New find

If you're looking for a good dressing to liven up your salad, I have found one!

All I can say about this stuff is YUM!!!

We have served this dressing at two separate parties at our house and it was a major hit with everyone who tried it! I was having a hard time eating salads but this stuff makes me walk to the store to buy lettuce (and anything else I can dream of to put on a salad) just so I can have the dressing! It is 70 calories per serving but I have found a half serving to be plenty for an average salad.

Today, I had a GINORMOUS salad for lunch and only used one serving and it was plenty. Just in case your curious, here's what else I put on my deliciousness:

2 1/2 cups spring mix lettuce (my new favorite lettuce blend)
6 grape tomatoes
1/4 green pepper
a few slivers of onion
2 sliced strawberries
2 slices deli turkey
McCormick Salad Toppins (another of my salad favorites)

My plate was hugely overflowing, I am stuffed, and the total calorie count? 200 CALORIES! I am so in heaven right now!

Apple Crisp

One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving (and Christmas for that matter) has been the pie! Oh I love pie! My favorite? Apple crisp - especially warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over the top! BUT, I also know that apple crisp is FULL of sugar and fat (at least the recipe I have).

I have been eating Healthy Choice meals now and then and they have a wonderful oatmeal topping for their apple crisp. I figured if it was part of this meal, I should be able to find a recipe online for a healthy apple crisp topping. I could skip the crust, put the crisp part on top, and be good to go! Every recipe I found had butter in it! I looked at the ingredient list on the box - NO BUTTER!

So, I decided to try my own recipe using the ingredients listed on the box. And I must say, it turned out decent. It wasn't great, but it is a good substitute. Don't get me wrong, this recipe is definitely NOT calorie free. It is LOADED with sugar. BUT it has NO fat and lots FEWER calories than the real thing!

1 jar apple pie filling
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp dark Karo syrup
1 Tbsp honey
1 cup rolled oats
butter spray

***REVISION FROM ORIGINAL POST***
To help crisp up the topping (and keep it crisper longer) bake the topping for 1 1/2 to 2 hours at 225 degrees. Turn every half hour. I sprayed the topping with butter spray, cooked if for 1/2 hour, turned it and then sprayed it again (so the bottom also got coated). This also seems to improve the flavor quite a bit. Cool.

Pour and spread the pie filling into an 8x8 baking dish (sprayed with cooking spray). Combine sugar, syrup and honey in saucepan and cook over medium heat until well mixed. Add oats and stir until well coated. Remove from heat and spread over apple filling. Spray the topping with butter spray. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

The ingredients list also had molasses but I didn't have any. I think it would probably have been better with a touch of molasses but I can't say for sure!

Potato update

Okay, so do you remember a couple of posts back, I mentioned a party that I attended (and was actually good at) where they served mashed potatoes? I didn't eat them because I wasn't sure what was in them (but had a pretty good idea from a small taste test that it wasn't very diet friendly). Well, I found the recipe for them. I am SOOOOO glad I passed on the mashed potatoes:

15 medium (5 pounds) potatoes, peeled and quartered
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons onion powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 egg whites, slightly beaten
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup chopped chives (optional)

Seriously! Who comes up with recipes like this? This just shows me that I really have made some changes. Last year, I would not only have eaten the potatoes, but I would have sought out the recipe and made some myself. Now, I look it at this recipe, and it doesn't even look tempting to me. It looks a little bit more like a heart attack in a crock pot!

By the way, I do have a good recipe for mashed potatoes that is still yummy but much healthier! Okay, maybe not technically a recipe, but...

I boil my potatoes (amounts depends on number to be served). Drain the water and blend in a small amount of skim milk and Butter Buds or Molly McButter (sometimes I do a mixture of the two) to taste! I have also added some butter spray before. Still very yummy but no where near the calories and fat of potatoes that have real butter in them.

Yummy Treat

I found a yummy treat that I wanted to share!

1/2 cup Dryers Slow Churned Vanilla ice cream (this is the kind I used but any with the same calorie/fat count would work)
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 cup (or 79 grams) frozen raspberry, blueberry, blackberry blend (needs to be this blend for the fiber)

Blend in blender until smooth. Weight Watchers points - 3!!