The Carb Queen

I mentioned in a previous post that I fear I'm becoming addicted to Party Mix. But the more I think about it, it's also that I just really, really enjoy carbohydrates. All the best foods seem to be carbs - chips, pasta, bread. I usually try to vary my diet as much as possible but man, do I love carbs.

My food choices from the past two days clearly reflect my carb addiction as I went with a Rachael Ray pasta recipe yesterday and today cooked a Spicy Balsamic chicken strifry atop a bed of brown rice. Yesterday I tried out 'Sausage, Penne and Broccoli with a Ricotta Surprise', a recipe from the Rachael Ray cookbook my brother gave me for Christmas. As with all other Rachael Ray recipes I've tried, there was quite a bit of preparation involved. I used a Kielbasa sausage (the recipe called for Italian sweet sausage but I could not find it anywhere) and didn't have any penne pasta on hand, so I used rigatoni instead. This is how it turned out:

Sausage, Penne, and Broccoli with a Ricotta Surprise

You can't see the 'Ricotta Surprise' from this picture but in the bottom of the bowl was a mixture of ricotta cheese, lemon zest, and pepper which I mixed throughout the pasta when it was finished. The stuff on the top is pecorino-romano cheese. Not one of the best Rachael Ray recipes I've tried but it was fairly tasty and made enough for Randy and I to take to work for lunch today.

Today I went with something quick (but healthy) from my Strifry cookbook: Spicy Balsamic Chicken. Pretty simple - red pepper, red onion, chicken, a few herbs and spices, and chili sauce. I also added hot sauce myself because I was afraid it wouldn't be spicy enough. It turned out like this:

Spicy Balsamic Chicken

This recipe also had the added feature of calorie and fat grams. For one serving (serves 2), there is 247 calories and 8.9 grams of fat. That's not counting the calories I added to the recipe with the brown rice. I liked this recipe a lot - the only downside I find to strifry is that I don't find it nearly filling enough. It tastes great but later on, I always find myself pretty hungry. Maybe it's because my portions are too big with other meals or maybe it's because I've been working out quite a bit lately and need more calories. I don't know. But luckily, I always have a bowl of cookies on my kitchen table.

Shout-outs from the past couple days go to: lemon squares, chocolate chip oatmeal muffins, and starburst candy.