Easy Chicken Cacciatore Meal With Whole Wheat Spaghetti Menu and Recipes
This menu features a quick and easy recipe for chicken cacciatore, a warm spinach salad and a sugar-free white cake with various topping options, to finish off the meal. Quick, easy, and healthy, too. Try this meal. You’ll be glad you did.
EASY CHICKEN CACCIATORE
2 tbsp olive oil
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts and/or thighs
1 cup thinly sliced onion
1 cup thinly cut strips of green bell pepper
1/2 cup diced celery
2 tbsp Tomato Basil Garlic blend (such as Mrs. Dash)
1 - 14 1/2 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
1/2 cup red cooking wine
Cooked whole-wheat thin spaghetti for 4 to 6 servings.
Heat oil in large skillet. Add chicken and cook over medium heat on both sides until lightly browned. This should take about 5 minutes per side. Remove from pan and set aside. Add onion, bell pepper, celery and spices to skillet. Cook over medium heat 3 to 4 minutes until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally. Stir in tomatoes and red wine. Return chicken to skillet with vegetables and cook over medium heat 6 to 8 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in center. Serve over cooked spaghetti.
WARM SPINACH SALAD
1 bag (approx. 7 oz) baby spinach leaves
1/2 cup salad croutons (non-fat preferred)
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
3 tbsp SPLENDA Granular
5 slices bacon
1/4 cup chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
Wash spinach leaves well, remove stems and drain in a colander. Place in a salad serving bowl and add croutons. In a small mixing bowl, blend together water, vinegar, mustard and SPLENDA. Set aside.
Over medium-high heat, fry bacon in saucepan until crispy. Drain well on paper toweling. In same pan, put onion and garlic; cook 1 to 2 minutes. Add vinegar mixture, return bacon to pan and simmer another 1 - 2 minutes. Pour over spinach and croutons and mix well. Serve immediately while still warm.
QUICK WHITE CAKE
1 2/3 cups sifted cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup Equal Sugar-Lite
1/2 cup solid shortening
2 egg whites
3/4 cup 2% milk
1 tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and Equal. Blend together well. Add shortening and egg whites. Using an electric mixer, at low speed, mix into flour mixture. Add milk and vanilla and beat at medium speed for 3 minutes or until smooth. Spray a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with non-stick cooking spray. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 - 35 minutes until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Topping suggestions:
Cut into squares and top each square with a dollop of sugar-free whipped topping, and fresh berries of your choice.
Mix a small package of your favorite flavored gelatin mix according to package conditions. As cake begins to cool, poke holes in cake with a large fork. Pour 1/2 of the gelatin mixture over cake. Refrigerate. Refrigerate the remaining gelatin until lightly set. Using mixer, mix gelatin into one small carton sugar-free whipped topping. Spread over cake. Keep in refrigerator until serving time.
Enjoy!
For more of Linda’s recipes and diabetic information go to http://www.diabeticenjoyingfood.squarespace.com She also has a Vintage Recipe Blog called http://www.grandmasvintagerecipes.blogspot.com
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Cooking Light Recipes - 2 Easy Quick and Healthy Recipes For Your Dinner
If you already had a full meal for lunch, you most likely don’t feel like something so filling again for supper. If you want to eat healthy and balanced, then it’s a great idea to choose something light for dinner, especially if your lunch had quite some calories today. And seeing that you already cooked, you definitely don’t want to stand behind the stove again, so it should be an easy non-cooking recipe.
Here are 2 easy quick dinner recipes which are light and healthy. Both of them make four servings.
- Mixed salad with whole grain rolls
- Noodle and mushroom soup
Light dinner recipe #1: Mixed salad with whole grain rolls
Ingredients
- 1 medium lettuce
- 2 red and 2 yellow peppers, sliced
- 250 g fresh mushrooms, sliced
- 200 g feta cheese, cut into small cubes
Dressing:
- 4 tbsp. olive oil
- 2 tbsp. lemon juice
- ΒΌ tsp. salt
- 1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tsp. thyme
- 4 whole grain rolls
Wash the salad, tear it into pieces and drain it. Then mix it with the other ingredients. For the dressing, simply mix all ingredients well, pour over the salad and mix thoroughly. Serve with the rolls. This recipe won’t take you more than half an hour, and it doesn’t require any cooking.
Light dinner recipe #2: Hawaiian Toast
Ingredients
- 8 slices of brown toast
- low-fat margarine
- 8 slices lean ham
- 1 large can pineapple rings or peach halves (should contain 8 rings or halves)
- 8 slices low-fat cheese
- yellow curry powder
Preheat the oven on maximum temperature. Spread the margarine on the toast and place it on a baking tray covered with baking paper. First put a slice of ham on each toast, then a pineapple ring and a slice of cheese. Grill the toast for approximately 5 minutes until the cheese has melted and slightly browned. Sprinkle a bit of curry on and serve. Done within half an hour, too.
Now, enjoy your light dinner and come up with more ideas yourself. You can put anything into your salad, be it vegetables that can be eaten raw or fruit, or both. Just choose foods that go quick to prepare. You can also adapt the toast. Maybe you prefer the grilled chicken stripes that you got in your fridge from yesterday’s lunch with tomato to ham and fruit. Many light soups are also very quick and easy to make if you use canned veggies and leftover rice or soup noodles.
Bettina Berlin is a health professional specializing in healthy nutrition and quick cooking. Eating healthy and thus maintaining a healthy weight can significantly improve your health and help prevent many diseases. Is your life so hectic that preparing healthy food often seems impossible? Then visit http://www.elishas-quick-recipes.blogspot.com TODAY and get your FREE fast cooking tips and much delicious quick easy recipes!
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Delicious Ways to Cook Light For The Household
If fried chicken and deep dish pizza are staples for the family, cooking light might appear very hard to do. However, the key to cooking light is to not make a big deal regarding it. Don’t tell the loved ones they might never get fast food again or they are only able to snack on carrots when viewing tv; such drastic announcements might not support you in any way. The actual strategy to begin cooking light might backfire with grumbles and groans from everyone.
However, when you make subtle variations slowly and gradually, the loved ones might actually enjoy the light cooking you put together with out even realizing it.
Whole Grains
If you’re a large pasta fan, begin blending One hundred per cent entire grain pasta such as spaghetti or other shapes into your frequent foods. A couple of lengths of browner colored pasta here and there might not throw your loved ones off. Steadily increase the proportion of brown to white and then blend it with lots of vegetables and they might not be able to tell the distinction. Should they do notice, ask them if they feel there is a drastic distinction in taste. If they reply in the negative, you might have gained your initial battle.
Sneak in Veggies
There are a lot of recipes to be found on the web as well as in books on how you are able to make zucchini muffins and carrot pancakes and no one is the wiser. Quite a few popular fruit juices have started including healthy servings of veggies in their fruit juices so that your kids receive their daily recommended amounts with out it having to be a large issue.
Switch to Low Fat
In any recipe you make, whether it is for brownies, alfredo sauce or meatloaf, you might run into the need for milk, cheese and other such items. Fortunately today, cooking light is made simpler with reduced fat and fat-free versions of numerous of the staples. When mixing up milk, cheese and butter for macaroni and cheese, use skim milk, reduced fat cheddar and vegetable spread rather than the frequent ingredients and your kids might barely notice the distinction.
Easy Substitutes
Use no calorie sweeteners for ones cookies, unsweetened apple sauce rather than butter or oil when baking and switch to canola or olive oil and cooking light will neither be a chore for you nor a large problem for the family.
Authentic Thai Chicken Stir Fry
Authentic Thai Chicken Stir Fry
Want to cook Thai stir fry just like the restaurant? Surprise your family and friends with this authentic Thai recipe.
The key of having that authentic Thai stir fry taste lies in the coconut milk, every other ingredient has to maintain the same ratio with how much coconut milk you put in.
Basic ingredients:
- 1 quart water
- 3/4 cup coconut milk
- 2 cups uncooked jasmine rice
- 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh basil leaves
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoons fresh ginger root, minced
- 3 tablespoons soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
- 3/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
- 1 medium onion, sliced
- 5 green onions, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 shiitake mushrooms, sliced
- 2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 1/2 inch strips
Ingredients adjustment (base on personal taste):
Spicy - Add more red pepper flakes and chile oil.
Blend - Less vinegar and more mushrooms.
Directions:
1. Boil rice and water in a pot.
2. Cover pot, reduce heat to low for 20 minutes.
3. Mix the following in a bowl:
- coconut milk
- soy sauce
- rice wine vinegar
- fish sauce
- red pepper flakes.
4. Heat oil with skillet over medium-high heat.
5. Stir in ginger, onion and garlic.
6. Cook until lightly browned.
7. Add chicken strips, cook for 3 minutes (or until browned).
8. Stir in the sauce from the bowl.
9. Cooking until sauce is reduced to 1/3.
10. Mix in green onions, basil and mushrooms.
11. Cook until everything is heated through.
12. Serve over the cooked rice.
Alice Anderson is a mother of 2 lovely boys, she loves cooking and spending a lot of time in the kitchen trying new taste and sharing recipes with others, recently she is interested in Cooking Crab Legs and Bose Home Theater.
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