diet pizza

gross, right? wrong!! :D by far one of the best pizzas i've ever eaten, i can't wait to eat the other slice for lunch tomorrow!!

i got the inspiration from this recipe

Caramelized Veggie and Goat Cheese Pizza
recipe by me, inspired by above

one precooked 4 serving whole wheat thin pizza crust (mama mary, buitoni)
1 & 1/2 cup sliced baby bella mushrooms
1 teaspoon sugar + pinch of salt
1 teaspoon evoo
2 cups thinly sliced onion (about one medium onion)
1 "cup" fresh spinach leaves - its hard to measure spinach, just get a nice handful
4 ounces reduced fat feta
1/2 to 1 whole roma tomato, thinly sliced

preheat the oven to 450*
heat a skillet and brown the mushrooms
drizzle the pizza crust with a little evoo and rub it in
crumble the feta evenly over the crust
once the mushrooms are browned, remove them from the pan and heat the oil, sugar and salt
add the onions and cook until they're see through and starting to brown, remove
add the spinach and toss around in the hot pan until it wilts
top the feta with the slices of tomato and then the rest of the veggies
be sure to cover the feta with the veggies, exposing it will make it harden
lower the heat of the oven to 425* and put the pizza in for 10 minutes
let cool and enjoy!

~~~~~

this pizza serves 4 at 400 calories a slice. that may seem like a high number for a single slice of pizza, but you are eating a quarter of the pizza and it is very filling. also verrrrrry good! the saltiness of the cheese goes perfectly with the sweetness of the veggies.

i only made half a pizza, but posted the recipe to feed 4. the other half was "meat lovers" and im sure not nearly as healthy, or good in my opinion! but bradley loved it.

Recipe Review

I have several low cal recipes book marked, and I plan to try them all and see which ones fool my husband and which ones will be filed under the "never make again it tastes like cardboard" tab. I don't wanna use the word diet here...

I eat whatever I want. Nothing is off limits. However, I only allow myself a set number of calories a day, so I have to budget them. Kinda like a bank account. Now, say I have $100 dollars to spend at the galleria. As soon as I walk in I see a shirt in the window at express and swoon and go try it on. It's $48 (and you know that's true!). As I'm walking out of the dressing room I notice the clearance rack and realize that I can get two shirts and a pair of jeans for $35. Why on earth would I blow half my money on one shirt when I could get one shirt plus an entire outfit for $13 less??? It works the same way with calories. At the end of the day, I want to come in on budget, and not overdrawn :D Sure I could have a coke, but for the same amount of calories I could have a string cheese and 16 wheat thins, with calories (money?) leftover!!

So when I saw a recipe on eatingwell.com entitled No-Bake Macaroni and Cheese, I wanted to give it a shot.

picture borrowed from foodnetwork.com who borrowed it from eatingwell.com

First of all, it should be titled Broccoli Alfredo. It in no way tastes like macaroni and cheese and if you dive in expecting it to then you might be turned off. With that aside, this is a great recipe! The recipe feeds four at 412 calories per serving, which is a little on the high side but it makes a TON and the serving size is really big. I think they intended it to be the main course, serving it as a side, you can lessen the portion and have fewer calories.

When I saw the calorie count I made one change and used fat free cheese instead, which lowered the count to 327.

Also - We tried whole wheat pasta for the first time. It has slightly fewer calories but extra good for you stuff. Well worth it. I couldn't tell a difference, and once you boil it the dark brown color fades a little. Covered in the white sauce, it looked like regular pasta.

This recipe will be tucked away for future use, filed under "Alfredo".

more, more for less

Tuna salad is one of my comfort foods. Especially the way my mom use to make it, with noodles that were still kinda warm and diced cheese and pickles. Yum! The cheese would get just slightly melty. So good. I try to re-create it but Bradley is a "no noodle in my tuna" person.

While Bradley had traditional tuna salad, on wheat bread with cheese and bacon (ugh!!) I turned mine into "Tuna Noodle Salad... Salad...". This is a dish that you can play with to taste how you want. I used fat free ranch instead of mayo thinking not only would it get rid of all the calories in the mayo, but add a nice taste to the salad. Wrong. You definitely need to add spice/seasoning. I usually add dill to my tuna salad, but got in a hurry last night and forgot. So my dinner was a little bland but still worth it! Next time I'll just have to remember to add the dill!

Tuna Noodle Salad Salad
recipe by me

one serving size your choice pasta, boiled, drained, slightly cooled
1/2 cup tuna
hard boiled egg
1/4 cup fat free shredded cheese
2 tablespoons fat free ranch
add ins of your choice - dill, relish, chopped onion, chopped tomato, dash hot sauce, etc...
bed of lettuce

fork up the tuna and the egg to about the same consistency, stir in the cheese, stir in the ranch, stir in the noodles and add ins. serve atop a bed of lettuce.

~~~~~

Without any "add ins" the calorie count was 470. I ate mine with 10 saltines for an additional 120 calories. Lots of protein!! Big serving!! Also - please excuse my shabby pictures, hopefully my digital camera will turn up soon! Maybe its hiding where my coastas are hiding!!

more for less: lunch edition

With the economy the way it is, gas the way it is and fast food the way it is..... it only makes sense for me to eat lunch at home. I can control the portion, I can control the calories and I get to see my puppies mid day :D

Most of the time you want lunch to be your biggest meal, because you are going back to work and using those calories for fuel, unlike dinner where you're going to sit on the couch afterwards and do a little channel surfing. But today I already knew what I was making for dinner and wanted to save my calories for that.

Last week I did a major grocery haul and cooked/prepped everything I could to make coming home for lunch quick! I bought a "family pack" of yellow squash for $4 that I sliced and browned on the nonstick griddle and stored in the fridge. I also cooked two bags of brown rice that I keep in the fridge until I need it. That way lunch is as easy as measure heat and enjoy!

So today when I stopped by the house to eat lunch and see the swearing in of America's new president, I reached in the fridge for starch and veg and to the freezer for protein. Gorton's seasoned fillets are so great and cook quickly in the toaster oven.

Brown rice really isn't that appealing to me all by itself, but I love to eat it because it keeps me full for hours. So today I added two low calorie condiments and it really impressed me! I now am a brown rice lover.

So lets count it up:

Cajun Blackened Fish Fillet - 100 calories
1 cup yellow squash - 40 calories
1/2 cup brown rice - 75 calories (mixed with the following 2 ingredients)
1 teaspoon margarine - 17 calories
1 tablespoon parmesan (the powdery stuff) - 25 calories

Now obviously the calories are slightly different depending on which brands you buy, but I'm sure this is a good estimate. That comes to a grand total of 257 calories! That is less than most lean cuisines people!! And just look at the amount of food it was:











Still hungry? Add some lettuce and low cal dressing for ~50 more calories. Still hungry? Add a clementine for dessert for 35 calories - and you're still under 350 calories for lunch. Now I know I have seen lean cuisines with a higher calorie count than that!

intervention

Well its a new year.... and you know what that means! Everyone is back on their diet. This year I decided I didn't want to make a diet resolution, I wanted to make a healthy resolution. I want to be healthy. I want to be fit. I want to weigh what I weighed when I got married..... 2 and a half years ago. It was NOT that long ago, how have I gained this much weight?!?! Oh... I know how, I was eating bite for bite with my stick figure husband. Damn his metabolism!!!! So while he went to work every day and performed manual labor to sweat off what he ate last night, I set on my butt answering phones and typing binders. When I went out into the PR world last summer I thought, "Here's my chance, I can move around all day, I can resist snacking by not eating in the car, I can get up and walk around the neighborhood in the mornings since I no longer have a 45 minute commute to work." And I did all of those things..... and I gained weight. GAINED WEIGHT!!!!!!! OHHHH MYYYYY GOSHHHHH!!!

I was mad and I gave up, convincing myself that this is who I am and I'm happy. But the truth is this is not me, and I'm not happy. I mean I have never been that girl who could eat whatever she wanted and still be thin, actually I've never been "thin" but I have been healthy and a decent size before. That is all I want.

So it started small, cut out cokes and tea. Only water and lowcal milk. Easy enough. Then step two, portion control, no more second helpings!!! Little harder. Step three, actually start counting calories. Which is where the sneaky part came in. Making a little bit of food into a lot of food by adding fruits and veggies. That was easy.

In between all of this I was reading, reading and reading about what all my body needs and how many calories I need a day to lose a pound a week. I found lots of inspiration on youtube, seeing ACTUAL people with an actual need to lose weight, actually lose it. That helped a lot. Not seeing some skinny ho on the nutrisystem commercials with before pics that may or may not of been her telling me that I'm a fatty.

Now I've lost 6 pounds and I'm really starting to get excited about it. Almost instantly my face cleared up, as I had been a victim of dietary rosacea for a while. I knew exactly what was wrong with my face, but when people would ask why my cheeks were so red I would blame it on me being hot or sunburned. It was embarrassing to say, "I'm all flushed looking cause I eat pure crap".

One of my main reasons for not eating healthy was, "It's hard to be on a diet and feed your husband too, he isn't satisfied with a lean cuisine and a salad for dinner." Which is true, but this time I wasn't going to let that stop me. Now there have been nights when I had a grilled chicken salad and he dined on a chicken quesadilla AND chicken nuggets, but those are few and far between. He has been very supportive and even joked with me that, "Just because you're on a diet doesn't mean I am" as he tried my new slim version of a once calorie laden dinner.

I said all of this to say, I know I am not alone. So I am going to put this culinary brain to work and come up with some man pleasing dinners that are easy on the waistline.

The first being, taco salad. BIG on taste, BIG on portion, small on calories! And the best part, you stay full for hours, and I mean HOURS, like eat for dinner and go to sleep and wake up still full. That's what I'm talking about!!!

Taco Salad
recipe by me

cook a pound of ground turkey and then season it with taco seasoning like normal.

lay out a bed of lettuce

mix 1/2 cup of each of the following: turkey taco meat, fat free refried beans, brown rice - and kinda spread it out over the lettuce.

top with 1/4 cup of kraft fat free cheese

top with 1/4 cup rotel

top with 2 tablespoons light sour cream

sprinkle 1/2 of an avocado, diced over that

~~~~~

Now I forgot to take a picture, but this took up an entire plate and was mounded way up high. So so so good! All for 585 calories!!! It is full of protein, which keeps you fuller longer. Don't be afraid of the ground turkey, once it is seasoned and mixed with all of this, you can't tell a difference.

Now I'm off to step four.... THE GYM!! :D

My "Presto Pasta Nights" Entry

When I saw this fun little blog-test I didn't scour my arsenal looking for the best recipe. I didn't stay up late thinking about ingredients. I didn't do any of the weird obsessive things I usually do when I am submitting a recipe for the world to see.

Why?

Because this summer I accidentally created my new comfort food recipe. It's nothing fancy. It's not gourmet. It is simply a way to use up all those awesome veggies from the farmer's market. There are no measurements, because you can make it for one or for one hundred and one (Dalmatians).

But it is something that you need to try, and therefore, I'm sending it in.



Presto Pasta Nights was the idea of Ruth over at Once Upon a Feast. It started in March of 07 and now here I am, over a year later, entering a dish.








Summer Pasta
recipe by me

ready cut macaroni - or whichever pasta you are currently in love with
butter
parmesan
evoo
zucchini - cut into half moons
yellow squash - cut into whole moons
vidalia onions - i cut mine into rings
minced garlic

boil the pasta in salted water. drain. while it's still hot toss with butter and parmesan.
heat evoo in a large skillet. add veggies. saute until they reach your favorite stage of done-ness.
add garlic and cook for an additional 30 seconds to a minute.
toss with pasta.
sprinkle top with parmesan.

~~~~~

So there you go. A very simple, very versatile, but still very delicious summer pasta dish.

(sauteed onions not pictured. please refer to the "chick food" post)

po'kchop po'kchop greasay greasay.......

we think yo (fill in the blank)'s E-ZZZY E-ZZZY


The above chant is all the more reason why children should be home schooled. I learned that in first grade.... and we put "mama" in the blank.

But for real I just figured out WHY a first grader should not be singing it. Innocent mind...... hmm hm hmm...... where's that halo....

No really, I'm just blonde.

Now.... much, much later.... I sing it every time we have pork chops. Bradley even quit looking at me weird, he is use to it.

This is a very easy yet VERY scrumptious Giada recipe that I discovered a while back and we have it a lot for dinner. Might I add, you want to shallow fry in evoo. Your canola oils and veggie oils collect under the crust and that is just no fun at all. Evoo gives you a drier fry.

I made that up, but it's true!

Giada's pork chop recipe can be found HERE and it is tried and true! I usually buy butterflied pork chops and then finish splitting them, but any ol' chop will do!

What I really wanted to talk to you about was my new favorite side dish. Grits! They're not just for breakfast people. You can mix anything in there. Treat them like you would mashed potatoes. Wanna mix in corn, cumin, cilantro and a lil lime juice? You can. Wanna mix in cheese and bacon? You can. Wanna mix in sardines and anchovies? You can, I won't judge you.

I won't come near you..... but I won't judge you.

For this meal, I added in mozzarella cheese. Some halved cherry tomatoes and parsley would of been great mixed in, but you know what? I'm married and that's chick food. So... there you go.

My other side dish was canned asparagus (love!) tossed with lemon juice, minced garlic, salt and fresh ground black pepper. This, apparently, is not chick food.

Take note.

Can't leave well enough alone....

Every couple of months I go on grocery shopping frenzies. It usually starts out with good intentions, just going to the store for a few things totalling under $20 dollars. Then I see something I like.... and something else.... and then it is all over.

See I can't knowingly spend lots of money on groceries. It hurts me. I know we have to eat, but I would much rather spend my money on fun stuff, like clothes or shoes. So I have to trick my self into accidentally grocery shopping. In between those times I drop under $20 dollars a week on stuff we run out of and desperately need (read: cheese and bacon and coke zero) at the grocery. This goes on for months.

Well this weekend I had one of "those" shopping trips. I found a new product I wanted to try and it was all down hill from there. I was meal planning like crazy. The product was a macaroni grill chicken helper type thing. I thought, "Yum macaroni grill how bad can it be?!"



I was right! But was it their fault.... or mine??

I tried the above version first. It was a basil alfredo sauce with chicken, noodles and sun dried tomatoes. Ok Bradley is not going to eat sun dried tomatoes. So I omitted those. Plus I only like them on salads, so tata matoes. Then I read the directions. "Brown chicken in butter". That's it? No seasoning?

No no no. Step back macaroni grill... let me handle this.

I chunked up chicken tenderloins and tossed them with a generous amount of italian seasoning. Heated up a few tablespoons of butter with some evoo and cooked my chicken.... all the way through because it wanted you to finish cooking them in the sauce and that's just gross. I also sauteed some onions and baby bella mushrooms in evoo and italian seasonings, and fried some bacon. I mixed the mushrooms and onions with the chicken, sauce and noodles, and topped the dish with crumbled bacon and parmesan cheese.

It was SO good! I guess I can't take any credit for the sauce, I mean right out of the box it was good. It was almost like a pesto alfredo sauce. I asked bradley if he thought it would of been just as good if I had of just made it like the box wanted me to and he said, "I don't want to think about it!"

Part 2 of 2

The meal is complete. Although, I don't think it has a better name. I really really really enjoyed it, I think Bradley just really enjoyed it, he didn't like that the onions still crunched. In his world, all veggies should be mush.

We both love pesto. It was so good! I purposefully fixed our plates to leave enough behind for my lunch today.

Preparation was not hard at all. Excluding the marination process, it took about 45 minutes. It could of been less, but at first I didn't think of multi tasking. It is also a 2 pan meal. One for the pasta and one for the steak and veggies.

Speaking of the marination process, mine really hit the nail on the head. The steak was so full of flavor and no one taste stood out above the rest. They all meshed very well, which made me smile. That is now my go to marinade. I have to buy more roasted garlic dressing....

Let's get started with the tutorial!

Steak with Pesto Pasta
recipe by me

one steak, your choice of cut and weight, fully marinated and brought to room temperature
your favorite house seasoning
1 tblspn olive oil
2 tblspn butter
1 & 1/2 cup dry pasta - i used penne
8 tblspns pesto sauce (or whatever equivalent that is)
1/4 cup parmesan
white wine
8 oz your favorite mushrooms (i used baby bella)
1/2 large sweet onion, thinly sliced
1 - 2 cloves of garlic, minced


bring a pot of salted and oiled water to a boil and boil your pasta for 10 to 12 minutes. drain and return to the pot. stir together with the pesto and the parmesan and set aside.










While the water is boiling for the pasta, heat your butter and oil in a large heavy skillet. rub both sides of your steak with your preferred house seasoning, i used herbes de provence, they are my favorite at the moment. get the pan nice and smoky hot and lay your steak flat on it. i cooked mine for 15 minutes, only turning once. this put it right about medium rare in the middle and more of a medium well on the ends. perfect for the two of us. when you are finished cooking, set it on a plate and let the juices re-distribute. DON'T CUT INTO IT YET! that ruins the tenderness.



now that the steak is finished, turn the heat down and let's de-glaze the pan to get all those yummy pieces un-stuck to it. pour a little white wine into the pan and rub the bottom of it. add the onions and let them start to break down. when they are almost finished caramelizing, throw in the mushrooms and garlic. they don't take nearly as long.






Aren't those mushrooms beautiful?? All that is left to do now is plate it up! I put the pasta on one side of the dish, topped it with the mushrooms and onions and fanned out slices of the steak beside it. a very easy and simple dish that tastes like it took you hours to prepare!