Chicken

A Lot

Posted by Lisa Eirene

Well, I think we tried to pack in as much as we could in one weekend. Sheesh. Friday night we got home from work and frantically cleaned and prepped for friends to come over for dinner. We made nachos. Yum!

Ground turkey meat cooked with taco seasoning, then of course cheese, black olives and red onions. Our friends made guacamole (it was really good) and we ate dinner, caught up on stuff and then played Cards Against Humanity. Randomly Michael decided to call the 1-800 number for the game and it was the funniest thing ever. If you’ve never called the number, you should. It was actually worth going through the phone tree. 😉

Logan fell asleep reading his current favorite book and it was too cute not to share:

On Saturday I went to the gym and then the three of us went out to lunch before naptime. Nap time was definitely needed! A bunch of chores and errands later…it was time for Saturday dinner and another pair of friends came over. Sam and John got married in August and they came over to our place Saturday to tell us all about their amazing honeymoon to London and Paris!

They took a cooking class when they were in Paris and I am so ridiculously jealous! 🙂 It sounded amazing. Anyways, I poured us all a glass of the Sokol Blosser sparkling rose to celebrate and we had the chicken that Michael smoked.

Sam made a really delicious slaw (fennel, granny smith apples, red cabbage and carrots) –seriously so good! And I made a Trader Joe’s harvest mix–it was red quinoa, Israeli couscous and baby garbanzo beans. Then I mixed in diced green onions, chopped almonds and dried cranberries. It all went really well together.

Dinner was delicious. Dessert was freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

Sunday Michael took Bella to the vet to get her stitches out. She’s thankfully feeling better and back to her normal self! While they did that, Logan and I did some art. 🙂

My brother got Logan a finger painting kit for Christmas and I figured it was a good time to test it out. He had a great time and then realized he could clap his paint-covered hands together and make splatter like Jackson Pollock. The entire kitchen had splatter. Guess who got a bath immediately afterward?

Oh my god. So dirty! It looked like a crime scene. There was paint splatter EVERYWHERE.

After that I went swimming, had lunch and then met an artist I’ve been following on instagram for awhile. Her name is Caroline Allen, you can check out her instagram or website. I drove out to her studio in the Estacada area and got to check out her space. It was really cool! She has a yurt in the woods set up as her studio. I bought a painting that she’s going to matte and frame for me. I can’t wait to pick it up and hang it at home.

Finally, for dinner Sunday night Michael did a pulled pork in the Traeger!

The pork was perfectly cooked! It tasted so good. We made pulled pork sandwiches with sweet potato “chips.”

Overall it was a good weekend, just way too busy. I hope next weekend we can find some time to chill!

Sun Basket Week 1

Posted by Lisa Eirene

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we tried the “Imperfect Produce” weekly box subscription. We tried it for a little over a month and I ended up cancelling it. I didn’t like that I felt so much pressure to use up the produce quickly because it was often on the verge of going bad.

A few years ago, Michael and I tried Blue Apron a few times and we really liked it. We liked the recipes we tried but in the end, the cost was a factor for me so we didn’t continue it. Since then, I’ve been seeing the “meal services” options get a lot better. Now there are ones that are diet-specific, which is cool. I decided to give Sun Basket a try because I liked that we had the option of doing gluten-free or Paleo diets.

I signed up with a discount code for the first week. I downloaded the app, which is nice and very easy to use. A bonus with the app: you can choose your three meals for a month out. I already have the next month of weekly deliveries all planned out.

When I tried to decide which meals to pick, I chose this way:

  1. An ingredient that is something we haven’t tried or something that isn’t “Common” on my grocery list.
  2. A recipe that is simple but is a little more interesting than a dish we could come up with ourselves (for example, I saw a few “bean and rice bowl” meal options and I skipped those because that’s not very creative and that’s something we can do on our own.)
  3. Gluten-free/Paleo/Low Carb option.

Week One

The first meal we made from the box was a Moroccan dish: Moroccan lamb merguez patties with warm carrot salad

630 calories,  Paleo, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Soy-Free

I’m not sure how long it actually took to make because I did a bunch of prep and then a little while later Michael made the lamb patties and started cooking. But it felt like a fairly easy recipe to make.

The verdict: delicious! We were both really happy with it. The arugula salad with raisins, chopped almonds and tahini dressing felt light and healthy. I loved the roasted carrots, so did Michael and he’s not a fan of roasted veggies. The lamb patties were good, too.

It was a great dinner for a first time out.

Next up:

The second meal was salmon with broccoli:  Roasted salmon and broccoli with almond-date tapenade

470 calories, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Soy-Free, Lean & Clean, Mediterranean, Diabetes-Friendly

This was a good dinner for a busy weeknight meal. It was pretty quick and easy to make. It wasn’t all that different than our typical dinner (we do salmon and broccoli all the time) but it was nice trying it with toppings!

The date-almond-dill-mint tapanade was really good! It was not something I would have thought to put with salmon but it had a nice flavor and a different texture that went well with the dinner.

The harissa sauce was interesting. It wasn’t spicy–it was kinda smoky? Overall it was a good meal but not super impressive, basically because we do salmon and broccoli once a week. 😉

The glass of rose went nicely with dinner, though!

Lastly: Superfast Southeast Asian chicken salad with sesame-lime dressing

490 calories, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Soy-Free, Lean & Clean, Diabetes-Friendly

This was another easy and quick recipe. I prepped the salad and everything and then Michael cooked the chicken while I put Logan to bed and read him stories. The meal was good and low in calories. My opinion was that it wasn’t anything special. It’s not that far off from meals we make on our own (we do a lot of salads like this) but I did like the unique flavors (the toasted sesame oil dressing with apricots and cashews).

Michael liked the meal but thought it would be better with seared ahi tuna. We could easily make it on our own and try that.

The first week of meals was overall pretty good. The lamb dish was my favorite. We are going to keep trying Sun Basket to see how it goes but I am also on the fence about doing it long term because it IS rather spendy. Stayed tuned!

What’s cool is that in the box they send a recipe book of all that week’s meal options so you can make some of the other recipes on your own if you want. I marked a few of them to try.

I have a discount code, if you want to use it!