Happy 4th of July!!

Happy 4th of July all!!! Ok, so do you want to know the secret for a YUMMY and LOW-CALORIE dessert???? Well, I found one yesterday!! One I can actually not feel guilty about! And it's also festive!

Red, White and Blue Mini Cheesecakes!

Ingredients (makes 12):
8 oz fat free cream cheese
3 T sugar (that's right, the real deal!!!)
1 tsp vanilla
2 egg whites
6 oz fat free vanilla Greek yogurt (I used Dannon Oikos)
1 T flour
12 reduced fat vanilla wafers
Strawberries/Blueberries for garnish

 Ignore the word "imitation" on the vanilla. I was out of regular!

Preheat the oven to 350. Line 12 muffin cups with papers, then place 1 vanilla wafer in the bottom of each cup.

So simple. I included this picture in case there are other weird ways to do this. This is the proper way.

Mix the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until all the lumps are gone. (Make sure to let the cream cheese soften before you attempt this!!! I always forget and it makes me mad. So I am reminding you now.)

The brown stuff is just vanilla. Real vanilla, I swear.

Then add the egg whites, yogurt, and flour and beat until just mixed. According to the recipe I used, DO NOT OVERBEAT. I'm guessing they would come out HORRIBLE!!!  ;) Or tough, or poisonous or something.

Again, note my Pampered Chef spatula. This is my favorite spatula.

After the filling as all beat up, pour it into the 12 muffin cups. (When I say "pour", I mean, scoop out with a spoon because it's too thick to pour.) Open the over door and put 'er in!

Ignore the gross-looking pizza stone. That was a combination of several drippy pizzas and one delicious but messy meal cooked on a slab of salt. Strange, I know.

After 30-35 minutes (mine took 35), the cheesecakes should be just barely starting to crack but still kind of jiggly. (Jiggly is a weird word .) This is how you know they're done. Take them out and let them cool, then chill for probably an hour. Garnish with strawberries and blueberries and you have a delicious 66 calorie (WHAT?!?!) dessert!!!

That looks like a little slice of heaven right there.

Things to note: The cookie stuck to the bottom of the paper...not sure how to combat this. Maybe flour the bottoms? I don't know. Still good. 

Also, these will freeze well! If you have leftovers, which I did (ONLY because my sister showed up to 4th of July with the EXACT SAME DESSERT!! I kid you not. The same thing. Right down to the flag-colored garnish. Only she tried to upstage me by using brightly colored and decorated red cupcake papers...the nerve.) Anyway! Freezing these guys is a great idea! Then you just pop on out, let it sit on the counter for a few minutes to soften, and eat up! 66 calories guys! That is unheard of! And these don't even use any fake sugar! If you chose to use stevia or something, they'd have even less! CRAZY!!!

Happy Fourth!!

Itttttttt's Breakfast Time!!!

So I'm a big fan of breakfast in general (who isn't?), but I love making delicious AND HEALTHY things for breaking my fast. My favorite thing is finding something delicious and figuring out healthier ways to make it!

Fresh is my favorite way to go! Yes, I do eat SOME processed food....but it's honestly unavoidable unless you bake your own bread every day and own a cow to milk. So yes, it's going to be processed to some degree...but all in all, I eat lots of fresh fruit and try to stay away from the scary preservatives...

 Yum! Fruit!

Yum! Cereal!

I'm all for simplicity some days (give me a bowl of cereal and I'm set), but other days I'm all about the pots and pans. Like today for example. Today is an eggburritosausagecheesedelicious creation!

First I pulled out all my ingredients.

The LA hot sauce is for a kick.

Then since the sausage was frozen, I threw 1/4 c in the pan for browning/defrosting/melting/what have you.

Tossed in some chopped onion too, because I like the flavor.

Notice my high-tech Pampered Chef spatula (compliments of Goodwill/my mother's kitchen).

Next I completed the terrifying and difficult task of separating the egg whites from the yolks (The egg yolks have the majority of calories in the egg, and honestly, in a dish like this, I can't tell the difference in taste. In fact, I like the taste of just the whites even more. Yeah, it seems like a bit of a waste to toss out the yolks, but when eggs are a dollar a dozen, I don't feel too horrible.)

 

Eggs are also cooked in a pan....after they're mostly cooked, throw in 2 T cheese and the sausage mixture. and stir til your arms falls off (or until it's sufficiently stirred in. Approximately ten seconds. If your arm falls off by then, you need some more arm muscles.)

Nonstick pans are the best.

Heat the tortilla just for a few seconds to soften it, and fill 'er up. Now let's talk for a minute about tortilla wrapping techniques. I am what you might call an intermediate tortilla wrapper (different than a tortilla rapper. I just Googled "tortilla rapper" and found some strange pictures.) I am not those things. ANYWAY. I find it's easiest just to make sure you don't overfill it. This recipe is perfectly tailored to a soft taco size tortilla (the brand I buy is only 110 calories!!) And I find I usually have success by starting to wrap one side, THEN folding in the sides, then continuing until the whole thing is contained in one thin flour tortilla shell of deliciousness.

Success!

Then just eat it. Note I had to go to work and wait like an hour before I could partake in the deliciousness...and yet it was an oh-so-yummy breakfast treat!

ALSO! Only 225 calories. Beat THAT, Mcdonald's/Sonic/Jackinthebox/allbreakfastwrapservingplaces. Low cal and healthy!! :)

So these past few days I've been very creative. Still working on the whole, "take pictures of everything that happens every step of the way....but we'll think of today's posts as kind of a comprehensive creative few days. Ready? Here we go!!

Yesterday started out normal, work and all ate some yummy yogurt and cereal for breakfast.

 Yummy homemade chicken salad for lunch (from a can? What???) spicy and bits of crunch in there too. Mmmm.

Today I was busy busy BUSY!!! I woke up before seven, and I made not only DELICIOUS chocolate muffins made with Greek yogurt and stevia, and they're only 110 cals each!! Here's the recipe, stolen from another pinterest(-er?)

 http://healthyisalwaysbetter.tumblr.com/post/6583755120/lessthan300kcal-triple-chocolate-chunk-muffin

And then! Then I had coffee and woke up for real.

After that I made bread dough! I'm kind of a pinterest freak, and I was intrigued by one pin I saw with Artisan bread in the crockpot!! So I made two loaves, one in the crockpot and one in the oven! ( one can't be too sure, you know :)

And both actually turned out delicious!

I think the one in the oven cooked a little more evenly, but good to know you can make it in the crockpot too!

Yummmm!!! Spent much of the morning cleaning the house in anticipation of the parents coming back home. I realized since I've been house sitting for the past two weeks, and having made several trips to bring more stuff over there.... I had a LOT of stuff to bring back home. Plus I decided I needed to make room for my sewing machine in my tiny apartment bedroom, but I was inspired by Ms. refashionista so I am determined to make pretties out of uglies :) Here's my first project.

Pretty terrible, right??? But I LOVE polka dots, so we'll see what comes of it!!

 Anyway, after MANY trips upstairs bring stuff in and unpacking, I made me a yummy chicken and veggies in light Alfredo sauce. Mmm!!

Plus a fun fruity drink in honor of my need to relax tonight! So here's to a not tired week and hopefully I will soon update with tales of my pretty polka dot dress!!