Peanut Butter & Celery Snack

A favorite snack from my childhood is peanut butter and celery. I could easily pile on a half cup or better on a plate of celery. If you're like me, you don't even think about eating that much PB nowadays. This is my answer to my old time favorite.

Calories-121kcal Carbs-7g Fat-8g Protein-6g Sodium-129mg Sugar-4g

Creamy Peanut Butter Spread

1 tbsp Jif creamy peanut butter
2 tbsp Chobani nonfat plain Greek yogurt
2 drops vanilla
Splenda to flavor

Blend thoroughly...

Spread on your favorite vegetable or cracker, or use as a dip. Makes a little peanut butter go a long way.

Happy Snacking!

Pesto & Pork

Supper tonight was delicious! Bacon-wrapped pork filet with almond-celery pesto. Baked seasoned radishes and cooked broccoli.
Calories-365kcal Carbs-14g Fat-21g Protein-31g Sodium-497mg Sugar-2g

Our store in Cheney carries these...

...which cook up nicely right out of the freezer in my NuWave oven. I also cooked two small whole potatoes for my husband and four radishes for myself at the same time. These were tossed in a light olive oil and seasoning mix. I topped my pork filet with a pesto that I made a few days ago. I had never eaten pesto, let alone made it before this. I had seen pesto mentioned in a lot of recipes and meals and had some celery greens that I needed to use when I came across a pesto recipe to do this. Most pesto recipes that I saw had a lot of oil in them, this one calls for no oil, I like that too. Not having pine nuts I had to find a substitute for those and found almonds recommended. Here's what I came up with...

Almond-Celery Pesto

1/8 tsp granulated garlic
1/2 c almonds
1/2 c celery leaves diced
1/8 c parsley diced
1/8 c grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 c lemon juice
1/3 c orange pulp

I chopped up the almonds and toasted them in a fry pan with the garlic. Combined the garlic, nuts, celery and parsley in a food processor and mixed on high till a consistent paste. Add cheese lemon and orange and mixed till well blended. I used this on my spaghetti first.

Sloppy Cucumber Sandwich

Sad and disappointed in Facebook. My "Food" album has been AWOL for the past few days. All the pictures, recipes, nutrition info, comments, years of sharing.... GONE! So... back to my good ole standby, my blog. Well, on with the show.

Cucumber Sandwich

1 tbsp Kroger - Neufchatel Cheese - 33% Less Fat Cream Cheese
1 tbsp Chobani - Greek Yogurt - Fat Free - Plain
1 tbsp Miracle Whip lite
1 tsp It's a Dilly seasoning
1 tbsp Onion Raw - diced
1/2 c (4 oz) English Cucumber - Seedless - diced
1 tbsp (.5 oz) Kroger - Fresh Mozzarella - shredded

2 leaves Romaine Lettuce or .5 oz baby spinach
1 Kroger sandwich slims - whole wheat

Heat the cream cheese for about 10 or 12 seconds, just to soften. Add and thoroughly mix the yogurt, Miracle Whip and seasoning. It's better if you can let it set over night, but not necessary. Add the diced onion and cucumber. Melt the mozzarella on one piece of the sandwich slim (I like to wilt the lettuce and spinach along with this). Top with the cucumber mix and the second half of the slim. You could possibly make two sandwiches with this but I was eating it all.

Only a slight difference when using Romaine or spinach.

with spinach...

Making the sandwich...

One set back to making this, "It's a Dilly", a McCormick seasoning was discontinued a while back...

I had searched and searched to find somewhere, anywhere to order this. I love that it is salt free. I love the dill flavor. I did find another company picked it up but they must have added gold to the ingredients because their price was high and THEN there was added shipping. Searching more I came across a forum that was discussing the same regrets that I was having and one of the member posted their answer to the problem. A recipe that they came up with for DIY It's A Dilly seasoning. 

I reduced the recipe and used a dash of cayenne pepper instead of ground black. I also ground some dill seed for a stronger dill flavor. But I think this is going to work for me.

Oh! One other hint, the fresh mozzarella has less sodium but it's also REALLY soft. Because I wasn't using it up very fast I froze it. Shredding fresh mozzarella is much easier if it's frozen.

Let me know if you liked my sandwich and if you tried one yourself. What did you do differently or if you have any questions.

Peanut Butter Hummus

Want to try something different for meatless Friday? Peanut butter hummus. 

First you make the hummus. 1 can of chick peas/garbanzo beans well rinsed, 4 tbsp peanut butter of your choice (Jiff creamy) and 3 tbsp lemon juice. Blend till smooth. Makes 12 - 2 tbsp servings. I portioned it out on a wax paper covered cookie sheet and froze them. I will thaw them in the microwave as I use them.

Take one soft white corn tortilla (6 inch), top with 1.5 oz baby spinach and microwave for 30 sec to wilt the spinach and soften the tortilla. 

Mix 2 tbsp non-fat plain Greek yogurt with 1 serv of Peanut butter hummus, put half in center of tortilla & spinach and fold in half. Fold one side of tortilla back open and spread with half of remaining hummus and spread the remainder on the other side.

This may sound really strange, but I REALLY like it and it is satisfying for me. I have also used wilted romaine lettuce when I was out of spinach. It's ALL good!

I received an interesting comment on my hummus in the Facebook group I posted in. I am new to hummus so I found this VERY interesting:

"I've done this because I didn't have tahini to make hummus or access to any place that sold tahini. It's a close taste to classic hummus and it works in a pinch. I used organic, all natural peanut butter."