Fudge brownies with caramel and pretzels

warning: NOT Weight-watchers friendly! I tried my best to calculate it & it came to around 11 pts per serving w/around 15 or so servings total.

    I stumbled upon this recipe on Pinterest a week or so ago & immediately thought of one of my best friends, Kacie. It so happens that her birthday is today and that she loves caramel and sweet-salty combinations. We got together last night to celebrate, so I made it for her.

• I used a Pillsbury fudge brownie box mix instead because it was on sale at our store. 
• We used sugar-free (I think Smuckers) caramel sauce
• I got generic pretzels for the savings, but I would recommend trying a name-brand. They got kind of soggy and different textured so I don't know if it may have been a bit better perhaps with non-generic ones. 
• I put the brownies in for around 33 mins and Mom checked on it while we went out for food. When I came back she had spread the caramel (nearly the whole jar but not quite) over the top of the pretzel-brownies and then I sprinkled the sea salt on top. I can't read, so I did all this before it cooled- read it backwards somehow!! haha. so make sure you let it cool at least some so that the caramel doesn't all sink in lime mine did. If you look at the pic on the recipe site it's supposed to be more of an icing than like "hot fudge." I kept adding more & also more sea salt because it kept soaking in where I couldn't see it anymore. 

So it was pretty good while it was still warm, & I think ice cream may have made made it even tastier. The more it set though the caramel made everything sticky and kind of hard and the pretzels were tough and kind of leathery... not sure what would help with that- maybe putting it in an airtight container right away? Next time I'd use "real" pretzels, less pretzels, & let it cool down before I topped it. Anyway it was fun to try & the birthday girl seemed to like it well enough. 

Memorial Day grilling

   Didn't wanna do the cliche hamburgers or bbq on the grill for Memorial Day this year, but a grilled supper did sound nice while everyone would be home. I thought, hey why not pork chops? so I looked for a recipe in the Weight Watchers collection and found this one. I thought I bought boneless chops but it turned out I just got really tiny lean ones. Still good though. I used the little red potatoes I believe, because that's all our store had in stock.

• Pay attention to the directions so that you have time to let it marinate in the fridge for a few hours.
• Mom helped me and we had one so this time I actually used real garlic cloves.  
• Our zucchini ended up cooking too long and was kinda burnt-ish and slimy at the same time :/  
• The potatoes & chops were REALLY good! I used a bit less than the called for rosemary & it was still a bit strong- so beware if you don't like strong herb flavor. 
• mom did the actual grilling so I'm not really sure how long everything ended up taking in real life. 
• She did grill a lemon & tried it on her zucchini

I forgot to take any pictures. 

Homemade chicken nuggets? Who knew

Tonight I made chicken nuggets from scratch!! a healthier version void of hidden spices I hate= great idea!!
They were easy & fast (more/less) to make & very very tasty- didn't even need ketchup, though I did use some anyway. The only thing was that I did not at all get them cut evenly. oh and i used the Italian breadcrumbs and original Panko that we had on hand instead of wheat or whole grain or whatever (so it's actually more than the pts listed). We had some peas & mixed (canned) hominy with them this time. Next time I'm going to have to make more!

4 WW pt/ "1/4" of  the recipe (IF you use the wheat breadcrumbs)

chocolate fruit dip & pork tenderloin

•    Ok I feel more than obligated to share this recipe. This stuff was seriously TASTY!! It tasted more like a mousse than a dip. I wanted to just eat it with a spoon ha. It was pretty rich for me for fruit, so next time I'd prob think about adding less cream cheese. 
• And let me just say: only 2 pts/2 Tbs!!!! It could be like a cheating dessert, or more incentive to eat fruit =D
• I guess I didn't get a pic of this one, but it looks like the pic on the blog. 

• seasoned pork tenderloin: I had wanted to make this for awhile now but the time I went to our local store before this they had only one tenderloin package left and it was looking a little worse for wear so I didn't buy it. Then later mom got one for me at HEB I think. Of course just yesterday when I was at our same local store they were fully stocked. Anyway, this was an interesting recipe for me, though I've been told it turned out (made it a little over a week ago) to be one of my best "creations." Dad even said it tasted like catering- although now that I think about it, that's not always the best kind of food ha. But hey, I'm available to make it for your next event ;) haha. 

• so I used sugar-free pancake syrup (a bit of generic we had left and then actually the IHOP brand one)
• we didn't have any dry mustard & I didn't want enough of that taste to use the kind in the fridge, but i did see mustard seed in the spice cabinet- so i googled it. It said to crush it w/a mortar and pestle which we do not have, so I thought I'd give the food processor thing a try for making it more into more of a dust. yeah, so that didn't work at all and nearly burnt out our machine since the blades were never hitting anything. In fact it burnt (not badly though) my finger when I tried to take it apart to pour out the seeds. Well I just used it anyway (the yellow specks on top if you can see them in the pics). 
• I found no cloves in our cabinet (though I saw them last night!) so I googled substitutions. I found this handy spice substitution chart. Though I ended up following another recommendation and used All-Spice in place of the cloves 1:1 ratio.
• I nixed the pepper, as I don't like it
• I let it marinate overnight and then didn't get it out of the fridge until after 3pm that day. 
• It didn't have a whole lot of fat to cut off but I had a bit of a hard time of it and I felt like going vegetarian in the middle of that. I don't quite think I cut it into halves & such correctly, but it all worked out in the end. 

  

Breakfast treats

•    French Toast WW-friendly: I actually made this one before the cheesecake, so I already had 2 egg yolks sitting in the fridge by then cause this one calls for 2 egg WHITES.

I used our regular 1% milk and whatever bread we had that was not the low-cal in the recipe.

• monkey bread muffins: These didn't quite turn out right. I'll attribute most of that to making them pretty late at night. First off I used sugar-free regular pancake syrup and the only reduced-fat dough I found happened to be Buttermilk. 
• ...so somehow one can of dough wasn't perforated right and I couldn't really see where to tear it and then I went through both cans dividing it into only 2 & rolling the bits into balls & into the sprinkle-sugar mixture before I remembered that it says to divide each "strip" of dough into THREE equal pieces!! Therefore I was out of dough before I was a little more than half done filling the 12 cups (muffin pans)-- red alert to my brain haha. I kind of sorted it out in the end but the portions weren't quite the same. 
• It calls for 2 Tbs of cinnamon to be split into 2 different parts. I would recommend using a lot less! I had a lot of the cinnamon-sugar mixture leftover after rolling the dough in it. Then right before you put it in the oven you're supposed to sprinkle the second half of the cinnamon over the muffins. I don't know if it's because I ended up having different portions in each cup or what, but I had a ridiculous amount of cinnamon on each one & it was overwhelming. I would have reduced it to at LEAST half of that last T called for in the recipe. I was worried about the amount of butter-syrup too once it was distributed, but be assured it does soak in eventually if you let them sit for awhile (I made them at night, tried one that was more liquidy and then the one I had in the morning was great)............ No picture (because they all got eaten too fast), but they pretty much look the same

chocolate chip cheesecake (WW)

   I'm gonna go ahead & admit right off the bat that I wasn't personally a fan of this cheesecake. at least how it came out for us- maybe I did something wrong. It wasn't awful though just depends on how you like your cheesecake. It was too mealy for my taste and I wasn't a fan of the almond extract being so strong a flavor. It uses a whopping 6 egg WHITES- so then there's the what do you do w/all the yolks?! (stay tuned later for the butter cookies I did use them in). I used generic Oreos to save money and the regular sized semi-sweet chocolate chips we already had on hand. I'm pretty sure I crushed the cookies for the crust in a food processor this time instead of inside a baggy.

you can't even see the chocolate chips cause they all sunk to the bottom for whatever reason but they're in there. in fact I ended up melting some more on the top later. I thought i got a pic after it was cut but I can't find any

seasoned green beans

   I've been searching for ideas to revamp veggies/sides. These green beans with olive oil & garlic were pretty good, although they didn't quite stay crisp/crunchy. I think we ended up over-cooking them and they turned out pretty leathery. I just used the powdered stuff as usual instead of real onion & garlic or whatever, & I don't like pepper so I nixed that.
2 WWpts/serving

homemade goulash

   While looking for some new food blogs I found this recipe for a goulash-like dish that looked yummy.(made this over a week ago now, just tryin to catch up) I used wheat shells that basically looked like the one in the picture on the site. Our little grocery store doesn't carry ground turkey, so I got our usual 97/3 lean ground beef. As usual I didn't bother w/fresh onion (plus I didn't want chopped onions to have to pick out or taste too much), just used the powdered stuff. I also cut out the mushrooms completely, as Dad and I don't care too much for them. It went well & was quite tasty. We had enough for the 3 of us and then for a few other times in the week.
8 WWpts/serving

low fat chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

   I was hungry for cookies the other day and as I'm trying to stick to lower fat/calorie/pts foods I looked up recipes on 1 or 2 of my favorite food blogs which show the nutritional info (more importantly already have the Weight Watcher pts calculated/serving). I found this one for oatmeal cookies on what's probably my favorite recipe index right now: SkinnyTaste. They're only 5 WW pts for 2 cookies!
   The only substitution I made was using Mexican vanilla to a slightly lesser measurement than what was called for in the recipe. They were GOOOOd! & abundant, as I paid attention to the 15 part instead of the bottom where it says it makes 30 cookies- & I doubled it! It ended up being 3 separate batches, so I made 3 different "textures"- really soft/chewy for me, medium ones, & very small crunchy ones for Dad. We still have plenty, but sadly they're getting hard & way less fresh :/ sad.