Chicken Salad Butter Lettuce Wrap...or good for Sandwiches too

Chicken Salad
Similar to other chicken salads I've made over the years...there are lots of variations.

2-3 C diced cooked chicken breast
grapes, seedless red ones, cut in half (maybe about 3/4 C...)
1 can sliced water chestnuts, chopped a bit more
1 bunch green onions, chopped, including some of the green part
1/2 C chopped cilantro (or use basil)
1/3 C slivered almonds
1-2 C leftover brown rice (or make it without rice)

Dressing:
1 C light mayo
1 T Dijon mustard
1 1/2 t ginger
juice of one lime

Toss with salad...eat as is, wrapped in butter lettuce leaves, on a sandwich, in a croissant, pita bread...

Goodnight iPad....a Book for Everett (and his parents)

Oh this really made me chuckle....and I'm the worst one to put away my tech at night!

In the bright buzzing room

There was an iPad

And a kid playing Doom

And a screensaver of ....(turn page)

A bird launching over the moon 

There were three little Nooks

With ten thousand books...(turn page)

And a huge LCD Wi-Fi HDTV

With Bose 5.1

Six remotes, and 3-D (turn page)

and a  blackBerry ringing

With Eminem singing

And a new Facebook friend

And texts with no end (turn page)

And a viral clip of a cat doing flips

and the bings, bongs, and beeps

Of e-mails and tweets  (turn page)

And a fed-up old woman

Who was trying to sleep

OK, That's it (she says)...(turn page)

Goodnight iPad

Goodnight Doom

Goodnight bird 

Launching over the moon

Goodnight Nooks

And digital books

Goodnight Eminem

Goodnight Facebook friend

Goodnight LOLs

Goodnight MP3s

Goodnight LCD Wi-Fi- HDTV

Goodnight remotes

And Netflix streams,

Androids, apps,

And glowing screens

Goodnight plugs 

And power lights

That guide us to pee

In the darkness of night

Goodnight buzzing

Goodnight beeps

Goodnight everybody

Who should be asleep

Goodnight pop stars

Goodnight MacBook Air

Goodnight gadgets everywhere

Moral Dilemma...Is Cool Whip Vegan? (Brown Rice Breakfast Bowl)

Inspired by Val's recent interest in vegan eating...I made some brown rice. Wanting to eat some of the leftovers for breakfast, I added chopped apples, Raspberries, slivered almonds, a little Splenda...and then to make it more luscious...a couple of dollops of Cool Whip...topped with a little nutmeg...it was very yummy, low fat, high fiber...(but I felt the Cool Whip might have negated the nutritional benefits!) Oh well...it was still good.

Lovely Lemon Blueberry Breakfast Bread

Lovely Light Lemon Blueberry Breakfast Bread...
From The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet

(Don't let the number of ingredients scare you off...double the batch and make 5 mini loaves so you can share...or put in the freezer for later)

1 C all-purpose flour
1 C white whole-wheat flour (or just use 2 C of either)
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C egg substitute (or one egg)
2 T butter, melted
1 6 oz carton light lemon yogurt
1/2 C buttermilk
1 T lemon juice
1 t grated lemon peel(optional, but I used it)
1 t lemon or vanilla extract
2 C fresh or frozen blueberries(if you use frozen, don't let them thaw)

Heat oven to 375; Spray 9x5 loaf pan with cooking spray (or double recipe and use 5 mini loaf pans)
Stir together flours, bp and salt in large bowl.
Whisk together sugar, egg stuff, butter, yogurt, buttermilk, lemon juice, peel, extract; Lightly mix with dry ingredients then gently fold in blueberries.
Pour into pan/pans and bake. The large loaf will probably take 55 minutes (or a little longer if your blueberries are frozen); small loaves take 40-45 minutes.
I glazed with a bit of powdered sugar/lemon juice while still hot.
1 slice (3/4 inch of large loaf) = 170 cal; CD 1.9; carb 33 g; fat 3 g; protein 4 g; fiber 2 g

Mayflower Ancestors

I always want to know this when Thanksgiving arrives....so  now it's here....we have several other Mayflower Lines..

John Howland was born about 1599, probably in Fenstanton, Huntington.  He came on the Mayflower in 1620 as a manservant for Governor John Carver.  During the Mayflower's voyage, Howland fell overboard during a storm, and was almost lost at sea--but luckily for his millions of descendants living today (including Presidents George Bush and George W. Bush, and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt) he managed to grab ahold of the topsail halyards, giving the crew enough time to rescue him with a boathook.

Elizabeth Tilley was born in 1607 in Henlow, Bedfordshire, the daughter of John and Joan (Hurst)(Rogers) Tilley.  She came with her parents on the Mayflower in 1620.  Both her parents died the first winter at Plymouth, leaving her orphaned at the age of 13 in the New World.  She married to Mayflower passenger John Howland around 1625 at Plymouth.

John Howland (1599) married Elizabeth Tilley (1607) and

had Hannah Howland (1637) who married John Bosworth(1636) whose sister was

Bethia Bosworth (1634)...she married Israel Peck (1644) and had

Mary Bethia Peck (1683) who married Josiah Dean (1685) and had

Josiah Dean (1716) who married Thankful Thomas and had

Daniel Dean (1738) who married Elizabeth Pease (1750) and had

Daniel Dean (1774) who married Elizabeth Crandall (1773) and had

Harvey Dean (1798) who married Mariah Bostick and had

Daniel Allen Dean (1822) who married Mary Jane Holmes and had

Jesse Lyons Dean (1878) who married Clara Adella Browning and had

Earle Holmes Dean (1900) who married Dorothy Vivian Cecil and had

Roger William Dean (1923) who married Janiece Opal Walters and had

Patricia Darlene Dean who married John Walter Nieman and had...

All of you kids!

Pineapple/Apricot "Dump" chicken

Pineapple/Apricot "Dump Chicken"

So this is the first variation I tried from this blog...and I did change it up a bit by using dried apricots instead of golden raisins:

"Dump" all of this in a regular zip lock bag...make 2 or 4 bags or whatever...cook one now and put the rest away....the idea is to have easy meals waiting for you in your freezer...or have an easy meal to give someone else!

1 1/2 lbs chicken (3 or 4 chicken frozen chicken breasts)

1/2 of a 20 oz. can of pineapple chunks

1/4 C brown sugar

1/2 t nutmeg

1/3 C orange juice

1/2 C "snipped" dried apricots (or use raisins if you want)

Lay flat in your freezer... to cook, thaw in refrigerator overnight, or just cook longer if you've forgotten to do that...you can cook in a crock pot, cooking bag(NOT the zip lock it's stored in!), or just in an open roasting pan...depending on the "frozennes" it will take varying times to cook, so plan accordingly. Make some rice (or use precooked brown rice from Costco)