Taco Salad

When people think of eating healthy it seems like they automatically think of salads, that salads are "diet food." While this may be true, salads can also be amazingly delicious and amazingly fattening if you don't know what is going in it. The dressing, that is the real killer. I must say, if I am going to have "just a salad" then you can bet that I'm gonna have some kind of delicious dressing on that salad - and a lot of it. Well, I figured out how to cheat the dressing gods and have a delicious full fat dressing that coats my entire salad without spending my entire booty of WW points on it. Forge ahead to find out how.

Taco Salad:
8p+ for 1 MASSIVE serving.

2C chopped romaine
1/2C spinach
1/2C grape tomatoes
10 large olives, sliced
1/4C shredded carrot
1/4C chopped bell peppers
1/3C kidney beans
2T Fresh Gourmet tortilla strips, santa fe style
2T ranch (made from a hidden valley packet)
2T salsa

Throw everything from romaine to tortilla strips in a bowl and call it macaroni. Acutally don't, that could be confusing. Call it taco salad! My taco salad is sans meat, I get protein from the kindey beans so that is good enough for me. It wasn't worth the extra points for taco meat on here. Ground turkey cooked in taco seasoning might be a good compromise. I'll let you decide.

Right, the dressing.

Don't put the salsa in the salad then add the ranch. No. You must mix the ranch and the salsa in a separate container, then pour it over and toss. This makes the ranch go so much futher and more evenly distributes over the ginornmous salad. It's salad science really.

Enjoy!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Holy smokes it is getting increasingly colder outside by the day. How to people live in places that snow? Seriously. I could never do that. Contrary to popular belief California is not always sunny (and the roads are not actually paved with gold in case you were wondering). I live in Northern California, which may as well be a totally different state. It is freezing balls here. I decided to warm myself up with some delicious chicken tortilla soup. This is an easy recipe that can be done in the crock-pot, and it is a decent amount of points for the serving size for those of you following Weight Watchers (like me!). Note: if you are doing WW, you should be able to search for this recipe in the tracker, Erika's Chicken Tortilla Soup, and it should come up so you don't have to add everything to the recipe builder yourself.

Chicken Tortilla Soup:

Makes 6 servings at 7 p+ per serving (not including tortilla strips and sour cream on top). With Tortilla Strips and 2T sour cream 12p+

1 15oz can red enchilada sauce
1 can corn, drained
1 can kidney beans, drained
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small can diced green chiles
1/2 packet taco seasoning
3 chicken breasts (I put mine in frozen, thawed is fine, too)
1 can reduced fat cream of chicken soup
1 medium sized can sliced olives (like 5-7oz... somewhere in there)
2-3C low sodium chicken broth (depending on how thin you want the soup)

Put everything in the crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours. Make good homemade food is so ridiculously easy that is saddens me more people don't take the time to cook.

After 8 hours, take out the chicken breasts, shred and put back in the soup.

To make the yummy tortilla strips on top:

2 corn tortillas, sliced up using a pizza cutter
2tsp canola oil
salt.

Toss tortillas in canola, line em up on a baking sheet and bake at 425 for 4-6 minutes, then flip and bake for another 4 minutes until golden and delicious all over. Sprinkle with salt while hot, and serve over soup.