I'm kind of famous...

No big deal...just an interview with the ISU Alumni Association. :)

My Kind of Town

Sad Day

Today I realized that I can't have Rolos anymore.  Today is a sad day. :(

I'm going to go cry in the closet for a couple of hours...

You Can Take My Mayo, But You Can't Take My Freedom!

So, Braveheart was a truly bad movie, but it is so quotable that you have to love it.  Guess what!? Eggs are out now too.  I'm not a huge mayo person, but I do love chicken salad.  So, I got on the Google machine and started searching.

Full disclosure: I LOVE GUACAMOLE!  And in our family, we eat it all the time.  And then I found this recipe. It combines two things that are amazing: chicken salad and guacamole.  So tonight, I'm testing it out.

Even more disclosure...I'm not a food photographer.  It's going to be pretty obvious the minute you look at my pictures.  Also, how awesome is that cutting board?  I'm pretty sure it was a Target special in 2002 and is still going strong.

So the recipe said it would take 50 minutes and it ended up taking me about an hour and forty five minutes.  Apparently I didn't 'pound the chicken' hard enough.  TWSS.  So it was too thick and took FOREVER to cook through.  Prepare yourselves for some amazing photography skills...

Wait for it... Step One-marinate the chicken.  This marinade was amazing tasting and I will totally utilize it for grilled and baked chicken moving forward.

Step Two-cut up stuff.  I was supposed to also include cilantro with this, but I couldn't find my grocery list when I got to the store tonight and considering I was buying all of the ingredients from memory (and I have never made this before), only forgetting one thing was pretty amazing.

Red Pepper, Red Onion, 12 year old cutting board and knife I think I 'borrowed' from my mom a few years ago with no intention of returning.  But look how fine that pepper is!

Step Three-Cook chicken.  So...here's where I had some issues.  Apparently, my chicken was still too thick, so when I cooked it on the stove, it was still pink in the middle, so I decided to stick it in the oven.  Twenty-five minutes later...it was finally done.  And still super juicy.

Doing it's thing on the range...

Doing it's thing in the oven...forever....

Cook chicken cook!! 

Finished product was delicious, was nice and lime-y without being too lime-y and hit the spot.  Who needs mayo when you have avocados?  I ate the salad with tortilla chips, because that's how I roll.

Guacamole Chicken Salad Recipe HERE

So far, dairy and eggs are now out, but coffee, alcohol, corn and these cookies are all safe:

Lucy's = Happy

RIP Dairy Queen...1984-2013

RIP Dairy Queen.  It’s ‘official’.  Today was the first day I could reintroduce potential allergy foods back into my system and the first thing I tried was dairy.  I didn’t even get halfway through the cheese stick before I felt gross.  I ate the whole damn thing anyway.  You never know when you’re eating that last piece of Pizza Ranch pizza, or that last bite of Blizzard that it will be your last.  And when it’s gone, it’s really gone.

It won’t be OFFICIAL official until I get the prick test at the doctors, which hopefully will be either August 28 (my appointment) or shortly thereafter.  The prick test sounds more like a potential boyfriend test than an allergy test, but who am I to question science. 

I’m not too worried about eating around a non-dairy diet, and I’ve already put in a request for an ice cream maker for my birthday so I can make my own with coconut milk.  Ah, ice cream…  I owe my love affair with ice cream to my Grandpa Coles.  He was obsessed with ice cream and they always had gallon buckets of it in their basement freezer…a highlight of every visit was a trip down the basement stairs with a bowl and the ice cream scoop.  And if unaccompanied by a parent, we went CRAZY. Scoop upon scoop of chocolate chip.  That was his favorite ice cream flavor and there was ALWAYS chocolate chip ice cream in the basement.  I don’t remember ice cream in our house growing up, but it was definitely a treat and part of the fun of visiting Grandma and Grandpa.  And when they came to visit, ice cream was always part of the meal-usually it meant a trip to the Marble Slab, this awesome ice cream shop that makes Cold Stone Creamery seem like slop that was on Welch Avenue in the 80s. 

He passed away in 1994, right before I started seventh grade, nineteen years now…which seems ridiculous.    I buy chocolate chip ice cream (or cc mint, which is even MORE delicious) every once in a while in his honor but it’s never the same when it’s not scooped up in a wooden bowl straight out of 1967 and eaten in the family room watching old Popeye the Sailor movies on VHS with my cousins.  My grandparents always hosted each grand kid (there were twelve of us when he died-three more came later) for a week every  summer and Grandpa was notorious for ‘afternoon trips’ to DQ so he could sneak extra ice cream ‘for us’ [for him…but I never questioned the man!]

You could fit a lot of ice cream in these bad boys...

So, one potential food allergy down, 22 to go!  Tomorrow I’m having coffee for the first time in twelve days and I’m almost giddy with anticipation. 

Here's My Thing About Pinterest...

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest, as I'm sure 97% of all Pinterest users do.  Who has time to make the super complicated desserts?  Just give me ice cream... I use it mostly for recipes and sewing pattern ideas [super cool single girls in their early 30s sew....duh] but it is super entertaining to see what other people pin.  My favorite thing ever [get used to this sentence starter....I use it a lot] is when people pin eight exercise and healthy eating pins followed immediately by twelve double chocolate, super caramel coated, cheesecake/pie/cookie recipes.  Oh ladies...[let's be honest...it's ladies] :)

Recipe 

Meanwhile, last year I made this for Thanksgiving dessert substituting GF graham cracker crumbs [we also had tacos and margaritas and it was awesome] and it is amazingly delicious.  Tomorrow I introduce dairy back.  I bought two cheese sticks at Target tonight and it was very exciting.  This is how I roll. :)

I am currently at the tail end of an elimination diet.  It's this glamorous thing where you get to eat very limited things while trying to figure out what food allergies you might have.  It's actually pretty cool because I've lost about five pounds since I started nine days ago and although the caffeine withdrawal was a bummer early on in the process...I barely [lying through my teeth] miss a Mini French Silk Pie [no pie crust please] Blizzard from Dairy Queen on the occasional Sunday afternoon when it's hot.  Or cold. Or Tuesday.

This is one of the greatest inventions of the last forty years. 

Here is a list of what I haven't been able to eat since last Monday: corn, peas, beans, bacon, sausage, hot dogs [gross anyway], lunch meat, citrus fruit, dairy [farewell, sweet Blizzard Prince], tea, coffee [sniffle], kool-aid, pop [yes-this is Iowa-it's pop], eggs, peanuts, processed foods, sugar, wheat [I've been gluten free since 2006], chocolate, food colors and dyes, nuts, alcohol [gasp!] AND soy.

Have no fear, I haven't been starving.  It's summer, and that means a lot of delicious produce.  My sister and I went up to my parent's house in rural north-central Iowa this weekend to get our chicken meat from their chickens [this is a normal thing that everyone does, I'm sure] and my mom loaded me up with fresh vegetables from their garden because I think they are petrified that I might have the [whisper] cancer...even though initial doctor's visit blood work came back normal.  Success!  Like tonight, dinner is brown rice and chicken sauteed with fresh green beans and broccoli.  Rock on! I'm pretty sure at the end of the day it is going to be dairy or eggs or both.  Fingers crossed for just dairy :)  RIP Mini Blizzard.  I've gone out to lunch once since I started it, and it was literally the scene in the diner from When Harry Met Sally.  Waitresses love me.

Invite me to your dinner party and I'll bring an amazing dessert! And probably raw carrots...

A friend sent me this graphic when I started and it's basically awesome. This is not a 'I have food allergies, wah wah wah' kind of blog, but this is part of my life, so enjoy some recipes that maybe you get to add cheese to...you jerks :)

So yeah, I'm like Sally, just not as Meg Ryan-y...This is me in a restaurant, except with less pie...