Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Cooking Light on a Heavy Body

In case you were wondering, the spaghetti and turkey meatballs turned out great! the entire meal was 435 calories. That included a full serving of spaghetti, sauce, meatballs, and salad. I honestly can't taste a huge difference between turkey and lean beef when I use it in recipes. I know there is a foodie out there who just gasped in terror but I am not a food snob. I used the same recipe I use for regular meatballs, I just swapped out the pork and veal mixture for extra lean turkey. I also made them much smaller. I used a jar of Prego sauce because I wasn't in the mood to make my own, and my grandmothers recipe calls for about 1 cup of sugar. The packaging on the linguine box said 1/8 of the box so I eyeballed the serving sizes but I only cooked half of the box and we had leftovers (which I took to work and ate cold :) ). I just added some premade salad and low cal dressing and we were set. It was super easy and it tasted good. My dad always made spaghetti and meatballs on Sundays during the winter. So whenever we have a cold rainy day I crave spaghetti. Now I can have it without crying myself to sleep and cuddling with my spare tire. That day I also made "egg muffins" I think they came out great but again I am not that picky. I just chopped up some veggies and some chicken sausage then layered that in a muffin tin with some cheese and beaten eggs. I baked them for 20 min at 350 degrees. They are 100 calories per muffin but the down side is I need about 12 of them to fill me up. I threw them in a bag and tossed them in the freezer. Tuesday morning I reheated two of them and ate them with a apple. Veggies? Check. Protein? Double Check. Fruit? Check. Delicious? CHECK!
Today has been another experiment in Healthy or substitute cooking. I just finished a banana bread that is under 200 calories per slice and no sugar! Woo Hoo. I am pretty proud of this one, I found a recipe on a blog called Clean and Delicious. I swapped the sugar for splenda and it turned out great. I think its a little bit denser than normal banana bread, but if I can eat banana bread at all I am happy. I don't create any of these recipes myself but I like to try new things and turn family favorites into Healthy family favorites.
Today I am also making some shredded chicken in the crockpot that is 120 calories for 4 oz. I just threw 4 frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts in with 1 can of diced tomatoes, enough low sodium no fat chicken broth to cover the breasts and some salt, pepper, cumin, and oregano. I figured we could shred it and keep in in the fridge for meals during the week. I can use it to top a salad, make enchiladas, fajitas, or just as a quick snack.

I want to remind everyone that these are not my recipes. I am in no way, shape, or form creative enough to come up with this on my own. But I do like experimenting and trying new food, especially food that can work with our new lifestyle that I like to call " Lets stay alive and avoid Diabetes"
When I can I will post a link to the recipe that I used. I will post the recipes from todays blog, in case anybody now has a weird craving for banana bread with meatballs and eggs...


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