Granny Smith Apple Chips

I love Costco, they always have fun new foods to try, and I really think they do an honest job at providing healthy options (ignore everything in the freezer section). We usually only purchase meat, cheese, and sometimes produce at Costco. They have really cheap produce, although it’s not organic. Same with meat and fish, cheap but not organic. However sometimes they bring out a new product and they suck me into buying it.

Todays item was Bare Fruit 100% Organic Granny Smith Apple Chips. If I remember right they were around $5 for the bag. The ingredients is what got me though:

Also nutrition wise they are really good:

I love that there is no added sweetener or preservatives, these are CLEAN! Also (and I know this sounds funny) but they aren’t TO DIE FOR delicious. I mean that I am totally able to stop myself at like 10 chips, and not feel the need to eat the entire bag. This is an important factor when purchasing snack foods for me.

I hope Costco carries these for a while, it looks like you can also purchase them online too. You should try em! Id love to make my own with a food dehydrator, but these are so perfect, mostly crisp with a little chew that why bother…lol! Oh and they are made in Washington! I know I’m not currently living there, but it still feels like “buying local” to me.

Oh and in other Apple News Mr. Gaunt bought an apple slicer! At first I thought it seemed stupid and useless, but it is bad ass! I love it in the mornings when I want some apple slices and peanut butter to take to work, this makes it so much faster!

Christmas Soup and Grilled Apple and Cheese!

Two parties down, one to go! I have tons of pics to put up, lots of things have been going on this past week (hence the limited blogging) that I want to share with you. I decided to break up the pictures into a few posts so yah don’t get bored. We are now a week away from Christmas (I know…crazy) and just two weeks left in 2009! My weight loss goal is pretty much NOT going to happen. I mean I’m sooo close, but I just don’t think I’m going to be able to lose 7 pounds in 12 days. I’m kind bummed, but its ok I worked hard and to think that I started this goal with 25 pounds to lose in three months, I’m ok with only losing about 20 of it.

Ok on to the food! YAY! Earlier this week we went to Mr. Gaunt’s mom’s house to help her decorate her tree and have a little family dinner. We really want to start doing a weekly dinner at her house (like on Gilmore Girls…Friday night dinner anyone?) in the new year, we just have to figure what day works best. This week Mr. Gaunt’s mom (we should really give her a nick name…hmm…I think I’m gonna go with Ms. G) so Ms. G recently discovered Clean Eating, one of my favorite food magazines, and decided to make the cover soup. It’s a vegetable soup with Quinoa and Chicken sausage. I tried to find the recipe on their website, but it’s not there. Maybe Ms. G will post it in the comments (wink wink) anyways it was so freaking good! Sometimes vegetable soups are a little bland, but this one was full of flavor, I loved it!

To go with the soup we had the ultimate comfort food Grilled Cheese! Of course we made it healthy with whole wheat bread and fat free cheddar, but the best part was adding thin sliced Macintosh apples into it before grilling! So good and totally changes the flavor. I will never make grilled cheese without apples again. So yeah both of these recipes are in the January/February issue of Clean Eating, go buy it!

And a sneak peek at my tree decorating post tomorrow…

Weight Watchers Fall Eating!

First off yay for me for doing day two of my menu plan! It’s great to set a goal or make a plan and then follow it through…yay me! Ok so on to what I made tonight for dinner, Weight Watchers Corn Chowder and Apple Crisp.

Both were delish! Especially the Corn Chowder. You can click the links above for the recipes, but I of course made some adjustments so here is my recipe:

Place the following in a LARGE pan that has been sprayed with Pam:

-4 ears of corn (raw) with the corn cut off. You could also do canned.

-1/2 a large onion diced

-1 cup cut up peppers of your choice

-1 cup of brocoli cut into smaller hunks

Cook until soft and bright in color.

Boil (or microwave) 5-6 small yellow potatoes (skins on is ok) Then put them in a large pot and mash them up. Add your corn veggie mixture to the pot of potatoes. Add 2 cups of Fat Free milk (or light Almond milk or Light soy milk) and two cups diced Canadian bacon (or turkey sausage because I dont eat pork). Cover and Simmer on medium low for 10 minutes. I found things werent as thick as I liked so I added a splash of flour, and then I ended up tossing in 2 cups of leftover wild/brown rice. That made a huge difference. Add Salt, pepper, garlic salt, and hot sauce to taste.

The Apple crisp was exactly like the recipe only I didnt have any Tapioca so I just didnt do that. It was like nice sweet crumble apples…works for me!