Week 2-Wednesday

Chicken Wednesday--Jessie's (not me) Chicken and Grain Salad with steamed broccoli
taken from 6 Week Meal Planning 

What you will need:

3 cups chicken broth-On the shopping list it just said chicken broth and I didn't look to see how much for today so I only bought one can and we needed two to I just substituted water for the other half.
1.5 cups couscous-We substituted for whole grain rice in a Steamer bag
Handful chopped fresh parsley-We forgot this also so we used parsley flakes
1 tsp thyme
2 cups frozen peas
Small bunch of scallions, thinly sliced (into some of the greens)-We didn't buy enough scallions so we omitted this
½ bell pepper, diced
2 cups cooked chicken, diced
¼ cup raisins-We didn't have any raisins so I used craisins instead.
¼ cup chopped nuts
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
2Tbsp lemon juice
2Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp curry powder (mild)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 heads broccoli, steamed-We left the broccoli out since it didn't seem to go with this meal.

Direction

1. In a large pot, bring broth to a boil. Add couscous, parsley, and thyme and cook the mixture for 30 seconds (yes seconds not minutes). Remove pan from heat, cover, and let the couscous stand for 5 minutes.
2. Place peas, scallions, bell pepper, chicken, raisins, nuts, and garbanzo beans in a large bowl. This is your “goodies” bowl.
3. In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice, curry powder, oil, and fresh ground pepper. Pour this mixture over the goodies bowl and toss to combine well.
4. Toss your now deliciously flavored goody bowl contents into your big pot with the grain and mix it all up well.You can serve it warm now, or refrigerate and serve cold.

ENJOY!

This is only half of the meal!
It defiantly made more than enough for four people

Stars
Jessie: 3 out of 5
Jason: 2.5 out of 5

Thoughts:
Jason and I split the cooking with this meal; he made the chicken and I did all the mixing. It took us about 30 minutes from start to ready to serve.  Jason said he gave this meal a 2.5 because it was like the "rice bowls" he makes but with more stuff. He expected it to be better and said it lacked flavor. I thought the meal was ok. Jason is right, it was a lot like our "rice bowls" but with more stuff which I liked. I wasn't thrilled with it but I would eat it again. As you can see from above we didn't do a great job of shopping this week. So far the shopping list for this week wasn't as good as the first week. During week one we bought everything on the list just as it was written, this week we did the same however it was less specific about the quantity of things we needed so we ended up short on several items on this meal. We also chose not to cook the broccoli as a side with this because it didn't make sense. If we were to have this meal again I would serve it with some sort of fruit or something like that as a side.

2012 Summer Transformation
Weight: lost 1/2 pound
Water: 120 ounces 
Breakfast: 2 pieces whole wheat Goldfish bread with peanut butter and a banana
Lunch: Left over Pasta with Meat Sauce, side salad
Snack: am-Cottage Cheese and Nature Valley Sweet & Salty Nut Granola Bar
           pm-Cheese & grapes and a Diet Coke
Dinner: Jessie's Chicken and Grain Salad
Exercise: 50 minutes of Hydro-fit
Sleep: Bed at 11:30pm and up at 6:45am.