Mopey, Mopey, Mopey

Every once in a while I get into these mopey, feeling sorry for myself sort of moods, and I find them really hard to shake off.  Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's just me, but honestly.  What do I even have to complain about? Sure, my life isn't exactly where I wish it was, and I want a lot of things to happen a lot faster than they are, but you know what?  It's not bad.  My apartment is a little bit run down, and it's super cold in the winter because the heaters are crap for crap, and so when we run the shower, boil water, or cook anything, it turns into a sauna and the steam won't go away for hours unless you open up a window, but at least I have a place to live, and clothes and blankets to keep me warm.  My car is a dumpy old rust bucket on four wheels with 175,000 miles on it, but at least it starts and gets me to where I need to be.  By no means is my job my dream job, but they're good to me, and they probably pay me more than I'm really worth to them, and it pays the bills.  I have two little kitties to cuddle with, (even if one does like to pee on everything in the house, including me, which is just about as disgusting as you would expect) and a wonderful husband who loves me no matter how much money we make, or what car I drive, that our TV is probably 15 years old and smaller than the computer monitor, the fact that I am legitimately afraid of ghosts, and that our purple couches don't match the wood paneled walls and matted brown, shag carpet of our apartment.  (Those couches, by the way?  A free gift from friends who care.)  Plus he cleans up the cat messes every time.

I watched a documentary a little bit ago about the Lost Boys of Sudan.  Those men/kids had nothing, and they were still perfectly happy.  And by nothing, I mean they lived in dirt huts and went hungry most of the time.  They were separated from their families, driven out of their homes, and orphaned in a strange place.  How can I even start to complain about anything?  I am one of those lucky few who won the lottery in life.  Parents who love me, friends and family who help me every day and care about me...  It's amazing.  There's nothing to be upset about, not really.  All those little annoyances aren't worth very much when you take in the whole picture.

Besides all of that, feeling sorry for yourself is pretty dumb when 95% of the reason you feel that way is your own fault.  I have goals, and things that I want to do, and I don't ever do them, and, dear readers, this kind of passiveness and laziness on my part needs to end... So my goal is to set some goals, and then complete all of those goals.  I'll get you an update on that, eventually.

Anyway, now for your standard Lauren Blog recipe!

I love some good chicken noodle soup, but the stuff that comes out of a can is horrible, which is why I loved this recipe so hard.  It's creamy, and almost stew like, (or it was when I made it anyway, I don't actually know if it's supposed to be that way, but hey, whatever.) and it was pretty tasty.  I made some changes, but the recipe goes like this:

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

1 ½ c cooked diced chicken breast

14 oz can (fat free) chicken broth

½ can of 10 oz can (reduced fat or fat free) cream of chicken soup

1 c peas & carrots, drained

(¼  t pepper, ¼ t garlic salt) 

2 oz No Yolk noodle

Directions:

Boil enough chicken for 1 ½ cups. Let chicken cool; then dice. Combine

 chicken, broth, soup, peas and carrots, pepper, garlic and salt and bring to a boil. 

 Stir in egg noodles; cook for 5 to 8 minutes, or until noodles are tender. 

Pretty quick, not a ton of skill involved... You just need to watch it to make sure it doesn't boil over, because I didn't, and it did.  Just a heads up.  The only changes I made, if you could call them changes, were adding the whole can of cream of chicken soup instead of just half of it, the whole can of peas and carrots, and twice as many noodles as it actually called for.  The noodle part was an accident, and I don't necessarily advice doing that, because that's probably why the soup turned out stewy.  I ended up having to add a little bit of water back into it so that I could cook the noodles the rest of the way, and I burned the bottom a little tiny bit...  BUT other than that, fabulous.  Haha.  Just serve it up with a baked potato, or some garlic bread, or even just normal bread - whatever you prefer - and bon apetite! 

 

Mother Nature ruins even the best laid of my plans... And a chicken recipe

Running would be a million times easier if I was doing it indoors... But I cancelled my gym membership to save a little extra money, thinking it was going to warm up soon anyway, and it hasn't.  After I posted last it snowed, twice.  But then it started to warm up, and I had a little ray of hope.  I got John out of the house and we went on a run, and all seemed fabulous... Until John caught the plague.  And we haven't gone since.

I guess I could have gone by myself, but it's so hard to keep motivated when your sick husband is home watching the TV and not wanting to leave the couch, and in reality I just want to do the same, so I do.  And then I catch his plague, and the cycle continues.  Long story short, in the past two and a half weeks, I have run exactly once.  I guess that's better than no times... If I set the bar low I won't even have to jump it; I can just step over the top of it.

ANYWAY.  Today I am feeling a little better, and so is John, so tomorrow or Wednesday we will be getting back to it.  Hopefully.  We'll see.

Onto the recipe section of my blog:

Crispy Panko Chicken!  Yay!  I really love chicken, it's so easy to cook, and there's about a million ways to cook it.  Chicken soup, chicken and rice in several assorted flavors, fried chicken, baked chicken, broiled chicken, chicken cooked in pies with vegetables, chicken cooked with potatoes in your crock pot... You get the point.  This little chicken recipe I was kind of hesitant about, (mostly because of the mustard it uses to dredge the chicken in) but it was actually a pretty nice meal.  Plus John LOVES breaded/fried/dredged chicken.  Seriously, if there is anything like that on our menu for the week, he will pick it immediately, and there's no fighting him on it.  

CRISPY PANKO CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS:

1/3 C. Panko break crumbs

1/4 C. Shredded parmesan

1 Tbsp. Olive oil

1/2 Tsp. Salt

1/4 Tsp. Pepper

2 Tbsp. Dijon Mustard

1 Tbsp. Water

1 Lb. Chicken breast

DIRECTIONS:

In a shallow dish, toss together panko crumbs, cheese, olive oil, 

salt, and pepper.  In another dish, combine mustard and water.  Coat chicken 

breasts in mustard mixtureand dredge in panko mix.  Bake on a 

sprayed baking sheet for 25 - 30 minutes at 400,or until golden brown.

Tada!  Cook up some rice with that, (we cheated and used Uncle Ben's 90 second microwavable brown and wild rice CHICKEN FLAVOR, (totally just said that whole sentence with one breath (IN MY MIND)) and it was pretty good) and you've got yourself a meal.  

P.S.: I have no idea if the last paragraph I wrote there is actually grammatically correct, but I don't even care right now, because I am sick, and at work, and I don't want to change it.  Happy eating!