Saturday, June 13, 2009

Food, Food, Food, Food, Food...

Whew. Well, I averaged up my calories for the week (I record my food on the SparkPeople.com nutrition calculator, perfect for the anal-rententive diners among us) and although I had an "episode" at the local Chinese buffet earlier this week involving some bourbon chicken and lo mein along with a slight run-in with Checkers yesterday, my overall weekly intake is within range.

Coolness.

And I'm hungry right now, because I've been spending more time cooking this afternoon than eating.

For dinner we're having Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken, which is from a recipe I got at SparkPeople. It's 4 1/2 chicken breasts, a cup of salsa, a can of reduced fat mushroom soup (I just used the Healthy Recpies Campbells variant), a package of reduced sodium taco seasoning (I used full sodium -- there are limits) and 1/2 cup of reduced fat sour cream.

Now the recipe says to just toss the chicken into the crockpot, sprinkle the taco seasoning over it, and pour the salsa and soup over that, then cook on low for 6-8 hours. But raw chicken? In a crockpot? It may be just fine, but I feel better browning it, so I did. And mid-cycle I've had it on high rather than low, because I'd like to eat a bit earlier than 9PM.

The sour cream goes in after the rest of the ingredients are removed from the heat. It's a really highly rated recipe, and it's smelling awesome, so I'm pretty eager to try it.

Oh! And I'm also making some weird cake/ quick bread-like stuff. I've got this book "200 Under 200" by Lisa Lillien, the lady who set up the Hungry Girl website (another fun productivity-killer of mine). Her big thing for reducing the calorie count in foods is with tons of substitutions. I'm not making one of her recipes exactly, but the inspiration came from reading through the book. I took a box of yellow cake mix (the Pillsbury "moist" type, and I used the reduced sugar variant), a can of pumpkin (the Libby's "Pure Pumpkin") and the other 1/2 cup of reduced fat sour cream. Mixed all three ingredients together (I also added 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract) until well blended, and divided them into two medium-sized loaf pans. Baked at 350 for 40-45 minutes, and got two pumpkin cake/quick bread loaves out of it.

It made 16 servings total at 140 calories each, and these are BIG pieces! Yeah, I'm psyched. I hope I get some before the boys and Choreboy consume it all.

I'll report back once I've eaten. This stuff better be good.

Edited to add update:
I can heartily recommend both the Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken and the pumpkin cake. More in comments. And I'm envisioning the cake served under a scoop of caramel ice cream... bliss.

4 comments:

ShrinkingDoc said...

Dang. You're making me hungry.

Amanda said...

Sorry about that -- I do that to myself alot, LOL. I'll watch the Food Network, read cookbooks... it's a sickness or something. On the plus side, dinner was good and filling. The chicken dish is served over rice (I was saintly and used brown, but I have visions of yellow rice dancing in my head), and I had two pieces of the pumpkin cake. At 140 calories per slice and considering that I'm running behind by one meal today, I figured what the heck.

Tycho Beresford said...

I would have added a can of beer to that crock pot. OK light beer then.

Amanda said...

Mmmm... beer...

Actually, that might have been a nice addition. Although I generally think of beer with cheese-based sauces.