Quick Sausage StirFry, Pittsburgh Style

I'd love to say that I'm on Weight Watchers, but the truth is that I'm cheating like crazy.  Two years ago, I truly followed the WW points plan and lost 25 pounds in 4 months.  (Go me!)  Well, then reality hit... we became stressed out over selling our old house, keeping up with four kids' sports schedules, living in four "homes" over the course of 3 months, eating hotel breakfast buffets (Belgian waffles for a whole month!!), eating out at Buffalo Wild Wings four times while living at the hotel (... what can I say... we could walk across the parking lot to that place, and the kids loved it!).... not to mention the many, many, many other restaurants we tried while having no real kitchen.  So, we packed on the pounds quickly.  I want to get back into a really healthy routine, but it's so hard to get going.  


Starting January 1, I read up on the new WW plan and started counting.  Now, I'm good with my three meals a day... but I tend to snack in between a little too much (while forgetting to "count").  I lost four pounds so far (but have maintained that weight for 3 weeks now... ugh!)


So... gotta get better with this counting thing again!


In the meantime, I've developed a REALLY easy three-ingredient meal that gives you about 6-7 points per meal, depending on how much you eat and which items you choose.


Being from Pittsburgh originally, I was raised on pierogies, so they are almost always in my freezer.  I personally like the cheddar/potato variety... and Mrs. T's rocks!  I found a few other ingredients to make a great, yummy stir-fry.

This photo shows 2-3 servings.

The ingredients:

1.  SAUSAGE  The Al Fresco chicken sausages are so yummy, and only rack around 3-4 points each.  Any flavor is good... I personally love the Buffalo flavored sausages, but they are hard to find around here.  I've also used Aidell's flavored pork sausages, but they are a little more points.

2.  PIEROGIES  I  use Mrs. T's mini pierogies.  (Can't remember the exact points, but I only use a few.)  I've used the fullsize pierogies, too, but you can only use one or two.

3.  BROCCOLI ...frozen or fresh, depending on what I have.  I try to use a lot since veggies are zero points and are filling.

Steps:

1.  Slice up the sausages (in the photo above, I used two sausages)

2.  Fry them up in a pan using only cooking spray if necessary.  The sausages are already precooked, but I like them nice and browned.  While these are browning, I "boil" the pierogies in a bowl of water in the microwave for five minutes.  It warms them up easily enough that way.

3.  I scoop out the pierogies and add them to the pan along with the broccoli.

4.  Throw in the chopped broccoli.

5.  Continue stir-frying the mixture until everything is nicely cooked and browned.

As you can see, I'm never very precise (part of my current WW problem!!!)  I use whatever I have for sausage, so that always changes points.  Same with pierogies... depends on how many I want to eat.  But the entire meal takes less than 10 minutes to cook up.  I will often make this in the morning to pack for my lunch when I work.