Red Pepper, Spinach, and Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

I am obsessed with stuffed mushrooms..any kind of mushrooms really! This is my first attempt at many that I am going to take in the future for stuffed mushrooms. Im going to try new ones this weekend, I just wanted to keep them as low points as possible!

Ingredients:

(Makes almost 4 servings, six mushrooms per serving)

Two small packages of white button mushrooms (20ish in count) (cleaned&stems removed)
1 cup chopped raw spinach
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 chopped red pepper
1 oz. neufchatel cheese (lower fat cream cheese)
2 wedges of flavored laughing cow cheese (I used generic garlic flavored)
1 Tbsp low fat plain yogurt

 

 Mushrooms cleaned, and veggies chopped! So pretty :)

When cooking veggies like this in a pan I like to let the pan get hot and let them get "charred" I think it adds more flavor, and looks pretty.

When the veggies are soft mix the cheeses and yogurt together in a bowl the best you can, but it doesnt have to be smooth! Then add the veggies :)

                                           

I then used a teaspoon to measure out a heaping amount into the mushrooms. If there is extra just add it to the tops of some. They wont melt! I didnt want to oil a big pan so I used two cake pans but whatever pan you have can work! (I sprayed the pans with canola spray)

I baked them at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Aren't they pretty?? SO good, and the best part is you can have SIX for ONE point. I was in heaven. :)

I also wanted to add how to chop fresh spinach the easy way that I have figured out!

Grab a decent bunch and try to put it in a decently nice pile!

Then roll the spinach leaves like a sushi roll. And hold on to it pressing it to the cutting board.

Then slice and it will make flat pieces as shown. They seem like big pieces but when you cook them they cook down! Easy way to hide veggies in casseroles for kids. ;)

Easy Weight Watchers Veggie Soup

Let me tell you I was very skeptical about this soup..I thought this recipe was TOO easy to taste good and I was so so wrong. And I also doubled the recipe for lunches and I am so glad that I did! I forgot to take a picture of the cans so when I make it again I will do a repost with updated pictures of the cans and sizes.

Lets get cooking!

I wanted to make this a major filler food that would satisfy you while staying low in points.

Easy Weight Watchers Veggie Soup

Ingredients:

(all cans were normal can sizes)

2 cans mixed vegetables

2 cans of sweet corn

2 cans of diced tomatoes (I used one can with jalapenos, another one with onions and peppers) 

2 cans of light minestrone soup (I used light Progresso Italian meatball. Perfect meat and noodle amount)

1 can of light red beans (or whichever you prefer) Rinsed

You can also ditch the beans or use only one can of corn to cut points but I love both and beans are protein! :)

Just throw it all together and heat. SO good. But I will say if you are watching sodium I would watch the cans that you use there was quite a bit of salt but you can always use low salt versions. (I was just nervous it would be bland but it wasn't!)

The jalapeno diced tomatoes made it tangy but not too spicy!

Two more things about this soup:

1: SO versatile! Add whatever you want and as much as you want just remember to change the points. ;)

2: Throw it in the crock pot on low and it will be done fast! 

For this recipe I put it in my recipe calculator and I put it in as 12 servings for four points. And I KNOW there were more servings possibly double but I couldnt tell because I sent more than half to my fiancee..so I may need to update that too!

Thank you for stopping by my blog, and happy cooking! 

Mommas Homemade Meatball, and Veggie Penne Bake

Sometimes I think somewhere down the line I think that I am italian! My love for italian food is like no other, but just like most delicious foods in this world it can be extremely fattening! :( When I started WW back in my freshman year of high school NINE years ago I started using whole wheat pasta and I still pick it over the original. Its a bit more grainy yes but if that means I am able to smack down on some warm creamy pasta dish then I dont mind! :) Anyways here is one of my first pasta dish attempts and I love it!

                                    (sorry about the ugly plates, mine are packed away.) :(

Mommas Homemade Meatball, and Veggie Penne Bake!

(9 Points per Serving) Makes 8 servings per pan!

First a little explanation on the meatballs. My mom made some homemade meatballs that she needed used up from a previous dinner so I used those instead of a ground turkey or a frozen turkey meatball. I tried to track it the best I could but if you would want to use something else instead of the meatballs you can! Its a versatile dish! ;) 

Ingredients:

1 Box of Whole Wheat Penne (or whichever you like) Pasta

1 Jar of Low Point Marinara Sauce

1/4 cup Part Skim Mozzarella Cheese

ANY cut up and sautéed vegetables you like!

6 Homemade meatballs, or any other kind of meat substitute you like!

First things first of course you have to get the pot of water boiling and get the noodles started. With whole wheat noodles I try to cook them longer than I would normal noodles just because they are a bit harder and I like my noodles soft. (Im also bad at actually reading the box and watching the time, I just do it by taste.)

NOM NOM

Second thing I get going is I cook up my chopped up vegetables. I love love love zucchini in my pasta, now I must admit plain zucchini is bland and gross but I love cooking with it because it soaks up flavor and if you cut them up small enough then you can hardly even taste them! YUM! So its an easy and cheap bulker for your food for no weight watcher points! Here I used zucchini and yellow squash that I bought it bulk chopped up and froze. I just pan cooked them in a little bit of olive oil to get them warm and soft.

The longest part of cooking the meal!

Meanwhile those are cooking I chopped six meatballs in half. My mom makes them pretty decent size and I wanted to stretch my points out in the meal as much as I could! I couldn't even keep count of how many of these bad boys I would eat in one dinner..yikes! Now as I said before I didn't really know how to count them because I did not make these. I tried to take the simple route and just looked up the points on my handy dandy WW app and I went with the points that I figured was most reasonable! But it would be just as yummy to use just ground turkey or turkey sausage instead!

After draining the noodles and the water out of the vegetables I threw them into the pan of noodles and HALF of the jar of sauce. Just enough to coat all of it and spread it out into a canola oil greased pan! (I also forgot I put in a drained canned of mushrooms) :)

I just love all the beautiful colors that the vegetables add to the meal! Also if you have picky eaters in the house and they hate vegetables just try to cut them into the tiniest pieces that you can and hope that you can trick them! ;)

       Here is my little Dexter the beggar. ;)

Here is the meatballs that I cut in half! I try to put them in certain places so that I will get a meatball or two per serving. :)

Annnnd I'm drooling..Time for cheese!

I preheated my oven at 350 and put it in just for the cheese to melt. I didn't want the noodles to get too hard when making this and I just wanted it to be warm and melty!

When I did my calculations for eight servings of this bake it came out to be nine points. BUT I strongly suggest you calculate the recipe for the ingredients that you use to be more accurate. I hope this meal looks great to you and thank you for baring with me with the poor quality photos, and bad grammar. :) If you took the time to read this whole recipe PLEASE leave me comments about your thoughts because this is all new to me. Thank you, and happy cooking!

Hello everyone. I have never blogged or even tried and let me tell you it is a lot harder than I thought it would be! But let me start with a little introduction to me! My name is Chelsy! I just graduated from a close by university with my bachelors in fine arts.. art is my passion, I live for creativity and I love to challenge myself in making different pieces of art with whatever I can get my hands on. I graduated a little over a month ago, and I am totally BURNED out of the typical drawing, sculpting, and painting. I found a new love COOKING. Healthy cooking that is for the most part. A week before Christmas 2013 I decided I needed a change in my life and I needed to start taking care of myself. After going through many diets, and diet fads I have decided to give good old weight watchers a try again! SO happy that I have gotten back in the swing of the way this diet works. I also have a lot of time on my hands since graduating so I have decided to challenge myself to making more healthy foods for swaps of what I used to eat. So please if you took the time to read this, and look through my blog, I hope you understand that I am not great at writing, I would rather take pictures. ;) I hope you all like my recipes and hopefully soon I will have more DIYs of crafts and art pieces that I love to make.
Chelsy