The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘meals’

I don’t know why it is so damn hard to update this blog and keep it current. I mean, I eat every day, I cook each week, and I half-ass count my Weight Watcher points online. One would think I could post my meals and reviews but apparently I have gotten totally lazy! This is going to change and it will begin tonight since I spent my hour lunch break at work creating my July 2010 menu. I’ve never done this but I’ve read about it all over the internet and have been meaning to do it. Now that I’m not working 12 hours + a day, I can think about planning and being healthier.

So I am hoping to accomplish a few things with this menu planning thing. The first is I hope to cut my calories down by preplanning fun, new recipes and mixing them in with some tried and true favorites. Second, I am hoping Mike and I can cut our grocery shopping list down and save a little money here and there. Fingers crossed!

So if this works right, here is the July 2010 menu. I have added known Weight Watcher points where I could and plan to add points after I make something and can calculate the points. I have linked to recipes that I have posted in the Sunshine Rewards Forum or recipes I found there. Any other recipes are from the Hungry-Girl cookbooks and I’ll post them as I make them. Just yell at me if there is a recipe you want and I haven’t shared it in a timely manner or if you want to skip ahead.

July 2010 Menu Plan

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.