Leftovers, Weekend Eats, and Lame Reality TV

Hello there, Monday.  Did you have trouble adjusting to the time change?  It seems like everyone I talked to today was talking about how much it affected them.  I know I couldn’t go to sleep forever last night… and 5:40 a.m. came around early.  :/

Tonight it was all about the leftovers.  Remember my quinoa last night?  (I love this picture!)

I love when I have leftover quinoa because I think it tastes just as good (or better) the next day.  Here’s my dinner bowl:

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tri-colored quinoa on the bottom, sauteed spinach on top, then a fried egg on the very top.  Sounds totally weird, believe me, I know.  But something about it is delicious!  Try it and you’ll see.  I am thinking a few slices of crunchy bacon would just push this over the edge into complete awesomeness.

I thought I would show off a few other breakfast/lunch/dinners from the weekend…

(I’ve really been in an orange mood lately.)

(Picnic plate: hummus, bell pepper strips, turkey slices, and edamame)

Breakfast casserole with whole wheat bread, eggs, baby spinach, and feta cheese… it needs a little tweaking.  But it was pretty good.

(I did like this picture in the morning light!)

And finally… tuna bruschetta… a very easy throw-together lunch.

Tuna, diced tomatoes, and feta cheese… serve on crackers or toast.

What kind of food finds have you discovered lately? 

So… I am about to finish up the Bachelor finale.  I swear, I can’t stay away from this show.  It’s just one of my guilty pleasures, I guess.  It’s cheesy and most of the relationships don’t last, but I always hold out hope…

Apps for Techies and Leftovers Reinvented!

Today was a hard day, friends.  Since December 13, I have been sleeping in until 8:00 or later.  It’s been nice.  Sleep, get up, drink coffee, catch up on the DVR episodes… but today it was back to reality!  Yes, school started back again and it was hard to drag myself out of bed at 5:45 a.m.  Did any of you start back to work today after a holiday vacation?  How was your day?

One thing that kept me going was knowing that I had leftovers and a way to reinvent them tonight, PLUS a free afternoon/evening to do whatever I wanted!

I have two apps to tell you about today that I think are awesome.  If you are currently exercising or trying to lose weight, I thought these might be helpful to you!

Now, I am an iPhone user, after many years of owning a Blackberry.  As a BB user, I would always get frustrated when the cool apps weren’t available to me.  So I am going to apologize in advance to any of you who can’t access these apps.  I don’t know if they are available on the Android or Blackberry (or other) Markets.  These are definitely available to you iPhone users, though!

1. iMapMyFITNESS

I am absolutely loving this app!  This is great to have if you are a runner or a walker.  My favorite thing is the “record workout” feature.  When I go out for a walk, I tell it to record my workout.  It finds my location via GPS and then tracks my walk.  I can see a map of the streets and it records my route, how fast I am going, how much time has elapsed, and more!

At the end, you can view a summary of your workout and save it for another time.  This is helpful when you are walking different routes in your neighborhood and you get home and you think, “Wonder how far I went?”

By the way, it also allows you to pause and resume a workout.  Today, I walked about 1 1/4 miles, and then needed to make a stop at the grocery store.  I paused my workout when I entered the store and resumed it when I left!

It was a little awkward to walk with this bag, but it was a great afternoon for a walk/run!

2.  Weight Watchers Bar Code Scanner

This is for any of you out there who are WW members.  If you are a paying member of WW (pay for monthly pass, online membership, or e-tools) then you can download this app and use it for free.  You can scan the bar codes of the foods you have at home (or while you are grocery shopping).  Within seconds, you get the product information with the points values! 

Plus, everything you scan is saved in your history, so if you need to record that food option more than once, you’ve got it!  Almost everything in my pantry (with the exception of private brands—such as Harris Teeter brands) was in the database!  So cool and convenient!

Now, on to the leftovers. (If you are just joining me, I am participating in Eat-In Month during January, so you’ll be seeing a lot more cooking and cost-effective meals this month!)

You may remember my pork shoulder roast from yesterday that I slow-cooked all day.  Well, seeing as how we are only a family of 3, we didn’t finish all of it yesterday!  But… I have found that we (i.e. the husband) are not great at eating our leftovers.  So I started thinking about a way to reinvent the leftover pork into a new meal.  Suddenly, it came to me: barbecue on rolls! 

The only problem?  We had no BBQ sauce in the house.  I started wondering… I bet it wouldn’t be difficult to make my own BBQ Sauce.  After a little searching, I came across this recipe on www.allrecipes.com.  It had great reviews, and we had almost all the ingredients on hand, so I gave it a whirl.

The verdict?  Delicious!  Hubby and I both agree completely that this was better than any store-bought sauce we could have bought!  I threw the leftover pork+sauce in the crock pot, turned it to HIGH, and in just a few hours, we had sweet and tangy BBQ Pork!

We served it up on hot dog buns.  Somehow we always have extra because Sadie always opts to have hers sans bun, so this was an easy way to use up the buns and not spend extra money.

I ate mine open-faced with peas and leftover collards.  :)

YUM!  If you’ve never made your own BBQ Sauce, you should give this one a try!

I like to think about cost effectiveness.  This pork roast cost $9 (on sale—score!).  We still have leftovers, so I figure there were 3 meals from that meat.  That’s $3 a meal.  The steamed peas were under $1 (also on sale) and the BBQ Sauce cost about $0.75 for the amount I made.  The buns and collards were leftover, so I count them as free.  That’s a meal for a family of 3 for under $5.  Sweet!

If you want to read more about how I grocery shop, click here to view my post on how to spend less on groceries.

Five Things

I have been in a random sort of mood.  I am a little scatter-brained today.  So I thought I would just share 5 things that I am loving today with all of you. 

I am loving this popcorn machine.  I actually gave this to my grandparents a number of years ago.  It might have been over 10 years ago.  My grandparents used to always stay at hotels when they would make their trips to South Carolina, and they stayed at a hotel that had fresh popcorn in the lobby.  The two if them would stock up before leaving the hotel, sometimes taking 5-6 boxes with them on the road!  I gave them this machine so they could make their own at home.  When we were going through their house, I decided I wanted the machine.  And I am loving it.  I popped popcorn for a meeting I had today and my classroom spells like the Target concessions area.  (Which means it smells GOOD.)

Since this is an air-popper, you have to season it after it is popped, so I used this popcorn spray and butter flavor.  Probably not the best thing for you… but it’s so good.

 

These boots.  Y’all don’t know how long and hard I have searched for boots.  I’m talking a 5-6 year search, friends.  I can never find them wide enough to fit my calves!  UGH!  It has been a long and frustrating search!  But on Black Friday, my luck changed.  I found these fabulous boots that fit perfectly!  And I even found them in brown, too!  The brown pair should be arriving soon! 

Leftover spaghetti.  One of my biggest challenges is having lunches readily available so that I don’t have to A—buy from the school cafeteria, or B—go without and eat crackers.  On Sunday night I made a big batch of spaghetti and portioned out lunch-sized leftovers.  So in the morning, I grab and go.  Literally.

My new iPhone.  My Blackberry died a few weeks ago.  I never knew how reliant I was on having a phone at all times until I didn’t have one.  I know some people say it feels great to take a break from their phone.  I am NOT one of those people.  I love being completely linked into the world at all times.  At first, I didn’t think I would ever get used to the iPhone.  But now… this phone is seriously like carrying a computer in my pocket.  If you’ve got an iPhone and are on Instagram, you can follow me!  I am posting pictures throughout the day so you can get sneak peeks at what is coming!  My username on Instagram is Couchpotatoliz. 

Finally—number five.  Clementines.  I get so excited when these start appearing in the stores.  They are so sweet, juicy, and easy to peel.  The perfect portable snack!  Funny story—when I was pregnant with Sadie, I had a “thing” for all orange foods and drinks.  I couldn’t get enough orange Gatorade, juice, oranges, orange soda…if it was orange and had liquid, I drank it.  One morning I packed a bag of 8 clementines to take to work to have throughout the week.  I ate all 8 of them that morning. 

So there you have it.  Those are five things I am loving today.  What are you loving today or lately??? 

Use Your Leftovers!

So this morning, I started the day off with leftovers from last night’s dinner!  (You don’t hear that very often, right?)

I took another cue from Diana and had quinoa for breakfast!  I made a quick fried egg and steamed some chopped spinach.  I know you are thinking… what a weird combination!  But it was really good!  Something about the texture of the quinoa goes so well with eggs! 

 

Today’s lunch was some chicken salad that I made last night with the leftover chicken.  I added some chopped onion, celery, egg whites, pecans, and apples for a sweet and tangy chicken salad.  I used Duke’s light mayo to bind it all together.  I also finished up the rest of the spinach.  More leftovers!

 

 

 

Don’t you love how last night’s dinner helped me put together breakfast AND lunch?  I need to cook this way more often.  It certainly does make life easier!  I even had enough chicken salad left for dinner and MAYBE lunch tomorrow!  Yay!

It was hard to make myself go work out today.  You know how sometimes you really don’t want to get off the couch???  Well, that was me.  But I felt so much better after Zumba with Katie!  It gave me just enough motivation to come home and make my playlist for Zumba tomorrow!

Now… I know many of you are wondering what I did yesterday.  But I still have no news… so I am going to have to make you wait another day.  I will give you a hint… it is Zumba-related…

I hope to have news to share with you soon!

POM Dinner Party Recap #5: What We Did With Our Leftovers!

Well... sadly, I have just about come to the end of my recaps on my POM Wonderful Dinner Party... if you are joining me here at the end and would like to catch up on the previous posts and recaps. please click on the links below!

Recap # 1: Preparations and Decorations
Recap # 2: Drinks and Appetizers
Recap #3: The Main Course
Video Tutorial: How to Open a Pomegranate AND a Giveaway!
Recap #4: Dessert

Now, you might think that this story ends with dessert... but you are wrong!  What do you always have after a dinner party?  Leftovers, of course!  We ended up with a LOT of leftovers, because we ended up 3 short at our dinner party! :(  It was ok... the rest of us enjoyed the extras and it made it possible for us to all squeeze in at one table.  Here we are enjoying some of the specialty POM drinks...

By the way... Lucas is holding the cheesecake in his hand... I just didn't get it in the picture!

Now, I knew that Ryan and I would get tired of eating leftovers, so we called in reinforcements: family!  We had Ryan's parents, as well as his sister and her two boys join us for Sunday lunch. 

Hello, Pom Party # 2!  Yes, we had TWO Pom Parties!!!  We just reheated everything and did it all over again! 

While I reheated everything, Ryan entertained the kiddos in the back yard.

Then it was time to eat!

What a fun weekend!

I am so grateful to POM Wonderful for such a generous shipment of gift bags for the guests, the two cases of beautiful, juicy pomegranates, and all of the fun goodies!  I am HOOKED on pomegranates now, and this opportunity gave me a chance to cook new dishes with an ingredient I was not that familiar with.  NOW, I will definitely buy lots of poms to use each fall and winter!  (I LOVE that you can freeze the arils to use later!)

Thanks to all of you for reading and for taking this journey with me (either via blog or actually at the dinner table)!

Don't forget... you can still enter the giveaway by clicking here.  Then you can take your own POM journey!

Zumba and a Roasted Twist on Leftovers

Today was my first Zumba class at Fascinating Rhythm!  Yay!  I had a small but wonderful class.  I really liked my playlist tonight.  I used a few new songs, like "Say Na, Say Na" (a bellydance) and "Plane to PR."  I love that song!  I have another class coming up on Thursday at Oakland Baptist Church, so now I need to build my playlist for that!

So... it can't always be glamorous.  Sometimes, yes, we do have leftovers.  The funny thing about leftovers... I always loved "Leftover Night" when I was growing up.  It was aways a lot like a pot luck dinner.  My husband... not so much.  I remember, I used to cook meals to last all week.  I'd make 2-3 huge meals, and then I would think, "This is awesome!  We can eat all week with no effort!"  The only problem was... my husband was not too fond of the leftovers.  Sometimes he would call me on his way home from work and ask what we were having for dinner.  The minute I would say "leftovers," his car would hit the drive-thru.

Well, now we are in money-saving mode and Ryan's not hitting the drive-thrus as often and I learned to cook differently.  Now I try to cook meals that aren't so huge.  I like to have maybe one day's worth of leftovers (hello lunch!) and that's it.  Then I don't end up wasting food and money.

But the way I do leftovers is add ONE new ingredient or side dish, so that it's not so boring.  Tonight it was just me because the hubs and Sadie were having dinner at the grandparents' house.  So I decided to have leftover chicken soft tacos.  But I added one new ingredient: roasted broccoli. 

I never thought about roasting broccoli.  I alway steam it.  But lately, everything I roast ends up tasting amazing.  So I thought, let's see what happens.  All I did was brush it with a tiny bit of oil and add salt and pepper.  It got a little crispy because I sort of forgot about it-- but it tasted amazing!  I can't believe I never did this before, but I will do it again.  What I am learning is that when you roast a vegetable, it just brings out the flavors even more and makes it taste that much better.

Tomorrow's "Hump Day!"