Not Alone Series: Recipes for One!

Hello hello!

Sorry this is up late...I've been crazy busy with work which results in my being somewhat of a flake.

On the other hand, I suppose it's a good thing that I'm focused on my career... ;)

This week we thought we'd link-up our favorite recipes for one!

I've heard over and over and over from friends/family/acquaintances-who-just-heard-I'm-unmarried:
"oh, well at least you only have to worry about feeding yourself!" 

HA. Right.
Because it is SOOO much easier to find delicious recipes for ONE than it is for "6-8 servings".
Right.

BUT! When I have time, I like to cook! And I like to eat something other than mac n cheese or tuna!
I'm also the kind of person who doesn't mind eating crock-pot potato soup or chili for an entire week because I made a huge batch over the weekend, but for this post's purposes, I'll just give you my go-to dinner.

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Lemon-Garlic Chicken

needed:

chicken breasts (1? 2? however many you'll eat)
garlic (powder or fresh...I'm not picky)
lemon stuff (zest, juice, or I use Lemon Pepper)
olive oil

what to do:

- defrost chicken breasts and chunk 'em up

- on low heat, heat up some olive oil and throw in the chunked chicken

- stir, flip, etc. the chicken until cooked thoroughly and sprinkle some garlic and lemon stuff on it...I use A LOT of flavoring, but add "to taste" [I hate that phrase]

- be careful not to burn the chicken but if you can brown it a little, that's great

- eat

Broccoli

needed:

broccoli (I have "best results" with fresh brocc)
Lawry's
butter (or olive oil if you're healthy)

what to do:

- chunk up broccoli

- put in a big pan over med heat with some butter

- stir it around and sprinkle [A LOT] of Lawry's [or to taste]

- cook to "al dente" and serve

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That's my most commonly made meal around here. It's simple, but yummy. I also eat A TON of omlettes...they're super easy, super delicious, and you can sneak a ton of healthy stuff in 'em.

And here are some Pinterest recipes I've made in case the above doesn't suffice:

One bowl, Two cupcakes - ok, not a dinner recipe, but the PERFECT number of cupcakes! reviewed here.

Pollo con Queso - o.m.g. SO great. bigger servings than needed, but I just scaled it down for me.

Nutella Cheesecakes - again, not for dinner, but I've made these for my students and they got rave reviews.

Garlic-Lime Chicken - oh my yum. so good.

Link up your favorite one-serving recipe below!

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Next week's topic:

Chastity as a Single Person

Physical or Emotional. What are your struggles? How do you overcome them?

October 22: Patience
Do you find yourself becoming really impatient, or struggling with your life to "really" begin? If so, how do you combat it? Do you do anything? How can we support one another in this area?

Send me or Jen your topic suggestions for the next couple months!

wicked weekend

wicked as in wicked awesome.
maybe that's slightly too enthusiastic, but I wanted to use alliteration so just deal with it :)

aaaanyway...I have some advice for ya'll...if you ever come home from work on a Friday night and think

"oh man. I am really tired...but I also really want to hangout with people tonight...aww I'll just take a little nap"


...set an alarm. 'cause the likeliness is that you'll just keep on sleeping and eventually wake up at 3AM bright eyed and ready to rock...but it'll be waaaaay to early to actually get up. And so you'll try to sleep some more, probably succeed and end up sleeping so much that you make yourself tired. It's true. I've got proof.

so that was my Friday night....sleeping.

But Saturday I got up at 8AM...crazy early for a Saturday, yes. But when you've slept 13 hrs...it's not that bad....and I went to lunch with some friends from ISU who just moved to Urbana to study for their Masters degrees at U of I...super cool.

And I had a crazy thing happen, which I've been getting mixed reviews on, so please tell me if you think this is normal or if you would do this as a parent.....

I was sitting at lunch, minding my own business (probably a lie...I like to people-watch) when a family sits down at the table next to me...and they have a baby. Yup. A BABY. I love babies. Love love love. So all three of us girls are oo-ing and ahh-ing at the little girl when the mom catches my eye and smiles...as to not be awkward, this exchange ensues....

Me: "She's beautiful!"
Mom: "Thanks! Do you babysit?"
Me: huh?! "Yeah!"
Mom: "Do you have a business card?"
Me: "Not with me, but I have a pen and paper!"
Mom: "Awesome! Why don't you give me your number?"

Ok. Wow.
Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that this is slightly odd, but I would NEVER randomly ask some person if they babysit, simply because they mentioned that my baby is beautiful*...how do they know that I'm not some serial killer or drug dealer? Huh? It's possible! I just think it's a strange situation. But maybe I'm just crazy. Also, side note...the dad kept saying "you should pass the baby over to her!" which never happened but I was like whaaa? You don't know me!

And don't worry, fam...I'm not gonna just go over to someone's house and trust that they're perfectly normal...I'll definitely bring my mace and rape whistle ;)

Moving on...then Saturday night, I went to the movies with my friend A, who also happens to be my boss's fiance...and she told him that it was a date...I'm sure he's jealous ;) But we went to see What to Expect When You're Expecting...it was funny and I liked the ending, but definitely a movie that you can wait until it comes out on DVD to see...a lot of innuendos, lots of inappropriate scenes...but then also a lot of babies so it all weighs out :)

And today I went to mass at St. John's, which really has to be one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been to...it's all marble and gorgeous. Really stunning. I'll try to remember to take a picture and post later this week. Went grocery shopping and got all the fixings for potato soup! So I made some of that and the recipe can be found here. I made about 1/4 of a batch due to the tiny tiny tiny crock pot at my disposal (I know what I'm asking for for Christmas!) but it turned out pretty good, I think...maybe a bit thicker than I anticipated, but the next time I eat it, I'll just thin it out with a bit of milk :) See pictures below!

just starting to heat up!

post-blender....yup. blender.

om nom nom...deliciousness :)

 That is all...love all around!

p.s. please pray for me to have patience this week...I'm gonna need it :)

* because, duh. my kids are gonna be gorgeous.

just to clarify...I was right :)

Not much to report today...except that I got a hilarious email from my grandma today. For those of you who don't know her, she is the sweetest, most grandma-like person ever. And she's also hilarious. Which is probably where I get that from ;)

So I'm not going to post the whole email (she practically wrote a novel) but since she said that she "would have been a little happier if there had been some broccoli or some other veggie on that plate", I am including a picture of my dinner from tonight....

***all food items pictured were purchased at Aldi***

and of course, no healthy meal is complete without a tall glass of milk...

Granny, I know that Busch is your favorite, but this was the only Grandma-esqe glass that I could find...sorry! ;)

While we're on the topic of family, I seem to remember a certain conversation I had with my mother and sister regarding a certain skirt that I loved and they called "frumpy"... believe I proved them wrong....

complete with my "I'm right and you know it" face ;)

*sigh* feels so good to be right :)

well, I best be off...there's a movie calling my name...anyone ever heard of Blood Money? I haven't seen it but expect it to be good...I'll let you know! Love all around!

ask and ye shall receive

Ok, so I know there's a whole hoard of you who are probably feeling bad for me and my friendless-ness...well, never fear! The Lord is good :)

So I was chatting with one of my coworkers today (he's on a hybrid work/vaca right now on the east coast, lucky duck) and he asked how the office was and I said quiet and lonely. Boohoo. He empathized since he is also a social-type but reassured that it would be alright...I begrudgingly agreed.
(in a good way, no worries, he knows I wasn't complaining or anything)

So anyway, I decided to use part of my lunch break to go to daily mass (right above my office, as I've mentioned before. score!) and prayed that the Lord would help me to appreciate this alone time and use it in whatever way He sees fit...and also threw in a little "but, you know better than anyone else how lonely I might get, so if you want to help me out a bit, it'd be much appreciated!"

The big man upstairs obviously heard my plea because when I went to the caf a half an hour later, I had barely sat down and begun reading a page of my book when a lovely missionary came up and asked if she could sit with me. And while I wanted to say yes, I told her that I haven't been getting any alone time...

JOKING.

I happily asked her to sit and we had a nice chat over our mutual salads :)
She was really sweet and it was so nice to have some human interaction.
I mean, Abe is a great listener and all, but after awhile, I feel like I'm just talking to myself...

So yeah. Good lunch.
The rest of my day went pretty slow but it was good overall...and my nice lunchmate gave me the confidence that maybe I could be the one to approach someone in the caf tomorrow...eek! It's so crazy to even think that I would be intimidated to talk to someone, especially maybe to some people who are reading this and know me as a person who can't. shut. up.
But I think the difference is that while I'm naturally an extrovert, it's super intimidating trying to break into a group of 400 people (literally. that's how many missionaries there are.) when they all know each other and I know maybe 3 of them.
So who knows, hopefully I can get over my fear of whatever it is that I'm afraid of (most likely rejection) and meet some new people. Stay tuned for more deets on that!

But so I came home after work and immediately watched the newest episode of The Bachelorette. I know, I watch trash tv. Get over it.
I'm a hopeless romantic and also enjoy drama (from the outside).
And somewhere near the end of the episode, I became hungry and was trying to figure out what I wanted for dinner...I knew I had a lot of frozen chicken but the most frequent way I cook it is with olive oil and lemon pepper on the stove...after 2 years of that as my main staple of protein, I'm sick of chicken cooked that way.
But for whatever reason, I got it into my head that some kind of ranch chicken sounded realllllly good...like a breaded, ranch-seasoned chicken. Doesn't that sound great?!
I googled "ranch breaded chicken" and chose the first recipe...SUPER easy and DELICIOUS!

Here's how I made it...not much to it and I actually didn't really measure some/most of it, so if you hate figuring-it-out-as-you-go, then don't try this lol

Morgan's Breaded Ranch Chicken

4 chicken tenderloin things (defrosted...duh)
1 cup corn flakes, un-crushed
some sprinkles of that powdered parmesan cheese stuff...Kraft?
dash of garlic powder (whatever that means)
1 TBS Hidden Valley Ranch powder
2-ish TBS melted butter plus some butter for bottom of pan

1. Crush cornflakes in small bowl (I used my hands but maybe you veteran culinary geniuses have a better method)
2. Add parm, garlic and ranch powder to crushed cornflakes
3. Get a pan big enough for your chicken and grease the bottom with butter, Paula Dean style ;)
4. Sprinkle a little bit of the cornflake mixture onto bottom of pan (I don't know why, but one of the recipes I saw said to do this)
5. Take chicken, lather it up with some melted butter and coat both sides generously with cornflake stuff and place in pan

6. When all of the chicken is in the pan, take excess cornflake mix and throw it in the pan...on top of the chicken, on the bottom of the pan...doesn't matter.

Bake at 375 degrees until chicken is cooked through...I still haven't figured out timing and all, so I just wait around the kitchen, cleaning and whatnot, while checking the oven every now and again...and I forgot to time how long they were in there for but I would guess maybe 15 mins? 20 mins? I have no idea actually...

nommmm...everytime I opened the oven, my mouth would water hardcore from all the delectable smells :)))

nommin' on some of these bad boys while I waited...thanks generous roomie!

DELICIOUS!
also, I think I know why you're supposed to have some extra breading on the bottom of the pan...
when everything is cooked, the extra breading is more baked than the stuff on the actual chicken and it is suuuper tasty

And it was DELICIOUS! Yum yum yum

Okeedokee...time for bed. Thanks for reading! Love you all!

for your pickled pleasure

I LOVE pickles. Like, LOVE them. In fact, I am currently eating some right now. At 1:40AM.

No, I am not pregnant. Yes, I am in college. BAM.

And only dill pickles...not sweet. sick. Just thinking about sweet pickles makes me gag...bleh. The best pickles are Milwaukee's Midget Pickles...whoever's in charge of the pickles and olives for family holidays KNOWS that this is the brand you buy. The pickles are so tiny and cute and taste A-MAY-ZING. I eat like 50 pickles throughout these fam parties. Legit.

Random post, yes...but this is what's on my mind at the moment. Plus, it's not like anyone reads my blog anyway :)

Funny thing though...I HATE cucumbers...huh.