Kung Pao Chicken w/ Coconut Rice

Both of these recipes were great! They’re from the new Cooking Light. The Kung Pao isn’t as spicy or sweet as the restaurant version, but the rice gives enough sweetnesss and you can always spice it up more if you like. Pictured with sauteed bok choy.

A note about Weight Watchers

Hey there,

So the 4 readers of mine or so who likely care about the Weight Watchers points values that I assign to recipes when relevant, take note: as you’ve probably seen, the company has changed its program as of today. It’s now called PointsPlus, and values for many items bear little resemblance to the originals.

I’m guessing it will take me a little while to get used to the system. And since I use their software, I’m going to have to shift to it. My plan, then, is to use the new system when noting WW points in my recipes, and to go back to my old recipes and include both the previous and current point values for them.

Hope it’s helpful! And hope the plan continues to work for me now that I’ve discovered, for example, an oz of bourbon is 3 points rather than 1…

Crockpot Turkey Barley Soup

Here’s this year’s leftover turkey recipe. Since we didn’t host, all we ended up taking home is a cup of turkey meat, which I turned into this simple soup.

Stir Fried Chinese Cabbage and Zucchini

This was another attempt to bump up our veggie quotient. I served this with a twist on Viet Chicken and Noodles, substituting tuna for the chicken.

Italian Egg Scramble w/ Crabmeat

John and I got a late night dinner at one of his favorite Italian places in Jersey last night. In an attempt to order a light meal, I got the asparagus appetizer with crabmeat as my entree. Yeah, not so light – tons of white wine sauce, crab, cheesy goodness, roasted red pepper, etc. Honestly, as a dish, it was a little weird, and given I ate less than half of it, I was skeptical about taking home the leftovers. John, though, suggested I make it into an omelet, and it was totally the right call – the eggs really worked well with the flavors, and I cut out the wine sauce and most of the cheese that was weighing it down.

Obviously, you’re not likely to have these leftovers hanging around, but it’s pretty easy to recreate the flavors with fresh ingredients.

Florentine-stuffed Baked Potato

This was pretty awesome. And I made it up myself!

Turkey Bacon BLT w/ Spicy Mayo

John wanted BLTs for lunch. I knew we only had turkey bacon, and I didn’t have any fresh tomatoes (and tend to ignore them come November anyway), so I had to get a little creative. I roasted and salted some canned ones to make them passable, and spiced up the sandwich with homemade mayo to make up for the less-than-stellar ingredients. It ended up being pretty tasty. And I think it’s official: I no longer hate mayo; I just hate jarred mayo.

We had this with leftover sausage bean soup.

Mediterranean Portobello, Escarole and White Bean Toss

We’ve been slacking a little on the Meatless front, so I went on the hunt for a healthy vegetarian recipe that used escarole (I had half a head leftover from the market). Stumbled on this, and thought it was delicious and super filling.

Baked Apples

I’m not much of a dessert person, but I love the smell of apples baking, and I had a few getting-old apples to contend with, so viola! Baked apples. They’re pretty WW-friendly, too.

My original plan was to core the apples and stuff them with the cranberry/walnut mixture but I suck at coring and ended up just slicing them and layering the dessert instead.

Pantry Cleanout Challenge

So once or twice a year, I take an inventory of what’s going on in my pantry. If I see a bunch of items that have been hanging out a bit too long, I make a list and stick it on the fridge. I give myself a month or so to widdle down the contents; everything else gets donated.

I did this about a week ago, which has led to some interesting results (homey casserole I wouldn’t have made without the nudging; yay! Clam sauce with what I later discovered was expired clams and had to throw out? Boo!). Here are some items I’d love some inspiration for: what would YOU do with these ingredients?

*Lots of dry onion soup mix (some went into the casserole I made this afternoon)

*barley

*apricot preserves, and lots of jelly in general

*Asian rice noodles and spring roll wrappers (well, have a feeling what’s happening to the latter)

*bisquik

*lentils, yellow and brown

*almond butter

*too much cream cheese and sour cream

*teriyaki sauce

*2 cans cream of mushroom soup

*miso

Suggestions?