Hungry Girl

Before my shopping trip last Wednesday (trying to do one trip every two weeks to make the budget!) I decided to pull out my Hungry Girl 200 under 200 book that I got quite some time ago. I have never really made much from it since a lot of the things she suggest were a little out of my budget for food. But I decided to give some of them a try using items I could find at Aldi (so not buying any of the name brand items she suggests). Now granted I could not find everything at Aldi's so I had to modify the recipes a little bit, so some of them were a little more calories. My wedding is also coming up in June and I figured now was as good a time as any to really hunker down and watch my calories. In case any of you are interested in tracking your calories or exercise, this is a great site that Mike and I use (my user name is StephLopez15 if you wanna be friends!).

The first recipe I tried was the Crazy-Creamy Spinach Artichoke Dip. I made it like the recipe said, except I could not find fat free versions of things at Aldi, so I just used low fat:

It was amazing! You couldn't tell it was low fat. Now if it was fat free maybe that would have changed the taste a little. To be low cal, I ate it with celery sticks, Mike had tortilla chips.

Friday I didn't have to go into work until 1pm, so for our mid day snack I made the Pina Colada Parfait Surprise:

Everything is the same except for the cereal used. All her recipes call for Fiber One Cereal, well they don't have that at Aldi, so I used Aldi's generic bran flakes. I think this may have been better if I had not put the coconut extract in the yogurt, the vanilla yogurt would have been just fine.

Driving in the car home from Goodwill on Saturday evening, Mike and I were debating about using our "going out" budget this early in the month, or to make something at home. So Mike made this (not from Hungry Girl):

It's farfalle pasta with fresh tomato, onion, garlic, and olive oil and semi-homemade garlic bread. It was simply wonderful and I am glad we did not waste our "going out" budget.

Sunday mornings are usually super breakfast mornings (in amount of food and calories!), but this morning I tried the Hungry Girl Frittata Italiano:

They only difference in this recipe is that I used only 1 cup of eggs substitute and one real egg. This is technically 4 servings, but Mike and I each ate half and half is only 160 calories! It was really filling and the fresh tomatoes and spinach made it super delicious. Definitely will make again!

And finally, today is Super Bowl Sunday, which means the Super Bowl Challenge. What is the Super Bowl Challenge you ask? Well its something Mike's friends came up with years ago. You must consume an immense amount of food in the time it takes to play the Super Bowl. For example, one year was an entire large pizza, another year was 2 Chipotle burritos, and another year was 8 items from a fast food chain dollar  menu. This year's challenge is 50 chicken nuggets. Mike is currently working on his last 10 nuggets. I decided to pass on the challenge this year since I am trying to lose weight for my wedding plus I didn't want to be in a food coma tomorrow at work. Instead my Super Bowl challenge was this:

These are Hungry Girl's replacement for potato skins: Bacon n' Cheese Bell Pepper Skins. The recipe made 4 servings, I ate all 4 and still only ate about 600 calories (and I was super stuffed!). They were really really good even though I burnt the turkey bacon. That might be from the fact I used full fat cheddar cheese (I did only use 1/2 cup and Aldi does not sell reduced fat cheddar) and low fat instead of fat free sour cream (again, Aldi does not have a fat free version). A must try if you love potato skins!

This week will bring more Hungry Girl adventures, but until next time, please enjoy this photo of some very pretty bushes in bloom at what is now my Mother's house in Ohio (I think these pictures were taken about 5-6 years ago):