A Sweet Experiment

Rain, rain, go away.... But, it didn't. It was a downpour all day ! I did not want to go anywhere this morning. I'm not usually put off by some rain (although some may say I would melt- he he), but I wasn't in the mood to battle it. So I stayed in and played around in the kitchen! It started with breakfast. I wanted an omelette, but was running low in the veggie department. I scrounged around the fridge and found this in the waaaaaay back...



I forgot about this Red Pepper Spread with Eggplant and Garlic from Trader Joes's. I decided to put this in my omelette with 1/2 of a Laughing Cow Light Cheese Wedge. Wow, what a great combo! The spread is 15 cal. for 1 tbsp. and it is really tasty paired with the cheese. I had an Arnold Sandwich Thin spread with the other 1/2 of Laughing Cow on the side. Delicious and filling; all for 3 Points...

Lunchtime was the start of playtime. I really wanted sweet potatoes for some reason. Maybe I need some vitamin A or beta carotene! I have been toying with the idea of making sweet potato chips, but I haven't found a way to make my sweet potato fries crispy, so I wasn't holding out much hope for the chips version. I cut my potato as thin as possible with my really old plastic mandoline slicer and laid them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. I cooked them in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes. They were extremely tasty, however, I had to discard quite a few of them because they were burned. The remaining "chips" were not chippy, more like - chewy. This has been the problem; to get them crisp, they have to be burned! Eeewww. There had to be a better way, I thought. While I pondered this very pressing question, I ate the rest of my lunch which was a ham wrap and a sliced apple...

I felt very healthy after eating this! Lots of color; veg and fruit on the plate. Weight Watchers would be so proud of me and this "filling foods" lunch for 5 Points!

After lunch, there was a ding dong at the door and to my surprise, it was a package for me from Kristi over at Healthy Living ! Look at this stash of awesome Ghiradelli Chocolates and the nice note she sent me...

Thanks, Kristi!

As much as I wanted to dive into that chocolate( there are so many cool flavors that I have never had!), I passed on it today and decided on some pretzel rods and string cheese...

The rain quieted down a bit, so I ventured out for a few errands. While I was out, I found this mandoline. I knew it would be the answer to my sweet potato prayers! I raced home, washed it and got to work slicing paper thin potatoes. This thing is a dream to work with, too. The blade is super sharp, so there was no fighting to slice these guys. I sprayed the slices with cooking spray and salted the heck out of them (I'll watch the salt next time), then laid them on the parchment -lined baking sheets. But, here was my trick. I decided to try and "dehydrate" them in the oven instead of cooking them. I put them in at 200 degrees and let them do their thing in there for about 1 hr. ...

It worked like a charm! They shriveled a little, but the "crispiness" was there! No more soggy, chewy sweet potatoes! Now, I must admit, I was getting a little impatient during this experiment, so when there was about 10 minutes left in the "cooking" process, I beefed up the temp to 350. Bad move; see how they started to burn a bit? They didn't look like that before I upped the temp...

Yeah, patience. It's not a virtue I possess, but I'm working on it :) So, maybe a bit more tweaking, but I'm calling this experiment a crunching success!

Of course, I had to eat them for with dinner ! In addition to the chips, I had a Cha Sui Bao (remember these? It's the last one in my freezer) and some grapes...

And believe it or not, no dessert tonight!! I'm not sick:) Just trying to lay low with the food because I planned on going to my WW meeting and get weighed-in tomorrow. Hopefully all the salted up sweet potatoes won't cause me to retain a small pond before I get on the scale :)

Sweet dreams=)