Buffalo chicken wraps

You want this, and you want it now. Believe me.  Super simple, easy to keep in the fridge for leftovers that are just as good as the originals, and under 500 calories for dinner.  What else do you want? You could cover it with glitter if you need more, but I'm happy with what I've got!

2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 stalks celery
2 T Frank's hot sauce
4 cups lettuce
4 large jalapeno cheddar tortillas
8 T Ken's light ranch

The original recipe called for 2 oz cream cheese, 1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt, and 2 oz blue cheese as well. I'm not big on blue cheese and the other stuff seemed like overkill, I just wanted a simple buffalo chicken wrap!

Bake the chicken breast in the oven until there is no pink left. Slice into small pieces and add Frank's hot sauce, mix well. Add diced celery to the chicken for crunch and then layer it on a tortilla. Top with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and light ranch before rolling up into a wrap. Done. Yep, you're done. And I bet it's gone in less time than it took to roll it up. 

Main Man: "That was really good for you?"
Me: "Yeppers"
Main Man: "Wow...I'm really full too. Good work, wife."

He makes me smile. And so do these wraps. Get yoself some smiles!  :)

Fat Stats:
450 cals
10 g fat
7 WW PP

I am entering this recipe in the MrFood.com easy weeknight meals contest!! We'll see how we do :)

What I've been up to...

Happy Monday, all! Whoops, I mean Tuesday....

It's been a busy couple of weeks with the wedding checklist, my Grandma Theda's 75th birthday surprise party, and work being extraordinarily busy for this time of year. Plus, my garden is producing more veggies than I can live with so it's a part time job trying to give away my overflow so none of it goes to waste! I am pretty happy with where I'm at with my freezing/canning for the year....just waiting on the big tomatoes to turn red. I have a ton on the vine, they just need a little coaxing to ripen up for me. In the meantime, I've been focusing on filling up my freezer and my storage shelves in the basement so we're always swimming in fresh veggies, even when there's snow on the ground. Is anyone else scared this Winter is going to be craaaaaazy in Iowa after such a dry Summer and not much snow last year? I feel like Mother Nature is just saving up a bad Winter for us...hopefully I'm wrong!

In case you are having the same problem as I am, and are overrun with veggies from your garden, here are some of the things I've been doing lately to preserve my produce for the coming year.  I've got about 10 bags of green beans blanched and frozen, about 20 bags of sweet corn bagged and frozen, and about 25 jars of dill pickles canned and shelved so far (I also did 25 jars of spicy pickles this year using Mrs. Wages as well).  As I said before, I'm just waiting patiently for my tomatoes to ripen in order to begin canning my fresh salsa and my pasta sauce and then I'm done for the year!  As satisfying as it is to just walk out to the garden and pick a bunch of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers to throw together a dinner salad to serve, it's just as awesome a feeling to head to the basement and grab a jar of homemade pasta sauce or pickles when the need arises.  It's the little things :)

 Anyway, I hope some of you are able to use these techniques, recipes, and tips on your own garden produce this year....and if not, we'll be back in full swing with tons of recipes tomorrow! Hope you're all enjoying the summer as much as I am....it seems to be going faster and faster with each coming day!

Gator sausage boil

Not much of a recipe on this fine Friday we have going. Wait, what?! It's Friiiiiiidaaaaaay! I don't know about you but this week can bite me. Busy at work from end of the month stuff and beginning of the month stuff, lots of wedding crapola (I say that with the deepest love for my fiance, just not wedding crapola) checked off the list thanks to my very helpful MOH (shoutout to Cyn City!) and my personal jeweler (oh yeah, bet you wish you had yourself a Laura), and some killer workouts at Kosama (when the entire class doesn't show up, you can't really dog it with the coach next to you the whole class, wowza am I sore!)....all that equals one tired Abby Lynn that's ready for the weekend and some QT with the main man.

But enough rambling....let's get down to the biznis (I got corrected on my grammar one time in my comments section so I hope you all realize I mispelled that on purpose....but I will start watching my overusage of parentheses for all you writing majors out there). As stated earlier, this is not much of a recipe....but that's kinda the point. I wanted to have a NOLA feel for my girlfriend/bridesmaid/Imissherface that was visiting over the 4th of July. This chick is fun, people. She weighs about 100 lbs, has a big old truck and a swamp shack, loves guns, shoots gators in her spare time, and is one of the most successful women I know career-wise but loves to get down in the country. You wanna hang with her...I'm telling ya! She's just about as cool as me...and that's saying a lot :)

Back to the point...when Main Man proposed and we got engaged the end of last year, I received a strange package delivered to my office with a note attached. The note said "Just thought you should have one last sausage fest before you get hitched....." and the package was filled with alligator sausage, boudin sausage, and tons of other types from her homeland of New Orleans. This is by far the most comical (and thoughtful) package I've ever had delivered to me. I've always wanted to accompany her to Louisiana to get all immersed in the cajun cuisine and culture.  *SIGH* Someday....

Back to the 4th of July (man, I'm really off topic today...and I used parentheses AGAIN)...we had a pool party/bbq the last day of her trip to let everyone who hadn't seen her and our other friend visiting from TX to have some fun before they jetted back across the country. What better way to send them off than with a cajun boil!?! 

We added all the sausages (there were 4 varieties and about a lb of each), a dozen sweet corn, 2 lbs of shrimp, a 5 lb bag of small red potatoes to our turkey fryer. Not sure if that's what they would use down in NOLA but that's all we had up here in Iowa :)  We added water above the level of everything in there, seasoned it with a bunch of butter, TONS of Tony C's cajun seasoning and boiled the crap out of that shizz! 

Notice my basil plant on the right there...if I could only grow one herb, that would be it. Love that stuff. Sidenote: Why do I have such writing ADD today?

Boil the pot on a high rolling boil for about 40 minutes until you can fork a potato without much pressure.....throw the contents of your stock pot/cream can/turkey fryer/whateva you gotcha hands on into a roaster or some other warmer to stay hot. We served this all day long with people walking through for nibbles. The only thing I didn't anticipate was not knowing which of the sausages were really my favorite! I luuuuurved the spicy one but I'm not sure which it was in order to purchase it again :(  Oh, and you can't get this stuff in Iowa...bummer. But don't fret...you can have your very own sausage fest shipped straight to your door if you want to check out  the Cajun Grocer website.

I hope everyone was able to follow this post in all the directions it went...and I also hope you're all having a wonderful Friday. Oh, and please wish my lovely Grandma Theda a happy 75th birthday if you see her!!

Chocolate pumpkin muffins

What's that you say? Chocolate muffins with only 3 (actually only 2 if you so choose to be like me) ingredients. Twist my arm....okaaaaaaaaay, I'll do it. Oh and they're only 1 Weight Watchers point per cupcake? Twist it again. That's enough...no need to get rowdy.

1 boxed chocolate cake mix (I used sugar free)

1 small can of pumpkin puree

6 ounces chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, mix together the cake mix and canned pumpkin with a fork or a mixer. Add chocolate chips and load up your muffin tins! Batter is dense and does not rise much so these can be filled all the way to the top. Bake for 22-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out  clean.

Easily the simplest muffins I've ever made...but we all know I don't bake much. Either way, these were very dense and filling so it seemed decadent but didn't give you the Catholic guilt for ruining your diet afterwards. Git on dis!

Oh, and just a tip....don't store them in an airtight container until they've sat out (at least overnight) to let the moisture escape. I left them in a tupperware hot outta the oven until a few days later at the lake and they got a teensy bit moldy from the moisture inside the container. The one I had right outta the oven was delectable though...

1 pt per cupcake (2 pp per cupcake)

Pesto stuffed chicken parmesan

I made this pesto cheese stuffed chicken breast a few weeks ago, and I promised I would make it again in the form of chicken parmesan.  So I did. I'm a blogger of my word.

Some of the girls came over to work on some more wedding projects (I know, I'm a bridezilla for making my bridesmaids help me with crafty wedding crap, but I do pay them well in dinner, wine, and loads of veggies from my garden to take home with them...I'm really not all evil!) and this was very easy to throw together without much fuss but with much mouth drool for them.

When I made the batch of the chicken, I made a double batch so I could freeze a pan of chicken for later. I simply thawed it, baked it, threw it on top of a bed of spagetti with sauce, and topped it with a slice of fresh mozz! FRESH MOZZ, I said!! That stuff is the reason I wake up in the morning, the reason babies are made, and all things that are right in this world....I literally have to threaten my own fingers with my cutting knife or I will continuously juggle the stuff right into my mouth as I slice it.

Anyway, throw the mozz on the chicken for the last 5 minutes of bake time, and set it atop your pasta like the trophy it is...and here you have it, folks. Pesto stuffed chicken parmesan.

Oh, oh, OHHH! Canon is sending me a new lense for my camera (the other one bit the dust and is what they call "hunting" instead of zooming) for freeeeeee! One year warranty and all.  That means you get better pictures again soon...no shadows and junk. Be ready :)

Chicken fajita quesadillas

Aaaaand for the lazy way out Tuesday, still getting in the swing of the week, type post.....what do you do with your leftover meat from the crockpot chicken fajitas you made yesterday? Boom. Chicken fajita quesadillas! When cooking for only two people, it's imperitive that you get creative with leftovers if you don't want to eat the same thing over and over all week or throw out any leftovers (my food hoarding ways wouldn't have that). Sooooo....after getting your fill of fajitas and fajita salads, head on over to quesadilla town and really get down and dirty with your south of the border cravings.

You don't even need any new ingredients! Lay a tortilla flat, cover with chicken fajita mixture, cover with shredded cheese, and top that with another tortilla on top. Throw it in the microwave for about 40 seconds (or if you're really feeling posh you can toss it in a skillet to heat up like we did the boursin chicken quesadillas a while back and get that crispiness to the shells) and you're in business! Dinner served in less than 5 minutes and tasting just like a restaurant with half the grease? No, you're not in heaven...you're in my kitchen in Iowa :)

I topped this with some Chalula hot sauce, which is pretty much the only hot sauce that exists in my world, and some greek yogurt before going to town on this appetizer for dinner dish....hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Crockpot chicken fajitas

I won't say this recipe is as good as as my Cyclone fajitas,...because what could really compare to one of your favorite foods that is sports affilitated...but if you're going for simple, this is the ticket! I usually enjoy chunks of chicken rather than shredded but if you're a lover of the shredded sort then this recipe may be for you! I would make this again (simply because you know how much I love having dinner ready to scoop into my open mouth the minute I walk inside at night) but I believe I would just use a fajita seasoning packet rather than using the cumin and chili powder...I think the taste could've been a little more apparent and the packet seasonings usually do it for me. Either way...if it's too hot to turn your oven on, you have a busy night and need dinner ready immediately, or you just love you some fajitas...get on this train.

1 yellow onion, sliced
3 bell peppers, sliced
4 large chicken breasts
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 t salt (I left this out)
2 T cumin
2 T chili powder
lime juice to taste
tortillas and fajita fixings like tomatoes, lettuce, sour cream (or greek yogurt), salsa

Combine sliced onion and peppers in the bottome of the lined crockpot.

Lay chicken on top of veggies. Pour chicken brother over top. Sprinkle everything with cumin, salt, and chili powder.  Give a nice squirt of lime jice over the top.

Cover and cook on low for 8 hours (or on high for 4-6 hours). When meat is done, shred with two forks and stir back into juices. Serve meat mixture with slotted spoon onto tortillas and top with fajita fixings! I went the salad route since we're overcome with green leaf lettuce from the garden right now...I flipping love the stuff!