Baked oatmeal - 4 points on WW blue

I absolutely love oatmeal. I eat it for breakfast, sometimes for lunch and often as snacks. I don't even need to put sugar in it if I load it up with fruit, chocolate chips or nuts. However, I often find these delicious additions don't fit well into my daily points when I'm trying to follow weight watchers.

In fact, when I chose my WW plan, I went for blue because oatmeal is zero points on purple and I knew I would over eat it if it didn't have any points attached. I also love sweet potatoes, so that would've been another temptation!

In moderation though, oatmeal can be a great option and this baked oatmeal is further fortified with eggs and applesauce to make it fluffy and filling and only 4 points.

Ingredients

2/3 cup quick oats

2/3 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk

2 eggs

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 tsp Lankato granulated monkfruit or other zero calorie sweetener of your choice, optional

1 cup fresh or frozen fruit (such as mixed berries, blueberries, chopped apples, chopped peaches)

1/4 tsp of baking powder

1 generous sprinkle of cinnamon

cooking spray

Cooking equipment: small baking pan, I use a 7" round pan.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray small baking pan with cooking spray. Put fruit in the bottom of the pan. Mix wet ingredients, taking care to whisk the eggs fully. Add dry ingredients and mix well into a wet batter, pour into the pan over the fruit. Bake for 18-22 minutes until the oatmeal is fully set.

Half the pan is 4 points.

You can also double the recipe and make four servings and use a standard 9" round pan to bake it. I tend to each too much when I do this, since I love oatmeal so much.

4 serving double recipe - this one had peaches on the bottom!

On the WW blue plan if you use the recipe builder it's 4 points for one serving and 7 if you eat two servings. Since WW sometimes has weird math, if you put half of the ingredients individually, it's only 3 points. I use the higher recipe builder calculation.

10+ ways to use almond milk

There are many reasons to use almond milk in place of milk in your diet. It's vegan, good for people who are lactose intolerant, and lower in calories even than skim milk. However, I love almond milk because it doesn't spoil as fast as milk or cream. It can be kept on hand for weeks before being opened and stays fresh at least 10 days afterwards (many brands are shelf stable until they're opened). We just don't use enough milk to make it worth buying so I try to use almond milk as a substitute where ever I can, so I don't have to buy milk.

There are a bunch of different kinds of almond milk available and different varieties work better for different things.

Plain: no sugar and no flavoring - the best for general cooking
Sweetened: sugar but no other flavoring added
Sweetened, Vanilla: sugar and vanilla flavoring added
Unsweetened, Vanilla: no sugar but vanilla flavoring added - I basically only use this when I'm on a low carb diet, in place of sweetened vanilla.
Chocolate: I only use this if I want to drink it straight or perhaps for a chocolate breakfast smoothie.

So where can you swap almond milk for milk? And which kind of almond milk is recommended?

1. As creamer in your morning coffee (sweetened, vanilla)
2. To replace cream in a quiche (plain, unsweetened), here's a quiche recipe using almond milk.
3. To replace cream in a fritatta (plain, unsweetened), here's a frittata recipe where you can try it.
4. On your morning cereal (plain, sweetened)
5. To make instant oatmeal (sweetened, vanilla)
6. To make instant pudding (sweetened, vanilla)
7. Drink it! (sweetened, vanilla or chocolate!)
8. To make a quick breakfast smoothie (sweetened, vanilla or plain)
9. To thin your mashed potatoes (plain, unsweetened)
10. In a corn bread mix (I've personally done this with the Aldi cornbread mix)
11. Add to a soup to thin it out such as butternut squash soup
12. To make pancakes or crepes

Almond milk crepes

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Almond milk crepes - 1 point on Weight Watchers

Have you developed an irrational craving for pancakes since you started Weight Watchers? No? Just me then?

Crepes are a very WW friendly option to help stave off your cravings. This dairy-free crepe recipe  is only 1 point per serving and there are many options to stuff your crepes with zero or low-point fillings. Such as:

• Eggs + bell pepper + tomato
• Eggs + mushrooms
• Eggs + reduced fat cheese (points for cheese)
• Eggs + 99% fat free deli turkey
• Eggs + tomato + avocado (points for avocado)
• Reduced fat cheese (points for cheese)
• 99% fat free deli turkey + reduced fat cheese (points for cheese)
• Bananas + Powdered peanut butter such as PBFit (1 point/serving of PBFit)
• Strawberries + Greek yougrt
• Strawberries + light whipped cream (points for whipped cream)

2 points - crepe with eggs, veggies and reduced fat feta

If you really must have a pancake and have a few more points to spare, check out my recipe for high protein peanut butter pancakes using powdered peanut butter.

Batter ingredients:
3/4 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 large egg
1/4 tsp of table salt
Non-stick cooking spray
* if you are making only sweet crepes, add 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract

Directions:
Whisk together all ingredients to form a thin batter. I suggest using a hand mixer to ensure there are no clumps of flour. It should be thinner than pancake batter, if it's too thick, you can add a little more almond milk or water.

Preheat a round, non-stick skillet to medium-high heat. On my stove, I use temperature setting 7 of 10. Give the pan a quick spray of cooking spray and pour about a 1/3 of a cup of batter in the pan. You will want to spread the batter out by swirling the pan or there is such a thing as a crepe spreader.

Not quite ready to flip....if you use a spreader it will be easier to make it more round.

Allow the crepe to cook until lightly brown, about 2-3 minutes and then flip it over. Cook an additional 1-2 minutes. Top with your preferred toppings, or eat plain!

Recipe makes 6-8 crepes.

Nice light brown!

Mine don't look as pretty as the ones sold on the streets of Paris but they still taste good!

2 points - crepe with banana and a drizzle made from PBFit

This recipe was adapted from a Weight Watchers recipe for Whole Wheat Crepes to be dairy-free. This blog is not affiliated with Weight Watchers in any way. Point values were checked in April 2018 under the Freestyle program. This post may contain affiliate links, if you make a purchase from one of these links this blog may receive a small commission. Thank you for your support.

Frittata with almond milk! And Paleo friendly.

We recently had a birthday celebration for my boss. Normally we all go out for lunch to celebrate someone's birthday (small office!) but he is always on a strict diet, I think he lives on Whole30 full-time. I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.

So he didn't want to go to a restaurant because he wouldn't be able to eat anything. But we felt bad to celebrate everyone else's birthday and not his. We did a little recon to see what exactly he was eating at the time and it was a "flexible" paleo - in other words paleo, unless he was cheating.

Of course, we didn't want to make him cheat so we wanted to keep the food paleo-friendly. I volunteered to make a frittata which is an Italian dish that is basically a quiche with no crust. To make it paleo friendly, you use almond milk instead of milk or cream.

It also makes it generally healthier. If you're into that kind of thing. Sometimes I am and I'm sometimes I'm not.

You also cannot put cheese in it if you want it to be paleo (I'd suggest 3/4 cup of shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese).

Ingredients:
Coconut oil (for a paleo pan grease)
5-6 eggs
1/2 cup almond milk (suggest unsweetened, plain)
3 links of Italian sausage (sweet or hot based on your preference)
1 cup chopped broccoli florets
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 TB trader joe's 21 seasoning salute (this is my favorite for eggs! but you can also use garlic, onion powder, salt and pepper)

Directions:

Remove Italian Sausage from casings and brown with bell pepper for 5-7 minutes. Add broccoli and cook an additional 2-3 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9in pie plate using coconut oil (or other grease if you aren't making it paleo). Put veggies and sausage in the pie plate, season with 21 seasoning salute or you preferred egg seasoning. Beat eggs and almond milk together in a mixing bowl. Pour egg mixture in pie plate and lightly mix with sausage and veggies. The sausage and veggies will mostly remain on the bottom but you want egg mixed in between the gaps. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until firm. It might take up to 35 minutes.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures! Here is an image to Pin!

This post contains some affiliate links to demonstrate the products used. If you purchase from this link I will receive a small commission.

Almond milk quiche

My boyfriend introduced me to almond milk last year and I have to say, this stuff is amazing (see my post on making pudding with almond milk here). Almond milk is great for anyone who doesn't use enough milk to use it before it spoils. Almond milk will last unrefrigerated for months as long as you haven't opened it, so it's great to keep on hand for cooking. It will keep in the fridge for a few weeks after it's opened (I think the box says 10 days but we've kept it much longer without a problem).

For the most part, you can substitute almond milk for cow's milk in recipes but sometimes, it will change the taste of what you are making or the chemistry of using milk is important, so you have to be careful and maybe give it a trial run before you serve it at a dinner party or something. There are also lots of different types of almond milk - sweetened, unsweetened, vanilla - which you'll want to take into consideration when buying some to keep on hand. There are problems with this at my house because I will use a small amount for cooking and would prefer the unsweetened, unflavored but the person who ends up finishing it has different preferences when it comes to using it in coffee or on cereal...these are the issues of small household management.

Keeping this in mind, I wanted to make a quiche. Normally, I would use light cream (or maybe heavy mixed with a little milk, depending what was in the fridge) but this requires the purchase of dairy products, ergo advance planning. After a little online research, it seemed like making quiche with almond milk was possible so a I gave it a whirl, doing what I normally do but using almond milk instead (see my post about my first time making quiche (the standard cream way), a bacon-cheddar quiche here) .

This quiche turned out fluffy and delicious! If I hadn't told you I made it with almond milk, you never know the difference. Not only do I not have to make a trip to the store for cream, using almond milk instead of cream is much healthier. Enjoy!

To make a quiche with almond milk:
1 cup almond milk to every 4 eggs, ideally you want an unsweetened and plain (not vanilla) almond milk but I actually used a vanilla flavored one and we could not taste the difference.

The quiche shown above used:
9in pie plate
1 pre-made crust
5 eggs
1 1/4 cups almond milk
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 cup lightly sauteed mixed pepper strips (originally frozen)
6 strips chopped bacon
1 Tb Trader Joe's 21 seasoning salute (or other seasoning you like on eggs)
1/2 Tb of garlic salt (I was trying to counteract the vanilla flavor)

Baked 28 minutes at 350 degrees.
Update: Many people have commented that theirs takes much longer to cook. I have never had to bake one more than 35 minutes but there might be variation depending on your oven. I originally made this recipe with my electric oven at my previous house and it may have run hot, my current gas oven takes 33-35 minutes to bake at 350 degrees.

Different quiche recipes will call for different numbers of eggs, amounts of milk but honestly you will probably have to adjust depending on the depth of your pie plate and how much cheese/toppings you put in. It's pretty hard to screw up, don't be afraid because it has a fancy French name!


Update: after this worked the first time, I've made a bunch of quiches with almond milk. It's a great week night dinner for us. However, I tried coconut milk recently, because it was all we had and I expected it would work the same and it did not. The quiche was very rubbery and I won't be trying it again.

If you are looking for a Paleo option, try this frittata recipe.

This post contains some affiliate links to demonstrate the products used. If you purchase from this link I will receive a small commission.

Make pudding with almond milk!

You may have noticed a small notice on the back of instant pudding boxes warning users that instant pudding can't be made with soy milk. The internet tells me this is because something in cow's milk it what causes the pudding to set up.

I unfortunately noticed this little moniker after coming home from the grocery store, intending to use almond milk to make pudding for dirt cake. There was no way I was going back to the store.

Enter cornstarch.

You can make instant pudding (I made butterscotch) with almond milk! This is what you need:

1 (small) package instant pudding
2 tsp corn starch
1 1/2 cups almond milk

Mix the corn starch in with the pudding mix and slowly add the almond milk while whisking all of the ingredients together. Allow the pudding to chill.

Update: this has become one of my most popular posts of all time. Tell me, what are you making with your pudding/almond milk? How is it working for you?


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