Mark and I follow the Weight Watchers Program. Like most people, our dedication has strengthened with the New Year. We've found that we have the most success when we cook our meals at home, in advance of meal time, or at the very least, preparing elements of the meal prior to meal time. We plan our meals for the week on Saturday, carefully selecting recipes based on their preparation, ingredients (we like for our protein to be lean and on sale), and points plus value (a Weight Watchers number calculated based on fat, carbohydrate, fiber and protein content). We've done this enough weeks in a row now that I can say with confidence that it's how we eat.
We both cook, but Mark is better at fitting his cooking in during the week, and I like to do my cooking on Saturday or Sunday. Because of this, I find myself oftentimes preparing a big batch of something that we can eat throughout the week. Soups are a favorite because they are typically much lower in points plus value, keep well through the week, and when you put more time into it there is often a greater reward.
We get our recipes from modified versions of our mothers' home-cooking, our Weight Watchers cookbooks,
Everyday Food, and online. One of our favorite online resources is
Skinny Taste. We've made more than a dozen of Gina's recipes and we have yet to be disappointed.
Chicken Pot Pie Soup is one of our recent favorites. We followed Gina's recipe exactly in terms of ingredients, but we didn't have cooked chicken breast on hand, so we tossed raw chicken into the milk-water mixture as it came to a boil. Then we took the chicken out with a slotted spoon and continued as the recipe was written.
Even though this recipe wasn't created by me, it was handmade by me! And it definitely fit the bill for tasty. We will be putting this into our favorite recipes folder... you should give it a try!
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| We topped our chicken pot pie soup with croutons made from dried whole wheat baguette from Panera Bread. Yum yum! |
