Month: December 2009

Meatless Tomato Sauce

I made an amazing meatless tomato sauce with pasta last night for dinner.

I usually don’t like my meatless tomato sauce, but it turned out rich and flavorful. I guess I am becoming a better home cook. LOL

Anyway, I sauted an onion in a hot pan with some olive oil and some salt, pepper, & dried herbs. When they were soft and yummy, about 10 minutes or so, I added my mushrooms.

Once the mushrooms were cooked, I added some white zin wine. I reduced uncovered for a few minutes, then added a can of diced tomatoes. Reduced uncovered and served over pasta with some freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano.

I reheated a serving of sauce with 2 oz of pasta for lunch today and it was still just as fantastic.

And under 300 calories for a nice big bowl. 295 calories including pasta and cheese!

Weigh In After Holidays!

Whoo hoo, I weighed in this AM. 171 lbs! yay. I feel healthy and good this morning. Yesterday, I was feeling a little full from the holiday feast!

It feels great not to have gained any pounds. Not that I was worried, I don’t think I did bad enough to gain (it could have been much worse if I didn’t stop eating)…but now the holidays are over. The new year is coming and I am happy I made it through the holidays!

Christmas 2009 Woes and Joys

Yeah, I didn’t do such a wonderful job on my food choices during the holiday, but it’s okay. I am back on track today (Saturday, Dec 26) and will continue to stay on track!

It was a bit scary, because I got a wake up call. It’s so easy for me to revert back to my old ways! But I just have to forget the past, and move forward. You can’t dwell on mistakes too much. Just learn from them, and try not to repeat them!

Christmas Eve, we went over to my sister in law’s home, as usual.

Lots of high calorie appetizer foods, mini hot dogs in pop-n-fresh dough, little hamburger meat pies, shrimp, and calzone (which we brought, with keilbasa & grape jelly – I only had one piece of calzone and didn’t have any keilbasa). I remained fairly in control.

Thankfully there was veggies and dip, which I LOVED. Probably shouldn’t have had so much dip, but I loved the veggie sticks. That saved me.

Desserts, I did okay as well. Not too bad. We made gingerbread cookies with homemade frosting. I had a couple of different cookies. Didn’t pig out too badly.

I think my big downfall was Christmas Day, when my family comes over. I did eh, okay with dinner. We had all natural Wellshire ham (from Whole Foods), taco dip w/ tortilla chips, smoked salmon w/ whipped cream cheese & crackers, cheese, pepperoni & crackers, shrimp with cocktail sauce.

Dinner was okay, I tried to limit myself. I ate a lot of shrimp, but I did have some of the other foods too.

Desserts! My sister brought a cute frosted birthday cake made from a bunch of cupcakes. I had one cupcake, and a couple of cookies we brought home from the night before.

My mom brought her famous magic cookie bars, which are to die for. I saved us a big hunk of the bars, and I had a big piece last night, and again this morning for breakfast. Thank God they are all gone now….and I can try to get back to healthy choices.

It’s good to splurge once in awhile, but this year, I did go a bit overboard. And like I said, it was a bit scary that I could revert to my old bad ways soo easily.

It just goes to show, you are NEVER safe! NEVER! I can never take it for granted that I have it all completely under control. I must always remember that I always must remain on guard, but I also can’t beat myself up too much. When I fall backward, I must forgive myself!

Oh but the good part of Christmas was my presents!

My wonderful husband gave me the Wii console, along with the Wii Fit Plus. And my mom gave me the Cuisinart 7 cup Classic Food Processor. I thought it over, and she said it is okay if I upgrade to a larger model. I am thinking of the Cuisinart Elite Collection Food Processor, either the 12 or 14 cup. The Elite model includes a mini bowl insert, and the larger model, also includes a 3rd medium sized bowl. It will be great for pastry, bread dough, cookie dough, veggies, grinding meat, making dressings, etc.

I am happy! Happy that I am back on track, and happy that I have such fun presents to play with.

172 lbs & Changed My Calories/Goals

I have been hovering around the 172, 171 mark for a few days now. But still hanging on.

I had a semi-bad day last Friday night when we had family over for a birthday party for 2 people. I ate ham, meatballs, and a little piece of cake. I did go a tad overboard on the ham and meatballs! I even had a small Kahlua with milk and half & half. eeek! It was delicious!

But I am still hanging on to 171 and a few ounces, so I round up to 172.

This week is going to be the challenge though, with both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day food and frolicking!

So, to try to combat any food issues now, I reset my goals over at MyFitnessPal back to a one pound weekly loss, (instead of .5 lb). I figure it will give me a better view of my calories, which are now down to 1500.

I also think that maybe it will give me an intensive to start working out again, which will give me more calories to eat! My January resolution is to work out more for sure! I have the eating healthy part down I think and that is the one missing piece!

Coleman Natural Polish Kielbasa

We ate Coleman natural polish kielbasa tonight. It was the “red” kind of kielbasa similar to hillshire farms.

http://www.colemannatural.com/component/option,com_resource/Itemid,9/article,877/category_id,2/controller,article/

It didn’t taste as spicy as hillshire but it was pretty good. I would have it again. It’s still not food to have every night because it is loaded with sodium, but for a treat it works good.

I roasted cut up pieces with parsnips, celery stalks, broccoli, & summer squash. The juices from the meat added good flavor. I think next time I might add some additional herbs or spices.

Thumbs up for Coleman natural polish kielbasa!

Homemade Bread

Dragged out the old Breadman breadmaker from storage and made some homemade light whole wheat bread.

I used 1 cup whole wheat and 2 cups regular all purpose white wheat flour. It was okay for a first try but the top kind of squished in and I read somewhere that it was due to lack of glutan. Glutan was on the list of ingredients but I didn’t have any so I just used flour.

I will have to find out where I read that and read more details. I think it was in my breadmaker recipe book. It also stated when making whole wheat, it’s good to run the breadmaker twice through the kneading stage.

It’s all a learning process! At least it tasted pretty good!

171 pounds

I thought I had hit a weight loss wall and seemed to be stuck at the 174, 173 range. It was okay, I wasn’t complaining. I figured that my body would let me know my optimum comfortable weight. So I let go of losing weight and tried to accept it.

I reset my MyFitnessPal “goals” to reflect a .5 weekly weight loss and my calories in turn were raised to over 1600. I still kept a goal weight of 160.

I knew I wasn’t going to eat all my calories everyday but it was okay. I figured it would ease me back into maintenance mode if that’s where I was headed.

So yesterday AM I weighed in and I was 170.5. Same weight this AM too, even on the old non digital scale.

I keep thinking it’s temporary still so I am prepared to fluctuate between 175 and 170.

So my total is a miraculous 29 lbs. I can hardly believe it.

The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook Review

I received a copy of the The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean by Tosca Reno from the library.

It boasts over 150 recipes, and it’s very well written with beautiful full color photographs. Although the recipes looked and sounded pretty delicious, I don’t think it would be a book that I would buy. Not that the recipes were complicated, it’s that there were occasionally ingredients I didn’t regularly keep in my pantry. Maybe a bit too frilly fancy, I guess prefer more basic recipes, which sounds kind of strange, because the recipes aren’t necessarily complex.

On a negative note, I found the text formatting difficult to read. For instance, the actual ingredient is formatted in a contrasting color. I found this more difficult to comprehend when reading. I think it might have been possibly better to use a bold formatting instead of a color to highlight the ingredient name.

Disclaimer:
I love reading cookbooks, like some people love reading novels! I am inspired by recipes, and enjoy learning ideas from cookbooks; I like putting my own spin on a recipe rather than exactly following it. Please keep in mind that my opinions might be completely different from the other home cooks.