Cheesy chicken bacon broccoli and rice casserole

Dinner was delicious tonight.

I used about a third of a rotisserie chicken from Sam’s – striped the meat off the bones and then diced it. I diced 4 slices of thin-cut, pre-cooked bacon, and set it aside with the chicken. I put 2 cups of generic minute rice in 2 cups of water, added pepper, garlic powder, and granulated chicken bouillon, then covered it and left it to cook. While that was doing its thing I minced three stems of celery and sautéed them in butter, then dumped them on top of the bacon and chicken in the casserole pan. I filled a small saucepan with frozen broccoli – a cup or two’s worth, covered it with water, added chicken granules, and set it to boil.  Once it was done, I drained it and chopped it up, then tossed it into the casserole pan as well. A generous handful of both cheddar and mozzarella cheeses got sprinkled over everything in the pan.  When the rice was cooked nearly all the way, in it went, too. I mixed 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, 1 can of cream of chicken soup, and maybe 6 oz. of generic cheese whiz over heat, and added a splash of milk, and when it was blended I poured it over the contents of the casserole pan. I used a wooden spoon to mix it all up, then made it level in the pan, and sprinkled cheddar over the top.  I out it in the oven at 350 degrees for …a while…the cheese melted but did not brown, but had begun to form a crust when I took it out, and normally I let it brown – probably best to bake for 20 -30 minutes, depending on your oven.

Oh. My. Gawd. i've made this a ton of times before,usually going by a recipe, but this time I winged it and it was soooooo good! My middle child not only asked for and ate seconds, but then proceeded to ask for thirds!

Had to document this for next time.

Y'know, its food like this that is the reason I'm a fattie.

fail...

so yeah, totally not watching what I eat at all. Made yummy treats for dessert last night, and they were yummy, but the recipe was flawed and now I have to tweak it to make it work.

it was for a S'mores - style treat bar. You take 1 cup graham cracker crumbs and mix them with 3 tablespoons of melted butter. press it into a pan, and bake for a few mins - till you can smell it, about 12 mins. then add 5 tablespoons butter, melted, to 6 oz. melted semisweet chocolate. pour that on top of the graham cracker crust. cut 18 marshmallows in half and stick them, cut sides down, tot he chocolate until the entire surface is marshmallow. bake for a few mins, then chill for at least 40 minutes. when its time to eat, pop the dish under the broiler for about half a minute till the marshmallows  brown. cut in to squares and eat.

sounds good, right? It tasted good, but there was a problem. the graham cracker crust wasn't a crust, and it didn't stick to the chocolate. So I got a chocolate and marshmallow square with a buttery graham cracker sand underneath. The texture was wrong, and the crust honestly hadn't any flavor.

This isn't the first time Ive encountered recipes with graham cracker crusts that were sub-par; my favorite Thanksgiving potluck recipe for lemony cheesecake bars had the same problem and I ended up adding copious amounts of butter and brown sugar to that crust until it finally did what it was supposed to. it still is crumbly and fally-aparty, but better than the original, which was dry and overly nutty.


Anyway, I'll try again sometime soon - it's an incredibly inexpensive recipe. I wonder if tweaked enough it would make a good wedding dessert, or if the marshmallow would just be too sticky?

nexttime i may talk about Queasy Cakes, my personal recipe of Doom for unsuspecting pot-luckers who think they are about to eat cornbread and instead get a mouth puckering sweet cake with a sour punch!

ugh

mowed the lawn today, went out saturday night, went to dance class saturday morning...unfortunately moving the front lawn was the most activity I've had out of all of those things. I'm totally slacking. need to drag out the bicycle and the pod and pop the kids in the pod and pull them around the block every day for the next week to make up for my zombie-ism this week and weekend. Need to pull my head out of my ever-enlarging ass and get some of this flab OFF me!

May 25th, 2011

My breakfast was two toaster pancakes, dipped in a tiny amount of syrup, eaten standing up as I mad eusre the kids ate their food.

Lunch was two battered oven baked chicken strips chopped to bits, one hard boiled egg also chopped to bits, a sprinkling of cheddar cheese, two slices of bacon ripped to shreds in some iceberg salad. No dressing.

The kids had chicken strips and waffle cut french fries (oven baked). I ate some of the fries and some of the chicken they didn't eat.

My snack was a rice crispies treat.

My dinner was a sausage patty, thin, with two strips of bacon, a slice of sharp cheddar cheese, and two scrambled eggs between two slices of buttered white bread toast.

I've had three or four cans of Dr. Pepper today so far. I'll probably have one more.

I took one Phazyme, one Zegerid, one generic acid reducer, one Vitamin D, one Vitamin C, one fish oil, one glucosamin chondroitin, one B12 supplement pill.

I haven't weighed myself.

The most activity I've had today was walking back and forth across the house dealing with my 2 and 3 year olds.

I am very tired.

Tomorrow, I will endeavor to have a fruity breakfast, a less fatty salad for lunch, and a non-greasy dinner.

So...Plateau'd.

I am 34 years old. I have been struggling with my weight for about eleven years. In 1998, I weighed 105 lbs and was lithe and happy, dancing for four or five hours twice a week, and completely thoughtless about my weight. In 1999, I became mother to a wonderful little girl, and my life changed completely. Dancing twice a week stopped, as well as most of my other activities. I moved away from everything I knew and loved to another state where I knew no-one.

I fell into a deep depression. I didn't bother learning my way around town aside from the local grocery and gas station for a year. At first it was just 'baby weight'. I I entered my pregnancy at 105 lbs, and went in to labor at 150 lbs. My doctors were pleased, because they felt I was underweight to begin - they didn't seem to understand that I ate heartily but also led a very active life that, coupled with a crazy metabolism, kept me thin.

After I had my daughter, I immediately dropped 30 lbs and was left a 'healthy' 120 lbs. Now, I  was depressed, and I suppose that being depressed contributed to it, but I stagnated at that 120lbs for a while, then began to gain back the 30 I'd lost.

After a year of depression and rarely leaving my home, I got a job. being out in the public made me want to look good, and caused me to be more active, and I lost weight again, but having never had to make any effort about my weight in the past had left me clueless about weight management. I didn't change my eating habits - in fact, they got worse. Growing up, I'd eaten relatively healthy foods, and my mother had always managed to have two vegetables with every meal. As a young adult out on my own, with my raging metabolism, i was able to eat at Whataburger twice a day and it had no effect! Suddenly I was living in a household where Southern style cooking reigned - vegetables weren't even remotely prioritized, and carbs were abundant in every meal.  I managed to lose a little weight, but never got back down to that 120 lbs of post-pregnancy weight.

In 2004, weighing 140 - 150 lbs again, I left my husband. I met someone new, and I lost a little weight during the intense honeymoon phase. But in 2006, I became pregnant again, and miscarried. My body was not pleased. I began to gain weight again. Later that year, I discovered I was pregnant again. By the time I gave birth to my second child, another girl,  in July of 2007, I was 180 lbs. I tried to keep my weight down and yo-yo'd a bit, but when I found myself pregnant yet again in early 2008, I was 180lbs.  After my son was born, I had a laproscopic procedure to have my tubes tied. I was around 200 lbs, and the heaviest I had ever been. Again, I tried losing weight, but failed miserably. Instead, I began to gain weight again, and ended up 245 lbs.

Last year, I began to take control of my body back. I started to take belly dancing lessons. I go twice a week when I can, and although my health rarely allows me to stay on my overburdened feet for the full hour, I do move my body in a healthy way for at least half an hour.

A couple of people at work pointed out to me that I was 'shrinking'. Ecstatic, and thinking that I must have lost weight, I finally pulled out the scales and weighed myself again: 245 lbs. You can imagine how disappointing that was for me!

They say that people who are trying to lose weight often 'plateau'  - they get stuck at a certain weight or size, even when they are doing things right. I have been very frustrated by the plateau effect! They also say that fat weighs less than muscle, and that even though I was losing fat, because I am using and building muscle I didn't even know I had to begin with (belly dance is harder than one might think!), my weight is unchanging.

So that is why I've titled this blog Plateau'd - that is where I am. Stuck at 245 lbs, with no light at the end of the tunnel. It's one thing to say that muscle weighs more than fat - its another to  prove it.

I hope to use this blog to just journal my weight loss path from here on out - to log meals, maybe post recipes, talk about habits I have that I need to change, and habits I need to develop.

I hope to blog here once a week, and every week I will pull out the scale and post my current weight.

We'll start next time.