Caramelized Coffee Spiced Chicken & Giveaway ~ Rachel

Greetings everyone!

I’m still alive, I promise. I can’t seem to get a leg up on much of anything these days so until I do, my postings might be a little sparse. To hold you over to the next post, I’m posting a couple of our wedding photos, an awesome recipe, and a giveaway! Can you beat that???

First, a few wedding pictures (click on them to get the bigger version):

Photo by Stephanie Spencer Photography

Photo by Stephanie Spencer Photography

Photo by Stephanie Spencer Photography

Photo by Stephanie Spencer Photography

Second, an awesome recipe:

You’ve probably heard me mention my most favorite store, Savory Spice Shop? Well, a couple of weeks ago we stopped in to see if they had espresso powder. I was making fancy brownies in our new “all edges” brownie pan and the recipe called for espresso powder, which I couldn’t find in any grocery store. Apparently, it simply enhances the chocolate flavor and does not mess up the recipe if you don’t have it. ANYWAYS…Savory Spice didn’t have espresso powder but they had a couple of new spice blends with coffee in them. One of them was the Baker’s Brew Coffee Spice and it was suggested that we use that in place of the espresso powder. Well…we did and the brownies were awesome…and we also picked up the recipe for Caramelized Coffee Spiced Chicken.

I made that the other night, substituting boneless skinless chicken breasts for thighs, and served it over some jasmine rice. In the words of Dave, dinner was <expletive> awesome….he wants to put the glaze on everything. Which brings me to…

Third, a giveaway:

I’m going to hold a giveaway to try and bring back my readers from the post-less abyss I banned them to (at least in terms of our blog here). The winner will receive a 4oz. bottle of the Baker’s Brew Coffee Spice and a 4oz. bottle of a spice or spice blend of their choice! All from Savory Spice Shop! All you have to do is go to the Savory Spice Shop website, drool over all the awesome spices and recipes, pick one or two of your favorites, and leave a comment here telling me what you picked and why! Leave your comment by Thursday, December 22nd at 5pm and I’ll pick a winner on Friday the 23rd! I can’t promise you’ll get the spices before 2012 but I won’t make you wait too long.

Now…back to reality….I’m hitting up my first Weight Watchers meeting in months tomorrow morning….weigh-in ain’t gonna be pretty!

I’m a Mrs. Now! ~ Rachel

Hello my blog friends! Dave and I are back from our honeymoon…for a week now…and I figured that I better get something on the blog before you all forget about us! It turns out that when a wedding is over, a somewhat lengthy wedding to-do list still exists:  sorting through piles, cleaning out the closet that had become our dumping grounds, thank you notes, emails to vendors, catching up with people, photos, a million surveys from vendors that I can’t say no to…I’m trying to ease back into life but I think I better jump back in at full speed or laziness will just take over!

I think I might slip in some wedding stuff at the end of each new post in the coming couple of weeks, especially as we get pictures in. Otherwise, you’ll go into wedding overload!

Before I get to a glimpse of our wedding, I’ll give you the non-wedding update. It’s not pretty.

Our eating has been atrocious and I have yet to get back to the gym. We threw all caution to the wind at the wedding and during the honeymoon…it was the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot after all.

I have an appointment this morning with Isaiah (my trainer) but I’m not feeling so hot so I think I might ask him if we can do some basic stuff like stretching…I’m hoping he can teach me some yoga type moves! My plan is go back to WW this week and start counting points on Thursday. I’ll get back to the gym regularly after that.

Returning to work has been a bit of a nightmare. Within an hour of entering my office, I could tell my blood pressure had risen. By the end of the day, I was nauseated and had a headache. The short story is that things blew up a little while I was gone…one person got a little nasty…and our data manager decided to give her notice. Every time someone leaves that position, I end up having to take over and it consumes me (more than work does now). The job sucks the life out of people! So I’m battling that right now and working on my use of the word no. My boss was in such a tizzy about the resignation that she emailed me a few times this weekend and then decided to call me yesterday afternoon when I didn’t email back. There are clearly some boundaries that need to be reset!

Ok…enough of that grossness. Below are a few pictures from the wedding that I grabbed from my Aunt’s Facebook page. We haven’t gotten any professional pictures back yet and I don’t have any actual wedding pictures! I have pictures from everything else though….and you’ll eventually see those.

Rehearsal Dinner

Entering the Reception

First Dance

First Dance

Step Mom Joyce, Cousin Ana, Best Friend Becky, Me, Mom Deborah, Best Friend Angela, Step Sister Beth

Let me clarify that Dave is not a shriner…the fez in one of the above pictures is a nod to Doctor Who. Just go with it 🙂

Overall, we had no major issues with the wedding and everything was wonderful. And a blur! Over the coming blog posts, I’ll tell you all about it! Until then…well, I’m off to the gym!