Guest Post: Alexa

Confessions of a Foodie (back) on the Weight Watchers Bandwagon
I’m the kind of girl who considers cooking her most favorite hobby. Roasting, baking, braising, slow cooking, barbecueing, grilling, smoking, canning, preserving, butter making–this is what I like to do with my free time. In fact, in order to get fresher ingredients, I ripped out my front yard and planted raised beds in order to grow more vegetables.
This year, I am growing 10 different kinds of tomatoes and five different types of hot peppers in between the beans cucumbers. I’ve already infused olive oil with basil so that when the tomatoes begin to ripen later this month, I can scour the cheese shops for the freshesest mozzaareall di buffula pull together the ultimate caprese salad.
Unfortunately, all this cooking with fancy (and often fattening) ingredients have this girl backed up against her college weight (yikes!).
So, unable to ingnore this fact any longer, I’ve jumped back on the Weight Watchers game plan. What I like about Weight Watchers is the food journaling. Always a good idea to write down what you eat. What I am less enthusiastic about are types of foods that are subltly pushed via the plan–you know, all that low fat, low cal, over-processed, packaged food filled with chemicles and aspartame. That contradicts with my eat local, food-snob style.
Fortunately, there are thousands of points-friendly recipes out there. Here’s one that I whipped up for dinner the other night, not too fancy, totally doable for a week night meal.
I call it, “Chicken Chilli with Chard.”
1 28 Oz can pinto beans
¹⁄₂ boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into 1 inch cubes
1 28 Oz can tomatoes
1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
1 pinch cinnamon
2 tsp olive oil
1 cup fat free chicken broth
7 dried chile pods (like california or new mexico), seeded
2 cups chopped chard
Sautee onion and garlic in olive oil until translucent. Add chiles, chicken stock and tomatoes. Allow to simmer for 20 minutes until the chiles are soft. With a hand mixer, puree the tomatoes and chile mixture until smooth. Add pinto beans, chicken and pinch of cinnamon. Simmer for 20 minutes, until chicken is cooked through. Add chopped chard, simmer for 5 more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.
This makes a sizeable batch of chili and each serving has 5-7 points, depending on how hungry you are. Most of the ingredients get a WW “filling food” rating, it’s pretty hearty fare, but doesn’t hog up too many points. I even had enough points left over to wash those peppery flavors down with an ice cold can of Tecate.
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Thanks so much Alexa for sharing this with us. If anyone is interested in writing a guest post for Go Fit Girl! let me know via comments or send me an e-mail to: ann@gofitgirl.com.