Lately my boyfriend Garrett and I have realized we’ve been loving food a little too much the past few months. In fact we just got back from a trip to Chicago that literally revolved around food. It was amazing needless to say (and really got me thinking about writing a post about the places we went) but I may have gained an extra 10 lbs. in the process. All good things come to an end….or so they say. It is my mission to get us back to our healthy, feeling good about ourselves bodies so we really need to buckle down on our diet. Yes exercise is a huge part of it but why exercise if you aren’t eating right.
Although we are on a mission to bring our sexy back, we also will not mentally be able to handle a diet that is so plain it tastes like cardboard every time we ingest. We usually get through the first half of the week on a clean protein, veggie, small amount of carbs diet, but both of our jobs are very demanding and sometimes you just want a meal that has your mind saying HELL YEA when everything else that week just isn’t doing the trick. Almost like being hungover, when your liver is on the verge of failure and all you want to do is sit and eat crap food and lay there, it’s a very similar situation but this time it’s your mind being exhausted from all the BS that just wants to eat some good food and to chill.
My cravings are usually always….ASIA, I swear I was Asian in another life. I love every form of this cuisine and could eat it every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No lie I used to eat Chinese food leftovers in high school for breakfast. Not to mention there may or may not be a picture circulating that captured yours truly eating sushi for breakfast in my sorority house mess hall. In my defense this was after pulling an all-nighter to study for a biology exa, I majored in hospitality so yes…getting a good grade in BIOLOGY took quite a bit of effort and definitely called for no sleep.
So to curb these cravings I started to rattle my brain every time I got one to come up with a dish that would hit the spot but also not add any extra baggage. One night I decided to make chicken lettuce wraps and all it took was one round and I think I NAILED IT. I add a little extra protein with mushrooms but I honestly considered making these with tofu instead of chicken and I’m thinking we could be onto something! Anywhoo here’s the low, hope you love them as much as I do!
Ingredients:
1 tbs. Toasted sesame oil
1 lbs. Ground Chicken
1 Medium onion diced
1 8 oz. package of portobello mushrooms
1 tbs. Garlic, minced
1/2 tbs. Ginger, minced
1 tbs. Hoisin
2 tbs. Soy sauce
1 Red serrano chili pepper, minced
1 can water chestnuts, chopped
1 Head butter lettuce
3 tbs. Scallions, sliced
Directions:
- In a medium saute pan heat sesame oil on medium high heat
- Add chicken and cook until no longer pink.
- Drain some of the fat off (if needed), add onion, garlic, ginger, and chili pepper, and saute for 2 minutes
- Add mushrooms and cook until they start to soften
- Add Soy sauce and hoisin and stir until combined, cook for another 3-5 minutes.
- Stir in chopped water chestnuts and scallions
- Serve along side butter lettuce leaves, white rice and any fixins you’d like, I recommend pairing it with kimchi to give it a nice flare.