The Healthy Tales

Posts Tagged ‘weight watchers’

I really enjoy slow cooking as it allows me to have a pretty tasty dinner without a lot of work. Usually it goes like this: line cooker with special liner, dump meat into pot, mix & pour sauce on top, run to work. Not a lot of work for a great dinner.

So last weekend before running to HEB, I went through my Fix It and Forget It Lightly Cookbook and decided to give Barbecued Pork Chops a try. I’ve made pork chops before in the slow cooker and they have turned out fairly well so I figured why not. The ingredients were things I already had on hand so I just had to pick up the pork chops which were on sale last week.

Barbecued Pork Chops
4 loin pork chops, 3/4″ thick, trimmed of fat
1 cup ketchup
1 cup hot water
2 Tbsp vinegar
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp paprika

1. Place pork chops in slow cooker.
2. Combine remaining ingredients. Pour over chops.
3. Cover. Cook on high 5-6 hours.
4. Cut chops in half and serve.

Nutritional information: 180 calories, 7gms fat, 11gms carbohydrates, 20gms protein

4 Weight Watcher points per serving

My review: The recipe was super simple. I will say though that I was disappointed in the recipe but I think it was more “cook’s error” than anything with the recipe itself. The chops I bought at the store were bone-in and had quite a bit of fat still on them. As I was making this before running off to work, I focused on cutting out the major chunks of fat on the exterior of the chop but didn’t make it to the inside of the chop. Therefore, there was a ton of fat floating around in the pot and all of my chops cooked into a giant meaty clump. It wasn’t very appetizing looking so I decided against posting a photo. Overall, I would give this recipe a rating of 3 out of 5 stars. I would make it again but I would use different chops and possibly a little more sauce to prevent the fat and cooked together issues I experienced.

A few weeks ago, Mike and I headed over to San Antonio to visit his family.  As we were heading back to Houston, Mike’s mom pulled out two pounds of frozen shrimp to send home with us.  I hated to tell her that I had two pounds already back in the freezer because I didn’t know how to cook it but I didn’t and took it gladly and decided I needed to find a recipe.  So off to Google I went looking for a recipe to use up at least two of these four pounds.

I found a great recipe to try out -> BBQ Shrimp and Pineapple Skewers.  The recipe comes from Razzle Dazzle Recipes.  The recipe did not call for a lot of ingredients and seemed easy enough to make at home so I decided to grab all of the ingredients today at the grocery store and give it a whirl.  What I found was that it really was a great and tasty recipe but the skewer part didn’t work out too well as the end of my skewers are thick and combining that with the thick chunks of pineapple raised the shrimp off the grill plate and they were not cooking.  Once I removed the skewers from the process everything went well.

We had this with my garlic and lime asparagus (recipe to follow) which went very well with the pineapple. I give this recipe two thumbs up and will make it again. I failed to point out the recipe for Weight Watchers but I would think that this would be no more than 5 WW points and the asparagus is about 2 or 3 WW points at the most. I’ll try to remember to do this next time.

Pineapple Barbecued Shrimp Skewers

1/4 cup barbecue sauce
1/2 cup pineapple juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh cilantro leaves
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 – ripe pineapple, peeled, cored and sliced into 2-inch chunks
4 – metal or bamboo (soaked in water) skewers

In a mixing bowl, combine the barbecue sauce, pineapple juice, lime juice and cilantro. Pour half of the pineapple-barbecue sauce mixture into a resealable bag, add the shrimp and marinate for 15 to 30 minutes. (Reserve the remaining sauce mixture for basting and serving.)

Preheat the grill to medium-high.

Remove the shrimp from the marinade, discarding the leftover marinade. Skewer the shrimp and pineapple onto the skewers. Grill the skewers on both sides until the shrimp are just cooked through, about 3 to 4 minutes per side. While the skewers are cooking, brush them with some of the reserved sauce.

Serve the skewers with the extra pineapple-barbecue sauce for dipping.

So a few weeks ago, I was on a blog that promoted coupons and free samples. I love free samples because they are free and provide me a little mail to open each day. One of the samples posted was for 1 free Bear Naked grain-ola bar. I love Luna and Pria bars and thought this one would be the same so I filled out my information and selected the chocolate cherry variety to receive.

My granola bar came this week and I was excited to give it a try. I brought it to work with me as my mid-afternoon snack figuring it would be healthier than the Zapps chips we keep in the audit room. That thought held steady until I opened the bar and started eating it. I flipped the wrapper around and was shocked to see 230 calories, 10 grams of fat, and 33 grams of carbs – only 4 grams were fiber. I think I would have been better off sticking with those chips! 5 Weight Watcher points, gone!

On to taste, as I mentioned, I selected the chocolate cherry flavor. Unfortunately, the bar tasted more like banana bread and I don’t recall finding any chocolate or dried cherries mixed into this bar. This bar is nothing like the old Luna Chocolate over Cherries bar so if you were a fan, don’t waste your money on this as a replacement.

There was a variety of nuts and grains throughout the bar. I was happy to see bits of pecans as you don’t see those everyday in granola bars. The rest of the ingredients though, sigh. The bar might be natural but syrup, molasses, canola oil, sunflower oil, etc adds up and also makes for a bit of a sticky bar. Yes, this bar is soft unlike the other bars that I have mentioned before so while you could take it on the go and avoid crumbs, you have to keep it in the wrapper or risk it falling about or gumming up your fingers. That could be a plus or a minus depending on where you are running to.

Overall, while I thought the taste was fine, I would not buy a box of these bars at the grocery store. The nutritional ingredients are just way too high in calories and fat and with only 22 weight watcher points per day I can’t afford to spend 1/4 of them on this one product. Also, I want my chocolate and cherry flavors!

Happy Labor Day Weekend!  I’ve taken the day off to run errands – mostly involving my name change.  Bleh!  I hope it will be fast and painless but these are government agencies so you never know what to expect.

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.

Today I rejoined Weight Watchers.  I didn’t officially join in as that would be an extra budget expense I can’t afford right now, but I did “rejoin” at home today with my pen, paper, and the scale.  I hopped on the Wii Fit Balance board to take my Starting Weight and my Wii Fit Age so that I can track my progress along this fun journey.  I am not participating in any challenges right now but I’m hoping to remember to check with the Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans in time to sign up for their next challenge. Their normal weekly weigh in is on Wednesday but I feel that stretching it out till Wednesday gives me an excuse to overdo it on the weekend and “fix” things by the time I face the scale again. Normally, that means a 0 weight loss and normally a 0 weight gain each week. Not very motivating as you can see. So I’m just going to be a tad early for the Wednesday Weigh in and try to keep myself on track all week.

So according to the Wii Fit ->
Starting Weight: 153.2
Wii Fit Age: 34 years old

Goal: 1 pound lost in 2 weeks, 10 pounds lost by Thanksgiving. Wii Fit age equal to my current age of 27.