Cooking To Lose

Other than tonight's double dinner, I have been making recipes that the entire family would enjoy that were also on the lighter side. Some of these were a delicious Margherita Pizza from Cooking Light and chicken fried rice, a family recipe. First thing is first.

Dinner tonight was a struggle, since we bought a ton of groceries all at once and have strived not to run out on our usual daily grocery trips. We decided on breakfast burritos, which are not a healthy food by any means-- huge, white flour tortillas, greasy meats, cheese... I made the boys' burritos out of maple sausage, scrambled eggs, frozen diced potatoes, and sharp cheddar cheese. Aaron topped his with salsa. Here is a pic of the stuffing:

For my burrito, I used a 95% fat free honey wheat (Aaron refused to eat this), a gardenburger regular veggie pattie chopped up, 1 tbsp of onion, 5 grape tomatoes sliced in half, 2 egg whites, and a tablespoon of 1% organic milk. I forgot to toss the tomatoes and onions in with the eggs, so I just cooked them for a min or two in the hot pan after I scrambled the egg whites. It probably looks prettier this way.

 I also opted to top mine with salsa.

It was SO VERY GOOD! Aaron ate two helpings of his burrito, so I am guessing he liked his, too.

The pizza was kind of troublesome. I worried that it would be really hard to make pizza dough from scratch, but again I was wrong. We ate the chicken fried rice one night, and once I finished prepping that I made the dough, which has to rise in the fridge for 24 hours.

To lighten up my usual chicken fried rice, I just used 1.5 cups sticky short grain rice, 1.5 cups brown long grain rice, and less sesame oil when prepping the final large pan.

The pizza dough comes out the next day and after it comes to room temp, you work it into a circle and top with homemade pizza sauce.

The sauce took 30 minutes to make, tops. The recipe is also at the above link.

Top with fresh mozzarella slices (we also hid tomato slices under each cheese slice).

This is best made right on top of your pizza stone / pan, because it is a MESS to move once topped. When it comes out of the oven, sprinkle with fresh basil. YUM!

Alternatives

My sister-in-law is a smoking cessation specialist. When we were discussing the most important part of quitting the habit, she said that the first thing she talks about with people is how they will deal with the time left over from smoking. What are you going to fill those countless minutes with?

I am applying the same logic to “quitting” TV. If I don't keep this little boy busy, we both will resort to TV to fill the time. Today, my project was Michelle Branch's Thumbprint Cookies, as published in “Parade.”

We only resorted to ONE episode of “Sesame Street” today, while I was getting things ready (lunch, my own dressing / makeup and hair) this morning for co-op preschool.

I'm pretty proud of us, especially since Connor asked several times, both for “Despicable Me,” “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan” and even his “Alpha and Omega” movie. Each time I diverted his attention to a different activity, from wooden train tracks and trains to playing outside despite the sprinkle of rain.

Here is the recipe, and some pictures from our misadventures. These cookies are going to stay in my recipe files-- absolutely delicious!

2 cups sifted flour (sift before measuring out 2 cups)

½ tsp of salt

1 cup butter

½ cup of sugar

2 tsp of vanilla extract

Your preferred jam or other filling (we used Smucker's Simply Fruit in Black Raspberry and a bite size Hershey's chocolate bar cut up into 8 pieces)

½ cup sifted confectioner's sugar

1)                  Sift together flour and salt, set aside.

2)                  Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

3)                  Add vanilla extract.

4)                  Slowly mix in flour ½ cup at a time till just blended. Chill dough 1-2 hours.

5)                  Preheat oven to 325. Shape dough into 1” balls and space 2” apart on cookie
                     sheet.

6)                  Make a deep thumbprint in each and fill.

7)                  Bake 15 minutes, or until cookies are color of pale sand. Transfer to a wire
                     cooling rack.

8)                  When cooked, dust with confectioner's sugar.