Changs & Cherries

Hey folks! Thanks for sharing all your guilty pleasures with me yesterday!

We have one more day in the work week and then it's onto yet ANOTHER storm on saturday. This one is smaller than we have been getting, but still more snow. I can't even complain about it anymore, you guys must know and feel my despair at the continuing onslaught of snow. On the bright side, the groundhog didn't see his shadow, so it will be an early spring! Doesn't that sound like the most wonderful thing EVER? It certainly does to me.

On to the food! Breakfast was my usual yogurt bowl with a banana, Chobani vanilla yogurt, a drizzle of honey, and some banana granola. This has become my favorite breakfast lately. I can't get enough of it. I'm sure you guys are sick of looking at it at this point.

A mid morning snack of cherries. I always fall into what I call the "cherry trap." I love cherries, so I get excited whenever I see them at the supermarket. They typically go for about $4.99 a pound at my supermarket, but they are tricky and bag them by the 1.5 or 2 pounds, so I end up paying $10 for a bag of cherries, which I usually eat in 2 sittings. You would think I would have learned my lesson, but nope, I still throw the bag in my cart when I see them there.

After reading blogs most of yesterday morning, it got me thinking that I had never made my own hummus. I had all of the ingredients on hand, and I was craving a hummus and veggie sandwich, so I decided to give it a try. Holy easy. Had I known all this time that it would be so easy, I would have done it a long time ago. For my hummus, these are the ingredients I used:

1 15oz can of organic garbanzo beans
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp minced garlic
salt and pepper

This came out so amazing. When I buy hummus, I always buy the garlic lovers kind because I LOVE garlic. The 2 tablespoons of garlic was the perfect amount. After doing some tasting (AKA sticking my fingers right into the food processor), I spread it on a flatout wrap for my sandwich. In the sandwich I threw some cucumber, tomato, red bell pepper, and avocado. I typically use a little mozzarella as well but decided to see how it was without it. I didn't even miss it. I had some unpictured wheat thins as my afternoon snack.

My unpictured afternoon snack was some tofu pudding that I whipped up after lunch. The boy was feeling some Asian food for dinner, so I decided to whip up one of the P.F. Chang's frozen meals for 2 that I had in the freezer. P.F. Chang's is one of our favorite restaurants, so when the boy spied these in the freezer aisle a few months back, we decided to try it. I just realized I never reviewed it on the blog.

The kind we had last night was the Orange Chicken.

The stats on this are not great...450 calories per serving. The chicken comes included in the bag, all you have to do is throw it in a saute pan and cook it up, add some rice, and voila! Dinner.

The two positive things were that this was super easy and quick to make. The other was that the orange sauce was really delicious...sweet with a little spicy kick. The downsides are the nutritionals, the fact that there are WAY too many carrots, and the portions are pretty small. I definitely won't buy this again, but would try a different variety that didn't have breaded chicken.

Another variety I make every now and again (and I like much better) is the Green Giant Create-A-Meals with an extra bag of veggies to stretch out the meal for leftovers. I like the teriyaki and sechuan varieties, the only downside is that they are hard to find.

How do you feel about frozen meals? Do you fall into the "cherry trap" as well?