No "Blue Box Blues" Here!

Macaroni and cheese is often a kid’s favorite side dish. Even as an adult, I enjoy a mac and cheese, especially with ketchup! Packaged mac and cheese mixes usually do not provide much nutrition. Though this recipe has quite a different flavor, it provides some great fiber, vegetables and calcium.

What was one of your favorite dishes as a kid?

I was able to find higher fiber pasta and lower fat cheese for this dish. One caveat to using a lower fat cheese is like Laura experienced, it is not the best melting cheese. Luckily this dish was cooked in a Crock Pot and had a little bit longer to melt and combine with the other ingredients.

If you look at Paula’s original recipe, she has this dish cook in a Crock Pot for 3 hours. I typically don’t have 3 hours to let a side dish cook when I get home from work. To make this a friendlier working girl recipe, I tried to cook it on high for only 1 hour. The dish cooked just fine!

One mistake I made when making this was forgetting to cook the cauliflower before I started making the dish. Once I remembered that the cauliflower needed to be prepared, I quickly cut it into tiny pieces, tossed them into a bowl of water and zapped them in the microwave. The cauliflower was softened but not quite cooked. Because of this, the cauliflower did not puree well and the “puree” had a much stronger flavor when it was added to the dish.

Overall, the macaroni and cheese was pretty good. The texture was very unique with the egg…very fluffy. The fluffiness of the egg combined with the creaminess of the cheese and other dairy products made this a delicious macaroni and cheese dish. All I would have done differently to make it superb would be to cut back the cauliflower to ½ a cup and to cook the cauliflower correctly!

Here are the nutrition facts:

Lower Fat Creamy Macaroni and Cheese

2 cups uncooked, whole wheat elbow macaroni
2 tbsp Smart Balance Light
2 ½ cups grated 2% Cheddar cheese
¾ cup egg substitute
½ cup low fat sour cream
½ cup Cheddar cheese soup
½ cup steamed Cauliflower, pureed
¼ tsp salt substitute
1 cup 1% milk
½ tsp dry mustard
½ tsp black pepper

Boil the macaroni in water until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain.
In a medium sauce pan, stir cheese and Smart balance over medium heat until cheese melts. In a slow cooker, combine the cheese mixture, egg substitute, sour cream, soup, cauliflower, salt substitute, mustard and pepper, stirring to combine. Add cooked macaroni and stir well. Set slow cooker to high and cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

More Cheese Please!

Are you tired of mac and cheese yet? I guess Laura and I love cheese and pasta so much, we keep choosing similar recipes! Today's recipe is a modification on Paula's Cheese Noodles. The recipe sounded super yummy and wasn't quite like mac and cheese so I thought I would give it a try.

There weren't too many strange ingredients in this recipe. I am a huge fan of the texture of egg noodles, so I was excited to make this dish.

The end result of this recipe looked very delicious. You have the oh so yummy egg noodles with this crispy and toasted brown crust on top. The flavor did not disappoint either! There was a beautiful hint of onion in every bite that finished with the creaminess of the different dairy products.

On the plate, on my new place mats!

A little closer...

On a side note, my hubby HATES cottage cheese. I didn't tell him there was any in here and he actually ate it! He wasn't too pleased when I gave him the news. Either way, this side dish was pretty good. As far as the nutrition value a whole lot didn't change. It is at least a little better.

Is there anything you wish you could sneak into a meal?


Here are the facts

and the new recipe:

Cheesy Noodles

Ingredients:
1 cup 1% Cottage cheese
½ cup low fat sour cream
¾ grated onion
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp garlic powder
6 oz No Yolk egg noodles, cooked
¾ cup grated Parmesan
Canola oil spray

In a saucepan, melt the cottage cheese and sour cream together until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients except the Parmesan cheese and stir to coat. Put mixture in a 2-quart casserole dish sprayed with Canola oil. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the mixture. Bake for 45 minutes.

Too Right To Be Wrong

If I were Paula Deen and I had some leftover Mac & Cheese, what would I do? I know, fry it! Kat and I saw a video clip of Paula Deen making The Lady's Fried Mac and we were fascinated. I think we both started sizing each other up, just in case we had to arm wrestle to see who would be the lucky one to take that recipe. As fate would have it, I already had The Lady's Cheesy Mac recipe in my pile, so I won this one!



It looked like it was a delicious recipe, but inherently unhealthy. It's mac and cheese (lots of fat), wrapped in bacon (more fat) and then deep fried in oil (eeek!). I used my lightened up version of Mmm...Mac & Cheese, swapped the bacon with turkey bacon, omitted the yolks of the eggs, and made my own whole wheat bread crumbs.

I had a couple of options other than frying. I could try to bake it, but I've didn't know that I would be able to achieve the crunchy texture I was hoping for. I've tried numerous 'oven fried' recipes and while they're good, they're not crispy. I could also pan fry it, which I know would make it crispy, but would also contribute extra calories. Eventually, pan frying won (It's what Paula would have wanted, right!). I only used enough oil to cover the bottom and flipped each side when it got brown.

The final product:



Oh. My. God. These were amazing. I had no words.

Once I composed myself, I was instantly worried that there would be a loud knock and the door and someone would come in and take away my dietitian credentials because I had fallen in love with Fried Macaroni and Cheese. I wanted to marry these golden cubes of cheesy, bacon-y goodness. My only hope was that the nutritional stats would save my hiney. Literally.

And...

Nutritional Information (OLD)	Nutritional Information (NEW)
Servings Per Recipe: 15	Servings Per Recipe: 15
Amount Per Serving	Amount Per Serving
Calories: 333	Calories: 268
Fat: 33.8 g	Fat: 17.1 g
Sodium: 737 mg	Sodium: 498 mg
Fiber: 1 g	Fiber: 1 g

(Whew). These guys are not something you want to have too often and when you do have them, you really have to watch your portion sizes and limit yourselves. But if Fried Mac & Cheese is what you're craving and nothing else will do, this recipe will save you a few calories and a little bit of fat.

A quick comment on the stats before I share my recipe: I don't know how much fat is really absorbed when you deep fry something, so I just assumed both recipes absorbed the same amount of fat. I suspect less oil would be soaked up with pan frying, but since I don't know how much I calculated both recipes with the same amount of oil.

What's one of your favorite foods that you would like to see Paula Deen fry??

Fried (For Real!) Mac & Cheese

1 Recipie Mmm...Mac & Cheese, chilled and cut into 15 pieces
1 lb turkey bacon
whole wheat flour (for dusting)
3 egg whites, beaten
3 slices whole wheat bread, toasted and ground into crumbs (OR store bought bread crumbs)
1/2 c canola oil

Wrap each square with turkey bacon and use a toothpick to hold into place. Dust each square with flour and then dip in egg whites. Coat with bread crumbs. Place squares into pan with oil and cook each side until golden brown, about 1 minute. Repeat until each side is cooked. Don't forget to remove the toothpick before enjoying!

It was a Two-fer!

Remember the (Wheat) Germy Chicken Strips I made a couple of days ago?? Anyone remember the Mac and Cheese that sat next to the strips?



Well, I was feeling particularly ambitious that day and decided to re-work TWO recipes in one day! I worked on Italian Chicken Sticks AND The Lady's Cheesy Mac; it was a two-fer!

(Sorry about the picture; I guess my shutter wasn't completely open when I snapped the picture!)

For this recipe, I made adjustments to almost every ingredient. I used a brand I've only used a couple of times for my macaroni. It's not whole wheat pasta, so it has semolina flour, but it also has a blend of legume and other flours in it (lentil, flax, barley). I like it because it's a little higher in protein and fiber than regular pasta. It also doesn't have the tough gummy texture of whole wheat pasta. I used my homemade Greek yogurt from earlier this week, reduced fat cheddar cheese and only used 1 whole egg and 2 egg whites.

Reduced and low-fat cheeses don't melt as well as full-fat cheese, so the final product didn't have that homogeneous, orange-y color that regular Mac & Cheese has. It didn't taste like the heavier version, but it was tasty enough to satisfy my craving. But that's okay, because I have plans for these leftovers (insert evil laughter here)!



The revised recipe is almost 100 calories less than the original and 10 grams less of fat. Here are the stats:

Nutritional Information (OLD)	Nutritional Information (NEW)
Servings Per Recipe: 8	Servings Per Recipe: 8
Amount Per Serving	Amount Per Serving
Calories: 333	Calories: 235
Fat: 20.5 g	Fat: 9.7 g
Sodium: 369 mg	Sodium: 285 mg
Fiber: 1 g	Fiber: 1 g

And the recipe:

Mmm...Mac & Cheese

4 c cooked elbow macaroni, drained
2 c shredded, reduced fat cheddar cheese
1 whole egg plus 2 egg whites
1/2 c plain, fat free Greek yogurt
4 tbsp margarine
1 c fat free milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

When the macaroni is done cooking and has been drained, return to the pot and add the cheddar cheese. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl before adding to the macaroni and cheese. When all ingredients have been combined and well-dispersed within the macaroni, pour into a casserole dish or an 8" X "8 square pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Let sit 5 minutes before serving.