The Healthy Writer Blog

Helping Myself Eat Healthy This Winter

Posted by Michelle Butler Jan 8 2012, 9:34 pm in 10 Healthy Guidelines, cooking, eating healthy, food, Michelle Butler, Michelle Mondays, portion control, process, recipes, weight loss

One of the secrets to succeeding with your New Year’s Resolutions, or goals as I like to think of them, is planning. Planning and preparing for success help me continue my journey to become and stay a healthy writer.

In order to lose weight or maintain my weight loss, I need to be careful with my food choices and portion control. I need to have healthy food on hand or plans to eat healthy food when dining out. There are going to be temptations everywhere. If I have not done the necessary preparation to help me eat right, I’m doomed.

One of the most successful ways I help myself is my cooking marathons. Every couple of months, I devote a good portion of a weekend to planning, shopping for, and cooking several, healthy, Weight Watchers-friendly dishes. I portion them out into individual servings, label them with a description such as its number of points plus, and freeze them. I am then set with plenty of yummy yet healthy choices for lunches and dinner and helps me succeed with my weight loss or maintenance efforts.

I enjoy the process, even though it can be tiring, but I love it for what it helps me do. It saves me time, money and from food boredom, waste and temptation. Now that I’m getting back into a routine after the holidays and really trying to set myself up for a good Weight Watchers stretch, it was pretty obvious to me that I had to do a cooking marathon this weekend.

Saturday afternoon, I sat down with my cookbooks and recipe collection and came up with a bunch of dishes to make. I even tried to choose some recipes with some ingredient overlap so that I would maximize my use of every food item I bought that afternoon. I made two dishes Saturday night and several Sunday. I will make a few more Monday and perhaps even later this week. After that, I may not do any more heavy cooking until March or so.

The dishes I made or will make include:

Moroccan Lentil Stew with sweet potatoes and chicken
Caldo Verde (in the comments)
Kielbasa, bean & cabbage soup
Pasta with sausage, fennel & spinach
Cider-braised chicken thighs with sweet potatoes & sage (recipe below)
Curried barley with lentils and chicken
Texas-style Casserole
Vegetable-Barley Casserole
Layered Mexican Chicken (recipe below)
Mexican Casserole
Picadillo with Quinoa
Turkey Burgers
Bella-Braised Chicken

I did try to focus more on poultry than red meat and lentils and barley. I also tried to make sure that there was a lot of flavor variety in what I made. My place smells great right now. I love that in one weekend I can help myself eat healthy yet still yummy food all winter long. A lot of these recipes don’t scream “dietetic”. Most people would find them satisfying and filling. That’s definitely the case with the following recipes.

Layered Mexican Chicken
12 Servings – 8 pointsplus each

	2 spray(s) olive oil cooking spray
	2 pound(s) uncooked boneless skinless chicken breast(s)
	30 oz canned black beans, rinsed and drained
	2 1/2 cup(s) fat-free sour cream
	2 cup(s) shredded reduced-fat Mexican-style cheese, divided
	8 oz chopped green chili(es), two 4-oz cans
	2 tsp ground cumin
	1/2 tsp black pepper
	13 medium corn tortilla(s), cut in half each
	1 cup(s) fat free salsa, mild, medium or hot Preheat oven to 350ºF. Coat a lasagna pan (9 X 13) with cooking spray. Place chicken in a medium saucepan and fill with enough cold water just to cover chicken. Set pan over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 10 to 15 minutes; drain. When chicken is cool enough to handle, cut into 1-inch pieces. Transfer chicken to a large bowl and add beans, sour cream, 1 cup shredded cheese, chilies, cumin and pepper; mix well and set aside. Arrange 10 tortilla halves in bottom of prepared pan, overlapping pieces to cover surface. Top tortillas with 1/3 of chicken mixture and then layer with 8 tortillas halves. Spoon 1/3 more chicken mixture over top and then top with remaining 10 tortilla halves. Spoon remaining chicken mixture over top and sprinkle with remaining cup of cheese. Bake until filling is bubbly and cheese is melted, about 30 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before slicing into 12 pieces. Serve with salsa on the side.

Instead of serving the salsa on the side, I dumped a jar of it on the top of the casserole before baking it. I wanted to guarantee I always had salsa to go with it.

Cider-braised chicken thighs with sweet potatoes & sage
6 servings – 8 pointsplus each

	1 1/2 pound(s) uncooked boneless, skinless chicken thigh(s), about 6 thighs
	1 1/2 tsp kosher salt, divided
	1/4 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
	1 Tbsp canola oil
	8 medium uncooked shallot(s), thickly sliced
	1 clove(s) (medium) garlic clove(s), minced
	2 cup(s) reduced-sodium chicken broth
	1/2 cup(s) apple cider
	1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
	2 tsp fresh sage, minced, divided (or to taste)
	1 Tbsp thyme, fresh, use 4 whole sprigs
	1 1/2 pound(s) uncooked sweet potato(es), peeled, cut into 3/4-inch cubes

Season both sides of chicken with 1 teaspoon salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over high heat. Brown chicken in batches, flipping once, about 2 minutes per side; set aside.
Reduce heat to medium and add shallots and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt to pan; cook shallots, stirring frequently, until softened and beginning to brown, approximately 5 to 8 minutes. Add garlic to pan; cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute.
In a small bowl, combine broth, cider, vinegar, 1 teaspoon sage and thyme sprigs; add to pan and scrape down sides of pan to loosen any brown bits. Increase heat to high; bring to a boil and cook until mixture reduces slightly and flavors blend, about 5 minutes.
Add chicken and potatoes to pan; stir to combine and reduce heat to low. Cover pan and simmer, flipping over chicken and stirring potatoes halfway through cooking, about 30 minutes.
Remove thyme sprigs from pan; stir in remaining 1 teaspoon sage. Yields 1 chicken thigh and about 3/4 cup sweet potato-shallot mixture per serving.

If the final sauce isn’t thick enough for your taste, use a slotted spoon to remove the chicken and sweet potatoes from the pan. Then increase the heat to high and reduce the remaining pan sauce to your desired thickness. This dish can be made ahead and reheated. It freezes exceptionally well.

Do you ever do cooking marathons? Do you have any recipes to share? How else do you help yourself to succeed through planning?

7 Comments

Comments

7 Responses to “Helping Myself Eat Healthy This Winter”

Anna Sugden says:

January 9, 2012 at 11:01 am

I love your cooking marathons, Michelle – we alsways get great recipes! Love the look of that layered Mexican chicken.

I don’t do cooking marathons, but then I can never cook for two, so we always have left-overs. Our food does tend to be pretty healthy, but I do need to make a point of adding in vegetables – especially if lovely hubby is cooking *g*.

One area I could be better is to make more of an effort to weigh ingredients and check portion sizes. With familiar recipes, you don’t think about what you’re cooking or how much of everything there is! As for portion sizes … a work in progress!

Reply
- Michelle Butler says:
  
  January 9, 2012 at 11:33 am
  
  Anna, let me know if you try the recipe and whether you like it. Have you ever frozen any of your left-overs? I’ll do that too, and it’s helpful.
  
  I have the ability to recognize what is a proper portion, but actually limiting my eating to just that can be a struggle. You can always fall back on that little red light when you are eating instead of weighing.
  
  Reply
  - Anna Sugden says:
    
    January 9, 2012 at 12:29 pm
    
    Oh yes, Michelle – we always freeze our left-overs! Even things like cooked veg – which we through into stews soups and curries.
    
    Reply
  - MaryC says:
    
    January 9, 2012 at 8:42 pm
    
    Michelle, at Christmas dinner my Brother-in-law was telling us about a Dr. Oz show he saw about the importance of chewing to both digestion (thus avoiding bloating), but also to letting your body give that signal.
    
    If I understood correctly, he was saying that we eat to fast so the food passes so quickly through our stomachs that there’s not enough time for the stomach to signal the brain that it’s full and for that chemical reaction to give us a full feeling and signal us to stop. He advocated putting your fork down between each bite and fully focusing on chewing.
    I know I’m guilty of gobbling rather than savoring.
    
    Reply
    - Michelle Butler says:
      
      January 10, 2012 at 9:35 am
      
      Interesting. Sadly, I’ve always been known as a slow eater, so I’m not sure if I can use this advice to my benefit.
      
      Reply
Diane Gaston says:

January 9, 2012 at 11:42 am

I am so-not-a-cook that a cooking marathon sounds impossible for me. But I sure enjoy hearing about yours.

I’m all for simple and quick. Last night wasn’t so quick, but dh and I had roasted turkey breast, green peas and wild rice. I was amazed when i added up the points!! Practically nothing.

Reply
- Michelle Butler says:
  
  January 9, 2012 at 12:08 pm
  
  I’m such a fan of the cooking marathon that I can get practically evangelical about it, but I can admit it may not work for everyone. I just can’t face getting home from work around 6:30/7:00 and having to come up with something to make for dinner. Take-out becomes almost irresistible then.
  
  Reply

The Latest Posts

7 Responses to “Helping Myself Eat Healthy This Winter”

Leave a Reply