Southwestern Corn Chowder

Tired doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling. My butt is dragging! I did get a chance to workout this afternoon, though! I almost jogged the entire 25 minutes, which was quite a feat considering I'm still pretty out of shape and not at all a runner. I was cheating by using a 0% incline, but I've got to work my way up, right?

I also learned something interesting today. Did you know that round plastic gladware containers will shatter if they are frozen and fall from the freezer? They do. And they make a mess.

My workday was also pretty challenging. I ended up being there 45 minutes late tonight, so by the time I actually ate dinner it was 8 p.m.

Good thing this Southwestern Corn Chowder came together quickly. And it wasn't bad. It just needed more chili powder and maybe a little hot sauce. I made it as written except I used evaporated ff milk because I wanted to make sure it was creamy without having to use 2 percent or whole milk. My version came out to 7 points per bowl, and it was a pretty good serving size. You could probably get away with three servings per recipe even.

Do you have a favorite quick soup?

Here's the eats for today:

Breakfast: Strawberry orange smoothie, whole wheat toast with 1 tbsp peanut butter

Lunch: Leftover pasta and a salad with carrots and tomato and vinaigrette

Snack: veggies in hummus with 4 kashi party crackers

Dinner: Corn chowder, big salad with veggies and Newman's Own lime vinaigrette, a few multigrain tortilla chips and white wine

Cinnamon-Oat Pancakes

I'm finally out of my cooking rut. I made so much good food this weekend, I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start with today's breakfast, since breakfast is the first meal of the day.

I started off my day with these Cinnamon-Oat Pancakes. I was a little worried about the recipe given my first attempt at oatmeal pancakes. Turns out the recipe I used was not entirely complete — at least according to a commenter, which I tend to believe. The didn't turn out at all.

The cinnamon-oat pancakes called for grinding up half the oats with the flour, which worked well. They came out maybe slightly more dense than a normal pancake, but still fluffy. And the cinnamon is probably the best part. I love cinnamon. I doubled the amount the recipe called for, in fact.

The nutritional info on these are pretty good, too. They're 296 calories for four pancakes and they're pretty filling. They even reheat well.

And here's the eats for today. I woke up fairly late and the pancakes were kind of like a brunch.

Breakfast: Cinnamon-Oat Pancakes, 1 tbsp maple syrup, 1 tsp powdered sugar, and about 1/2 cup of sliced strawberries

Snacks: I had a Kashi strawberry cereal bar on my way out the door at 1:30 p.m. and ended up making a strawberry-orange smoothie around 4 p.m. because I was starving. I just realized I ate a ton of strawberry stuff today.

Dinner: Pasta with asparagus and goat cheese, salad

Snack: Not sure. Maybe some veggies and some hummus since I think I've had my fill of strawberries!

Overall a more balanced weekend, although I didn't find time to workout. Shame on me. Definitely will carve time out of my day to go tomorrow.

Vegetable Soup

This soup was a dud. A big, fat dud. And I was so disappointed. The photo with the recipe I used looked great. But in the end, it tasted like it was missing something.

Plus, it looks just like a bowl of green vegetables with broth, despite the fact I had roasted grape tomatoes in there and added corn for color. Maybe I was expecting too much from the soup.

I had a crappy week at work. One day I'm stopping random strangers asking to take video of them for the intranet. Not surprising, people were not exactly welcome to the idea. In a large corporation, most people would like to stay anonymous and just do their jobs, I think. There are always people who love the spotlight, but those are few and far between and my chance of finding one of those by standing in the lobby and stopping random strangers on their way to lunch aren't good.

And there was lots more nonsense on Thursday morning. So I came home, tired, still a little angry from the morning's events, and wet from the constant downpour. Soup sounded good, but this one so wasn't.

I had to eat it the next day for lunch, too. I had an all-day training session yesterday and eating lunch in the cafeteria on a Friday is never an option, unless you love greasy fried fish.

I will say it got a little better the next day. But definitely not worth making again.