Spinach Artichoke Dip

To die for, I'm telling you! So good!

The original recipe came from a Pampered Chef mini-book. I've changed a few things, to reduce the fat and calories. Here are the ingredients:

~10 oz. frozen cut spinach, thawed and drained (you can do this in the microwave)
~2 6oz. jars of marinated artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
~1/2 cup Miracle Whip Light salad dressing (original recipe is mayonnaise)
~1/2 cup light sour cream (original recipe is regular sour cream)
~3/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese (NOT the powdered stuff in a can!!)
~2 tsp. minced garlic (the kind in a jar, soooo much easier than peeling and chopping cloves of garlic, which is what the original recipe called for)

All the ingredients. Yep, I live in a small town, Walmart shopping is the thing.

Chopped spinach, heated in the microwave and drained. This is also a Tupperware bowl - a microwave colander that fits inside the microwave bowls. Very handy for nuking veggies like spinach that need to be drained.

All the raw ingredients.

Everything mixed together.

I cooked this in my Tupperware microwave Stack Cooker (love this set!) for 5:30 until the cheese was melted and bubbly. You can also bake it in an 8x8 baking dish at 375 for 20 to 25 min. Serve with crackers or crusty bread slices.

Per 1 oz./28g serving, approximately 1 Tablespoon:
50 calories, 3.1g fat, 3.3 carbs, 1.5g protein

Strawberry Rice Crispie Treats

So, I'm cruising down the aisles of my local Wal-Mart, checking out the Valentine's Day treats and other displays, and my eye catches a bag of strawberry-flavored heart marshmallows. I'd been having an obsession lately with Indoor S'Mores (awesome barpan treat version of the campfire classic), and I thought, "Hey, I bet those would make great Rice Crispie treats for Valentine's Day!" And sure enough, they were awesome! So, here's a tricked-out version of an old classic treat.

Strawberry Rice Crispie Treats

~6oz. butter (yep, use butter... and yep, this is double the butter in the original Rice Crispie treat recipe. Ever wonder why your rice crispie treats are hard as a rock and not chewie? It's because you need to use more butter!)
~1 10oz. bag of marshmallows, strawberry-flavored (if these are only seasonal and you can't get them later on in the year, you could probably just add a few drops of red food coloring and 1/2 tsp. of strawberry extract flavoring)
~6 cups of crispy rice cereal (any brand will do)
~about 1 cup of white chocolate baking chips
~non-stick baking spray

A Wilton heart pan, great for molding these goodies! I found it at Walmart. Each heart is approximately 1 cup.

Spray each heart with non-stick baking spray, then sprinkle white baking chips in the bottom of the pan.

Put the butter in a microwave-safe bowl, then pour in the whole bag of marshmallows. (Yep, those two bowls are Tupperware, I used to sell it years and years ago. If you don't have a set of the special microwave cooking bowls called Stack Cooker, get one, it's been 15 years and I still use mine. Find a set on eBay or see a Tupperware dealer.)

Nuke the butter and marshmallows for about 1 minute, the marshmallows are now big and puffy. Stir the marshmallows and butter, then nuke one more time for about 45 seconds.

Pour in the 6 cups of cereal and stir.

Everything mixed together. Spoon the mixture into each heart, pressing down with your fingers (grease them first with the non-stick spray.)

Wah-lah! Heart-shaped Rice Crispie Treats. You can get 8 of them out of the recipe, but only if you work fast to shape the last 2 hearts while the mixture is still warm. Put the pan in the freezer or fridge for a minute or two, then flip the 6 hearts out onto a baking rack. Hurry and mold 2 more hearts. All that sticky marshmallow mix will come off your bowls and spoons with warm/hot water.

Per 1oz. serving of the rice crispies only, w/o the chips:
120 calories, 3.5g fat, 21g carbs. 0.9g protein

For the 2oz. heart treat, with 12g or 1-1/2 Tbsp. of the white chips, it is:
304 calories, 10.1g fat, 50.1g carbs, 2.5g protein

How I Figure Out the Calories Etc.

NorPro measuring cups and spoons

How do I come up with my calories and nutrient info? First off, I use a site called www.myfooddiary.com for all my weight-loss calorie-counting and food journaling.

I hate Livestrong's The Daily Plate. I'm sure there are people who love it because it's free, to each their own. But My Food Diary is so much more straightforward and easy to use. Anyway, I can input ingredients into the Recipe Builder, and tell it how many servings there are per recipe, and then it gives me the calories and nutrient info. So awesome! It's totally worth the $9/month price tag. So, that's what I use to get all the hard data.

Now, how do I measure food to input it into the Recipe Builder? Well, the obvious is to use a variety of measuring cups to measure volume. But to really get specific, I use digital scales. Yep, my digital scales are kind of crusty and beat-up. But that tells you how much they get used! At least half-a-dozen times a day, and often much more:


It's great to measure portions of pre-packaged food, not just raw ingredients.

I measure my food almost always by weight. That way, when I want to eat just a smidgen of a naughty treat, I know how many calories I got for my 1oz. portion, not just the full recommended portion-size. It's very handy when "dieting" or watching calories and portion sizes.

Here's my procedure for tabulating calories:
1. Weigh or measure all the ingredients, sometimes both, to calculate portion sizes and number of servings.
2. Add up all the calories for each amount of ingredient.
3. Divide the total calories by the amount of servings, sized either by volume or by weight. Wah-lah! Yes, I was good at math in school, not Einstein or anything, but I got A's. I'm just lucky that my brain is wired for it.

Today's cute kitchen gadgets -
Really cute measuring cups featured at www.thekitchn.com:






More at www.catchingfireflies.com:

They also have matching heart and flower measuring spoons. Great gift ideas for Valentine's or Mother's Day!