Watermelon + Heirloom Tomato Summer Salad

Beauteous, no?

Most people reading this will know I recently returned from am amazing trip to the United Kingdom, where I enjoyed some especially amazing meals.

For some reason, whenever I travel somewhere new, it's always that first meal that really knocks my socks off and sticks with me.  On this trip, that meal took place at Draper's Hall restaurant in Shrewsbury, Wales, and began with an appetizer of watermelon and heirloom tomatoes.

The original!

When I got home, I knew I wanted to reproduce it!  The flavor combination was unexpectedly complementary and so refreshing on a hot summer's day....not that we experienced any of those in Wales, but back home is another story.

It's also a delightfully easy, no-cook recipe.

What you need:

About 3 cups chopped watermelon

1 large heirloom tomato

About 2 tbsp feta cheese

A sprig of fresh rosemary

6-10 large basil leaves

A dash of salt and black pepper

Makes 4 servings

Just chop it all up, toss together, and serve!

Nutrition Facts:

Calories- 53

Fat- 1.5g

Carbs- 8.7g

Sugar- 6.5g

Protein- 2g

Pretty healthy! Plus it's just pretty to look at. Surprisingly filling, too!

And it paired very well with some prosciutto-wrapped roast asparagus (that recipe shall be shared next).

.....On to things I could not replicate, sadly:

Draper's Hall Restaurant exterior in Shrewsbury.

Boyfriend's lamb dish.

My beer + bernaise sauce dish.

Some sort of chocolate mousse something.

I did have some success with recreating this face!  Boyfriend highly approved of the salad.  No leftovers!

                                     

Rosemary Parmesan Roast Carrot "Steak Fries"

Roasty toasty!

Last night I had to have some sort of roast veggies in my life.  Nothing else was going to do.  And I had a big ole' bag of carrots in the fridge that needed to be eaten.  As I let this ravenous craving congeal with my longing for balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese, a lovely idea for roast carrots formed.

They were divine.

Like giant, toasty sweet potato steak fries, lightly charred on one side in the same delightful manner of a roasted marshmallow. We dipped them in roast garlic hummus and devoured the entire plate in no time.  I definitely see more of these in our future...especially since there's already another bag of carrots in my fridge.  And especially since they fulfill my desire to inhale masses of salty french-fry consistency things dipped in sauces.

So simple, so good.

What you need:

1 bag of carrots (mine had 12 ~7" long carrots in it), or about 12 carrots of your choice

1 tsp sea salt

1-2 tsp cracked black pepper

1 tbsp fresh rosemary

4 tsp grated parmesan cheese

4 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2.5 tbsp olive oil (more if you like, but I was trying to cut calories)

Makes 12 servings.

What to do:

Preheat your oven to around 400-450 degrees (the oven in my new place seems to heat up way beyond what I set it to, but I haven't quite figured out how much hotter it is yet). Slice carrots in half lengthwise and spread them out on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Drizzle with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and flip them around a few times to coat.  Sprinkle your seasonings evenly on top, pop them in the oven, and give them 30-45 minutes to roast, depending on how crispy you'd like them (the crispier the better for me!).

Nutrition Facts (per 2 slice serving):

Calories- 65

Fat- 2.4g

Carbs- 7.5g

Fiber- 1.7g

Sugar- 5.2g

Protein- 1.7g

Vanilla Berry Protein Pancakes

 I think I've finally perfected them, so here is the final recipe!

Mmm...fresh raspberry vanilla.

A few weeks ago I decided I really needed to focus on upping my protein intake in light of how much more I was working out.  I wound up overdoing it and making myself sick, mostly because I was in a frenzy to try all the protein powder recipes I could and gorged myself on the (crazy low calorie) results, but I'll spare everyone the details there.  Since I've been experimenting for weeks though, I can guarantee any protein powder recipes I share here are absolutely delicious, and don't taste like protein powder nastiness at all.  Just beware if you decide to eat a few batches of these a day along with the apple pudding muffins I shall share soon...

I have to say though, I bet none of what I've made would taste as good with another protein powder.  I highly recommend the BodyLogix Natural Whey.  I initially bought it just because it seemed to the the best powder around so far as giving me the most protein for the least calories, and I was shocked that it was also the best tasting I had tried, by far!  The vanilla flavor is like a white chocolate milkshake, even just mixed with water.  Not to mention it is one of the less expensive powders out there, to boot.

My Nana tells me these do not look good and she can't believe they would taste ok with protein powder, but she's wrong, I promise.  They taste different from your average IHOP rendition, for sure, but they're also way, waaaay healthier.

On to the recipe!

What you need:
1 scoop BodyLogix Natural Whey
1.5 tsp Ener-g Egg replacer
1/4 cup King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat Flour (white whole wheat works, too, and is 10 less calories)
1/4 cup low fat 1% cottage cheese
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp Stevia
(optional) handful of your berries of choice
(optional) pancake syrup/toppings (look for Walden Farms 0 calorie syrup- it is a miracle in a bottle!)

Makes 4 medium sized pancakes.

What to do:
Add all ingredients except the optional berries to a blender and blend until everything is nicely combined. Heat a greased skillet over medium heat, pour some batter in, toss in some berries if you like, and cook them like you would any other pancake!

Nutrition facts (without berries or toppings) for the WHOLE stack:
285 calories
2g fat
33g carbs
33.5g protein
4g fiber
2.5g sugar

These turn out pretty moist, so it's not entirely necessary to top them with anything, but it doesn't hurt.  They don't fluff up as much as your average pancake though, so if you toss in something like blueberries, it gets tricky to cook them evenly on both sides (because the blueberries are thicker than the pancakes).  I chopped up some raspberries from my dad's garden for them this morning and that problem was avoided!

You can also substitute plain Greek yogurt for the cottage cheese, but you wind up with a denser pancake.  The cottage cheese is better for fluffing them up, it seems.

Suggestions for making them fluffier without losing nutritional value are welcome!  I like this version a lot, but it's always fun to try more variations and see what I get.

Previous versions:

The very first try.  Not bad, but very dense...

Getting better....more pancake-shaped at least....

Mmm blueberry!

Cheesey Veggie Polenta Lasagna- a 272 calorie dinner

I wasn't even sure what polenta is until a week or so ago, but it kept cropping up as a main ingredient in healthy recipes I've come across, so I had to try it out.  If you don't know, it's a bland, corn-meal substance that can easily be transformed into a gluten-free substitute for pasta noodles, dough, and a variety of other things. Recently The Boyfriend has suspected he might be gluten intolerant, so we are trying out some recipes to work around this!  I was pretty thrilled with the results on this one, and it still boggles my mind that it is under 300 calories.  I've added everything up and run it through my recipe calculator serveral times just to make sure I'm not leaving something out.  It is so filling!  And you can have a HUGE slice, 1/4 of the whole dang lasagna, for 272 calories!

To avoid making it sound like an awful, scary "health food" meal, you could call it corn meal lasagna.  Or just present it as regular lasagna, and I bet people won't ask many questions after they taste it and figure out it's glorious.

I had seen a few different recipes out there for Polenta lasagna, but decided to kind of wing it and use up some things I had in my fridge to make my own.  To make the true Domestically Impaired version, be sure to entirely forget to include the garlic and balsamic vinegar you see here in my ingredients picture.  I'll toss those in next time, maybe.

Cut the polenta in half, then slice it into about 1/8" thick slices to completely line the bottom of a baking dish.  Add a layer of sliced zucchini.  

Then a layer of sliced tomato.  

Another layer of zucchini.  

Then spoon your pesto over the top.

Then add half of the vodka sauce.

 Next, slice up the other half of the polenta and layer it on top.

Spoon the remaining vodka sauce over this and pop it in the oven for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

After 25 minutes, carefully remove the burbling vat of  lava that is your lasagna at this point and spread your mozarella cheese over the top.

Put it back in under the broiler and broil until the cheese starts bubbling and browning!

Enjoy and join me in the amazement over NOT missing pasta noodles at all!

What you need:

16 oz polenta

1 large zucchini

1 large tomato

1 cup Monte Bene Vodka Sauce

1 cup Kraft Fat-Free Shredded Mozarella

1/4 cup pesto

Makes 4 servings

What to do:

Heat your oven to 375. Place a layer of sliced polenta in the bottom of a large baking dish, then layer zucchini-tomato-zucchini over the polenta.  Spoon the pesto and half of the vodka sauce over these layers. Top with a second layer of sliced polenta and the remaining vodka sauce.

Bake for 25 minutes, remove to add the cup of mozarella shreds, place under your broiler, and broil until the cheese starts to brown.

Nutrition Facts:

Calories: 272

Fat: 8g

Carbs: 31g

Fiber: 3g

Sugar: 6g

Protein: 19g

Liquid Cake!

50-90 calorie Liquid Devil's Food Cake

Today I’m not posting a recipe so much as a suggestion.  It’s probably obvious at this point that I have a bit of a sweet-tooth, and that’s been my biggest challenge to overcome so far as striving to maintain a healthy diet.  I’ve found a brilliant alternative to cakes, and cookies, and all that other sweet stuff though: TEA!

I’ve always been a tea lover, but a while back I started venturing into the world of loose leaf teas and varieties beyond what you’re going to find on the shelf at the local grocery store.  I’d tried a few supposed “chocolate” flavored teas and such in the past, but was pretty disappointed.  Now I know though that not all tea is created equal, and if you go for the right thing, brewed correctly, you’re going to be pretty amazed by how extravagant tea can taste.

Some of my favorites from Tattle Tea.
French Toast Chai, Honeybear Green Chai (salted caramel honey), Blueberry Lemon Cake Rooibos, and Forbidden Love Oolong Chai (devil's food cake).

My current favorite sources for tea are Tattle Tea and The Spice and Tea Exchange.  There are so many creamy tasting or right-out cake flavored teas to choose from!  On a whim a few months ago, I tried steeping the Black Chocolate tea from Spice and Tea Exchange purely in milk, and to my surprise wound up with the most decadent tasting hot chocolate I have ever had!

What you need:
Yummy tea of your choice
Milk or milk alternative of your choice
Sweetener of your choice...or no sweetener; whatevs.

To create my liquid cake, I heat the milk on high in a sauce pan just until it starts frothing, then pour it over tea leaves into my cast iron tea pot and steep it just as I would in water.

Using regular dairy milk and sugar still made for a fairly high-calorie treat for me though, so I started looking to alternatives that might make this a treat I could enjoy more often.  I love my raw sugar, but I’ve found Truvia to be an acceptable alternative, and I’ve found out I’m quite a fan of soy and almond milk, which have way fewer calories than dairy milk.  Yes, I know skim milk is also an option, but...yuck.  Go for it if you want some watery-bleh-icky tea, but I'm telling you there are better options.  Silk vanilla soy milk is my personal favorite!

Cookie Butter is NOT a part of a balanced breakfast...but a teaspoon of it can be on some double fiber wheat bread paired with low-cal almond milk tea.

Recently, I brewed up the Forbidden Love (devil's food cake flavored chai) tea from Tattle Tea in Silk Vanilla Almond Milk and added two teaspoons of Truvia baking blend sweetener.  The result: 90 calorie cake in a glass!

And last night?  Decaf French Toast Chai in Silk Unsweetened Almond Milk + 2 tsp Truvia baking blend = 50 calorie liquid French toast glory.  I mean, seriously.  You can have three cups of this and still come out healthier than a single tall chai latte at Starbucks (and having once been an addict of those, I can attest that this alternative is actually tastier).

The options for creating liquid cake are endless, and I'm having a pretty great time experimenting.  For anyone else with a disastrous sweet tooth, it's worth a try, and cheaper than a slice of cake, too!

Most importantly, liquid cake is Weebie-approved!

50 Calorie Chocolate Miracle Muffins

These are by far my favorite "diet" recipe that I have given a whirl, and actually what inspired me to start recording the recipes I've tried, edited, or created.  These are so freakin' good that they made me want to share them with the world!  People have laughed at me, rolled their eyes, and don't for a second believe that a 50 calorie muffin could taste like anything better than soggy cardboard.

And unlike the diet coke brownies from my last post, these are not only low calorie, but also have nutritional value!  They've got protein, are pretty darn low carb considering this is a chocolate muffin, and aren't high in fat or sugar either.  This is mostly accomplished by substituting out the usual unhealthy culprits in the ingredients list: oats in place of flour, unsweetened applesauce in place of butter, Splenda in place of sugar, and egg whites in place of whole eggs.  I'm typically not a fan of artificial sweetners such as Splenda, but for the results, I can deal with it.

The recipe I used can be found here:  Joe and Sue's Double Chocolate Muffins

This time, I actually highly recommend following the recipe as is.  The only adjustment I've made is using Hershey's Dark Chocolate morsels, the ones that are slightly larger than your typical chocolate chips.  I just prefer dark chocolate, and the larger chips make for more of a fudgy bite than normal sized chips, even if you are using the same amount of chocolate in the end.  The bigger gooey pockets are nicer and pack more flavor than the smaller ones.

Before baking...

...and after baking.  Yes, they look almost black before they cool.

What I'm most amazed by is that the nutrition facts actually check out!  So long as you're using about 3 tbsp of batter per muffin, they're going to be around 50 calories.  Of course, this also depends on how generous you are with sprinkling the chocolate chips on top.  I stuck to five per muffin, but I think 3 would be fine.

Nutrition facts (per 1 muffin- recipe makes 24):
Calories: 50~60ish, depending on size and amount of chips
Protein: 2.6g
Carbs: 7.8g
Fiber: 1.8g
Fat: 2.1g
Sugar: 3.2g

Things to potentially try: replacing the chocolate chips with butterscotch chips.  The results of this weren't bad, but they had a distinct coffee flavor (I have no clue why), and I am not a fan of anything coffee flavor.  My best friend enjoyed them at least!

Things not to try:  editing this into a lemon muffin recipe.  We tried.  It was a monstrous failure.  Even though the results look pretty ok here....they weren't.  We just tried to salvage the batter any way we could, and mini lemon pancakes resulted.  Still yuck.

At least The Boyfriend Food Disposal System still took care of them.

90 Calorie Fudgy Brownies

I was faced with an interesting challenge this weekend:  make a holiday dinner for my family- one that they can enjoy and so can I- without everything tasting like crazy “health” food.  I succeeded by using lots of vegetables, baked chicken, and being a little more generous with the butter than I would if I were cooking purely for myself, but my favorite thing I made?

90 calorie brownies.

And I didn’t tell anyone what they were until after they’d taken a few bites, because you’d seriously never know.  Here’s the recipe: http://www.eat-yourself-skinny.com/2012/04/diet-coke-brownies.html

Here's what you need:

12 oz Diet Coke

1 Package Pilsbury Sugar Free Brownie Mix

Makes 12 servings

Yes, for real, you just need a can of diet coke and some brownie mix.  The original recipe is 115 calories per brownie, but by using the sugar free mix, I was able to cut it down to 90 calories! 

My Domestically Impaired Requisite Cooking Goof-Up this time was using a special brownie pan that has a lift-out sleeve for cooling once the brownies are done baking.  Don’t use those for this recipe, folks.  The mix is going to be more liquidy than usual, and it will leak.  And your kitchen will smell like burnt stuff.  And it’ll take you three rounds of soaking your oven with 409 and scraping with a spatula to remove the burnt gunk.  But your brownies are still going to taste amazing!

On to the instructions….

Just mix the diet coke with the brownie mix, pour it into a (non-leaking) pan, and bake according to the instructions.  It might take a little longer than the package says for them to bake if you don’t like your brownies as gooey as I do.  Either way, the result is going to be a rich, fudgy wonder akin to the flavor of a flourless chocolate torte. They're still not particularly nutritious (yeah, check out that carb content), but they're a pretty awesome alternative to your average calorie packed brownie!

Nutrition Facts:

Calories- 90

Fat- 2.5g

Carbs- 23.1

Protein- 1

Fiber- 3g