It’s a chilly fall Sunday night and I can’t think of anything more appropriate than beef stew in the CrockPot. I use the old school recipe right out of the CrockPot cookbook because why mess with a good thing! According to Recipe Builder it’s 9 PTS+ if I split it into 5 servings. Here’s what goes into it:
1 lb beef round cut into 1″ cubes (I use a leaner cut than stew beef)
1/4 cup flour
Salt and pepper to taste
1.5 cups low sodium beef broth
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 clove minced garlic
1 bay leaf
1/2 teastpoon paprika
1/2 bag baby carrots, chopped (calls for 3 carrots, sliced)
1 lb potato, chopped
1 onion, diced
1 cup diced celery
Put the meat in the CrockPot. Mix the flour, salt and pepper and pour over the meat. Stir it up to coat the meat. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir it all to mix. Cover it and cook on low 8 – 10 hours. Stir before serving.
It’ll be done about 5:30 tomorrow morning so I think this is lunch for tomorrow. Yum!!
I’ve been at this since October 2008 (my 2nd blog-day is almost here!) and I’ve posted some great fall comfort food recipes in the past years. Here’s a look back at some of my favorites, as a reminder:
Sweet Potato Soup (4 PTS)
Tuscan Turkey Sausage and Barley Stew (6 PTS)
Philly Cheesesteak (6 PTS, great for watching a football game)
Homemade Chili with Cornbread (6 PTS total)
Au Bon Pain Veggie Chili (4 PTS)
Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup
Chili Cheese Baked Potato (7 PTS)
(If I were to do this now I would use the homemade chili from above. The original canned chili has way too many preservatives for me these days!)
2 PT Hot Cocoa (1 milk serving)
I went grocery shopping at Whole Foods yesterday, and took a little time to explore their prepared foods section. I tend to stay away from those dishes because – despite the delicious flavor – are often higher calorie than I am looking for. But given the chilly weather we’ve been having lately I stopped to take a look at the prepared soups. Canned soups have way too much salt for me (and a funny aftertaste) so I was pleasantly surprised to find that several of the Whole Foods soups were less than 2 PTS per serving.
Before I would commit to buying a quart, I decided to sample them by purchasing an 8 oz to go container of two of the soups – Mom’s Chicken Soup and a vegetable and healthy grain soup that I can’t currently remember the name of. Both were 2 PTS per serving. I tried the Mom’s Chicken Soup for lunch yesterday and all I can say is WOW. It truly does taste like the classic, homemade chicken soup you would get from Mom when you were home sick from school. No noodles, no rice – they weren’t necessary. Just chicken pieces, flavorful broth, and big chunks of carrot, celery, and onion. It was fantastic. And not too salty, either.
I highly recommend this one, and plan to go buy myself the quart on my next trip up that way. (Note – most Whole Foods also have a To Go area so I plan to add this to my rotation at work. There is a WF within walking distance of my office so this would be a great option for a cold day with a fresh salad from their salad bar).
I made matzoh ball soup tonight and am so excited with the way it came out, both for taste and PTS reasons! First I made the matzoh balls with:
1 envelope Streits Matzo Ball mix (Manischewitz is the same calories)
1 1/3 Tbsp olive oil (it was all I had!)
2 large brown eggs
I mixed all that together and let it sit in the fridge for about 45 min while I prepped the soup. I made that from the following:
1 carton low sodium organic chicken broth
1 carton full sodium organic chicken broth
1/2 bag organic baby carrots, cut into pieces
approx 1/2 – 3/4 cup frozen chopped onions
I let all that boil in my soup pot on the stove while the matzo ball mix chilled out.
When the mix was cold, I formed it into 11 matzo balls, each starting about the size of a quarter. I plopped them into the pot as I rolled them and let them cook for 30 minutes. They fluffed up SO nicely, I think because I used less oil. The recipe called for 1/4 cup and I had no intention of using that much! I would have used 2 Tbsp but I ran out, and it turns out that 1 1/3 Tbsp (approx) is more than enough!
I then tore up some leftover turkey white meat from our Seder turkey and put it in the bottom of the bowl (nuked it for 30 seconds just to warm it up from the fridge). I then ladled a generous helping of soup and 2 matzoh bowls over the meat and sat down to the perfect light Passover dinner for a cold, rainy evening (we’re having the great flood here in Boston right now…can Elijah bring Noah and his ark please?!).
And the best part….Total PTS = 4!!!! 2 PTS for the 2 oz of turkey, and 1 PT per matzoh ball (I put it into Recipe Builder to be sure). Amazing!! I packed up the soup into smaller containers for lunch for the rest of the week. I’ll probably have it with a large salad and a Date & Nut bar. This is seriously going to be the tastiest Passover in a long time!
