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.