Crawfish Casserole

1 tbsp light margarine
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb crawfish tails, rinsed
1 can 99% fat-free cream of XYZ soup
3 cups cooked rice
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
salt & pepper
dash red pepper
1 can chopped tomatoes and green peppers (aka Rotel)
1/2 cup shredded fat free cheddar cheese

In a large pan, coated with nonstick cooking spray, melt margarine. Add onions, green peppers, and garlic. Cook until tender. Stir in crawfish, soup, rice, lemon juice, seasonings, tomatoes and green chilies. Mix well. Turn mixture into a shallow 2-quart casserole dish coated with nonstick cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Sprinkle with cheese and return to oven for an additional 5 minutes.

Makes 6 servings

As prepared: 281 calories, 136mg Cholesterol, 4.8 gms fat, 15.2% Calories from Fat

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

I was surfing and came across A Year of CrockPotting blog.  Basically, the blogger used a crockpot to cook/make something every day in 2008.  I have spent hours on her blog copying recipes into Word so I can put them into my rotation because they are so tasty especially since she includes pictures of the ingredients used and how it should look when it is done cooking.  I highly recommend this blog if you crockpot.  There really are 365 different recipes, believe me I was digging through the posts but was not able to finish reading it.

The first recipe I tried from the website was Lazy Chicken.  It really is just that – lazy chicken. LOL.  All you need is a pound or two of chicken, a crockpot liner, and a jar of spaghetti sauce.  It was very quick and easy to throw together during the tail end of busy season.  Here is the official recipe and directions.

Lazy Chicken

1-2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken

1 jar spaghetti sauce (depending on the amount of chicken you may need 2)

1. Line Crockpot with liner.
2. Put chicken in. Cover with sauce.
3. Cook on high for 8 hours (I did 6 hours and it turned out just fine)
4. When you get home boil some noodles for 20 minutes. While noodles are going shred up the chicken with a fork in the pot then serve chicken mixture on top of noodles.

This made approximately 8 generous servings mainly due to the amount of sauce I used.  Next time if I use the restaurant bought (homemade) spaghetti I will be throwing in 2 pounds of chicken and then freezing half of the mixture.  I would estimate about 6 Weight Watcher points per serving maybe less if you use Whole Wheat noodles.

So earlier this week, I decided that I would drag my slow cooker out and make something that I could bring to work.  I had a pound of ground beef and not a clue what to do with it.  So I pulled out my favorite cookbook and found  a recipe for Beef-Lite.  The recipe seemed easy enough and only had 4 ingredients so I gave it a whirl.  Overall it was a good and quick thing to throw into the slow cooker over night while I slept.

Beef-Lite

1 pound extra lean ground beef
1 package dry onion soup mix
1 10 3/4oz can of 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup
1 10 3/4oz can of 98% fat free cream of celery soup

1. Spray slow cooker with fat-free cooking spray or insert 1 liner
2. Combine all ingredients in slow cooker
3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours
4. Serve over brown rice

This recipe made approximately 6 half cup servings when placed over a half cup of rice.  It was fairly tasty but could use a little seasoning but I’m not sure yet what I would add.  It comes out to about 5 weight watcher points per serving including the brown rice.  Not too shabby!

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.