Weight Watchers Wednesday: need a quick, summery dinner?

Grilled Cuban Chicken with Black Bean and Mango Salsa

{picture from weightwatchers.com}

POINTS® Value:5
Servings: 4

What you will need:
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup cilantro, fresh, chopped
3 Tbsp fresh lime juice
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp table salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 1/4 pounds uncooked boneless, skinless chicken breast, four 5-oz pieces
1 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup mango, fresh, cubed
2 Tbsp red onion, chopped
cooking spray

How to make it:

The night before you are going to eat this:

In a small bowl, combine orange juice, cilantro, lime juice, oil, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper; remove 1/2 cup and place in a large zip-close plastic bag. Add chicken to bag and turn to coat; seal bag and refrigerate.

Then, to make the salsa, add beans, mango and onion to bowl with orange juice mixture; toss, cover and refrigerate.

The night you are going to eat this:
When ready to cook, coat grill or grill pan (we used the George Foreman) with cooking spray; preheat over medium-high heat. Remove chicken from marinade; discard marinade.

Grill chicken, turning as needed, until cooked through. Transfer chicken to serving plates and spoon salsa over chicken; pour any liquid left in bottom of bowl over top. Yields 1 piece of chicken and about 1/2 cup of salsa per serving.

K and I had this last night with some Saffron rice on the side, it was great! Plus it only took about 20 minutes to get dinner ready since I had done all the prep the night before.

weight watchers gourmet pizza

Have I mentioned how much I love Weight Watchers online? Seriously, I love it. Since starting WW in February I have tried out so many amazing recipes. Like this EASY and DELICIOUS one for example.

Gourmet Pizza

POINTS® Value:5

Servings: 6

(this is the WW picture but mine looked pretty similar)

What you will need:

2 large onions, vidalia , thinly sliced
12 oz pizza dough (I just used the Pillsbury dough)
10 medium sun-dried tomatoes, without oil (I used probably about 15 of the halved ones)
3 oz hard cheese, Gorgonzola (I used one small package of the crumbled kind)
10 pieces spinach, washed and dried (I just chopped up a couple handfuls of baby spinach)
black pepper

How to make it:
Coat a large nonstick pan with cooking spray. Warm pan over medium heat. Add onions and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until onions brown and become very fragrant.
Meanwhile, prepare pizza crust for baking according to package directions. Mince tomatoes. Tear spinach into pieces (or chop if you are me.) Preheat oven to 425°F.
Spread caramelized onions on pizza crust and bake for 12 minutes. Remove from oven and add tomatoes, spinach and cheese. Bake until cheese is melted, about 3 more minutes. Season with freshly ground black pepper.

Enjoy!

road trip! and muffins!

K and I (and Hanna) are leaving tonight to drive to North Carolina for the weekend. My parents, brother and sister (and Gryffin---their dog) are also going but they are leaving earlier today. We are all going to visit my aunt and my cousin and will probably eat too much, drink too much, enjoy the sunshine and relax. I'm especially looking forward to the fondue and martini night my aunt has planned.

I wanted to make something to bring with me so I decided on trying out two different kinds of muffins recipes and a cherry scone recipe I got off Weight Watchers. Last night I was literally baking from 6-10.

I'm looking forward to these...

Raspberry Muffins

3 POINTS each, makes 12 muffins.

You'll need: 1 1/2 cup(s) whole wheat self-rising flour OR If you cannot find whole wheat self-rising flour, mix together 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour with 2 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
4 Tbsp margarine, softened.
2 cups ready-to-eat crisp rice cereal, divided
1 1/2 cup(s) raspberries, divided
2/3 cup unpacked brown sugar, divided 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cups buttermilk

How to make them: Preheat oven to 400ºF. Coat a 12-hole muffin tin with cooking spray or use liners. Place flour in a large bowl and rub in margarine with your fingers. Stir in 1 1/3 cups of cereal, 1 cup of raspberries and 1/2 cup of sugar. Combine eggs and milk in a small bowl; stir into flour-fruit mixture. Pour mixture into prepared tin; sprinkle with remaining raspberries (I put one whole raspberry on top of each muffin), cereal and sugar. Bake 25 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before flipping onto wire rack to cool.

I hope you have a very nice Easter weekend!

super (easy) salsa

I had a fabulous day off yesterday. My sister and I went to lunch then went shopping and got some amazing deals at Old Navy. All of their cardigans were 20 bucks and we got these cute metallic belts for $2.50. No lie. Gotta love Old Navy.

Tonight we are going to watch the Ravens game at a family friend's house (I hate football so I will probably just be hanging out in their hot tub) and I made some salsa to bring. Like most of my cooking I combined several different recipes then left it up to trial and error until it turned out "right." It's super easy and really good.

Here's how you make it:

In a bowl mix together:
1 can of diced tomatoes with roasted garlic and olive oil
1 finely chopped red onion
1 medium to large jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped (if you like things spicy you and try two but I've found that makes it too hot for the average person)
one large clove of finely chopped garlic
1-2 fresh tomatoes, seeded and chopped
lime juice (about 2 tablespoons)
lemon juice (about 2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of chili powder
salt to taste

Chill

Enjoy...Scoops work well since it's a chunky salsa.

Loaded Baked Potato Salad

In honor of the last real cookout weekend of the summer I thought I would share a recipe. I made this for the 4th of July and it was a huge hit and now it is the only thing people want me to bring to parties. Even people who don't like potato salad like this! The original recipe came from allrecipes.com but I made some changes.

What you will need (will make a large bowl full):
5 pounds red potatoes
2 cups sour cream
1 cup mayo
1 bunch of green onions
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (I sometimes use a bit more then two cups)
1 package of thick cut bacon

How to make it:
1) Cube potatoes and cook in lightly salted water (the water should only just cover the potatoes) for about 10 minutes or until you can easily stab them with a fork.
2)Allow potatoes to cool completely
3) Cook bacon and chop it up (bacon bits style)
4) Chop green onions (I use kitchen shears to do this, it goes a lot quicker)
5) In a large bowl mix together sour cream, mayo, about 3/4 of the cheese, about 3/4 of the onions and stir in the cooled potatoes gradually. Then add in about 3/4 of the bacon bits.
6) Top with the rest of the cheese, the rest of the green onions and the rest of the bacon to make it look pretty!
7) Eat it! Leftovers will hold up well in the fridge.

Hope you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Eat Your Brussels Sprouts!

My mom has always said how much she loves Brussels sprouts but she never really cooked them for us growing up. I guess she assumed we would hate them and it was easier to make vegetables with more positive reputations. Several seasons of "Top Chef" have made me much more open minded about food and I love cooking new things, so I picked up some Brussels sprouts at Trader Joe's on Sunday. Then I started looking for recipes and decided to try out this one for roasted Brussels sprouts from The Barefoot Contessa. The sprouts turned out great, crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside. I followed the recipe but you could totally add some other seasonings. They make a great side dish, and much healthier then fries!

Here is how to make them, it is very simple:

1) Heat oven to 400.

2)Cut off brown ends and remove any yucky looking outside leaves from the sprouts. Then put them in a bowl.

3) Drizzle with olive oil and and add salt and pepper (or any other seasonings) then stir to coat the sprouts.

4)Pour onto a pan.

5) Cook for about 40 minutes, shake pan every 15 minutes to brown evenly. They should end up browned on the outside. The picture above is from the recipe but mine looked almost the same!

6) Enjoy right away!

Stuffed Green Pepper Soup

Since it has been so cold lately I decided to defrost what was left of a batch of this awesome soup I had made in the fall, for dinner last night. I got the recipe from my mom, who actually got it at a Weight Watchers meeting. It is only 1.5 WW points per cup when made with extra lean ground beef and probably more like 1 point when made with turkey (how I made it...of course I ate more then 1 cup...so it was probably a few more points!)

Here is how you make it:

Brown 1 lb ground turkey (or beef) with 1 cup diced onion
Cook brown rice (remember brown rice takes about 45 minutes to cook so you might want to do this first.)

Mix 1 cup of cooked rice and turkey/onion mixture with:
1/2 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz.)
2 cups chopped green peppers (make sure you chop them pretty fine since it is going in a soup)
1 can tomato sauce (15 oz)
3 cups of water
1 tbsp. beef bouillon

Place in a crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours or simmer in a pot for 1 hour.

Yields 12 cups

I am obsessed with Parmesan cheese so I sprinkled some on when I served it! Enjoy!