A Week of Salad - Wednesday

We are nearing the end of the week so quickly! After all the work on VBS it always surprises me how fast the week actually goes. We are having so much fun!

I am also having fun with my salads and these posts! I do love salad more than the average person but I hope you can see that by making it a little different each day it isn't such a bad thing to eat it for lunch for a whole week! Maybe I can challenge you to try a week long salad fest and give up your fast food lunch and see how much better you feel.

For yesterday's salad I decided to go with an Asian flair. This is really an old Pampered Chef recipe I believe with a few tweaks of course.

The lettuce was a mixture of leftover red leaf that needs to get used up and a mix of red and green organic baby romaine. I also added carrots, radishes, snap peas, red onion, sliced oranges, and the best part was the crunchy oat bran sesame sticks on top.

  

To slice the oranges cut your orange in half horizontally and then take your knife along these natural divisions to score it it. You can peel the orange first so it will just kind of fall into those pieces as you cut but I like to avoid as much pith as I can when putting orange on a salad so I went around the circle with my knife too then peeled it back.

I made a homemade dressing again yesterday too. There is a great recipe right on the side of this Pampered Chef dressing maker I use all the time. I didn't follow it exactly of course because that is against my nature as you know. I used about 2 or 3 ounce of rice vinegar, 1 or 2 ounces of less sodium soy sauce, 1/4 tsp. ground ginger, 1 large garlic clove, minced, one packet of Stevia, and not nearly as much olive oil as they wanted me to!!! I think I used about 1/4 cup. You can use less vinegar and more olive oil if you don't care for it as much as we do.

Miles commented on how much he liked the orange in the salad. He said he was surprised at how good that flavor was in there! I agree so don't be afraid and don't skip it if you try this salad. I liked that I got a couple different veggies in there, the radishes and snap peas, that are not my normal go to salad fixings. I do love them both but for some reason just don't put them in my salad enough! I should mention that Miles also commented when he came and sat down, "That is one good looking salad!" So men, you too can enjoy a week of salad for lunch.

Some Rainer cherries on the side! I am not much of a cherry lover but I do like the Rainer kind. I always buy a couple containers to enjoy when they start putting them out in the stores. Maybe it is the Rainer name that draws me to them.

I am from Washington state after all!

Now on to my VBS pictures of the night............

It would not be VBS without these crazy ladies! This year their names are Marley and Flash. Faith is still calling the one dressed as a pilot "Panda Patty" because that was her name last year. They make our VBS spectacular and SUPER fun for our kids,

Nothing like some Minute To Win It games for the 5th grade group.

I am not bossing Sarah around! I am telling her to look back at last year's VBS pictures of us together because she has lost a ton of weight!

Throwing huge tube a loons through the hula hoops was super fun!

Our mission project is raising money for mosquito nets for kids in Mali. We are STUNNED at how much money the kids have brought. Our goal was enough money to buy 25 nets. They cost $6.00 each. Last night we had raised enough to buy 90 nets!

Isn't this the kind of fun kids are looking for at VBS. Crazy! I love it!

Only two more nights to go and we are having a blast!



Asian Stir Fry Night

I am not much of an Chinese food lover. I will never choose it, and I only eat at Chinese restaurants out of kindness if a friend picks it. I don't hate it, but if I am paying money for it I certainly won't choose it. I have a few other issues with Chinese food and the main one is these three letters M-S-G! Someone else in my family likes it though so I cooked it one night last week. I should learn to like it more because it does involve a heck of a lot of veggies!

This was one of those nights that I decided about 4:50 what we would have for dinner. That is probably when most of you decide, but we eat around 5:15-5:30 every night so that wasn't such a great thing.

I opened the freezer and found the stir fry veggies and decided to cook some chicken quick to throw in it and that was about all I was going to make. I cut the chicken into slices and cooked it in a little water and garlic. Then I set the chicken aside and quick rinsed out my pan. I only like to dirty up one pan.

Then I used a little Asian Stir Fry oil and a dash of fish sauce for cooking the veggies. Be careful with the fish sauce. It can be a bit salty and strong tasting.

This was the bag of veggies I had grabbed at Wal-Mart. I loved it! I will buy it again and make some kind of garlic sauce for it next time.

Into the pan and cooked until no longer frozen.

Add the chicken back to the pan.

  

Then I also added a bit of low sodium soy sauce and some Chinese Five Spice. You know by now that I don't measure so I am guessing it was about a teaspoon of spice and a tablespoon or so of soy sauce. 

That was going to be all I served because I didn't really have any other plan. I figured I could just cut up some pineapple and call it good. However my daughter hates meat and even though I have worked really hard and she would eat the vegetables she wasn't going to be super thrilled about them. Plus pineapple is really bad for her reflux. That leaves her with about 3 bites of dinner. So I went scrounging in the fridge.

I found some won ton wrappers and some reduced fat cream cheese. Not super healthy but better than restaurant or store bought cream cheese won tons. I mixed in a bit of garlic powder and some green onions and a bit of soy sauce.

Folded those little suckers up with some water to make them stick together and....

pan fried them in some olive oil. I know you can see the lack of color in these little critters and know right away they aren't the best choice for you. You know my rules about color. What makes them doable and an occasional splurge is that the won ton wrappers are made with whole wheat flour and I used reduced fat cream cheese. It was less than a tablespoon of cream cheese in each won ton. The fact that we also used the asian stir fry oil to fry them helps a little since it is a pretty good oil to use but you can go one step better and skip the frying all together and boil them. Each won ton wrapper has about 20 calories so that doesn't make them to horrible. Just a guess but I think the 3 that I ate probably equaled around 125 calories.

125 calories for the won tons was worth it and after I also found some snap peas at the bottom of the crisper and cut up the pineapple it turned out to be a pretty good meal for deciding at 4:50 in the afternoon. We sat down by 5:30. Not too bad I'd say. Plus there is enough color on the plate to balance out the won tons.

Evan LOVED the won tons. That kid likes to save the thing he likes most for the end of his meal. He eats in a specific thought out order. (Proof that he is my kid!) So his chicken and veggies went down first, then the snap peas, then the pineapple, and he savored every bite of his won tons. He was so full he didn't think he could eat another bite and he offered me his last one. I said no thank you and that if he didn't want it I would probably just throw it away because it would soggy tomorrow. He was having NONE of that so he said, "I might as well!" and down the hatch it went. I am afraid for the teenage years and the grocery bill with a boy! It is already terrible so I am not even kidding. I am afraid.

In a couple years when I come knocking on your door asking if I can clean your house in return for some grocery money please take pity on me!

Asian Stir Fry

3-4 chicken breasts cut up and cooked in garlic and water

1 bag frozen stir fry veggies

1/2 -1 tsp. fish sauce

1-2 Tbsp. Asian stir fry sauce

1 tsp. Chinese five spice

1-2 Tbsp. reduced sodium soy sauce

Cook chicken and drain. Set aside. Add oil and fish sauce to the pan and add in the whole bag of the stir fry veggies. Cook until no longer frozen. Place the chicken back in the pan and add the soy sauce and five spice. Cook until warmed through 5-7 minutes. Serve immediately or keep warm on low until ready to serve.

Cream Cheese Won Tons

4 oz. reduced fat cream cheese

3 green onions chopped finely

1 tsp. soy sauce (or more to taste)

1 tsp. garlic powder (or more to taste)

1 package won ton wrappers

Asian stir fry oil or olive oil

Soften cream cheese and mix with green onion, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Brush edges of won ton wrapper with water. Place a scant tablespoon in the center of won ton wrapper and fold into a triangle. Press edges together firmly. Grab the left and right points and bring them down pinching together tightly. Place in heated oil in a pan and fry a couple minutes on each side.