What's cooking

Tonight I got ambitious, and actually cooked dinner, instead of making a sandwich, AND I made a dessert thingie, AND I got tomorrow night's dinner into the crockpot so that in the morning I just have to take it out of the refrigerator, put it into the electric part of the crockpot, and turn it on. Wanna know what we had/are having?

Tonight's dinner was a chicken stir-fry.
2 teaspoons sesame oil blend
1 cup thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 bag washed baby spinach
1 8-oz can sliced water chestnuts, drained
1 8-oz can sliced bamboo shoots, drained
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 cup shredded or diced cooked chicken breast

Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet. Stir-fry the mushrooms and garlic until the mushrooms are wilted. Add the spinach, water chestnuts, and bamboo shoots. Stir-fry until the spinach is partially wilted. Sprinkle the sugar and soy sauce over the mixture, and stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon, leaving the liquid in the pan. Add the chicken and cook until the chicken is heated through. Return the vegetables to the pan and continue cooking until the spinach is the level of wilted that you like. It makes 2 large servings or 4 smaller servings; it's 2 points per smaller serving. I started some rice in the rice cooker about 15 minutes before I started this, and had it over a cup of rice. Very tasty.

The dessert thingie is a recipe I found on the WW boards. It's called caramel apple salad, but I have no idea why because it doesn't taste like caramel. It's good, just not caramel-y.

1 tub Cool Whip Free
1 20-oz can crushed pineapple, undrained
3-4 apples, diced
1 packet sugar-free fat-free butterscotch pudding mix

Put the pineapple in a bowl before you start chopping the apples. As you chop the apples, drop them into the pineapple and stir them up so they don't oxidize. After all the apples are chopped and stirred in with the pineapple, stir in the packet of pudding mix. Then fold in the Cool Whip. If you're doing WW, it's 2 points for a cup. It tastes really good. If you don't care about points or if you feel like spending them on it, adding a little coconut would be really good with this as well.

And tomorrow night's dinner is split pea soup. Why I'm making split pea soup in August in Texas is beyond me. Can I just plead that I'm ready for autumn, and leave it at that?

1 16-oz bag of split peas, rinsed, picked through, and drained
4 cups water
3 carrots, scraped and sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
1-2 oz Canadian bacon, diced
1 can chicken broth

Dump everything into the slow cooker and heat it at low for 8-10 hours. It's 2 points per cup if you're counting points. If you're not counting or if you have points to spare, throw in a few chopped potatoes as well. Before serving, if you want to, take out about half of the soup and puree it, and then stir it back in with the remainder of the soup.