Healthy Light Dinner (from leftovers)

I wanted something quick and relatively healthy for dinner. I had leftover chicken breast and some vegetables that needed using up. So I decide on a salad with chicken cubes. However, I like salads of this type with thousand island dressing. I didn’t have any, and no patience to begin making real thousand island dressing . So I tried to find something similar enough to thousand island without, you know, bothering too much. I googled “quick thousand island recipe” and predictably, the first try was a recipe that indeed was quick, but needed a bunch of stuff I didn’t have or even know what they were (query: does any one know what sweet pickle relish is? All the thousand island recipes I saw had it). And the more serious problem was, that at the end it specified “refrigerate for a few hours until sugar is dissolved”.

This is NOT quick.

In the end I found  this recipe.  The result was spectacular! (It came out a bit too much dressing, but really, I don’t mind 🙂 )

Salad: (serves 1)

1 grilled chicken breast, cubed
1 mini-cucumber, cubed
4 cherry tomatoes
half a grilled squash, cubed
1 large fresh mushroom, cubed
Anything else you have in mind 😉

Mix everything together.

Pseudo Thousand Island dressing:

1/2 tbsp mayonnaise
squirt ketchup
splash balsamic vinegar
1 drop tabasco (or to taste)

Mix everything together. Taste and add tabasco/vinegar/ketchup if necessary. Pour over salad and serve.

Chicken salad with pseudo thousand island

Yum!

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Really Cool Teapot

I haven’t written in a while. We had renovations so I wasn’t at home for a while, and then there was Passover with everything around it, and after Passover it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to eat something before going to sleep. I was in my eighth month, still working every day, picking up the kids etc.

However, now our house is gorgeous, and I transferred my managerial tasks to another person, and I’m working from home on some programming projects. I’m still sleeping most of the time, but at least I have a few minutes to write a few words 🙂

In order to remain hydrated, I’m making a lot of tea or iced tea. My husband noticed this and was in a kitchen appliances shop (for himself) when he saw a really cool teapot, so he bought it for me. The idea of the teapot is that you can make both tea or iced tea, without having little bits of stuff in your tea. Also, you control how long the tea steeps without having to put things in or out. I bought camomile, lemon-grass, hibiscus, and myrrh (I think it’s myrrh, anyway) in bulk some time ago, and the camomile especially is practically a powder. I always end up with bits and pieces in my camomile tea, no matter what strainer I use. 😦 But with this new cool teapot, no more!

Cool Teapot

The teapot is made of two parts: The main teapot part, and a cup-sized insert on top. In order to make iced tea, You fill the teapot with ice cubes.

Fill with ice cubes

Then you put the insert on top.

Ready for Tea

Then you put your tea in the insert. shown: Camomile, lemon grass, pinch of myrrh, brown sugar.

Small herbs for herbal tea

Pour boiling water into the insert. Note that it steeps in the insert. Ice doesn’t come into contact with the tea yet.

Steeping…

Steeping…

When it has stepped enough for your taste, press the red lever. The water will drain from the insert into the teapot, through a very fine mesh. No camomile bits! Also, as the boiling water drains away completely, you won’t get bitterness from oversteeping.

Draining…

Tea!

Voila! Iced chamomile, lemongrass and myrrh tea! I’m just going to put my feet up … 🙂 good day to you!

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