Recipe Tuesday :: Red, White and Blue (cheese) Salad

I'll admit that this salad is not my invention but a knock-off of a very delicious salad made by Red Robin, also called a Red, White and Blue Salad.  It just had all the possibilities of being a balanced meal and it comes together quickly and is quite summer ready.  Salads for dinner never seem delicious in the middle of winter, but when the weather warms up, who wants to eat hot and filling food?

Red, White and Blue Cheese Salad

2 heads of romaine
6 oz chicken breast, grilled and cut
1 medium apple, diced
4 Tbsp Craisins
3 Tbsp glazed walnuts pieces
2 Tbsp blue cheese crumbles
4 Tbsp honey mustard vinaigrette dressing (I recommend Annie's Naturals Lite)
2 slices bread, toasted (I recommend Dave's Killer Bread Thin Sliced)

Makes 2 salads.  Grill and cut up the chicken breast and split between two bowls.  Chop the romaine and split between the bowls.  Core and dice the apple (peel if you wish), half to each bowl.  Split in half again the Craisins, walnuts, blue cheese and dressing to each bowl.  Toast the bread and serve on the side.

(519 calories for each salad, 49 grams carbs, 37 grams protein, 19 grams fat, balanced 38-29-33)

If you don't like blue cheese you can substitute feta or some other crumbly cheese or even omit it all together.  With a salad you can tweak it to your own personal tastes!  Switch up the apples for oranges, walnuts for almonds, Craisins for golden raisins, the possibilities are endless!  If you come up with a delicious combo I'd love it if you shared it!

Recipe Tuesday :: Cheesy Broccoli and Hot Dog Skillet

Looking at the title of this post you wouldn't think it was a balanced meal but it is!  The original recipe I found used chicken and you could easily substitute a chicken breast instead of the hot dogs if you like.  But I think with the cheesy noodles your inner child really calls out for some hot dogs in it!  This is a 30 minute meal including all the cutting and measuring of the ingredients and will only dirty a pot and a skillet.  Win-win if you ask me.  ;)

Cheesy Broccoli Hot Dog Skillet

4 Hebrew National 97% fat free hot dogs
2 cups of broccoli, cut into bite size pieces
6 ounces Barilla Pasta Plus penne or rotini
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
1/4 to 1/2 cup onions, chopped
1 cup 2% milk
4 ounces 2% cheddar or cheddar blend cheese, shredded
1 ounce parmesan cheese, shredded

Boil water for the pasta.  While the water is boiling, cook the hot dogs how you like (microwave or grill) and chop into bite size pieces.  When the water boils toss in the pasta and cook 5 minutes.  Add in the broccoli to the pasta and cook both 2 minutes more.  Drain and set aside.  In a skillet melt the butter.  Add in the onion and sauté about a minute or until the onions are translucent.  Add in the flour and stir until dissolved.  Stir in the milk and season with salt and pepper.  Bring sauce to a boil and simmer 3 minutes.  Remove from heat and add the cheeses, stirring until melted and smooth.  Add the pasta and broccoli to the cheese sauce and stir to combine.  Add in the hot dogs and stir again and it's ready to serve!  Serves about 3 to 4 people.

(1,624 calories, 165 gram carbs, 109 grams protein, 59 grams fat, balanced 41-27-33)

Recipe Tuesday :: Turkey Hummus Wraps

So I got some good response from the healthy recipe last week so here's another!  This is my favorite easy lunch for taking to work.  It's balanced and tasty and looks so healthy, which honestly makes everyone jealous of your lunch.  I'm serious.  Almost every time I eat this at work someone will comment on how good it looks.  So here...tell me what you think...

Delicious, no?!  Don't you want to make that for your lunch?!  All right, all right, I'll tell you how.  But first it would probably be a good idea to buy yourself a food scale.  I actually bought mine for yarn (I know I'm crazy) but it's really good for dividing your skeins of yarn in half.  I mean if you have a 100 gram skein of yarn you want to make into two socks, then you need two 50 gram balls, so weighing them is key.  But I digress.  My food scale is an invaluable tool in helping me properly manage portion sizes.  It's hard to eyeball 2 ounces of turkey.  But weighing it out you know you're getting exactly the amount you should eat.  They aren't too expensive either.  Here is the one I use, but there are others that are less expensive like this sleek one and this other one sure is pretty.  Get one.  It will change your life.  But now, bring on the food.

Carrie's Turkey Hummus Wrap

1 Carb Balance Fajita size tortilla
1 Tablespoon hummus
2 oz (about 5 slices) thin slice turkey lunchmeat
1 oz (or 1 slice) 2% milk provolone
1 leaf of lettuce
1/2 oz pretzels
2 oz grapes

(334 calories, 37 grams carbohydrates, 23 grams protein, 10.4 grams fat, balanced 44-28-28)

Take a tortilla and spread the hummus on it.  Lay out your turkey evenly on the tortilla.  I like to spread my cheese evenly over the tortilla as well, so I tear it up along with the lettuce.  Then just start rolling from one end and enjoy with pretzels and grapes on the side!

Recipe Tuesday :: New Year's Tuna Sandwich

Welcome to the New Year!  As with everyone we are back to eating healthy and trying to lose weight in this house.  There are many diets out there and it can be hard to stick to them for the long run but I'd like to share what has worked for us.  Mom and I have eaten the balanced diet for a few years now and it is really something you can use to change your habits and not just "diet" for a while.  It encourages more protein to keep you from being hungry, eating smaller meals more often, lowering your fat and carbohydrate intake and not throwing your hands up and quitting when you've cheated a bit.  The basics are that you should balance your carb-protein-fat intake to 40%-30%-30%.  This has also been called the Zone Diet and we use the FormulaZone website a lot to help us make meals that are balanced that we want to eat.  We have a whole binder full of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks that we can pick through and put together quickly and easily.  If we do have a long hard day and can't find the time or energy to cook dinner we do pick up something for dinner, but with this diet you just eat your next meal as a balanced one and you are back on track.  Granted you can't do that every day but as with everything moderation is key.  Mom and I got serious about balancing our meals again after a Christmas season filled with goodies, as you've all seen on these Recipe Tuesday blogs, and we already feel more energetic, less emotionally tied to food and just more positive about life.  So I'm going to be sharing some of our favorite balanced recipes here on the blog throughout the year along with the other less balanced ones!  I hope you enjoy them and that they inspire you and help you on whatever diet plan you choose!

We got into quite a rut before Christmas, eating the same things over and over, which is the first sign that the death of your diet is coming.  We splurged all Christmas long and the scale showed the errors of our bad ways.  So at the beginning of the year we came up with some new ones and this has been one of my favorites.

I've never been a huge fan of tuna, mostly because of the pungent smell, but also the flavor that seemed to linger....all day.  We started off by choosing a higher quality albacore tuna and then I mixed in some of what I like to call "Janelle's Amazing Guacamole."  Really it's just an avocado mashed up with garlic powder and pepper to taste.  It really thinned out the smell and taste of the tuna and made it taste divine.  Seriously I was singing the praises of this sandwich for the rest of the day!

Balanced Tuna Sandwich

1 slice Dark Sweet Columbia River Bread
1/2 package (2.5 oz) Premium Albacore Tuna
1/2 to 3/4 Tablespoon light mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon avocado (mixed with some garlic powder and pepper)
Alfalfa sprouts

Mix up the tuna with the mayonnaise and avocado.  Mound onto 1/2 a slice of bread.  Top with sprouts and other 1/2 slice of bread for an amazing sandwich.  You can add 1/2 a pack of sliced apples or about 1/2 of a medium apple.  This lunch works great for two people!