Pound it Like It’s Hot

Last night (for the first time), I tried pounding out meat. Yeah, it was a pretty exciting Sunday night for me. Anyway, I found a pretty delicious looking recipe in the new Cooking Light magazine. It was for Sweet and Sour chicken.

This month’s magazine is actually a pretty great one. There’s a whole section dedicated to new ways to use chicken. For me, chicken gets excruciatingly boring-yet we eat it all the time. So if you have the same problem-boring chicken every night- check out this month’s Cooking Light (I swear I don’t get paid to say that…but I should!).

Anyway, back to the recipe. Here are the ingredients:

• 4 chicken breasts (skinless)
• dash of salt
• dash of pepper

For the sauce:

• 1/4 cup fat free low sodium chicken broth
• 3 tablespoons apricot preserves
• 1 1/2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 2 teaspoons thai chili paste
• fresh cilantro to garnish

First up-pounding the chicken breasts. I placed the chicken onto a sheet of plastic wrap, then covered them with another sheet (all on the cutting board). Then, just started pounding!

Next, I added some salt and pepper to the pounded chicken and sauteed it until it was cooked through.

Once the chicken was cooked, I took them off the skillet and set them aside. Next, I made the sweet and sour sauce. I didn’t have apricot preserves…so I used Cactus Jelly instead. It’s sort of a long story where the cactus jelly came from…but basically it came from my wedding. I figured it was sweet…like apricot preserves…so it might work?

I mixed the rest of the ingredients together (except for the lime juice and cilantro) and cooked it in the pan for a couple minutes. When it started to boil, I stirred it a couple times, then took it off the heat. Then added the lime juice.

When the sauce was done….I poured some on top of the cooked chicken breasts and added chopped cilantro. On the side, we had edamame and brown rice.

This turned out pretty good! I actually really liked the sauce…it did taste like sweet and sour sauce.

Today’s Workout:

Today, I decided to hit up the Spartacus workout again. I wanted to do something challenging and immediately thought of that!

Here’s the order again:

1. Goblet Squat-60 sec., 20lb.
2. Mountain Climbers- 60 sec.
3. Single-arm Dumbbell Swing- 60 sec., 12 lb.
4. T-Pushup-60 sec., 5lb.
5. Split Jump- 60 sec
6. Dumbbell Row- 60 sec, 12lb.
7. Dumbbell Side Lunge-60 sec., 12lb.
8. Pushup Position Row-60 sec., 5lb.
9. Dumbbell Lunge and Rotation-60 sec., 12lb.
10. Dumbbell Push Press-60 sec., 12lb.

I went through the circuit once (tried not to break) and then went back through 2 more times. So, you do each exercise a total of 3 minutes. Here’s a link to another page where I go more into detail on each exercise.

It was definitely brutal…just what I wanted.

Time to get some dinner ready! Might attempt some polenta tonight….