The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘Recipes’

I’ve tried off and on to be a meal planner. In fact, last Christmas, my father found a cute chalkboard to hang in my kitchen to help with my meal planning. At first, I was really good about writing the names of the recipes I wanted to cook that week or in the next two weeks. Then I started slacking off.

Now that we are back from the wedding festivities, honeymoon, and work is slowing down, I want to try and start meal planning again. I read about it on other blogs and in my weekly Weight Watchers meetings as a great way to help keep grocery prices down and lose weight. With everything that has gone on lately, Mike and I need help with both of those things.

So as I sit here on a Sunday night and plan our weekly trip to the grocery store, I want to ask. Do you have any tips or tricks for meal planning? Does meal planning work for you? Have you found any other benefits from planning your meals in advance? How far in advance do you plan?

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!

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.