Day 75: I Eat When I'm Stressed

Have I mentioned that I eat when I am stressed?

Yes.

I have. 

Multiple Times.

Keep up. 

Geesh. 

I am a comfort eater.   It is this fact alone that causes me to keep multiple sizes of blue jeans on hands at all times.  I need options people.

Anyway, when I stress eat, it usually goes one of two ways.  Incredibly sweet or incredibly savory.  I guess it would be called savory. (I don't actually know the culinary term for hot, fattening, and either slathered in a sauce or covered with cheese . . . so I went with savory.)

Recently, I discovered, modified and perfected a sandwich that you could describe as healthy (minus the sauce, butter,  and buns of course).

The best thing about it is, you make it in your crockpot, with FROZEN chicken breasts, and then you throw it on a toasty bun; and it's so incredibly good that you actually think about it days later,  and count how many days it's been since you last made it, so you can decide how quickly you can make it again.  (It also is so good it makes you forget all grammatical convention when describing it!)

The best thing is?  It requires 3 ingredients!

BBQ PULLED CHICKEN SANDWICHES

Ingredients:
4-8 Chicken Breasts, Frozen
1 Bottle of Your Favorite BBQ Sauce (any kind)  (but save about 1/4 cup for later)
1 12oz Can of Coke (yes coke, not diet coke, not cola, not Pepsi - Bite your tongue!, COKE)

Put in Crockpot on low for 4-8 hours.
Remove chicken from sauce (the sauce will be very liquidy . . . that's another technical term)
Pull apart with two forks (figure it out or find a you tube video)
Place pulled chicken into a bowl and pour one or two ladles full of the liquidy sauce onto the chicken and stir it around)

Now leave that alone for a few minutes because you are about to make the secret to this sandwich.

Get some buns.  Any kind.  Hamburger, sour dough, french, whatever.

Butter them on the inside and place buttered side down in a hot skillet.  Toast the buns like this.

Then, take them out of the pan (most people would know to do this, but I'm trying to be precise!)

Now, take your bbq sauce (the actual sauce that you saved in the beginning) and spoon a little bit of this on your toasted buns.  Heap a lot of that bbq chicken (I think I am actually getting more country by the minute as I am typing out this recipe) onto the toasted bun, and it's done!

Serve it with a pickle or some onions or even some cheddar cheese if you like.  Bacon's good too!

All that to say, you're going to personally write me and thank me for sharing this with you.  It's that good.

UPDATED: Lots of you have asked for a clean version.  Here it is!

 Clean Version  Frozen Chicken Breasts, apple cider vinegar 1/2 cup, sugar free bbq sauce.  Serve on whole grain buns.  Use olive oil in the place of the butter if you like, but butter's okay too!

Day 69: Ode to Candy Corn

 

 

 

I am a Candy Corn aficionado.  I blame my mother, much for the same reason I blame her for my love of Little Debbie's Oatmeal Creme Pies, or every other bite of comfort food that I have eaten in my lifetime. 

 

 

 

 

The woman was good at comfort food.  She could console just about any discomfort in life with something hot, greasy, sweet or fattening and make you believe that everything in life would be great from that point forward. 

It's a rare talent that woman has.

I almost want to call her right now and tell her to bring me a big ole picnic ham with some homemade potato salad.

But I digress.

This post is about my love for Candy Corn.

I have a friend, a new friend really, who shares my mad obsession with the corn.  And what I love about her is that she understands there are rules when it comes to candy corn.  You don't just go buying any brand, or any color, at any time of the year.

You wait until the fall.  And then you only buy Brach's.  If you buy another brand, you'll be sorry, and you'll end up being one of those dumb people that says things like, "I don't like candy corn."

Next, you give it the "squish" test in the store, through the bag.  (If it doesn't squish, you don't buy it.)

Then, and only then, do you buy it and eat it,

all,

in one sitting. 

This is guaranteed to make you sick of candy corn for at least two weeks, maybe longer if you're lucky, or a lightweight.  (This is an important step, because if you don't get sick of it right away, you're going to munch on it for the two months that it is available.)

Also, if you're a purist, you will only get the yellow, orange and white, because that's the only real candy corn.  Everything else is a poser.  A wanna be.  Don't be fooled.  You'll be disappointed.

And lastly, and this is really important, you must eat it in order.  I like to start at the bottom, eating the yellow layer first. Then the orange. Then the white.  I don't know why this matters, but it does.  (That could be my OCD, but I don't know for sure.)

My husband is aware of this obsession I have for candy corn.  He frowns upon it.  This has forced me to buy it and eat it in my car.  You just got a visual, didn't you?  It's sad, I know. 

Today, as I was loading the girls in the backseat of the car, I found a piece of an empty candy corn bag, most likely ripped off and tossed aside during an eating frenzy.  My heart raced at the sight of it, and I had two thoughts:

1.  Oh my gosh!  I hope no one saw that.
2.  How quickly can I unload these kids and go score a bag . . .  er, I mean, buy some?

It's not pretty.  I know.

All that to say, Candy Corn, I love you.  You're my guilty pleasure.