BBQ Chicken Salad with Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing

I love a nice big salad! It's my opportunity to pile on the veggies and protein, this fills me up! I often have salads for lunch, but the other day I made this for dinner. My husband loved it, and asked for it to be on the regular dinner rotation. 

If you love salads too I think you'll love this! For this salad I used a low fat ranch dressing to make the cilantro dressing. BBQ sauce is filled with sugar, so I used the one that I could find with the least amount of sugar in it, and I only used enough to coat the chicken. 

 3 grilled chicken breasts marinated in BBQ sauce for 30 minutes. After chicken is grilled thinly slice chicken breasts. 

Here's what you'll need: 

1 can black beans washed & rinsed

2 tomatoes diced

1 handful of cilantro, chopped

1 lime

1 can of corn rinsed & washed

5 green onions chopped

1 cup low fat ranch dressing

Mexican cheese if desired

2 romaine lettuce hearts chopped

Assemble to salad with the lettuce first and then pile on all your other toppings. 

For the dressing you'll mix your ranch dressing with the juice of 1 lime, add half a handful of cilantro and mix together. Drizzle over salad. 

Simple Frittata

I get asked a lot about what I'm eating and how much of it to maintain my weight loss. So here goes, I'm gonna share all my secrets with you starting with this breakfast. 

A simple frittata. I like to make them because they are easy, and they also keep well in the fridge so I can make one on Monday and have it for the next few days. 

Here's how I make mine. I like to pile it full of veggies, whatever I have already on hand. 

6 eggs

1 heaping handful of spinach

1 red bell pepper chopped

half yellow onion chopped

Mix all that together with the eggs, pour into a pie dish. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until cooked through. 

I also love to pair it with half an avocado and some coffee to make my morning complete. It's a quick and simple breakfast that you can make in no time. 

What are some of your easy go-to breakfasts? 

The Cookie DoughJo Experience

Summer is flying by fast, I just saw school supplies in Target this week! I've been trying to keep Ava busy this summer with fun activities and play dates. She starts school in August and I'm going to miss having her around with me as my side kick errrday all day! I want this summer to be super memorable for her and do a lot of fun things. 

Last week we visited a new local place called the Cookie DoughJo. The Cookie DoughJo is a fun little bakery that gets your little ones involved in the cookie making process. They offer cookie making classes and have space for larger groups for hosting birthday parties. 

Each kiddo got their own little apron to wear, and was handed their own mixing bowl and spatula to get started. They gave each kid their own recipe card, it was really interactive the way they went around explaining how to make them, and asking about which came next in the list of ingredients. This was really fun for little ones that knew how to read. But it got all the kids involved anticipating what was going to be added to their bowls next! 

We made M&M cookies! Ava loved placing the candies on top of the cookies after we scooped them onto cookie sheets. She may or may not have snuck a few chunks of raw dough too! 

We had so much fun together, Ava did most of it all on her own. She really loved mixing everything together and adding the M&Ms. When we were done they placed each cookie sheet into the ovens and we sat down and enjoyed some chocolate milk and cookies ourselves. 

They gave each kiddo a white gable box and let them decorate it with markers and stickers. Ava wrote her name and added a bunch of Frozen themed stickers to her box. 

It was a lot of fun seeing her take ownership of her cookies and decorating her box. 

If you live in the West Valley and are looking for an interactive way to keep your kiddos busy and entertained this summer I invite you to give this place a try. For class info and updates follow them on Facebook here.  I loved the whole experience, it reminded me of my high school job working at Cookies, Etc. 

The Cookie DoughJo is offering you a chance to win two cooking classes and an apron valued at $75 for you to have your own baking experience! The Cookie DoughJo is located in the West Valley in Peoria. Giveaway ends 7/18, please use the Rafflecopter below for your entries. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We were invited by the Cookie DoughJo to attend, all opinions and thoughts are my own. As always I only participate in events that are a good fit for my family and ones that I think my readers would enjoy as well. 

Easy Smoothie Prep with Silk Almond Coconut Blend

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for Collective Bias and its advertiser.  #silkalmondblends #shop #collectivebias

When Zane was a baby around 4 months old he started spitting up large amounts of breast milk right after each and every feeding. He was eating really well, but throwing all of it up shortly after each feeding. I had asked a couple mama friends their opinions on the situation before I had made an appointment to see his Doctor. 

I wanted to see if it was something I could clear up on its own before anything else. A few friends suggested that maybe he could be allergic to dairy. Since I was breast feeding everything I was eating he was too. 

So as an experiment I cut out dairy cold turkey. No milk, no cheese, no yogurt, etc just to see how Zane reacted. Within a week of this he stopped throwing up after his nursing time, he was eating really well, his crying stopped a lot. I think mostly because his tummy was upset from all the dairy. I was convinced yup he was indeed allergic to it. 

Head to Safeway stores and grab a deal the Silk Almond Coconut Blend are 2/$6 or the Protein + Fiber is .39 off with your club card this week! 

Since then I myself have enjoyed Silk Almond Milk in replace of regular milk in just about everything, cereal, coffee, I also enjoy cooking and baking with almond milk. At first it was hard to cut dairy out of my diet, but now I actually prefer the taste of Almond milk. One of the benefits of almond milk is that it has 50% more calcium than regular milk.

My family and I use Silk Almond milk in a lot of our foods, I use it in all my baking where milk is added, we use it at breakfast time for cereal too! And I use it now in my coffee in replace of the creamer I once used. 

For my easy smoothie prep I like to divide up all my fruit and other ingredients and place them in ziplock bags and put them in the freezer. Then I when I want a quick smoothie I can just grab one out of the freezer and it's ready. 

Here's what goes into my bags;

Fruit (any desired kind) spinach, chia seeds, vanilla protein powder, Silk Almond Coconut milk. 

I love that in comes in a few flavors, my kids love the chocolate flavor too! Now, I'm excited about the addition of Silk Almond Coconut Blend and Silk Almond Milk Protein + Fiber perfect for adding to my morning smoothies! Even my kids love a good smoothie with almond milk. 

I'm excited about these new additions to the Silk family, giving me even more variety in a brand that I love! Do you love smoothies too? What do you put in yours? 

Paleo Taco Salad

For the last few months my family and I have been trying out the Paleo lifestyle. We still have to cut out a few things before going full fledged but so far I've been loving all the new recipes we're trying. 

I've been using the Practical Paleo cookbook. 

This is one of the recipes from that cook book. If you love Mexican food, I really think you'll love this one too. It's basically a taco without the taco shell. 

I used ground turkey instead of ground beef. 

1 pound ground beef or turkey, brown the meat. I used my homemade taco seasoning to spice it up. 

For filling my salad I chopped up cilantro, one avocado, red and green peppers, 2 tomatoes, half a head of lettuce, three green onions. 

Build your salad with all these, squeeze limes on top and Enjoy!