I sat down and turned on one of my favorite shows, Chopped. The contestants were competing and someone made a hash with bacon. I thought that would be a great breakfast for me and my boy (Mackenzie was at summer school at COC). I started chopping up some bacon and threw them in the iron skillet. My burner clicked but never lit. I panicked. Why wasn't it working? I used a lighter to help light the burner and nothing. I tried turning on the oven to see if it was just the burners, nothing. What was I going to do? I felt like I was in Cutthroat Kitchen and figured I was just given the sabotage of cooking on the BBQ. So, I went into the backyard to turn on our natural gas BBQ. Nothing. It clicked, but didn't light. I tried to turn on the spa to see if there was gas coming into the spa to heat up. Nothing. I was about to lose my mind. How am I supposed to eat well without my stove/oven/BBQ? I went online to see if I could get some troubleshooting help. The site allowed me to book an appt but it wasn't until August 11th. That wasn't going to work. I NEED TO COOK! Finally, I called their emergency number feeling guilty that it wasn't really an emergency, but they helped me! They considered it an emergency if my water heater wasn't heating water. So, they came out 2 hours later. After they installed a new meter, I learned that the meter just stopped working. Phew! Now onto food decisions that were made for the day.
While I was waiting for the gas company to arrive, I microwaved the chopped up bacon and then microwaved some mini potatoes to have for lunch. After it was all cooked, I had mini baked potatoes with butter, bacon and some shredded cheese. I also added some leftover salad from last night to my plate. It was so good and just what I needed.
The gas guy came and was gone by 5:00. Now, it was time to start thinking about what I was going to do about dinner. I didn't really plan ahead today since I was thrown off my game, so I decided to wing it. While I was trying to figure out my plan of attack, I had some TJ's trail mix. It was dark chocolate, cashews, pistachios, cranberries & raspberries. It was good and gave me some fuel while I tried to think about dinner.
I started cooking some TJ's polenta in a skillet with olive oil, salt and pepper. I thought I would make thick little tortillas to have a taco salad type dish. It was not cooking up as I thought it would, so I mushed it all together and added some canned corn to it, hoping to make a something like the corn-ish little side dish that they serve you at El Torito. I let that continue cooking down to brown it a bit. On another burner, I cooked some onions and ground beef until brown. I added some taco seasoning and water along with a can of black beans. I let it simmer until fully cooked and flavored with the seasoning.
After all was cooked, I spread the corn mixture on the bottom of a ceramic dish.
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| Polenta and canned corn |
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| Added ground beef with taco seasoning and black beans |
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| Added cheddar cheese |
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| Topped with leftover southwestern chopped salad |
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| Final product with sour cream and cholula. |
Viola! Dinner is served!
I feel especially good about this dinner because I didn't use a recipe. I just flew by the seat of my pants and made a meal that was worthy of seconds. It feels so good to see my family go back for more. Brian even thought that it had some type of bread in it. Nope! It was the polenta that gave it that extra filling feeling.
That's all of the excitement that I could take today. I was really feeling like I was being challenged to stay the course. I did it! No eating out to accommodate for food and a good dinner was still made at the end of the day.
I hope you had a great day! Stay on track and know that you are worth it!
Until tomorrow,
Angela
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