picnicking with buffalo chicken salad sandwiches & kettle chips

Spring is here!  Spring is here!  Spring is here!!!

What does that mean?  Fresh air flowing through open windows, sunshine warming faces and arms… and picnics!

We are blessed to have a beautiful backyard to enjoy, and goodness does food just taste better outside, ya know?

Also, packs of messy kids are much more easily hosed off outside and crumbs are food for the birds, so no clean up for me.

WooHOO! I love picnic weather!!

I don’t love eating the same foods over and over and over again though, so I am always trying to come up with new, fun, ‘outside’ food recipes.

These buffalo chicken salad sandwiches are a perfect blend of spicy, creamy, comforting, and delicious. Much easier to eat outside than a plate full of wings, with all the fiery flavor you love!

Shredded chicken and diced celery are tossed in a creamy blue cheese and buffalo sauce dressing, and piled on a bed of romaine on a chewy ciabatta bun.  Hot or cold, this sandwich is heavenly on a springtime picnic!

Feel free to make this salad ahead… it will keep in the fridge for at least a day or so! Sandwiches and chips are always a favorite combo, and they are often on the menu since my family loves them so much.

They love any excuse to eat chips with our meal, really…  and we especially love Kettle Brand Chips!
Have you ever tried Kettle Brand Chips before?
Not just any kettle chips, but The Real Kettle Chips?  All-natural, batch cooked chips, made with real ingredients by real people?

Kettle Brand Chips is the first brand to be verified by the Non-GMO Project!  That right there makes them the best choice for my family.

I especially love their Natural Promise: all natural ingredients, Non-GMO oil and potatoes, and no trans fats, MSG or preservatives.  Exactly what I like to hear when I am picking out food for my family!

Oh and don’t worry… these chips taste amazing. Crisp, golden, fresh & flavorful. Everything you’d want in a chip and more!

I am a jalapeño chip girl…  across the board that is my favorite flavor with just about everything.  My kids love the sea salt flavor, and well…  the Buffalo Bleu chips are a must try!  Yum!

Buffalo Chicken Salad Sandwich Recipe

Ingredients

  • 2 large chicken breasts, cooked & shredded
  • 2-3 large stalks of celery, chopped
  • 3/4 cup buffalo sauce (+ extra for the rolls)
  • 1/2 cup blue cheese dressing (+ extra for the rolls)
  • salt & pepper, to taste
  • 4-8 romaine leaves
  • 4 ciabatta buns

Directions

In a large bowl, toss together the shredded chicken, chopped celery, buffalo sauce & blue cheese dressing. Toss to combine and season with salt & fresh ground pepper, to taste.

Spread one half of each of the split rolls with a bit of buffalo sauce, lay a romaine leaf or two on top of that and then a generous pile of the chicken salad. Spread a bit of blue cheese dressing on the top half of the bun and close the sandwich.

If you are packing these on a picnic farther than your backyard, wrap each one individually with parchment or foil and refrigerate until you are ready to leave.

Don't forget to pack your wipes, drinks, and of course, some delicious Kettle Chips to go with those sandwiches!

http://sweetannas.com/2013/05/picnicking-with-buffalo-chicken-salad-sandwiches-kettle-chips.html

 

We’re giving away a $100 Visa gift card to one lucky reader!  To enter for your chance to win, leave a comment letting me know what you include in your picnic basket!

 

Rules:
No duplicate comments.
You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
b) Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the
following unique term in your tweet message: “”#SweepstakesEntry”"; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post”
c) Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 5/20 – 7/3.

Be sure to visit the Kettle Brand Chips brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!

We tried The Fast Metabolism Diet, and it worked!

Disclosure:  This is a sponsored post, but the review is absolutely my own.  Questions?  Ask me!!

Ok, I am not a dieter by nature.  I am too much of a food-lover.  (Obviously!)  But after having 3 babies in under 4 years, my body had pretty much given up on ‘bouncing back’.

It didn’t matter what I ate, or didn’t eat…  my body stayed the same and seemed to get more uncomfortable every day.  I did’t feel like me anymore, but rather a miserable shadow of me, trapped in someone else’s body.

So, when I was offered the chance to try out Haylie Pomroy’s new book, The Fast Metabolism Diet, I was happy to try something new.  I wasn’t very optimistic, that’s for sure, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, and the Hubs was on board, so we jumped right in!

(If you follow me on instagram at all, you probably had an inclination something was going on!)

I read the book, and loved it right away.  Haylie has a very scientific but understandable approach to nutrition and dieting.  She explains things well, so that I understood them, instead of just saying “do this because I said so”.

I was pleasantly surprised when I started losing weight right away!  But much more importantly…  I lost inches!!

Lots of inches actually, and all from the right places!  We are a few days from being done with the diet, but Andrew has lost 12 pounds and 3 inches off his waist (and other places too!) already and I have lost 14 pounds and 4 inches off my waist (and lots of inches from other places!!).

My waist is smaller, my thighs are smaller, the fat just felt like it was melting off my frame.  Even though the scale didn’t change that much (not 20 lbs, anyways, but I’m definitely not complaining!), the measuring tape proved much more important.

I will take inches lost over pounds any day!  (We all know muscle weighs more than fat anyways, right?)

Ok, so the bottom line is:  I am happy with the diet.  I am glad we did it.  I will happily recommend it, and I will probably do it again someday (even soon)!

But you don’t just want the bottom line, do you?  You want the nitty-gritty.  So, here it is, pro/con style:

Pros:  It worked for me!  I lost inches & pounds, dropped lots of bad eating habits, learned to love some new-to-me healthy foods and good habits, and just feel better overall.

Cons:  It’s hard.  Ok. it’s not the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s definitely hard.  This diet requires lots of planning.  If you don’t plan, you will probably fail.  But, if you do a little planning, you will do great!

*There is an iPhone app that you can buy to go with the diet and I’ve gotta say, that was the best $1.99 I’ve spent in a long time!  I don’t think I could have done the diet without it.  And on the topic of money…

The only other real con I had with this diet is the cost.  Now, to be fair, that is not Haylie or this diet’s problem.  That is just the unfortunate cost of eating fresh veggies and real food.

That said, if you garden, wait until peak harvesting season to do this diet!  And for the rest of us…  late spring and summer, with their abundant farmer’s markets, farmshares and produce stands will make the cost of eating this healthy that much more bearable!

My husband’s hardest thing, besides just going through the pain of breaking bad eating habits (serious sugar cravings for that guy!), was drinking enough water everyday.

Water is a biggie on this diet, and you need to drink half your body weight in ounces every day (which we really should be doing anyway!).  I drink a lot of water so that wasn’t a big deal for me, but for my husband…  he felt like he was drowning a bit!  ;o)  But, he has definitely learned to be better about drinking water!

And as Haylie puts it…  if you don’t drink all your water so that the fat and toxins can be flushed out of your body, you’re basically taking fat off one thigh and putting it back on the other, because it has no way out!  Yuck!!

So, what do you think?  Do you think I’m a quack?  Or do you think you might give this a try?

 

Loving our new Maytag fridge!

I sometimes don’t know how we survived without this beauty in our kitchen.  Even just the ice & water in the door, something we’ve never had before, seems so essential to us now.

Spoiled maybe?  Yes, absolutely.  But I’d rather think of it as a blessing than as a ‘spoiling’!

I had no real problems with my old fridge, but I would never choose to go back after trying out this big beautiful new Maytag Ice20 French Door Refrigerator.

Yes, my whole family loves the ice and water in the door (Hello?  Dr Pepper poured over a big glass of freshly crushed ice?  Heavenly!)…  but do you wanna know my favorite thing about this fridge?

I just love how deep and roomy it is!

I love that I can go grocery shopping, come home, put away all the groceries, make a big pot of soup, and still be able to fit that whole pot of soup easily into the fridge to reheat the next day.

I can thaw roasts & turkeys, and I can prep slow cooker meals the night before, without ever even worrying about wether or not I will be able to fit that stuff into the fridge!

I also love the extra middle fridge drawer.  We keep it stocked with fruits and veggies, and even Bjørn & Haakon (3 1/2 & 2 years old!) love to grab their own apples and carrots.  They feel so grown up, and all of a sudden eating veggies is fun for my picky toddlers.  How is that not a great thing?!

With the holiday baking season in full swing, this beautiful fridge is getting a workout.  And I am grateful for it every single day when I walk into my kitchen!

Want to hear some other moms’ thoughts on their Maytag appliances?  Check out Maytag’s facebook and twitter pages!

“I wrote this post participating in an Maytag Moms Dependable Kitchen Ambassador program by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Maytag. I was provided with a Maytag kitchen appliances set, including a refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, and range to facilitate my post.”

 

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