BLT

I did this recipe on September 14.

I always get turkey clubs whenever I can't figure out what I want on a menu. It's a great standby because it's hard to mess up. The BLT is a a turkey melt without the cheese and turkey. So, I like BLTs.

Rocco let's you use real lowfat bacon, however, my wife is against eating piggies, so I had to get turkey bacon. Turkey bacon is no substitute of real bacon, so I kind of wish I didn't use turkey bacon, but I did. It was ok. I think if we had real bacon, it would have been better.

Normal BLTs come in at around 800 calories. This one comes in at around 350 calories.

Baked Beans and Barbecue Sauce

I originally did this recipe on September 9.

This is a two for one special here. Because I needed to make the barbecue sauce and baked beans, and because Rocco's baked beans calls for Rocco's barbecue sauce, I did both at once. They both came out great. The barbecue sauce was actually a lot sweeter then what you would expect. And, putting them in the beans didn't dilute the sweetness enough. My wife mixed rice into her portion of the beans and it definitely helped. With the left over sauce, I also made my version of sloppy joes, which came out good too. I added in some water to cut down the sweetness.

I don't really like baked beans. I'm not sure why, maybe because they taste like the can they come in. These didn't have that canned flavor.

Normal baked beans are around 200 calories. Rocco's baked beans are around 100 calories. Normal barbecue sauce is around 150 calories. Rocco's bbq sauce is around 25 calories.

Spaghetti Carbonara

I originally did this recipe on September 7.

I've never had spaghetti carbonara before, but I loved this recipe. It's almost appears sauceless, but it definitely has a sauce. The sauce is an evaporated skim milk that you add cook with some egg yolk, onion, and bacon. It's really a great recipe.

Normal spaghetti carbonara comes in at around 1000 calories. Rocco's comes in around 300. Two thumbs up.

Peach and Blueberry Cobbler

I forgot to take a picture of this. But it came out great. My wife was actually the one who did this. We had it for a dinner party and everyone loved it.

This would normally be around 700 calories. Rocco's version comes in at around 100 calories. Definitely a keeper.

Gooey Garlic Cheese Bread

This recipe was originally done on September 3.

I wanted to like this recipe, I really did. It was just ok. I think I have an idea how I would make it better. Rocco calls for soaking the bread in chicken broth. I think the one thing I would do would be to dissolve  some garlic powder with the broth. Perhaps that would give this a more garlic taste.

Normal garlic bread comes in around 800 calories. This one comes in at around 220.

Individual Lasagnas

This recipe was originally done on August 29.

Everyone knows that lasagna isn't good for you. This recipe, though, is definitely a keeper, though.

I didn't do this exactly as the recipe called for. I was supposed to put them in four individual pans, but I didn't have that, so I just put the whole thing in one larger pan.

Anyway, it's awesome. It's much better then the zucchini lasagna I tried earlier for this experiment.

Normal lasagna is around 1000 calories. This one is just under 340.

German Sweet Potato Salad

I did the recipe on August 26.

German sweet potato salad is really tasty. I've never had a potato salad with sweet potato before, but it really works. It is both sweet and sour. Plus, it has bacon. Definitely a keeper.

Normal potato salad is around 500 calories. This recipe comes in at around 100 calories.

Basic Gravy

I originally did this recipe on August 23.

Who doesn't like gravy? It's the perfect topping for meat. This one is is kind of interesting. It almost has a baby food sort of texture. It did start to taste better over a few days, but I was kind of disappointed.

Normal gravy is around 90 calories and 5 grams of fat. This recipe has 1/10 of a gram of fat and only around 10 calories.

Mama-Approved Spaghetti and Meatballs

I originally did this recipe on August 22.

Spaghetti and meatballs is a classic recipe. It's also ridiculously high in calories. I've mostly used frozen meatballs in my cooking, but I think since I tried this, I might have to make fresh meatballs from now on. They were that good.

The way you make fresh meatballs kind of freaked me out. The recipe calls for uncooked meatballs be put straight in the sauce and to leave them in there until they are fully cooked. I was worried that the raw meat would somehow ruin the sauce. It didn't and these were close to the best meatballs I've ever had. They are just really tender and have a great taste to them. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Normal spaghetti and meatballs is around 1500. This recipe is just under 350 calories.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I did this recipe back in August 11. And, I've got two pictures to show.

This recipe is really hard. I'm not sure if I did it right. I tried to follow all recipe but there was a lot that was pretty unusual, like squirting the gnocchi dough onto the back of a cookie sheet, and then put that in the freezer. You can see the picture of me on the left squirting the dough on the cookie sheet.

My attempt came out very doughy and not sweet potato enough for me. I might have used too much flour during one of the steps. The sauce also had a weird strong cheese taste, so that was a bit of a turnoff for me as well.

Normal gnocchi comes in at around 1000 calories. This one comes in at around 350.

Macaroni Salad

I'm really behind on this blog.

I originally did this Macaroni Salad on August 8. And it's really good. As good as any regular macaroni salad. It might have a bit more "veggie" taste to it, but that's fine.

Normal macaroni salad comes in around 350 calories. This one comes in at around 170. It's the perfect picnic treat.

Chicken Fried Steak with Sausage Gravy

It's recipes like this that make this blog worth it. This is very good. It might not rank up there with the pizza or mac and cheese, but it's definitely a keeper.

Rocco's recipe gets around the badness of the original chicken fried steak by baking the steak instead of frying it. You also coat the steak in whole wheat panko bread crumbs. Finally, the one last trick is using non fat greek yogurt in the gravy.

It's a dish that takes you back home to the south, even if you've never been there.

Normally, this dish comes it at around 2000 calories. Yes, that's 2 THOUSAND calories. Rocco's version is around 320. The one thing is that there is still 10 grams of fat. But, that is better then 100 grams of fat in the original.

No Cream-No Cry Penne Alla Vodka

I have a lot of pasta dishes I haven't done yet, so I better get cracking on these.

I discovered that I'm not a big fan of tomato cream sauces. Or maybe, just this one. I guess if I had to give this a grade, I'd give it a C. Again, another dish that wasn't terrible, it wasn't great, either.

The garlic bread was something I added in. It was NOT healthy by any stretch of the imagination. When I was shopping for the key ingredients to this recipe, I saw that Hannafords had a wheat garlic bread that you just threw in the oven. After ten minutes, I took it out and realized that there was about a half stick of butter that hadn't melted. I scrapped it off and we had that side the next day. It was pretty yummy, even with the butter scraped off.

Normally, this dish comes in at around 600 calories. Rocco's variation comes in at around 300.

Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-fry

I'm trying to take care of more seafood dishes, so I don't have to do them later. This one was pretty easy. I had some of Rocco's sauce all made up in the freezer, so I just pulled that out. I probably put in too much sauce. But, over all, it was a pretty good dish. I would give it a B-. Good, not great.

Normally this dish comes in around 900 calories. Rocco's version is around 200.

Seared Tuna with Green Beans, Lemon, and Wasabi

Seafood for me goes into two categories: either I really like it or I really don't. This one goes into the really don't.

I followed the directions to a "T". Unfortunately, the final product was too wasabi-y and I just wasn't impressed with the tuna. It's funny, because last week I loved the raw tuna. This cooked tuna just didn't taste great.

Calories in this dish are usually around 600. The calories in Rocco's version is around 150.

Loaded Potato Skins

Loaded Potato Skins

Yes, healthy loaded potato skins! Ha ha, this makes me laugh. These things are so good. They are like crack for your taste buds.

Normal loaded potato skins are around 650 calories per skin. Rocco's potato skins come in at around 200.

I will confess that we ate 2 each, so that puts us at 400 calories this meal. I guess that kind of defeated the purpose. But they were that good.

Skinny Chef's Salad

Skinny Chef's Salad

You know when you go to a restaurant and you can't find anything you like on the menu, what do you end up getting? The Chef's Salad. This is Rocco's answer to that.

This was harder to prepare than I thought it would be. Everything is hand cut and the eggs are hard boiled, yolks removed. It was very tasty. We used Rocco's Ranch Dressing, as opposed to his suggested Russian Island Dressing. The portion it made was huge, and we couldn't finish it in one sitting. It was a great salad.

Normal Chef's Salad is around 900 calories. This one is around 250.

Tuna Tartare with Ginger and Shiitake Mushrooms

I've never had Tuna Tartare before so I have nothing to compare this to. I guess I could compare it to sushi. I like sushi, so it was like doing my own sushi salad. 

I got the tuna grade sushi at HMart, an Asian grocery store in Burlington, MA. They have every kind of Asian food you can think of. I was a little nervous about buying this and keeping it fresh. So, on my way to HMart, I stopped by Market Basket and bought a bag of ice. After I bought the tuna, I put it on the front seat, took the back of ice and put it right on top. It did stay fresh.

This was a real good meal. I couldn't tell it was raw fish and I hate mushrooms too. But these mushrooms just blend right into the salad.

Normally this is around 360 calories. Rocco's version is around 130 calories. Yum!

French Onion Soup

I've never done a thyme bouquet, so I was really out of my element here. The restaurant french onion soups always have way to much salt, but this one was perfect.

I did manage to burn the onions the first time. I had to run out to the grocery store to get two more. And our house really smelled like smoke.

Regular french onion soup comes in at around 550 calories. This one comes in at around 300 calories

Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

This is a simple and incredibly delicious salad. The ingredients you can see right in the bowl. The way Rocco gets this healthy is by cutting the olive oil way back.

This was a big hit with the wife, so I think we will be making this a lot, perhaps even once every two weeks or so.

This is around 190 calories. And believe it or not, it's pretty filling.

Onion-Garlic Puree

This is a weird one, but it's a recipe in the book, so I have to do it. It's the base for Rocco Mac and Cheese. He also suggests that you use it for any recipe that calls for a lot of butter and cream, or just stir it into a soup or sauce.

It's fat free and it's only around 90 calories for 1 cup. I won't tell you how to make it, you should get the book. But it gives the Rocco Mac and Cheese a fantastic taste.

Macaroni and Cheese (Healthy)

The King of the comfort foods! It's good no matter if it's from the box, from the microwave plastic container, or baked with crunchy bread crumbs. So, how do you make it healthy?

Rocco's recipe calls for whole wheat macaroni, low fat cheese, some greek yogurt, and a bizarre puree of garlic and onion. It is truly one of the best recipes in the book. It's that good.

A regular serving of mac and cheese has around 700 calories. This has only around 230.

Flash Fried Finger Lickin' Chicken

So, I made this for 4th of July and it was a big hit. Even a genuine southerner thought it was great.

The secret is flash frying in grapeseed oil, which is something I've never done before. The reason you use grapeseed oil is because it has a high smoke point, which means you can really heat it up before it starts burning, as opposed to other oils. All you are doing is dipping it in the oil real quick (30 seconds to 1 minute) and browning the crust.

I didn't have a way of measuring whether the oil made it to 400°, which was Rocco's recommendation, so my first piece of fried chicken as a complete disaster. It came out totally charred and made the house smokey. So, I turned it down, and tried the next piece. That was a failure as well, because it was still to hot, but not as hot as last time, but hot enough to melt the ends of the plastic tongs I was using to put the chicken in the oil. By my third attempt, I got my game down and the rest were a success.

I did tweak the recipe a bit. Because grapeseed oil is so expensive, I only bought half the amount that was in the recipe and I used chicken breast instead of chicken thigh. Basically, I made healthy chicken fingers. And it came great, a definite keeper.

Normal fried chicken is around 550 calories, while this recipe is around 200.

One final tip, I found that a lot of these recipes have one or two hard to find/expensive ingredients. I highly suggest find a Trader Joe's around you and shopping there. TJ's seems to have the obscure ingredients at really good prices. I found a bottle of grapeseed oil there for $3.99.

Corn Chowder

I've never made corn chowder from fresh corn before. My corn chowder is loaded with spices and cheese, so it's no where near healthy. The Rocco version is great, though. Just the fact that I had to cut the corn off the cob added something a little special.

The secret ingredient is the cauliflower, which is pureed into the soup. Cauliflower, when pureed, almost has a potato taste.

Normal corn chowder comes in at around 360 calories. This one is around 200.

And, I just realized that I'm still on track for my 3 recipes a week. This one was done the week of June 27th, and it was my third recipe for the week.

Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad

I'm about 2 weeks behind, so I'll try to catch up here. I also thing that I missed a recipe in the past couple weeks. I'm not sure how I did that.

Anyway, here is Rocco's Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. This is usually my go-to-staple at a restaurant, if I'm not too hungry and I don't see anything on the menu that I like. And this version is fantastic. Everything is homemade, right down the the croutons. I did use raw spinach instead of romaine, because that's what I had to eat. Normal chicken caesar salads are around 900 calories. This one is around 200.

Crab Cakes

My wife's response to this: "I'm not chow'n down with the Browns tonight!". She does not like seafood, although she did try to eat it.

I haven't had many crab cakes before, so I don't have much to compare this with. I was a little disappointed myself. This is the third recipe in a row that hasn't been great. My problem with this is that these cakes aren't really "solid". They are very mushy in the middle and it's hard to scrape them off the pan. And the underside doesn't get cooked. So, when I had leftovers today, I flipped the cake over and broiled the other side. It came out better. I'm not sure if broiling is that great an idea for this recipe. Perhaps baking would have been a better idea.

Normal crab cakes 1000 calories. These come in at around 150 calories each.

Shrimp Pad Thai

To be honest, Rocco missed the boat on this one. I know how to make a pretty good authentic Pad Thai. This healthy version isn't really close to it at all. For one thing, one of the necessary ingredients to Pad Thai is tamarind juice. Considering that tamarind juice is only 10 calories a serving, I'm not sure why Rocco didn't put it in. And seeing as I've had to really look for some of these ingredients, I'm surprised he didn't make it one of the ingredients.

I might actually be able to take some of the ideas from this recipe and make a healthy version.

In any case, normal Pad Thai is around 2000 calories, which makes it one of the most unhealthy things you can eat. This recipe comes in at around 300 calories.

Chicken Piccata

So, this is the first of two recipes I tried this week that were just ok. It wasn't bad, just not great either. The few times I've had chicken picot I've enjoyed it. I guess I'm not a huge fan.

The thing about this recipe is that it uses basically the same lemon sauce as two of the fish recipes, so that just adds to the disappointment. It might be healthy but it just isn't outstanding.

I did make one screwup. I bought capers at the store, however, a few days later, when I went to look for them in our cupboard, I couldn't find them. But, capers shouldn't make or break this recipe. I pick the capers out of normal chicken piccata anyway.

Normal chicken piccata comes in at around 1000 calories, this one comes in at 250 calories.

Oysters Rockefeller

I've only had oysters twice and I've never shucked my own. So, after visiting a total of 3 different grocery stores to find oysters, I went home and began shucking. First, actually, I watched several videos. It's really interesting that you pull them apart at the hinge, instead of the front or the side. In any case, it was a fun experience and I'll definitely want to try this again.

These came out awesome! I can't possibly explain how great they were. In fact, they served as my main dish for the night.

Normal oysters rockefeller have around 330 calories. This recipe has around 130 calories. Because my wife doesn't eat shellfish, I ended up eating her portion. Still, that's only 260. I'll definitely be making this again.

Sweet Potato Puree

Sweet Potatoes, if you believe anything on the internet, are the most nutritious foods you can possibly eat. Ok, that might be up for debate, but they are good for you. Rocco includes a recipe for a sweet potato puree, which is useful if you need a quick, healthy side.

I did have to tweak this recipe. I love a baked sweet potato with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. This puree doesn't have any of that. I really like those flavors, so, what I did was add a bit of Molly McButter, for +5 calories, and a little bit of Truvia. My little tweaks really made it tasty and my wife didn't even notice I added a sweetener.

So, I guess when you add all the butter and sugar to this, it can be around 400 calories. The Rocco version is around 80 calories.

Grilled Chicken with Warm Mango Salsa

I've never worked with mango before, so this was really interesting. It takes some skill to cut it, but I watched a bunch of online videos and figured it out.

The prep time to make this is surprisingly long. There is a lot of veggies to cut up and after that's all done, you need to heat it up. But it came out awesome, although my wife would argue that it was too spicy. It might have something to do with the half of jalapeno in the salsa.

Normally this recipe comes in at around 600 calories. This now comes in at around 300. Definitely a keeper.

Loaded Nachos

I've been known to order nachos at a main dish at restaurants. So, yes, I love nachos. And I was a little disappointed with this recipe. My issue with it is that I really like lots of cheese on my nachos. This has a lot of toppings, just not as much cheese as I'd like. I don't think that the amount of cheese I'd like would allow it to be healthy, though.

So, normal nachos come in at around 900 calories. These nachos come in at 350.

Cheddar Cheese and "Potato" Soup

What could be wrong with potatoes? They are higher in calories then most other vegetables. So, instead of using potatoes, Rocco uses cauliflower. A pureed cauliflower has a similar texture to mashed potatoes. It does taste different, though, it's not quite a potato. So, if you are craving a potato soup, this might not be for you.

The other thing is that this doesn't last in the fridge very long. I'm sure why. It might have been that the cauliflower we used as starting to get old. In any case, I'd recommend eating it right away and not saving left overs.

So, normal cheddar and potato soup comes in at around 700 calories. This soup comes in at around 200 calories. The chopped scallion really makes this good, so don't skip it.

Smoked Turkey Reuben

If you like Friendly's Supermelt Sandwiches, this is the sandwich for you. This can't have corned beef, like the real reuben has, because that would be unhealthy. So, Rocco calls for turkey. It's delicious. It could easily replace the grilled cheese as the quick and easy go to sandwich. Of course you need all the ingredients, like sauerkraut, low fat swiss, high fiber bread, etc. This recipe uses Rocco's low fat "Russian Island" dressing.

The real reuben has around 950 calories. This one has 335. It has the greasiness of a grilled cheese, because you use a ton of cooking spray. I like the grease.

Russian Island Dressing

Ok, the blog is back. I was lazy and didn't post anything for the past week. I'll catch up.

Rocco here combines Russian Dressing and Thousand Island Dressing. And it's really good. As you will see in my next blog post, it is used for some of his sandwiches.

Regular Russian dressing is around 150 calories, this recipe is only 20. You can't tell the difference.

Mozzarella Sticks

AWESOME!

This recipe is fantastic! First of all, if you knew how bad mozzarella sticks were for you, you would never eat them again. I'll start off with that badness: 2 mozzarella sticks are around 750 calories and have around 40 grams of fat. That is bad. But, they taste really awesome.

So, Rocco's recipe comes in at around 240 calories and around 8 grams of fat. And, you wouldn't know it if I didn't tell you. They are that good.

The one issue I had was that the cheese drips out that crust. When I do these again, I will probably only heat them for 7 minutes, instead of the 15 minutes Rocco suggests.

Jambalaya

I've only had jambalaya a couple times so I'm not sure if this is an "authentic" recipe. The problem with my attempt at this was that I had just made chili earlier this week, so it kind of was too similar. Next time I'll try to break up my recipes a bit more.

The other thing is that my wife doesn't like seafood and doesn't like spicy food. So, I didn't use shrimp and used a little extra andouille sausage instead. The extra andouille sausage gave the recipe quite the kick, though. So, while I liked it, my wife didn't.

Normal jambalaya is 650 calories vs Rocco's jambalaya, which is only 350.

Chili Con Carne

Yum, chili!

It's actually pretty easy to make a chili that is healthy. You just make sure that you pick ground turnkey instead of red meat. So, I'm not sure I needed this recipe to make a healthy chili.

But, since I am working my way through this book, I did the recipe anyway. It was pretty good. Maybe not the best chili I've made, but good enough.

I couldn't find a can of 35 ounces of whole tomatoes, so I used one 28 ounce can plus one 14 ounce can. It made a lot of extra chili. I saved the rest in the freezer as leftover.

Normally, chili runs around 1000 calories a serving. This one comes in at 287 calories.

One last thing: you can see in the photo that I needed to spice things up a little bit. That's "Dave's Insanity Sauce" in the background. I put four drops in my serving and it gave it a nice kick.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies or I FINALLY whipped some eggs whites

Yay for me! I finally whipped eggs properly. This has taken me many tries to master. And when I mean whipping eggs, I mean the chemical process in which the whites turn from clear liquid to a white, fluffy meringue. That's one of the secrets to this recipe and how the recipe goes from a small amount to an amount that makes 20 cookies.

The other secret is the dough is mostly cannellini beans. It sounds weird but it actually works pretty good.

The consistency isn't quite a cookie. It's something else, almost a wafer. It's really light. It's also INCREDIBLY chocolatey! Like dark chocolate chocolatey.

With that being said, this cookie only comes in at around 50 calories, while a normal cookie comes in at 200 colories. You could eat 4 of these to equal 1 normal cookie.

Sloppy Joe

We made these sloppy joes for lunch, so that's why I don't really have a finished product photo here. Honestly, the recipe was ok. It wasn't the best I've had. I like sloppy joes, so I was expecting a bit more. I think I like the sweetnes of normal sloppy joes. This recipe doesn't have it. Perhaps if I added some Splenda next time. But, that might get a little weird. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great either.

Normal sloppy joes are 640 calories, this sloppy joe is 300 calories.

Pepper and Basil Frittata

What's the difference between a frittata and a quiche? A frittata cooks on the stove, then goes in the oven, and it has no crust. A quiche just goes in the oven and has a crust. This Frittata is delicious. I don't think I've ever had one before. I've had something similar and it had potatoes. This definitely doesn't have potatoes. That would add calories. So, a normal frittata has 340 calories and 20 grams of fat. This one has 130ish calories and only 6 grams of fat. The basil and pepper made this taste so good. And the cauliflower and zucchini were a nice touch, too.

Cheesy Turkey Enchiladas

Enchiladas are classic comfort food. Who doesn't love them? This Rocco recipe comes in at around 300 calories, while normal enchiladas are around 1000 calories. That's why it's comfort food. :)

The recipe calls for pre-made black bean dip. I looked both at Whole Foods and Market Basket and I couldn't find anything. So, I looked up a black bean dip recipe, and made my own. I simply used one can of black beans, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, onion powder, and some fresh lemon juice. I also threw in some low fat sour cream. All of this was food processed.

So, after the bean dip was done, I grilled up the turkey meat. Once that was done, I poured the dip in to the turkey and cooked that for a bit. I then build the enchiladas, put them in the oven, and in 12 minutes, they were done.

One tweak that I made besides the bean dip was that I used fresh salsa that I bought in the produce section, instead of the jarred salsa Rocco called for. I'm not sure I can ever buy jarred salsa, now that I know stores sell fresh salsa.

Anyway, my wife's reaction was "Wow!". Enough said, this recipe is a keeper.

Hollandaise Sauce via Eggs Florentine

Yummy! I've never eaten Hollandaise Sauce before and my wife says it's supposed to be fantastic. I thought I'd try it for Mother's Day.

Eggs Benedict calls for some sort of meat, like ham, and I thought I'd do a non ham version, and use spinach instead, thus making Eggs Florentine. It came out awesome. We have so much left over, we are going to be eating this for one more day.

So, here's what I did. Through testing, I've become an expert at poaching eggs in the microwave. I'm way better at that then doing it in a pot of hot water. I tried the pot of hot water once, and it came out horrible. So, I'll tell you about poaching an egg in a microwave. First, I put a small amount of water in a teacup. Then, I  put a whole egg yolk in there. I cover the teacup with saranwrap, then microwave this for 35 seconds (my microwave is powerful, so it's only 35 seconds to cook but keep the yolk runny. It might be longer in your microwave). Meanwhile, I have a pan heated and I'm wilting some spinach. In addition, I take a whole wheat english muffin, toast it, and lightly butter it. By now, the microwave has beeped. I'm doing all this while keeping the hollandaise sauce warm.

Finally, I take the toasted english muffin, put down a layer of wilted spinach first, then the poached egg (which I got out of the teacup with a slotted spoon), then the hollandaise sauce.

It's the perfect Mothers Day meal. And the sauce is only 50 calories. Not sure how healthy that whole poaced egg is though. :)

Individual Thin Crust Pizza

I know I've already done the deep dish pizza. But sometimes you just want a crispy thin crust. Rocco has the answer with this recipe.

The two tools you will need for this one are a rolling pin and a pizza peel. I don't have either and didn't feel like spending the money. So, for the rolling pin, I used an aluminum water bottle I had sitting around. This bottle is the kind that you get as a giveaway at trade shows, with a company logo on it. Mine was 8", so it worked perfect, as long as I covered it with flour before I started rolling.

For the pizza peel, I covered the back of a baking pan with cornmeal and slid it onto the hot pizza stone. My first attempt did not work at all and it was a complete disaster. To the point that I had to scrape it off the pizza stone and reroll it, which wasn't the best idea. I saved this individual crust for myself, since it had mutated to some weird shape that didn't look too appetizing.

The second and third attempts worked better, however, it was still problematic. My cooking sheet is not a flat one, so the pizza dough would kind of fold onto the pizza stone. So, it looks like I'll be buying a pizza peel.

I've noticed two kinds of pizza peels, ones that are raised and pretty cheap, and ones that are almost completely flat but expensive. Based on my experiences with the baking sheet with a lip, I'm definitely going to look for a flat pizza peel. I'm going to check out Christmas Tree Shop today to see if they have any flat ones. For those who don't know, Christmas Tree Shop is a kind of discount bargain store, where you can find all kinds of miscellaneous stuff really cheap. It has stuff like factory close outs and what not. It's the kind of place a grandma would adore.

By the way, this pizza comes in at around 200 calories a serving. And it's very yummy. And the pizzas that I did right looked like they came for some foofy fancy restaurant.

Buffalo Wings and Ranch Dressing

Two for one post today. I made the Buffalo Wings and Ranch Dressing.

You don't want to know how many calories normal Buffalo Wings have. Ok, you do, and deep fried wings come in around 1200 calories. These Rocco wings are 300 calories a serving. And they are totally awesome. I could eat these every day. Of course, I made these too spicy and my wife didn't like them for their spiciness.

The Rocco Ranch Dressing is fantastic. It is smooth, creamy, cool and just plain wonderful. The calories per serving is around 30.

Chicken and Dumplings

Yeah, a healthy chicken and dumplings. Normally, this dish comes in at 800 calories. This Rocco recipe is around 270.

I cut up the stuff before I left for work and my wife finished off the recipe. She did a great job. In fact, it's hard not to go for seconds on this recipe, it's so good.

I think we are getting faster at these recipes. Hopefully I'll be able to keep this pace up.

Apple Pie

Ok, a fair warning here. This falls into more of the "Apple Crisp" category here, rather then "Apple Pie". I tweaked the recipe a little and included a crust, so mine is closer to a pie then a crisp. It's the oatmeal top that makes it more "Crisp". I think a pie should definitely have a pie top and bottom. Anyway...

This is low calorie because it has no sugar. The only two sweeteners are Truvia and Splenda. And, on a whole, I think this tastes pretty good. One of the elements to the crust is crushed pecans, which give it a rich flavor. 130 calories a server is great, too.

Ok, so that's all for this week. I have a busy day tomorrow, so I wanted to get all of these recipes down before the week was done.

Turkey Tacos

One of my favorite foods is tacos. I have a recipe my mom gave me with is out of this world. Honestly though, it came from Betty Crocker, so it's not authentic at all.

Rocco's recipe doesn't stray too far from my own in it's basic ingredients. It just doesn't have the "spice pack" that mine has. I'd say Rocco's tastes a lot "fresher" then mine, because all the ingredients are fresh, of course!

One of the key ingredients is fresh salsa. He doesn't make you make your own, although that would be good. Instead, he recommends using fresh salsa from the produce section of any grocery store. Market Basket sells an awesome brand and it tastes incredible. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but it's the only brand they carry. It really pushes this taco to another level of goodness.

The other things that he has that I don't put in mine: tomatillo salsa, greek yogurt, and black beans. The tomatillo salsa I found that was great was from Trader Joes. The greek yogurt replaces sour cream, and it works really great as a replacement. Fat free sour cream is so bland. And the black beans add a nice flavor to it, so it almost because burrito like.

I'm not sure this is really lower in calorie then the tacos I make. I did notice that we had a lot left over and we ended up eating this three nights straight. A definite keeper in my book.

AWESOME Low Calorie Onion Rings

Another bad photo with a horrible camera flash. My flash will be returned to me hopefully soon and I will be able to get back to taking somewhat decent photos.

This has been one of my favorite recipes. It's crunchy, yummy, and has a zippy sauce to die for. All it takes are some vidalia onions, skim milk, egg whites, wheat flour, and panko whole wheat breadcrumbs. The secret is soaking the onions in the skim milk for 20 minutes. Then, toss them in wheat flour, a toss in egg whites, a toss in panko bread crumbs and you've got an awesome dish.

The sauce is real simple. Low fat Hellmans, liquid smoke, and a dash of tabasco. Now, I didn't have liquid smoke and didn't feel like spending hours looking for it. I did have worcestershire sauce, and it has no calories, so I substituted that. It tastes fantastic.

At some point, I'll come up with the best recipes of the month. This will be one of them.

Rocco's How Low Can You Go Marinara Sauce

Another day without my flash. These pictures
make me annoyed because the food doesn't look
as good.

So, you're thinking, what's up with pasta sauce, isn't it low cal anyway? Well Rocco is shaving off 30 calories with this recipe for a total of around 50 calories. And it's wonderful. It has such rich flavor. This is what makes the deep dish pizza so heavenly.

I made three batches this week. One went to a pizza my wife and I had for lunches. The other two are in the freezer, and I can pull them out at a moments notice. This is the best sauce I've ever eaten.