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Ham and egg cups

Ingredients:

12 slices thin sliced deli ham

12 large eggs

Salt & Pepper

Nonstick cooking spray

Preheat oven to 375°. Spray cupcake pan with nonstick spray. Put a slice of ham in each cupcake cup and form a cup shape. Carefully crack an egg in each cup. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on top. Bake for 15 minutes at 375°.

Cool and remove gently with a spoon. To store, cool completely and store in fridge for up to 5 days in an airtight container. Place on a plate and paper towel in the microwave to warm up.

I was able to successfully meal prep my entire lunch week on Sunday, which doesn’t always happen. More often I piece them together from day to day with leftovers or toss salads together at the last minute. I notice a definite difference in my week when I can accomplish my prep over the weekend. I get to bed earlier, I get to work earlier, and my mornings are less stressful. It can be tricky because you need to know what will and will not stay fresh until Friday, and even trickier if you want a variety throughout the week. There’s a lot of meal prep plans out there that require eating the same thing  for lunch Mon-Fri, and that’s really not my style.

I saved even more time by prepping breakfast as well, which just consisted of a dozen hard boiled eggs. Very simple. Very cheap. While I love scrambled eggs loaded with onions, peppers, and ham, I don’t always have time to make them in the morning and they don’t stay terribly long in the refrigerator. I like hard boiled eggs just fine with a little salt and pepper. I took the entire carton with me and peeled them and sliced them each morning. I find that eggs peel a little easier if you put a tablespoon or two of white vinegar in the water when you boil them.

But let’s take a look back at the lunch menu.

This mix consisted of cucumber, chickpeas, tomato, red onion, peppers, basil, and 2% shredded cheddar cheese with a little bit of Wishbone Olive Oil Garden Herb Vinaigrette salad dressing. The Triscuits are Avocado, Cilantro, and Lime flavor and I spread them with Friendly Farms spreadable cheese from Aldi. It was good, but lacking enough protein to keep me full through the afternoon. I nearly had to staple my fingers to the desk to avoid reaching into my wallet for money for the snack machine.

Here we have the same cracker and cheese choice, but with a lot more filling protein. I made BBQ chicken kabobs for an earlier dinner and used the leftover in lunch. I made cauliflower rice cooked in chicken broth for the base. You can do this by taking frozen cauliflower rice and steaming it in a frying pan with chicken broth or by making the steam-in-the-bag kind and mixing in powdered bouillon afterwards. The cauli rice was used for the base and I added the BBQ chicken, corn, red onion, cheddar cheese, and tomato on top. It was even great  cold and took a long time to finish eating.

The chicken lunchmeat side on this one, in retrospect, was a poor idea. It tasted terrible alone and wound up in the trash. The rest was great! More cauliflower rice with peppers, tomato, corn, chickpeas, and red onion. I also put in a little leftover pesto pasta.

Tacos! Yes! In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned how when I make chicken breasts I cut them down to equal size and often use the leftovers to cook and shred for taco chicken meat. That’s exactly where this came from, and I added two small tortillas to build tacos with another compartment carrying the tomatoes and lettuce. I put some cilantro in with 2% shredded cheddar cheese. I only packed 2 tortillas but did have enough leftover ingredients that I could have made 3 small tacos. The size I used were “street taco” size, which seems a little smaller than your traditional soft taco shell. I added taco sauce from the stash of taco sauce packets I keep in my drawer. Every time I go to Taco Bell I “accidentally” get too many. Considering how many times I’ve gone through the drive thru for two tacos and received twenty packs of sauce, I don’t think it’s a big deal.

This taco bowl was amazing. I used the shredded taco chicken and added corn, tomato, peppers, and refried beans on the side. I didn’t even notice that I forgot cheese — and I’m a cheese addict. I saved a little mix of tomatoes, peppers, and chickpeas on the bigger side for a snack in the afternoon.

Speaking of snacks, I did make a big bowl of fruit to dig into in the afternoon. I try to keep my afternoon snacks to fruit salad, bananas, and yogurt or if I’m not in the mood for something sweet I’ll stock hummus and carrots in the fridge. That’s not to say I don’t make the occasional trip to the snack machine, but I try to keep myself well stocked with alternatives to avoid it.

It did take some time to prep everything but it was broken out over chunks in the day, so I couldn’t even give a fair estimation of time. I was glad that I had a good variety. One cool tip I did learn some years ago is that if you want to just get small amounts of things, try checking out the salad bar at the grocery store. It’s an easy stop to get a mix of things to use for sides in lunchboxes!

Back in the 90s, Ragu released a jarred sauce called “Chicken Tonight” with a catchy commercial jingle. It came in eight different flavors and the sauce was simmered over browned chicken, heralding it as a quick new innovation to boring old chicken. Along the same lines, Prego has now released a line of sauces. called “Prego Cooking Sauce.” It currently comes in five different flavors — Creamy Lemon Parmesan, Garlic & Italian Herb, Tomato & Fresh Ricotta, Creamy Marsala, and Carbonara.

The sauces are typically located either with the other jarred pasta sauces or near the pasta kits. I’ve gotten two different flavors thus far to try, the Creamy Lemon PArmesan and the Garlic & Italian Herb. Both are white sauces and come with the same basic instructions, brown chicken and simmer. Serve with pasta, rice, veggies, etc.

Granted, any of these sauces could simply be utilized for a pasta sauce, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

I’m a big cast iron fan for a lot of my cooking. I don’t use any sort of super special secret type of cast iron pan, just the Emeril one handed down from my mother. Judging by her love affair with QVC, I’m guessing that’s where it came from. Instructions for browning chicken always seem to call for one tablespoon of olive oil, but I have a tendency to use a pretty liberal tablespoon. I make sure the oil is nice and hot before I add my chicken, otherwise it tends to stick to the pan a bit.

On of my tips with chicken is I buy the big bulk packages and trim the breast down with a kitchen scissors so they’re a less thick and more reasonable cooking size. I like to throw the scraps in my small rice cooker which cooks it up really fast. Then the chicken can be shredded and used for salad or for shredded taco meat for later meals.

I have no idea how to tell if chicken is done other than to poke it with a kitchen thermometer. You can get one for a reasonable price on Amazon. Once the chicken is just about to 165, I turn down the temperature and add most of my sauce. I reserve about 1/4 of the jar to toss with some pasta and olive oil. Rice or veggies would work well, too.

The finished product is a nice browned chicken breast with a delicious sauce. The Garlic and Italian Herb was fairly mild, the garlic wasn’t overpowering, and it wasn’t too heavy like an alfredo sauce. I’ve also tried the the Creamy Lemon Parmesan, which wasn’t bad, but I was hoping for more of a lemon note that’d you’d get when fresh lemon zest is present in a dish. Parmesan was more the power player in that duo.

The cost is about $3 a jar retail but with recent promotions and coupons I’ve gotten a couple jars for $1 each and at least one jar for free. I’m not savvy with making my own sauces, so for me they’re a great lazy substitute. Easily a meal to make two or three times a month.

Suggestion for the next Prego Cooking Sauce — something with a Tex-Mex flare!

The summer season is upon us. I’m enjoying gardening, swimming, longer daylight hours and now it’s time for the all important switch from hot to cold coffee. Everyone who knows me, knows I drink an obscene amount of coffee. I love flavored coffee in particular, and sugar free flavored syrups as well. Torani sugar free s’mores and sugar free salted caramel are on the top of my syrup lists. My K-Cups of choice are the Friendly’s ice cream inspired coffee flavors. I’m also an almond milk and Splenda-aholic. When that warm weather hits, I want my coffee cold, but I can’t stand how watered down ice coffee gets. I’ve tried freezing coffee cubes with fair results, but it would only cool down hot coffee so much.

I turned to Pinterest, which offered me solutions involving making coffee sludge in mason jars and draining it out with mesh strainers. It was a huge mess and way too much work. I pondered why I couldn’t just steep coffee the same way I steep ice tea. That’s when my cold brew coffee hack was born.

Here’s what you’ll need.

1. A bag or canister of coffee of your choice.
2. A pack of coffee filters (Dollar Tree brand is fine)
3. A pack of mini rubber bands (Again, you can get 500 of them from the hair section at Dollar Tree)
4. A two-quart pitcher (Holy hell, they sell these at Dollar Tree, too!)

In the photo above I’m using Target brand mocha coffee, but you can use whatever brand and flavor you like. In fact, if you’re budget-wise like me, you know that Giant often has coupons for Folgers at $1.99 and Wal-Mart has their own brand of coffee for not much more than that.

Take the coffee and scoop a few tablespoons into the coffee filter. Leave enough room to bundle and tie it on top with the rubber band and make a little bundle just like the one pictured on the right. Use at least two rubber bands, just to make sure it’s secure. Make two of the coffee bundles and put them in the pitcher and fill to the two-quart line. Put it in the fridge and allow to steep for 8-12 hours. Then take the bundles out and throw them away. Or compost them. Or make coffee grind body scrub.

That’s it. Take the cold brew and add additions to your liking.

I recently got my hands on a free sample of the new Dunkin’ Donuts cold brew packs, which are essentially the same principle.

As much as I love my Dunkin’, they are a little on the expensive side, costing nearly $10 retail to make 4 quarts. With my coffee hack we have:

$1 – Filters
$1 – Bands
$1 – Pitcher
$2 – Coffee canister

So for $5 you can make several more pitchers of cold brew coffee. Since after the initial investment of filters, bands, and a pitcher the only additional expense is the coffee itself, you can save tons on your cup of cold brew with subsequent pitchers.

Another tip – it goes great with a little Bailey’s Irish Cream! I’d save that mix for the weekend, though.

When I’m running late or just plain forget breakfast, Dunkin Donuts is my usual go-to. I love their 190 calorie Veggie Egg White Wake Up Wraps, and they’re hard to resist when they’re on sale.

When they’re 2/$2 I go ahead and order 2 and have a little calorie saving hack. I take the egg patty out of one, put it in the other one and eat a double egg wrap and toss the extra tortilla. Double the protein without double the calories.

Wallah!

This week’s lunch had two key components — chicken and salad. I whipped up a quick chicken salad using 3 ingredients.

1. Rotisserie chicken breast
2. Friendly Farms Garlic Herb spreadable cheese (Aldi’s brand of Laughing Cow)
3. A little bit of Kraft Avocado Mayo.

It turned out super creamy and full of flavor. I made one lunch where I wrapped the chicken salad in large leafs of romaine lettuce. Another I mixed it up with broccoli slaw, some shredded 2% cheddar cheese, and added in a 100 calorie pack of guacamole because avocado makes everything better. I often use 100 calorie guacamole packs in place of dressing on my salads.

The salad I made this week was garden lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, cucumber, tomato, broccoli slaw, and StarKist Tuna creations ranch. I usually don’t add dressing to my salads when I put the StarKist Tuna creations in them, but I was feeling a little dab of bleu cheese this week.

I’ve been using fruit as my afternoon snack for a few weeks now, but it’s starting to get old so I may have to switch over to veggies and hummus for a little while. I’ve been getting the big clamshell packs of kiwis for $5 and slicing them up into my fruit salads. Sam’s Club has had some great deals on strawberries. When it comes to pineapple, I usually buy the plastic jars in their own juice because they last longer and it’s difficult to keep fresh pineapple at the ready.

Yogurt was a big side snack this week as well. Giant had a big sale on Dannon Greek yogurts and I believe I wound up getting them around 54¢ a piece after discounts and coupons. My favorite is the Dannon Light and Fit Greek Caramel Apple Pie but I also enjoy Oikos Triple Zero Salted Caramel with bananas sliced into it.

I will share that I have been ridiculously hungry this week, and can’t get to the bottom of what is causing it. I’ve tried to keep super hydrated, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Maybe time to up my protein intake? Time to figure it out!

One of my favorite breakfast foods are eggs, primarily either fried or hard boiled. They’re a staple for keto dieters and currently 0 points on the Weight Watchers Freestyle plan. Of course I love them smothered in cheese, peppers, onions, and bacon. But a lot of times I stick to a low down dirty secret for making flavorful eggs.

Popcorn seasoning.

My favorite is pictured above, Kernel Season’s Bacon Cheddar, but the White Cheddar, Nacho Cheese, and Cheesy Jalapeno lend perfectly to eggs as well. I’m also a huge fan of the Garlic Parmesan on roasted vegetables.

Yes, it does add sodium. Though I’ve never compared, I can’t imagine it’s more than the addition of real bacon and eggs plus there’s a lot less calories involved.

Another hot tip? You can sprinkle it in your egg salad or deviled eggs for added flavor.

I’m a big fan of alfalfa sprouts. There’s something about the texture and the way salad dressing clings to it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find containers of sprouts in any of my local grocery stores for almost two years now. I saw on Pinterest that sprouts can be grown indoors in glass jars fairly easily. I thought I’d give it a try but then discovered a step up — this great two-tier sprout on Amazon.

It didn’t come with the seeds, so I purchased those separately. I soaked the seeds overnight and then created a layer of seeds on each tray. I placed it next to my AeroGarden in the kitchen so it would reap the benefits of some of the light. Each day I rinsed them once or twice. In six days the sprouts were ready! Huzzah! They were perfectly wonderful and fresh. I think I’m going to rotate so I’ll have a new stash every 3 days or so.

For me, each tray has about half the sprouts needed for a lunch size salad. The one pictured above is romaine, cucumber, tomato, broccoli slaw, sprouts, Sunkist Tuna Creations Ranch, reduced fat cheddar cheese, and just a little bit of blue cheese dressing. It was a perfect veggie and protein combo with lots of crunch!

Now to find a much larger sack of alfalfa seeds!

I went to see my bariatric surgeon and he asked about my exercise routine. I told him I wasn’t getting much in because I’d been working a lot and had a new job with an hour long commute that was cutting into my time.

That was over 2 years and 30 pounds ago.

A lot has happened since then, aside from the weight gain. I finally left my long hours and commute to Lancaster behind and am back where I belong in Berks county. My daughter (now 5) has started kindergarten. She’s on the autism spectrum, so it’s a struggle because she has some trouble paying attention, following directions, etc. In the “perfect parent” era I have to cope with the eye rolls and stares in public because people tend to immediately think I’m a jerk parent raising a disobedient kid. She’s a super happy-go-lucky kid, so lots of times I just roll with it.

I’m pretty sure my pouch has “stretched” now that I’m nearly 5 years into this bariatric surgery business. Too many times trying to squeeze in a few extra pieces of sushi, perhaps. I don’t run anymore. I’m tired a lot. Not “I want to sleep” tired, more of a “I don’t want to move from the couch” tired. Pretty bad since there’s an elliptical right next to the couch. Most walking I get when I’m playing Pokemon Go at the park or museum, though I’ve started taking lunch walks in downtown Reading. I’m trying to avoid those walks ending at Salsa Burrito.

Here I am back at blogging in hopes of rekindling my health. Exercise is obviously a hurdle, but less of one. My big issues are after-work snacking and dinner. I’m still good with meal planning for dinner, but cooking for myself plus my boyfriend and kid is where the struggle is. I’m happy eating a salad or chicken and quinoa, but the “meal” expectations are tough. Too much pasta and Rice-a-Roni wind up on the plate.

My plan is to work through small goals. Expecting to go from 0 to beast mode is setting yourself up for failure.

Today’s goal: 15 minutes of some kind of exercise.

This month’s goal: Don’t pumpkin spice myself to diabeetus.

I wanted something sweet before bed. Before bed is my worst time. I’m always afraid of waking up hungry in the middle of the night or, worse yet, waking up in the morning and being SUPER hungry for the rest of the day. My bariatric surgeon once told me if I can account for a snack at this time, it’s fine. For me, it might even be a good time to eat carbs because then it won’t trigger more carb cravings since I’ll be asleep. Obviously not a solid piece of advice for everyone, but for my situation, it’s fine.

Tonight is no different than any other night except that Halloween just passed and I’m trying to offset a few Reese’s and some Hershey Cookie n Creme bars. I told myself I was absolutely done eating for the day, and nearly grabbed a cup of hot cocoa to settle down with. Then I thought of something way better.

I recently purchased a carton of almond/cashew hybrid milk. I don’t drink regular milk anymore because I’ve gotten pretty lactose intolerant since my surgery, which took me a stupidly long amount of time to figure out. I spiced it up with some cookies and creme Milk Magic. Truth be told, I’m usually a bigger fan of MilkSplash and I put it in all kinds of things. Almond milk, oatmeal, smoothies, protein shakes. But Milk Magic was on sale recently, so that’s what I used.

It was creamy and super sweet and only cost me 25 calories. I feel pretty satisfied with my choice. I’ve never tried making hot almond milk, but that may be next on the list.