Lightened Up Baked Creamed Spinach

I’ve cooked a lot over the past few weeks and have SO many recipes to share with you guys…. but I’ve had so much other news to tell you about that I haven’t gotten around to sharing the good eats. I made a really awesome marinated chicken dish last week that was SO good.  And, I promise to post the chicken recipe soon, but holy cow…. the spinach comes first!

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I’ve always loved creamed spinach; however, I’ve usually eaten the frozen variety.  Last week, I made it homemade.  Yep, it was amazing… and it was a Weight Watchers recipe, so you can INDULGE!  It was the PERFECT side dish for this chicken.  So creamy and delish.

Baked Creamed Spinach

From Weight Watchers Five Ingredients 15 Minute Recipes – Summer 2011

Serves 6

Look how yummy that looks!

INGREDIENTS

2 tsp. butter or I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Spray

2 (6-ounce) packages fresh baby spinach

1 (8-ounce) package 1/3-less-fat cream cheese

1/4 cup 1% lowfat milk

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. black pepper

cooking spray

1/2 cup Italian Herb flavored Panko

Optional:  Diced Onion

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2.  Melt butter in a large Dutch oven over medium heat.  Add diced onions and saute until clear.

3.  Add spinach and cook 3 minutes or until spinach wilts, stirring often.

4.  Beat cream cheese and next 3 ingredients with a mixer at medium speed until creamy.

5.  Stir cream cheese mixture into spinach mixture until blended.  Spoon spinach into a baking dish sprayed with cooking spray.

6.  Sprinkle panko over spinach mixture.  Coat crumbs with cooking spray.  Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

Before going into the oven

After coming out of the oven, golden brown and bubbly…

 PER SERVING:

CAL:  114; FAT: 8g; SAT FAT 4g; PROT: 5g; CARB: 9g; FIB: 2g; SUG 2g

WW Points+: 3; WW Smart Points: 4