Year of the Dragon

I had a great weekend that ended with video chatting with my little sister on Sunday.  She reminded me that Monday marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year and all the wonderful food she would be cooking in honor of the New Year.  So then I became inspired. Keeping in line with trying to use everything from my pantry and fridge, I chose a Shrimp and asparagus stir-fry recipe to celebrate too!

The recipe is pretty simple. In the recipe they served it over some kind of noodle pillow, lol.  I went simple and used Jasmine brown rice that we bought from World Market.  I’m happy to report that this seems to be a hit with the husband.  I’ve been eating brown rice for over 4 yrs now, but he was kind of hit or miss with it.  BUT after I found Jasmine brown rice he seems to be in love with it now! He’s not the only one.  I wondered if Josie was going to hate the shrimp, but it didn’t even phase her.

Breakfast Pizza

 

I’m trying to keep my breakfast ideas fresh and filling.  My go to’s are cereal with lots of fresh fruit, toast with peanut butter, egg beaters with spinach and even homemade egg sandwiches.  I came across another weight watcher recipe on making a whole breakfast pizza using store bought pizza dough.  It looked delicious, but I just needed a piece for me and I had no pizza dough.  BUT I did have this:

• OroWeat Sandwich Thins
• 2 tablespoons of any store bought spaghetti sauce
• fresh spinach
• 1/4 cup mozzarella
• less than a 1/4 cup of crumbled breakfast sausage
• 1 egg

I only used one slice of the Oroweat thins for just one personal pan pizza.  I toasted it in my toaster and then sprayed it with some oil.  I also sauteed the spinach in a small pan on the stove to wilt it just a bit.  I then began layering the pizza.  I spread the spaghetti sauce, then the cooked spinach and then sprinkled the mozzarella.  Next you carefully crack the egg above the pizza and let it settle on top. Lastly, sprinkle the breakfast sausage to top it off.  Put into a 400 degree oven for 15-18 minutes or until the egg is soft-set.  

This was so filling!  It really hit the spot and tasted very decadent!  There are so many variations that you could make for this pizza!  I can’t wait to change it up and try it again.  This is definitely going to be one of my weekend breakfast go to’s!

Creamy Polenta with Spinach and Feta

I have been cooking up a storm this past week.  I’m really trying to bring some new recipes to the table as well as use what I have in my fridge and pantry.  I had some polenta in the pantry and had a hankering for a stuffing/mashed potato dish, but didn’t want all the calories or take a ton of time doing it.  When you have an 8 yr old and a 1 yr old at your feet in the kitchen you’ve got to be quick! This dish did the trick.  This was a Weight Watcher recipe, but I changed it up because I wanted some more flavors and it came out great!

3 1/2 cup(s) fat-free chicken broth, or vegetable broth

1 cup(s) uncooked cornmeal, in the form of instant polenta

1/2 tsp table salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

2 tsp olive oil

1/2 cup mushrooms

2 tsp(s) garlic, diced

1/4 cup(s) shallots, chopped

2 cup(s) fresh spinach, baby leaves, stems removed, chopped

1/2 cup(s) reduced fat feta

1/4 cup(s) fat-free milk

• Heat broth to boiling over high heat in a medium-size, heavy-bottomed pot.
• While waiting for the broth to boil saute the mushrooms, shallots and garlic in the olive oil.
• Once the broth is boiling  gradually add polenta, stirring constantly to prevent lumps; stir in salt, pepper, sautéed shallots, garlic and mushrooms.  Then add the chopped spinach. (keep stirring)
• Reduce heat to low and simmer until mixture is thick, stirring constantly, about 5 minutes; stir in cheese and milk. Simmer until cheese melts, about 1 minute; serve immediately. Yields about 5 1cup servings.  ( The Weight Watcher recipe said 4 3/4cup servings, but there was a lot more.

You could use parmesan or even blue cheese instead of feta if you’d like.  I chose to add mushrooms, shallots, garlic and feta. This recipe cooks up quick and I mean quick.  Once you start adding the polenta (I used a 5 minute, quick cooking polenta) you have to keep stirring! Once you add everything you better be ready to sit down to eat.  Because when you take it off the stove and it begins to  cool, it will get very thick.  It still tastes great, I just wished I had been better prepared! lol  I was still running around trying to cut up my littlest ones food and get the table set with drinks and so on.  It was delicious though and was even tasty the next day.  I served it with pork tenderloin.  (If I had planned it, I would have laid the sliced tenderloin on top of the polenta mixture.)  Oh and if you think your kids might not care for it… think again.  Josie finished all of her creamy polenta before she started on the meat!

Snap out of it

You are tired.  Not hungry.  This isn’t hard, but it is if you make it.  Just keep tracking everything (which you’ve been doing, good job) and lace up those new running shoes every day. Get your butt in bed by 10pm tonight and get some sleep.

Week 2 update and new buys

I went to weigh in today and was down another 2.6 lbs.  I felt confident going in even after enjoying some cake and really good chinese food! I would have liked to get some more workouts in but that’s for this week.  I tried some new recipes and made sure to get some fish in for dinner a couple of nights.  The new recipe I tried was actually Paula Deen’s Sweet and Spicy Coleslaw.  Jerry and I were watching the FoodNetwork  every weekend  a couple of weekends ago and got pulled in.  It’s not your typical coleslaw because it’s made with a vinaigrette instead of mayonnaise.  That reason alone had me hooked, but I’m also always looking for meals that are made primarily with fruits and veggies. It has about six cups of cabbage as well as apples and it did not disappoint!  I highly recommend it and we paired it with some baked tilapia.  I have no pictures because we ate it up!

I ordered a couple of new items to help me along with my weight loss goals.

 

I’ve already made myself some fantastic smoothies using Yoplait’s Smoothie mixes.  I was at Target today and discovered a new one!

I cannot wait to try this and I’ll let you know how it goes!

The kitchen scale is what it is.  I don’t want to become anal retentive about weighing my food, but for now I need it.  I personally think most people slowly gain weight  because they don’t realize what an actual proper portion size is.  I’ve been weighing my cereal and fish/meat portions.  It’s a very simple and easy scale to use and it’s been working for me.

My last Christmas gift to myself were these New Balance Women’s Trail running shoes from Dillards.

I love them.  They are extremely light and just a little bit of pink to make me feel girly.  I wore them for the first time yesterday during my walk/run and it was like running with baby pillows tied to my feet.  Love them.  It was truly the best thing I could have done for myself.

On that note I’m going to call it a night because the fridge and pantry are whispering to me…  I have some other fun finds and I look forward to posting them soon!  But after posting about all these purchases it’s got me thinking.  What purchase would you treat yourself to?

Pizza, babies and 100th post.

  I have been down this road before and I’ve learned that you have to change-up your menu.  Oh it’s good to have your favorite quick and easy go to’s, but you have to be careful of falling into a rut.  Take breakfast for example.  One of my favorite quick on the go foods was an Eggo waffle smeared with a tablespoon of peanut butter and a banana on the side.  I love this.  I love peanut butter. In the beginning it was my running out of time, heading out the door, better have something for breakfast and quick morning meal.  But I can remember when I ate it every other day and this isn’t such a good thing.  I totally believe that your body gets used to what ever you are eating and adjust accordingly.  I had stopped taking the time to really plan some different breakfasts and that goes for lunch and dinner too.  Not to mention peanut butter provides that punch of protein in the morning it also packs in the calories and my tablespoon measurements were becoming much bigger!  All of this resulted in the Plateau of 2009.

But I digress.   My point is that I want to make meals to keep it interesting and not get bored with just smoothies, cereal and spinach omelette’s for breakfast. I’m especially trying to find ways to get in more fruits or veggies into that morning meal.  I usually put this kind of work into dinner, but breakfast is the most important meal of the day right?  It should fill you up, get you through to lunch and be damn tasty!  I woke up this morning and figured I’d change it up.  I wanted something filling and low in points.  It also needed to pack a punch with veggies.  So I made a breakfast pizza. It . Was. So. Good.

I basically split an english muffin in half.  I then toasted it to crisp it up a bit.  I didn’t want it to end up getting soggy from the tomato sauce.  I then sautéed the mushrooms and then the fresh spinach.  I also chopped up the mushrooms so they would fit on the muffins, but they still rolled everywhere.  I beat 3 egg whites and scrambled them on the stove. I found a little Light Babybel cheese round and cut it in half.  Now you are ready to assemble your breakfast pizza.  Put one tablespoon of a light spaghetti sauce on each muffin.  Then layer the spinach, mushrooms, egg and top with cheese.  Next they go into the oven at 400 degrees for about 8-10 minutes, you just want the cheese to melt.

I think it took me 15 minutes to saute everything and scramble the egg.  While I was doing this I had the muffin toasting in the toaster. The 10 minutes in the oven allowed me to go and lay Josephine down for her morning nap which let me have a quiet breakfast.  It was so filling!  In fact I wasn’t hungry again until about 2 pm and I had to make myself eat something.  I still plan on having peanut butter smeared waffle from time to time, but this breakfast reminded me that you can make some pretty tasty stuff in 15-20 minutes.

Today was another great “on plan” day!  I tracked all my points and got in my 40 minutes of exercise.  The only thing I didn’t get in was one more serving of dairy and fruit.  I was going to make a smoothie, but honestly I just wasn’t hungry enough.  I promise to post my chicken salad tomorrow! I had it for lunch again today and was pretty much done when I remembered that I needed a picture!

Also, I thought I would share some other news.

We’ve officially packed up all the baby bottles.

AND IT’S BEEN HELL.

Our pediatrician advised us to start weaning Josie off the bottle at her one year check up. Well…she is due for her 15 month check up in about 3 weeks and I decided to put it in motion.  We packed them away and she’s been drinking only from her sippy cups.  The problem is SHE WON’T DRINK MILK FROM THE CUPS!  I have never been more frustrated! She’ll drink water or juice from the sippy cups but not milk.  I’m really just concerned that I was depriving her of calcium.  We just finished day three and she has only had 2 sips of milk each day.  I’ve been filling in with yogurt, oatmeal made with milk, cheese, fruits and veggies.  I checked in with the nurse to make sure I wasn’t harming her and she reassured me that I was doing everything right.  The nurse swears that it will all fall into place and that I did the right thing by putting the bottles away. God, I hope so.  I am thankful that it hasn’t effected her sleep schedule at night or her nap times.  I just can’t wait for the moment she picks up the sippy cup and just drinks the milk.  It will truly be a relief. Probably for the both of us.  Stubborn little baby.

I love this little face.  She loves reading this book that her Tia Misha bought for her.  I swear she tries to read it to herself!

Lastly, this is my 100th post.  I hope that I will hit another 100 before summer!  Happy 100th post to me!

Week 1 Weigh-in

I had a great day! Of course the great weigh in at Weight Watchers helped.  I lost 2.2 lbs for my first week and that’s awesome!  I feel that all in all my first week went pretty well!  I didn’t always add up or look up the points for everything.  I was focusing more on writing everything down .  It kept me aware of what I had just ate when I would start to feel like grazing through the pantry or fridge.  So here are some things that worked for week 1.

1. Journaled my food/drink intake.

2.  No late night snacking after 8pm.

3.  Nothing but water all week.

4. Grocery shopping and stocking up on fruits and veggies.

My week starts over today and I’ve journaled everything and have counted my points.  This week I’m focusing on fitting in exercise for at least 30 minutes.

That’s it.

As I said before I’m keeping it simple. I’m trying to add something new in for each week.  Last week was all about journaling. I have to admit that having done this before it was easier to fall back into the Weight Watcher routine.  I didn’t feel deprived, but I did struggle with my sweet tooth.  It wasn’t that stressful, but it helped me to find some healthier options to sweets besides chocolate.  For example, I like Quaker Oats caramel rice cakes.  But I really love putting some fat free cream cheese on them and then topping it off with sliced strawberries.  It’s so good and very low in points!  I made some whole wheat spaghetti and chicken parmesan tonight.

I even weighed the chicken and spaghetti to make sure of my portions. That is exactly 2 ounces of spaghetti, lol.  I don’t want to be anal about this, but for the next year I plan on weighing a lot of my food to be sure of my portion sizes.  I hope that this practice will help me to better judge my portions when I won’t have a scale to be sure.

I’m happy to end today knowing that I got in all my healthy weight watcher checks and stayed in within my points.  I also worked out for 40 minutes and I feel great.  I will have to post my chicken salad that I made at lunch on tomorrow’s update. I’m looking forward to planning another homemade dinner too!

 I was kind of blown away at how much 2 oz really looked like.  Also, I’ll add that it was enough too.  That chicken looks huge, but I swear it was just a tad less than 4 oz.  I used some Babybel light cheese on top and that made it delish!

Question: Do you pay attention to portions when you eat out or at home?  I’ve gotten away from it but I plan on asking for a to-go box for when I eat out.  If the meal is huge I’ll cut in half to take home.  What do you do to avoid over eating? Or do you plan for it? I remember reading something a long time ago about how ” you never see skinny people going home with to-go boxes.” lol I will say that I have a problem with wasting food and that IS the problem sometimes.  How do you handle portion control?

2012 Kick Off!

SO how was your holiday time?  Mine was wonderful! It was amazing watching my two children on Christmas morning.  Of course Josie was running around but she wasn’t that interested in opening the gifts.  Big brother and mama had to help out in that department.  I wish I had pictures but for some reason we ended up using my parents camera and no way to upload them to my computer.  We took a ton of video, but I am clueless on how to get that video to upload on here…for now.  Our New Year’s celebration was a blast and had more fun that I really thought I would, to be honest.  I think it was due to Josephine waking up just 30 minutes before midnight and getting to ring in the New Year with my kiddos.  She laughed, smiled and danced into 2012 with the whole family and went to bed like a little angel 20 minutes later.  I think what I will remember most is captured here in our annual Christmas photo.

As usual it all went by too quickly and I find myself missing that just before Christmas Eve feeling that I love so much.  I’m already looking forward to next December!

On Jan 3rd I went to my first Weight Watcher weigh-in in over 3 months.  Of course it was no real surprise to see that I gained 12 pounds in 3 months.   I honestly believe that I gained 8 of those pound in December alone! I definitely enjoyed my baking as well as dinners in Houston very much! I’m choosing to focus on the future and my actions going forward.  I used to say that the scale may not move but as long as it is not going down it’s not going up either.  The alternative to not going to weigh-in’s is this: +12lbs.

My goals for this week:

• Go to my 2nd weigh-in
• journal my food intake for accountability
• STAY POSITIVE

I’m keeping it simple and right now it’s all about the baby steps.  I had a wonderful conversation with a dear friend just a few days ago.  I said that I couldn’t believe I was here again and then she said something inspiring.

“You did it before and so you can do it again.”

  On that note I choose to go into 2012 with hope and faith in myself.  I’m taking it one week at a time and keeping my goals simple.  It took me 20 years before I successfully lost weight and even then it was a two year journey.

My goal for 2012 is pretty simple, but not easy.  It’s not a goal about losing weight.  That’s right.  My goal is focusing on the positive.  I have to work on this negative mind that I have created.  I’m still working on how to hold myself accountable or making it measurable.  It may be as simple as coming here and posting 3 good things that happened on a daily basis.  It’s a work in progress, but I do know this.  If I don’t change this all or nothing attitude I will never be able to  maintain any kind of healthy lifestyle.  I ultimately want to lose weight, but I feel that it will come with focusing on the inner me.  Doing things that truly make me happy.

What do you do to get you through hard/stressful times?  I would love any suggestions!  Happy New Year everyone!

Happy New Year! (to me)

My October and November months just ran together and feel like one big month.  I’ve been so focused on celebrations that I have managed to put myself on the back burner. Again.  It’s so easy to slip into this mom role and just put it into auto-pilot.  The last Weight Watcher meeting I went to was on October 8th and I pretty sure that I didn’t even stay for the meeting.  I just weighed in and left.  I had already mentally checked out and turned my attention to our big Halloween party.  As much as I love planning this annual event this year it was different.  It was also my youngest first birthday and my oldest 8th birthday. Already high emotional expectations, to say the least. This was also the first year of trying to plan a party AND having my littlest baby added to the mix.  I feel like I planned that party for 6 months and it was over in 6 minutes! Before I could say Happy Thanksgiving I was taking down Halloween stuff and putting up Christmas decorations.  Next was Michael’s official 8th birthday and Thanksgiving in Houston and then back home again.

Of course now I’m still pressing fast forward. Well, kind of…

I’ve decided that I didn’t want to wait until January 1st to start some type of regimen.  In a nutshell this just means that I’m going back to my meetings this weekend and fitting in some type of activity for at least 30 minutes a day.  December is a tough month to try and restrict yourself.  But I absolutely hate the feeling of day 1 being Jan. 1st.  My goal is to take these next 3 weeks and do the best that I can.  A blog that I follow, Roni’s Weigh,  had a great post  this evening.  It reminded me that I’m more than a number and that December is tough for everyone trying to lose weight.  I’m going to focus on having a fun month with my kiddos and getting some date nights in with my husband.  I don’t want to spend this month beating myself up about things I didn’t do. Christmas is my favorite time of year and I plan to enjoy it!  As far as all the holiday food, well I plan to enjoy that too, in moderation.  Now having said that I have to show you the cutest picture.

We baked our first batch of cookies for the season and he was just so proud.  We definitely have some more cookie baking in our future.  Stay tuned!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It’s actually been looking a lot like Christmas around here since about mid November.  I saw this Target commercial the other day and almost spit out my drink.

This is my life.

So the tree was up by the weekend before Thanksgiving and I’ve been putting the final touches these past couple of days.  I have informed my lovely husband that he will putting up icicle lights and garland on the front porch on Friday night.  Once that gets done we will be officially done with decorating! We had to put the stockings on the stairs this year because there was no way Josie was NOT going to touch them on the fireplace. Although today I caught her trying to tug on the green one…

I’m having a cookie decorating party on the 17th and I’m excited to say the least.  It’s definitely on a much smaller scale than the Halloween bash, but still so much fun! I also filled in my calendar for the month of December and literally scheduled in the fun.  I did this on purpose because I feel that in October I was caught up in getting ready for one day that I lost so many other days of fun!  I’ve been trying to take my time and really soak in the season.

 This cup helps!

I love my Falalalala mug!

I’m looking forward to making some cookie doughs this week and hopefully baking a few this weekend.  I just love this time of year! I swear I’m on cloud 9 from October 1st to December 31st!  Hope you are having fun decorating your homes and remembering the most important thing is being together with the ones you love!