The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘chicken’

I just got home from the gym and saw someone that I follow on Twitter post their Meal Plan Monday link and I realized I forgot to post my meal plan for the week. I don’t have anything really fabulous planned but I am testing out a new Weight Watcher friendly slow cooker recipe – BBQ chicken. I hope it tastes as good as it sounds. I’ll post the recipe and photos Wednesday night.

Monday: Brats and Sauerkraut, 1/2 apple
Tuesday: Brats and Sauerkraut, 1/2 apple
Wednesday: BBQ chicken, salad
Thursday: BBQ chicken, salad
Friday: open to go out to eat
Saturday: BBQ chicken pizza, salad
Sunday: open for ideas

I briefly discussed my downfall with budgeting and weight loss - it is my lack of planning what to cook early in the week.  I found a great meme that I hope will help tackle this issue.  If you would like to start meal  planning or participate in this weekly meme, click the banner to the right and visit Orgjunkie.com to leave your link!

This week I will be using the contents from my pantry, freezer, and donations from my mother’s house to create our meals for the week.  I’ll post recipes & photos as I make these items.

Monday – Finish off the Chicken Rollups from my mother

Tuesday – Thursday – Crawfish Etouffee

Friday – Homemade Pizza

Saturday – Company over so probably eating out

Sunday – Sushi (with a coupon!)

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!

After lazy chicken you probably didn’t think I’d find something even easier and lazier did you?  Well, I scoured the internet and my slow cooker cookbooks over the weekend and I found one!  This recipe is called easy chicken and it really was easy.  All you need is 4 chicken breast halves (boneless, skinless of course), a packet of italian dressing mix, and a cup of water.  Yup that is it!  So what do you do?  Here is the recipe:

Easy Chicken

1. 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2. 1 packet of Italian Dressing Mix (found on salad dressing aisle)
3. 1 cup of warm water or chicken broth

Line the slow cooker/crockpot with disposable liner.  Put chicken on the bottom of the slow cooker.  I used a mallet (is that the right word?) and gently beat them until they flattened out a bit.  Next, sprinkle chicken with the Italian dressing mix.  Lastly, pour cup of water/chicken broth over chicken. Cook on low for 8-10 hours. The ideal crockpot size is 4 quart so that the crockpot is 2/3 the way full.  I have a 6 quart so I just added more water so the chicken wouldn’t dry out.  Adding the water diluted the Italian flavor but it kept the chicken moist so I can’t complain.  Next time I will just double the entire recipe.  The recipe makes 4 servings.

Overall, the meal was good.  I served it with a salad and corn.  You could probably serve it over brown rice as well.  I opted for cooking on 7 hours since I didn’t fill the crockpot 2/3 the way full and everything turned out fine.  As previously reported the Italian seasoning was diluted so next time I’ll just double everything and it should turn out fine.  I didn’t calculate Weight Watcher points but I would imagine it would be one point per ounce of chicken.