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Monday, February 21, 2011

Happy Long Weekend err I mean Happy Presidents' Day!

My two best friends, whom I’ve known since grade school, came to town for the long weekend and we had an absolute blast! I was super proud of myself for making good choices even though we were at restaurants where I’d normally have covered my plate with queso. While it was a great time, I’m very glad to have Presidents’ Day off to recover and get my week planned out. There are roughly 4 weeks until St. Patrick’s Day and I’ve promised myself that if I stick to plan and exercise at least three times per week, I get to have all the Guinness and soda bread that I want!! (side note: it’s definitely a good thing that it’s a school night, that will keep me from over-indulging on the Guinness)

This week, I’m making an egg beater & turkey bacon casserole for breakfasts and am working through the lentil, tortilla and black bean soups stacked up in our freezer for my lunches. I was super excited to go to the farmer’s market today and see SO much fresh, locally grown produce to incorporate into this week’s dinners.

This week’s dinner menu:
Monday – make-your-own pizza night!! I’m letting Dan have pepperoni on his but I made a homemade salsa to top mine
Tuesday – chicken breasts stuffed with ricotta/spinach topped with a homemade marinara, sautéed eggplant and mushrooms
Wednesday – oven-fried chicken; we were supposed to have this last week but I hurt my knee, skipped the gym, and let Dan order pizza instead so we’ll be having it this week with sweet potato fries and green beans
Thursday – shepherd’s pie; I was crazy surprised that my regular recipe for this didn’t need much tweaking to get the points value down!
Friday – healthified chicken enchiladas

Stuffed Chicken Breasts
4 servings, 7pp each
- 4 boneless/skinless chicken breasts
- 1 pkg frozen, chopped spinach
- 15oz part-skim ricotta cheese
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- salt & pepper
- olive oil

1. Thaw spinach in a colander and squeeze out as much water as possible; pound out the chicken breasts to make them about ¼” to ½” thick
2. Mix ricotta, garlic and spinach in a large bowl; add salt & pepper to taste (I also add some red pepper and onion powder sometimes, when I remember)
3. Lay the chicken breasts out flat, salt & pepper the side facing up then stuff with the spinach/ricotta mix; fold the chicken breast over the filling and hold with toothpicks if necessary
4. Lightly drizzle with olive oil and bake 30-40min at 375, until cooked through

Totally optional but I’ll be adding a spoonful of marinara on top of each of mine with some sautéed mushrooms and eggplant instead of pasta, it increases the dish by about 1 pp. Enjoy!!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Valentine's Week Menu!


We aren’t really big Valentine’s people; it usually comes and goes without much fanfare in our house. For some reason, this year I decided I’d have a bit of fun with it and celebrate a little bigger (and no, not Big Love style a la 2009 when Meg, Shan and I took Dan out for vday dinner together). I didn’t mention to Dan that I was planning anything, which made it all the more fun that he made a similar decision to do things bigger this year too!! For my part, I planned a bunch of sweet treats, romantical date night and a week-long vday themed dinner menu. Dan surprised me with a 2nd fridge for the garage, something I’ve wanted for awhile but just never got around to searching (I hate appliance shopping almost as much as I hate the wireless store). The fridge was my kitchen-gift; the gift for ME was a pile of “W” stuff!! I love monogrammed items but find I rarely come across pre-monogrammed items with V or W so I was super excited; I am going to be SO obnoxious at the office, drinking out of my W mug, writing in my W notepad and using W sticky notes!! Dan also found Prosecco made by Cupcake! Cupcake wine is my current fave, and needless to say the Prosecco was amazeballs. I still don’t know what my “real” surprise is, but I’ll find out tomorrow … I can’t believe he did all this!!!!

Our romantical date night out on Saturday was fab, but not quite ww-friendly. To make up for our over indulgence, I’ve planned a very ww-friendly menu featuring some of our favorite restaurant meals, tweaked slightly of course, all meals are under 10pts total!

Sunday – Pork tenderloin medallions in a mushroom marsala sauce with roasted red potatoes, baby carrots and green beans (pictured above)
Monday – NY strip with a red wine reduction, asparagus and smashed potatoes/cauliflower
Tuesday – chicken breast stuffed with feta and pesto, green beans, broccoli and squash
Wednesday – hot wing turkey burgers (recipe follows) with oven fries and celery slaw
Thursday – oven-fried chicken, sides tbd
Friday – the jersey girls are coming, the jersey girls are coming!!! One if by land and two if by sea so I guess three since they’re flying? The jersey girls are coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hot Wing Turkey Burgers
4 servings, 5 pts each
- 1lb lean ground turkey (93/7), all white breast meat
- ¼ c bleu cheese crumbles (I used gorgonzola)
- ½ tsp Tabasco
- 1 ½ tbsp reduced fat buttermilk
- 3 tbsp bread crumbs

1. Place ground turkey in a large mixing bowl and break it up with your hands; add the rest of the ingredients and mix well
2. Form into 4 patties (at this point, you can wrap in plastic and freeze if you’re making ahead like I did)
3. Broil or grill the burgers until cooked through (internal temperature must be 170-180), enjoy!

Serve by themselves or on a bun, adding a bun will increase points. I’m going to top these with shredded celery, staying with the hot wings theme.

Friday, February 11, 2011

live near dallas? want a cupcake?


If you live in the DFW area and would love some free cupcakes, post a comment here or on the National D'Anthem Facebook page with your guess for how many cupcakes I'm baking this weekend to fill all the Valentine's Day orders I received. The person with the closest guess wins a dozen homemade cupcakes :)

GOOD LUCK!
(contest ends 10pmCT Sunday 2/13)


Sorry out-of-towners, I don't know how to mail the cupcakes without the frosting getting all messy

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

seriously ... more snow??


Due to unprecedented ice, snow and freezing weather in the DFW metroplex last week, we almost didn’t make it to Portland to visit my family and meet my new niece (#3 on my list). While there, I was also able to cross off #74 as wow, really, my niece Mallory is truly one of the most beautiful sights to behold! It was a fabulous visit and I can’t wait to go back; we had so much fun with the family and Mallory is just such a sweetheart, I miss her already! If only everything had gone as smoothly … what should have been a nice and easy trip, landing us in Portland at 11amPT Saturday morning ended with us not getting there until 6:30pm … thank you SO much DFW airport for being so ill prepared. I can’t say it’s entirely their fault, I mean we haven’t had weather this bad here in the almost 6 years I’ve lived here (the news said it’s the worst in 20yrs), but I’m still going to blame them because Saturday was pure misery!!

I will say that I had fully intended to be good, track points, and not go over my ww allowance even though we were on vacation. HOWEVER, by the third airport stop in ONE day, I gave up and fell off the wagon with heaping plates of chili cheese fries, nachos and quesadillas. I also over indulged during the Super Bowl, noshing on chips and dips, pizza, lil smokies and much much more. I’m not even going to count the wine, or that random mojito drink thing (which was darn tasty). I do wonder though, do I have to figure out the points value of Mallory’s cheeks? Because I sure smooched those nonstop and ate her up!! Seriously, look at that sweet face and those gorgeous cheeks; how could I not? Buuuuut, now that I’m back home, I’m back on track and planning to stay that way! We got home just before dinner Monday night and thankfully, I had a pre-made healthilicious dinner waiting for us in the freezer. After we ate and relaxed a bit, I went right to work and made my egg casserole for the rest of the week’s breakfasts and started prepping dinners. We are a little behind this week and Dan has a little more to do each night, but it’ll all be ok and we WILL stay on track!

While eating regular, normal bacon at Sunday breakfast, we started chatting about our favorite meals. Brett & Heather (my brother & his wife) were telling us how much they love meatloaf and I’ve been craving it ever since. Tonight’s dinner is a healthilicious take on one of our favorite comfort food meals: meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Turkey Meatloaf
6 servings / 4 pts OR 4 servings / 5 pts
- 1lb ground turkey, all breast meat, at least 97/3
- 1 egg white
- 2tbsp skim milk
- 1/3 cup Italian bread crumbs
- 1tbsp Worcestershire (Wooster!) sauce

Place the turkey in a large mixing bowl, add all ingredients and mix well with your hands; you can use a mixing spoon but I swear it never comes out as well, just dig in there and get your hands dirty!

Form into a football shape and place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 45min at 350; check that the internal temperature has reached at least 170 before slicing into servings.

Roasted Vegetables
4 servings / 4 pts
- 1 cup chopped broccoli
- 6 small red potatoes, washed and quartered
- 10 baby carrots, halved
- 1tbsp olive oil
- 1tsp no-salt Italian seasoning

Place all the veggies into a casserole dish, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with seasoning. Bake 30min at 350 and enjoy!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

snow day; day 2


Yesterday was cold and snowy and I craved soup. Today was FREEZING and the dogs and I wanted some yummy, still warm cookies!! For the doggy cookies, I made their favorite peanut butter treats and dipped them in melted carob. You know what’s not cool? Forgetting that you’re working with carob and licking what you *think* is melted chocolate off your finger only to be sorely reminded that it is carob … yuck!!!! The melted chocolate from a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie that I licked off my finger later totally made up for it though.

Healthilicious Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes anywhere from 48-60 cookies / 2pp per cookie if you measure out 50
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
½ cup Smart Balance 37% Light Spread Margarine
½ cup safflower oil (you can use canola, I just prefer safflower)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
2 cups whole wheat flour
¾ cup mini chocolate chips

- cream together butter, oil, sugars, vanilla and egg until well blended
- add flour a little at a time until fully incorporated
- stir in chocolate chips
- drop by rounded tablespoon onto baking sheet
- bake 8-10min at 375

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Skinny Italian ... indeed it is!

Right before Christmas, the most wonderful surprise appeared in my mail … an autographed copy of Teresa Giudice’s Skinny Italian cookbook from the bestest friend in the whole wide world!! If you don’t recognize Teresa’s name, please google, she’s fabulous and I love her, despite her inability to properly form a sentence. I must say her (not) ghost writer did a fabulous job in translating the book so that it truly TRULY reads as if Teresa wrote it herself (with better sentence structure); so much so that I’d actually believe she wrote it, IF she hadn’t given so much credit to Heather in her acknowledgements (big snaps for giving credit where credit is due). The book is hilarious, I love the little jabs at Danielle and sidebar commentary by Joe, and the recipes are fantastic!

I was a little worried starting WW that I wouldn’t be able to eat much Italian food so I’ve been researching recipes for weeks. Tonight, I’d planned on making pizzas using whole wheat pita as the crust, but since I’m working from home today, I have time for a proper pizza crust … and since it’s a snow day, I want soup! I took my already made pizza dough (courtesy of Teresa) out of the freezer to defrost and whipped open her book to her recipe for minestrone. Before I started anything, I pulled up WW e-tools, entered the recipes and found out that her pizza dough is only 3pp per serving and the minestrone is only 3pp as well! Excited is not a strong enough word to convey my feelings towards tonight’s dinner. I’m going to top my pizza with 2tbsp of pesto, sliced tomatoes and mushrooms and of course, fresh mozzarella. Total pp for tonight’s dinner = 11 (8pp for pizza + 3pp for soup).

While I can’t post her recipes here since I don’t have her permission and am afraid of getting in any sort of trouble, I will tell you that with the proper google search you can find others who weren’t so wary (my pesto sauce is from a jar, but she also has a delicious recipe for that as well). Hope wherever you are, you are warm; happy googling!!!!