Basil Pesto Chicken

For the past two weeks, I've been making some really poor food choices.  

Let's recap:

- I have been in all-day training meetings at work for the past two weeks.  This means that I have access to free breakfasts, free morning snack buffets, free lunches, and free afternoon snack buffets.  Although I sometimes make good food choices, that doesn't really matter if you eat a ton of healthy food.  The volume of food outweighs the quality of the food at that point.

- Additionally, I took a trip to Disneyworld last weekend.  I had a fabulous time but it is super super hard to eat healthy food while on vacation.  My willpower just can't win in battles like these.

I was so happy to make it back home on Monday so I could try to get my body used to eating some semblance of healthy food once again.  I can also head over to the dance studio now and squeeze in some cardio workouts.  Finally!

I stumbled across this chicken dish through a photo posted on Pinterest.  Can I state how much I love that site?  Such pretty pictures.  I then discovered that the recipe associated with this picture belongs to the Kalyn's Kitchen blog.  I think she has simple, interesting recipes and beautiful photos on her site.  Another thing I love!

After reading through the post, I realized that the Basil Pesto Chicken recipe is actually a part of the South Beach Diet cookbook.  Now, I'm not one to follow diets.  If I want to get my body back on track, I make sure to eat healthy foods and get enough exercise.  But since everything in this recipe is fresh and good for me, I had no qualms about whipping this up.  And of course there's cheese.  There's always cheese.

City Winery: A Review

Wow, I've just realized that I haven't done a review in a long time.  In fact, I haven't done one since last summer!  This isn't to say that I haven't been gallivanting around town and checking out new spots.  I just haven't been focusing on it like I should have been.  I'm about to fix that.  I have a few reviews coming your way.  I'm on a travel stint which will last approximately two weeks, so my home-cooked meals shall be non-existent for a hot minute.

Instead, I will tell you allll about this cool venue in New York City called City Winery.  In case you haven't put "two" and "two" together yet, this is a winery which happens to be located in NYC.  Can you really get much better than that?  I'm pretty sure it would be difficult to top this.  But they try.  Because City Winery is also a popular music venue. There's a musician or a band playing on the built-in stage just about everyday.  What don't you love about that?

During the week, the Barrel Room at City Winery is open for lunch.  The Barrel Room happens to be an attached 30-seat cafe/tasting room with 11 wines on tap.  Did you just hear what I said?  11 wines on tap.  Sweet be-jeebus.

Easy Paella

I have been making (and sometimes eating!) a ton of snacks and desserts over the past month or so.

So this week, I decided I would be a real person and cook some real food.  To push myself even further, I decided to tackle something new.  For this month's Secret Recipe Club assignment, I was paired up with Corina's Searching for Spice blog.  Can I say that this blog excites me?  Is that going to far?  Great.  I didn't think so either.  I love spices and anything remotely related to ethnic food, so this blog was a perfect match.  I can't believe how many recipes I want to try.  I don't even have enough time to talk about it all.  Check it out for yourself!

One of Corina's dishes immediately caught my attention.  Paella.  For some reason, I have never had paella before.  I don't know why but this should be fixed immediately.  Now I know in my heart of hearts that I will most likely not recreate the full authentic flavors of Spain since I don't have the exact rice and I don't have all the correct spices.  However, that doesn't mean that I can't still make a mean pot of flavorful rice.  I had to give this recipe a shot.

Triple Chocolate Muffins

Two weekends ago, I was kind of sad.  Why?, you may ask.  Well, I had these well-laid plans to hang out with Joy the Baker at her Brooklyn book signing that Saturday.  Fast forward to Friday afternoon, when I learned that we were supposed to RSVP to the event.  Say what?  Let's fast forward a little bit more to the following morning when I realized that the entire Twitter-verse was also going to the book signing.  Ahhhh!

In the end, I decided not to go because 1) I'm not really a fan of waiting around for 4 hours to get a book signed and 2) I had only allotted two hours to spend at the book signing before having to be somewhere else later that afternoon.

OK, let's be real.  I would totally have waited 4 hours.  But in all honesty, I really did have somewhere to be later that day and I didn't want to face the disappointment of having to leave early without getting my book signed or meeting JTB.

It had been my plan for a few weeks to whip up a recipe out of Joy's new cookbook, but I hadn't gotten around to it.  This past weekend, I ended up staying over at my friends' place for the Easter holiday.  On Sunday morning, we woke up and enjoyed leftover sangria and Joy's Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins.  I personally like to call them Triple Chocolate Muffins.  It's faster.  Man, these things were good.  Both the sangria and the muffins.  And yes, this was breakfast.  No judgements, OK?

Oh, speaking of "no judgements", I totally did not have my DSLR handy and so this post is also a test of my iPhone camera picture-taking skills.

Carrot Ginger Soup

I've been in a soup mood lately.  I think it has to do with this new health kick I've been on. It doesn't really matter why I want it though.  I just need to have soup when the urge hits.

Lucky for me, I had just the solution. Joy the Baker's Carrot Ginger Coconut Soup.  Yes.

Here's something that you probably don't know about me.  I love that carrot ginger dressing that gets slathered over salads at Asian restaurants.  I'm drooling just thinking about it.  I haven't gotten a chance to attempt my own version of that dressing yet, but I was quite excited to focus on a soup with the same flavors.

So simple.  So easy.  So orange.  Another fun fact about me is that I love orange food.  Why?  I don't know.  I can't even figure myself out sometimes.