My hazelnut coffee.  LOL!  I get it from my local grocery store, Martin’s.  The brand is called Javana coffee.  Not sure if it is only carried by Martin’s but this coffee is tasty.  I mean don’t get me wrong I love coffee but those flavored coffees are so much better.  I don’t use creamer in my coffee anymore (too many calories, it’s bad enough I put sugar in there) so a nice strong flavored coffee is amazing. 

Sheesh with all the coffee I drink these days I certainly won’t need any herbal phentermine, this coffee has me peeing a lot and a bit of a curbed appetite.  LOL!  I don’t drink that much coffee but I will say with this tasty coffee I drink more than I used to. 

Tony and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen cooking and over the years we have come to realize there are kitchen items we just can’t live without.  It makes cooking and baking so much more convenient. 

We started off several yrs ago with a griddle, the Presto Tilt n’Drain griddle.  It is a decent sized griddle.  With a family of 6 it will make 6 grilled sandwiches or 6-8 pancakes at a time.  Now there is a slightly bigger griddle we considered getting but it just took up too much counter space.  So we will stick with the one we have.

The other items we have all gotten within the last couple months. For Christmas Tony’s dad got us a crock pot.  Nothing fancy but it is such a wonderful addition.  With 3 lil ones sometimes just throwing some food in  there and letting it cook all day is great and easy.  We make spaghetti sauce in there, chili and a bunch of other foods.

Then Tony and I bought the next 2 items, I guess as presents to each other, LOL!  It is an espresso maker and a kitchen aid mixer.  Both we got from Walmart and they were on sale.  The espresso maker was originally $130 (I think) and we got it for $30 and the kitchen aid mixer was like $40 cheaper than usual.  We make a lot of homemade bread and cookies and well all sorts of foods.  We hardly ever eat out and make most of our food from scratch.  The kitchen aid mixer is such a wonderful product.  I think for Tony’s birthday I am going to get him the pasta roller attachments.  We really want to make homemade pasta and it is a pain to roll it out by hand.

And the espresso machine is a nice and easy way to make a latte or a single cup of coffee.  I can’t wait until it gets a bit warmer out so we can make frappucinos.

All of these items have made cooking and baking so much more pleasant.  Unfortunately with all these items we have run out of space in our kitchen, which wasn’t very big to begin with.  LOL!

Today Tony has the day off.  It is also our friends day off so we are having them over for dinner.  I am excited because I am making enchiladas.  For the last 9 months or so Tony has been doing all the cooking, which isn’t bad but enchiladas is my meal, one of the dishes I cook.  It is delicious.

For dessert we will be having cheesecake which is something Tony makes.  It is also delicious.  Here’s to an evening of good food and good friends.

I have never liked coconut.  However last night Tony brought home a macaroon from his restaurant and I tried one.  Holy Moley!  It was delicious.  I am not sure if all are this way but these were half dipped in chocolate.  Unfortunately I can’t give the restaurant name because quite frankly, I never say anything nice about his job.  Not to mention his restaurant isn’t all over the place like a Chili’s or something.  If you really want to know where they are from, email or post a comment and I can tell you.

All I was saying is that macaroons are tasty.  If you haven’t had one, go buy some.  They are scrum-diddly-umptious!!!!

Tonight I made some delicious enchiladas.  They are so easy and uber tasty.

Ingredients:  1 1/2 pounds of chicken breast

                     8 oz of cream cheese

                     1 jar of salsa

                     tortillas

                     8 oz of shredded cheese

                     enchilada sauce

All ya do is dice up the chicken and cook it until no longer pink.  In a bowl mix the cream cheese, salsa and chicken.  Then fill the tortilla shells with about 2-3 teaspoons of chicken mixture, roll it up and put it in a  pan.  The mixture should make about 10-12 enchiladas.  Top the enchiladas with the sauce and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 min.  Then top the enchiladas with shredded cheese and bake for another 15-20 min until cheese is melted. 

You can top with more salsa and sour cream and bon appetite!!!

Delicious!!

Tony and I decided a couple months ago that I wasn’t going to be that concerned with my salt intake since when I workout, I sweat A LOT.  I still was a little conscious of how much I was eating and trying not to consume too much.  Since using myfooddiary.com I was able to track everyday.  Well over the last couple weeks I have (not so much) not been worried about it at all.  Seriously I was eating about 5000+ mg of sodium a day.  That is A LOT!!!  Well I am wondering if that is why I feel so bloated over the last week, why I have a 3 pound gain.  Maybe I am retaining a good deal of water.  

I have been watching old episodes of Biggest Loser and I heard one of the trainers tell a contestant not to consume more than 1200 mg of sodium a day.  WHAT??  Are you kidding me???  

I would have to only consume 1/5 of what I was.  That is going to be hard.  I told myself I would try over the next few days to eat less sodium.  So I was looking in my cabinets and pantry and tried to find low sodium foods and well…….it was hard.  I thought I could eat (just for a couple days) more oatmeal and some cottage cheese and then dinner will have the most sodium.  

Cottage cheese, I was disappointed to read that it contains 400 mg of sodium per serving (1/2 cup).  That is not good.  At least for what I am trying to accomplish over the next couple days.  No cottage cheese for me.  Chicken and tuna even has a good deal of sodium.  How ever am I going to only consume 1200 mg?   Unless my fridge is packed with fruits and veggies and financially that is just not possible.  Fruits and veggies down here is really expensive. 

I need to see if my weight dilemma right now is water related.  If it is not then it is either muscle gain or that I am destine to be overweight. 

I was watching Biggest Loser last night and they were showing how to make your Thanksgiving dinner a little healthier and since I am all about low fat/calorie recipes I logged on to the website to check it out.  I went to the Biggest Loser website and checked out Rocco’s recipe’s. 

I LOVE Apple Pie but after seeing how much fat and calories was in a serving, I think I love it a little less.  LOL!  A slice of Apple Pie has 500 calories and 24 grams of fat.  That equals about 2 meals for me and I would eat that just for dessert. 

So I would like to share this recipe,  I am going to try it for my dessert tomorrow.  I am already making a homemade Pecan Pie for Tony, I am not sure I like that kind of pie.  I know it will also be a lot of calories and fat. 

So here is the recipe:

Apples:
10 Granny Smith Apples
2 pints fresh Raspberries
1 tbls Brown Sugar
1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
4 oz Apple Juice
1/2 a Lemon, Juiced

Crumble Topping:
3 cups Low Fat Granola
2 tbls Canola Oil
1/2 cup Whipped Egg White

Pam
Mint
Fat Free Greek yogurt

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly coat an 11 inch baking dish with cooking oil spray. Set aside.
2. In a nonstick sauté pan, cook apples and spices in apple juice until tender add raspberries and sauté for 2 minutes.
3. Place cooked seasoned apples/raspberry mixture in prepared baking dish.
4. In a medium mixing bowl, combine crumble ingredients.
5. Put crumble on top of apples.
6. Place in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly. Garnish with a dollop of Greek yogurt and mint sprig.
 
Some of the things I will leave out like the yogurt and mint sprig because, well, I don’t like yogurt and mint sprig is just a garnish. 
I will let all of you know how it tastes.