In Mah Belleh!: Adventures in Wine

Week 4: I kinda sorta forgot to weigh myself at the gym yesterday (oops!)...If I can remember today I'll come back and edit...

Net Lbs. lost: I dunno...I could say 10 just to impress you all, but I'll take the honest route.

Workouts this week: 4 (tis about average)

Cheez-it bags eaten: 1 (I had a moment of weakness, sue me)

After thinking back, I actually did better workout-wise than I thought I did! I took off Tuesday and Wednesday, but made up for it by some major bad-assery working out over the weekend.

Exercise tip of the week: Make sure to balance out strength training and flexibility with cardio. I can do all the crunches in the world and have the best six pack somwhere in there, but unless I do my cardio and work on the stuffings around them. I will never see them! Also don't forget to stretch, losing flexibility is bad...m'kay?

Hoping for some good results as I did pretty well on diet this week. I typically use Saturday as a reward day for following my menu plan all week. I allow myself to have the snacks and foods I avoid during the week (in moderation of course). Well the funny thing is that this Saturday, I found myself not craving the bad stuff! So strange I know! I ended up with a Subway sannich and a Papa Murphy's veggie Delite pizza (which is wondermous by the way).

Sunday: Baked parmasan crusted chicken, sweet potato rounds and spinach salad.

Tasty and quick for a weekday meal. Just lightly breaded chicken breasts in breadcrumbs and parmasan then baked in the oven. Sweet potato rounds oven baked too with olive oil, lemon pepper and a wee bit of sea salt.

Monday: You know me...leftovers.

Tuesday: Baked salmon in a little lemon garlic butter, with sauteed asparagus

Pretty self explanatory no?

Wednesday: I raided bestie's fridge. Enchiladas...yummmmm

Thursday: And my highlight recipe of the week! Skillet Tuna Noodle Casserole

Now, this was my first excursion cooking with wine and we'll just say I won't be surprise to see this end up in a sitcom someday. Shall we play out events as they happened complete with illustrations?(Amy ~linky linky~ can attest to this story's validity. She's a wine connoseur and I ask her questions via text)

When I realized I needed wine for this recipe I decided to finally use a bottle of Chardonnay I got from a client a couple years back as a Christmas gift. I'm all happy go lucky and getting my stuff together, ready for this to go all smoothly. I start the water for the boiling of the noodles and get my bottle of wine out.

Damn....I don't drink wine really and realized I didn't have a corkscrew for said bottle...

Nothing in there is a corkscrew right?

So what's a girl to do? Go to the store and hope they carry corkscrews that you are sorely in need of!

Hi, Store! (Just for visual's sake..I am in my pajamas for this trip)

As I'm perusing the aisles, I have an epiphany. Those bottles of wine were a gift basket and in that gift basket also came this small red twisty thing that is currently sitting right next to my wine rack (more decorative than anything else) at home!

Just short of throwing a small temper tantrum right in the middle of the Huggies, I grabbed some plastic wrap (which I needed anyway) turned around and marched out of the store. (Oh, I did pay first! No worries there!)

I get home and sure enough...

This thingy here? It's a corkscrew! (albeit a pretty weak one)

So ya know, I don't really drink wine. And have never opened up one of these babies by myself before! This should get interesting...In my head I'm thinking "Thank God I'm alone now." I get the corkscrew into the bottle easy peasy. Now what?

I super uberly-cautiously-controlley tug on the corkscrew repeatedly. No budge. Amy: "Pull hard!" Me: "I don't want to get it all over me!" Amy: "It's not pressurized like champagne." Still not budging. I'm cursing this idea the whole time. And saying words that are not for polite company. Next thing I know I'm on the floor of my kitchen (you can kinda see it in the picture above!) with the wine bottle between my legs like some kind of sitcom. Me: "I'm on the damn floor!" After a final struggle...

Victory!!!!

~takes a swig straight out of the bottle~

Well all the rest ended up going well and here is the finished result!

It actually turned out even better than I expected! Try it for a healthier version of tuna noodle casserole! (I'm so proud of this bitch!)

Let me know what you think or what you've tried recently that you would recommend!