You know how I love trashy television? Well, I have yet another embarrassing program to add to my repertoire: True Beauty. Has anyone watched this? The concept is that all of these attractive people are grouped in a house and given fake challenges. The contestants think that they’re competing to see who is the hottest, but they’re really being judged on their “inner beauty” (ex: will they donate money to a cancer fund if given the opportunity, will they help a cyclist who crashes next to them, etc.). Very entertaining, especially when the person being kicked off is filled in on the concept. Which poses the question: Why the hell are people still auditioning for reality tv???
Okay, enough with my obvious classiness. For breakfast this morning I tried out the Honey-Almond Oatmeal recipe in the latest issue of Clean Eating. It seemed a little boring (flavored only with almond butter and honey) so I added some fresh blackberries:
I took advantage of last night’s leftover BBQ salmon filet for lunch and put together a ginormous salad: chopped baby spinach, mini peppers (red, orange, yellow), goat cheese, salmon, ½ a chopped pearapple (interesting), sliced red onion and Annie’s Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette:
That’s the other half of the pearapple you see around the edge of the plate. Has anyone else tried these? I love the super-crunchy texture, but they don’t have a lot going on in the flavor department.
Dinner was kind of a random combo. A couple weeks ago I received an email from the Young Chef Association at El Centro about an amateur soup competition taking place at Northpark later this month. It’s only $25/recipe to enter and the proceeds benefit several children’s charities- all of you Dallas people should think about entering (info here). Anyway, tonight seemed like a good opportunity to work on a recipe… I don’t want to reveal too much and jinx myself, but it was kind of Thai-inspired and wintery. Yum.
We had a package of gnocchi in the pantry and a big container of baby spinach in the fridge, so I decided to try the Gnocchi with Fresh Chicken Sausage and Broccoli Rabe recipe from Rachael Ray’s Big Orange Book (subbing spinach for the rabe).
This was one of those recipes that doesn’t contain very many ingredients (gnocchi, spinach, sausage, onion, red pepper, garlic and lemon) but tastes really complicated. I loved the lemon juice/zest. Will definitely be making this one again!
*Survey Time*
How do you organize your recipes?
My friend Carolyn recently tipped me off on YummySoup (online recipe storage for Mac) so I’ve been playing around with the free trial. My recipes are such a disaster of torn clippings that it’s going to take forever to get them in any sort of electronic format.
I’m interested by this Thai-inspired soup…. Hope you win when you submit
I am completely disorganized when it comes to organizing recipes – and such a paper waster. If I’m using a recipe from a book, it’s fine. But when I print recipes out I usually get water all over them or something and end up printing them out again the next time I want the dish. I should really find a better method.
I get freaked when it comes to cooking competitions. Not a single recipe of mine ever comes out the same. I do best under pressue; however, my mind, heart rate and blood pressure beg to differ. If I had to enter a single soup recipe it would be my tortilla soup. It’s easy and oh so tasty! I’ll think about it. It would be a good challenge for me.
As far as trash TV goes, True Beauty is right up there. Lame, but I watched it also, and the girl that got the boot still didn’t get it. Blonde’s !!?? hahaha… Sorry to say that the fourth picture is gross looking. It looked like guts and eye balls with green stuff running through the middle….
I organize my recipes in notebooks, using those plastic sheets where you can stick your pages inside. If they are clippings, I just tape or gluestick them onto a piece of copy paper first. Then I use dividers to group them in categories. When you are cooking, I just take that recipe out of the book and it doesn’t get dirty (as I am kinda messy when I cook):)
Gammypie- You should enter!! You just make the soup at home and drop it off (along with the recipe) on the 20th- so you could tweak it if needed.
Susan- I WAS going to eat the leftovers for lunch, but now all I’m going to see are guts and eyeballs. THANKS.
to answer your question, b/c people like you are still watching it
lol, i did catch one episode of that, it was pretty rediculous!
great-lookin soup, good luck!
and i actually post recipes i want to try in a private blog and tag them by ingredient and type of dish, so that way it’s more search-able. the thing i’m trying to improve is the way i cook them. copying them down on scrap paper every time is getting a little cumbersome…
I couldn’t watch that last night because I was watching mama’s boys on nbc.
pearapple? more information, please.
Susan – give the guts and eyeballs a chance, it was really good.
I have a great system for keeping track of my recipes. I have a beautiful wife who takes care of it for me.
I haven’t watched True Beauty but I thought it looked pretty funny in a guilty pleasure kind of way!
Those blackberries look so ripe! Wow!
That soup looks yummy! I don’t have any method for organizing recipes. I’m bad. But to answer your P90x questions on my post, you’re supposed to do the workouts every day for 90 days (Sunday is usually an active rest day). I’m not going to follow the meal plan to a T because I’m already pretty happy with what I eat, but I have incorporated some of the concepts and might try out some of the yummy recipes! I also think there might be days where I will switch it up and do one of my old workouts. I think I might go crazy if I feel pressured to completely follow the plan, so making a few changes will do me some good!
Hey, I totally got up early to watch the new episode of Real Housewives from last nite…I’m obsessed!