Friday Links!

Happy Weekend everyone! I hope you all have a safe and enjoyable St. Patrick's Day. I have no plans at the moment, but may have a Guinness in honor of my tiny sliver of Irish ancestry.

It's been a slow blogging week, but I have a lot of great things planned for the next few days. On Sunday, I'll be hosting a brunch at my mom's house to try out some new Dannon products. I'm working on a healthy, lower calorie french toast that I think will be super tasty. Keep an eye out for photos and recipes coming on Monday.

Now onto some yummy links I discovered while blog surfing this week:

• My girl Eva just made a tasty chicken fajita salad for a low carb fix at KitchenInspirations, she's also hosting a Titanic themed dinner party!
• Check out these incredible nutella peanut butter chocolate brownies over at Baker Street. Yes, I am serious, such deliciousness does exist!!
• In honor of St. Patrick's Day, Red Shallot Kitchen made Irish carbomb cupcakes.
• Check out these cool beet and goat cheese Napoleons from the lovely Ann at Cooking Healthy for Me. I didn't even know such yumminess was possible

And, as always, here are some interesting Healthy Links:

• A new study shows that exercise can prevent disesase, even in overweight people - NYT
• Yikes! Diet soda is linked to heart disease! - CNN
• Good news! Eating healthy omega-3s in fish can help reduce the risk of polyps in women - NYT
• YAY. Spring is here. And its a great time to shake up your exercise routine - Health.com

Garlic Ginger Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are a wonderful and tasty compliment to any meal. I wanted to use them with my Spicy Thai Roast Chicken so I decided to put together a side dish that would pick up some of the flavors from my Thai marinade. Garlic and ginger added a nice compliment to the sweetness of the potatoes, while not overpowering the dish. Plus, this ended up being an incredibly lean and healthy recipe. Just a bit of olive oil and some skim milk is all you need to get a tasty, creamy texture. This recipe will yield four large servings or six smaller servings, depending upon your appetite. The best part? A large portion of this dish has only 195 calories and 6 grams of fiber.

I also wanted to give a shout out to the lovely Eva from KitchenInspirations who not only made my whole wheat cheez-itz this week, but send along four lovely awards for me. I am always so flattered when someone makes one of my recipes, so I was especially excited to see these yummy, healthy snacks on her site. If you haven't already, I urge you to check out her blog, she makes amazing recipes and has the most gorgeous kitchen!

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Spicy Thai Roast Chicken

Roast chicken is a delicious and economical meal. Whenever I find a sale on whole chickens at the grocery store, I get really excited to think up a new way to roast them. I particularly love cooking whole chickens because you can get so much mileage out of one. Yes, it takes a while to cook, but you get lots of leftovers that can be used to make a whole bunch of tasty  meals.

So, I decided that an Asian twist on traditional comfort food was in order. I decided to use some Thai flavorings to spice up traditional roast chicken and mashed potatoes.

This spicy Thai marinade is a recipe I developed a year ago and have been perfecting ever since. It is spicy and complex and whenever I use it, I get tons of compliments. I decided to try it with a whole chicken to see what happens. I am happy to report the results were fabulous. The meat was super juicy and flavorful and had the right amount of heat and tang.

Note: cooking roasts can be tricky, since you want everything to be cooked perfectly. In order to do so, I always use a digital meat thermometer. I got one for $19.99 at Bed, Bath and Beyond and it has paid for itself many times over. It has an alarm that lets you know when the meat has reached the desired temperature. I love it since I don't have a fancy stove with a roast probe, yet.

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