Tag: cooking

Lemon Asparagus Pasta w/Chicken

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Here is yet another recipe that I found on Pinterest. I like pasta, I like asparagus and I’m okay with lemons, so I figured I would try it. I did make one kind of big mistake though. I must have glossed over the part where the recipe said that the chicken would need to be grilled prior to making this dish. I don’t have a grill or a grill pan (but they are on my wedding registry) so I just through the chicken in a regular pan and cooked it. So I’m pretty sure that this meal would’ve tasted ten times better if I had actually grilled the chicken first. Other than that minor issue, the recipe was very easy to make. And it lasted for a very long time. My fiancé went out of town for a work trip and I literally had 1 ½ weeks’ worth of food. Also, one serving of this recipe is less than 400 calories. I’m counting calories now (can’t eat more than 1200 a day) so that’s really important to me nowadays.

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INGREDIENTS
  • 1 pound of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, grilled and cut into strips
  • 1 pound of asparagus, ends removed, cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 10 ounces of linguine pasta (spaghetti or fettuccine will also work)
  • ¾ cup heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • ⅓ cup finely shredded parmesan cheese
  • Optional garnishes: lemon slices and ¼ cup chopped parsley

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Baked Garlic Parmesan Chicken

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Okay I finally tried another Pinterest recipe, so I can actually post the ingredients and instructions today. I made this on one of the weeks when I really didn’t feel like cooking anything. I hadn’t cooked a real meal for a few days and I was feeling bad for my fiancé so I turned to Pinterest for a basic chicken recipe. I was lucky to find this recipe already on one of my Pinterest boards because I already had all of the ingredients at home so I wouldn’t need to make a stop at the grocery store (thank GOD!).

Baked chicken doesn’t really excite my taste buds like a juicy steak would so that makes me less excited about cooking it, but this recipe actually surprised me. It didn’t taste like regular baked chicken. It was more fun to make and more fun to eat. I just served it with white rice and some canned green beans that I’ve been trying to get rid of for a while (I want to use fresh or frozen veggies only).

Ingredients
  • ½ cup Mayonnaise
  • ½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
  • 4 boneless skinless chicken breast cutlets.
  • 4-5 teaspoons Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs
  • ½ teaspoon garlic powder
  • pinch of salt

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Cheesy Cheeseless Scrambled Eggs w/Burst Cherry Tomatoes + Garlic Roasted Bacon

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Let me start by saying that I NEVER cook breakfast. My fiancé is way better at making breakfast foods than I am so I usually just let him handle that. But when I found these two recipes in Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings cookbook, I figured that I would give it a shot. Our typical breakfast meal is eggs and bacon anyway so I can’t mess it up too bad, right?

Let me just say, I would’ve never thought to add cherry tomatoes to my breakfast but they added such a burst of flavor. I love tomatoes anyway, but they are really amazing when they are warm/hot. This particular recipe uses a lot of eggs (twelve, to be exact). For my fiancé and me, it was way more than we actually needed. Now I have an extra plate of eggs in my fridge (which means I’ll probably have breakfast for dinner tonight). This cookbook is seriously amazing. I have not made one dish from this book that I didn’t absolutely love. Also, Chrissy’s commentary is hilarious and spot on.

Spicy Cajun Sausage, Peppers and Cabbage

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The other night I tried making a recipe from Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings cookbook.

I made a few adjustments to the recipe and the directions.

The recipe calls for one red bell pepper, but I had to omit that because the red bell pepper that I had was bad and I forgot to pick up another one. The directions require a really large skillet. I don’t consider mine to be that large so I did the first half of the recipe in the biggest pan that I have and then switched everything over to a really big pot (not a stockpot though). I did that so I could fit everything into one dish without making a huge mess in my kitchen. Unfortunately, I can’t be too specific with the list of ingredients and instructions but I can tell you that even with the adjustments that I made, the food was lovely. Continue reading →

So Lush Lifestyle

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In case you haven’t noticed, I have changed the title of this blog and the domain. I always knew there would come a time when I would have to buy a domain. For the past month or so, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with something cute, unique and encompassing of what I actually blog about. I decided to go with So Lush Lifestyle for a few reasons.

1.)    This is a lifestyle blog.

The things I blog about are actually part of how I really live and what I’m really interested in. I cook, I shop, I work out (sometimes), etc. These are my real interests and passions in life.

2.)    “Lush” is something I used to say as a teen.

When I was around 15 or 16, “lush” was my WORD. It basically means “awesome” in the context that I use it. I picked it up from Charlotte Church so I guess it’s actually British slang. Either way, I said it all the time and it was even on my MySpace profile so you know it was official.

3.)    A “so lush lifestyle” is something I aspire to have.

I am someone who believes that women can have it all. I want to be able to say that I’m a great wife, a great mother (eventually), a great cook, etc. I want the nice car, the nice wardrobe and handbags, the nice house. I want it all. I truly believe that I can have it all. And I believe that other women can too.

Maple Mustard Glazed Salmon + Garlic Parmesan Broccoli

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During our last trip to the grocery store, my fiancé picked up a huge slab of fresh salmon. It was so big that I couldn’t possibly use the whole slab for just one dinner for the two of us that night. So I had my fiancé cut the slab in half and freeze one half of it. The first night we had the salmon and asparagus recipe that I posted about a few months ago. About a week later, I decided to use the other half of the salmon because I just didn’t like the idea of the salmon being frozen for too long. My fiancé did not want the same salmon recipe that I had made the week before because he had been eating the leftovers from that dinner at work for a few days. So I found another recipe on my Pinterest board that I had only made once and paired it with a new way to make broccoli. My mom used to boil broccoli all the time when I was still living with my parents. Sometimes we would have it two or three times a week. It’s kind of a running joke in that household. But I had a bag of frozen broccoli that needed to be used in my freezer, however I decided to try something new with it so that it wouldn’t feel as redundant.

The salmon came out perfect. Continue reading →

Cravings by Chrissy Teigen

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One of my birthday gifts this year was Cravings by Chrissy Teigen. My mom bought it for me because she knows that I’ve been learning the ropes in the kitchen via Pinterest. I’ve never had a cookbook before so this is my very first one. And I’m also a big fan of Chrissy Teigen. I’m super duper excited to try these recipes, many of which I have never even thought about making before. Although I love my recipes board on Pinterest, having an actual book with pages and pictures that I can look at is going to be awesome. I won’t have to scroll and screenshot images on my phone or worry about my touching my phone with food on my fingers. Eventually I’ll make my own cookbook binder with all of my favorite Pinterest recipes but I haven’t had the time to invest in that right now. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to post a link to the recipes like I usually do because that could get me in trouble but I can post a link to purchase the book. If you like Chrissy Teigen’s personality and sense of humor and you also like to cook, I would suggest buying this for yourself. Her write-ups are funny and hopefully the recipes are delicious too. I guess I’ll find out soon enough…

Chicken + Broccoli Alfredo Pasta

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Another day, another one-pan recipe. Well…not exactly. You really need a large pan/skillet and a large pot, but it all ends up in one pan by the time you’re finished cooking. First, let me say that I am not a big fan of canned Alfredo sauce. It’s too much like mayonnaise in taste, look and smell. And I don’t particularly care for it when it’s heated up the next day. Generally speaking, it’s just not my thing. So initially when I found this recipe, I figured I would just have to take an L on this recipe and make something that I don’t really like because I know my fiancé would eat it and at the very least, it’d be something different for my taste buds. I was very surprised to find that this particular recipe with the word “Alfredo” in the title did not actually use any type of canned Alfredo sauce. Instead the recipe calls for heavy cream, milk and flour. It tasted so good! Instead of looking, tasting and smelling like mayonnaise, it’s more subtle and so much better. You can honestly barely see the sauce once the chicken, pasta and broccoli are mixed in. It’s very light but you can certainly taste it. Anyone who feels like they don’t like Alfredo sauce should probably try this recipe. More than likely, if you don’t like Alfredo sauce, you’ve probably just been using/eating a sauce that was too heavy.

Click HERE to see the ingredients and instructions for this recipe.

Spicy Cajun Pasta

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I tried a new one-pot recipe last week and the results were… pretty good. The recipe is called Spicy Cajun Pasta. It’s one of those recipes where you throw everything into a big stockpot and 30-45 minutes later, you’re done cooking. So it’s very easy to prep and it doesn’t leave you with a bunch of dishes to wash afterwards.

 
The food came out looking and tasting great, especially when topped with Parmesan cheese. I personally felt like there was too much meat in it though. Even my fiancé agreed and he damn near throws a fit when I make a dish that doesn’t include enough meat. This recipe includes chicken, andouille sausage and shrimp. Out of the three, the chicken is the most useless as you can barely taste it. So if I were to make this dish again, I would only include the sausage and shrimp.

Click HERE for the ingredients and instructions.

Balsamic Chicken & Vegetables

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This is a recipe that I should’ve tried a couple of months ago but I kept putting it off because I never seemed to have all the ingredients at one time. Last week I ended up getting everything I needed so I decided to give it a go anyway and hope for the best. 

First of all, the food came out looking beautiful! I almost didn’t want to eat it because it was so pretty (we still ate it though). Secondly, this recipe includes a good amount of carrots (I hate carrots), but surprisingly I still enjoyed it. I don’t cook just for myself so sometimes I make dishes that include foods that I don’t necessarily enjoy eating (i.e. carrots, salmon, etc.). Both of the vegetables in this recipe were tasty though, and that’s probably due to the sauce that they were cooked in. Lastly, the recipe calls for you to remove the chicken from your pan and put it on a serving plate prior to cooking the vegetables… don’t do that if you have no way of keeping the chicken warm. No one wants to eat cold chicken and warm veggies. I don’t have a serving plate that has the ability to keep the food warm so I kept my chicken in the pan with the vegetables and my chicken wasn’t burnt at all.

  

Click HERE to try this recipe.