The Healthy Tales

A few weeks ago, Mike and I headed over to San Antonio to visit his family.  As we were heading back to Houston, Mike’s mom pulled out two pounds of frozen shrimp to send home with us.  I hated to tell her that I had two pounds already back in the freezer because I didn’t know how to cook it but I didn’t and took it gladly and decided I needed to find a recipe.  So off to Google I went looking for a recipe to use up at least two of these four pounds.

I found a great recipe to try out -> BBQ Shrimp and Pineapple Skewers.  The recipe comes from Razzle Dazzle Recipes.  The recipe did not call for a lot of ingredients and seemed easy enough to make at home so I decided to grab all of the ingredients today at the grocery store and give it a whirl.  What I found was that it really was a great and tasty recipe but the skewer part didn’t work out too well as the end of my skewers are thick and combining that with the thick chunks of pineapple raised the shrimp off the grill plate and they were not cooking.  Once I removed the skewers from the process everything went well.

We had this with my garlic and lime asparagus (recipe to follow) which went very well with the pineapple. I give this recipe two thumbs up and will make it again. I failed to point out the recipe for Weight Watchers but I would think that this would be no more than 5 WW points and the asparagus is about 2 or 3 WW points at the most. I’ll try to remember to do this next time.

Pineapple Barbecued Shrimp Skewers

1/4 cup barbecue sauce
1/2 cup pineapple juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh cilantro leaves
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 – ripe pineapple, peeled, cored and sliced into 2-inch chunks
4 – metal or bamboo (soaked in water) skewers

In a mixing bowl, combine the barbecue sauce, pineapple juice, lime juice and cilantro. Pour half of the pineapple-barbecue sauce mixture into a resealable bag, add the shrimp and marinate for 15 to 30 minutes. (Reserve the remaining sauce mixture for basting and serving.)

Preheat the grill to medium-high.

Remove the shrimp from the marinade, discarding the leftover marinade. Skewer the shrimp and pineapple onto the skewers. Grill the skewers on both sides until the shrimp are just cooked through, about 3 to 4 minutes per side. While the skewers are cooking, brush them with some of the reserved sauce.

Serve the skewers with the extra pineapple-barbecue sauce for dipping.

This week is shaping up to be a lazy one so I’m hoping to turn that around before I get to work this morning.  Mike is in Beaumont again which leaves me home alone with no motivation.  I have a few mid-week deadlines for work as well which means by the time I get home I have a feeling I won’t want to do much.  I am going to set some mini goals though to try and combat that.

First goal: Go to the gym twice this week by myself.  I hate going to the gym and I hate even more going to the gym without Mike.  It is just lonely and boring.  I stepped on the scale this morning and didn’t like what I saw so I think I need to get over this attitude.

Second goal:  Eat healthy meals this week, do not give in to junk food at work and unplanned happy hours.  Do not create happy hours at home with the Magic Bullet (yup I have the As Seen on TV product) even though it creates great margaritas.  Sounds like a reasonable goal.

My menu for this week to help accomplish goal #2:

Monday – Lunch: shrimp alfredo lean cuisine, fresh fruit, yogurt,

Dinner: grilled chicken, asparagus, fresh pineapple

Tuesday – Lunch: tortilla crusted fish lean cuisine, fresh pineapple, yogurt

Dinner:  crawfish etouffee, asparagus, small salad

Wednesday – Lunch: jambalaya, fresh fruit, yogurt

Dinner: grilled chicken, small salad

Thursday: lunch: Chicken parmigiana lean pocket, fresh fruit, yogurt

Dinner: Grilled Chicken salad

Friday: lunch: Chicken parmigiana lean pocket, fresh fruit, yogurt

Dinner: Homemade pizza

Saturday: lunch: beef taquitos

Dinner: BBQ shrimp and pineapple skewers

Recipes and photos to follow. For more Menu Planning Monday visit I’m an Organizing Junkie.

So a few weeks ago, I was on a blog that promoted coupons and free samples. I love free samples because they are free and provide me a little mail to open each day. One of the samples posted was for 1 free Bear Naked grain-ola bar. I love Luna and Pria bars and thought this one would be the same so I filled out my information and selected the chocolate cherry variety to receive.

My granola bar came this week and I was excited to give it a try. I brought it to work with me as my mid-afternoon snack figuring it would be healthier than the Zapps chips we keep in the audit room. That thought held steady until I opened the bar and started eating it. I flipped the wrapper around and was shocked to see 230 calories, 10 grams of fat, and 33 grams of carbs – only 4 grams were fiber. I think I would have been better off sticking with those chips! 5 Weight Watcher points, gone!

On to taste, as I mentioned, I selected the chocolate cherry flavor. Unfortunately, the bar tasted more like banana bread and I don’t recall finding any chocolate or dried cherries mixed into this bar. This bar is nothing like the old Luna Chocolate over Cherries bar so if you were a fan, don’t waste your money on this as a replacement.

There was a variety of nuts and grains throughout the bar. I was happy to see bits of pecans as you don’t see those everyday in granola bars. The rest of the ingredients though, sigh. The bar might be natural but syrup, molasses, canola oil, sunflower oil, etc adds up and also makes for a bit of a sticky bar. Yes, this bar is soft unlike the other bars that I have mentioned before so while you could take it on the go and avoid crumbs, you have to keep it in the wrapper or risk it falling about or gumming up your fingers. That could be a plus or a minus depending on where you are running to.

Overall, while I thought the taste was fine, I would not buy a box of these bars at the grocery store. The nutritional ingredients are just way too high in calories and fat and with only 22 weight watcher points per day I can’t afford to spend 1/4 of them on this one product. Also, I want my chocolate and cherry flavors!

Happy Labor Day Weekend!  I’ve taken the day off to run errands – mostly involving my name change.  Bleh!  I hope it will be fast and painless but these are government agencies so you never know what to expect.

My recipe for today is a family favorite.  By family favorite, I mean my entire mother’s side of the family.  I don’t know who developed this recipe or when we started eating it but you can’t pry our fingers away from a pot when it has been cooked.  Normally you have to make 2 batches for us crazy people – 1 to eat immediately and 1 to freeze.

When my grandmother was sick, we use to joke with her that this recipe had special healing powers.  She would go in once a month to have her chemo treatment.  She always picked the first Sunday of the month.  She would feel terrible the rest of Sunday and through Tuesday.  Wednesday was my day off at the time other than Sunday so I would always go over to visit on both of those days.  On chemo week, my mother and I would gather all of the ingredients for this recipe and get to work in her kitchen while she rested and then when it was done we’d bring her a big bowl and she would start feeling better.   I don’t think this recipe really has healing powers but she always knew once she had chicken spaghetti she would be on the upswing the rest of the month.  I guess it was just a small thing to look forward to.

Chicken Spaghetti

• chicken (you can use anywhere from 1 breast to a 1.25 lb of chicken breasts)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 stick oleo or butter (you can cut this or eliminate it – I normally eliminate)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 can tomato soup
• 1 can died rotel (regular or mild)
• 1 pound of Velveeta Cheese (look for the light or 2% package)
• 1 package of vermicelli noodles

1. Boil chicken with 1 bay leaf until cooked (~30 to 45 mins). Let cool
2. Saute onion in butter in an oven safe soup or stock pot
3. Shred your chicken into small pieces
4. Add Can of Tomato soup and can of Rotel into onion pot.  Stir until mixed.
5. Start boiling your noodles.  Boil in same water that chicken was boiled in to add flavor
6. Chop your Velveeta cheese into small chunks.  Start adding to soupy mix.  Stir until melted.  Add more, Stir.  Repeat until all cheese has been incorporated and is fully melted (very important!!)
7. Add in Chicken to mixture.
8. Drain noodles.
9. Add cooked noodles into cheesy chicken mixture and mix very well.  Make sure all noodles are coated and mixture is throughout the mass of noodles.
10. Bake in oven at 350 degrees until the mixture bubbles.  Normally this is 10-15 minutes.  Not very long at all

I don’t have all the nutritional information on this recipe but if you stick with a 1 cup serving it is 6 Weight Watcher points.  This recipe makes 6-8 servings depending on how big your 1 cup serving is.

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.