The Healthy Tales

Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category

It’s Friday and you know what that means – Another great Freezer Friendly recipe!  I am excited about the recipe I have for today.  This recipe is from an old family friend who was just one of the sweetest old ladies you could meet.  Additionally, this is one of the few recipes my grandmother would cook with me.  Normally she didn’t announce she was cooking and would call after to invite me or my cousins up to pick up the food as she wanted to visit with us instead of slaving in the kitchen.  I quite enjoyed cooking with her but it was one of her quirks.

Anywho, my grandmother was battling cancer and my mother and I were over visiting and she decided she wanted to make this soup.  I remember being in the kitchen with her and my mother in the living room watching tv and hearing my mom yell out to us not to make it too spicy.  See my grandmother and I liked “taste” or seasoning, including spice, and my mother did not.  We had already doubled the amount of hot velveeta and cut back on the plain velveeta so there was no helping my mother out.  I think my grandmother and I ate that entire pot of soup…

Broccoli Soup

• 1 can 98% fat free cream of chicken soup
• 1 can 98% fat free cream of celery soup
• 1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom (or another veggie) soup
• 1/2 stick oleo
• 1 onion, diced
• 1/2 stick velveeta cheese, plain (basically 1/2 of a 16oz package – look for the low fat or 2%)
• 1/4 stick velveeta cheese, hot/mexican
• 3 cans of milk
• 1 head of Broccoli – steamed, drained, and chopped

Saute onion in soup/stock pot.  Add in milk and all 3 cans of soup.  Cut the cheeses into small squares and slowly add to soup pot.  Stir until melted before adding in the next group.  Mix in Broccoli.  Heat until all cheese is melted and everything has blended together and heated through.  Serve with ranch flavored oyster crackers.*

*Ranch flavored oyster crackers are basically oyster crackers that have been seasoned with the Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix.  I believe that my grandmother would coat them and then bake for 30 minutes just to toast up the crackers and let some seasoning set in.

Happy Friday once again.  I am glad to see the weekend here.  I would say I’m having a quiet weekend with Mike away at a bachelor hunting/camping party but one of my best friends is coming into town tomorrow morning.  So quiet, but not so quiet.

I know when I set out to share recipes on this site I said I wanted to keep them healthy and Weight Watcher friendly.  Unfortunately, not everything can be healthified or made to be WW friendly and you can’t deny yourself of everything.  Especially not this week’s recipe.

I first had this recipe in college.  I was living in the dorms and on my own food wise as the meal plans (and food) was horrible.  My grandmother got wind of this and started making food and freezing it for me so I wouldn’t starve.  Often times she just made a recipe up from her head and it wasn’t anything fancy but boy was it good and I was happy.  This recipe never really had an official name.  Sometimes it was Taco Pie and other times it was Frito Pie.  Tasted the same either way.  It works well frozen and defrosted and your kids will love it.  Just don’t expect it to be the healthiest thing.  Also, since it is a made up recipe and I never got to cook it with her, the measurements are approximations.

Taco/Frito Pie

• 1 bag of Fritos, crushed
• 1 pound of lean ground beef
• 1 can of turkey chili
• 1 can of beans, Texas Style
• cheddar cheese
• 1/2 can cream style corn
• 1 box Jiffy Corn Bread Mix

Begin by browning the ground beef.  Next puree that can of beans.  Grab an oven-friendly casserole dish and start layering.  There is no measurements to your layer.  Just make sure you can spread a thin (or thick) layer across the dish before moving onto the next layer.  Layers are: Fritos, chili, meat, beans, then cheese.  She normally did 3 layers but 2 would be fine as well.  For the topping make the Jiffy Corn Bread batter following the box directions*.  Mix in a half can of cream style corn.  Pour batter on top of your layered dish and then place in oven.  Bake until the topping is brown (follow Jiffy directions for oven temperature).

* Jiffy mix can be infested with weevils so make sure to buy it the day you make it and sift through it first.

Happy Friday!  I am glad the weekend is here.  I’m heading home to visit my family so no cooking for me this weekend.  I am hoping to see if I can bring back some chicken rollups though as I haven’t had any in a very long time.  We’ll see though.

So this is my first week with Freezer Food Friday.  The purpose of this meme is to share a meal that you can make ahead and freeze to eat later.  So this week, my recipe is for Red Beans and Rice.  It is an old southern favorite and one that freezes very well.

Red Beans and Rice

• 3 cans of Green Giant Red Beans, drained**
• 1 small onion, diced*
• Smoked sausage, diced (use up to 1 pound)
• Celery, diced*
• garlic, minced (to taste)
• Cajun seasoning (to taste)
• Brown Rice

Saute the onion, celery, and garlic in olive oil.  Remove.  Brown the sausage in the same pan.  Drain sausage on paper towel (pat to remove excess oil & grease).  Put beans in a stock pot and then stir in the sausage, onion, celery, and garlic.  Add 2 cans of water to pot and let cook for 30 minutes.  Add cajun seasoning for flavor.  Serve over brown rice.

I tend to do 1/4 cup rice, 1/2 cup bean mixture.  You can serve with cornbread or muffins.  The Vitatop Corn muffins work well and they are only 1 WW point.

This recipe will make 6-8 servings depending on how you serve the rice/bean ratio and the points will be around 5-6 per serving depending on rice/beans.

*frozen, diced onion and celery will do.  If you have a Kroger, look for the Recipe starters bag that has celery, onions, and green bell peppers already diced and use that.  It saves time and money.

**any brand will do but they should be red beans if you absolutely cannot find them you can use Kidney beans but there is a taste difference.

I was looking for some new health related memes and came across Freezer Food Friday.  This meme is dedicated to passing along recipes that can be made ahead and frozen.

Meal planning is one of those tasks that I am terrible in doing.  I always have the grand idea to sit down and think about what to cook but then I head to the grocery store and it all falls apart because I didn’t plan right.  I tend to buy items but none of them go together and when I do have a recipe in mind I’ll forget an ingredient.

After not planning appropriately, the next downfall of mine is making enough meals to get from Monday through Thursday.  Typically that is just one recipe stretched out over 4 days with 2 people.  So by the time Friday hits, I’m tired of eating the same thing or we’ve run out and I don’t want to cook.  So I’m going to try the cook and freeze half method.  I think this will help with the budget as well as help with the weekend revolt I tend to have against the kitchen.  The revolution leads to eating out which blows the budget and packs on the pounds.

I’m excited to start this meme on Friday.  I am going to try and ensure most of my recipes are Weight Watcher Friendly as this is my healthy blog.    My first recipe will be for my favorite – Red Beans and Rice so come back and grab this freezer friendly, and heart healthy recipe!

Historically, I have been really bad about adding fish into my diet.  Every now and then I’ll order a fish taco for dinner or possibly shrimp.  Sometimes I get adventurous and pick up tilapia and put a little blackening seasoning on it and bake in the oven.  I’m not sure why I haven’t been on the fish bandwagon but it might be because if you undercook fish you can get pretty sick (trust me) or I just don’t know what to do with it.

With needing to shed a few pounds as well as being tired of the same old foods day in and day out, I have been trying out a few new recipes.  I’ve tested out homemade grilled fish tacos (A++), salsa fish, and now Lemony-Asparagus Fish.  The last recipe is one I received in a HungryGirl email last week and it looked quick and easy.  Asparagus was on sale so I figured that would seal the deal and I would try it out.  So come Sunday night, I pulled all of the ingredients out and fired up the oven.  Talk about tasty food!  Here is the recipe courtsey of HungryGirl.com.  An actual photo will come later tonight when I fire up the camera.

Lemony-Asparagus Fish
Ingredients
1 package frozen Tilapia filets or other white fish (normally 4 to a pack)
1 bunch of Asparagus trimmed of tougher end, depending on length possibly cut in half
1 lemon, sliced
1 tsp. whipped butter (spray/melted butter worked fine)
1/2 tsp. chopped parsley
1/2 tsp. crushed garlic (garlic powder was ok)
1/8 tsp. salt

Cooking Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, mix together butter, parsley, garlic, and salt to form a thick paste. Set aside.
3. Lay a large piece of heavy-duty foil in front of you. Line up the stalks side by side (like a raft) in the center of the foil. Lay the fish on top of the asparagus.
4. Spread butter mixture evenly over the fish, and top with lemon slices (2 slices per fish). Fold and seal the top and bottom edges of the foil, and then the side edges, to create a well-sealed packet.
5. Place packet on a baking sheet, and cook in the oven for about 15 minutes, until asparagus is tender and fish is cooked through.

Allow packet to cool for a minute then serve 1 raft with 1 fish and 2 lemon slices. The lemon slices will be nice and tender and will nicely “juice” your fish.

PER SERVING: 205 calories, 4g fat, 412mg sodium, 6g carbs, 2.75g fiber, 3g sugars, 35g protein. About 4 WW points per serving. Can’t beat that!