Healthier Eating...

I grew up in house where great food was a priority.  My mom was a great cook and dad was a long distance truck drive who often bought an extra halibut or box of king crab legs to the house.  So anything that feels or tastes like a diet is hard for me to swallow (pun intended.)


My mom, grandma and great-grandma all have/had diabetes and Johnny also has diabetes.  So far I've been able to keep my blood sugar in check without making too many lifestyle changes.  But with all the pain and stress of the issues with his leg, Johnny's blood sugar has been running a bit high lately.  So I've been putting a bit more effort into trying to find some new recipes that taste good but are a bit healthier.


A few days ago, Laurie mentioned a recipe website in her blog,  Semi-True Tales of Our Life on the Road.  The website is Gina's Skinny Recipes.  Gina started to blog in 2008 when she couldn't find a website with good recipes that included Weight Watchers points.  As she works out recipes, she says she tries not to sacrifice taste to get the points/calories down.  It's about finding the balance of good tasting food with healthy ingredients and keeping the points low.  She uses the minimal amount of fat needed for the best results and sugar rather than Splenda.  In addition to listing the Weight Watchers Points and Points+, Gina also lists the calories, fat, fiber, carbs and protein.  


I liked the sound of that so started looking through the recipes.  The first recipe I tried was Chicken and Mushrooms with Garlic White Wine Sauce.  That one was winner.  Yesterday I tried Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken.  This one we were a bit disappointed in.  I think I ended up with a can of tomatoes with hot chilies instead of mild -- and in spite of being from Louisiana, Johnny is not a big fan of hot things!  When I was looking at the comments I noticed someone suggested using taco seasoning in place of the individual spices.  We decided that the recipe was worth trying again making sure to use tomatoes with mild chilies and a package of taco seasoning.


Tonight I tried a side dish -- Baked Zucchini Sticks.  These were a definite hit. We didn't even use the marinara sauce.  They were very good just plain.  We had them with some pan sauted tilapia and twice baked potatoes.  It was a quick, easy tasty dinner.


So I'll be spending some time checking out Gina's website for new tasty treats.  She appears to post a new recipe almost every day and you can search by ingredient, category, WW points, etc.  As an added bonus Gina includes nice pics of each recipe.