food

I think I am a pretty good cook. Not to be tooting my own horn or anything, but I really like to cook and in a family of 8 where we eat at home really every single night of our lives, I get plenty of practice!

That being said, I don't often share a lot of my ccoking ideas here. I love to read your blogs where you share your recipes...they inspire me. But I know you are not all cooking for an army and trying to do it as economically as possible. We have a farm share which means I always have tons of vegetables around to try to cook in new and exciting ways. We buy our beef as a quarter of beef so I really have no idea how lean or fat it really is...and we recently got a ton of pork from a meat locker that is the same lovely unmarked packaging. I tend to get creative with what I have on hand. I decided when I joined WW that it would be unrealstic to drastically change the way my family eats. D has been a staunch low carb man since before half our children were born. He likes the way he eats. With WW I am much more of a low fat girl. My kids are healthy and some of them are quite active. Jack E is a TINY little guy who I try to get as much WHOLE milk into as possible. I try to get the kids to snack on fruit or yogurt (though they much prefer cereal and lunch meat-not at the same time-not even by the same kid, honestly!) so I always have those options around too.

So, I don't often share what I make for dinner because it wouldn't really help you unless we signed up for wife swap together or something like that. But I do want to mention 2 things we ate this week that were highlights for me.

The first is spaghetti squash. As mamas, we all love the spaghetti dinner. It's easy. It's cheap. And what kid doesn't like it? Tell that to my carb hating dh! We usually save pasta meals for when he isn't home, but a couple times in the past week, we've had spaghetti squash. Granted, I buy 2 of the biggest ones I can find...you don't have to do that. It reheats really well, too. It's great since 1 cup is only 1 point. I still sometimes give the kids whole wheat spaghetti while D and I eat the squash, but the kids want the squash too, so what the heck? It's really not terribly expensive for spaghetti squash this time of year either.

My other yummy dinner this week? This yummy noodle dish. I love chinese food, but it's not WW friendly...and we rarely go out for it or order it in. I made this with Ken's Lite Asian Sesame Dressing instead of the Kraft variety listed here. And I used fresh garlic and ginger and just put red pepper flakes on my bowl. Oh and I used whole wheat cappellini, too. It was really really tasty and I felt like I was eating Chinese food for a LOT fewer points. The next time I do it, I'll definitely add more veggies aside from the broccoli. Maybe pepper strips and pea pods and julienned carrots. I totally loved this! This was what I ate Wednesday night when I said I "overdid" it at dinner.

I haven't put it though the recipe builder yet. In fact I'll do that now and update with how many points per serving it is.

And I am really looking forward to my meeting tomorrow and buying a new little tracker notebook. I ran out last week and thought I'd just use a notebook. I miss my little book!!!

just ran it through...8 points for a large 2 cup serving withoout the peanuts