Deep Dish Pizza Casserole, Chicken and Cheese Casserole, Chicken Piccata

Tuesday-Deep Dish Pizza Casserole (for recipe, click the title)
Tonight we tried the Weight Watchers recipe for Deep Dish Pizza Casserole.  Hubby and I worked together doing the prep work and had all of the ingredients ready for the oven in about 15 minutes.

We did the dishes as the casserole baked and the crust browned, and then added cheese and baked it for 5 more minutes, until the cheese melted.  It smelled so good as we were cleaning up!  The finished product was not disappointing, either.  It's a great food when you are dieting and still craving pizza like a Ninja Turtle.

I only used half of the amount of ground beef, and I bought Meijer brand refrigerated pizza dough and Meijer brand Italian diced tomatoes, but that was all that I changed in the recipe.  Upon first bite, I thought it needed a little extra help from herbs, but the more I ate, the better it tasted, and by the time we were done with our pieces, we decided we needed more!  So far, we have been very pleasantly surprised with the recipes we've tried.  I am more than happy to add this recipe to our rotation now too, and will probably continue to make this long after we part ways with Weight Watchers.  Very tasty, and highly recommended!


Wednesday-Chicken and Cheese Casserole (for recipe, click the title)
This was not as good as we had hoped.  Regardless, we were hungry, so we ate it anyway.  Our biggest complaint was that it was very bland.  It was easy enough to make, though--cook the chicken and macaroni at the same time, then mix all of the ingredients together in the casserole dish and bake for about 45 minutes.

We didn't have any low-fat cheese, so we had to use the regular shredded cheddar that we had in the fridge, which probably affected points a bit, but we hate to let the food we already have go to waste now that we are eating healthier.  I also halved the recipe, since it's just the two of us and used a can of cream of chicken instead of cream of mushroom (the nutritional values on the cream of chicken were slightly better than the mushroom--go figure).  I admit that I forgot to add garlic powder to the chicken, but I doubt that it would have affected the flavor that much.  I might try spices, such as mustard powder (frequently used in homemade mac and cheese recipes), paprika, garlic, and maybe a little seasoning salt.  I will have to play around with it if I make it again.  If you try it and add spices, please let me know what you used!

Thursday-Chicken Piccata (Original Recipe: Pork Piccata)
Nope.  Didn't like it.  So, I'm not going to share the recipe.  Sorry...I'm sure there are good recipes out there in cyberspace.

Review: Weight Watchers Parmesan Chicken Cutlets

Update: I have lost 2.2 pounds since we started last Monday.  Hubby, however, has lost a whopping 6 pounds since Monday!  

For dinner tonight, we tried a chicken recipe from Weight Watchers.  Very simple, and very good!  In all honesty, I probably could have come up with this myself, but they did it first, so I went with it.  I did make some changes, as I'll describe below.

For the recipe, click here.

This recipe is for four servings, and each serving is 4 points.

First, I mixed up all of the ingredients, minus the chicken, in a Ziplock bag.  I didn't have Italian breadcrumbs, so I used plain crumbs and added some Italian seasoning.  I also didn't measure the herbs, just added what I guessed would taste good.  It worked out well.  Once all of the ingredients were well mixed, I cut the chicken up into small strips/chunks and dropped them into the bag (or, my hubby did the cutting, since I managed to have a bad run-in with an old razor blade as I was getting the trash together to go out.  I always seem to find sharp objects on accident).  I shook the bag around to coat the chicken well, then sprayed the baking sheet with cooking spray and placed the chicken on.  I popped it in the oven for 25 minutes, and they came out golden brown and smelling great!  The coating gave the chicken a good flavor, and just a little crunch--just right, in my opinion.  Hubby loved it too, and requested that it go into our regular meal rotation.  Overall, I would definitely recommend this recipe for a flavorful chicken coating--and it would probably be good with turkey and pork, too!

On the menu this week:
WW Deep Dish Pizza Casserole (from Food.com, 6 pts.)
WW Chicken Piccata and Oven Fries (5 pts. & 3 pts.)
WW Baked Beef Ziti and Garlic Bread (7 pts. & yet to calculate points)
WW Chicken and Cheese Casserole (6 pts.)
WW Chicken Pot Pie (points value to come)