Chicken with Apples and Noodles

Another recipe from the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook!

I love chicken and apples together! Well really chicken and any fruit. Add in noodles and I'm there!

Ingredients:
4 tsp olive oil
1 Granny Smith apple halved, cored, and sliced (I used an apple slicer and then cut the pieces in half.)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 onion, sliced
1/2 cup reduced sodium chicken broth
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 Tbsp honey
2 cups hot cooked wide egg noodles



Heat 2 tsp of oil in a nonstick skillet on medium heat and then add the apples. Cook them for about 5 minutes until lightly brown. Move them to a plate



Salt and pepper both sides of the chicken, put the other 2 tsp of oil in, and then add the chicken to the skillet. Cook until both sides are done. Move that to a plate.

Add the onion into the skillet and cook, stirring until tender, about 5 minutes (there's a lot of skillet babysitting in this recipe, set the laptop up on the counter and surf facebook or read a book while its going...not that I do that!)

Add the broth, vinegar, and honey, and stir. Cook that about 2 minutes until thickened. put the chicken back in and cook it through, spooning the liquid over it here and there.

Return the apples to the skillet and cook until heated through. Put the noodles into a plate or bowl and then put the chicken, sauce and apples on top. Enjoy!

Its four servings for about 8 WW P+ per serving and 320 calories, 9 g fat, 33 g carbs, 2 g fiber, and 28 g protein.

If you're cooking for two and want to halve the recipe, I would just half the chicken and noodles, but keep everything else the same. If you're doubling double the whole thing.

Side note: if you walk away to clean the knife and put it away after you slice the onions in my house, this may happen:

How I Do Pizza

Pizza is my weakness. I cannot give it up all together. I cannot eat a tiny little slice and call it a day. I need my weekly fix or its ON.

So this is how I get my weekly fix without losing my progress.

Its cheap, its not too unhealthy, and its easy. My watch words. You can add whatever toppings you'd like short of making it a meat lovers replica without too much damage. Especially if you stick to veggies and turkey pepperoni. Most of the time, because we are not a veggie on pizza family, I just do the turkey pepperoni. It adds all of 50 calories. No biggie.

So here's what you do.

Take a Pillsbury thin crust that you find in a tube in the refrigerated section with all of their other lovely tube products. Roll it out onto a cookie sheet and pre bake the crust for 5 minute at 425.

Once that's done, take it out, spread all the pizza sauce you want on it. I don't measure pizza sauce. It should probably be half the jar.

Then sprinkle with 2 cups of shredded part skim mozzarella. The finely shredded will spread better. Fat free may save you some more calories or points, but I think it tastes like plastic. Then sprinkle some seasonings over it. Garlic powder is a must for me. And basil and oregano.

Then top with whatever you want and bake for another 6-10 minutes!

Sure there are more guilt free pizzas out there. Make it on a pita with less cheese, buy some whole wheat dough...but this is classic and dummy proof and easy and kid friendly.

So how have I been able to keep losing or maintaining weight for a year and a half straight will eating pizza every week? Pretty much this way.

1/4 of the finished product is 415 calories and 10 WW P+ with just cheese.

Oh and if you're feeling even lazier and want pizza minus guilt, DiGiorno Flatbread frozen pizzas are wonderful and pretty guilt free. Also check out Newman's Own (my husband has banned me from buying it though, says it taste's like cardboard...I thought it was fine!) and Amy's which would be in the organic section.

For take out pizza, I love Mellow Mushroom. Love, love, love. Its not any worse than any other pizza place (maybe even a little better) and has whole wheat crusts and natural ingredients.

For take out, always go for the thin crust unless there's a flatbread or whole wheat option. And as a former Pizza Hut employee (15 years ago, but I doubt its changed)...AVOID the pan pizza. I used to squirt the oil into the bottom of those pans, and trust me, its a lot!

Berry Crepes with Turkey Bacon

This is knock off of one of my favorite things to order at First Watch...except mine don't come with a huge muffin on the side.

The recipe for the crepes came from Weight Watchers' New Complete Cookbook.

Crepes
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 whole eggs
1 cup milk

Then I added 1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 packet of splenda because I'm making a sweet recipe. I imagine you can put all kinds of seasonings into the crepe recipe depending on what you're doing with them!

First, mix all the dry ingredients, the flour, salt and seasonings in a bowl. One that holds at least a few cups.

Then whisk the eggs and milk together until well blended in another bowl. Pour the milk and egg mixture into the dry ingredients' bowl and whisk until well combined. L

Leave sit for at least 15 minutes (great to make ahead and refrigerate for a couple hours, or even overnight!) Stir it again right before you're ready to start cooking.

Then when ready, pour by scant 1/4 cups into a hot skillet sprayed with cooking spray. You may need to turn the skillet and use the spatula to keep it all together in a circle or something resembling it.

You may get some strange shapes. I think instead of tea leaves you could read fortunes by crepe batter shapes. "This looks like the state of Minnesota. I see traveling in your future!"

Anyway, when the batter seems to be done on one side (it kind of changes color and bubbles stop popping), flip it carefully and then cook on the other side for 30 seconds or so.

You don't have to serve these hot, in fact its better if they sit a bit. So make the a little ahead and refrigerate or even freeze between pieces of wax paper.

Or as I did, get the done then take a little break to calm a child down from a fit finish the rest of dinner!

To make them as I did here, fill them with fresh berries (strawberries and blueberries here), then top with yogurt. I used Yoplait Light Triple Berry Torte flavor. Then top with 2 Tbsp of granola. This is Bear Naked Vanilla Almond.

Serve with 3 pieces of turkey bacon. You'll get about 8 crepes fro the batch so 4 servings of two each is a very nice meal. (I gave the kids a 'deconstructed' version. They ate the berries and the bacon and gave the crepes to the dog...sigh)

The crepes are about 60 calories each. 60 calories for the granola, about 75 for the fruit, 50 for the yogurt (3 oz). So the crepes are about 305 calories and the bacon 90.

Total for the meal: 395 calories! (WW friends, its 8 P+ for the crepes and 2 for the bacon)

So good you may have to watch out for little fingers snatching granola :)

Texas Roadhouse

It took some planning but I (almost) did it!

Here's 500 calories (ish) at Texas Roadhouse.

Probably should disclose that Texas Roadhouse does NOT publish thier nutritional information so these are estimates according to what people have posted on y Fitness Pal and Livestrong.




Roast Chicken: 276 calories with skin (I didn't eat the skin so you can subtract at least 50 calories for that)
Seasoned Rice: 199 calories for one cup (which is what they give you! I love that they serve it in a little bowl instead of just on the plate where it would be hard to eyeball the serving size)

That's 425 calories or so there.




Then I also had a side salad. I had them leave off the eggs and tomatos (personal preference) and had light ranch dressing on the side so I used a very small amount. I also took most of the cheese off, probably left a couple Tbsp and the croutons as well (my husband likes to munch the croutons, so I didn't have them leave them of all together).

So that comes in at about 500 calories.

The trick is not to eat the rolls. I can't say I succeeded there but I'm on Weight Watchers and that's what we have weekly points allowances for! (My goal is to usually have one semi-indulgent but in control day, which was today! That's what I love about that program, its very liveable).

BTW, rolls with no butter according to My Fitness Pal is 115 calories. So they're okay to indulge a little in but can get out of control fast!

Texas Roadhouse actually has some very good choices. 6 oz sirloin steak would be a great one, I just don't like steak! (I know, Un-American right?) There's some good veggie side dish options, just watch those fries and potatos!

And of course there's good salad choices, just watch the dressing and mountains of cheese.

Unfortunately the chicken critters with steak fries, not a good option. I love those greasy things!

How I Burned Hundreds of Calories (Hip Hop Fitness!)

Last night I went to my second hip hop fitness class with Mike Nicholson (here's his website if you live in Columbus and want to check him out...definitely recommend! This video embedded here is a little intro to what he does.)



I've been to a lot of dance classes in my time. Starting at age 4 with the Joan Garrett Dance Studio's tap dancing lessons. Luckily the grown up classes aren't so strict about knowing your left from your right (which I'm still not so great at when moving fast!)

I danced all through childhood and am glad I did because whatever coordination I have, which isn't much, probably comes from that. Is it sad that I had 10 years of dance lessons and I still have no rhythm? Probably.

As an adult I've gone to Zumba classes, 'latin fusion' class at the gym, and now hip hop. Varying levels of difficulty with hip hop seeming to be the hardest...but it really wasn't! They were all very accessable!

The Latin Fusion class was probably the easiest one, and was actually cancelled at my gym a few weeks after I first tried it due to lack of attendance (there's now a Zumba class at that time that I wish I could make it to but the kids are always too hard to get away from on Monday evenings) It had more instruction and slower pace, kind of like a dance workout DVD (or all the ones I've done).

But Zumba and Hip Hop are very similar (this class anyway...I should probably add that its part of a program that offers Zumba too). Minimal instruction, just jump right in. And its easy to jump right in because the moves are repetitive enough and there are enough people in the class who really know what they're doing adn are amazing, that you can just watch them and pick it up in no time. And if you don't? Just move around like a crazy person and burn calories anyway! No one cares if you look like a fool! This isn't a recital, this isn't 'da club', its a bunch of people looking to have fun and get a good workout in.

All levels of fitness were there. ALL LEVELS. And there was probably a forty year age range represented. Maybe more than that because there were a couple little ones rocking it out with their moms here and there.

Want to talk about a stress reliever? You REALLY don't think about your problems in a dance fitness class. You don't think about much more than the dancing and the music! And maybe your sweat. (I don't know about you but when I do yoga, they say push it all out, but I think A LOT).

Definitely recommend to keep exercise fresh, get out of your comfort zone!

By the way? Probably burned 500-600 calories during this class (total conservative estimate. I wore a heart rate monitor during the first one and it went through the roof!)

500 Calories or Less at Chick-Fil-A

Any mom who lives anywhere near a free standing Chick Fil A knows its the place to be with kids. (Unless your child has a peanut allergy but that's another issue...)

You can sit, eat, visit, and let the play where you can see but not hear them if you're lucky enough to get a table by the window! And during weekday lunchtime they even have a super nice person on duty in the dining room to help you get your food to the table, get yourself set up, get any extras you need, and even get your trays for you when you're done! They'll even set up place mats for the kids!

And this time my kids even went in and played by themselves for the first time without freaking out that mommy wasn't in there with them! (Woo hoo! Because as much as I love my Chick-Fil-A, that play area is claustrophobic! And having to climb up the slide to retrieve a scared child who knows how to go up but not down is no picnic either. Not that I've done that a time or twenty-six...)

So all of that intro aside, here is my 500 calories or less meal at Chick-Fil-A. A Chargrilled Chicken Cool Wrap with ranch. I only use a tiny bit of the ranch. Less than 1 Tbsp. Its not the lowest cal thing there but its made up of healthy (for fast food) components. This is my favorite warm weather meal there (for when its cold outside, I luuuuuuv their soup).

My dining companion (another mom I was meeting there) had a Chicken Salad sandwich and fruit, which is also a good choice. That sandwich comes in right at 500 calories and is probably the highest calories of all of their sandwiches, which are pretty low in general, but it certainly looked more filling than some of the others.

In fact, most of their salads and sandwiches are under 500, I think because they typically don't have cheese or mayo on them (and its all skinless chicken breast...sometimes breaded and fried chicken but still skinless chicken breast). You get yourself in trouble when you start adding sides. Small waffle fries are 280 calories. Those with a Chargrilled Chicken sandwich would be 540 total. Not the worst, but you can do better there. You can fit them in without too big of a hit though if you get them with kids meal nuggets. Four nuggets are 130 calories. Just watch those sauces! Those little packets are as much as 140 calories! (BBQ and honey mustard are your best bets at 45, Chick-fil-a sauce, polynesian and ranch, are the higher ones)

So here's the damage:

Chargrilled chicken cool wrap: 410 calories, 12 g fat, 49 g carbs, 33 g protein, 11 WW P+
1 Tbsp Ranch dressing (the full fat stuff): 80 calories, 8 g fat, no carbs or protein, 2 WW P+

Total: 490 calories!

Blueberry Banana Oatmeal

You're not going to see a ton of breakfast recipes from me. I literally eat this every morning right now. Except once in a while when I eat Cheerios instead. (I do make breakfast for dinner once in a while though!)

I came up with this recipe when I was reading a list of super foods. Blueberries are one of the best things out there for you when it comes to the big antioxidant punch they give you. Oats were also on the list and are known to help lower cholesterol. Bananas help fill you up and the milk is my way of guaranteeing at least 1 serving of dairy in my day, whcih is very iportant for women and sometimes I let it fall by the wayside. (Plus, 8 g of protein more than if I cooked the oats in water.

Blueberry Banana Oatmeal

Ingredients:
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
3/4 cup 1% milk (or whatever you have on hand...I like to use milk rather than water so that I get my dairy servings in. Otherwise its kind of hit or miss whether I will...the other 1/4 cup of milk goes in my coffee, btw)
1 packet of Splenda (or sweetener of your choosing)
A dash or two or three of Cinnamon (its a super food! Cinnamon is known to help control blood sugar)
1/2 cup frozen blueberries dethawed (or fresh if its a good time for those)
1 banana sliced

Combined the oats and milk and microwave according to package directions (I do 2 1/2 minutes)

After cooked, let sit for a minute or two then add the splenda and cinnamon. Stir.

Then add the bluberries and stir, then the bananas.

Yum yum! (For bonus protein and healthy fats...and a nice crunch...add a small bit of chopped unsalted almonds...like a Tbsp or two)

With the milk that ends up in my coffee, it comes in at 400 calories, 76 g carbs, 6 g fat, 14 g protein, and 7 WW P+

The stats are probably less if you have a three year old sitting in your lap asking for bites and stealing blueberries like I do. Oh and sometimes when you stir it all up the whole bowl is blue. Blue oatmeal, can't beat that!