Rachael Ray... part 2

I made Rachael Ray's chicken enchilada last night for dinner.

The verdict?

It was actually pretty fantastic!
It isn't authentic Mexican food or anything, but it definitely has a Mexican twist to it. I used flour tortillas instead of corn, and there were about twice as big. So even though the recipe called for 8 corn tortillas, it made enough for 4 flour tortillas. And that was still way too much food for the both of us.

Next time, I will go a little easier on the chili powder. I will also add in some vegetables with the chicken mixture-- perhaps cut up a squash or a pepper and add it in. Chad suggested serving some Mexican rice with it, or homemade chips and salsa so we could have a full blown Mexican night.

In conclusion, Rachael Ray hasn't *totally* redeemed herself, but she is not on my shit list either!

Rachael Ray

So I've been trying some new recipes lately to add to our collection. Chad and I are more interested in eating healthier these days and he has opened himself up to foods that I would have never imagined him eating two years ago.
I decided to try some of Rachael Ray's recipes. Picked three out:

1. Spinach and Artichoke stuffed shells: Recipe here. I bought some jumbo shells, and used my own marinara sauce that I make on my own instead of her sauce recipe. I replaced the ricotta cheese and parmesan cheese with lite ricotta cheese and lite parmesan cheese, and instead of using frozen spinach and artichoke hearts, I bought fresh organic spinach and removed the artichoke hearts from organic artichokes from our local produce market. I also used I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Lite instead of EVOO. After all was said and done, 5 stuffed shells with sauce came out to about 550 calories.
The verdict: WAY TOO MUCH CHEESE. We could have cut the amount of cheese in half. We couldn't really finish them either as the cheese was just hard on our stomachs. We might try this again in the future, but in the end it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.


2. Chicken and Wild Mushrooms in a Balsamic cream sauce: Recipe here. I made this using skim milk instead of heavy cream, and light butter instead of regular butter. I made linguini instead of orzo, but that is pretty much the same nutritional value. It was pretty gross. I don't think I'll be trying this again. There were way too many mushrooms and the "cream" sauce was not tasty at all, but instead tasted like sour mushroom water.

3. Chicken enchiladas: Recipe here. This is the recipe I plan on trying Thursday night. We both love Mexican food. I don't expect this to be like authentic Mexican or anything, but I'm hoping it will be tasty enough to where we might want to make it again. I'm going to use flour tortillas instead of corn (because neither of us really like the taste of corn tortillas), and omitting the cinnamom from the tomato sauce. Because that sounds disgusting and most of the comments suggest to do it. I'll use skim monterey jack cheese to cut the calories.
If this doesn't work out either, then I won't be trying anymore of Rachael Ray's recipes again. I'll probably start researching some Emeril recipes after this regardless.

I also have a cookbook from Jillian Michaels (thanks Eliz!!! :D). I tried two recipes from there already, one of them being this spinach egg white omelet with whole grain toast that was excellent! I also plan on trying more stuff from there. Sorry, Rachael Ray, but you just didn't work out for me.

Engaged!

Date: March 19, 2010
Location: Point Lobos, CA

Chad told me once a really long time ago that he was going to propose to me at Point Lobos. Why? Because when he and I came to Monterey to visit Dave (before he and I lived here), it was our favorite place that we had visited. Incase you didn't know, Chad is actually a very skilled photographer and he had gotten some amazing shots of the sunset there. I never took him seriously when he said he was going to propose to me there because, well, he was intoxicated when he told me. :) And I didn't think he remembered. Haha.

ANYWAY-
So, he got home from work at 5pm and said that Dave wanted to go hiking on Point Lobos that evening to watch the sunset. It had gotten up to 80 degrees that day (which is unheard of for Monterey) without a cloud in the sky. I thought "OMG, I wonder if this is the day?". Chad is really horrible at keeping secrets from me (he had told me all of my Xmas presents before I opened them, haha) and I was kind of expecting for him to be like "Hey, let's go to ____ so I can propose!" when it was going to happen. Well, we were sitting on our futon and he was like "Dave will text me when he is ready to go so we can pick him up" and I was like "okay, cool" so we sat there watching basketball. Sure enough, he gets a text from Dave saying that he was standing us up because he had forgotten about a cycling party he wanted to attend that night. Chad even showed me the text being like "He can't come because he has a cycling party." and that's when I thought "Oh, okay. So this ISN'T the day because Dave wouldn't have sent him a text like that if it was."
What actually happened is that they schemed earlier in the day for Dave to sent him a fake text pretending to "stand us up" on a hiking trip to watch the sunset, so that way it wouldn't look like Chad wasn't planning anything. Well, it worked. Good job, guys. haha.
So Chad was like "Let's just go anyway, without him." and said we needed to stop in his office to get the directions to the trail that Dave gave him earlier. Since Dave "wasn't coming anymore", Chad wasn't sure how to get to the trail. What he was REALLY doing was going to his office to get the ring he had been hiding there for the last week.
Point Lobos is about a 7-10 minute drive from our apartment. We got there and we starting walking on the trail as he snapped pictures of the ocean and the sunset.
Here are some of his photos:


This is a view of the trail we walked on.



Sunset.

We sat on this bench and he didn't say anything for about a minute. The view of the sunset from the bench we sat on is now my blog logo image above. :)
He said he loved me and I said I loved him too. He said "speaking about love... I don't think I'm going to keep you in suspense anymore." He got off the bench and got on one knee and said "I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?" and of course I said YES!!



The ring is a 1-carat diamond on a platinum setting from Tiffany&Co. :) I LOVE IT!