A weekend of trying new recipes

Before I get into some of the fantastic meals I ate this weekend, I am going to tell you about the exercise video I just tried: Jillian Michaels No More Trouble Zones. I bought this DVD and Jillian's Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism DVD from Sam's Club about a month ago. Reading about Caitlin's journey with Jillian's 30 day shread, inspired me to finally unwrap this DVD. WOW, was this rough for me. Maybe it is because I haven't lifted weights in a couple weeks, but I was using 5 pound weights and for a few exercises I had to drop my weights and just do the exercises without them.

Jillian is very amazing, so if you haven't tried one of her DVDs yet, you should. Now on to some eats.

Before I get to the new recipes I tried, I wanted to thank my husband for making pancakes. He is the pancake maker in our house, and today he really decorated them nice with all my favorites. There is some fat free cool whip on there, I haven't bought it for months, because it is full of crappy ingredients, but I really love it, so I picked some up this weekend.

I have wanted to try a Mushroom Stroganoff recipe for a long time and finally tried one. I found one online for Tofu Stroganoff. I followed the basic recipe, but instead of tofu I used more mushrooms and some morningstar crumbles. Also instead of sour cream, I used Fage. We had it over some fresh whole wheat pasta we bought at an Italian market.

Also this weekend, we tried, for the first time, to make Indian food. First, I knew that the recipe called for chick peas, and being previously inspired by Heather making beans from dried beans, I made the chick peas instead of using them from a can. I soaked the chick peas overnight, and then just cooked them in boiling water for 20 minutes when I needed them. This was so easy, I can't believe I was buying canned chick peas for this long and never tried this.

Here is a picture of my chick peas:

I used some of the chick peas in a Indian dish I found for Indian spiced kale and chick peas. I really liked how this one turned out. With that, we finally made Happy Herbivore's Red Lentil Dal, which I have seen on so many of my favorite blogs. I think we made this too spicy for me. My husband liked it a lot, but my mouth was burning. Steve had leftovers of the Red Lentil Dal for lunch and still loved it. So I'm sure we will make both recipes again.

Finally with our Indian, we attempted to make our own whole wheat Naan bread, but it didn't work out for us. Steve still loved this bread, but it didn't turn out to be or taste anything like Naan. I attempted this recipe for the naan bread. Has anyone else tried to make Naan? I even went to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy a baking stone to bake it on!

Time to get ready for bed. I'm so sad the weekend is over!