Diana's Szechuan Chicken with Peanuts
We had ww at my house, but Diana cooked. She got the recipe from the weight watchers “Take-Out Tonight” book which is AWESOME. Everything in there looks fabulous. Here's the recipe.
Szechuan Chicken with Peanuts
From weight watchers “Take-Out Tonight”

Makes 4 Servings, 6 pts per serving (with chicken)

Ingredients:
1 pound skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips (we used quorn naked cutlets)
3 tblspns hoison sauce
2 tblspns cornstarch
½ cup low- sodium chicken broth (can use vegetable broth)
2 tblspns rice vinegar
2 tblspns sugar (can use splenda)
2 tspns chili-garlic sauce (cut in half if you can’t have the spice)
1 tblspn canola oil
1 tblspn minced peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced on a diagonal
¼ cup unsalted, dry-roasted peanuts

Combine the chicken, 1 tblspn of the hoison sauce, and 1 tblspn of the cornstarch in a medium bowl; toss well to coat and set aside. Combine the remaining 2 tblspns of hoison sauce, 1 tblspn of cornstarch, the broth, vinegar, sugar, and chili-garlic sauce in a small bowl, set aside.
Heat a non-stick wok or a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat until a drop of water sizzles. Swirl in the oil, then add the chicken. Stir-fry until almost cooked though, 2-3 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic; stir-fry until fragrant, about 15 seconds. Add the bell pepper, carrots, and peanuts; stir-fry until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Add the hoison sauce mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils and thickens and the chicken is cooked though, about 1 minute.
We substituted the chicken with quorn naked cutlets and had ours with ½ cup of jasmine rice- It probably still came out to 6 points for the entire plate!

Snack Favorite of the Week!
I just discovered that Nabisco makes fat free fig Newton bars in lil snack packs that come 12 to a box. Hello convenience! Each pack is 2 points as opposed the the non ff packs featured here which are 3.5 points. I also found a site which sells a TWENTY FOUR pack for 11 bux!!! These are great for a snack or dessert and being individually wrapped should keep you from eating too many. It amazes me how many choices we have at the grocery store these days. I think my friend Ryan will be reviewing the smart ones breakfast sandwich next week. Mantry.

Pizza and Game Nite





My high school friends (who are still my adult friends), came over last night for pizza and games. We made pizza on pita bread or as carrie calls it, pitza. I forgot to use her recipe. I bought wheat pitas (2 pts), spread some regular ole pizza sauce on it (1/8 cup) because I could not for the life of me find any Healthy Choice ff sauce (.5 pts.), sprinkled some italian seasoning and pepper, added 2.5 oz of smart balance mozerella cheese (5 pts), and topped it with onions, mushrooms, and some more itialian seasoning. I cooked it on 350 for 6 mins and then broil for another 6 mins to get the cheese a lil golden. They turned out really great! Perfect size, crust was great, mmmm. I added a side salad of spinach, cucumber, olives, mushrooms, msall amount of diced onions and grape tomatoes. I finally tried the wishbone spray vinegarette salad dressing and it was AMAZING! Not too much vinegar, just tart enough, and being able to spray it on allows for full but not over-coverage. Everyone loved it. So the total points for the meal is 8. I might use less cheese next time or do half mozerella and half ff feta. Despite the stack of games, we only got to play Truth or Date Jenga and that didn't even last too long.

Anna's WW Nite



We had weight watcher's at Anna's last night. Diana did hair, I cooked Indian bread,Bubbles begged for food, Anna made her yummy curry veggies, and we watched KOQ (King of Queens) on DVD. Hello Heaven! Anna made this recipe up and it was so delish. I got the bread recipe from a ww cookbook, and we served it with Chipotle style rice (recipe on previous entry- scroll down).
Anna's Vegetable Curry
Ingredients:
1 can of low fat coconut milk
1 cup cauliflower, chopped
3 white potatoes (cubed)
1 1/3 cup baby carrots
1 samall can of peas
1 green green bell pepper, chopped
1 handful cilantro, chopped
1 tsp.salt
1 tsp. pepper
1-2 tsp. cumin
1 pkg curry mix of choice (i used taste ofAsiaaIndiann curry)
Directions:
In a large pot, Sautee veggies in ff vegetable oil spray for 5 minutes. Add salt, pepper & cumin (I sprinkled enough to cover the veggies). Stir veggies for a minute or so. Add low fat coconut milk and curry paste. Let it cook on medium heat for 25 minutes. Add cilantro last to bring out a nice flavor. Serve with rice, enjoy!
Serving size, about 1 cup. Estimated points value is 2-3 points.

Chipati Indian Bread (basically a wheat version on naan is how it turned out)
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup warm water
1 tsp. salt
Directions: In medium mixing bowl, combine both flours and salt. Form a well in the center and add warm water. Mix (Knead) dough with hands 7-10 minutes (I recommend adding 1 tsp of veg. oil with the water to moisten the dough a lil). Set aside and cover, let sit 10 minutes. Split dough into 12 sections. Form sections into balls with your hands.Rolle each ball into a flat, round piece about 6 inches wide. Heat a skillet (I added a lil ff veg. oil spray for each piece) on medium heat and place onepiecee on at a time. Let cook at least 1 min., the top should bubble a little and the bottom should become browned. Flatten each side with a spatula as it cooks. You should cook each side 1-2 minutes. Just eyeball it to see that it's done. Pile em up on a plate be carefull, they are super hot when you take them off the skillet) and serve with curry veggies.
1 point per piece.

Robby's Italian Dinner


Saturday night Robby made me dinner! We had wheat spaghetti topped with Healthy Choice Garlic and Basil marinara sauce. In a skillet he browned 1 quorn nacken cutlet in lemon pepper seasoning, salt n pepper, and ff vegetable oil spray. I made garlic toast on 7 grain bread with spray butter and fresh garlic. The fresh garlic gives it a strong flavor that added to the meal. We split the quorn cutlet and topped it with some chopped basil I had that comes in a tube. I would say we had one cup of the wheat pasta. I estimate the meal to be 7 points, not bad!

Megan's Weight Watcher Nite

We had weight watcher's at Megan's new house. It was Chicken Parmesan made with Quorn fake chicken patties, wheat pasta, and healthy choice pasta sauce. We had a nice salad on the side with Newman's Own low fat vinegarette. MMMMM! Megan originally estimated the meal to be about 7 points, but I think it's more like 9. Either way it was a HUGE delicious meal, I can't believe I ate it all! I couldn't tell that the pasta was wheat either. And Anna brought Krusteaz fat free brownie muffins, so good!

The Diet Soda Challenge
My fellow ww-friend Anna , recently told me that she wanted to cut diet sodas out of her diet. I kinda laughed it off since diet sodas are no calories, thinking drinking them wouldn't change anything. I'm a diet soda addict (meaning I have to have at least one a day) so I think I just didn't want to comprehend giving up my bubbly.
Then I thought about it more. Consuming aspartame everyday is not exactly a good thing. Also, the carbonated can lead to bloating and gas (not pleasant I know). So I got back to Anna and decided to try to cut the diet coke out. I'm replacing it with tea to which I add Stevia, a natural calorie free sweetener made from Stevia Leaf. I found this Article .which doesn't go into why we gain weight from diet sodas. Then I found this Article which debates aspartame and it's long-term effects. I can't say now whether quittting diet coke will lead to any amount of weight loss, but it can't be a bad thing to reduce your intake of aspartame and cut down on the carbonated beverages. So, Anna and I will be taking on this challenge to see if we can find any results of our own. I can't say that I won't have ANY diet cokes, but for now I'm trying to resist them completely and not rely on them each day. Wish us luck!

Grilled Mushroom and Onion Sammich on Garlic Loaf
Carrie's sammich blog has been making me (and many others I'm sure) think about sammiches more lately.
So today I took some leftovers, bought a fresh garlic loaf from Kroger and made yumminess.
The loaf comes underbaked, so you bake it and it tastes all fresh n warm and it has whole garlic cloves in it, mmmmm.
I grilled the onion and mushrooms in ff canola oil spray, added salt, pepper, and season-all.
Spread one slice of the bread with a lil ff nayonaise and put 1/2 slice of 2% pepper jack single on there (wasn't even necessary). Topped it with the onions and mushrooms and added baby carrots as a side. The bread was 3.5 points a serving and the cheese was MAYBE a point (if that). Next time I'll just leave out the cheese. The sammich is small, but I needed to eat some carrots anyway so it kept it healthy.

Chipotle cilantro lime rice and Beef/Quorn Kabobs

I love the cilantro lime rice at Chipotle so I decided to try to replicate it- Robby loves his grill so I thought we could do kabobs with it. We are both vegetarian-friendly so we did 1 skewer of beef and veggies and another with quorn naked cutlests (fake chicken) and veggies
I found the recipe for the rice online and altered it a lil
1 teaspoon vegetable oil or butter - replaced this with smart balance squeeze butter and ff vegetable oil spray
2 tsp. fresh cilantro
2/3 cup white basmati rice
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Lime
In a 2-quart heavy saucepan, heat oil or butter over low heat, stirring occasionally until melted. Add rice and lime juice, stir for 1 minute. Add water and salt, bring to a full rolling boil. At boiling, cover, turn down to simmer over low heat until rice is tender and the water is absorbed, about 25 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork.
KABOBS
marinated 2 quorn naked cutlets in some oiliv oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, water, salt, pepper. I don't have measurements, but try a tablespoon of each of the liquids and a teaspoon of Salt n Pepper and see how that works. Stir the fake chicken around, then add mushrooms, zuchini and let let sit for 10 minutes. Stuck all this on skewers with onions and red bell peppers, grilled and done!
I estimate each plate to be 7-8 points. I measured 1/2 cup of the rice of each plate. If you used quorn instead of beef for the other skewer, it would be 4-6 points for the whole meal.

The rice held the shape from the 1/2 cup measurer, helped the presentation!

Robby had his with a 1/2 avacado, mmmmmm

Vegetarian Low Fat Mexi-Tarts
So, I went to tart cafe recently http://www.tartcafe.com , and got pretty excited thinking about lil personal tarts!
So, I decided to attempt a tex mex tart first. I bought mini quiche tins, put a couple layers of wheat Filo Dough inside (bought it from Central Market in the frozen pie section). It breaks apart in your hands but you can just layer the pieces on top of each other, about 3 layers and they will cook together but still be flaky like filo. Then I added a dollop of ff (fat free) cream cheese at the bottom, then about 1/4 a cup of browned quorn, bell peppers, and onions with taco seasoning added to it in the skillet and some water so it wouldn't dry out. I put in a tablespoon or two of loose corn that I steamed in the microwave for a couple minutes, and smart balance cheddar and 1-2 tablespoons of some fancy hard spanish cheese we found at central market. We each got 2 and I estimate their points value to be from 4-5 points per tart depending on how much and what kind of cheese you use. I think next time I would just have one tart with a side salad or even a bean salad. I also topped mine with a lil warm Tejas salsa. mmmmmmmm.