Foodie Friday

We've been making our own fat free pudding and sugar free jello from the box/mix at home for lunches lately. A neat variation on the jello recipe is to add 1 cup of boiling water (as instructed), and then instead of adding 1 cup of cold water, use 1 cup of your favorite soda (diet or regular should work). It adds some pizzaz to the jello, and it's fun to mix and match the flavors.

So far, we've tried combinations like lime jello with gingerale and orange jello with sierra mist cranberry splash, both of which were good. The combinations are (practically) limitless, so give it a try, and let me know what fun and tasty mixtures you create!

Foodie Friday

I reeeeally like the oatmeal raisin cookies at Starbucks and was super stoked when I was able to find their recipe online. I made a batch last week, and they are oh-so-yummy!

I used my new cookie scoop, and it worked like a charm. The only thing I will probably do differently next time is to flatten the dough balls a bit before baking so that I can bake them for a shorter time (to keep them chewy), but they will cook evenly throughout.

Foodie Friday

I'm a big fan of chickpeas, a.k.a. garbanzo beans. I mean, I really love them...on a salad, in chili, on pita chips in the form of hummus, and the list goes on. Except...well, the list doesn't go on because I haven't found all that many different ways to enjoy my beloved beans. So, when I heard about ROASTED chickpeas, I was quite excited.

The especially good news about this recipe is that, not only are garbanzo beans very good for you, but the roasted ones are oh-so-easy to make. Plus, when making/eating these, you get to feel multi-cultural, as roasted, spiced chickpeas are a popular snack in Turkey called leblebi. :)

Here's what you do:

• Rise and pat dry one can of chickpeas
• Toss the beans in a little bit of oil (I used olive)
• Season to taste (the options are endless, but I tried garlic salt for my first attempt)
• Spread the seasoned and oiled chickpeas on a cookie sheet
• Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, shaking the beans around every 10-15 minutes
• Increase the oven temperature to 400, and bake for an additional 15-20 minutes
• Remove roasted chickpeas when crunchy

Viola! Roasted garbanzo beans!

My roasted chickpeas were crunchy and good! However, if you don't love these beans as much as I do, I think you'll want some more seasoning, as I did feel they were a bit bland. Some ideas I'd like to try in the future are cajun seasoning, chili powder, and garam masala.

Wordless Wednesday

Foodie Friday

I had so much fun making Christmas cookies this year, that I'm almost starting to think I might like baking! ;-) Here are two of the recipes and a couple pictures of the goodies since, unless you live in my neighborhood, you probably won't get a taste of these (Sorry Christy!).

Flourless (Gluten Free) Peanut Butter Kisses

2 cups peanut butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1.5 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients together, shape dough into 1.5" balls, and roll in sugar. Bake at 350 F for about 9 minutes. Gently press Hershey's kiss on top of warm cookie (or just place the kiss on top, and it will melt a bit, as cookies have a tendency to crumble.). Makes around 3 1/2 dozen.

Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Cream Cheese Filling

(based on this recipe)

2 (18.25 ounce) packages spice cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup canned pumpkin
1 container of whipped cream cheese frosting

Blend the first 4 ingredients together, and drop quarter-sized balls of dough onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 F. Let cookies stand on cookie sheet for 5-6 minutes before placing them on a cooling rack. After cookies have completely cooled, spread cream cheese frosting between 2 cookies. This recipe easily makes 4-dozen cookies (or 2 dozen "sandwiches). So you could definitely cut it in half and have at least a dozen servings, especially if you actually used "quarter-sized" drops (most of mine were 50% larger than that and required 12-14 minutes of baking).

Wordless Wednesday

Foodie Friday

We discovered an amazing, and fairly healthy snack/side a couple of months ago that I wanted to share with you. I've made "homemade" potato chips in the past by thinly slicing up some potatoes and putting them into hot oil in the pan. Well, that works decently, but (unless you have a deep fryer) it makes quite a bit of mess and it's sometimes difficult to get the oil at the right temperature and keep it there...not to mention all that oil that the potatoes soak up! Anywho, I discovered a great way to do it in the microwave with practically no oil! I didn't believe it when I first read about it online, but sure enough, I tried it and we liked these as much as the oil-saturated fried version! Here's how you do it:

Clean and thinly slice (1/16"-1/8" thick) potatoes. I found that about 1 small-medium potato per serving worked well, and I didn't peel them, since I'm looking for easy, not time consuming. Also, I used our food processor (which meant cutting the potatoes in half), but you could use a mandolin, vegetable/cheese slicer, or just a knife.

Rinse/soak the slices in cold water for 5-10 minutes. Some recipes I saw online don't call for this, but I figured it removes some of the starch and couldn't hurt. If you're looking to shave off a little more time, try eliminating this step.

Arrange a single layer of potatoes on a piece of parchment paper that has been lightly coated with oil (vegetable or olive), and try to keep the slices from touching each other since they will stick together during the cooking process.

Spray/drizzle a little oil over the potatoes and add seasoning (salt, garlic powder, chili powder, creole seasoning, etc.). Some recipes do not call for any oil at all, so you could try leaving this off, but I think it might help prevent sticking and potentially add to crispiness.

Microwave the chips on high for about 5 minutes until they are lightly browned and crispy. You might need to flip them over halfway through, but we had success even when we didn't do this. Make sure to check every minute or two (and maybe do a taste test) since cooking time will vary based on the thickness of your slices and your specific microwave.

Repeat until all the chips are finished, and store in an airtight container for 3 days. This is the one thing I've yet to try...for how long can they really be stored? We've always just eaten ours right away...in fact, so fast that I wasn't able to take a picture of the final product!

So, there you have it...a quick and fairly easy way to make healthy, homemade potato chips! Next, I want to try the salt and vinegar version, which involves dipping each potato slice into cider vinegar before putting it on the parchment paper, then sprinkling with salt before microwaving. :)

Foodie Friday

I have several "foodie Friday" topics that I need to blog about soon.  However, I've just not had the time.  Anywho, we went to the fair last night, and I just couldn't resist sharing with you the fried snickers we had! ;-p  Enjoy!

Foodie Friday

Today's food focus is oh-so-yummy black bean dip!

If you like salsa, this is a great way to add some substance to chips and dip or even a meal.  I've spread some on a tortilla with cheese, chicken/beef, and sour cream, and it was yummy!  Plus, it's fat free, and the beans provide additional protein and fiber.  I first discovered it at our local grocery store (Harris Teeter), but I'm sure many other places carry such a dip, and it wouldn't be difficult to make it yourself.

Foodie Friday

For those of you who read my blog a few weeks ago about my first attempt at dehydrating, here's a little update. I've ALWAYS wanted to dehydrate watermelon...I mean, for years I've talked about this. Watermelon is easily my favorite fruit, and pretty much embodies for me the wonder of summer. :) So, I broke out the dehydrator once again and this time tried dehydrating a few different fruits, including...WATERMELON! I sliced up nearly a pound of strawberries, about 6 bananas, and the rest of our watermelon leftovers into 1/8-1/4" pieces, resulting in 2 trays of bananas, 1 tray of strawberries, and 2 trays of watermelon. For some fruits that tend to brown, you can pretreat with lemon juice (I'd consider it) or sulfite (no thanks), but I decided to just see what happened with the bananas.

I never really know for how long to let these dry, because the suggested range of time varies so greatly. I did, however, put the watermelon on the bottom, closest to the fan. For the first few hours of drying, our kitchen smelled like a yummy fruit cocktail! After ~12 hours, all the fruit still felt a bit gummy, and I think I ended up letting them go for about 18 hours total. None of the fruit ever got "crunchy," which is what I was expecting, but maybe I got impatient with the drying process.

The bananas, well...tasted like bananas! They didn't taste quite like the banana chips you may have had from the store because (1) they weren't fried and therefore weren't crispy, though they may have gotten more crispy if I'd have left them in longer, and (2) they weren't coated with honey or sugar before drying them, which would add sweetness. It might actually be just as easy (or easier!) to make banana chips in the oven, so I may try that next time.

The strawberries tasted a lot like the dehydrated strawberries you might have had in cereal, and the watermelon....well, it was interesting. It certainly paled in comparison to fresh watermelon, but it wasn't bad, either. It didn't taste quite like the delicious candy that I'd read about a couple of places online, but I am considering trying it again with more of a leather approach: blend up the watermelon, drain off the liquid (I'll probably drink it...yes, I love watermelon THAT much!), maybe add some applesauce (apparently leathers need pectin, and applesauce helps with that), and then pour the puree into the trays to dehydrate. If you get the hankering to dehydrate watermelon chunks, I'd definitely recommend larger strips than the little square pieces I used...not thicker, just longer.

Overall, I found that a LOT of fresh fruit makes a LITTLE dehydrated fruit. This is the end product of nearly a pound of strawberries, about 6 bananas, and a "good bit" of watermelon, and yes, those are small sandwich ziplock bags:

So, if you're looking for a way to preserve your garden's harvest or summer's great deals on fruit and vegetables, this may be a good way, especially if you are planning on using the fruits/veggies later in the year for cooking purposes. However, you'd have to perfect the drying process to make sure you've removed all the moisture, or else your dehydrated food will spoil. I also read somewhere that you should put the finished product in the freezer for a day or so to make sure all the bacteria are killed, so, whether that works or not, I tried it. It certainly made things a bit more crunchy, which gives me more reason to think that my batch of fruit was not completely dehydrated (since none of it was crunchy when it wasn't frozen).

My "take home" from this experience is that fruit leathers are the way to go. The prep work is a good bit less time consuming, since there's little/no slicing involved, and the fruit leather actually tasted better to me. Happy drying!

Foodie Friday

We borrowed a food dehydrator from my parents and finally were able to try it out last weekend. I bought a bunch of strawberries and blueberries and decided to make fruit leather. It was really quite easy as far as the hands-on work goes, but I don't think I realized just how long it takes for fruit to fully dehydrate.

First I used the food processor, though you could easily use a blender or chopper, to make a smoothie of the berries--1 1/2 lbs of strawberries and 1 1/2 pints of blueberries, give or take some. I didn't add any sugar, honey, etc. because I wanted to see how we liked it "au natural." Some recipes suggested using a seive to remove some of the seeds from the berries, but because the berry mixture was quite thick, I couldn't imagine that working well. Plus, I like texture and fiber in my food.

I lightly sprayed two trays designed for making fruit leather with cooking spray, and poured half of the berry mixture into each.

Then I plugged in the dehydrater, and let it do its thing....basically a fan moves heated air around in a circular motion. The recipe book said it would take anywhere from 8-12 hours, and since I didn't actually start the process of dehydrating until about 1 p.m., our leather still wasn't fully dry when we were ready to go to bed 10 hours later. However, the texture of the leather had definitely changed, and it felt gummy-ish.

So, we put the dehydrator on a timer for another two hours, and hoped for the best! In the morning, it felt *mostly* dry, and at that point I was just ready to wrap it all up. So, I rolled up the leather in individual servings using plastic wrap and, to be on the safe side, stored it in the refrigerator.

Overall, I was pleased with the result, and my husband has been enjoying the fruit leathers in his lunches, too. I think I'd like to incorporate some applesauce or something next time as a bit of a filler; some recipes even say to use applesauce as the main ingredient in fruit leather. Also, I'm glad I didn't use any additional sweetener. The fruit-only leather tasted sweet enough to me, and is certainly much healthier without the extra sugar.

If you're interested in trying out drying, you don't necessarily have to own (or borrow!) a dehydrator. There are a couple of other methods for drying food, including using your oven. In the future, I'm looking forward to making more fruit leather, and I also want to try to make some jerky and dehydrate watermelon!

Wordless Wednesday

Foodie Friday

Today's post might be more appropriately called "Fluid Friday," since I'm writing about one of our favorite breakfast juices/drinks--V8 V-Fusion Light.

Now, before you stop reading on the basis that I just used the words favorite and V8 in once sentence, please "hear" me out! ;) V8 V-Fusion Light does not taste like vegetables (I'm not a fan at all of regular V8) and comes in three varieties: strawberry banana, peach mango, and pomegranate blueberry. All are made with the juices from a number of fruits and vegetables such as sweet potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beets, white grapes, oranges, apples, strawberries, and bananas. One 8 oz. serving of our favorite, strawberry banana, has only 50 calories and no fat (yay) or fiber (boo). So, for only 1 WW point, you can have your fruit/veggies (1/4 cup veggies and 1/4 cup fruit = 1 combined serving of fruits and vegetables) and drink them too!

Just a word of warning...while normally the regular version of something tastes better than the light, I would not recommend regular V8 V-Fusion. We've tried it before, and it tastes much more like vegetables, with a thick consistency, which is not how I like my juice! So, we stick to the light version, which means a smaller serving of fruit/veggies per 8 oz, but also less than half the calories, too!

Foodie Friday

Do you like chocolate? If not, I'm actually surprised we are friends...or maybe you accidentally stumbled onto my blog... ;) juuuuust kidding. But seriously, if you do crave things like warm chocolate cake or chocolatey brownies fresh from the oven, then you MUST check out the chocolate muffin mix made by Vitalicious.

This mix makes in an oh-so-chocolatey muffin that barely tastes like it's good for you. Of course, in addition to chocolate goodness, these muffins are surprisingly healthy, with 100 calories, 1.5g fat, 6g fiber...that's only 1 WW point per muffin! I think they're best served warm from the oven, but I've successfully frozen them in the past and just reheated a muffin or two at a time in the microwave. These are a perfect snack, and I even like them for breakfast (is there EVER a bad time for chocolate??). In fact, when we go on vacation, I'll pack a few in an airtight container, along with some bananas and juice, and voila--a healthy and fairly inexpensive "continental breakfast" right in our hotel room.

While they are available online, I've also found Vitalicious products at Harris Teeter in the Carolinas, and they're probably available at a store near you! If you're interested in trying these out but aren't sure you want to commit to making a dozen, they do come pre-made in packs of four in the frozen food aisle, though they're more expensive than the mix.

p.s. As you can see on their website, there are a ton of other varieties. I've tried the frozen version of the brownies (not bad, but I always end up coming back to the muffins) as well as the golden corn vitatops (muffin tops).

Foodie Friday

Today's post is in honor of summertime and all the cookouts, baseball games, etc. that go along with this warm, but wonderful season! We've found that Ball Park Lite Beef Franks are a good substitute for the full fat dogs without losing much/any of the flavor. Before I even give the stats on these low fat franks...I knooooow that hot dogs still probably aren't the healthiest food to eat. However, we like them, and they are a quick and easy meal when we're on the go. Plus, if you pair them with some baby carrots on the side, then it's not so bad, right? ;)

Ball Park's Lite Beef Franks have only 100 calories and 7 grams of fat per frank for a total of 3 WW points. Now, that may sound pretty high, since that doesn't include the bun, but is actually quite a bit better than Ball Park's regular beef franks, which have nearly twice as many calories and more than double the fat. There are, of course, even "healthier" options that are fat free and/or made with turkey that you may enjoy. While we don't like the turkey/fat free hot dogs by themselves, I think they would taste good with some turkey chili and melted low-fat cheese, which is how we often enjoy our lite franks!

Foodie Friday

We were camping and hiking last weekend, and I wasn't able to post anything on Foodie Friday (See Figure 1):

Figure 1. Megan, Brian, and Riley hiking at Pilot Mountain State Park :-)

So, this Friday, I want to tell you about a fabulous snack we enjoy in the great outdoors (and use to supplement many a lunch in the great indoors, too!).


Archer Farms' fruit strips are what I consider a healthy version of the fruit roll up. Incorporating enough fruits and veggies in our diet can be challenging, but these real fruit strips (primary ingredients are fruit purees and juices) make that task a bit easier. Oh, and the fact that they're organic AND sold at Target doesn't hurt either!


These quick snacks come in a number of fruity flavors, such as pomegranate, apricot, strawberry, raspberry, and tropical. I especially like they they have only 45 calories and include 1 gram of fiber (you'd be surprised at the things that SHOULD have fiber, but DON'T!), which comes out to 1 WW point. In fact, you could even eat 2 of these guys and still fall within the 1 point range. Pretty sweet, eh?

Foodie Friday

I'm always looking for new tasty and healthy snacks, recipes, foods, etc., so I thought I might share some on here as I come across them. I tend to use the Weight Watcher system to help determine "healthiness" at our house, so I'll include Points values, too, when I can. Oh, and because I'm cheesy, I'll try to share on Fridays and call this Foodie Friday! hehe

My latest find is smartfood's popcorn clusters. I bought the "chocolate cookie caramel pecan" version to try because it sounded like it might be a good fix for both salty and sweet cravings. While the name sounds kinda busy, I think this snack is oh-so-tasty!The popcorn clusters come in individual bags, so portion control is easy, and it's only 2 points for a single serving (1 oz.) bag. I was impressed by the 5g of fiber and 20% of the daily recommended values for calcium in each serving. They have a couple of other flavors like cranberry almond (gluten free) and honey multigrain (slightly lower calories/fat) that I might try in the future.