Surviving Weight Watchers, Vol 2: Breakfast muffin

This is one of the EASIEST things you can make to save yourself from the DOOM of HUNGER!! The key? These amazing Oroweat Double Fiber English Muffins. They should be available at most grocery stores, but I usually grab a few packs when I go to Target (I don't have a Super Target, just a regular one with a limited grocery section). The muffins are ONE POINT for the entire thing!! I often use them instead of a bun for a veggie/turkey burger as a way to shave off a few points. THEY ARE SO AWESOME! I also occasionally spread some The Laughing Cow Light cheese on one if I need a filling snack. It is a great substitute for cream cheese or butter (and as a side note, I HATE SWISS CHEESE! This cheese is very mild and tastes nothing like regular Swiss).


So, here's the recipe, a mere THREE points:


Breakfast Muffin (3 points)

1 Oroweat Double Fiber English muffin, toasted - 1 point
1 serving (1/4ish cup) Quick Egg Whites - 1 point
1 wedge The Laughing Cow Light spreadable swiss cheese - 1 point

I learned a trick about scrambled eggs when I used to work at a bagel shop in college that served sammys on bagels. Use a small microwavable bowl ... plastic or glass will work fine. Spray it with Pam, then pour in your egg mix. Microwave for 2-3 minutes, until you can see that the eggs are cooked on the bottom of the container you're using (there shouldn't be any liquid hanging around in there, unless you LIKE that sort of thing. In which case? GROSS). It might appear that your eggs are going to overflow at some point because they get REALLY puffy in the micro, but don't panic, they go back down and I've never had an accident. When you're done you have PERFECT scrambled eggs already shaped in a circle and you can just flip it onto your sandwich!! No mess, no pans on the stove, no overly dry eggs! I actually prefer to eat scrambled eggs this way, even when NOT on a sandwich!!

Surviving Weight Watchers, Vol. 1: Yogurt with fiber

Lately I eat based on getting the maximum food for the minimum amount of points on Weight Watchers. I'm going to try and share a few of the recipes I've come up with and foods I've discovered that have helped me lose 21.5 pounds so far! These combinations are filling, taste good and are healthy even if you're NOT on Weight Watchers!! :)

Yogurt with fiber = 3 points

8 oz. Fage Greek Total 0% Yogurt (plain) -2 points
1 tbs. Honey - 1 point
1/2 cup Fiber One cereal - 0 points
1 cup fresh strawberries - 0 points

I often eat this for breakfast or as an afternoon snack when I'm really struggling. Does the job! Strawberries are in season right now so I'm always looking for ways to get through the huge containers I buy at Costco. It's one fruit you can eat a lot of and it hardly costs you anything! YAY!

Hey look! There's FOOD in my food!

Things are getting all Weight-Watchery around here this week, and since I've been presented with a new eating challenge my creative cook juices have been really flowing! I went walking with a friend on Tuesday who is also on Weight Watchers and she gave me some great tips on how to totally MAX out the amount of food you can cram into your points. Fine by me ... if I didn't love to eat so much I probably wouldn't have to be on WW in the first place! Anyway, she told me that if you make regular oatmeal instead of instant, you get MORE. Also? You can add a tablespoon of brown sugar (1 point) and berries or other fruit. I made myself a bowl this morning and it was only 3.5 points (to give you a comparison, I also ate a 6 oz. container of Yoplait yogurt and that was 4 points. Probably not worth it!)!! The best part was that I was totally FULL after I finished and I didn't have to sacrifice any flavor whatsoever.

I used steel cut Irish oatmeal that I found at Trader Joe's. It takes about 30 mins to cook but MAN was it good! My husband has eaten the leftovers for lunch two days in a row now. It means I have to cook a new batch each morning but I don't mind sharing! :)

After the oatmeal was done, I added 4 tbs. of flax meal. This works out to 1 tb. per serving and added .5 pts. to the meal. It also added Omega-3, lignans, extra fiber and a subtle nutty flavor!!
When it was all mixed together I topped it with the brown sugar and a handful of rinsed blueberries and a handful of pared strawberries (I was curious about how much one of my "handfuls" would be and it was 1/4 cup exactly for each berry. Fun!). And then, I scarfed it all down because my baby was getting antsy!!

Fun finds at Target

Lately my cooking has been, well, sparse. Instant oatmeal, cold cereal, and fried egg sandwiches usually round out the menu during the first half of my day (and if I get in two meals by 2 p.m. I'm in great shape!). Since I now have a little one in tow, I sometimes try and combine my shopping trips as much as I can, which in recent history has included trying to get all my grocery shopping done at my local (NON-Super) Target. At my standard Target, there is a limited selection of cold foods and a few aisles of dry goods. I usually pick up a gallon of milk, sometimes some half-and-half, sodas ... just regular pantry staples to save myself a trip to Trader Joe's or the uber-expensive Ralph's in our neighborhood (we live near a major airport so our prices are very inflated).

In the last few weeks I've made a marvellous discovery!! Archer Farms Macaroni and Cheese. I picked up a box in the Four Cheese Florentine flavor because the only necessary ingredient was water. I can handle that! You add all the ingredients at once, simmer for 12 minutes, then eat. I made the box while totally and completely distracted by baby, ate half, and fed my husband the other half. SO GOOD!

The next time I went back I picked up the Creamy Tomato flavor, which we loved topped with shaved Parmesan cheese, and also the Porcini Mushroom flavor that we have yet to try. This is a nice alternative to traditional "blue box" mac and cheese (which I'm not a fan of AT ALL but weirdly craved while pregnant). I like Annie's Homegrown organic mac and cheese a lot so if you like that, you might like to try Archer Farms! Fun!

Working person's lasagna

My mom packed away her cookbook somewhere because she's trying to sell her house and she asked me to email her this recipe yesterday. Since I typed it out I thought I'd go ahead and post it! This is the basic recipe. I usually substitute ricotta for the cottage cheese, a real egg for egg substitute, add lots of extra sauce (I use two jars) and cheese, double the spinach, and use whole wheat noodles. This recipe is so easy and delicious and fun to experiment with! You can also swap out a pound of cooked hamburger for the spinach for a yummy meat lasagna. What is SO AWESOME about this recipe is that you don't have to pre-cook the noodles. I love that. Just don't forget to add the water to the sauce!!

1 28 oz. jar spaghetti sauce
1 t. garlic powder
1 C. water
1/4 t. water
1/4 t. pepper
16 oz. lowfat cottage cheese
1 8 oz. package lasagna noodles, uncooked
1/4 C. egg substitute
1 10 oz. box frozen spinach, cooked and drained
8 oz. part skim mozzarella cheese, shredded
vegetable cooking spray

Preheat oven to 375. Spray bottom of casserole dish with cooking spray. Add water to sauce. Mix cottage cheese and egg substitute with garlic powder, pepper, and 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese. Lightly cover the bottom of the casserole dish with some sauce. Place a layer of raw noodles with sauce. Drop spoonfuls of cheese mixture over sauce. Layer spinach. Layer noodles, sauce and cheese mixture and remaining sauce. Bake, uncovered 40 to 50 minutes. Sprinkle remaining cheese over lasagna during the last 15 minutes of baking. 8 servings.

Easy Garden Bake

When my mom was here last week she busted out my cook book and made one of her old standby recipes: easy garden bake! It was sooooo good. The whole family left yesterday (sniff, sniff), and John and I were starving for lunch after we got back from our hospital appointment so I rifled through the cabinets and discovered that we had enough ingredients for another batch! Don't you just love it when you don't have to go shopping to make something delicious?! I do. The recipe truly is very, very easy. I doubled it so I could use up a lot of ingredients (John brought in about 10 tomatoes from the garden today and we had just a cup of Bisquick left) and so we'd have plenty of leftovers.

Here's the recipe (don't forget, I doubled the recipe to get a full 9x13 pan's worth):

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a square baking dish (8x8x2) or a pie plate.

1 cup chopped zucchini
1 cup chopped tomato
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
-I also added fresh broccoli because we had it in the fridge. I chopped it up pretty small. You could also add potatoes! If you want to add cooked meat like ham, bacon, or sausage you'll probably want to omit the salt and reduce the pepper (which follows).

Sprinkle above ingredients evenly in pan.



In a separate bowl blend 1 minute or until smooth:
1 cup milk
1/2 cup Bisquick baking mix
2 eggs
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
Then pour batter evenly over veggies and cheese. Bake 30-35 mins.* or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Let stand 5 minutes before cutting. Serves 6.

*For the double portion, I added an extra 15 minutes to the cooking time and it came out perfectly. As you can tell, John and I took out 6 portions on our own!! We were hungry!

Garden fresh goodness!

This week while my family's in town we've been feasting (once again) on the fruits of my husband's vegetable garden: green beans and tomatoes!! Can I just say for the record that home-grown tomatoes taste SO much better than store-bought? It's one of the joys of summer. We've had quite a crop this year of Romas, Better Boys, Beefsteaks, and even a few little Early Girls at the beginning of summer. I've made tomato-basil pizza with fresh basil from my herb garden, we've had TONS of great salad and sandwiches with our tomatoes, and we've also eaten easily 10 pounds of green beans from our back yard (and we even shared some with our neighbors!). I love that we got so many beans from a little package that only cost $1.50!! If you live in a climate that can handle it and have the time, veggie gardens are AWESOME!

Here's John and his dog tending the soil:

John enjoying his beans (or waiting to while I take a picture) with some homemade meatloaf!

This week we made tomato and mozzarella salad with fresh basil:

It was so simple to make ... just cubed fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh snipped basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. We GORGED on this!!

We also made beans and potatoes to round out our lunch (the potatoes were from Trader Joe's, as was the fresh mozzarella):

We boiled the beans and potatoes together in salted water, drained, and then added butter and salt and pepper. YUM! I accidentally left my plate of leftovers out in dog range the other day to make a bathroom run and my basset hound ate ALL the rest of my veggies. I was so MAD!!