Weight Watchers Continued...

The chicken fingers were delicious. You can obviously decide which sauce you want to dip them in, but be careful to calculate the points correctly for the one you choose. The fries were not awesome, they were average. Trevor didn't like them, he thought they "looked funny". I tried to explain they don't look like McDonalds because 1, they were much larger since I cut up an actual potato, 2, they were deep fried in grease so they don't get that lovely coating and 3, there was nothing on them but a little creole seasoning. So truthfully, next time I will make the Chicken Fingers alone or with another side dish. Try these out though, they are awesome!

The other WW friendly thing I came up with was a snack that just seemed to sound delicious at the time. My problem is that I love fruit, so I am all set with that, but with Veggies, i'm a little more hesitant. I do like several different things; brocoli, cauliflower, carrots, beans, salad, zuchini, squash, potatos, etc. but the problem is with about 90 % of those veggies, I like them either cooked (which adds a different points value), or dipped in some kind of dressing. (Ex. RANCH). So either way I am not taking advantage of the low points value of eating raw vegetables. This "brilliant" idea came to me when I realized we had leftover mushrooms from our Ka Bobs and some baby carrots in the fridge. I wanted to take these as a snack but I didn't want to eat them plain. So i'm weighing out the options and checking the back of the Hidden Valley bottle to see how many points the right amount of dressing would be to satisfy my need. Turns out, it's not worth the 4 points it would be to dip the entire amount of veggies. So I came up with this brilliant plan.

Ranch/Sour Cream & Garlic Veggie Dip

1 cup of mushrooms, cut, uncooked (Insert Fav Vegetable Here) (0 pts)

10 fresh baby carrots, uncooked (Insert Fav Vegetable Here) (0 pts)

2 tablespoons of Hidden Valley Fat Free Ranch Dressing (1 pt)

2 tablespoons of Fat Free Sour Cream (0 pts)

1/4 teaspoon of Mrs. Dash Salt Free Garlic & Herb Seasoning (0 pts)

0+0+1+0+0=1 pt!!

To me that is well worth it, that is a lot of veggies and the dip makes just enough so that you can heavily dip each one. Solution to my 4 o'clock "starvation" without reducing my points for dinner.

On a side note, that Mrs. Dash Salt Free Garlic & Herb Seasoning is great! You also coincidentally use it on the WW Chicken Fingers (that's why I originally bought it), but it tastes delicious and is very low in points (clearly). They have several different kinds and are good on just about anything. Check them out, they are a great addition to the kitchen!

Weight Watchers

On a Weight Watchers note, I started the program last Monday and actually ended up going with the Online Version instead. The problem with the WW @ Work was that it kept getting post-poned. It's hard enough to get back on the wagon without having a couple extra weeks to justify garbage plates and endless amounts of starbucks. The Online Version ended up being $65 for the first 3 months and then $16.95 each month from then on. So it's really not too bad when you think about the impact it will have on my life.

Anyways, for anyone who is thinking of signing up for the program, I HIGHLY reccomend the online version. I love it. I can 'build' recipes by taking ingrediants and adding and subtracting them to figure out what the best points solution can be. It tracks/calculates my points right online and lets me know where i'm at. The chart that tracks your weight loss every week is neat too. It has your starting weight and your *Goal* and then will show you in a line graph where your at. It's cool to watch it go down (I took a look at one of my friend's at work from her site, and it has a significant drop, good girl!). I'm excited to watch mine go down, this week I had a 4lb difference. Hey, you gotta start somewere!

I found a great recipe on the site that I made for Trevor and I Tuesday night before my Cake Decorating class. Here it is;

WW Chicken Fingers w/ Ranch & Seasoned Fries

3 sprays of cooking sprays
1 lb boneless, skin less chicken breast, cut into thin strips
1 tbsp Dijon Mustard
2 and 1/2 packets instant oatmeal (I used one cup of bread crumbs, I didn't have oatmeal.
2 tsp Garlic Herb Seasoning, preferably Salt Free
1/2 tsp table salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 Large Potatos, Russet, Peeled and cut into 1/2 inch thick fries
1 tbsp Creole Seasoning
1/2 cup Fat Free Ranch Salad Dressing

Preheat over to 400 degrees, coat a large baking sheet with cooking spray.

Coat chicken with mustard, combine oats, garlic herb seasoning, salt and pepper into a bowl, and dip chicken strips into the mixture, coating completely. Arrange potatos on pan around chicken fingers, and coat both lightly with cooking spray, sprinkle potatos with Creole seasoning.

Bake, flipping once until chicken is cooked through and both chicken and potatos are a golden brown, about 30 minutes. Serve chicken and potatos with ranch on the side.

Yields about 3 oz of chicken, 1/2 a potato and 2 tbsp of dressing per serving.

POINTS VALUE=6

Hunter 3 Month Pictures

It’s been a couple days since my last post and I apologize. I had a very busy weekend, and an even busier first half of the week! Saturday morning we had Hunter’s 3 Month pictures taken by our personal photographer Heather! They turned out awesome of course, not that we expected any less from her!

He was being a good boy for the most part, but not quite as smiley as he is sometimes in the evening. She still got some great smiles from him though, and they came out great. Here is my favorite one, I’m not sure what it is but it just puts me in the best mood when I see him smile like that. I think Trevor agrees also, we could b.e having the worst day ever and if he smiles at us later that night all is forgotten! We are in so much trouble lol.

Sunday was a fairly quiet day. We did some housework, and my mom convinced us to come over for dinner. We had steak, salad, corn on the cob and onion rings/French fries. Correction; I had a tiny piece of steak, corn on the cob w/ no butter, salad w/ no dressing and a cup of FF Cottage Cheese. Doesn’t sound too appealing right? Well, I don’t the small portion of steak, it’s not my absolute favorite anyways. The corn was fine without butter believe it or not, and I LOVE cottage cheese so that was no biggie. The hardest part for me was eating my salad without dressing. I am a HUGE ranch fan, but my mom had 0 dressings that were FF or even LIGHT. Bummer. Oh well though, I went home and had a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich, yum. I think I even may have gotten Trevor hooked on them.

Tuesday night was my first cake decorating class at Michaels! It was a lot of fun, I got some great tips that I never would have thought of within the first hour. I mentioned the classes to my friend Jen at work a week or so ago, and she loved the idea and ended up signing up for the same class. So it was definitely nice to have a friend there to chat with. Turns out I have to buy even more supplies than my kit had, so that’s always fun! Looove shopping at Michaels. I get so excited walking in there it’s crazy! I know every time I go in that I’m in trouble. The great thing about Michaels is that they have amazing coupons, and always have sales, so it’s not as bad as you’d think. ;).
Anyways, while I was shopping after class I noticed the most adorable thing over in the decal aisle. (What was I doing there you ask? I got “lost” of course, HeHe). It was a little iron on screen print of a little skunk and th. Above it was a 3 pack of plain white cotton bibs. Hmmmm. What would a forest-animal-loving freak do in this situation? Buy it of course. And pick up a new hobby lol. Well, let’s not push it and say it’s a new hobby, I just really wanted Hunter to have a bib that has that print on it.

It was really really easy to do, and cost about $6.00 in total (after coupon of course), so it was well worth it. I don’t think I need to go into detail explaining instructions because if you decide to do this yourself, refer to the back of the iron on for complete directions!

It turned out cute I think, and as a bonus it came with a little Fox that said Foxy. Now, generally I would think that saying is totally lame. But picture a cute little chubby cheeked dragon wearing it around the ladies and then tell me you wouldn’t put it on him. I did have an extra white bib in the pack, so I saved it in my craft “box” in case I find another cute iron on that I can’t live without!