I Am So Excited Today!

It really takes very little these days, I’m afraid. I LOVE the indoor grill. I used to have one made by ‘healthzone’ and it was wonderful. The food cooked fast, no grease, and the grids came out for easy washing. Unfortunately, it finally got where the grids would not stay in when I lifted the cover and the non-stick was getting pretty sticky. I have been without one for a little while now, tho it was one of the first appliances I bought my daughter when I took those few days to go down to Paso and show her how to cook healthy. Yesterday during their Veteran’s Day Sale, Kohl’s had the XXL Family Size George Foreman on sale for $29.99. It normally sells for $70.00. How could I resist? I really don’t care for the George Foreman as the grids on many of his models (like this one) don’t come out for cleaning. I think it’s poorly designed (the cheap plastic grease catcher you just sit on the counter under the end of the thing to catch the grease, etc),  but I had been without a grill long enough, the price was good enough, and it’s big enough to cook for my family vs. 2 or 3 pieces at a time.

I immediately went to the grocery store so my middle daughter and I could reproduce the wonderful grilled chicken sandwiches we had made down at my other daughter’s.

We took boneless, skinless chicken breasts, seasoned them and put them on the grill (after preheating for 5 min. and timed the breasts for 9 min.)  It seemed like I barely had enough time to cut the tomatoes, red onion, and romaine and they were done, all 5 of them. I ate mine on Oroweat’s Light Italian bread (save the points), my daughter, son, and mother ate theirs on the sourdough, and my BF ate his on rye. As you can see,  this is so versatile. For condiments, I used a mix of honey mustard and sweet hot, (I like to kick it up a notch), but had no need for mayo. For those who wanted, we had Fat Free Swiss. The breasts were fat enough that it was easy to be satisfied with cutting them in half, knocking the amount down to about 3 ozs. They were fast, filling and delightful without the grease and extra salt and extra bread of the fast food places! Good for Us!

Bad, Bad Chicken…

I am a freak for KFC, especially when I have been busy all day and don’t want to stop to cook because I want to keep working. That’s how yesterday was. While I was waiting for them to process my order, I found myself in front of the nutritional board hanging on the wall. It’s sure a lot easier to ignore the fat, er I mean facts, when you don’t have them staring you right in the face! All of a sudden a healthy chicken breast, that is a healthy person’s staple, took on a life of it’s own and grew to 450 calories! I never knew what really good tasting skin could do! I also couldn’t imagine that eating coleslaw was worse than eating mac and cheese. So I left there with my bags in hand, came home and had a salad and a piece of chicken with all skin removed.  I now am thinking about going to each website and downloading the nutritional info for each fast food place I like and carrying the info with me. I know WW has the dining out companion where they tell you how many points, but something about reading Red’s blog telling me all about the Big Mac and seeing that 450 calories for a piece of chicken makes it all hit home a little harder!