my sauce falling through. After I felt the crust was well-cooked, I pulled it out of the oven and put a thin layer of barbecue sauce over the crust. I covered the crust with pieces of chicken that I had sort of tried to shred with two forks while my crust was baking. The chicken didn't shred so much as just tear into pieces, but what the hell? As long as the pieces were placed in such a way that I could still cut into the crust, I wasn't worried about it. Then I threw on a little pineapple and topped it off with shredded monterey jack cheese.

The end product was fairly good. I was pleased with my topping combos, although it could have stood to have a little more cheese. The only bad thing was that the whole pizza ended up just being four small slices, three of which I ate right then. (It was an hour and a half past my normal meal time. I was kind of hungry.) The crust tasted mostly like egg, and while I didn't mind it, it was definitely a weird thing to have on the bottom of the pizza when I'm used to having bread products there. I don't regret trying it though, and it is probably something I would make again. But now I know a little better, and hopefully the end result would turn out more appetizing. Maybe I could use a little less egg in the crust and a little more cauliflower? Who knows? It's worth a shot, and I'd definitely recommend the recipe to anyone looking to try a low carb diet.