Slightly Off Topic...

But I wanted to give some major congrats to Brandee for dropping over 20 pounds in 6 weeks. She placed just out of the money, but she wasn't very far behind at all.

I dropped 33.4 pounds and took 3rd in the contest, and couldn't have done it without her.

Dessert!

I'm going to talk today about a little something that is near and dear to just about everyone's heart, especially when trying to eat healthy.

That's right, I'm talking dessert! Few things are more satisfying than having something sweet that isn't going to make you groan the next time you step on the scale.

So, here are a few things we do for dessert that are pretty low calorie. No recipes (we'll get in to that another day. Brandee's experimental Sugar Free Angel Food Cake still needs some tweaking) today, just some suggestions.

Suggestion number one: Skinny Cow Ice Cream! Brandee said it best on Facebook the other day. This stuff changed our lives.

I personally recommend the Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwiches. Cookies and Cream is my favorite. Brandee prefers Strawberry Shortcake.

HEB makes a knockoff that tastes exactly the same and is noticeably cheaper called H-E-B Creamy Creations® Ice Cream Sandwiches. They're sold right next to the Skinny Cow stuff.

Skinny Cow also makes some unbelievably good ice cream bars. Brandee is a caramel freak, so these are like crack for her. I won't lie, they're ridiculously good, and at 100 calories a pop you can even afford to sneak a second one without too much guilt.

On a slightly less delicious note, Jello's Fat Free Chocolate and Swirl puddings are a tasty sweet treat that isn't too bad for you. They check in at 100 calories a cup, and while they're not quite as filling as the Skinny Cow offerings, they'll still fool your sweet tooth in to being satisfied with dessert.

[added] Also, for a even lower calorie dessert or snack, we've really enjoyed Wyler's Italian Ices. 60 calories a pop, and all 4 flavors are pretty tasty! [/added]

So there it is, a few of the no-cooking-needed dessert options out there that won't kill your calorie count.

(H)Olé Lower-Cal Taco Salad

Taco salads are always touted as a big no-no for dieters. The fried crispy tortilla bowl, fatty cheese, sour cream, and refried beans. But there's a way to do it and still not break the calorie bank! Remember that kickass guacamole you experimented with? Here's your chance to put it into action! I give this meal two big thumbs up, as it's massive, filling, and incredibly tasty. Seriously, you won't miss the real thing once you've had this.

Getting Going:

1. 1.5 lbs extra lean ground beef (we use the 96/4 variety).
2. 1-2 heads of iceberg lettuce (3 cups per person, shredded).
3. One can of fat-free refried beans.
4. Part-skim mozzarella cheese.
5. Fat-free sour cream.
6. Tabasco or other hot sauce (optional).
7. "Taco" seasonings (chili powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, etc.).
8. Baked Tostitos.
9. Ingredients for homemade guac and salsa:
- Avocado
- Onion
- Roma tomatoes
- Garlic
- Limes or lime juice
- Cilantro
- Jalapeños
- Salt

Kitchen supplies you'll need:

A cutting board
Knife
Large sauté pan
Wooden spoon
Measuring cups/spoons
Small sauce pan
Food processor
Strainer


Prep Steps and Cooking Instructions:

• It's best to make your guac and salsa ahead of time, or at least at the beginning of your prep, because they're best served chilled.

• The homemade salsa process is made almost exactly like the guacamole, minus the avocado. Our salsa is somewhere in the neighborhood of a 2:1 tomatoes to onion ratio, though you will have to adjust for personal preferences. Cut and seed your tomatoes and mix them with diced onion, jalapeño, garlic and cilantro. Start with 5-6 sprigs of cilantro; be careful, though, it can quickly overpower the salsa. Throw the whole mixture into your food processor and blend it to your desired consistency. Because we have a FP that only understands the command "liquefy," it resembles Chuy's salsa. Add lime juice and salt to taste.

• To make the guacamole, scroll down the page to the other recipe, lazy.

• Chop your lettuce. The easiest way to do this is to cut off the stem (is that what you call the bottom of the lettuce head? The neck, maybe?), then slice the lettuce into strips like you would an onion. Then chop those strips into halves or thirds.

• Warm the refried beans in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. They can burn easily, so keep an eye on them and stir occasionally. Once they're heated through, turn the heat down to low to keep them warm.

• Brown the beef over medium heat with some chopped onions and garlic thrown in. Season it liberally with paprika, cracked black pepper, chili powder, and cayenne. Throw in some other stuff, too, if it appeals to you. Once the meat is browned, drain it and set it aside, but keep it warm.

• Measure out into 1 oz. quantities both your cheese and chips. Go get that food scale from Wal-Mart. Seriously. It will make your low-cal life SO much easier.

The Assembly Line:

The meal made just over 3 gigantic servings. You really don't need directions for this part, but here's how we put it together:

Lettuce > Beans > Guacamole > Sour Cream (unless you're weird like Mark and hate sour cream) > Beef > Cheese > Salsa > Crumbled Tortilla Chips > Diced Tomato (optional)

And Enjoy!

Calorie Breakdown:

1.5 lbs Extra Lean Ground Beef: 780 Calories (260 per person)

Refried Beans - 80 Calories per half cup

Fat-Free Sour Cream – 25 Calories per serving (2 tbsp)

Guacamole - 30 Calories per tablespoon

Mozzarella Cheese - 80 Calories per ounce

Baked Tostitos - 120 Calories per ounce

Salsa - 5 Calories per tablespoon (approximate)

Lettuce - 25 Calories for 3 cups (even though you'll actually burn more calories eating it than it's worth! A classic negative-calorie food)

Tobasco sauce - NADA!


Total Calories per Serving: 625-675, depending on toppings.

Post Meal Thoughts/Impressions:

I was incredibly satisfied with this meal, as were Mark and our buddy, Kub, who ate with us. The sheer amount of food will keep even the fattest fatty happy, and the deliciousness of homemade guacamole and salsa are the proverbial icing on the Mexican cake. If you weren't told this was a lower-calorie version of taco salad, you'd never know. The flavors were spot-on, and the portions were enormous. Make this one at home, and you'll never get a fat-laden taco salad at a restaurant again.

The Great Beef Stroganoff Experiment

Stuff you'll need from the store:

1. Extra lean stew beef or extra lean steak (We used .85 lbs of extra lean stew beef).
2. White or yellow onion.
3. Green onions or shallots.
4. Mushrooms (optional—we skipped these).
5. One can of low-sodium cream of mushroom soup.
6. 16 oz tub of fat free sour cream.
7. Garlic. You definitely need this; we accidentally omitted it from our cooking.
8. Beef broth (optional).
9. 1 ½ tablespoons of whole grain or whole wheat flour.
10. Salt, pepper, and paprika to taste.
11. Whole grain noodle-style pasta. We used the Ronzoni Healthy Harvest brand.


Kitchen supplies you'll need:

A cutting board
Knives (one for meat, one for veggies)
Large sauté pan
Wooden spoon
Measuring cups
A strainer
A pot or 2+ quart saucepan for boiling pasta


Prep Steps and Cooking Instructions:

• Dice your onion, though the amount needed will vary depending on how much beef you use. I used about one-third of a large onion for the beef (we cooked 1.7 lbs, but only used half for this recipe). Chop your green onions into pieces about ¼”-½” wide. For this quantity, we used approximately half a cup. The final product sorely needed garlic, but ours was MIA. I’d recommending using at about half a clove, finely diced or chopped. If you’re a mushroom fan, put them in the pan as well.

• Brown the beef in the sauté pan with the onions, shallots, and garlic over medium-high heat. After it’s browned, if you’re using beef broth, throw it in. You don’t want to drown the meat, just use enough to simmer it a bit. Cook it to about medium-rare to medium, and then drain the liquid.

• Throw the beef and onion mixture back into the pan and add the flour, then the can of cream of mushroom soup. Stir well and turn the heat down to medium-low. Add the paprika, pepper, and salt. BE CAREFUL ABOUT ADDING TOO MUCH SALT. The beef broth and mushroom soup will already add a lot of sodium to the meal, and the longer you simmer and reduce, the saltier it’s going to taste. I made this mistake with this meal, and it came out as salty as that trash they feed you at The Ninety-Nine.

• Simmer it for about 15 minutes or so, then add 1 ¼ cups of sour cream (it’s almost the whole tub). Stir it well and heat it through. Use this time to tweak the stroganoff to taste.

• Hopefully you’ve got your pot of water boiling by this point. Add 2 oz. of dry pasta per person to the water. This usually translates to somewhere in the neighborhood of ¾ cups. We have a 2 lb. food scale that we bought at Wal-Mart for $5. It’s great for measuring stuff just like this (and things like chips, to keep our calorie counts accurate).

• By the time your pasta is done, your stroganoff should be done, too. The meat will be thoroughly cooked, but not chewy, and the sauce will be about the consistency of cream gravy.

Calorie Breakdown:

.85 lbs of Beef – 725 Calories (This is an estimate. There was no calorie count on the package, but it looked to have similar marbling to sirloin, so we’re using the calorie count from that).

Mushroom Soup – 250 Calories

Fat-Free Sour Cream – 250 Calories

Whole Grain Pasta – 360 Calories

Onions/Garlic/Seasonings – Negligible

Total Calorie Count: 1585 (with veggies, round up to 1600).

Per Plate: 800 calories.

Post Meal Thoughts/Impressions:

The meal was a little lackluster, but very filling. However, the total meal was more caloric than we’re used to. We ended up picking up the ingredients without looking at a recipe; we bought everything on a whim. I added too much salt to make up for the fact that it was sorely missing the garlic flavor, and the overcompensation was very obvious. Next time around, I’d make sure to use a little beef broth (25 calories per cup), I’d remember the garlic and I’d cut the beef chunks into smaller pieces so that we could use less protein overall (reduce the portion to half a pound total). It wasn’t a bad meal for a quick slap-together while roaming the aisles at HEB, tired, cranky, and starving, but it left a lot to be desired.

A Quick Hitter: Homemade Guacamole!

On a whim a few nights ago, we decided to try our hands at some homemade guacamole.

Here's the quick recipe...

Stuff you'll need from the store:

1. A good sized avocado. (275 calories) If you don't know how to pick out a good one, just give it a little squeeze. You're looking for one that isn't rock hard, but isn't disgustingly mushy too. A little give goes a long way. (Sidenote: we used two avocados)
2. A Roma tomato. (40 calories) (Sidenote: we used two tomatoes)
3. A white onion (35 calories)
4. Cilantro  (hardly any calories)
5. At least one lime, for juice purposes (10 calories)
6. Additional seasoning items. We used the Mild Green Jalapeno Tabasco Sauce both because it's delicious and because it has a slightly limey taste to it. (0 calories, yeahhhh buddy!)

 Kitchen supplies you'll need:

A cutting board
A knife
A food processor that doesn't suck
A container or bowl to temporarily hold your unfinished guacamole
An air tight container with a lid to store your finished product to prevent browning



Lets make us some guac!

 Cut Up Some Veggies

• Cut your avocado(es) in half and remove the pits. Once the pits are removed, slide the avocado in to smaller pieces to make blending easier.
• Dice as much onion as you want to add. We used around 1/3 a cup. If you really love onions, use more. If you're eh about onions, do less.
• Cut your tomato(es) in to 8ths and seed them.  
• Dice some cilantro. We used somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 sprigs.
• Cut your lime(s) in half.

Fire Up the Food Processor

• Drop your avocado bits in to the processor and let it blend it until it's nice and creamy looking. You want the avocado to blend down as much as possible.
• Squeeze your lime halves over the blended avocado.
• Add in the additional cut veggies and whatever seasoning you've decided to add in and let it blend. You're looking for the smooth consistency of avocado, but everything else doesn't need to be blended down to liquid status. Having some small chunks of tomato/cilantro/onion is not a bad thing!

So close to done

• Once it's all blended and well mixed, transfer your guacamole to your airtight container and slap the lid on. Put it in the fridge until you're ready to eat.
• Make sure you keep it in the container with the lid on as much as possible. The more time it spends out in the open, the more oxidized and brown looking it will get. And nobody wants oxidized guacamole!

 And you're finished! Get to eating!


Calorie Information

A quick caloric break down:  

Avocado - 275 calories
Roma Tomato - 40 calories
White Onion - 35 calories for a medium sized onion. We less than 1/4 an onion. We'll call it 10 calories.
Cilantro - Under 10 calories
Lime juice - 10 calories per lime.

So your grand total for this heaping helping of delicious guacamole is 370 calories. This should make well over a cup of guacamole, which is enough to garnish 3 or 4 servings of whatever delicious Mexican style food you've decided to compliment with Guac a la Brandee and Mark. It also makes a killer dip for chips!

Post Meal Thoughts/Impressions

This was made completely on a whim just to see if we could do it, and it turned out spectacular. It was so fresh tasting, and the flavors perfectly off-set each other. I'm never buying store-made guacamole again!

Topic Number 1: The Delicious Looking Jalapeno Poppers

The item that started it all, the baked jalapeno poppers. Here's the down and dirty to how we made them:

Keep in mind the plan was to find low cal substitutes/ideas to keep the calorie and carb count down, but at the same time not lose the taste.

Stuff you'll need from the store:

1. As many whole jalapenos as you want to make. (4 calories a pop)
2. Fat free cream cheese. (210 calories for the entire package) It will need to be nice and soft before you start making your poppers. The whole package of cream cheese was almost the perfect amount for the 16 poppers we made. There was just a little bit left over.
3. Some form of regular cheese. (I used a stick fat free twist string cheese, but what it came down to was about 70 calories worth of diced cheese)
4. Liquid Egg Whites. (we used around 1/2 Cup of these, but it's hard to get an exact number on calories, since a lot of the liquid whites themselves don't end up stuck to the poppers. 30 calories per 1/4 cup so we'll just call it 60)
5. Cayenne Pepper. (no calories)
6. Some form of Salt (I used Garlic Sea Salt, but this can be whatever kind of salt you like. No calories)
7. Parmesan Bread Crumbs (one serving, which was 1/4 Cup was 100 calories, but since a lot the crumbs never stuck to the poppers, again, it's probably less than the total 100 calories)

Kitchen supplies you'll need:

A cutting board

A knife

A tray safe for the oven

Tinfoil

A spoon

Three regular sized bowls

A pot full of water, you'll want it to be boiling around the time you start

An oven (preheated to 350)

And away we gooooo:

Prepping the Jalapenos

• Using your knife, score the jalapenos. Run the knife-point down the side and generally around the outside of each jalapeno to create an uneven, rougher surface than a jalapeno normally would have. The point of this is to give the breadcrumbs a place to stick to later in the cooking.
• Drop the scored jalapenos into your boiling water for about 2 minutes to soften them up a little bit.
• Remove them from the boiling water, then cut the stems off and then slice each jalapeno in half lengthwise.
• Seed each jalapeno using your spoon. Scrape out all the seeds and pulpy insides that don't look delicious and jalapeno-y green. You can throw the seeds and pulp away.

Prepping the Cream Cheese Filling and Adding it to Your Poppers

• Open up your softened cream cheese and dump it in a bowl. 
• Take your stick of string cheese (or whatever cheese you went decided to use) and dice it in to small pieces. The size of the pieces is completely up to you. I cut ours pretty small mostly for mixing ease, but also because I was having fun cutting stuff.
• Use a fork or spoon to mix up the cream cheese a little bit, then mix in your seasonings. I went with a pretty healthy dose of cayenne pepper (because I likes it spicy), and added some ground up garlic with sea salt to add a little bit of extra flavor. The amount of seasoning is completely up to you, so feel free to be creative about it. The cream cheese flavor will be the main taste you get, so unless you add a LOT of seasoning, it will only enhance the flavor, not overpower it.
• Once you've whipped the cream cheese and seasonings to your liking, use your spoon to scoop up some of the deliciousness and spread it inside your halved and hollowed out jalapenos. You'll want to fill the hollowed out part completely, and there's no shame at all in overfilling them above the top of the jalapeno too.

Breading Time!

• Get your tray ready for deliciousness by laying down a layer of tin foil across the top of it.
• Take bowl number two and fill it with a cup or so of the Liquid Egg Whites.
• Take bowl number three and fill it with 1/4 Cup of your Parmesan Bread Crumbs.
• Dip the jalapeno half in the Liquid Egg Whites. Roll the jalapeno around until it has a good amount of Liquid Egg White on it.
• Take the previously dipped popper and roll in in the bread crumbs. The scoring you did at the beginning of this whole process should allow the bread crumbs to stick to the normally smooth outside of the jalapeno half. Once the popper is completely coated in your crumbs, set it on your cooking tray.
• Repeat until all poppers are coated in bread crumbs. You may find that the bread crumbs in your bowl become gummy as you get farther in to the process of dipping. We had to dump out our bowl and refill it once to make sure that all of poppers were properly coated in deliciousness.

Now the Hard Part: Waiting for the Poppers to be Finished

• Take your tray full of almost-done poppers and put them in the preheated oven. They're going to need about 40 minutes to bake.We decided they weren't looking quite crispy enough for our tastes, about half way through the baking process we gave all our poppers a little spritz of Pam across the top for that fried-but-not-really taste.
• Once they're done baking, let them sit out for 5-10 minutes to cool. 

That's it, destroy them.

Each popper checks in at under 30 calories a pop if you bake them our way, so your heart won't be a sad panda later in the night.

Here's a caloric breakdown:

Jalapenos - 4 calories per jalapeno x 8 = 32 calories

Fat Free Cream Cheese = 210 calories

Fat Free String Cheese = 70 calories

Liquid Egg Whites = 30 calories for 1/4 Cup, we used around 1/2 Cup, so 60 calories

Parmesan Bread Crumbs = 100 calories per 1/4 Cup

Cayenne Pepper  = 0 calories

Garlic and Sea Salt = 0 calories

Grand total for 16 Jalepeno Poppers = 472 calories, assuming you actually use the entire 1/4 Cup of bread crumbs and all the egg whites (which you won't).

So, 472 calories divided by 16, you're looking at less than 30 calories per Popper!

Post Meal Thoughts/Impressions

These turned out amazing. They were almost out-to-eat quality. The only thing that could've improved it, in my opinion, is if we've had some dipping sauce to dip them in.