Chicken | Healthy and Sane

Ultimate healthified buffalo chicken dip (+few extras)

October 7th, 2011

***Welcome Pinterest visitors!! So glad you liked my healthified buffalo chicken dip (it IS as good as it looks – maybe even better

). I have lots of other juicy content on the blog so I hope you stick around and do a little digging. For other fun healthy appetizers, you may want to try roasted red pepper, tomato and anchovy crostini, tofu and mushroom lettuce cups, double tomato bruschetta or chipotle-lime two-bean hummus. And for something a little indulgent, the pizza monkey bread is always a HUGE hit! For more ideas, check out my favorite recipes page on top. Thanks again for coming!!

***

Onto the post…

Hi y’all (I’m currently in the airport on the way to New Orleans, so I’m getting myself in the mood). Happy Friday!! I am obviously in a great mood since vacation is just hours away. The weekend is just around the corner for you too, so I wanted to share a quick and easy recipe with you before I shut my computer down for a few days.

Buffalo sauce. OMG, I love buffalo sauce. If I didn’t worry about killing my taste buds, I’d be totally cool with covering everything in it – breakfast, lunch and dinner. Something about how acidic and spicy it is. LOVE.

Luckily, it’s football season so instead of bathing myself in it (gross + I don’t have anything to wear with neon orange Smile with tongue out ), I can just show up to a football-watching party with a buffalo sauce covered concoction and be the most popular person in the room. Win-win. Smile

A lot of buffalo chicken dip recipes call for canned chicken (eww) and butter (totally unnecessary). I came up with this on a whim the other day and it was the best buffalo chicken dip I’ve ever had. It’s not exactly health food but it’s just a little lighter.

Ultimate healthified buffalo chicken dip (serves a crowd)

2 poached chicken breasts, shredded
2 packages (8oz ea) neufchatel (low fat cream cheese), softened
1 cup low fat sour cream
3/4 cup Frank’s RedHot buffalo wing sauce
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1.5 cups shredded reduced fat cheese (I used 1/2 mozzarella, 1/2 cheddar), divided
Baby carrots and pita chips for dipping

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven, or toaster oven, to 350*.

2. Mix all ingredients together, hold 1/2 cup cheese. The Kitchen Aid with a paddle attachment does an amazing job of creaming it all together. Super easy!

3. Transfer to 9×5 loaf fan (or another baking dish), sprinkle remaining cheese over the top.

4. Bake for 15 minutes.

4. Broil for 1-2 minutes to get the cheese extra golden on top.

Enjoy!!

Creamy, buffalo-saucy, cheesy. Dig in!

For a few extra snacks, consider making the Eat, Drink and be Vegan two-olive sundried tomato hummus.

And Trader Joe’s blueberry goat cheese is perfect for those craving something a little sweeter… or those that may just be goat cheese obsessed Winking smile [I’m both!]

This stuff seriously tastes like cheesecake. Crazy awesome!

One of my 2011 goals (btw, I should really look at those again) was get into sports watching. I may not be a die-hard football fan just yet, but I’ve got the game day snacks down for sure! Smile

Do you love buffalo sauce? Any favorite game friendly snacks?

*Last reminder about the Pomi giveaway. I’ll be announcing the winner on Monday.*

Entertaining the family for dinner

July 21st, 2011

Hi y’all (apparently I’m turning Texan)! lol Thank you SO MUCH for all of your feedback on my clearing out the closet post. Going through it, combined with stress at work and the feelings e-course I’ve been taking, has put me in a bit of a funk for a few days. I tried going shopping too and wasn’t too successful. Nothing was looking quite right (and was several sizes larger than I was before) – it’s tough to embrace your “new body” when that happens.

Anyways, I’m cool now and I want to tell you about the dinner I cooked for my dad’s birthday last weekend (sticking to my 30 by 30 list and hosting dinner parties left and right. haha)! His birthday happens to be on my wedding anniversary. Adam and I celebrated the night, just the 2 of us, but I had plans to make it up to my dad soon enough.

When hosting a dinner party do you pick a theme or just go with delicious recipes?

I wanted to make sure this was really really delicious so for my main course I chose a recipe I’ve made (and loved!) before – chicken thighs on the grill (btw, I always tag my favorite recipes so you can find them easily… on the right hand side).

Next up were these lovely ravioli with prosciutto, sundried tomatoes, basil and mozzarella in Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef cookbook. The pictures have been enticing me for weeks and a special birthday dinner seemed like the right time to break out my pasta roller! [PS – you can find the entire recipe on this blog]

Seriously, such cuties! Smile

It appears that I had an Italian theme developing so I went with it! Doesn’t strawberry ricotta cake sound kind of Italian? [If you say ricottttte like Giada, it definitely will Winking smile ]

OH YEAH!

Add a few Russian cheesy profiterole-like puffs (recipe coming to Russian Bites next)…

Some green beans with wild mushrooms…

And we have dinner!!

My mom was a giant help with executing the menu. I got a little ambitious planning this… happens every time! Open-mouthed smile

I was hoping this would turn into delicious comfort food, fit for a hole in the wall restaurant. I don’t know if I hit the bar quite that high (I’m pretty critical of my own cooking) but every single item turned out absolutely delicious… I can tell you that!

Happy birthday, dad!!

[Ha, he was trying to make a funny face when I pulled out the camera… I say that worked!]

Hope your dreams all come true! Smile

The angel food cake meets Italian grandmother was so light and the perfect ending to our Italian feast. Adam asked that I add it to our rotation of desserts (which means I should start a rotation of desserts! Yessss). I’m adding more strawberries between each layer next time!

Have you entertained recently? Do you have go-to items for dinner parties?

Healthy and Sane in the kitchen: making pita bread

July 15th, 2011

I’m going through a major reorganization of my (hard copy) recipes (from various magazines and blog printouts). Major! I’ve logged in probably close to 20 hours and I’m not even half-way through. But it’s been fun… and addictive… and things are slowly but surely shaping up!

My favorite thing about the final product (which I guess is not even final yet) is that all the pretty food pictures of recipes that look appealing to me are right there, in the format that’s enjoyable to browse through (as opposed to before, where a few nice recipes were either buried between useless articles or worse – shoved into a big folder also known as the black hole for recipes).

So the other day, I was doing my thing, gluing away, and Adam spotted a picture of the spicy chicken shawarma recipe from Cooking Light… and said: “You need to make this asap!” The good wife that I am, I put it on next week’s menu… and decided to take it up a notch by making my own whole wheat pitas. Why not!

I used the whole wheat pita bread recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook, which looked easy enough.

I Red heart my Kitchen Aid.

My dough was seriously sticky. I think I added a bit more flour and definitely let the mixer go for longer than the book specified.

Eventually I stopped it and hoped that once the yeast does it’s thing, everything will turn out fine Smile

Why hello, Mr. Yeast… looks like you’ve been hungry!

The dough was still slightly goopy (see top right in the picture above) but a slight toss in some flour produced perfect little dough balls.

Hi cuties! [Ok, I really need to stop this whole talking-to-my-food thing.]

Roll ‘em out…

And into the oven (on a pizza stone) they go!

OMG, OMG, OMG – they’re actually ballooning up!!!! [Yes, I was that excited.]

Actually, most of them looked like the ones below – at best. Spraying some water into the oven seemed to help a bit (thanks, Emily for this tip on twitter… Btw, I changed my twitter handle to @elinaholbrook… follow me if you love me!!)

Dinner time!

My first pita opened up so easily and perfectly, I was excited about “nailing it”!

The ones that followed definitely put up a fight (after this dinner I pretty much used them as flatbreads). They were really pillowy and doughy though so I enjoyed the texture.

I hate how store bought whole wheat pitas taste like cardboard so I’d love to find the perfect homemade (fool-proof) recipe that I can make over and over. It’d be cheaper too!