April Showers bring May...Cold?

Turns out Saturday was just a cruel tease. Today, it's a lovely 5 degrees, cloudy, and windy outside. Hmmph! Come on, summer!

On Sunday, I took two salmon fillets out of the freezer for supper. I had some bottled Teriyaki Marinade left over from several entries back when I made a Beef Satay with Peanut Sauce so I poured some in a ziploc bag and let the fillets marinate in it for a solid five hours or so.

I baked them in a casserole dish (along with the extra marinade) at 350 for about 20 minutes and served with a baked sweet potato and some of the leftover caesar salad from Saturday's BBQ:

Marinating the salmon all day was definitely a good call. It was tasty, moist, and not too fishy at all. The baked sweet potato was...meh. I really enjoy sweet potato fries but turns out, that's the only way I like them so far. I hadn't yet had a baked sweet potato and lacking the patience (and sharp knives) to turn my sweet potato into fries, I figured baking it would be just as good (and much easier). I was wrong. Better stick to the fries.

I realized that I have a massive bag of chocolate chips left over from my Christmas Cookie Bake-a-thon and since I will be moving out of here in a month and a half and I hate to waste food, I wanted to make some chocolate chip muffins with them. Not wanting something too fatty and heavy, I searched the Internet for a decent low-fat chocolate chip muffin recipe. I hit the jackpot! I found a 'Cooking Light' low-fat and low calorie chocolate chip muffin recipe that is light and fluffy and delicious. Now, I have made low-fat muffins before. And they lacked...well, taste (Jillian Michaels, this one's for you). So needless to say, I embarked upon this recipe with a healthy dose of skepticism in my brain. But holy moly, I was in for a pleasant surprise. So here you have it: Low Fat Chocolate Chip Muffins (courtesy of Cooking Light):

You will need:
- 1 1/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour (I did not have pastry flour so I substituted half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat flour)
- 2/3 cup all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 whole egg, plus one additional egg white
- 1 cup fat free plain or vanilla yogurt (I used vanilla)
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 1/2 cup skim milk
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and spray a 6 cup jumbo (or 12 cup standard) muffin tin with cooking spray (or use paper liners) and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt, oil, milk, brown sugar, and vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until everything is just moistened:

Fold in the chocolate chips:

Spoon the batter into muffin cups, filling them about 2/3 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Wait 10-15 minutes for them to cook before removing from the pan:

Yum! The nutritional information for these (if you use a normal 12 cup muffin tray instead of a jumbo 6 cup one) are: 131 calories, 2 grams fat  (with zero grams of saturated and trans fats!). I enjoyed one this morning for breakfast, warmed with a little butter. Delicious!

I'm afraid I don't have too many exciting or innovative meals to report as...you guessed it...Thursday is grocery day!

Looking once again to use up stuff around the house, I defrosted some leftover hamburger casserole I had frozen a few weeks back and had that for supper on Monday along with some canned corn:

Yesterday, Randy so generously agreed to barbecue some hot dogs despite it being freezing outside. I have had barbecued hot dogs on the brain ever since our barbecue on Saturday so while I was at work on Monday (subbing for my boyfriend, the nerve!), Randy picked up some All-beef, no by-products weiners and on Tuesday barbecued them for us. I served them with some spicy McCain crispy fries:

I had a blob accident with the ketchup as you can see but damn, sometimes all it takes is a couple of basic hot dogs to hit the spot.

Shoutouts from the past few days go to: Mr.Solid Easter Bunny (which I ate half of in one sitting), Kashi Punpkin Spice bars, and chunky Skippy peanut butter

Here's a shot Randy got of Sebastian interrupting my yoga workout, as per usual: