Weigh in #7

So I decided to move my weigh ins to Thursdays to match with the Biggest Loser challange at work. It seemed silly to have 2 weigh ins on 2 different days of the week, and no time to bounce back from the weekend since my weigh ins are on Mondays. Sooooo..... I only lost 0.2 pounds. (and when I weighed myself in at work, I lost 0.6 pounds... wierd huh?!)

Total weight loss: 0.2 pounds

Weight Loss Remaining: 42.6 pounds

This week snacking totally got the best of me, while working from home I snacked WAY too much! If chips are there… I will eat them. I need to remember this and have more willpower! Plus, let’s be honest, I pretty much ate like shit all weekend (except for those breakfast sandwiches, those were awesome!) I was talking to V about this, and she told me to limit cheese and carbs. So I am going to try very hard to do that, and limit cheese, carbs, and SODIUM! Sodium is a sneaky one too.

Since I was home yesterday, I prepared a crock pot chili during my lunch break! I will post the recipe and book it came from later, it tasted pretty good! It was a white turkey chili, I think I prefer regular chili with black beans, tomatoes, chili powder, ect. Here is what it looks like:

 And here it is over a salad for dinner, which I also packed for lunch today:

WEDNESDAY

L – Salad w/grilled chicken, artichoke hearts*, roasted red peppers*, feta cheese, balsamic vinaigrette

S – Chips and hummus

D – Turkey chili over mixed greens with salsa, balsamic vinaigrette, and asiago cheese

THURSDAY

B – Balance Bar

S – 2 Clementines, light n fit yogurt, sprinkle of granola

*The artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers are in water (not marinated in oil). The artichokes have 10 calories each, and the peppers have 5 calories per serving.

Alright, back to work! Have a great day!

Beer Bread!

So today I took photos of all my meals, and then lost them - I guess thats what happens when you use a REAL camera instead of an iPhone! Well, here is what I ate anyway:


Breakfast - Slice of WW Toast with almond butter and a tiny smear of peanut butter
Lunch - Salad with 1 1/2 turkey sausages, feta, artichoke hearts, bruchetta, and balsamic. And I made an identical one for lunch tomorrow :)
Dinner - A Morningstar black bean veggie burger on an english muffin with lettuce, tomato, ranch, avocado, and hot sauce. Side salad with tomato, avocado, cilantro, salsa, and balsamic. Delicious!


SO, on Sunday night, I BAKED BEER BREAD! If you know me at all, you know I am NOT a baker. At all. I am actually suprised I have been cooking real dinners, and not microwaving cans of Italian wedding soup in plastic tupperwares every night. Anyway, Walter's sister has made beer bread a few times, and it is much thicker and heartier then normal bread. I have been craving it to go with all of the salads i've been eating lately. Trader Joes used to sell a mix for it, but they discontinued it. So I decided to take matters into my own hands! I googled a bunch of recipes, and here is what I came up with. SO simple, and so delicious!


Ingredients:
3 cups self rising flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 beer (any beer you would like!)


Optional:
1 tbsp margarine or butter
various herbs to enhance the bread


First, I added 3 cups of self rising flour to a mixing bowl:

Then I added 3 tablespoons of sugar, 1 tsp of rosemary, 1 tsp thyme, and 1 tsp of dried minced garlic (There are so many combos you can add to your bread, and many suggestions online)

Then, I added the beer! Walter and I thought Yuengling would be a good, safe choice. Not too light, not a crazy flavor, a nice traditional lager if you will. :)

Walter stirred it up because he thought knew I would get flour EVERYWHERE! And he would have been absolutely right if he let me stir it! And then he poured it into a loaf(?) pan that was greased up with Pam.

Here it is in the pan before going into the oven...

I set the oven to 375, and baked it for 45 minutes. I mustve checked on it 10 times! The yeast in the beer makes it rise in the oven, and i thought it was going to rise right into the top rack! But it didn't :). With 20 minutes left to bake, i melted a tsp of margarine, and brushed it over the bread. To me, it turned out to be an essential step, because it make the bread crispy on the outside, and so soft on the inside. Here is the bread when we took it out of the oven...

And here is a slice! 

It was seriously SO GOOD - I can't believe I baked! I want to make this every week now. A co-worker tried it the next day, and she said it tasted like macaroni grill bread! Oh beer bread, I love you!

Recipes: Week 2

I wanted to share the recipes I made for week 2 of my 2011 goal of 2 recipes per week. I am actually making my crock pot recipe right now, so I will post about it when i taste it and make sure its good :)


Last week, I made a Grilled Shrimp with Mom's Avocado-and-Orange Salad that I found in Food & Wine Magazine (link above). It was SO GOOD! Walter and I made it on Tuesday, and then ate the leftovers on Wednesday. 

The shrimp had a marinade that included ornage juice, hot sauce, and mint, and it was delicious!

 The side salad consisted of avocado, orange slice, tomato, onion, hot sauce, cilantro, olive oil, and lime juice. It was also delicious! Here it is all together:

 Here are the leftovers we saved for the next day. The trick was cutting enough avocado for dinner the first night, and when we brought it our the next day, we cut up the rest of the avocado to make sure it was fresh!

We both agreed it was more of a summer dish, since it was so light and refreshing. I will definately make this again when it gets warmer!

Another dish Walter and I made this week was the Spicy Shrimp and Vegetable Stir-fry I found on Self.com. We wanted to make a quick and easy dinner with whatever we had in the kitchen, so we used the above recipe as a guide and used our own veggies. Here are the ingredients for the recipe:

• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup sake
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon dark (toasted) sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped or grated ginger
• 1 cup large-diced red bell pepper
• 1 cup large-diced green bell pepper
• 1 cup large-diced onion
• 1 cup cubed cabbage
• 1 cup sliced carrot
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 24 large shrimp, shelled and deveined
• 
  

Substitutions: For the stir fry sauce, we used all of the ingredients exactly but omitted the sake. It tasted great! For veggies, we used 1 1/2 cups of green pepper instead of a cup of red and a cup of green. We substituted the cabbage for broccoli, and still used the onion and carrot. we only had about 10 shrimp, so we just used what we had. It turned out to be medium spicy to me (probably mild for most people). You can vary the spice level by using more or less of the red pepper flakes. We ate it with a side of jasmine rice. I forgot to take a picture of it though :(

Finally, I guess I created my OWN recipe!!!! (Insert your shock here) I absolutely LOVE the quesadilla explosion salad from chilis, but it is one of the most unhealthy meals out there. It has a whopping 1400 calories and 88 grams of fat if you order it as is. Check out all of Chilis nutrition facts here. I used to order this salad ALL the time, which is why i need to loose weight! The other night, i was playing around not knowing what I really wanted to make for dinner, and out came a salad that tasted just like the quesadilla explosion! Here is what I used (I don't have exact measurements, because i just eyeballed everything):


First, combine the following in a pan (makes 2 servings):

• Chopped pepper and green onion (about 1 cup total)
• 2 servings ground turkey (i used a pre-packaged jennie-o turkey burger and chopped it up as i cooked).
• Chili powder
• 1 serrano pepper
• 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

For the salad (makes ONE salad):

• 2 cups romaine lettuce (or whatever you prefer)
• Diced tomatoes
• chopped fresh cilantro
• 2-3 tablespoons of salsa
• drizzle of ranch dressing
• 2 tablespoons of Ken's Creamy Balsamic Vinaigrette with Honey salad dressing

I think it was the mixture of the salsa, ranch, and balsamic, but it tasted just like the real quesadilla explosion dressing! I ended up eating this for 3 meals! (Once with Shrimp) Of course, I forgot to take a picture of this too. I need to get better about that!

Right now, there is adobo chicken cooking away in the crock pot, and I am off to *attempt* to bake some beer bread!

Rainbow Cookies

I guess I have been really busy this Christmas season, and it is affecting how often I am posting! Hopefully it will get a little less hectic soon J Ok, so let’s pick up from where we left off.

Monday’s lunch - Progresso can of split pea soup, 2 saltines, and a slice of whole wheat bread.

Snack – handful of trail mix

Dinner – Walter’s work Christmas party! I had one large plate, and filled it with half salad, grilled peppers and mushrooms, and caprese salad. The other half was filled with 3-4 mussels, penne vodka and pasta with alfredo sauce. I skipped the bread basket (yay!) but had half a slice of amazing chocolate cake and a bite of Walter’s tiramisu (boo). I also felt like I drank an entire bottle of red wine myself! I am not the best at small talk, so I sipped on my wine glass most of the night. The second it got low, a waiter came over and filled it up to the brim it seemed like!

Tuesday I woke up nauseous (surprise surprise) because of the odd combo of foods and wine I had (I think it was the alfredo pasta and wine personally).

Breakfast – oatmeal plain (one splenda) and a Clementine. Someone left a bag of them in the kitchen at work for people to take. Score!

Snack – A RAINBOW COOKIE!

Lunch – I went to shoprite and got vegetable noodle soup from their soup bar. It LOOKED like it would be like chicken noodle without the chicken, but no such luck. Too many weird veggies. I ate it anyway and had a ton of pretzel goldfish on the side!

Snack 2 – ANOTHER RAINBOW COOKIE!!! If there is any dessert I would cheat on my diet for (other than choc. Cake), it would be rainbow cookies. They are my all time FAVORITE!!!

Dinner – Soup and Salad. Walter’s sister Christina arrived for the holidays, and she loves to cook. She whipped up an awesome soup filled fresh veggies, lentils, and small pasta straight from her recent trip to Italy! I will try and remember to snap a pic later. I had a small cup of soup, and a huge salad filled with mixed greens, chicken, craisins and feta. I made another one for lunch today!

Dessert  – A Clementine. I was busy working on my homemade gift for Christmas (a painting), and worked up an appetite.

I have said it before and I will say it again… Molly is NOT a morning person. As Walter and I were getting ready she kept sleeping…

And when she caught me snapping a picture of her she protested!

Today was bagel day at work! We get them once a month for birthdays, so I couldn’t skip. Especially when I discovered WHEAT EVERYTHING bagels in the mix! If you ask me, it is the perfect bagel.

I am learning more and more during this dieting thing that preparation is KEY to success. Knowing it was bagel day, I packed 2 triangles of Laughing Cow light Garlic & Herb cheeses. I think they taste SO good, and I used it instead of cream cheese.

 I ended up taking out all of the insides of the bagel, putting a dab of green olive cream cheese (because how could I now) on part, and used one of the triangles on the rest.

 I saved the other triangle and ¼ of my bagel for lunch!

Have a great day!

Christmas Gift Wrapping!

The other night, Molly and I got busy wrapping Christmas gifts:

And then I opened my first Christmas gift! (well, Molly tried to open it first):

 It was a batch of homemade cookies from my coworker!

 And chocolate covered oreos!

 Molly got herself wrapped in the bow...

 And after I tried tying it around her, she had enough!

 But then she gave in.

 She's so cutie!

 After a long night of wrapping, I had this guy. It was SO GOOD!

Yesterday's Food:

Breakfast - oatmeal w/craisins and walnuts

Snack - handful of trail mix

Lunch - pizza (yikes!)

Dinner - Christmas Party!

Last night Walter and I went to a Christmas party over at a friends house. Sadly I didn't take any pics, but it was a ton of fun! I ate way too many chips though! I had 2 cherry vodka and diet cokes, many chips and onion dip, some chips and buffalo chicken dip, and a dinner plate of salad, baked ziti, and lasagna. I brought the salad:

It was a mixed greens salad with smoked gouda, walnuts, and craisins. So good! We also did two white elephants - one new and one regift. I ended up with a DSW gift card and a neck massager. Not bad!

Today is going to be an eventful day. It will officially be my first CHEAT DAY, (even though yesterday's eating was awful), and SANTACON! More on that to come...

Salad

Today for lunch, i went to the salad bar at Shop Rite and got this beauty:

 After I cut it up and added dressing, it looked like this:

And it was soooooooo good! It had chicken, olives, onion, roasted and regular peppers, and feta cheese.

For a snack i had hot chocolate. After work, I had to run to an art supply store to get some items for my homemade christmas gift. I walked around that store for almost an hour and LOVED every second of it!

 After I got home, I made dinner:

Its some spinach and a quesadilla with spinach, roasted peppers, goat cheese, and chicken. Awesome. I then came upstairs and wrapped gifts and did Christmas cards. I am tired, and heading to bed!

Monday

It's been a few days since I've last posted... I have been very busy, but i know that is no excuse! Here is what I have been up to...

• Friday I worked until 8pm. Enough said.
• Walter's sister, brother-in-law, and nephew were in town for the weekend... as well as Molly's best friend Barkley
• Walter and I got (almost) all of our Christmas shopping done on Saturday!
• Sunday was spent working on homemade Christmas gifts, and completing Xmas shopping online.

In Walter's family, we do a Secret Santa, and this year, we have a second person for a homemade. I never did my homemade from last year (yes, I am THAT much of a slacker), so I got last years done, and now I have this years to do. They are both paintings. I will post pictures of them after Christmas so I don't ruin any surprises!

That being said, let me recap my food since Friday...

FRIDAY:

Breakfast - Yogurt with granola

Snack - Vitamuffin

Lunch - Chipolte burrito bowl. I ran errands during lunch, and it was the only place i could go to get me back to work in time. That's what I get for being unprepared!
Snack during my marathon project that lasted until 8pm on a Friday night - About 5 rolls of smarties and Halloween pretzels!

 Dinner - A small salad with spinach, chicken, roasted peppers, cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette

SATURDAY:
Breakfast - a huge bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich that i only finished 3/4 of. This made Walter very happy since he got to eat my leftovers!
Lunch - a slice of mushroom pizza, a garlic knot, and a bite of Walters 2 slices (sausage and white)
Snack - 10 baked scoops and hummus
Dinner - homemade pizza (by Walter's dad). he made me chicken artichoke with green olives on whole wheat crust since i love that pizza at Sun Tavern, I had 2 slices, and 3 little squares (they are like 2x2in) of pepper and onion pizza. So good!

SUNDAY:
Breakfast - 4 silver dollar pancakes and 3 1/2(!) pieces of bacon, and a coffee
Lunch - a roast beef sandwich, and a spinach salad
Snack - 1/2 a monster half sour pickle
Dinner - a small serving of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and edamame. Then an hour later i had hummus and wheat thins.

MONDAY:
Breakfast -  Oatmeal with craisins, walnuts, and banana

Snack - 2 bites of banana

Lunch - Chinese food. I'll get to that later.

Dinner - Boston Market. I'll also get to that later.

Happy Monday!

Bleh.

Molly, Walter, and I are all sick. Thats right, I said Molly... she can't stop sneezing, which is so cute, but I do feel bad for her. Needless to say, i didn't go to the gym yesterday, i came home and crashed on the couch all night to try and get better. And Molly joined me. She is such a mush when she's sick.

Breakfast was a coffee, raspberry yogurt and granola...

Snack: 2 clementines.
Lunch: Soup and salad. I drove allll the way to shop rite in the rain, to get chicken noodle soup, and do they have it? No. So I choose vegetable instead...
Dinner: More soup. French Onion. With low fat cheese. And some multigrain chips and hummus.


Today, theres a hurricane out. I guess am avoiding getting ready to drive to work in this hot mess by writing this post when I am supposed to be getting ready for work! Have a great day!