Delicious (and EASY) Homemade Fajitas

May I have your attention please..

What I am about to share with you is a recipe that only one person in the world besides my family knows the exact steps for, and that's because she was there when I "invented" it. These homemade fajitas are easy and delicious, enough so that every time I have made them any one walking into the kitchen wants a part of it. No lie. Best part about it? So so so so healthy! All natural, great source of LEAN protein and those all important veggies, and you can customize it however you'd like if you are touchy about some of the ingredients. 

Here are the following, original ingredients:

- 3-4 Chicken Breasts (Good for sharing with 2-3 people or for 1-2 days of leftovers)
-Minced Garlic
-3 Bell Peppers (color of your choosing, I usually do two green and one red)
-1 Medium Onion (again, size is also your choosing. Love onion? Use more! But I wouldn't cut it out completely unless you really hate it.)
-Poultry Seasoning (thyme, sage, black pepper and nutmeg sold in a jar 
-Hot Pepper (Cayenne Pepper works, or if you're like me and have too many hot peppers from the garden, dry them and grind them into death powder if you like it hot)

Other options you can test out putting into this dish: Black beans, corn, diced tomatoes, cilantro (LOVE LOVE LOVE), jalapenos, changing up the meat to steak or fish... Comment below on other things you would like to try with it!

That's it. 6 ingredients. All of them 100% natural and all of them 100% good for you. Then you get to make this:

*cue angel music*

So to make this is really really easy:

Step 1: Chop everything up. Chicken no larger then 1" x 1". I cut the onion into 6ths and the bell peppers into thin strips. For faster cooking, cut everything smaller. Helpful Hint: Partially frozen chicken is 150x easier to cut than fully defrosted chicken. Just be aware of this when you are cooking to be sure the chicken cooks through. Cut off all that unnecessary fat if there is any. Once you get good at chopping, you can multitask and start cooking the chicken while chopping veggies. I recommend getting everything cut up the first time.

Step 2: In a big pan (a wok will work as well, but I suggest 12" pan with as high of sides as you own.. this is not a small meal), put 1-3 cloves of minced garlic (read the label to find out how much one clove is) and the chicken in on medium-high heat. Douse everything in Poultry seasoning. I mean a nice layer. It'll seem like a lot but it's all good.. some cooks out of it. Cook up the chicken until it is white on all sides, but not cooked through.

Step 3: Add in alllll the veggies. This is why you need the pepper cut into fairly thin strips and the onions to not be massive chunks. This is also why we add it to the chicken before the chicken is done cooking. Douse everything in cayenne and poultry seasoning again. If you like things spicy, add even more of the cayenne or hot pepper. Opposite if you don't like spicy. 

Step 4: Stir occasionally and wait for peppers to be at a consistency you like. Generally, you should be able to stick a fork into one of the peppers pretty easily without it feeling like its still crisp. Take a bite out of one to test if you are unsure. This is where having a high-sided pan comes in handy. I have a top I put on my pan and it cooks faster because it's being steamed while also cooked from the bottom.

Step 5: Remove from heat and top with whatever you like! I usually have shredded cheese, salsa, and sometimes sour cream/plain greek yogurt. I allow the cheese for myself because generally speaking, my diet is very low in fat and it's a decent way to get some fat and calcium in my diet. Omit if it is not in your diet plan or you're watching your sodium. You can wrap it in a tortilla or, if you're like me and have decided to cut out the middleman, put it all into a big bowl and go to town!

I don't have exact nutrition information on this.. I wish I did. However, by eating this you are officially eating 100% natural foods that are all darn good for you. I don't count calories, and if you split your final product into however many chicken breasts you used as servings (i.e.  chicken breasts, divide what you have in the pan by three, etc), you can guestimate how much protein you have. I CAN tell you the health benefits of every ingredient though!

Chicken - Lean source of protein. Easy enough.
Peppers - High in Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Vitamin B6. They also have a decent amount of fiber and other healthy anti-oxidants other than those listed. 
Onion - Although smelly, these little stinkers also have a decent amount of fiber in them. Plus, it's an easy way to flavor dishes without adding calories.
Cayenne Pepper - Did you know that cayenne pepper not only sets fire to your mouth, but also to your metabolism? Consuming spices like cayenne pepper have been show to curb your appetite as well as boost your metabolism. I add cayenne to so many dishes, mostly because I like spicy food, but with the added benefit of not wanting to eat as much of it!
Poultry Seasoning - I know that each of the spices in poultry seasoning have their own health benefits, but the main reason I LOVE using it is that it DOES NOT CONTAIN SALT! I know I have a problem with sodium and sugar intake, and this awesome seasoning has none of that. Sprinkle away!

I hope you like it. I cook this all the time for myself and love making it for others. Let me know what you think and what other ideas you have to add to it!

The Art of Omelette Making!

So, lately I have been a little omelette crazy. It's just so easy and fast to make, great source of protein and frankly, anytime I can eat breakfast - I will. I often have them for dinner because I just want to cook something that is REAL food (not out of the freezer), but I am too darn tired after work to think that hard.

Anyway, this got me thinking to all of the people I hear saying, "I can't make an omelette", which is reasonable because you have to follow three simple rules to not ruin an omelette and end up with scrambled eggs (been there, done that, been disappointed every time), and how many people do you know that can be follow rules while they are hungry? Not I. It takes will power for this to work, which takes a little time to develop, unless you want this:

Sadness..

So.. since I THINK you all can handle cracking eggs/pouring Egg Beaters into a bowl and stirring it up with some salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic salt, whatever else you might like in your omelette.. I'll start after that.

Rule #1 - Start with a pan big enough to make a solid omelette. If your egg is not at least 1/8" of an inch thick in the bottom of the pan, the pan is too big. The thicker you can get your egg mixture in the pan, the easier it will be to flip in the end. I think about 1/4" is good. I use a 10" skillet. About 3 eggs for an omelette will work here (I use 2 eggs and one Egg Beater serving to lower the cholesterol a bit). Now you have your base.

Rule #2 - Use PAM like it's going out of style.

Yup, I used the PAM word. I want you to go out and buy some Olive Oil PAM spray. Good fats in that... omegas.. and we're gonna use that spray like it was intended - coat the HECK out of that pan!! To be safe, I get every single edge of that pan, especially the bottom middle and where the edges start turning up. You never know when you're going to have a crazy egg incident that will land it semi on the side of the pan and YOU WANT TO BE COVERED. Omelettes are not a perfect science.. be safe or be sad (see above).

Side Note - Turn the stove on to MEDIUM heat and heat the pan up before pouring in the egg.. This will help to set it faster.

Rule #3 - STOP TOUCHING YOUR OMELETTE! For the love of all things delicious, STOP poking it. STOP checking under it like a grilled cheese to see if it's done. STOP TOUCHING IT COMPLETELY. Okay.. you can swish around the wet stuff around the edges to make a slightly larger but only if you're careful and only if you can control yourself. You leave it be. You clean up your mess, wash your dishes, twiddle your thumbs and you WAIT until there is no more wet, mooky egg on the top of your omelette. This means the heat of your stove should be at medium, no higher, so you don't burn your egg while waiting for the magic of disappearing egg goo to happen.

So, now you know the very basic three rules not to break while making omelettes. Now, all you have to do is take your spatula (wide and thin is best, but really.. any spatula will work) and work it carefully around the edge, and shake the pan bake and forth to work it loose from the center. This is where the good ol' PAM comes in handy because it shouldn't take much if you used it right. Once you can get your spatula completely under the middle of the omelette, it is a quick 180° turn. This is where it's possible to get a little egg incident, but because we coated our pan with enough PAM to make an egg Slip N Slide we DON'T WORRY!! because now we can just gently push our omelette back into place and now it's beautiful and perfect and ready for cheese. The magic of the disappearing goo has helped us here because by the time you've got the cheese (whatever your preference) onto one half of the omelette, the bottom has cooked what little it needed to and you can fold it in half and leave in the pan for a minute or two, HEAT OFF, to help melt the deliciousness.

And now you know how to make an omelette =] I want to hear success stories!! Here are some delicious additions to omelettes. Big things are added at the beginning, while leafy things are added towards the end.

• Bells Peppers of any kind, diced - Add at beginning mixed in with egg mixture
• Mushrooms if you like them - Same
• Bacon, bits or real fried bacon torn up (or really any other meat source you like that you either cooked up previously [leftover chicken anyone?] or comes precooked - Same
• Avocado - Can be diced and added at the beginning or used in place of cheese to make it super healthy =] I slice it thin and add it at the end, personally
• Spinach - the perfect thing to add to increase nutrition value and it doesn't add a ton of taste. I hand shred and add right towards the end before flipping so it can stick to the omelette and cook on the other side shortly.
• Herbs like Chives, Rosemary, Cilantro. I add these at the end like the spinach (leafy, remember?)
• Garlic - minced - Add at very beginning when you're heating up the pan or mix a little in with the egg mixture. If you heat it up with the pan, mix it up real fast with the egg mixture once you pour it in to spread out the garlic. Be very careful.. I suggest not heating it up in the pan until you are pretty good with the omelette first.

Magically, Naturally Delicious =]

Okay so I went away for a while, but I'm back. In short, moved to Atlanta, started my job, been at it for a few months now. Started CrossFit at an amazing box and am working hard to live healthy, happy, and have fun in a new city.

Now that that's out of the way... Part of this living healthy thing is trying to eat as much as possible all natural...

...
..

I've lost you now haven't I? You saw all natural and thought, ugh, health food... that's too hard.. too boring.. too tasteless. Whatever. Here's the awesome thing about eating a lot of all natural food.. I no longer count calories. If you are eating food that is REAL, you don't have to worry about calories. First, there are generally less in natural foods than the processed crap you're eating. Second, your body is built to handle and digest things that are in nature. (Here comes a whole lot of information thrown at you in a probably haphazard manner because my brain can't function in an orderly way on the weekend).

For me, it explained why when I ate a huge meal that had a lot of processed carbs.. high in fat.. etc, I felt sleepy and just awful overall and I was tired of it. I started out small.. cutting out things like boxed crackers, meals consisting of only sugar (pasta, cereal, etc). Yes, carbs = sugar. People often think if they are not eating a candy bar, there isn't that much sugar in a food, but carbs are just different combinations of sugars, and ARE NOT ALL BAD!!  The point is, there was nothing healthy about those meals even if I was careful with portion control and only ate the recommended amount of it (which, for those of you who have tried, the amount of cereal supposedly in a "meal" is paltry and sad and just plain depressing to look at). I thought for the longest time that if I just ate and controlled my calorie intake to slightly under what I burned every day, I would be healthy and fit and happy.

It didn't work.

So now I stock up on a TON of produce. Fresh raspberries, strawberries, red peppers, spinach, squashes and avocado run abundant in my fridge. I have a gigantic tub of whey protein on stock at all times. Old fashioned oats are magic. Cans of tomatoes, black beans, and bags of frozen veggies of all kinds. Ground turkey, chicken breast/tenderloins and salmon or tilapia are always on hand. My refrigerator is not sad and empty, it is filled to the brim with good food. That's a key step. Temptation too close at hand gives you an excuse to cheat yourself.

I have always had athletics to fall back on and excuses to be lazy. I still have tons of excuses, I just don't use them any more... or at least.. I try. I am human after all.. I want to be healthy and I have the knowledge to do what it takes. I've surrounded myself with a team of people at CrossFit Smyrna who believe in me and what I am capable of. Will power is all it takes. Small steps make for big strides. Do I still go out to eat, or have my favorite comfort foods? Absolutely. I'm not Superman, and I believe in being able to have a cheat day. It just can't become a cheat weekend. And even then, it occasionally happens... I'm 23 and in a huge city with 500 million things to do every weekend and friends who want to do them all. (We have enough that we've finally created a calendar in order to keep track of all the stuff we have planned). Life happens. The thing is having the strength to return to the routine after a cheat day/weekend. However be careful. You can undo a lot of progress in a cheat weekend. I don't pay attention to the number on the scale. All I care about is how I feel on the inside and whether or not my clothes fit (because let's be real.. clothes that are too tight are uncomfortable and I don't make enough money to deal with that nonsense).

Now that I'm retired...

It's been a while since I posted last... in fact a long while. I better catch y'all up on what I've done since the last post.

• Retired from my High Jumping career on the Track and Field team.
• Got a research paper accepted into the Academy of Marketing Science journal and hopefully published.
• Graduated college w/ a Bachelor's in Accounting and Marketing and a Master's in Accounting.
• Moved from Illinois to Georgia to start my job.
• Met some really cool pool and miss a lot of really cool people from home too.
• Learned how to play Bocce ball and was recruited for a Co-ed Softball team (Lord help our team..)
• Began volunteering at a great Golden Retriever Rescue organization which you can read more about here!
• Started my job in Georgia for one month and one week at the time of this post.

Now we're all caught up.. There are other things that will come up as they come to mind.. but that's not what this post is about.

This post is about me being retired from being an athlete for the last 20 years of my life. I know there are thousands of athletes out there who know exactly how I am feeling right now. What am I supposed to do with myself now?? I was on the track team, but I really dislike running. I am (or.. was) built for power, not endurance. I like doing just about any other activity except running, but unfortunately have been reduced to it since I am a grown up now and Atlanta has God-awful traffic I really don't want to put myself through if it's not necessary. That being said, I love the trails around my apartment and have a decent amount of long, open space to do things in and I have a pretty great workout facility in my apartment complex.

I have been noticing the loss of muscle, and it sucks. I was proud of my strength, I am just terrible at making myself go do boring workouts in the gym by myself without anyone there expecting me to. I do better with classes and teamwork, but don't know where to go around here. So I decided to start the 7 Day Ab Challenge as well as the 7 Day Summer Butt Challenge to kick start myself getting motivated again. I started on Sunday and will update you on how it is going throughout the week. So far, so good!

Anyone have any good workouts they like that are unique and fun? I would love to hear from you! 

Graduation Application

I applied for graduation the other day. 


I always saw my friends' statuses and tweets and other such nonsense get really excited about this day as some momentous occasion that made them feel they were suddenly going to breeze past their last year of college. I couldn't wait to feel the same way, like this was some final hurdle I had to get past and I would feel this rush of relief to have it out of the way.


It doesn't feel like that.


Instead, I now sit and worry and ponder when I am going to get that call from the registrar's office (or whoever takes care of this) telling me, "Sorry, you are missing X requirement, you will have to finish that class before you can graduate (or God forbid, in the summer)." No matter how many times I have checked, and double checked each and every semester for the last 10 semesters to make sure that I was on the right track, following the little schedule my school sets up for idiots who can't figure it out any other way, and annoying the crap out of my advisors (who both happen to be Chairs of their respective departments) to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN I had it right and we were good to go, I still feel like this couldn't possibly be the end. 


Does/did anyone else feel like this after they put in their graduation applications?


Maybe it's because I was a difficult case in the first place. I am formally known as an Accounting 3:2 and Marketing major, which means I graduate in 5 years with a Bachelor's and Master's in Accounting and a Bachelor's in Marketing. I chose marketing the first semester of my 4th year in school as a second major when I realized I hated everything about accounting, and that the small section I did enjoy was actually marketing-based (managerial and cost accounting for those accounting nerds out there that know what I'm talking about). 

I REALLY didn't want to be this guy.

Now I love marketing and everything I do for those classes and am holding on to the Master's degree in accounting because, well, why not? I had gone 4 years with it, might as well stick it out and have a little more wallpaper for the walls. 


So anyway, after having a mental breakdown in the Marketing Chairperson's office that semester, we decided on a course of action to graduate with both majors, on time, and double checked it with the lovely woman who helps us all out with our degree audits and makes sure we're on top of our shit too. Everything was kosher, and I have followed that plan to a T. Why do I still feel like I'm going to get a terrible call one month before I'm supposed to graduate telling me it's not going to happen? I've really no reason to worry. 


Because sooner or later, the pessimist comes out from my 95%-of-the-time optimist's shadow and whispers, "You're finally getting exactly what you want and somehow, life is going to bite you in the ass."


No, that's literally what she says.. that pessimist is a vindictive B.


So I sit here and worry about getting a call. This doesn't include the fact that I have yet to hand in my graduate program graduation application. I'm really pretty sure that once I do it'll burst into flames or the university's president will come by and shake her head disappointed-ly because my getting a master's in accounting might be the biggest travesty our accounting department has ever seen.

This.. all over President Jo-Jo's face.

But that is a story for another time.


Real World Girl

Here Goes Nothing

I'm a college kid!


Well.. sort of.


I guess I'm a college adult now. I'm in my last semester of my last year of college and I guess that sort of makes me an adult now. Not only that, I'm in the last semester of my 5th year of college, which pretty much makes me ancient in college world. Yup, by all standards, here I am, elderly at age 22. Awesome.

This is me in approx. 4 months

If you think about it though, graduating college is sort of the mid-life crisis of the young adult world. Up to this point, we have spent every August-May in school, gallivanting around the summer months with wild abandon and then trudging back off to school where, in college, our gallivanting was limited to three of the seven days of the week (or more for the more.. adventurous of my generation). 

All day 'ery day

Okay Okay, I am not one of those crazy kids. Living up to my elderly standing, I rarely go out. Of course, I'm an athlete and don't drink while I'm in season but even out of season, I'm not a huge drinker. I'm just not. I'll be Sober Sally for the night and still have fun though.


So anyway, here I am, 4 months from graduating, about to be thrust into the low-twenties crisis that everyone so swears is going to happen and I am going to write about it. Graduation processes, the last hurrahs, my very last season of a sport I have been competing in for the last 11 years and moving into that oh-so-scary "real world", I am going to let you in on how I'm surviving. I am convinced that I will be okay, because I, for one, can't wait to stop being a broke college student and move into my real life. Where I can save towards the things I really want in life. Where I can finally stop studying stuff just to remember it long enough for a test.


I'm moving into the real world, WHAT?!


Yeah, we all do eventually,
Real World Girl.