easy honey-lime chicken enchiladas

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Tired of turkey leftovers? I was in the mood for Mexican food tonight, and when I saw this recipe for a honey-lime marinade for chicken, I was inspired! I turned it into a crock-pot recipe, added some diced onion and bell pepper, tortillas and cheese and green tomatillo sauce, and made honey-lime chicken enchiladas. They turned out del-i-ci-ous, and SO easy!

I made a small batch since it’s just Mike & me, but you could easily double or even triple this recipe to feed a bigger family. These enchiladas heat up great as leftovers and even freeze well for later meals.

honey-lime chicken enchiladas

– 2 large chicken breasts
– 2 tsp minced garlic
– 1/3 cup honey
– 1/3 cup lime juice
– 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
– 1 small onion, diced
– 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
– 3 wheat tortillas
– 1 cup shredded reduced fat Mexican cheese
– 1 small can green enchilada sauce

1. Place chicken breasts in the bottom of the crock-pot. Add chicken broth, honey, and lime juice, and stir to combine. Cook on low for 4-6 hours.

2. Saute onion, garlic and bell pepper in a little olive oil over low heat for 3-5 minutes, until onion becomes translucent. Add ingredients to crock pot mixture and cook for another 1-2 hours.

3. The chicken mixture is done when chicken is fully cooked and most of the liquid has evaporated. If needed, take off the lid and turn heat to high for the final 15-20 minutes of cooking.

4. Turn off crock-pot and use a knife and fork to pull apart/shred the chicken.

5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare an 8×8 glass baking pan by pouring about 1/3 of the can of enchilada sauce into the pan to coat the bottom.

6. Fill each tortilla with the shredded chicken mixture and a spoonful of enchilada sauce. Roll and lay into the pan. Pour the remainder of the enchilada sauce evenly over the tortillas and top with cheese.

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until cheese is fully melted and edges of the tortillas are a little crispy.

I served mine with brown rice and broccoli for a filling, healthy and delicious meal!

What are some of your favorite post-Thanksgiving, non-turkey meals? {Actually, this recipe would probably work well with turkey, too, now that I think of it!} 🙂

Hope you’re having a great week!
-Dallas

homemade festive christmas chain

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Good morning! Hope your transition from the long holiday weekend back into your regular routine wasn’t too painful yesterday. I had a nice time seeing my students again and hearing about their Thanksgiving breaks. I can’t believe we only have two more weeks left of the semester!

Christmas is in full swing here in my little apartment. Today I’m excited to share an easy, super inexpensive, and wonderfully festive holiday craft with you.

Remember those colorful paper chains you used to make in elementary school to decorate the classroom or count down to holidays or special events? In my family we used to make them as count-downs until Christmas or our birthdays and tear off one strip each day … it was so exciting to watch the chain gradually get smaller and smaller as the big day approached!

We also used to make chains with red and green construction paper to decorate our stair bannisters. The only problem with using paper is it isn’t very durable. We would make them again and again year after year, which was fun in its own way {especially as kids} but it isn’t very environmentally friendly or time-friendly — there are so many other craft and decorating projects I want to try rather than doing the same one year after year!

After some brainstorming, I came up with an idea: what about using using green and red felt instead of construction paper?

TA-DA! A homemade festive Christmas chain that will last from year to year. The best part? It costs less than $3.00 to make!

Here are the supplies you’ll need:

  • scissors
  • stapler & staples
  • red & green felt — I used 5 sheets of each color {got them at Michael’s for $0.29 each}

Directions:

1. Cut the felt into strips about 1 inch wide.

2. Bring one strip of felt together into a loop and staple the ends to each other.

3. Take a strip of the alternate color and loop it through, stapling its ends together to make another loop.

4. Continue the process until your chain reaches your desired length.

Then display them around your house! These are great hung around the walls and draped over a mantel. I don’t have a mantel in my apartment, so I draped mine over the top of my bookcase where my stockings are hanging.

And that’s it! Hope you enjoy this festive Christmas craft.

Have a great day!
-Dallas

marvelous monday: grocery store surprises

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Happy Monday, everyone! I hope your Thanksgiving weekend wrapped up well and that you made it home safe if you were celebrating out of town. I am happy to report that Mike and I arrived back safely in Lafayette last night, with enough time to hit up the grocery store, do a bit of work, watch an episode of Arrested Development, put all of our clean laundry away {thanks, Mike’s mom, for letting us do laundry in your lovely machine instead of having to trek to the quarter-eating machines in our apartment complex!} and even put up a few Christmas decorations. The wreath is on our door and my mini tree is on display!

Sometimes it’s the smallest things that add a big smile to your day. I love surprises, and one of my favorite things is to discover a new treat when I’m browsing the grocery store. Look what I found last night:

PUMPKIN SPICE ENGLISH MUFFINS!

I know we are transitioning from autumn into winter, but I remain pumpkin-obsessed. And I’m okay with that!

I enjoyed every bite of a pumpkin spice English muffin for breakfast, half smeared with chocolate peanut butter and the other half with regular peanut butter. I can’t decide which topping I like better. I also want to try cream cheese. I might have to eat another one for a snack later to do further research! 😉

What grocery store finds have you been delighted with lately? Anyone else still obsessed with pumpkin?

Have a marvelous day!
-Dallas

goals for the week of 11/25

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Here’s how I did on my goals last week:

  • get up to 200 pages written of my thesis
  • start reading The Happiness Project for PBF Book Club {it wasn’t available at my library yet, but I did read 110 pages of This is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks, which is my book club pick for the month on here}
  • write Thanksgiving cards for loved ones
  • clean bathroom & vacuum
  • finish grading student work
  • post announcement for winter writing camp {www.writeonbooks.org}

And here are my goals for this upcoming week:

  • get up to page 210 of my thesis
  • submit online applications
  • finish reading The Happiness Project for PBF Book Club
  • wrap & mail Christmas presents
  • order Christmas cards
  • send Mike’s mom flowers as a thank-you for hosting us over Thanksgiving
  • use Groupons for Nature’s Pharm & Re-Usables
  • return items to Target
  • take donation box to Goodwill
  • get new windshield wipers installed on car
  • wash kitchen & bathroom floors
  • bake blueberry-oatmeal muffins

What are your goals for the week? Feel free to share in the comments below!

saturday upsides: even chores have silver linings

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Happy Saturday! I can’t believe how quickly this Thanksgiving weekend is flying by. We’re having a wonderful time visiting Mike’s family, and it’s been a nice mix of productive work time, relaxing lazy time, Christmas shopping time, family time, and of course eating yummy food time! I need to do a bit more grading before we head back to school on Monday … I tend to put grading at the bottom of my to-do list {maybe because I really dislike giving bad grades and sometimes I simply have to.} The great students more than make up for it, though. Which brings me to my topic for today’s Saturday Upside, linked up with Bonnie at Recipes Happen:

even chores have silver linings

We all have those chores we don’t like to do, those small tasks that we procrastinate on. For me it’s grading and cleaning the bathroom. Mike really dislikes doing laundry. Another friend of mine hates doing the dishes.

But the thing I’ve learned about procrastinating is that it just makes the dreaded chore bigger than it needs to be. It gives it power by letting it take up your brain space. The dread of what needs to be done later taints the present time, which is time spent doing other things you do enjoy. And then, when you finally do get around to completing whatever it was you were procrastinating on, don’t you often think, I guess that wasn’t so bad/didn’t take so long/wasn’t as difficult as I was expecting? It happens to me a lot. It would be so much better if I would just bite the bullet and complete the chore before the procrastination lethargy settles in!

Something that helps me is to try to find the silver lining even in life’s chores. Maybe that means putting on my favorite new CD or Pandora playlist and dancing while I clean the bathroom. Mike folds laundry while watching one of his favorite TV shows. Even washing the dishes could be time spent daydreaming about your dream vacation or mentally plotting out your Christmas list or listening to an intriguing podcast or audiobook. Hate to exercise? Call a friend and have a catch-up chat while you walk around the neighborhood. Or power-walk around the mall while you window-shop!

“Silver linings” can also be mini-rewards you give yourself. Like I said, I have lots of terrific students, and I often save the papers from my best students for the end of my grading stack, as a little reward for me at the end. {It always makes me so happy and proud to see my students trying their best and shining with their work!} Maybe you could break chores up with little treats: a good cup of coffee or tea, a chapter of the great book you’re reading, a square of dark chocolate, a game of fetch with your dog, a phone call to a friend. It also helps me to think about the end goal of whatever I’m doing: the students I hope I am helping become better writers, for example; or how important it is to keep the bathroom clean and wiped down to stay healthy, especially during the winter cold/flu season!

And sometimes it helps to get down to the basics: if I feel annoyed at having to clean my apartment, I’ll remind myself how lucky I am to have a place to call my own. On those days I don’t feel like getting up and going to work, I think instead about all the people who are trying so hard to find work, and how lucky I am to have a job to get up and go to!

What could be the silver linings in some of your least favorite chores or tasks?

what I wore to thanksgiving dinner

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Happy Black Friday, everyone! Did you go out last night to score crazy deals? Are you shopping online right now in your PJs? Mike & I braved Walmart for a Christmas present for a special someone I can’t disclose for obvious reasons, but I will just say we got a good deal! It was my first time going to the stores on Black Friday and it was actually a lot of fun. We brought books and just read and chatted and people-watched for a few hours waiting in line. Luckily the store was open, so we were waiting in line in the warmth of the store. I’ve heard horror stories about people going crazy on Black Friday and trampling each other, but the people we were waiting in line with were all very nice and considerate. There was a fun holiday atmosphere and I actually had a lot more fun than I expected to!

Today I’m participating in the “What I Wore to Thanksgiving” link-up over at Camp Patton.

I wore my go-to autumn skirt {you might recognize it from my first day of school outfit this year} paired with a silky pink blouse I got a couple years ago when I won the “Best of You” award from Glamour magazine and was given a photo shoot. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life — I felt like a princess! I’ll have to do a whole post on it sometime.

Glamour photo shoot

In real life I never wear much make-up, so this photo feels like an alternate-reality version of myself! Whenever I wear this shirt, I think of that weekend and get a jolt of confidence. It’s the perfect shirt to wear when I have first days of school jitters, a big interview, or yesterday when I was meeting some of Mike’s relatives for the first time! They were all very sweet and welcoming to me. I guess the shirt’s magic worked! 🙂

I finished the outfit with a red belt, grey tights, a black cardigan, and black-and-gray flats.

I’m currently in my pajamas {yes, it’s past noon in Chicago} and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon! Hope you are also enjoying some post-Thanksgiving lazy Friday-ness.

Till soon!
-Dallas

thanksgiving gratitude list

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am spending the long weekend with Mike’s family up in Chicago and they have welcomed me into their household with open arms and absolutely delicious food. Especially during the holiday season, it is very hard to be so far away from my parents and Greg! Luckily I’ll get to go home for winter break and spend Christmas in Ventura with them. 🙂

Something I like to do often, but especially on Thanksgiving, is to make a “gratitude list” of all the blessings I have in my life and all the reasons I have to be thankful and happy. Often I make a mental list {it is a great way to fall asleep … counting your blessings!} but today on Thanksgiving I want to write a list down. So here it is:

my {ever-expanding!} gratitude list

  • my amazing, supportive, one-in-a-million parents and brother, and all of my terrific extended family, too!
  • my fun and thoughtful and lovely friends, near and far
  • my health {something that I didn’t used to appreciate nearly enough, but feel more and more grateful for the older I get}
  • that I always have not only enough food to eat, but also enough grocery money to buy organic fruits & veggies & dairy even though they are more expensive
  • my safe, warm, cozy apartment that is feeling more and more like home
  • my parents’ home in Ventura that will *always* feel like home and welcome me back with open arms
  • the opportunity to pursue my passions for writing and teaching as a career
  • the incredibly supportive teachers and mentors I’ve had throughout my life — from my first-grade teacher who gave my shy self confidence by casting me as the lead in our school play, to my middle school and high school teachers who encouraged my love of writing, to my teachers at USC and now at Purdue who have helped me develop my own writing voice and  nurture my own creative identity
  • my goofy dog Murray, who never fails to make me laugh with his antics and happy doggy smile
  • long walks through an autumn park or on the boardwalk by the Ventura pier
  • rain falling softly outside on a lazy Sunday
  • snuggling up on the couch with my sweetie
  • all the books I’ve devoured and all those I have stacked on my nightstand, waiting for their turn
  • old movies, especially It’s a Wonderful Life, Some Like it Hot, and It Happened One Night
  • watching Bing Crosby Christmas movies every year with my Gramps
  • warm chocolate chip cookies and a big glass of milk
  • shopping dates with my mom
  • lunch dates with my dad
  • my brunch date tradition with my brother
  • 3-hour Simone’s coffee dates with my friend Erica whenever I go home to visit
  • a hot cup of tea, an empty hour or two, and a journal or good book
  • browsing Target with my friend Holly and stocking up on Taylor Swift cards
  • sending and receiving handwritten cards from those I love
  • sunsets {and the occasional sunrises, when I’m up early enough to see them!}
  • Christmas lights twinkling cheerfully against a night sky or the snow
  • hugs and kisses and even tears saying goodbye because it’s a blessing to have so many people to love
  • being part of such a wonderful community of bloggers, and that you would spend a few minutes of your day visiting my little corner of the internet here!

Happy happy happy Thanksgiving! I hope you have a blessed day with those you love!

❤ Dallas

ecomom’s “green” friday sale

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Just a quick post to let you know about a really great sale one of my favorite “green” living sites is having this week …

Ecomom.com is a site designed for moms who want to buy healthy, organic, nontoxic products for their home and family. They have everything from organic baby food to non-BPA reuseable water bottles to natural products for your home. I especially like their organic hair products and natural home cleaning supplies. You don’t have to be a mom to find great products on their site that can make your daily routine healthier for your body, and for our planet!

Until November 25, they’re offering:

  • $20 off orders of $50-$99
  • $40 off orders of $100-$199
  • $80 off orders of $200+

This might also be a great way to stock up on some early Christmas gifts!

Here’s the website again: www.ecomom.com. Happy shopping!

butterscotch pudding cookies

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I am usually a triple-chocolate cookie kind of girl, but I found myself in a butterscotch cookie mood last night after seeing this recipe on the fabulous food blog Two Peas & Their Pod. What makes these cookies unique is the secret ingredient: pudding! This gives them a lovely moistness and keeps them fresh-tasting for days. {If they manage to last that long!}

This is a quick and easy cookie recipe that makes a few dozen cookies — perfect to take to a Thanksgiving gathering as a sweet alternative to classic chocolate-chip cookies. Or make a batch and send some to a friend, as I did. The pudding helps the cookies stay moist, which makes them a good choice to send through the mail.

butterscotch pudding cookies

(recipe adapted from Two Peas & Their Pod)

– 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
– 3/4 cup brown sugar
– 2 snack-size cups of butterscotch cookies
– 2 large eggs
– 2 tsp vanilla extract
– 1 & 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
– 1 cup white all-purpose flour
– 1 tsp baking soda
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 1 tsp cinnamon
– 1 cup butterscotch chips
– 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips {if desired}

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

2. Using a mixer or a whisk, beat together butter and sugars until creamy. Add in butterscotch pudding, eggs, and vanilla extract.

3. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.

4. Stir in the butterscotch chips and chocolate chips.

5. Drop cookie dough by rounded tablespoons onto prepared baking sheet.

6. Bake for 10 minutes, or until slightly golden around the edges and set. Remove cookies from oven and let cool on baking sheet for two minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely.

How are your Thanksgiving plans coming along? I hope you are having a wonderful week!

❤ Dallas

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– Time spent: 40 minutes
– Cost: about $5.00

marvelous monday: little oases of rest in a hectic, busy season

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Happy Monday, everyone! It’s that time of year … the holidays are upon us. All weekend I’ve been seeing not just Thanksgiving decorations in stores, but Christmas decorations, too! Some houses in my neighborhood have even put up lights and lawn ornaments. {Which I’m admittedly not used to, coming from California, but it does make sense here in Indiana where you want to get the lights up before the first snow hits!} It seems like Christmas season sets upon us earlier and earlier every year … which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for me, a girl who starts playing Pandora Holiday stations in October. I love the warmth and comfort of the holiday season!

Still, the holidays bring with them a lot of busyness — gifts to buy, special meals to cook, cards to send, relatives in town, parties to attend, and just a general hectic pace of life that can be overwhelming. Coupled with the approaching end-of-semester obligations and deadlines: final papers and projects to grade, class presentations, meetings — and for me this year, a completed rough draft of my thesis to turn in — and life can quickly feel out-of-control crazy-busy!

I’ve started doing a brief stretch and deep-breathing routine each morning to get my day off on the right foot, which I’ll share with you later this week. But something else that has helped me keep my sanity and approach the holiday season with a grateful heart {as it is meant to be celebrated, after all!} is to take little breaks throughout the day to slow down, take a breath, and reward myself for the work I have gotten done. Even just ten or fifteen minutes away from my computer or pile of dirty dishes can be enough to clear my head and make me feel worlds happier and more refreshed. Here are some of my “oases”:

  • making a phone call to my friends or family
  • reading a chapter of a good book or a story from a magazine
  • taking a power nap
  • going for a brisk walk around the neighborhood
  • daydreaming with a cup of tea

How do you keep your sanity and stay energized during the crazy-busy holiday season? What are your little daily oases?