Sunday Splurge: 10 Minute Steak Night!

So I haven't posted lately, but my granma died last weekend and I'm just now getting back into cooking every night and working out. However, that has not slowed down my weight loss! I am about 8 pounds down since Jan. 1 and one pound away from my goal weight for January. If I do lose that last pound, it means I get a fancy new set of pajamas. If I lose MORE than that for January, I get to pick from a list of little treats for meeting my goal early. I think I'm leaning towards a hair blowout kit, but I'm not sure.

I decided to have steak tonight because I haven't had it since my birthday in September, and it sounded so good! I have a George Foreman so it's really simple to cook for me, and I oven roasted some asparagus and popped a potato in the microwave. Voila, a steak dinner in 10 minutes!

As I said, this was a splurge because it topped out at just under 700 calories, but this was a BIG steak. I probably could've split it and had it for lunch tomorrow, but...I was hungry. I listed every little step out in the directions because I wanted to prove that I made this in exactly 10 minutes. Mmm!

Yield: 1 serving (multiply as desired)

Ingredients: 
Olive oil cooking spray (like Pam, 0 calories)
Asparagus, about 10 medium stalks
Baked potato
2 tbsp low fat sour cream (or margarine) for potato topping
New York strip steak, about 8 ounces
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Turn on the George Foreman and warm it up.
2. While it's heating, wash and dry the asparagus, and then cut off about 2 inches of the stalks with a sharp knife. Spray a pie plate with the cooking spray and lay the asparagus in a single layer in the pie plate. Spray with cooking spray again and sprinkle with black pepper and sea salt. Put the asparagus in the preheated oven and set your timer for 10 minutes. By the time the asparagus is done, everything else will be too.
3. Season the steak as you like it, I just use a little sea salt and cracked pepper, but I think next time I'll try some cajun seasoning on it.
4. Wash the potato and poke some holes in it with a fork. Put it in the microwave and use the potato setting for one potato, plus an extra 30 seconds or so. This usually takes about 5 minutes and 30 seconds to cook, just in case you don't have a potato button on your microwave.
5. By now the George Foreman should be ready to go, so put the steak on it and set it for 4-5 minutes (depending on how you like your steak cooked). I cooked mine for 5 minutes and there was almost no pink in the middle, but it was still nice and juicy.
6. Take the potato out of the microwave, split it open, and top as desired. I used 2 tablespoons of low fat sour cream, so that's what the nutrition shows.
7. Plate the asparagus and the steak, serve!

Pantry Palette: Black Bean Soup

I left work this afternoon with a dry cough and was looking in the pantry to find something I could throw together that would be easy and soothing for my sore throat. I came up with this super easy black bean soup recipe, and it's made exclusively from things you can keep in your pantry for those sick days when you're tempted to just get chinese food or a pizza delivered because there's nothing good in the fridge.

This recipe took about 25 minutes from opening the first can to dividing out the portions.

Yield: 4 servings (1 1/2 to 2 cups each)

Ingredients:
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cups salsa (I used Safeway Select Southwest Salsa)
2 15 oz cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
1 15 oz can low fat refried black beans
1 15 oz can fat free low sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1/8 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp chili powder (optional)
Garnishes: sour cream, cilantro, lime juice, green onions, tortilla strips...(These are not included in the calorie count to the left!)


Preparation:
1. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add the salsa and cook for four minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add all other ingredients except the garnishes, bring to a simmer for five minutes.
4. Top with desired garnishes (I used the juice of 1/2 lime, chopped cilantro, and green onions) and serve.

I do have to show some love for one of my favorite kitchen tools of all time, my lemon/lime juicer, pictured below. It's awesome!!

Asparagus, Fried Egg, and Parmesan with Rosemary

My breakfasts rarely contain any form of vegetables (I don't count potatoes) since I gravitate toward eggs, meats, and breads or grains. I love asparagus and never thought about having it for breakfast, so this was a great recipe to get in some veggies early in my day. 

As written, this is a super low carb recipe, but you could easily add an english muffin underneath it or throw some bacon on top to make it really tasty. It does take a while, so this is definitely a weekend breakfast for me -- I'm too lazy on the weekdays!


Yield: 2 servings (but easily can be made for however many people you need)

Ingredients:
2 eggs
Fresh asparagus, about 16 spears
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Rosemary, 2-3 sprigs
Parmesan cheese, shredded, 2 tbsp
Cooking spray
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Line the asparagus spears in a shallow baking pan (a pie plate works great). Drizzle olive oil lightly on the asparagus, shaking the pan to coat. Break apart the rosemary springs and place on top of the asparagus.

3. Roast in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, or when the tips of the stalks start to brown.

4. Using a nonstick skillet sprayed with cooking spray (or you can use butter or extra virgin olive oil to coat the pan). Crack the eggs in the pan carefully without breaking the yolk. Cook the eggs over medium heat for 2-3 minutes until the whites are solid. Carefully flip the egg over and cook for another minute, then remove from heat.

5. Place the roasted asparagus on a plate and lay the egg on top. Finish with cheese, salt and pepper to taste (use sea salt and fresh ground pepper for an extra special flavor). Serve immediately. 

Thai Tonight! Pineapple Chicken Curry

I made it three days on the diet before I started craving the delicious takeout from River Spice that is one exit up the tollway from my apartment. I love their curry and drunken noodles so much I saved them as a contact on my cell phone last month. Sad. Unfortunately, based on a very reliable source (Google), I estimated that 1 cup of the curry is 465 calories with 25 grams of fat...22 grams of saturated. Yikes...that's not even including the rice! And let's be honest, I'm not just eating 1 cup of the stuff. 

Luckily I anticipated the craving and last time I was at the store I bought a jar of Thai Kitchen Panang Curry simmer sauce. It's seriously my new best friend. It was a little pricey at around $5 for the jar that has 3 servings, but considering the fact that the curry from River Spice costs $11.73, I let myself splurge. So glad I did. With my final total for dinner tonight, I was at 517 calories and only 7.5 grams of fat -- including 3/4 cup of rice!! And it only took 30 minutes.

Yield: 2 servings (the whole jar will make 3 servings, and you can easily make this just for one...but it's so good you'll definitely want the leftovers!)

Ingredients:

1 cup (2/3 jar) Thai Kitchen Panang Curry Simmer Sauce

1 boneless skinless chicken breast, sliced in about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick slices

3 canned pineapple rings, cut into bite-size pieces (in retrospect, pineapple chunks would be better)

1.5 cups sliced bell peppers (I used frozen Safeway Pepper Strips)

1/4 cup chopped green onions

1 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

3/4 cup (dry) Jasmati rice, cooked

Preparation: 

1. Pour the sauce into a saucepan and bring to a boil on medium-high heat.
2. Put chicken slices in the heated sauce and simmer until half cooked. 
3. Add pineapple, peppers, onions, and red pepper flakes (optional), and continue to simmer until chicken is fully cooked. 
4. Serve over cooked Jasmati rice (if you put the rice in after you add the chicken, the rice will be ready just in time to serve).

This recipe is definitely going into my regular cooking rotation. And River Spice's phone number is definitely coming out of my speed dial. 

Ravioli Minestrone

This is another new recipe I've adapted from a Taste of Home recipe. My version uses carrots and green beans as vegetables, but you can throw in whatever veggies you want (I think zucchini, corn, and cabbage would all work perfectly). Total time was about 25 minutes, but I did use a lot of canned and frozen ingredients as shortcuts. I portioned this at 3 HUGE servings, but if you were eating something else with it (a salad, for example) you could easily get 4 servings out of this!

Yield: 3 giant bowls, enough for an entrée portion.


Ingredients:

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 cups frozen bell pepper mix, thawed and diced

1/2 cup diced onion (NOTE: If you can find the onion and bell pepper mix at the store, that will work too. just use 2 cups of that.)

1/4 teaspoon crushed crushed red pepper, or to taste (I used a packet from the last time I ordered a pizza and it was the perfect amount.)

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, fire-roasted if available

1 15 oz can vegetable broth

1 1/2 cups hot water

1 tsp dried basil

1 15 oz can sliced carrots, drained

1 15 oz can cut green beans, drained

6 to 9 oz fresh or frozen cheese (or meat) ravioli

Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. 
2. Add peppers and onions and crushed red pepper (if using) and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. You can also add some minced garlic (about 2 cloves) here if you'd like, I'm not a big garlic fan so I chose not to add it. 
3. Add tomatoes, broth, water, and basil; bring to a rolling boil over high heat. 
4. Add ravioli and cook for 3 minutes less than the package directions. 
5. Add carrots and green beans; return to a boil. Cook until the vegetables are tender if using fresh, or about 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

I love it! A note on the ravioli - I used a small sized ravioli in the freezer section, Rosetto's brand. I chose this because each serving size is 13 ravioli, and I used 33 ravioli in the soup (so I could have 11 ravioli in each bowl). Portion the ravioli based on how the soup will be eaten (an appetizer, a side course, or the main course). 

Boot Camp: 28 Day Challenge: Day 1

In addition to using my Wii Fit everyday (for different reasons, not the least of which it yells at me if I skip a day) I'm going to follow Sparkpeople.com's bootcamp workout for the next four weeks. For those who don't know, Sparkpeople is a wonderful free site where you can track calories, goals, recipes, workouts, and basically anything you would ever need to lose weight. Again, for free.

They had this workout as one of the challenges for January on the Start page, so I signed up for it. They lured me in with words like "for people of all fitness levels" and "it's called 'Bootcamp' not because it's highly intense, but because it involves daily exercise and commitment" and "10 minutes or less." I set up a Youtube playlist with all the videos and set my TV up to play the first one yesterday evening. 

I scoffed at the 11 minute length of the cardio workout - 11 minutes is nothing! How is that a cardio workout? Can you even get your heart rate up enough? Meanwhile, the instructor on the video has been power marching and I can already feel myself thinking "Ok, is this over yet?" I couldn't even DO the jumping lunges at about 6:00 and the mountain climbers and squat thrusts that followed nearly killed me. 

After the 11:00 workout finished I was sold on this bootcamp, not because it made me feel like I'd actually done some serious physical activity (which it did) but because it got me to do exercises I didn't believe I could do. I was watching MTV's I Used to Be Fat last week, and there was a girl on the show who started at 253 pounds and her trainer was making her do these mountain climber moves. When I was watching her I thought, there is no way in hell I could do those. Yesterday I proved myself wrong. :)

Enchiladas de Pollo con Salsa Verde (AKA Green Chicken Enchiladas for people like me who hate ordering food in different languages.)

My first recipe post! I decided to start the new year off right, so I made some green chicken enchiladas that I can eat on all week. I used a recipe from Cooking Light but modified it to make it easier and even lighter! Their recipe was titled that fancy name in Spanish, but I always feel so stupid ordering things in restaurants when they're in different languages, so I'm just going to call this green chicken enchiladas and avoid humiliation.

This took me about 30 minutes of prep time, but I think with a little practice I can get it down to 20. Cooking time was 3-4 hours for the chicken in the crockpot and then just 25 minutes in the oven. I'm hoping these freeze well. If so, I will plan to make a double batch next time.

Yield: 4 servings (2 enchiladas each)

Ingredients:

8  (6-inch) corn tortillas

Sour cream, if desired

Filling:

3  cups  water

1/4  tsp salt

8  black peppercorns (or 1/4 tsp regular black pepper)

1  yellow onion, quartered (at least big enough to make up 1/2 cup when chopped)

1  bay leaf

1  pound  skinless chicken breast

1 1/2 cup of 2% Mexican blend cheese 

Sauce:

2/3  cup  2% milk

1/4  cup  fresh cilantro

1/4  cup  egg substitute (like Egg Beaters)

1/8  tsp  salt

1  (11-ounce) can tomatillos, drained (I found these in the Mexican section of the grocery store)

1  (4.5-ounce) can chopped green chiles, undrained

Preparation

1. To prepare filling, place all of the filling ingredients listed above except the cheese in a slow cooker and set on high for 3 hours or low for 6 hours. Remove chicken from cooking liquid and shred with 2 forks. Remove onion from cooking liquid and dice to make 1/2 cup. Discard liquid and any remaining onion (or save it for a soup base).
2. Preheat oven to 375°.
3. Combine chicken, 1 cup of cheese, and 1/2 cup onion in a bowl; set aside.
4. To prepare sauce, place all sauce ingredients listed above in a food processor; process until smooth. If you just have a tiny food processor like me, the only things that really need to go in are the tomatillos, the chiles, and the cilantro. You can stir in the rest of the ingredients out of the food processor.
5. To prepare tortillas, fill a medium skillet with 1 inch of water; bring to a simmer. Dip 1 tortilla in water using tongs. Spoon 1/2 cup filling in center of tortilla; roll tightly, and place in a 12x8-inch baking dish. Repeat procedure with remaining tortillas and filling. 
6. Pour sauce over enchiladas. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup cheese. Bake an additional 5 minutes or until cheese melts. Top with sour cream if desired. Enjoy!!

For the record, it is delicious. I made some quick Rice A Roni (the whole grain spanish flavor) and divided it into four portions. These will make the perfect lunches to bring to work this week -- don't they look better than a frozen dinner??