It's been forever since I last posted, but I made that Greek Chicken Pasta that I promised about a year ago, and thought that I would finally post the recipe.  It's so yummy!  I got this one off of allrecipes.com.  Now, I am not a photographer, but this is really a lot tastier than it looks.    I've been realizing lately that I love foods that have bold flavors, and this dish is full of them with the lemon juice, feta, olives, and artichokes.  Read after the recipe to see what changes I made to it.

Greek Chicken Pasta

1lb uncooked pasta

1T olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup chopped red onion

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 (14 oz) can marinated artichoke hearts

1 large tomato, chopped

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

3 T chopped fresh parsley

2 T lemon juice

2 tsp. dried oregano

salt and pepper to taste

2 lemons, wedged, for garnish

In the past, I have added Kalamata olives to this recipe, but these days we can't afford the likes of kalamata olives, so I used some black olives that I got for a great price at a case lot sale.  This dish was super quick today because I used my canned chicken, that I got at the same case lot sale for an awesome price.  (It was too much to fit in a freezer, so me and my mom canned some of it and froze the rest.  On a side note, if you have never canned chicken before, I would recommend it for sure!  Especially if you find a really good deal on it.  It is so nice to not have to thaw your chicken or cut it up, you just pop open the can and you're good to go!)  I also used only half as much lemon juice as they call for, and probably about twice as much feta.  I felt like last time I made it the lemon flavor overpowered everything else, so I wanted to balance out the flavors a little more.  

So I make this dish the same week as the Greek Pita Wraps because it has a lot of the same ingredients, I can just buy one can of olives, one thing of feta, etc.  I also used the grape tomatoes instead of a large tomato since I had them on hand from the pitas.  I hope you enjoy this recipe.

In other news...since I last posted we have purchased a house!  We have been doing a lot to it, and I want to post some before and after pictures soon.  The SD card we had in our camera seems to be broken, so a lot of my before pictures might be lost.  But I still have at least a few.  It's so fun to fix up and change the house!  Tom has been working so hard on it.  : )

Greek Salad Pitas

  This is what I had for lunch today!  It made me a happy lady!  I am always trying to think of ways to eat more vegetables for lunch.  One thing I have been doing a lot lately is just having some canned soup with lots of vegetables in it.  I usually don't like to spend a lot of time making lunch.  But today I made this delicious pita!  It doesn't take too long to put together, just long enough to do some slicing.  It is really healthy and reeeeally yummy!  I love love love kalamata olives.  Have you ever tried them?  They are amazing.  They might not be for everyone.  They taste probably closer to a green olive than a black one, but I don't think they are as bitter as the green ones.  They are salty with a little bite to them.  Also, I love feta cheese!  MMMM!  If you are not big on the lemon flavor, you may want to cut back on the lemon juice a tad bit.  So this recipe I got from a Martha Stewart Magazine.  I have to warn you that this is not the most economical lunch.  Feta cheese and kalamata olives come with a bit of a cost, but for me it is worth it once a month.  Just buy them on sale.  I have this lunch the same week I have another recipe that calls for both ingredients, Greek Chicken Pasta, so that I can get two meals out of one can of olives and one container of feta.  I will share that recipe with you later in the week when I make it, so I can give you a picture.   

                                                  Greek Salad Pita Wrap
                               1/2 cup reduced fat (2%) plain greek yogurt
                               1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
                                2 T lemon juice
                                1/4 tsp finely grated garlic
                                4 whole wheat pitas
                                2 small cucumbers, very thinly sliced crosswise
                                1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
                                1/2 small red onion
                                3 oz reduced-fat feta cheese, crumbled (3/4 cups)
                                1/3 cup pitted Kalamata olives, coarsely chopped
                                 1/3 cup coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley


 1. preheat oven to 375.  Stir together yogurt lemon zest, and garlic.   Arrange pitas on a baking sheet: bake until warmed and pliable, about 3 minutes.


 2. Toss together lemon juice, cucumbers, tomatoes , onion, geta, olives, and parsley.  Divide salad mixture among pitas, and spread.  Divide yogurt mixture among pitas and spread.  Divide salad mixture among pitas; roll to close.  Wrap in parchment to secure.


Instead of heating the pitas in the oven, I just microwaved mine for about 15 seconds.  Just make sure you don't do too long or they will get rubbery.  This recipe serves 4.  The pitas I used were smaller, like 6 inch diameter, so I think it would make at least 6 of those.    Each pita has 282 calories.

Fairy Party

My oldest daughter, Reina, turned 3 on New Years Eve.  We had planned a fairy party for her, but unfortunately she woke up quite sick on her birthday and I had to cancel the party.  She didn't really seem too upset.  I told her I thought she was too sick to have her friends over and she just said, "yeah, I'm too sick."  She did keep talking about how she was going to have a pink cake, though, so Tom went to the store and got some cupcakes, I put some pink sprinkles on them, and we sang happy birthday to her.  The rest of the day was pretty much spent laying around being sick and no one at our house stayed up til midnight for the new year.

We redid the party on the 8th and it turned out really fun, I thought.  I got most of my ideas from familyfun.com.

First, we made tiny pink scrolls with tiny words inside, which had to be read with a magnifying glass because it was written by a fairy.

"Fairies, fairies did you hear?

Reina's birthday is almost here."

We'll sing, we'll dance, we'll have sweet fun

You'll be a fairy before it's all done.

Wear your fairy best, a tutu will do,

your wings and accessories await you.

The party's at 12, please say you'll fly by

Reina's godmother awaits your reply."

The original poem said ___'s birthday is this year, which I thought was silly because, well, everyone has a birthday every year.  I don't know if my version is much better because I rhymed hear with here, but oh well.

Here is a picture of the invitations.

 

We delivered these by hand with a little magnifying glass i got at the dollar store in the party favors section.

I set the stage for the fairy party by making a fairy bower.  I hung pink tulle from the ceiling and stapled artificial flowers around the entrance.  We have a ceiling fan in our dining room, so we had to work around that.  We taped the fabric around the base of the fan and then brought each strip out and hung it from the ceiling with tape and thread.  We used a hula hoop to give it more shape at the top.  I am saying "we" because my hubbster helped me out a lot with this project.   He is a good sport.  I used a table top from Lowes, some "tacky" and an upside down hamper to make the little table. I wanted it to look kind of like a tree stump, so I got a brown tablecloth to put over it.

This is Reina, the birthday girl

My baby, Skye, and Reina's BFFN (best friend for now), Kayla

The first thing we did was have a lunch.  The fairies got to eat in their bower, and the adults ate at the table in the next room.  We had chicken salad sandwiches, pink-chocolate-dipped strawberries, and pink lemonade.

The fairies enjoying their tea party.  They even drank their
lemonade about a tablespoon at a time out of the tiny tea cups.

After the tea party, we made a fairy landscape or "enchanted garden."  These were made with those plastic trays you put under house plants.  I cut some Styrofoam to size and glued it inside and the glued the green ribbon around the outside and the moss on the top.  Then I provided the girls with different nature items to make their garden with.  I also thought it would be fun to have a little fairy they could play with in their garden, so I bought some little wood peg people and butterfly-shaped wood and glued them together to make the fairy.  The cost less than a dollar each to make.  This activity was cute idea, but it may have been a bit too old for the group of girls I had.  They still had fun being creative and using their glue, though.

The next activity was to go on a fairy treasure hunt.  The website suggested using gold buttons, but it was just too expensive to buy that many gold buttons, so I just bought these pearl beads.  Also, I originally planned on hiding the beads individually and having the girls collect them in their pouches, but there were babies present, and I was afraid they would find the beads and put them in their mouths, so I just hid a pouch of beads for each of the girls.

After they found the "treasure" they strung the beads onto pipe cleaners to make into little bracelets.

Showing off their new bracelets

The baby fairies: Skye and Maddy

And of course, we had the pink cake and sang Happy Birthday!  Reina was in heaven!

I thought I would start out my blog with some of my new favorite recipes.  This first one is not the healthiest, but pork loin is pretty low fat, it's got about 300 calories per serving.  The ingredients are super bizarre.   When I first saw this recipe, I was reluctant to try it because of the combination of ingredients, but i had a high rating on allrecipes.com so I gave it a try and loved it.  I served it with mashed potatoes and gravy.  It produces a lot of sauce, so I took some of the sauce and added it to a chicken gravy mix ( I would have used pork if I had one) along with a little corn starch and it turned out REALLY yummy.  At least I thought so.  Give it a try!  It's really simple and I love crock pot recipes for Sunday.

Slow Cooker Cranberry Pork

• 1 (16 ounce) can cranberry sauce
• 1/3 cup French salad dressing
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 (3 pound) boneless pork loin roast
• 
  
1. In a medium bowl, stir together the cranberry sauce, salad dressing, and onion. Place pork in a slow cooker, and cover with the sauce mixture.
2. Cover, and cook on High for 4 hours, or on Low for 8 hours. Pork is done when the internal temperature has reached 160 degrees F (70 degrees C).