Going to TRY and follow through with this...again...

So, I have sadly neglected this blog, and I've also sadly neglected my diet. :( I've noticed some of my clothes aren't fitting properly lately and a hop on the scale told me why- I've regained about 8-10 pounds over the last few months! :( Big, huge sad face. So I decided to start dieting again. Instead of making a huge goal like I did in 2009 (was at 163ish, need to be down to under 140 for my big Mexico trip in November), I'm going to do some little goals.

My first little goal is to lose 5 pounds by October 29. Why October 29? I'm taking a mini-vacation to Door County over that weekend. It's about 5 weeks away. I need to lose a pound a week. Not a bad goal.

Right now, I am hovering at about 146.5 lbs. If I can manage to lose 1 pound per week, I should be around 141.5-142 lbs by October 29.

The challenges I think I'm going to face this time around is my unpredictable work schedule. For the majority of 2009 I had a "9-5" job of sorts. Now I have a weird schedule where I work 4 hour shifts until 8pm two days a week, 8 hour shifts two days a week, am off (for now...) on Fridays, work Saturday mornings and then am off again until Monday afternoon. It makes for eating healthy when I get home from work at 8:30 a challenge. But hell, I lost 30 pounds in 2009- I can eat healthy despite my weird schedule and lose 10 pounds before 2011!!

Here goes nothing! :)

What's for dinner? Chicken Kabobs!

Last night, we made chicken kabobs for dinner. Delicious, easy, and summer-y!

Usually, chicken kabobs in this house entail mushrooms, zucchini and green peppers, plus the chicken.

I start out by cutting the chicken into chunks (about 1-1.5 inches), and then marinading them for at least an hour in the fridge before tossing them on the grill.

Last night's marinade included Wildtree's Hickory Smoked Grapeseed Oil, which adds a delicious smoky flavor, Southwestern Seasoning (from Pampered Chef!), cayenne pepper and a spicy garlic from Dean Jacobs. What we actually did was add the spices first and tried to coat the meat as thoroughly as possible, and then added in the grapeseed oil, then added some more spices and mixed it again.

Tossed in the fridge for an hour to let the flavors marinade together.

On Monday, I went out to run some errands and happened across a produce stand on my way home. Since I actually had cash on hand, I made sure to stop. I picked up a dozen ears of corn ($6), two large zucchini ($1.50/lb), two ginormous green peppers ($o.75/lb), some green beans (~$1.50/lb), a pint of blueberries ($2.50) and two cucumbers ($0.75 each). My total came to just over $14 which is WAY better than I'd have been able to do at the grocery store. Plus, it was fresh and local!! Bonus!

For the kabobs, I had bought two green peppers and two zucchini, since that's what we'd used for our last round of kabobs. Since the peppers and zucchini were much larger than the ones we get at the grocery store, we only had to use 1 of each. We sliced the zucchini and peppers, and started threading the kabobs. We have a nice set of wood handled kabobs that we use, but please keep in mind that if you are using wood kabobs, don't forget to soak them in cold water for about 20 minutes (minimum) before adding the meat and veggies so they don't go up in flames when you put them on the grill!

Toss the kabobs on the grill, making sure to check on them and rotate them regularly. It took about 15 minutes for the kabobs to cook thoroughly on medium high heat.

Kabobs are delicious and a fun way to eat chicken and veggies. The prep time is not that long, I'd say about 20 minutes total and that includes cutting up the chicken and making the marinade, and then to cut up the veggies and thread the kabobs (but allow about 1 hour to marinade).

And it's only chicken and veggies, so it's not bad for you at all. There are marinades available at the grocery store, but if you have oil/grapeseed oil on hand, I encourage you to make it yourself! We have also used sesame seed oil for a marinade with success.

Happy grilling!

Mmm...Indian Food...

So, once upon a time I blogged about how much I adore Indian food. Because I do adore Indian food. I love Indian food so much that I hope when I die, heaven is actually just an Indian buffet that is all-you-can-eat and you never get full.

That being said, however, I've really been wanting to make Indian food in the meantime (before my all you can eat Indian buffet heaven plans). :) While I have always been a huge fan of Indian food, the budget is a bit tighter now and a typical Indian restaurant trip usually runs us in the $40 range once you figure in all the delicious appetizers!

So when I came across this recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala (aka my favorite Indian dish!) on AllRecipes, I knew I HAD to try it.

It sat in my recipe box for a while (btw, I'm going to take a quick minute to plug AllRecipes. It's awesome. And the recipes are endless. And most of the ones I've made have been delicious! So I suggest that you finish reading this blog and head over to AllRecipes to log in and create your own account!), but I finally decided I really needed to eat Indian food since I don't think I've had anything save my Trader Joe's frozen meals since New Year's Eve. Or maybe February. But that is too long ago.

The one thing I noticed (which surprised me a bit) was that I pretty much had all of the ingredients already: chicken, plain yogurt, lemon juice, cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper (okay, well, had to borrow this from the neighbor since ours ran out a few months ago and forgot to replace it, but now it's been replaced!), black pepper, ginger (recipes calls for fresh, I used powdered), salt, butter, garlic (minced), paprika, tomato sauce, jalapeno pepper, heavy cream & cilantro. Aside from the heavy cream & yogurt, most of the ingredients were here or already on our regular grocery list.

The recipe was clear and easy to follow. Aside from using powdered ginger instead of fresh ginger, I didn't really make any modifications. Chicken marinaded in the fridge for about an hour while we ran some errands (including to get some cilantro, since the stuff we'd bought about a week earlier was already gross). Trader Joe's has frozen naan, both plain and garlic, but I decided not to get any this time.

After marinading and soaking the wooden skewers in cold water for about 1/2 hour, we threaded the chicken onto skewers and tossed them on the grill.

While the chicken was on the grill, we started on the cream/tomato sauce. The recipes calls for melted butter and then jalapenos and a whole bunch of spices to be sauteed prior to the cream & tomato sauce being added. Almost burned the butter! but was able to keep it from burning by hurrying up the spices and tossing in the cream. Phew. Crisis averted. The jalapenos and spices combined with the cream & tomato sauces turned into the lovely orange chicken tikka masala sauce that I know and LOVE! :)

I also had a bag of basmati rice so I made sure to cook that up to go along with the meal, especially given that I had passed on the naan.

After the chicken was grilled and the sauce was ready, we added chicken to the sauce & let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

THIS. WAS. AMAZING.

Holy crap and holy crap again. I honestly think this is one of the best dinners we've EVER made and that's saying something as it includes the Sprecher beer cheese soup, the Pioneer Woman mac & cheese, the chicken tortilla soup, the Jamaican jerk chicken and any of Andy's awesome chili. So yeah, I highly recommend this. A lot. And did I mention you should possibly go out and make this tomorrow?

So given that a chicken tikka masala dish at a good Indian restaurant will usually run about $10 (on the low end), and I don't really think this is "healthy" (though it yields 4 servings at 404 calories a pop, so really not as bad as I thought it would be), but I think it fits the "frugal" aspect.

Chicken: 3lbs @1.99/lb = $6

Heavy Cream: 8oz @0.89 = $0.89

Yogurt: large carton = $2.25

Tomato Sauce: 8oz @ ~$1

Cilantro: ~$1

Jalapeno Pepper: ~$0.50

Cumin, Cinnamon, Lemon Juice, Cayenne Pepper, Black Pepper, Salt, Ginger, Butter, Garlic & Paprika, Basmati Rice: Already found in the house. :)

So for the whole dish, it was roughly $11.65. For 4 servings. No tip necessary! :)

Next time, however, I am going to try a few different things to try and make it a bit healthier. The entire recipe as written calls for 7 teaspoons of salt. Uhh...sodium much? A few of the reviews on allrecipes said the salt didn't matter. So I think I'll just do a bit of trial and error with that. The recipe also calls for a tablespoon of butter, but it really was just to saute the jalapeno and spices. I am going to try substituting grapeseed oil for that next time. No risk of me burning then either....

Overall I give the recipe an A+. It tasted pretty similar to my favorite Indian restaurant's chicken tikka masala (though I'm not going to stop frequenting my favorite Indian restaurants because of it). I was really surprised at how relatively easy it was to make, and I was very impressed.

Extreme Comfort Food and Fun with the Grill

Periodically, this blog strays away from the healthy aspect. :) This is one of those days...

For a while, I've been itching for some good, homemade mac & cheese. This was inspired by a recipe that I found in the copy of the most recent Penzey's catalog. I even went out and bought some mustard powder on my last Penzey's trip to make this mac & cheese! But the Penzey's recipe, while it sounded delicious, was baked. And the humidity had struck and the air conditioning is on so there was no way that I was going to turn on my oven. :) So, I thought I was going to have to put the mac & cheese on the backburner for a while.

And then I found this recipe last Wednesday. And I was in love. And we went to the grocery store Thursday night so I immediately picked up all the ingredients that I didn't already have.

Scan over the recipe and I dare you not to fall in love with it too.

I'll start out with the modifications that I made: I followed the Pioneer Woman's recommendation of using Cavatappi noodles (I find this recipe calls for a "heftier" noodle than just a macaroni noodle!) and eliminated the jalapeno pepper completely. I also used 1 cup of Pepper Jack cheese and 1/2 cup of Monterey Jack cheese instead of all Pepper Jack cheese.

I more or less followed the rest of the recipe as is, except I used a combination of Garlic olive oil and Chili olive oil.

Olive oil, onions, red bell pepper, garlic & corn:

Shredded Pepper Jack & Monterey Jack cheese:

I don't even want to think about how many calories were in this delicious dish, but sometimes it's worth it to take a break from the healthy living to have the ultimate in comfort food. :) And mac & cheese IS the ultimate in comfort food, and having the spicy elements adds a bit of a "grown-up" twist. Not to mention this mac & cheese is not neon orange a la Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. :)

I definitely will be making this again. I liked the modifications that I made, but I think I might add Jalapeno Grapeseed Oil to the mix instead of Chili Olive Oil. Go out and make this mac & cheese. Probably not this second, but this week. For sure. :)

The next entry in this blog post is much healthier!

For dinner tonight, we made Black & Red Chicken from the Penzey's catalog, and added grilled asparagus and mushrooms for a side dish.

The chicken we made as is. We dipped the chicken in Natural Grapeseed Oil and then sprinkled on quite a bit of Black & Red seasoning before rubbing the seasoning into the chicken. We then left the chicken in the fridge for an hour to let the flavors "soak" into the chicken.

After the chicken was "marinaded" for an hour in the fridge, it was put on the grill for about 10 minutes at medium high.

For the mushrooms, Andy drizzled olive oil and sea salt on them, wrapped them in tinfoil and put them on the grill. He made two "batches" - one with garlic olive oil and one with chili olive oil. They were grilled on medium high for about 15 minutes.

The asparagus was brushed with chili olive oil and put directly on the grill for about 5 minutes on medium high.

Overall- really really tasty!! Not very much salt/sodium in it since the Black & Red seasoning is salt-free and we only used salt in the mushrooms (and not very much). A really good recipe, but possibly I will use less Black & Red next time because it was extremely HOT (spicy!).

I think grilling vegetables is going to become a new staple in our house. A little bit of olive oil, shake on some spices and put on the grill and veggies are tasty but still relatively healthy (not being sauteed in butter helps, haha). I'm hoping to experiment more with grilling veggies throughout the summer.

The importance of good spices!

So lately, my life has been pretty uneventful. I haven't really done much cooking since it's either been humid, we've been grilling out, or we've been hitting the town with Eating Milwaukee (since my last post here we've reviewed Speed Queen BBQ and Barbiere's Italian Inn- a review which has not yet been published but is coming soon!) Over the weekend, however, I took a trip to one of my two favorite food-type stores in the entire world: Penzey's!

I went to Penzey's to pick up a few things and ended up with an entire bag full of spice-related goodies. Oh, that store never ceases to make me wish I had an unlimited cash flow and cabinet space (even though I, um, have an entire cabinet devoted to spices).

I went there for two specific reasons: 1- that I had a coupon from my last catalog for a free Northwoods, BBQ 3000 or Black/Red seasoning. 2- in the most recent catalog (which I suspect is never showing up at my house because it was due to arrive when the maintenance people switched around our mailboxes with the neighbors and right after that switch happened, we didn't get any mail), I read about a Beef Roast Seasoning that sounded a-MAZING! So of course, it was necessary to make a trip to Penzey's!

So, after browsing for about 1/2 hour, what did we emerge with?

Beef Roast Seasoning

Northwoods Fire (one of Andy's favorites, this jar was a replacement for the last one)

Black & Red Spice (because it smelled delicious, was one of the "free" options, and also because the Black & Red Chicken sounds tasty!)

Mustard Powder (because there was a recipe in the latest catalog, which I happened to pick up a copy at the store, for mac & cheese which called for mustard...)

Taco Seasoning (because who doesn't love a good taco seasoning?)

Chicago Steak Seasoning (self-explanatory! and also because we ran out of my favorite steak seasoning: the Rancher Steak Rub from Wildtree)

Pasta Sprinkle

and

Pizza Seasoning

Man, life is good since I live really near Penzey's!

My goal for the next few years is to get rid of all of my spices that aren't Penzey's, Wildtree, The Spice House or from other specialty shops. I know McCormick's spices are not bad, but they just aren't as good! For example, in 2005 I started making pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. I used my McCormick cinnamon. The pie was good, of course, it's pumpkin pie! The next year, I had gotten some Penzey's Cinnamon (in this case the China Tung Hing Cinnamon) and used that instead. China Tung Hing Cinnamon = much tastier pumpkin pie. Promise! Now to get ginger and cloves from Penzey's...

Other Penzey's favorites in our house include the Cajun Seasoning, Chili Powder, Cinnamon Sugar (great in applesauce!), Tandoori Seasoning, Sandwich Sprinkle and Tsardust Memories.

I realize that spices from places like the above are not the cheapest, so it may bring about the question "how is this frugal?" Well, splurging on good spices equals even better food. You may cut corners by buying bulk meats and freezing it, making more things from scratch, drinking Crystal Light or Kool-Aid (don't knock it...) instead of buying soda, some people use beans more often than meat (I'm not going to do that since I don't like beans, but I've read that it is good for the budget!), etc etc. There are a lot of ways to cut your food budget, but I think skimping on spices is a poor way to do so. For example, if you are pouring over the ads every week and see a good deal on chicken and buy a bunch of it to freeze, when the time comes to eat said chicken, a cabinet full of good spices equals a lot of choices for making a delicious marinade.

A lot of spice specialty shops also have multiple sizes of their spices. With very few exceptions, I buy the smallest jar possible of a spice before I know if I am going to love it or not. I can always buy more if it turns out that it is the Best. Spice. Ever.

One of the problems with buying higher end spices is that it gets seriously addicting and then you are devoting an entire cabinet to spices. Not that I would know...

So I highly encourage you to find a specialty spice shop in your area and go there for your spice purchases from now on. If this is old news and you already do this, where do you shop and what are some of your favorite spices?

Coming soon- a post on the importance of good olive oil. It makes a difference, really!

Jamaican Jerk Chicken!

I have had the recipe for Jamaican Jerk Chicken in my "recipe box" on AllRecipes for over two years now and just haven't gotten around to making it! However, I decided a few weeks ago that I really wanted to make it since we were at the Brewers game instead of going to Rhythm & Brews when they had their "Jerk" night a few weeks ago.

So, without further ado, Jamaican Jerk Chicken!

The recipe calls for 4 limes (juiced) and a cup of water to put the chicken in. We used 5 limes since a- we have a lot of limes leftover from our Memorial Day BBQ where the featured drink was gin & tonic, and b- we don't have juicer and I don't think squeezing the limes by hand maximizes the amount of lime juice...

The rest of the marinade was made up of allspice, nutmeg, salt, brown sugar, thyme, ground pepper, and ginger. It also called for vegetable oil, but I substituted Natural Grapeseed Oil instead since I have almost a whole bottle of it that I've only used twice. The recipe called for ground allspice, but I only have the whole allspice, but since it gets put in the blender I hardly think it really matters. Blended all that together and then added the chopped onion, chopped green onion, 6 cloves of garlic, and the peppers. The recipe called for habanero peppers but we used jalapeno and serrano peppers instead since habaneros are hella hot! After all that was blended together, it was added to the chicken/lime juice/water and marinaded in the fridge for two hours.

This chicken went on the grill after it was marinaded and only took about 15-20 minutes to grill thoroughly. There was a little marinade leftover so that it could be used to baste the chicken on the grill.

Finally, we served it with a side of basmati rice, since that's what we had in the house, when we make it again I'll probably use a more authentic side such as red beans and rice or anything from Zatarain's. :)

Overall, a great dish. Easy to prepare and easy to cook. Prep time was pretty accurate on the recipe, it took about 20 minutes to prep everything before going into the fridge. 221 calories per serving (about 5 WW points) not including the rice. Even without the habanero peppers, there was a bit of spice in the dish, but nothing outrageous (I can't imagine how hot it would have been with the habaneros, though!). Fun to make, and perfect for a summer day!

Even in the year 3000, the question will be "what's for dinner?"

If anyone else happens to remember that commercial from the 1980s promoting canned food, then mad props to you. There is nothing more weird than a space housewife promoting canned vegetables, and if that doesn't promote canned food, then I just don't know what does!

Anyway. My friend Erin periodically runs a post on her food blog called "what's for dinner" and I decided to steal her idea sincerely imitate her and do a post like that of my own. :)

On Friday we made hamburgers with sauteed mushrooms and onions (sauteed in Hickory Smoke Grapeseed Oil), on Thursday we cheated and went to The Chancery for 1/2 price pasta night.

On Wednesday night, however, I made Spaghetti Pie. When I was a kid, my mom made spaghetti pie a lot and it has become one of those nostalgic favorites. I had never attempted to make one myself, though I have tried to make lasagna and have deemed it to be a lot of work and I don't like making it that much. Spaghetti pie, however, is another story.

I don't really have any recollection of what recipe my mom used, so I poked around online and found one that sounded good at AllRecipes.com. There were a number of spaghetti pie recipes there, but I settled on Spaghetti Pie II because it sounded the easiest and most basic.

Since I had never made this recipe before, nor had I ever made a spaghetti pie before, I decided to just follow the recipe more or less as is, except that after I had made the "crust" (spaghetti, 2 eggs, and 2tblsp of butter in a pie pan), I realized I had bought tomato paste, but no diced tomatoes. Oops. Luckily, one of the reviewers of the recipe noted that instead of tomatoes/tomato paste, they used spaghetti sauce. So I used a plain spaghetti sauce instead, and it turned out fine- you're just mixing the tomatoes/paste with ground beef, onions and green peppers anyway.

Aside from that minor substitute, I followed the rest of the recipe as is. It turned out really good and was not that hard. Now that I have a basic recipe down, it will be easy to substitute and do my own variations of it. I am also going to ask my mom for her spaghetti pie recipe to see how it differs- I don't remember having that much ground beef in the pie as a kid.

I recommend this recipe- easy, tasty and for me, nostalgia. But unlike some nostalgia (like Sunny Delight - ew), this one is still good. :)

Chicken Tortilla Soup

I love Mexican food, and I'm lucky enough to live in a city where there is a large percentage of Mexican restaurants. :) That being said, however, I have only found two places with a suitable Tortilla Soup- La Carreta at the El Dorado Seaside Suites in Riviera Maya, Mexico, and Riviera Maya Mexican Restaurant (I'm sensing a common theme here...) right here in Milwaukee. Since La Carreta is a bit far away (ha) and Riviera Maya is a bit expensive, I decided to try making my own.

I found this Slow-Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe on AllRecipes.com, and decided to give it a shot. It was ridiculously easy, ridiculously tasty, and relatively healthy. I didn't make any modifications to this recipe at all.

The "hardest" part of the recipe was the chicken shredding, because it's pretty tedious. General chicken shredding instructions found here, thanks to eHow. I used the boiling water stovetop method, no pounding involved. Something the tutorial doesn't say but I've found has been extremely helpful is to cut the chicken into small strips. The cooking time is much shorter, and it's easier to shred smaller pieces of chicken than a full sized chicken breast. Today's chicken came from Trader Joe's, and I mis-read the label and bought chicken tenderloins, so they were already pre-cut and smaller, but cutting regular chicken breast into the tenderloin size would work too.

I used La Preferida mild red enchilada sauce and diced green chiles. I'd like to try making the enchilada sauce when I make this again, but for now the La Preferida was just fine. The recipe also called for a can of whole peeled tomatoes- mashed. I decided to go for the mashing tomatoes with a fork method. :)

Chopped the onion using our Slap Chop, which was courtesy of my family's Xmas White Elephant exchange. It makes chopping onions much easier and tear free- I highly recommend getting one, especially if you like onions!

After the chicken, onions, enchilada sauce, green chiles, tomatoes, garlic, chicken broth and water- we added the cumin, salt, pepper, bay leaf and chili powder. Since I'm a spice snob, I used chili powder from Penzey's (while Penzey's is a specialty spice shop- they have amazing spices, and if you subscribe to their catalog they have amazing coupons. For example, the first catalog I got had a coupon for a free Cajun spice.)...I highly recommend Penzey's if you live near one, and be sure to sign up for their mailing list!

The last things to be added was the frozen corn, and fresh cilantro. I had picked up a bag of fire-roasted corn at Trader Joe's about a month ago and it was PERFECT. The recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of cilantro, but since i had bought a bunch of fresh cilantro at Piggly Wiggly, we added way more.

I took this picture prior to turning on the CrockPot. Since I didn't get a chance to go to Trader Joe's to pick up the chicken until about 2:00, I had to cook it for 3 hours on high instead of 7 hours on low.

Right before the soup was done, we made the tortilla strips. We sliced up 5 soft corn tortillas, brushed them with garlic olive oil from the Olive Cellar.

I put them in the oven for about 8-10 minutes at 450 since the recipe did not really specify, but next time I may put them in for 15 minutes at about 350 instead.

The tortilla strips were perfect. Next time, I may try using our chipotle oil from the Olive Cellar, or chili olive oil from The Oilerie. They also might be a fun snack to make with leftover corn tortillas.

All in all, this recipe did not require that much assembly and it turned out delicious!

Caloric count: 262 calories per serving (recipe does not specify serving size), or approx. 2000 calories for the entire pot of soup. Our pot yielded five large bowls- approx 400 calories, or 8 WW points per bowl. Since it was heavy on the protein, it was also very filling so we didn't have any side dishes with it at all.

I cannot say enough good things about this recipe and I encourage you to try it out yourself. It was super easy to make, super tasty and the most difficult part was shredding the chicken. It would be a perfect weekend dinner because you can assemble it in the morning and then put the crock pot on low and let it cook all day. Depending on time, you could also make it in the morning before work, but since shredding chicken is a huge chore for me, I don't think I'd ever make it during the week if I had to work during the day. :)

Blog Revamp!

I've decided that my weight loss blog needed a "makeover" of sorts since I have been lax in keeping up with it. :) So I decided to expand my blog to include frugal living, since I still have no job. The "good" part about having lots of free time is that I also have lots of free time to come up with cooking ideas, rather than just eating prepackaged food (okay, not that I cook very much, especially in the summer because summer is when Andy grills out a lot). For example, last week, we took this Wisconsin Native's Beer Cheese Soup recipe that I found on AllRecipes and added Sprecher Black Bavarian Beer to it. It was absolutely delicious (albeit anything but healthy with the 6 cups of cheese and an entire stick of butter). In terms of frugality, however, I had spent about $4 on a cup of beer cheese soup at a coffee shop, making an entire pot of beer cheese soup was much more economical. We did end up inviting over my parents and our neighbor to help us consume the beer cheese soup that night so that we wouldn't have leftovers, but under normal circumstances, we could freeze leftovers.

Anywho, I will also soon be renaming the blog to reflect that new changes. For now, it's been temporarily titled "Lauren's Healthy & Frugal Living" but I'm going to spend some time brainstorming a more clever name. :)

Pudding Pops!

I've never mentioned it before on this blog, but I have been signed up for SparkPeople for a while. I don't use it very often, but I do get recipes emailed to me every day. Most of them get put in the circular file of my email account (haha), but some make it into the "SparkPeople Recipes Folder" that I have. :)

One of the recipes that made it to the "SparkPeople Recipes Folder" is their recipe for Frozen Pudding Pops. As you can imagine, I am all about sweet frozen treats (see also Diet...Ice Cream??), so the recipe's promise of a low-fat frozen snack that you can actually make yourself sounded like a fun 'challenge.' Soooooo I picked up a packet of Trader Joe's Instant Chocolate Pudding (sigh, here I go again promoting TJ's, but really I haven't been to P&S in forever!) on my last grocery run. But any sort of pudding mix will do- next time I may try a Jell-O pudding mix. ;)

Anywho, according to the recipe, just make the pudding according to directions, then put the pudding into either a popsicle mold or just paper cups with popsicle sticks. Since I'm attempting to be more conscious of buying things I can reuse versus just throw away, I was hopeful of finding a popsicle mold, but wasn't sure where I would find one. Let me tell you, today was my lucky day! I was at the Dollar Tree picking up cleaning supplies (including some Totally Awesome Laundry Detergent which I'm linking to because I probably wouldn't have believed that this was in fact the brand name either....but I digress) and I thought to myself that I should check into buying some paper cups and popsicle sticks. I was perusing the aisles when I actually found a popsicle mold! Score one for me....

So I mixed up the batch of pudding- it probably took about 12 minutes altogether before the pudding was set, and 10 of those minutes were waiting. I put the pudding into my spiffy new popsicle mold and then rummaged around in my freezer to find some space to set the mold so it wasn't tipping over or anything. The jury is out on how they will taste frozen, but the pudding itself was quite tasty :)

Caloric breakdown:

Per the pudding box, serving size is 1/2 cup prepared with 4 servings. I made the whole box, so I'll quadruple the calories. 1 serving = 110 calories, 5 calories from fat, with 1g fat and 0g saturated fat, 23g carbohydrate with 19g of sugar. Calories for the whole box = 440. The recipe called for 2 cups of milk, and 2 cups of skim milk has 160 calories. Total calories for the pudding mix = 600. I figure I used about 1/3 of the total to make my pudding pops, so 200 calories for all of the pops, and there were 8 pops made, so 25 calories each. Not bad...not bad. :)