Coach Kirstin

So dinner tonight came about because one night I had chicken and I really didn't have a very good plan.  I decided to scan my cabinets and see what I had.  Diced tomatoes and tomato paste it was.  Here is what I ended up using 3 cans diced tomatoes (I'm a nerd and had organic) 1 can tomato sauce (because I'm paranoid its going to burn while I'm gone) 1 small can tomato paste 4 cloves garlic ~ 1 tbsp basil ~1  tbsp oregano few dash's of salt, I prefer to add this after I tossed it all in the crock pot the night before and went to bed.  Not pretty but this was my masterpiece. Plugged it in and went to work.  Of course the can of tomato sauce was completely unnecessary but I'm paranoid.  Came home and all I had to do was cook a veggie.  I was really craving Kale with Bacon and with my boyfriend out of town, I can cook it with even more apple cider vinegar than usual.  Its my favorite side to cook because its easy and quick. ...

So I might the only person on the planet that doesn't like mango. And I was trying to broaden the types of fish we eat and I decided we needed to eat mahi mahi, we every damn recipe has mango in it...horay!  So I finally found something else and it was spicy.  I have tried it a few times and I had to tone it down a bit so I could handle it.  Chris loved it, I not so much.  Here is the colors of the spices that tells you how this is about to go down. The spices above are: 1 tsp sea salt 2 tsp garlic powder 2 tsp cumin 2 tsp paprika 2 tsp cayenne pepper The original recipe only used 3 pieces of mahi mahi but I have used up to 6 and had plenty of mixture.   You will need some olive oil to cook the fish in, I tried grape seed oil and it just got soaked up too fast by the fish.  Start off with the fish  dried off and the mixture all prepped. Then add some of the dry rub to each side Go ahead and do this for all of your fillets...

So I have a recent affair to confess to...my crockpot. It has made my life exponentially simpler. I come home and he has a hot meal prepared and waiting, what's not to love? Except every recipe I google is cook this and that and then put it in the crock pot....I'm using the crock pot so I can just dump it in an forget it, why would I want to cook anything before I put it in the crock pot. I get it, you can make some pretty amazing stuff. But lets think about my life...its planned out in 15 minute increments still and I'm not even fighting anymore, the prep work involved in that is not my style. Sooo I am working on a new section of my blog of no prep crock pot recipes. I am sure to have a few fails. So this was my first experiment. We were short on time and had a lot of chicken thighs in the freezer. So into the bottom of the crock pot went 6 chicken thighs On top of that I added: 2, 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes 6 oz can tomato paste 1/2 onion coarsely chopped ...

Maybe I'm lazy or just always short on time.  Either way I decided that it's easier to make a big batch of my breakfast for the week on Sunday's and the warm it up throughout the week.  It started when I started fighting.  I used to be really neurotic and I would measure out each portion in a pan cook it individually to ensure I got the same amount in each serving....time and life has gotten my neurosis to calm down a bit.  I now just cook in a bit batch.  I also have learned some ways to make save time and money.  I like to keep my veggies extra fresh, well dead of winter that is always possible so I use frozen, also saves me from having to chop all that up.  I just dump the bag in and voila!  I also use Trader Joe's Bacon Ends & Pieces.  Its about $2.99 here which is about $5 less than a package of bacon of the same size (1 lbs) since I just chop it anyhow, I don't need pretty strips of bacon for frying up with my eggs and laying on pla...