BBQ Chicken Calzones

Ingredients

• 4 slices bacon
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• 3 cups shredded, cooked chicken breast meat
• 2/3 cup BBQ sauce
• 1 (10 ounce) can refrigerated pizza crust dough
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Fry bacon in a large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove from the pan to drain on paper towels; crumble. Add the onion and shredded chicken to the hot bacon grease in the pan. Fry over medium heat until onion is tender. Stir in 1/3 cup of BBQ sauce, and remove from the heat. Mix in the cooked bacon.
3. Roll the pizza crust dough out onto a greased cookie sheet. Press out to an even thickness, and then cut in half. Divide the chicken mixture between the two pieces of dough, spreading on only half of each piece to within 1/2 inch of the edge. Drizzle the remaining sauce over the filling. Sprinkle the cheese and cilantro over the top. Fold the uncovered portion of dough over the filling, and press the edges together with a fork to seal.
4. Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until browned to your liking. Cool for a few minutes, then cut each calzone in half. Each serving is half of a calzone. These can be served with additional BBQ sauce if you like.

Amount Per Serving Calories: 565 | Total Fat: 18.7g | Cholesterol: 107mg


This was a really yummy (although a tad bit time consuming) meal. Really though the hardest part about making it was dealing with shredding the chicken after I boiled it. The only modification I made was to use Turkey Bacon instead of regular, and I didn't add cilantro as I didn't have any. Also I sprinkled a little garlic salt on the calzone before baking. I served it with a side of ranch for dipping and we were good to go. It was good and very filling.

November's "Us" picture

Taken Thanksgiving day at my parents house.

sweets for my sweet

This is the outcome of 6 hours baking with my friend and co-worker Antoinette today. We had been planning our baking day for some time now, and although we couldn't bake everything we had originally planned we still had a good time. These are only the goodies that I brought home, there was plenty more left at her house.

We baked some classics like peanut butter blossoms and sugar cookies, and also tried some new recipes like the Oreo truffles (aka lumps of coal) and some almond hug cookies-- those were probably the funnest to make as we really had to play with it as we went. LOL, sure did make for an interesting cookie.

I brought home so much that I have enough for us to enjoy a few at home, and to give to my parents, as well as to send Rick off with some to share with his co-workers. :)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone

I'm not sure what's taken me so long to try out the Harry Potter series. You'd think with as much as I love to read that I would have gotten into it a long time ago. But it just never really caught my attention. Plus I sometimes get weary of books that have so much hype around them, for fear that they can never live up to it. But after hearing so many great things about the books, I figured why not give it a go.

I gotta admit I was a little scared when I first started it. It seemed very "young" even for a young adult book. But I remembered hearing from others that the books seem to grow as Harry does. So I pushed all that out of my mind and tried to just have fun with it and enjoy the book for what it was.

I just finished today during lunch, and I actually can't believe just how much I enjoyed it. It was fun, it kept me on my toes, and the main characters are all very likable in their own way. Oh and I never saw the ending coming! Which is always a pleasant surprise.

I will say though, the book made me kind of hungry! It seemed like they were always eating something. And I can now say that I know the reasoning behind those nasty jelly belly beans I once tried with a friend. (ewwww!) LOL

May the stars watch over you...

When I first picked up Brisingr a few weeks ago I thought that I was starting the last book in the Inheritance (or Eragon) series. I thought it'd be one more task for me to check off of my list... however after finishing the book I discovered to my surprise and delight that the story continues.

I can't decide which book I liked best so far of the three. I had originally read Eragon a few years ago, and while I enjoyed it I didn't give much thought to finishing the series. However Rick and I had a long car trip back in September, we were looking for a long book to enjoy, and I knew he'd love Eragon. After listening to the book my interest in the series was renewed. I jumped back into it and devoured Eldest. Although it was a bit slow at times due to the character development I enjoyed it a lot. There were so many twists and turns that I didn't see coming!

As soon as I finished that I headed to Borders with a great coupon and bought Brisingr. Again the book started out a little slow, there is just sooo much to the story! But again, it was amazing! There were some new devlopments which completely shocked me. And towards the end of the book I actually found myself crying. I don't do that often with books, but it is always a sign to me of a truly amazing book.

I now have my husband reading Eldest, and I can't wait til he is done with it so we can chat about it. And I know he's dying to read Brisingr so that he can find out what happened that made me cry.

This is the second time I've had to wait for a book in a series. I've never had that issue until this year when I read Hunger Games/Catching Fire... and I now find myself in that same sitaution. It's going to be hard to be patient and await this next book!

The Ugly Truth

When making "my list" I came up with most of my tasks on my own. I did however look through a few other 101 in 1001 blogs to get some ideas to fill in the gaps. When I stumbled upon the "watch 5 chick flicks I've never seen before" I thought it was a great one. Although I'm very into movies (I have a good size dvd collection, after having a habit of always buying dvds--even if I hadn't ever seen the movie. I'm proud to say that netflix has cured that issue, and saved me a ton of money! lol) there are a lot of "classic" chick flicks I've never seen, like pretty woman or beaches. So that was my initial thoughts process, to stretch myself a bit and see some older chick flicks and to not include any newer ones in here.

Well, I just got done watching the Ugly Truth with my husband and I honestly have not enjoyed a chick flick that much in a while. Maybe it was because Katherine Heigl has been one of my favorite actresses since Grey's Anatomy came out. Or maybe because Gerard Butler has not only impressed me with his looks (300) but also by starring in another of my favorite chick flicks (P.S. I Love You). Hmmm... probably a combination of the two? The movie was the perfect balance of everything: adult humor without being overly raunchy, goofy, smart, sweet, and it actually made me laugh out loud. It'd be wrong to ignore a movie as great as this, it is very much deserving of a spot on my list.

I haven't bought a dvd in a LONG time. This one is a must buy for me, and I already told Rick I'm adding it to my Christmas wish list.

Bucca di Beppo

I went from never hearing about this restaurant before, to hearing a lot about it recently. So when I got a sweet coupon in the mail earlier in the week for $10 off Rick and I decided to give it a try. They have 3 locations in San Diego, but we decided to go ahead and go with the downtown location. We're not huge into the downtown scene, we tend to prefer quiet evenings at home, but even still it's fun to get all dressed up and go downtown every once in a while.

It was a Saturday night so we were not surprised when we couldn't find any street parking. Luckily there was a parking garage nearby that wasn't ridiculously priced. We put our name on the list (it was a 2 hour wait!!!) and headed to the borders across the street. We couldn't have planned that any better! It was a great way to kill time, plus I had been intending to go to Borders anyway to use some borders bucks I had earned.

So with a half hour of wait time to still spare we made our way back to Bucca di Beppo's to see where we were on the list. Turns out they called our name already, so back on the list we went for another 15 minutes or so. Finally it was time for us to be seated, and we were shown our way to our table which took us through the actual kitchen. There was a booth in the kitchen for people to sit and watch, which I thought was pretty cool.

The atmosphere was loud, probably more so than normal as there was a huge party right by our table. They left shortly after we got there though, and the noise was then very bareable. We decided on an appetizer of Fried Calamari, and then we shared the baked rigatoni. The calamari was good, but nothing out of this world. I did really like the marinara sauce served with it, because it had a nice healthy dose of red pepper flakes. The baked rigatoni was very tasty in my opinion. It honestly reminded me of lasagna. The serving (small) was huge and we have plenty left over for tonights dinner.

While the food was good overall, I'm not sure it was at all worth the wait. I probably would have been very disapointed had we not had our coupon. But for me that is one of the hardest things about eating at Italian restauraunts... nothing on the menu ever stands out as spectacular, and it's one of the cheapest types of food to cook at home.

However our downtown dinning experience cost us little more than a fast food dinner (not including tip, and parking of course) so I really can't complain too much. I'm glad we tried it, but I'll probably just stick to Olive Garden.

October's "Us" picture

Better late than never eh? This pic was taken Oct 24th while waiting for our tour of the Whaley House.