The Healthy Tales

Last night, I was having a hard time falling asleep so I spent a little longer online playing around and reading emails.  I was up so late that I was able to catch today’s edition of the HungryGirl newsletter.  This newsletter was for unusual but tasty breakfast foods that would be quick and easy to make.  So the item that caught my eye, because I had all of the ingredients, was scrambled eggs and laughing cow light cheese made via a coffee cup and a microwave.  I have been in the mood for breakfast tacos recently and decided to give it a try this morning as I dealt with laundry.

So what did I think?  Overall it wasn’t too terrible.  I will admit that the eggs were a little weird looking during the whole cooking process.  They were scrambled but didn’t have the same look as scrambled eggs during and after the process but they tasted the same.  They worked well for breakfast tacos because it was one or two lumps of egg and not lots of little pieces so I could transfer them over to the tortillas fairly easily.  Next time I make them though I am going to make less.  I felt 1/2 cup of Egg Beaters was just too much egg for me in a breakfast taco.  Otherwise 4 stars and a great way to have eggs before heading off to work.

I am not huge on fast food breakfast but every now and then I get a craving for some McDonald’s Hashbrowns or a McGriddle or a McMuffin.  Luckily it is not often because they are killers when it comes to Weight Watcher points.  I came across a McMuffin “Weight Watchers” swap a while ago.  I can’t remember where I found the recipe or what actually was in it but I decided it couldn’t be that hard to figure out myself.  So a few weeks ago I decided to give the swap in my head a try.  I have to say, I did a pretty darn good job because now I am hooked on my McMuffin swap and it is super easy to make even on work days.  In under 5 minutes, I have everything cooked and ready to be put together.

So here is how you do it:

Ingredients:

1 Lite English Muffin
1 Slice Fat Free Cheese
1/3 cup of Egg Beaters
1/4 cup frozen veggies
2 pieces precooked turkey bacon

How to cook:

1. Preheat your skillet on medium heat.  Spray with non-fat cooking spray
2. Cut English Muffin in half.  Put in Toaster and start cooking
3. Put 2 slices of bacon on plate and microwave for 20 seconds.
4. Cook frozen veggies until they are soft.  Then add the eggs.  Scramble until cooked.
5. Take out English Muffin and put sliced cheese on it.  Microwave for 15 seconds until cheese is melted.
6. Add turkey bacon to english muffin and then egg/veggie mixture.  Season with Salt/Pepper and put the top of the muffin over the eggs.

Voila!  You have a great Egg McMuffin swap and it is only 5 points!

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!

A few years ago, I decided to try Weight Watchers and one of the best support systems I have found has not been attending the meetings, but rather reading posts on Dottie’s Weight Loss Zone. It is a regular message board atmosphere focused on the ups and downs of weight loss while on Weight Watchers. I have found numerous recipes in the forums that I make over and over. Cheesy Chicken and Rice is one of them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to cook this week, but I went shopping in my pantry and found all of the ingredients and knew it was a sign. So right now Cheesy Chicken and Rice is about 30 minutes away from being dinner.

All you need are 7 simple ingredients:

1.5 lbs of boneless skinless chicken breasts (or tenders), 1 cup instant brown rice, 1 envelope Lipton’s dry garlic/mushroom soup mix or onion soup mix, 1 can of Low Fat Cream of XYZ soup, 2 cups water, and 4 oz Velveeta Light.

Start by layering the bottom of your casserole dish with the brown rice. Like so:

Next cut the cheese into small chunks. Once you are done combine the water, soup, soup mix, and a few pieces of cheese and heat until the cheese melts. Add more cheese, heat, stir, and repeat until the cheese and soup have melted into the water.

Next, remove the chicken from package and assess the size. I find tenders work the best for this recipe but breasts will do fine. If you are using breats, you might want to consider cutting them into small pieces and even using a meat tenderizer to decrease their thickness. Just be careful not to pulverize the chicken if you choose to use a tenderizer.

Place chicken pieces on top of brown rice, and then pour mixture over the chicken and rice. Cover with a piece of foil and cook for 60 minutes on 375 degrees.

Make sure you check on the mixture during the cooking process. I tend to take it out every 15 minutes to stir so that the chicken and rice cook evenly as well as ensuring the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.

After 60 minutes are over, uncover and let cool before serving.

This recipe makes about 6 servings at 6 Weight Watcher Points per serving!

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.