Tonight's Dinner: January 2, 2014

I have been so bad with going to the gym.  Monday. I'll start again on Monday.

The break has allowed me to get back into cooking.  I really do need to find a happy medium. Tonight I wanted to experiment more with using our Vitamix to make a healthy and flavorful marinade like I did for the chicken during Downton weekend. I made the mistake of adding half a lemon with rind to the marinade.  The chicken was delicious, but I also put zucchini and mushrooms in the sauce to soak up some flavor.  And soak up it did.  The veggies were pretty bitter.  I guess they can't hold up to the citrus flavor like the chicken can.  I really enjoyed the chicken, but not the veggie so much. So if you try this at home, just marinate the chicken!

One whole onion, four cloves of garlic, one bunch green
onion, two lemon wedges, 1 tbsp Siracha, 1/2 cup of water.
Aside from any salt that was in the Siracha, I didn't have to
add any because the veggies were so flavorful.  If you don't
want a kick, you can omit the Siracha all together.

I blended the veggies until they were smooth.

Marinated for about an hour.  I didn't add any EVOO like I normally would
because the drumsticks let off enough of their own oils to not stick to the
pan.

I also made some brown rice to be a little healthier since the chicken was pretty
healthy.  I don't actually like brown rice so I just had chicken and vegetables,
but I don't like depriving Nick of carbs. I've been trying to make them good
carbs.  I still love pasta though.  It's my healthy diet downfall. 

Since the wedding, we've been pretty good about changing what we eat.  Though we still like to go out to eat, which we do plenty of, when we cook we have been pretty healthy.  Some days I don't even make a starch.  It has helped with our energy levels and also regulating our weight.  I've been trying to utilize the  natural fats from the meats we cook and also to eat more chicken than red meat.  I still don't enjoy chicken as much as beef or lamb, but I can tolerate it if it's dark meat. I really wish that I would have taken formal before and after pictures of our healthy lifestyle change.  I was able to find a couple of pictures from before and after, but it would have been much easier to tell the difference with actual progress pictures. 

This is from the weekend we got engaged.  Both of our
shirts were a little tighter and our faces rounder.

This is from the honeymoon. Double chins no more!