The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘recipe’

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!

I was looking online a few weeks ago for slow cooker recipes – BBQ chicken to be specific – that would be relatively easy to make.  I typically turn to the cookbook, Fix It and Forget It Lightly, for all of my slow cooker recipe needs.  But this time I was unable to find a relatively simple BBQ chicken recipe.  Every recipe in the book required a minimum 10 ingredients because you would be making the BBQ sauce from scratch and not using the bottled sauce.

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.

One thing I dislike about my job is that we have a busy season stretching from the beginning of January until the end of February and sometimes into March where we are working and ordering in delivery food every single day.  It gets very old, repetitive, and unhealthy.  One thing I promised myself this year was that I would not be ordering in junk everyday.  I would either bring food from home or I’d order a salad and use my own dressing.  I have to say that I have been successful so far thanks to lean cuisine and their expanded line of frozen meals.  I have not gained a pound but I haven’t lost anything either.  I guess I should be happy about the no gain when I’m sitting on my butt 12 hours a day.

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!

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.