Green Breakfast Smoothie!

This is the smoothie I make after I work out in the morning. Since I’ve been off sugar it gives me that little special treat as well.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup plain or greek yogurt

1 organic apple cut into 4ths

1/2 cup of Old Fashioned Oatmeal

1 handful of baby spinach

1/2 tsp of cinnamon

4 ice cubes

Optional additions are

1 frozen banana or

1/2 cup frozen mixed berries

If you find that you need it sweeter, you can use vanilla yogurt instead of the plain. Personally I’ve come to love it just the way it is.

Directions:

Place everything in the blender in order given and blend until smooth.

ENJOY!

Chicken, Broccoli, Rice Casserole with a Chipotle Cream Sauce!

Gee I don’t know, is the title long enough for you? I wasn’t sure what to call this after I realized it was scrumptious enough to post on my cooking blog. LOL! I just threw it together last night and everyone loved it. So for now that’s what we’re going to call it. I’ll take any other suggestions though. HA!

Ingredients:

3 cups cooked rice (I used Jasmine)

4 cups cooked chicken, chopped into pieces

2 cups of broccoli, chopped (I used frozen and let it thaw out enough to chop into bite size pieces.)

1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Cream Sauce:

2 TBS. Butter

1 TBS Olive Oil

1/3 cup of flour, (I used Brown Rice Flour because we are Gluten Free right now)

2 1/2 cups of milk (I used Rice Milk)

2 Chipotle Peppers, chopped fine

Salt to taste

Directions:

If your chicken and rice isn’t cooked yet, get that going. Meanwhile, let’s make that cream sauce.

In a medium sauce pan add your butter and olive oil and melt over medium heat. When melted, add your flour and whisk it together. (It should be pretty thick at this point) Slowly whisk in your milk and increase heat just a tad. At this point I don’t walk away, I whisk continuously until the sauce starts to thicken (approx. 5-10 minutes) When sauce is thickened to a creamy consistency, add your chopped chipotle peppers and stir to combine. Add salt to taste. Now set this aside.

In a bowl combine your cooked chicken, rice and broccoli. Spread this out into a 9 x 13 casserole dish. Sprinkle your mozzarella cheese on top. Now take your cream sauce and pour it all over and then take a spoon and spread it out evenly. Cover with foil and bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Take foil off during last 5 minutes of baking.

You’ll notice that I didn’t add any other seasonings to this. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to but I was in the middle of talking to a friend who had stopped by and completely forgot. BUT with that said, it tasted delicious just the way it was and made it that much easier.

Feeds 6-8

Let me know what you think!
ENJOY!

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The Chipotle Pepper, What is it and what do you do with it?

Years ago I kept coming across recipes asking for chipotle peppers. I quickly avoided them, not knowing what the heck it was. I’m glad I finally looked into it because now I use them all the time.

First of all, What is a Chipotle Pepper?

The chipotle pepper is a dried or smoked jalapeño pepper. It naturally, resembles a jalapeño, but after the smoking process it tends to look brown and shriveled. It doesn’t lose much of its heat through the smoking process, so you not only get to enjoy that wonderful spiciness but the natural wood smoke taste. YUM!

Here’s the kind that I buy at the grocery store. They are located with the Mexican stuff.

Here’s one straight out of the can. See? Nice and brown and shriveled.

When I use them I like to chop them up really fine so that they are distributed throughout whatever it is I’m putting them in.

And then there is always plenty leftover to use in other recipes.

On this particular day I was using them in a cream sauce to cook with my chicken. It was FABULOUS! I also make a Chipotle Meatloaf that is my family’s favorite meatloaf recipe ever. A lot of times I’ll put them in my soups or casseroles. If you like spicy then you really need to give these a try.

Well I hope this helped curb your fear of the unknown. LOL!

HAVE A LOVELY DAY!