Italian cheese & herb veggie skillet

Easy.  Low-calorie.  Quick.  Healthy.  Filling.  Delicious.  Cost efficient.

All of us can appreciate the above adjectives... especially when it comes to making a great dinner!
In late spring I bought a little tub of the Philadelphia Cooking Crème . It sat in the back of my fridge in the land of pickle & jalapeno jars waiting for me to use it.  I don't know why it took me so long to try this ingredient.  Since I made this, I have purchased 3 more flavors to try!


Notice there are FOUR servings in this. Here is where you can alter both flavor & calorie count.  I took a butter knife and scored the crème inside in half to help ensure I only used half the tub to make 5 servings. 

Math: 1 tub= 110 Calories  / 2 = 55 calories per half.  55 calories/5 servings = 11 calories a serving.

Now that I have fully covered this delicious, flavorful addition to the recipe I will talk about the recipe…
I boiled 2.5 cups (measured dry) of whole wheat wide egg noodles.


*Optionally, and for about 100 more calories a serving you can brown some chicken in the skillet...or use some you prepared on Sunday like I told you about in this post.  After it’s browned, I used my phenomenal specialty bamboo cookware tools from Pampered Chef {thank you Momma!} to haphazardly cube and shred the chicken. The flat edge helps you do so much more than stir.  I toss in most, if not all, a bag of vegetable mix that has broccoli in it.

I always have several bags of this “California Style Veggies” frozen mix on hand because it can literally go in ANY dish.

Calorie count here: 30 calories a serving. 

Remember when I talked about how there are good calories and bad calories?  Well, these are good calories so if you have more than a serving it is absolutely ok.  It is the proper fuel for your body!

          

My delicious version seen above has chicken in it which adds an additional 80 calories ( I used 4 4 oz breasts and split the servings up so I have 5 servings.)  Additional calories in chicken also add about 17g of essential protein!

This cooking creme has made a quick weeknight meal into a healthy, delicious dinner like you won't believe!

Preparing for success

The #1 excuse I hear from people who veer off their initial nutritious path is I don't have time to eat healthy.

I agree with you that it takes about 3 minutes from the time you place your order, pay and pick up your food from you local burger hut and you have a meal ready to devour and you put forth little effort.

So very tempting!  I won't get in to all the disgusting ingredients found in most of those places but I will tell you how to save money and time.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, it is the day most of us enjoy a big meal and relax.  I view Sunday just like it is on the calendar- the beginning of the week.  I thaw my bag of frozen chicken breasts ($6.99 on average).  Mid afternoon I begin to grab my aluminum foil sheets from SAM'S (often seen at the salon... they're the perfect size!).  I trim my chicken breasts of fat, and cut them a little bigger than the size of a cassette tape- or a deck of cards for you young ones!

I grab a sandwich size tupperware, flip it over and fold my aluminum foil sheet over it to mold your "baking basket".  You can drizzle the aluminum foil with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil for some added omegas or you can bake it dry.

As far as flavor- I have a whole drawer of Mrs. Dash spices.  They're salt-free and there is a wide selection. I grab my 13x9 baking dish, I place two 4oz servings of chicken into the aluminum foil basket and sprinkle both sides of the chicken with 1 flavor seasoning.  I do this and usually end up with about 6-8 baskets, which is sometimes a tight squeeze in my dish.  I love the fiesta lime seasoning so sometimes I do 2 baskets in that.  Bake at 350* for 40 minutes.

Each 4 oz serving costs you about 58 cents, packs approx 130 usable calories and 22g of protein. For this meal, I would add 1/3c of drained black beans for 100 calories, 6g protein and 5g of fiber and a small green salad with a vinaigrette dressing like Newman's Own light balsamic (45 calories/2 tablespoons) and you have a healthy light lunch your body will convert to fuel instead of fat and you prepared it all in one day!

I have 8  sandwich size toss 'n go containers that I just store my meal in but if you're like my sister who is in her 40's and still gets refuses to eat food if it touches other food, there are also some with compartments.  You can also get some cheap storage solutions like this at the dollar store, just be aware of any BPA coating.  (Both Johnson & Johnson and Glad are PVC/BPA free products.)