Points Plus Living: March 2011

What a great start to the week! I got caught up over the weekend on cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping, which left me in a good position to start the week off running! After a quick breakfast of 2 eggs and some fresh honeydew melon...my kitchen was a-buzz!

Started with some pre-chopped onion and green peppers...

Got them sizzling in a pan that with some cooking spray...

Cracked my fresh eggs on top of the veggies and cooked them gently...

Plated up my "over light" eggs (4pp) with some fresh honeydew for a great, filling breakfast.

These eggs had such a great fresh taste...I can never figure out why taking the same ingredients like eggs, onions and peppers can taste so different depending on how you fix the eggs. For example...scrambled with the veggies over top...scrambled with them cooked inside...or overlight with veggies cooked underneath. I just love it! I'll have to ponder over that one awhile (later).

While I had the energy, I chose to get started on some of the prep work for meals I had planned for the rest of the week. I already shopped for the groceries for my "Week Two Menu". For those of you reading my blog for the first time, there are several weekly menus saved on this site with links to recipes and its grocery list (or you can find them in the menu tab above). It can be helpful to use these as short cuts to get started on your WW journey. They come in handy when you have a horribly busy week and just don't have time to plan, too. Just choose one, print it out, and go for it!

I had a busy weekend, and little time for planning or shopping. For convenience at home, I pre-printed out each menu and have them in sheet protectors in a white binder (each week has its own tab). Inside the sheet protector is the menu on one side and the grocery list facing the other side. This makes it easy to 'grab and go' with the list when its time to shop. When I get home I simply put the sheet back into the binder. The recipes for that week are in separate sheet protectors behind it. It also makes it pretty easy in the morning to see what's for dinner and to put out any meat to thaw, and to pre-assemble any sides I plan to make.

Today's offering is Oven Fried Chicken with Baby Red Potato Salad. While I already had eggs out from breakfast, I decided I'd also hard boil some for my favorite egg salad wraps for lunch later in the week.

I love the makings for this Baby Red Potato Salad...especially the real "babies" that came in the sack...

Hated to cut this little cutie in the middle of this shot!

After I cut them up into bite sized peices, I just boiled them until soft.

While all THAT took place, I used some cooking oil to treat the wooden handles of some steak knives, spoons and other utensils...very productive morning...and only took a few minutes to clean up.

I used my mini chopper to chop the red onion, green peppers, and to blend in the rest of the seasonings for the potato salad. Every bowl got a cover on and went into the refrigerator for later.

When I got home at the end of the day, Justin and I made quick work of putting the dinner together. We combined the potatoes with the dressing and set it aside while we made the chicken. We basically had a little assembly line - I brushed the mayo-dijon mustard mix onto the drumsticks and he coated them with the crumb and seasonings mixture. Onto an oiled rack and into the oven - and 40 minutes later we had this:

Once it was on our plates it looked more like this:

The chicken was really good ~ crispy, moist and hot on the inside ~ and the seasonings were a little heavy...spicy with a little heat. It took me by surprise at first...but then we really liked it. If you are not a big fan of hot and spicy, you could seriously cut the ground cayenne pepper down by half and still have a great tasting coating for your chicken. The Baby Red Potato Salad was light and fresh tasting. Different from traditional potato salad, but it would be great on a hot summer day with some leftover oven fried chicken. Too bad we won't know for sure until next time, as we polished it all off!! Total for this plate of dinner: oven fried drumstick (4pp), 3/4 cup potato salad (4pp) and 1/2 cup frozen corn kernels (2pp) = 8pp for the entire plate. Now, keep in mind that was mine...Justin polished off at least 3 drumsticks...I didn't keep tabs on Chuck. Makes me glad I doubled the batch of chicken so I have leftovers to try!

My friend, Danica (a.k.a. DanicasDaily.com) is hosting another give-away! Hop on over to her site to enter to win one of 4 autographed copies of Rocco DiSpirito's new book: 'Now Eat This!Diet'. In case you are wondering who Rocco DiSpirito is...he was a guest chef on the Biggest Loser...so I'm sure he has a lot of great recipes to share with those of us looking to change our lifestyles and eating habits. Check out Danica's photos of the inside of the book - there are some awesome recipes that are just begging to be made. I love the photo of the Rocky Road Oatmeal...I've just got to make that one! What looks good to you?

Another weekend of diet challenges - but hey - what fun is it if you don't challenge yourself? We were so happy to be invited to this awesome 10th anniversary party for our friends, Marci and Dave. The theme was from Alice in Wonderland (they are huge Disney fans)...a Mad Hatter's Tea Party. Check out these photos and see if you aren't salivating by the end of this post!