Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup

January 3, 2014 by Christine Skari

Hello, hello, hello! Kyle here. A.k.a: Chief of Food Consumption and Secretary of Stealing Sample Bites.

It’s been a while since I posted something for you all to take a look at. I’m really happy that you all seem to have liked my previous guest post on a Guy’s Opinion on Body Dysmorphia and What I Find Attractive in a Girl.

This one isn’t about something similar at all, but vastly important nonetheless! This post is about my hearty chicken noodle soup!

Before I go on, let me just say thank you to my wonderful, beautiful girlfriend, Christine (He’s totally trying to earn brownie points here. I’m on to you.- Christine), for letting me submit another guest post!

I’m still new to blogging, although one blog post more experienced since last time, so keep that in mind as I just go for it.

Now, on to the soup! This is a recipe that I have been making a lot (probably once a week) up at Santa Barbara. It’s tasty, makes 4 big man servings (or 6 normal sized bowls), and it’s easy to make and store! Perfect college food, eh?

The story behind this soup begins with my younger brother’s Eagle Scout Court of Honor, or, more specifically, the dinner at said event. Basically Christine and I were left with several pounds of leftover pulled chicken. This sweet-savory chicken was originally intended for sandwiches, and both Christine and I originally planned to use it for just that. However, eating it in sandwich form for a few weeks straight didn’t seem too appetizing, so the plan quickly changed when Christine suggested that I try to make some chicken noodle soup for dinner one night.

We discovered two things that night: an amazing, easy to make chicken noodle soup recipe and a great use for all of our frozen, pulled chicken! I have been making and tweaking the soup ever since, and now I am going to share the recipe with all of you!

Note: Christine and I quickly learned that putting chicken noodle soup in a bread bowl is NOT the same as a chowder. It was necessary to speed-take pictures/stuff it in our mouths because that malevolent bread kept on soaking up all the liquid. You have been warned.

This hearty chicken noodle soup is wonderfully filling and has a well-blended chicken and vegetable taste, along with great textures and colors! It truly has a great combination of flavors which mesh and work together really well. The onions and celery really help to create the vegetable portion of the flavor, which balances out the stronger chicken flavor. The carrots give each bite the perfect amount of crunch. And if you make it with a saucy chicken, like Christine and I did originally, it is especially tasty.

Additionally, it’s an extremely flexible recipe. I have prepared it with several slight variations in attempt to make it more or less chunky, salty, and sweet and each time it has come out slightly different but delicious nonetheless!

So, without further ado, here’s the recipe!

I hope you all enjoy reading this post and give the soup a try! It’s really delicious, especially with a baguette or on a cold day. Thanks again for putting up with my shenanigans, and hopefully I’ll submit another guest post sometime soon!

-Kyle

Thinking Out Loud #1

January 1, 2014 by Christine Skari

Today I’m going to be linking up to Thinking Out Loud so I can just type out whatever comes to my brain. Thanks, Amanda, for hosting!

1. Tomorrow I’m going to be hauling some serious butt and cooking up a storm. I go back to school this Sunday and most likely won’t have too much free time to create new recipes. So, I’ve decided to try to stockpile some for future posts so I can keep Apple of My Eye going with a steady stream of blog posts.

Kyle is going to come over tomorrow and making his specialty: Chicken Noodle Soup!

Also on the to-do list? Dark Chocolate Orange Avocado Truffles (a different take on my original Avocado Truffles), the BEST breakfast hash ever, and Brown Sugar Glazed Asian Roast (a family favorite).

Hopefully I make it out of the kitchen alive.

2. How cute is this wallet?

I got it right before Christmas, but didn’t find a good time to blog about it. I usually don’t like spending money on the thing that holds my cards and cash, but it was calling my name and right next to the checkout line. Way too easy to grab it and go! Luckily, TJ Maxx shot down the price so it wasn’t too pricy.

3. HELP. Kyle’s birthday is coming up this month and I have no idea what to get him. This is a rough time of year for me (first world problem), because I have to figure out what to get him for Christmas, his birthday, and Valentine’s Day- all in quick succession.

In the past, I’ve gotten him a leather messenger bag, custom man-jewelry, a ski jacket, sweaters, a tennis jacket, a video game, a custom photo book, and who knows what else. I’m at a loss! If you have any brilliant ideas, I would appreciate it SO much if you could shoot me an email!

4. I’m glad my post on How to Increase Your Pinterest Traffic was helpful to you guys! Those posts always take a long time to write and it makes me so happy to hear from you guys that they weren’t a total waste of time to read ;).

5. I’m thinking about getting a new layout for Apple of My Eye. I’ve been eyeing the Thesis theme, but am a bit hesitant to have to go through the whole remodeling process again. Anyone else have any experience with it?

6. They just released seasons 5-8 of Dexter on Netflix. I know what I’ll be doing the next couple of days.

7. I went to the gym today and completed my “I Don’t Want to Workout” workout and one round of the “Arm Definer” workout on my Nike Training Club App. HOLY HECK was it hard! Definitely feeling the burn from the medicine ball pushups.

Andd that’s all that comes to mind at the moment! Check in tomorrow night for a tasty new recipe!

WIAW: Road Trippin’

January 1, 2014 by Christine Skari

Hey guys! I know it’s odd for me to be posting twice in one day, but I couldn’t help wanting to get in on the WIAW fun even after spending a good amount of time on my post on How to Increase Your Pinterest Traffic.

Here are some of my eats from my road trip back from Tahoe! Not what I usually have, but when you’re on the road for 8+ hours, stopping at Taco Bell and gas stations to eat are your only options and sound pretty damn food.

Lunch was a bowl thing from Taco Bell. Complete with guac, corn, black beans, and chicken. Not too bad for fast food!

Also, can we take a minute to appreciate the awesome lighting the window in the restaurant (can we call fast food places that?) was? Look at that light scraping across the meal. Food blogger problems, I tell ya.

Snacks: half a coke slurpee (too sweet and gave me a headache to drink the whole thing). I couldn’t resist getting one of these when we stopped for a bathroom break. I remember getting one for a treat after most of my soccer tournaments and games when I was younger with my dad. I used to be able to down a huge one without any problem at all! Guess I’m getting more and more like my mom everyday and am starting to lose my sweet tooth ( )

A quick bar before lunch to help tide me over:

After arriving home after a looong drive, we put away our suitcases and bags before heading to my Obachan’s (Japanese Grandma) house for a small New Year’s dinner. We’ll be going over again tomorrow for lunch (New Years is a big deal for Japanese people), but it was so nice to have a delicious and healthy dinner waiting for us when we got back.

And there you have it! I’m exhausted, but had a great trip.

Hope your New Year Eve celebrating is going swimmingly. Mine is being spent in my pjs catching up on some Netflix. Paartyy!

How to Increase Your Pinterest Traffic

December 31, 2013 by Christine Skari

A while back, I mentioned a few ideas for future blog posts that I thought you guys might be interested in. One of the ideas that got the most requests is one on how to increase your Pinterest traffic. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that Pinterest brings in the vast majority of my site’s traffic and I love seeing my recipes, workouts, and general posts being shared and read!

Here are some of the major ways I’ve been able to increase my traffic from Pinterest and gain page views, readers, and self-confidence as a blogger. After all, I don’t think many of us can deny that seeing that our content is being read and enjoyed is a huge self-confidence booster.!

1. Improve Your Photography and Graphic Images

This is by far my number one tip on how to increase your Pinterest traffic. Almost 90% of the people who get sent my way from the site come from pictures of my recipes and this correlated DIRECTLY to me improving my food photography. After I gained some experience with my camera and learned how just the most simple and subtle differences in lighting/composition can make all the difference, I started getting accepted on to food spotlight sites like Foodgawker, Tastespotting, Tasteologie, Healthy Aperture, etc and visitors started to pour in.

Not only was it an added bonus to get thousands of unique visitors directly from those sites, but many of the people who found their way over to Apple of My Eye pinned the recipes and also explored around, leading them to pinning workouts or quick tips like my post on How to Lighten Up Your Starbucks Beverage (which consistently brings in a solid stream of visitors everyday, even though I published it over 3 months ago).

Looking back to my early days blogging about the food I ate, I feel a little embarrassed about the photo quality. Honestly, when I read my posts from just a half year ago I can’t help but wonder, “what was I thinking taking a picture of all those mushy granola fruit salads”? Yes, it tasted delicious, but for the people reading my blog, it probably looked revolting! After all, you eat with your eyes first. Luckily, I think my skill with a camera has increased a bit since then!

In the future, I’m thinking about writing a post on how I step-by-step take my pictures/edit them, but for now, I cannot recommend Lindsay’s Tasty Food Photography eBook enough(<— affiliate link!).

I bought it a while back and after reading it and practicing some of her easily explained concepts, I almost instantly started getting accepted into the Food Submission sites I mentioned above.

I literally did a happy dance when my Healthier Cinnamon Roll Scones appeared on the site and later, when my Healthy Skillet Lasagna was accepted, it ended up being one of the most popular recipes on Foodgawker for a month and was pinned almost 13,400 times! That certain recipe brings in hundreds of visitors a day and, without improving my photography, it would probably have just been lost in my archives- even if it tasted just as delicious!

I really, really can’t stress how much your photography matters when it comes to increasing your audience and traffic!

You can read a more throughout review of Lindsay’s eBook on my giveaway post for it. (Her posts on the income of her food blog is also such an interesting read, they’ve been posting income reports for the past few years and have built their blog up from making only a few dollars a month to over $15k. Fascinating!)

2. Design your images so they’re easily noticed by the people scrolling down Pinterest. If you’ve been reading Apple of My Eye for a while, you might have noticed that I usually post a picture that has a few images in a vertical collage with a few eye-catching keywords. This gives me an advantage on the site because they take up more room on Pinterest and are therefore more likely to be noticed by those scrolling by.

To make my images, I go to picmonkey (it’s free!), click on the “Make Collage” button, choose “Ducks in a Row”, rotate it so it’s vertical, and get to work putting a few of my images and text on it. Super simple, but it makes a big difference!

3. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers and fellow bloggers to pin your images if they find them tasty or helpful! Social networking is such a powerful tool and great way to connect and help each other grow our sites and get to know each other.

In fact, if you find this post helpful and don’t mind, I would really appreciate it if you could pin a recipe or workout (or two 😉 ).

If you’d like to be friends on the site, here’s my Pinterest account! (shameless self-promotion). Follow me and I’ll follow you back!

4. Another great way to increase your Pinterest traffic is to pin pictures to your site at optimal times. Here’s a chart I found that shows when most people are pinning away!

(Source)

5. Joining group boards (where multiple members of Pinterest can pin) is a great way to expose your site and reach a wider audience of people.

I was thinking of creating a group board where us bloggers could all pin together. Let me know if you’d be interested in joining the group!

So there you have it! I really hope this quick guide helped give you guys a starting idea on how to increase your traffic from Pinterest. It’s SUCH a great tool and viral pins can bring in tens of thousands of page views a day. In my opinion, Pinterest is the #1 best, fastest, and easiest way to grow your blog and I have to give most of my quantitative success as a healthy food/lifestyle blogger to it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Tahoe Ski Trip Recap!

December 29, 2013 by Christine Skari

Most years, I get an awful case of the post-holiday blues. I’m not sure what it is I expect from Christmas (since they’re wonderful every year), but I feel like it has to do with all of the buildup that comes from me preparing for the big day a full month in advance. Seriously, Christmas music and my Pinterest boards start getting played and filled up even before Thanksgiving. Yup, I’m that annoyingly jolly person.

Anyways, as some of you might know, I’m currently in Tahoe on a ski vacation with a bunch of my family, Kyle, and my friend Ryan. We’re having a wonderful time and it’s doing a marvelous job of keeping away the holiday blues!

Here’s what’s Marvelous in My Monday!

Marvelous is taking Kyle skiing for the first time!

I’ve had skis on my feet since I was three years old. My dad decided that it would be a grand idea to take a toddler cross country skiing and I ended up throwing a huge fit (I probably would still throw a fit now if I had to cross country ski all day) and he had to carry me on his shoulders for the rest of the day.

Ever since then, my family and I have gone skiing most winters and it’s one of my favorite traditions. I was ecstatic when Kyle was able to come up to the mountains with us for his first-ever ski experience! After all, he is basically a part of my family already. I kid you not when I say that my mom likes him more than me.

He was a bit rocky with it at first and there was a lot of falling involved, but he’s a chipper guy and was (mostly) all smiles!

The trip was made even more fun by having our giant-of-a-friend Ryan there with us! Ryan also goes to our college and is one of our closest friends there.

Marvelous is delicious lunches after a hard day of exercise.

All that skiing really takes it out of you, and there’s nothing like sitting down to a hearty and delicious lunch. On the menu for the last few days? Beef chili with a side of cornbread (finally getting my mountain cornbread fix!) and one of the best burgers I’ve ever had, justly called the “Epic Burger”.

Marvelous is a rest day.

We went skiing two days in a row and after, everyone was a bundle of sore. Since we only go once a year, the unfamiliar motions make every.single.muscle in your body ache and taking a day to lounge around till 12 in our pajamas was just so nice.

At around 12:30, we headed into the small nearby town to grab some lunch and browse the shops. I ended up getting an Irish stew and stealing some bites of Kyle’s chicken burger as well. Delicious!

Since I’m lazy and the joints in my fingers are sore from gripping my ski poles, I’m going to stop typing and just throw out a bunch of pics. Cheers!

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