Category Archives: partner campaign

Bandwagons, menu plan Monday, partner campaign, recipes

Two-thirds of last week’s eMeals recipes were great

4 Comments

Disclaimer: eMeals.com has provided Nichole with a free subscription in exchange for a review. Nichole’s opinions remain her own, and she remains very opinionated about food.

Last week we tried a couple of eMeals recipes, and only one of them — a pasta with a pumpkin-sausage sauce — was a flop. To be fair, that’s not something I would normally even consider trying. It wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t fit our preferred flavor profile at all. It smelled amazing while it was cooking, though. I was pretty disappointed that it wasn’t as delicious as it smelled.

The Sweet and Smoky Bacon-Wrapped Chicken, however, was a big hit. Poppy said it tasted like “something a cowboy would eat,” which must’ve been a compliment because she ate it without complaint. None of the rest of us had trouble with it, either.

Sweet and Smoky Bacon-Wrapped Chicken
Author: eMeals.com
Ingredients
  • 3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in half lengthwise
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon salt
  • 1⁄2 teaspoon pepper
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 1 tablespoon chili powder
  • 6 slices natural uncured bacon
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons honey
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Sprinkle chicken evenly with salt, pepper, paprika, and chili powder. Wrap 1 slice bacon around each piece of chicken; secure with wooden toothpicks.
  3. Heat oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat; brown chicken, in batches, 2 to 3 minutes on each side.
  4. Arrange chicken in the skillet, and bake 15 minutes or until chicken is done and bacon is crisp.
  5. Drizzle with honey during last 5 minutes of baking.

We also tried the Chicken Tikka Masala — which Pete thought was called “Chicken Chicken Masala” — and it received high marks, too. I couldn’t find garam masala at the store, so I found an “easy garam masala” recipe and mixed up my own. Super simple, and it was way less expensive than buying it because I already had all of the spices involved.

This week we have a couple birthdays, so we’re once again not doing the full week of eMeals recipes. I’d hate to have a pumpkin pasta scenario on my birthday. So we’re going with things we already know on the birthdays and eMeals the rest of the week!

Monday: ???
Today’s my birthday, and I think we’re going out. I haven’t decided where I’d like to go. Possibly to Firehouse Subs, because I am hopelessly devoted to their brisket & cheddar sandwich.

Tuesday: Chicken Pot Pie
I love a good chicken pot pie, and I’m really hoping that the eMeals version is just that. There are biscuits involved instead of a crust, though, so we’ll see.

Wednesday: ???
A friend asked us last week if we wanted to go out for dinner this Wednesday, but I haven’t heard back from him to confirm. So we might be going out again. But maybe not.

Thursday: Cheeseburgers
Me: Hey Pete, what would you like for your birthday dinner?
Pete: Hmmm, I don’t know. Probably cheeseburgers.

And so cheeseburgers it is!

menu plan Monday, partner campaign

In which I try to take the “planning” out of the menu-plan equation

1 Comment

Disclaimer: eMeals.com has provided Nichole with a free subscription in exchange for a review. Because of the nature of the product and the fact that Nichole writes/thinks about food a lot, you can expect to read at least a little bit about eMeals every week for the next month or so. Nichole’s opinions remain her own, and she remains very opinionated about food.

My meal-planning routine usually consists of taking a spin through my Menu Plan Monday archives — because I can never seem to remember what we eat from week to week — and then looking through my I’d Eat That board on Pinterest for a few new ideas.

For the next couple of weeks, though, I’m not going to do either or those things.

Instead, I’m going to be downloading a weekly menu plan from eMeals, which will include a grocery list of everything I need for that week’s meals. I usually spend at least 30 minutes of my Friday evening pulling together my menu plan and compiling the grocery list; I’m looking forward to finding out what else I could be doing with that half-hour. (Handicrafts? Learning a new skill? Watching more television? The possibilities are endless, but the probability is sadly the latter!)

I’m not expecting to follow the eMeals plan to the letter every week, because (1) we can be kind of picky and (2) our schedule lately means I haven’t had time to actually prepare a meal every night. This week, for example, we have “Nutcracker” rehearsal, an American Heritage Girls meeting and all sorts of soccer practices, so we’re only going to be having two of the eMeals meals. It’s not that they’re especially complicated or lengthy; I just tend to lean on recipes — and I use that word lightly here — with which I’m already familiar.

Monday: Grilled cheese sandwiches

I used to always serve tomato soup with our grilled cheeses. And then we all admitted that none of us really likes tomato soup, so we don’t bother with that anymore.

Tuesday: Spaghetti

I think might even have some meatballs in the freezer!

Wednesday: Beef Chalupas

This will be the first eMeals recipe we’re trying. It’s supposed to be served with “crispy zucchini and corn.” Side dishes are never my strong suit; I’m hoping having it all planned out for me will help with that!

Thursday: Philly Cheesesteak Stromboli

And this is the second of the eMeals! It uses refrigerated pizza dough and roast beef from the deli, among other things. It’s served with Cajun french fries, which are really what sold me on trying this meal.

Friday: Out

Poppy will be doing her very first tae kwon do testing on Friday, and I’m preemptively planning to go out for a celebratory dinner. Go P!
partner campaign

I very much enjoyed not trying on swimsuits at the department store.

1 Comment

Disclaimer: Free Country gave Nichole a swimsuit for review purposes.
Free Country sells outdoorsy clothing like winter coats and board shorts, so I was somewhat surprised when I got an email from them earlier this summer asking whether I’d like to try out one of their swimsuits. I am a lot of things, but an outdoorsy beach babe is not one of them.

Just a few days before I got that email, though, we’d decided we wanted to give Dollywood Splash Country a try. And do you know what one generally wears to a waterpark? A swimsuit. So I said yes, and a few days later the items I’d chosen arrived. And I realized that I’d ordered the brown board skirt and a black-trimmed “tankini” top, because apparently I’m bad at making things match. (I’m betting the folks at Free Country would’ve helped to fix my mistake, but I didn’t even contact them about it. My desire to not spend any more time thinking about swimsuits won out over my desire to match.)

I didn’t have as much need for a swimsuit this year as I have in summers past, because it was relatively chilly when we were at my dad’s house this year. The suit got most of its wear in my backyard and at Splash Country, where probably the most flattering photo ever of me in a swimsuit was taken. But I was too cheap to pay the $15 they wanted for a print of it, so I can’t share it with you. Let’s pretend I did, though, and now you’re all like “Wow, that’s an amazing photo of you with your family in a wave pool! Your hair looks so good!” and then I’d say, “Yeah, thanks, I’d just gotten a haircut that morning,” and you’d say, “What? Why did you schedule a haircut on the day you were going to a waterpark? That’s poor planning,” and I would agree with you because it was poor planning but my hair did look great in that picture. I regret nothing.

Anyway: swimsuit. I love half of it.

Let’s talk about the half I didn’t love first: the tankini. The front of the tankini is on the low-cut side for my comfort level (which, to be fair, tends toward the culotte suit). I think the low-cut problem is exacerbated by a lack of support in what Poppy calls the “Mommy parts” region. I need a turtleneck top with steel girding, is what I’m saying, and this was not that. I did, however, really like the racer-back aspect. I think the sturdiness of the racer back may have saved me from a humiliating incident in the wave pool, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from worrying about spillage while I was wearing the tankini.

The board skirt, however, I love. It isn’t made of typical swimsuit material, from what I can tell, so it doesn’t get all clingy when it gets wet, and it dries very quickly. It also has a velcro closure on the front, which makes it easy to get in and out of when one needs to visit the lady’s room at the pool.

So: minus-5 points to tankinis and 10 points to board shorts!

In the market for a swimsuit? Free Country has a ton of them on sale right now. This would be a great time to stock up for next summer!

[schema type=”review” url=”http://www.freecountry.com” name=”Free Country swimsuit” description=”Nichole reviews a swimsuit from FreeCountry.com” author=”Nichole” pubdate=”2013-08-28″ user_review=”3″ min_review=”1″ max_review=”5″ ]