20 Weight Watchers Lunches in 20 Minutes or Less

1. Monte Cristo Sandwiches – Weight Watchers (8 Points)

2. Tuna Salad – Weight Watchers (3 Points)

3. Easy 20 Minute “Texas” Chili – Weight Watchers (3 Points)

4. BLT Wraps – Weight Watcher (3 Points)

5. Italian Stuffed Tuna Sandwich – Weight Watchers

6. Crab Quesadillas – Weight Watchers (8 Points)

7. Pita Pizza – Weight Watchers (9 Points)

8. Applebee’s Copycat Low Fat Veggie Quesadilla – Weight Watchers (6 Points)

9. Avocado and Tomato Pasta Salad – Weight Watchers (8 Points)

10. BLT Pasta Salad – Weight Watchers (2 Points)

11. Egg Salad – Weight Watchers (3 Points)

12. Classic Coleslaw – Weight Watchers (1 Point)

13. Chicken Salad – Weight Watchers (5 Points)

14. Easy Asian Beef & Noodles – Weight Watchers (9 Points)

15. Five Can Soup – Weight Watchers (5 Points)

16. Sauteed Shrimp – Weight Watchers (2 Points)

17. Zucchini Fries – Weight Watchers (3 Points)

18. Crunchy Chinese Coleslaw – Weight Watchers (3 Points)

19. Stir Fried Chinese Vegetables – Weight Watchers

20. Sunshine Salad – Weight Watchers (3 Points)

Cooking Tips :

Make Cheaper, Healthier Meals With These Simple Cooking Tips

Becoming a better cook can be accomplished with a little time, patience and following a few simple steps. The basics of cooking are easy to master and accomplish. In order to cook meals and dishes that will make your friends and family say "Wow!" you need to try these simple steps and you can be on your way to being the best cook you can possibly be.

The smaller the item you are cooking, the higher the baking temperature should be. Baking something delicious does not have to involve leaving food in the oven for hours. If you are baking something small, set the oven temperature higher. Just make sure you leave it in the oven for less time.

If you are cooking for someone important, such as a new boss or for a dinner party, don't use a new recipe and a new ingredient. Make sure you practice the dish first for your own family. Play around with it to make sure it is how you want it.

Make sure that all of your spices are stored away from heat and light. When spices are exposed to light and heat, they lose their flavor and it reduces their storage life. Keeping your spices in a cooler space with little light will enhance their flavor and shelf life. Using fresh spices makes meals even more delicious.

If you are making a sandwich and adding mayonnaise, make sure that you spread the mayo from corner to corner to give you the ultimate coverage and a delicious taste in every bite. Each and every bite that you take should be outstanding, as spreading mayo will achieve this goal when you eat sandwiches.

When you are seasoning a salad, add a small dose of olive oil in addition to natural sea salt. This will help to give your salad a crunchy appeal even after you add the dressing. Keeping your salad as crunchy as possible will create a feeling of freshness upon consumption.

Make sure that if you are planning a party with friends and family, to have each course planned out in advance. You should have an appetizer course, salad course, main dish and dessert. Breaking your meal into courses will give people a chance to digest and appreciate what you have cooked for them.

Have you been making the same berry shortcake for a while? Make the flavor pop with the following tip. Mix your berries with a pinch of salt, a little fresh mint and a small spoon of lime juice. Your guests will never guess how you enhanced the flavor of the old family recipe.

Do you know that guilty feeling you get when you throw away fruit that has mold? Is it safe to save a portion of fruit by cutting around the mold? Saving half-rotten fruit in a healthy way is not possible. The mold and spoilage that you can see is only part of the problem with marginal-looking fruit; even the parts that appear pristine can be unsafe to eat.

If you are making pastries, you should try to maximize the accuracy of your measurements as it is a very exact science. By adding one gram too much or too less, you are going to put the taste of your pastry in jeopardy. Always try to be precise when baking.

The mushrooms will just absorb the water. The right way to clean the mushrooms would be by hand, using a clean, wet cloth.

When you are chopping onions for a home cooked salsa make sure you rinse them. Rinse your onions immediately after you cut them then blot them dry with a napkin. This will remove the sulfurous gas and will make your salsa taste better. This works well for other recipes too.

To discover when oil is really hot enough and ready for the food, look to its' surface. If it is no longer completely smooth and appears to be shimmering it is hot enough. When oil is allowed to over-heat it actually starts breaking down and releasing unpleasant compounds and will begin to smoke, so know when to say when!

When you feel like your dish is missing something but it isn't salt, consider something acidic. Lemon, wine, and vinegar can all be great ways to add acid to a recipe. Healthy acidic balances out the flavor of anything sweet. It can also be a wonderful way to add a "salty" flavor if you're on a low salt diet.

Plan your meals in advance. One of the biggest time wasters is engaging in the "what am I going to fix for dinner?" debate. Often, we could have dinner on the table by the time we fuss with examining the options. Over the weekend - or whenever your free time occurs - think through the upcoming week and loosely plan four or five meals you know your family will enjoy. This advance planning allows you the time to stock your fridge and pantry with the items you need.

If your family tends to eat a lot of chicken and often, remember to always brine the poultry as it will lock in flavor. Otherwise you are left with a dry piece of chicken that merely has whatever spices and herbs you chose coated on the outside rather than penetrating every bite.

Avoid limiting yourself to white potatoes in your cooking. They are very high in starch and have the least amount of nutritional content of any of the potatoes. Try varieties that come in blue, red, yellow, and orange. You can substitute almost any root vegetable as your usual white potato.

In order to become a good cook, you should learn to use simple measuring devices. It is very important to know how to get the right quantities because many tried and true recipes require very specific amounts of this and that. Learn to measure and you'll be licking your chops in no time!

After trying these steps, you should be well on your way to being a much better cook. The great thing about these tips is that if they don't work the first time keep trying and you are sure to get better. You should notice the difference right away and your friends and family will thank you.

Take Food And Make It A Meal

Cooking is necessary, but it doesn't have to be a chore, even if you are not a whiz in the kitchen. Anyone can improve their cooking skills with the right help and persistent practice. Read the advice in this article and try some of the tips. You will improve your cooking skills and start to enjoy it more.

To prevent your homemade pizza from becoming soggy with all of the juicy toppings you add, lightly coat the bare dough with olive oil. Pizza sauce, peppers and meats can all weigh down a pizza dough and cause it to be soggy even after baking so be sure to brush on a bit of olive oil for a crispier, firmer pizza!

Make sure that you defrost your vegetables before you put them in the microwave if you are planning to cook them this way. This will allow you to achieve the best texture, while not sacrificing the taste of your vegetables. After cooking, add your vegetables to a main plate as a side dish.

Always keep your spices away from light in a cool place. If the spices become too hot, or moist from humidity, it can shorten their shelf life. Too much light exposure also does this. Your spices will have a longer shelf life and retain their good taste if stored in a dark, cool spot. You'll taste the difference in your dishes.

To improve your level of convenience in the kitchen, one of the things that you can do is to freeze the excess sauces that you create, in ice cube trays. This will allow you to reheat them when you need sauce again and also to save money on the excess sauce that you kept.

When you cook vegetables for a long time, like boiling them, a lot of essential nutrients will be cooked away. To preserve their nutrition, choose to cook foods in quick methods like steaming, sauteing or even just eating them raw.

An electric mixer is a blessing when you have to make your dough, but even this relatively easy task can turn into a nightmare when the dough sticks to the dough hook. To avoid the sticky mess, spray the hook with vegetable cooking spray and your dough will never stick to your mixer again.

After you have cooked a meal for someone, never rush them into eating as you should always take your time and engage in conversation to give your body a chance to digest. Part of the meal is the smells and aromas it gives off while the other part is your actual consumption.

Store your cheese in the fridge, wrapped tightly in plastic, and away from air. This will help to keep mold away. While a little mold is not harmful to cheese, excessive mold is dangerous to consume. It will certainly affect the quality of your cheese as well.

An easy way to skin nuts. When used in cooking, nuts such as almonds and pistachios need their skins removed. Blanch the nuts by boiling them in a pan of water for one minute. Drain the nuts, and place them on a clean dishtowel. Fold the dish towel over the nuts, and rub vigorously. The skins will rub off onto the towel.

If you want to pan sear a nice tuna steak, you want to do it right! Make a baste for the tuna that is comprised of ginger, cilantro, soy sauce, pepper, and salt. Put oil on the pan and heat it, sear for one minute on each side. The middle of the fish should still be pink.

Cooking pasta a minute short of its full cook time. When you short the cook time on your pasta you can finish the cooking process when mixing with the sauce. This will prevent your final steps in the dish from overcooking the pasta and destroying its texture or shape. Your dishes will maintain an inviting look this way.

For maximum sandwich enjoyment, make sure you spread mayonnaise evenly across the bread. Most people simply put mayo in the center of their sandwiches. Spread the mayonnaise properly so that its flavor permeates the entire sandwich.

Check your meatloaf or meatballs by test cooking a small piece. You want your meat to taste perfect, so when you make a mini hamburger patty, and fry it up to taste it, you can decide if the seasoning is just right or if you need to add more flavor. Doing this ensures your meatloaves and meatballs are perfect when you pop them out of the oven.

When you are boiling rice, pasta, or vegetables it is very important that you salt the boiling water before placing the food in the pot. This helps the salt absorb, and it will taste better than if you add salt to the food after it has already been cooked.

To keep lettuce fresher longer, do not wash it until you are ready to use it. When the leaves are refrigerated wet, they hold in the excess moisture, which speeds up the decomposition process. By keeping it dry when in the refrigerator, the lettuce will keep better and remain fresh.

Don't overcook cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. While lightly steamed cabbage that still retains its crunch is delicious, particularly in dishes like coleslaw, and lightly steamed broccoli is great in salads, when either are overcooked, they liberate stinky sulfur compounds and lose a lot of nutritive value and texture.

Pomegranates are a superfood, but they can be super un-fun to peel. To make it easier, put the pomegranate portions into a bowl of water and gently separate the juicy seeds. The white pith will float to the top and the seeds will sink to the bottom. Collect the floating pith, discard it, and strain the water to be left with a bowlful of delicious seeds!

Cooking is a chore for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to be. If you need help in the kitchen then use the tips you've just read to improve your skills and make cooking more enjoyable. Anyone can do it with the right advice and a lot of practice.

Learning How To Make Your Taste Buds Dance

Cooking a delicious meal is not nearly as difficult as some people think. The most important part is having a good recipe. After that, it's just a simple matter of buying the right ingredients, knowing your household measurements and following the steps. There's no reason to try to be a gourmet chef right away.

Pizza has a lot of flavor to begin with depending on how you cook it but adding olive oil can help bring out a vibrant aroma. The next time you are making pizza, cook with olive oil to instill a rich flavor in the dish that you make for optimal satisfaction.

When you are going to the store, do not always have a large shopping list which can restrain you to just getting certain items. See what you like and what you are in the mood for and purchase based on that. This will give you the spontaneity to cook whatever you choose.

If you have a family, you will want to implement a process for cleaning up after you cook your meal. This is very important as you will want to conserve the excess food that you do not eat for future servings. Post meal cleanup is just as important as pre-meal preparation.

If you want to spice up your meal, add peppers. Peppers will not only give the meal that you are making flavor, but will increase the spice intensity to appeal to your taste buds. Try different types and variations of peppers so that you can hone in on the peppers that you prefer.

Ginger roots can be used for several dishes so it's worth learning how to store them. For a few days you can just put them in the refrigerator's vegetable drawer. For a much longer storage, freeze the unpeeled ginger root and cut the piece you need while it is frozen.

Do not use wine for cooking that you have not tasted. Using a wine that you are not familiar with in your food can cause you not to like the flavor that's produced. There are cooking-specific wines available at the supermarket.

Prepare as much of the food as you can the night before. The cooking process will go much smoother when you can concentrate on the more difficult parts of cooking instead of worrying about the mundane tasks. Many dressings and vegetables, for example, will stay in the refrigerator quite well.

When cooking around small children, safety is imperative. Get in the habit, even when children are not around, that you keep knives, breakable dishes and other objects that could fall and injure a young child, well back on the table or counter. You might just prevent a child from being seriously injured because of sheer carelessness, on the part of the cook.

In addition to staples, condiments and seasonings, keep your kitchen stocked with healthy convenient foods and quick-fix items. A no-stress kitchen should include eggs and dairy, fruits, vegetables, breads, baking products, canned and bottled items, grains, refrigerated and freezer items, and condiments. When you run out of a product, don't forget to make a note of it, so you won't be caught out if you need it in the future.

Cutting onions does not have to be a crying matter. The keys to success with onions are easy to follow and minimize tears. Chill the onions first before cutting, use your sharpest knife for cutting and turn exposed cuts down on your board. As you cut, be efficient, quick and constantly turn the largest exposed cuts down against the board. Running your vent hood will help circulate air as you cut as well.

Adjust your baking time for smaller items. For example, if you are making mini cookies, crank the oven up to 500 degrees, and bake the cookies for only 4 or 5 minutes at the most. The end result is perfectly cooked, delicious cookies that will fly out of your cookie jar!

Don't skimp and use cheap olive oil. More expensive olive oil is not only fresher, it often has a richer flavor. High-quality olive oil can draw the flavor out of all your favorite dishes, including pizza, pasta and many types of fish and meat. Even a small drizzle of more expensive olive oil can make the difference that takes your meals from drab to fab!

When cooking anything in a pan it's ideal to add a little bit of oil to the pan, even with non-stick pans. Oil is a great conductor of heat and thus eases the object into heating up without burning the external portions. It helps the dispersion of heat across the entire object, rather than having the exterior burnt while the interior remains frozen or cold.

When it comes to baking, a great tip to follow is to be sure that you bake smaller items at higher temperatures and for less time than larger items. This is important because you will have your food quicker and it will be less dry than if you were to bake it slower.

If you like to bake for the holidays and give home-baked gifts from the kitchen, consider packaging your goodies in any of the readily available, multiple-use plastic storage containers instead of holiday print metal tins. The recipient of your tasty treats will not only love their cookies, but will also love the very re-useable container your baked goods came in. Fancy tins are pretty, but often get tossed away because they are rarely air-tight and tend to rust after washing.

Use pita crisps in place of tortilla chips. Rather than using store bought tortilla chips, try making your own pita crisps. Simply split 6 pita pockets, making 12 rounds. Combine 2 cloves of minced garlic with 1/4 cup of olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Brush the mixture over the top of the split sides. Stack and cut into 6 to 8 wedges. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet, and bake at 400 degrees until golden brown and crispy (about 5 minutes). They are absolutely delicious with guacamole, salsa or hummus!

It doesn't matter how old or young, anyone can learn how to cook a fantastic meal. Start with a simple recipe and follow the directions exactly as written. Thousands of recipes are available online. As you get more comfortable with cooking, you can start changing the recipes to suit your particular taste preferences.

Cooking Is Easy When You Know What To Do

Learning to cook can be one of the best things a person can learn to do. Cooking is something that one can always learn more about and share with others. The following article can add to your enjoyment of the art of cooking and give you information that can enhance your skills.

Make sure you are storing your herbs and spices in a cool, dark space. Many factors can cause herbs and spices to lose their flavor. Light, humidity, and heat can all cause them to lose some of their flare. To avoid this, make sure you are storing your herbs somewhere like a cool cabinet.

You can remove the garlic odor from your hands by rubbing them for thirty seconds on your stainless steel stove before washing them. Garlic adds a delightful flavor to many recipes, but the unmistakable odor can linger on your hands. Using this tip, you can enjoy your dinner without your hands smelling strongly of garlic.

Make sure that you have the place settings set beforehand so that you can reduce the stress that you will have when you are bringing your food to the table. High levels of stress do not mix well when you are cooking, given the danger, so you will want to reduce this as much as possible.

When you are seasoning meat, try a small piece prior to adding seasoning to the entire thing. A lot of foods require you to season them carefully; for instance meatloaf, hamburgers or meatballs. It's best then to not cook all of it immediately, only to find out that the seasoning is off. A better way is to form a patty with a little bit of meat, then cook it. If it tastes good, then cook it, if it needs some additional seasoning, then you can adjust your recipe before making the entire meal.

It's vital that you always use sharp knives when cooking. Knives that have not been sharpened in a while can not only pose a threat to your health, but also a threat to smashing your food. This is because if you are trying to cut using a dull knife you have to exert more force to make the same cut that you could easily make using a sharp knife.

Think about buying large beef roasts or pork shoulders to make during one of your weekend nights. After you have this for dinner, store it in your fridge so that you will be able to create many different types of sandwiches, as the week progresses. Maximize your value and limit your expenses by conserving food.

When baking, here is a tip for eggs and butter. Let your eggs and butter set out overnight at room temperature. Doing so will soften the butter which will make it easier to spread, melt, and mix with other ingredients. The eggs will be easier to beat, and foaming egg whites will be easier as well.

Use cast iron pans when you cook your meat. Cast iron imparts the best flavor to the meat and avoids any chance of sticking. You also get the added benefit of your meat having a higher iron content from using the cast iron. Sometimes old fashioned ideas are the best.

A great help for achieving your best baking results is to bring your butter and eggs to room temperature before use. By allowing these ingredients to lose their chill, you allow heat from cooking to activate the oils and fats within them at the right time as opposed to waiting for them to achieve the right temperature while cooking.

Make perfect meat and fish by applying seasoning, evenly. Especially with salt and pepper, think of the seasonings as snow that is falling delicately onto the meat and fish. As a result, you won't have too much seasoning on one section and not enough or none on other sections. It also prevents the seasonings from clumping.

If you are cooking a soup or stew and you add too much salt to the pot you can add a peeled white potato to the pot and continue boiling it. The starch in the potato will help to absorb a lot of the extra salt. You can repeat with an additional potato if it is still too salty.

Use high-quality utensils to cut with in the kitchen. This can save you time so that you don't wrangle with dull knives, and it's safer for you to use a sharper one! More accidents occur when utensils are dull, because they have a tendency to slip as you cut.

Get perfectly beaten egg whites. For perfectly beaten egg whites, use a copper bowl. Copper makes the egg whites more stable and they can be whipped to a greater volume. There is an ion in copper that binds with the protein in egg whites, causing them to become more stable. If you don't have a copper bowl, a stainless bowl will achieve the same results by adding a little cream of tartar to the eggs whites prior to beating.

When cooking, be sure that you use as much low fat or lite dressings as you can. This is important because this is an extremely easy way to prevent unnecessary fat and calories from being consumed by both you and the people eating your food. In moderation, the regular types are acceptable.

When you open a can of tomato paste for just a spoonful and are wondering what to do with the rest, place dollops on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, and stick the sheet in the freezer. When the blobs of paste are frozen solid, transfer them to a freezer bag. You can then pull out just enough tomato paste for your next few recipes, without wasting partial cans.

As was previously noted at the beginning of this article, learning to cook can be one of the best things that you will ever learn. It can be a skill, a gift, and a hobby. It can bring families together and is something that can be passed along to future generations.