Quick, Easy and Satisfying Dinner

Growing up my mom would make these amazing sesame noodles.  Once I moved into my own apartment and started cooking a little, I asked her for the recipe.  It was super easy and you could eat it hot or cold.  It was also really cheap, so it was the perfect thing for a college student to make for dinner (and have plenty of leftovers!)

However, the recipe is not very healthy.  It has a lot of sesame oil and peanut butter, which is why it tastes so good.  Recently I've been experimenting with the proportions of ingredients in attempts to make it healthier.  I've also added some ingredients to make it more of a well rounded meal. 

Josh and I love this dish and it has become a regular in our dinner rotation.  It's also great because I always have the ingredients in the house, so it's perfect for those nights at the end of the week when I've run out of groceries but still want to make a good dinner.

Sesame Noodles with Chicken and Edamame:

• 1 lb pasta (I use whole wheat for this recipe to make it more hearty)

• 1 teaspoon ginger (I don't like having pieces of ginger in my food so I use ginger juice, but you could also use powdered ginger)
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons sesame oil
• 5 tablespoons soy sauce (reduced sodium)
• 4 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter (I use Trader Joes Better'n Peanut Butter which is all natural and has 85% less fat than regular peanut butter)

•  1/2 pound chicken cut into bite size pieces and marinated in a combination of soy sauce, ginger and garlic (I didn't measure these, just kinda threw it all into a zip lock bag and stuck it in the fridge for 30 minutes until I was ready for it)

• 1/2 cup shelled edamame (I buy the frozen kind from Trader Joes)
• Sesame seeds for garnish 

This is a really fast dinner and comes together in less than 30 minutes.  

First, get the chicken cut up and marinating.  While it's marinating, get your water boiling for the pasta.  While you're waiting for the water to boil, mix the ginger, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, white vinegar and peanut butter together.  I mix it all together in a mixing cup to make it easy for myself. 

 Once the water has boiled, drop the pasta and take the chicken out of the refrigerator.  Put a pan on medium heat and cook the chicken.  Once the chicken is almost cooked through add the edamame.

Once completely cooked, turn off heat and put in a colander to get rid of any excess liquid.  Put back in pan and drain pasta in same colander.  Once drained, combine pasta, chicken & edamame and sauce in the pot you cooked the pasta in (I hate making extra dishes) and stir to combine.  Then just serve up in bowls and sprinkle some sesame seeds on for garnish and crunch!

Josh and I each ate a bowl of this for dinner and were very full.  We still have at least 3 servings left and since this dish can be eaten warm or cold, it makes an easy snack, lunch or quick dinner.  When I put the recipe into the weight watchers calculator it comes to 65 points.  I think we'll get 5 servings out of it which makes it 13 points each serving - not bad for dinner!  You could serve it with steamed broccoli on the side and get 6 servings out of the recipe, making it only 11 points each serving.

Then for dessert I made some homemade chocolate chip & walnut cookies.  I won't even begin to figure out the points in these... but they sure were yummy!

Treats for Teddy

I made Teddy some dog biscuits a few weeks ago and even though he gobbled up the first few, he got tired of them very quickly.  I found that he had been hoarding all of the biscuits that I had been giving him in his play pen, so he obviously wasn't eating them!  I figured he was sick of them so I gave them out to Teddy's friends (i.e. my friends who have dogs).

At first I figured I would give up on the idea of making homemade treats for Teddy.  If he was going to get tired of them after having only 3 or 4, what was the point of spending 2 hours making them??  It's so easy to buy a package of treats from the store.  But then, at the store, when you read the list of ingredients you remember why you want to make your own - so you can control what goes in them.  Besides, how do we show those that we care about that we love them - with food!

I wanted to make Teddy something that I knew he'd like, and what does every dog like?  People food.

Teddy loves carrots.  Every weekend when I go food shopping I buy a bag of baby carrots, because I'm sure that I'm going to be good and snack on carrots instead of junk food.  Yeah right.  Needless to say, by the end of the week half the bag gets thrown away.  This week though, I decided to add those carrots to a dog biscuit!

Carrot Dog Treats:

• 1 medium banana (ripe)
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 1/8 cup water
• 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (plus more for rolling)
• 1 cup rolled oats

Tip: use a food processor to shred your carrots, it will save you A LOT of time and cut fingers (I know from experience).

Preheat your oven to 350.  In the bowl of your mixer mash up the banana (the browner the banana is, the sweeter and softer it will be, so I saved my banana for a few days until it had lots of brown spots) and mix in the shredded carrots.  Add to that the water and applesauce.  Next, add in the flour and oats.  Stir together until it is thoroughly combined.  Knead mixture until a dough forms (it will all clump up on the kneading attachment and scrape the sides of the bowl clean).  Put the dough on a floured surface and roll out to about 1/2 inch thickness.  Using a cute cookie cuter, cut into biscuits.  Place biscuits on a lightly sprayed baking sheet (or just use a sil pad).  The baking time will depend on how hard you want the biscuits.  Teddy likes them a little soft so I baked them for 25 minutes. They'll harden a bit as they cool, but if you want them very hard you'll have to bake longer. 

These were definitely Teddy approved!

 

** If you are going to make your own dog treats, make sure to not add anything that can be dangerous for your dog.  Here is a link to the ASPCA's list of harmful people food for dogs. 

No More Broken Promises

Before I moved to my apartment on Long Island I bought a cookie jar.  It was from Neiman Marcus and I fell in love with it.  However, when Greg and I decided to live together again, he forbid me from bringing my amazing cookie jar.  Now, if you know me, you know that I do not take no for an answer - the cookie jar was coming. 

The only way I could get Greg to allow me to keep my cookie jar in the kitchen (and not in a closet) was by promising to always keep it stocked with homemade cookies.  This lasted for a couple of weeks and then I stopped baking because I didn't want to keep eating cookies!  But yesterday, I remembered that promise I made to my dear friend and I was going to keep it!  No more empty (amazing) cookie jar.

I decided to use a Weight Watcher cookie recipe, with some changes, so that I hopefully wouldn't feel as guilty when munching away on cookies. 

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies:

• 1 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup salted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 egg whites
• 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

The original recipe calls for white flour, but I've recently discovered white whole wheat flour and it has changed my baking life. 

I've tried baking cookies with whole wheat flour but they come out too hearty and dense, so I save the whole wheat flour for breads.  The white whole wheat flour is lighter than the whole wheat but still maintains the higher protein and nutrition.  The way they do this is simply by milling the grain from hard white spring wheat rather than red wheat which is what whole wheat flour is from.

Anyway, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. 

Combine the flour with the baking soda and salt in a small bowl and set aside. 

Beat butter and brown sugar with a mixer at medium speed until it's light and fluffy, then gradually add the granulated sugar and beat well.  Next, add the cocoa and egg whites, beating well.  Gradually add the flour mixture, beating until blended.  Finally, stir in chocolate chips.

Drop onto baking sheet (I put a sil pad on mine instead of spraying it with non-stick spray to avoid having to wash it) and bake for 12 minutes.  Cool on the pan for a few minutes before you attempt to move them to a rack, as they come out very soft and harden as they cool. 

The original recipe made 40 1-point cookies, but that would be too tiny!  I made 30 cookies, so it came out to 3 weight watcher points in 2 cookies - not too bad. 

Best of all though, the cookie jar is again full of cookies and fulfilled promises.