try 5 new recipes

I made vegetarian chili, a recipe that I copied off of Betty Crocker’s website. It was quite scrumptious, but next time I would like to make it a little more spicy. I need some spice in my life.

I have made an easy garden bake. Quite yummy! Not as good as my stuffed mushrooms…but still tasty and I will make it again.

I have tried a recipe! It was stuffed mushrooms and it was yummy!

I will have some extra time (and money) over the next three weeks. I want to try out a some new recipes that will be good for when I start college in the fall since I’ll have a better kitchen than I have now. I’m looking for recipes that are cheap, decently healthy, and one of the following:

a. Can be made in bulk (I’m just one person, so like four servings worth), frozen, and reheated easily.
b. Can be quickly made up as a single serving.
c. Are good for packed lunches.

Well, I’m off to find some recipes to try.

I tried a new recipe for baked pork chops at allrecipes.com.

The marinade was quick and easy to make and the results were delicious! As I noted elsewhere in my ramblings, the pork chops are surprisingly low in calories, checking in at less than 300 calories for a 6 ounce pork chop.

I tried this recipe for mahi mahi which I found on Allrecipes.com. I doubled the amount of sauce ingredients for the marinade, since my hubby likes sauce on his fish. This was very good and easy, and according to Allrecipes.com, each serving checked in at less than 300 calories.

Definitely will be making this again!

This week I bought a new cookbook called “Eating for Life”. It is written by Bill Phillips, originator of the Body for Life program. Last night I made this casserole and it was really delicious. It ended up a lot like one of the Tuna Helper casseroles I’ve made from a box, but one of the things I liked about it is that I tried making it with whole wheat rotini. Yum! It made a huge difference in the way that the casserole tastes,

I bought this cookbook in an effort to learn some new and tasty healthy meals. So far, I am impressed with the book and the variety of recipes it offers. An awesome feature of the book is that each recipe is designed with using readily available ingredients. It even has pictures of the boxes you need to buy at the grocery store. grin

I am contemplating trying the Body for Life program. It seems nutritionally sound, so I thought I would start out by testing some of the recipes. I’ve reserved the actualy Body for Life book from the library. Something to think about this spring.

This year I decided to try making the stuffing for dinner from scratch. I used the following recipe which I found at Allrecipes.com: Slow Cooker Stuffing .

Okay, it was quite a bit of work. But very delicious! And a benefit is that since oven space is at a premium, it was great to cook this in the crock pot!

I’ve been trying to find new ways to fix fish for dinner, so we can all eat more healthy food. So last night I tried the following recipe Easy Baked Tilapia which I found on Allrecipes.com.

Well, it was easy and pretty good. The tilapia part was really yummy, and scored high praise from the 15 year old. However, even though I baked it for 25 minutes, the frozen vegetables were not completely warm after that, and I had to finish cooking them in the microwave.

I’ll make this again, but next time I’ll cook the vegetable separately.

Finally, I got motivated to try a new recipe for dinner tonight! As the name indicates, it was a chicken dijon recipe. It was cooked on the stove, so was pretty quick to make, even after work.

It was pretty good. I think I’ll make it again, but make more of the sauce to go with it. I guess my reaction to it speaks volumes about what we usually eat here: it looked and tasted just like the Lean Cuisine Chicken Dijon. I don’t know if that’s good or bad if it turned out very similar to a microwave meal (lol).