I'm Back, I'm Back!

 ....and more motivated than ever...kind of.

I don't know what we've been eating for the past little bit but it has just seemed as though J and I were throwing together some pretty decent meals that were free of all bad things, but just didn't seem to be, oh I don't know, bloggable?  J has also been making a lot of the meals in the past week or so and he doesn't exactly follow recipes, so to blog and tease about a meal that I wouldn't know how to even - myself - replicate...well, that wouldn't be very nice.

Anyway.  Back to it.  This week, Jon made a big batch of slowcooker chicken which made some good soup, some chicken sandwiches and which then gave me the idea of combining our favorite quinoa (which we haven't had for so long) with some leftover chicken (like torn off of bone-in chicken).

So here it is....this recipe came from www.wholefoodsmarket.com, but I made some changes to it myself.  Here's what I did:

Quinoa with Chicken and Asparagus
1 cup of quinoa
1 cup of vegetable broth
1 cup of water
1 tbsp of olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
1/2 bunch of aspargus cut into 1-inch pieces
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 cup of shredded chicken (or whatever you have)
1/2 cup of baby spinach leaves

1.  Combine water, broth, and quinoa in a pot and bring to a boil. Cook for 15-20 minutes or whenever the quinoa absorbs all of the liquid.
2.  Meanwhile, in a pan, cook asparagus and onion in oil for 5 - 7 minutes.
3.  Add garlic.  Cook for another minute.
4.  Add finished quinoa and chicken to pan.  Stir and add spinach leaves until leaves wilt (around 3 minutes).

5.  Serve!

.........................................

Now, since I hadn't been "owning" the kitchen for a bit, I wanted to make the dinner extra special.  As all of the above was going on, I also made this appetizer - which I served together with the quinoa.  Delish!  This came from allrecipes.com, but I changed it a bit for myself.


"Stuffed" Portobello Mushrooms

After cleaning two portobello mushrooms (without stem), I placed them in a baking pan.

In a bowl, I mixed together a couple tablespoons of olive oil, 3 cloves of garlic, almost a tablespoon of balsamic, approx 2 tbsp of chopped red onion (chopped small!), basil, and one piece of chopped chicken bacon (just because I had it in my fridge).

Then, I spooned the mixture onto each mushroom, drizzling any extra over the pan.  I baked these in the oven for 15 minutes.

Yum!