Weight Watchers Crock Pot Turkey Chili

January 28, 2014 by jgisvold Leave a Comment

I have been watching what I eat lately, and counting my calories. So far, I’ve lost 5 pounds! It hasn’t been easy too. I was getting so frustrated with myself because of it, I just had to force myself to do it. I’m using fatsecret.com to keep track of calories. What I like most about that site is that it figures out calories, protein, fat grams, and so on for recipes. It’s kind of like another myfitnesspal.com and joining is free.

I’ve also been expanding my chili horizon recently. I used to only like chili with beef and beans and a lot of spice in it. Now, I’m adding more vegetables to my chili like onions and bell peppers. Call me crazy, I know. Chili is very filling and if you use lean ground turkey the chili is now a low fat bowl of goodness with all those vegetables. I like to top my chili with cheese, chips, and green onions.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 lb 99% lean ground turkey
1 medium onion, diced
1 red pepper, chopped
1 yellow pepper, chopped
2 (15 oz) cans tomato sauce
2 (15 oz) cans petite diced tomatoes
2 (15 oz) cans black beans, rinsed and drained
2 (15oz) cans red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 (16 oz) jar deli-sliced tamed jalapeno peppers, drained
1 cup frozen corn
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
Salt and black pepper, to taste

For the rest of the recipe, please visit Two Peas and Their Pod’s website!

Calories: 280; Fat 4:6; Carbs 41; Fiber 12.8; Protein: 20.59

Points Plus: 7 (serving size = 1 cup)

Weight Watchers Spaghetti Pie

August 2, 2013 by jgisvold 1 Comment

Sorry I haven’t posted lately. My fancy dslr camera has died. The memory card won’t even insert into the camera and I’ve already sent that camera back to Nikon once and it was pretty expensive to get it fixed. I might be buying a new camera here pretty soon, so I’m stuck taking pictures with my fancy Nokia Lumia phone. I highly recommend these phones because the camera quality on them is AMAZING. I have the 920 which has 10 megapixels on it, but now the 1020 is coming out and has 40 megapixels on it. It is a Windows based phone which I like too.

This pie was really good. Like lasagna, there is the basic noodle layer, cottage cheese layer, and meat sauce layer, but this is in pie format. That is right 3.14. You can use 93% lean ground beef or lean ground turkey to make this pie lighter, and use low fat mozzarella cheese and cottage cheese. It came to 7 points plus a piece for 8 servings. The points plus would be around 10 if you changed the serving size to 6. Enjoy!

Note: I only cover the pie with half the cheese because I have a husband who doesn’t eat dairy products.

Spaghetti Pie

Ingredients

6 oz spaghetti
1 egg, lightly beaten
6 Tbsp Parmesan cheese, divided
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1 and 1/2 cups spaghetti sauce
1/2 teaspoon basil
1 cup cottage cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly spray a 9-inch pie plate with cooking spray. Set aside.

Cook the spaghetti according to package directions. Drain and place in a large bowl. Toss pasta with egg and 4 Tbsp Parmesan cheese. Press the spaghetti mixture on the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate.

Brown Italian sausage. Drain fat. Stir in spaghetti sauce and basil.

Combine cottage cheese and 1/4 cup mozzarella cheese. Spread over spaghetti. Top cottage cheese with meat sauce. Sprinkle remaining mozzarella and parmesan cheese on top.

Bake for 30 minutes or until heated through. Allow to stand for 10 minutes before serving. (It will be runny and fall apart if you serve it immediately)

Breakfast Quinoa

May 11, 2013 by jgisvold Leave a Comment

If you like having oatmeal for breakfast quinoa is kind of like that, but it’s like a fancier upgrade to oatmeal. To cook quinoa all you do is boil it in some water or milk. Usually 1 cup of quinoa you use 2 cups of liquid and just boil the quinoa until it all the water evaporates. The organic quinoa was rather expensive at my store. 1 cup was 4.98 a pound. That is quite a lot, so maybe opt for the non-organic kind. I know Trader Joe’s has bags of quinoa in their store, not exactly sure on the price of it though.

Quinoa is SUPER healthy too. 1 cup has 8 grams of protein in it and has more fiber than any other grain. I actually like this more than regular rolled oats now. You can add basically whatever type of fruit you want to quinoa and nuts to give you even more protein value!

This recipe makes 2 whole cups of quinoa so there’s 2 servings for the whole recipe. 1 cup is A LOT so this is really filling.

Breakfast Quinoa recipe from Martha Stewart

Servings: 2

1 cup

Calories: 260, Fat: 4.37g, Carbs: 43.76g, Fiber: 3.3g, Protein: 12.74g

Points Plus: 7

Ingredients

2 cups whole or low-fat milk, plus more for serving
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
3 tablespoons light-brown sugar, plus more for serving
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus more for serving
1 cup (1/2 pint) fresh blueberries, plus more for serving

Directions

Bring milk to a boil in a small saucepan. Add quinoa, and return to a boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer, covered, until three-quarters of the milk has been absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Stir in sugar and cinnamon. Cook, covered, until almost all the milk has been absorbed, about 8 minutes. Stir in blueberries, and cook for 30 seconds. Serve with additional milk, sugar, cinnamon, and blueberries.

Weight Watchers – Slow Cooked Jerk Pork with Caribbean Salsa

March 3, 2013 by jgisvold Leave a Comment

Man, I think this has been the tastiest thing I’ve ever made in the Slow Cooker for a long time! I got to use my jerk spice seasoning that I got when the husband and I went to Jamaica. The jerk seasoning I got, wasn’t too hot though, I would have liked it on that side a little bit more. I tried it before serving the pork, and decided to throw in an extra tablespoon of the jerk seasoning. If you’ve never had jerk seasoning before it’s a mixture of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, brown sugar, and red pepper flakes. I’d like to try a wet jerk marinade in the slow cooker one time. That uses habenero peppers and would be a lot more spicier! Jerk is kind of a funny name for a spice mixture, isn’t it?

I can never find decent ripe mangoes where I live, so I used a pineapple instead. I think the Caribbean salsa was the best part. Instead of rice, I served this over orzo pasta. I would definitely make this again.

Recipe and Nutrition Info from Skinnytaste.com

Servings: 10

Calories: 265, Fat: 15g, Protein: 21.4g, Carbs: 11.5g, Fiber 2g

Points Plus: 7

Slow Cooked Jerk Pork with Caribbean Salsa

Print recipe

Ingredients

3 pounds pork shoulder roast
6 cloves garlic
2-3 tablespoons jerk seasoning
1 lime (squeezed)
1/2 cup orange juice
1 large avocado
2 mangoes (ripe)
1 1/2 tablespoons red onion (chopped)
1-2 tablespoons cilantro
2-3 tablespoons lime juice
salt and pepper (to taste)

Directions

Step 1
Using a sharp knife, cut slits into the pork and stuff holes with half of the crushed garlic. Combine the remaining garlic, jerk seasoning, and salt, rub all over pork (you may want to wear gloves). Place in a large container, pour the lime and orange juice over the pork; cover and refrigerate 5 hours or overnight, turning pork occasionally so the marinade covers all of pork.
Step 2
The next morning, put everything in the crock pot and cook on LOW for 9 hours.
Step 3
After 9 hours, remove pork and shred using two forks.
Step 4
Remove liquid from crock pot and reserve. Add shredded pork back to the slow cooker. Add about 1 cup of the liquid back into the crock pot and taste for salt and pepper. Let it cook an additional 15 minutes.
Step 5
Meanwhile make the Caribbean salsa: combine all the ingredients in a bowl, season to taste with salt and pepper. refrigerate salsa until ready to serve.