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Try It Tuesday: Butternut Squash & Quinoa Pilaf

23 Aug

Oh Jamie Oliver,  how you tempt me!

It seems every time I go grocery shopping and am in the frozen aisle I see a Jamie Oliver product I want to try, dangerous not only to my eating plan but also to my budget lol Lucky for me I seem to spot his items when they are on sale, or maybe they are always on sale…nah, that can’t be it!

Once again I bought the item thinking it was a meal on its own and it turned out it is actually meant to be a side dish. I figured I’d try eating is as such which meant I had to cook an entire meal -the horrors!

Here is what I started with…

Sorry it isn’t in focus, I would have sworn it was when I took the picture and the box is in the recycling now so too late to try again, oops.

Like the box says, this is a butternut squash & quinoa pilaf with mixed rice, pumpkin seeds and cranberries. The box makes a point of saying how it is made with whole grains and contains no preservatives or artificial flavours, so ya know, if that matters to you, there ya go. 😉

When frozen it looks like this…

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Pretty decent huh? I chose to microwave it because (1) the box says I can do that and it’ll be fine and (2) my oven was busy cooking other things and coordinating multiple food items in the oven is not a strong skill of mine…something always ends up either burned or not fully cooked, ugh.

So yeah, this sucker got microwaved and turned out great! I paired it with some chicken from M&M Meat Shops and McCain’s Super Fries. Random? Yes. Tasty? Also yes. 🙂

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A portion is 1/3 of the package, or 125 grams. I weighed my portion out then portioned out the remainder of the package so it would be ready for when I wanted the leftovers and there is actually more in the package than three full servings. Not a big deal, just a large spoonful over but if you are really strict about portions you’ll end up having a bit left over. I may have eaten the random spoonful and pretended it didn’t count but ya know, that is me, you do you! If you follow Weight Watchers the Smart Points are 6 per serving.

It isn’t some flavour packed dish, not that I was expecting that, I mean c’mon, it is butternut squash, quinoa and rice…none of those are particularly flavourful items. Having said that, it tasted good. It isn’t covered in some sauce or trying to pretend it is anything other than what it is, which is a nice change for packaged, microwavable food lol. I did put a spoonful of salsa on the left over serving I had the next day at lunch and it took it from good to yum, but you have to keep in mind I love salsa so I’m biased. 😛

I’d put this on my buy again list, as long as it is on sale! 😉

 

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Try It Tuesday: Grow Something!

26 Jul

A couple of months ago I bought a sweet potato and somehow didn’t eat it. Distressing enough. Even more distressing is that when I picked it up it was sprouting things, *shudder* I find the sight of a potato with shoots growing from it highly disturbing. Normally when this happens I throw it out. This time, for reasons I can’t explain, I had an urge to see if I could grow another sweet potato from this one.

After much research, thank goodness for Google!, I learned that step one is to chop the potato and put it in a water bath. Basically you chop off the end, stick toothpicks in the potato, then rest the potato in a glass (I put mine in a small tupperware container) so that the flat part is immersed in water but not touching the bottom of the glass (or in my case, tupperware). You have to change out the water every couple days or so and have the patience of a saint because you are waiting for roots to grow. The roots look like thin, stringy, pale white / almost see through hairs…think something that looks like it belongs to a jellyfish.

While waiting for the roots to grow the shoots kept getting taller and taller, to the point that the tallest one was flopping over so I piled tupperware beside it so it had something to lean on. Along the stalk / stem there were these very tiny little bumps, I have noooooo idea what they are, or if they are good or bad, but I’m leaning toward good because, well, the idea that they are something gross and were living in my kitchen for months is distressing. 😛

So finally, roots have grown, yay! Back to google I went and I learned that growing this thing in a pot is going to take a bit of effort, sigh. If it was not yet full on summer, when I planted it I’d have to make a little tent over the dirt it was planted in to help the dirt stay warm enough for it. I kid you not! A freakin tent! Lucky for me it is summer, full on summer, lots of heat happening over here, so no tent is needed. I however did have to buy a pot, and dirt, and take care of assembly.

Another way I lucked out is having a friend that grows stuff, lots of stuff, an entire garden worth of plants and veggies and fruit. She basically knows everything there is to know aaaaand has tools!

Mr. Pots and I (that is what I named the sweet potato) went over to her place, along with the dirt and the pot I purchased and she helped a lot!

This is during transport. You can see in the picture on the left the toothpicks that were in Mr. Pots. I put soaking wet paper towel in a small container and rested Mr. Pots on top, I couldn’t travel with the water because it would slosh everywhere so that was my compromise. I added the picture on the right to show how tall the one shoot got. Oh and see that spade at the bottom? That is my one and only garden tool, it still has the tag on it and I still haven’t used it cause my friend had a better one lol

Once at my friends place she pulled out her drill and kindly put four holes in the bottom of the pot for me. See, when growing a sweet potato in a pot you need to water it a lot because they are thirsty little guys but you have to provide an escape for the excess water so you don’t drown the sweet potato. They are a tad finicky. Also, you have to line the pot with a mesh sheet so that when the water drains from the pot the dirt doesn’t go with it. Lisa, my friend, had some of that stuff also, I swear, she has everything!, so she let me have some. We lined the entire pot, I would have only thought to line the bottom but she suggested it go all the way up the sides of the pot so that is what we did. I bow to her knowledge. 🙂

Once the pot was lined I used her massive spade shovel thing to fill most of the pot, then we made a bit of a hole, plopped in Mr. Pots sans toothpicks and wet paper towel, buried him and voila! We planted a sweet potato!

Because I was going to be bringing him home in my suv we gave him some water but not too much, didn’t want to mess up my vehicle. Once I got him home I thoroughly watered him and got him a snazzy spot in the garden. He has to be watered every day but I don’t have to worry about that because my landlords, whose garden Mr. Pots now resides in, have their sprinkler system on a timer so Mr. Pots gets watered every morning around 5:30am. I check on him every couple days, make sure his dirt is wet, and basically leave him to do his thing…not that I know what that is…I did notice some ants crawling on his dirt which worries me, what if the ants hurt him? I don’t like him being outside and exposed to things but he seems to be ok with it because he has noticeably grown since being put out there. I figure he’s highly enjoying photosynthesizing, since while in my place he wasn’t able to do that and we all know that’s what leaves like to do.

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Mr. Bartholomue Pots

He is much taller now, and those short little shoots you can see in the picture have shot up, I’m taking that as a sign he is thriving.

Now I have to figure out how to tell when he is ready to dig up, that is something Google has yet to teach me but I’m sure I’ll find an article somewhere. So far everything I read mostly talks about how to grow sweet potatoes and seems to assume once it is growing I will psychically know how to figure out the rest…silly internet, thinking I know something! lol 😉

 

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Try It Tuesday: Smart Ones Ravioli Florentine

12 Jul

I work shift work which means I get to eat at odd times. Depending on the day my dinner could be at 11pm, 7pm, 4pm…or any other random time, shrug. Because of this I have been trying to stock up on quick and easy meals so when I get home at 10pm I don’t have to do a lot of work to get a meal.

Safeway had Smart Ones Ravioli Florentine on sale last week, it is a frozen dinner that is endorsed by Weight Watchers so I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.

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Side note, in the Smart Point program this is 7 points.

 

Well…ok, while it technically didn’t hurt or anything it wasn’t great, heck, I wouldn’t even rate it as good. In fact I am kind of regretting wasting my points on it, sigh.

If you prefer tomato based sauces you might be ok with this one. I prefer cream sauces with my pasta, ya know, the higher in calorie sauce cause hellooooo, so yummy! But yeah, so it isn’t like there was anything specifically wrong with the sauce, I just didn’t like it. One good thing about the sauce was the vegetables that are in it. All the veggies are cut small but not so small they turn to mush once heated up. I really enjoyed the zucchini pieces.

The pasta itself was ok. Good sized pieces of ravioli filled with cheese, can’t go wrong there.

This definitely wouldn’t be big enough to eat on its own as a meal, I was ok because I ate it as sort of a second dinner / later night snack type of thing but if I had taken this to work to have as my real dinner I would of had to supplement it with a salad or something on the side.

I wouldn’t buy it again but only because I am not a tomato sauce type of person and 7 points for this amount of food seems ridiculous to me. I can make a burger and put it on a bagel thin, with cheese, for roughly the same amount of points and get waaaaay more enjoyment out of that meal.

I’ll probably take a look at their other offerings next time I am in the store, see if they have something I might like better cause the ease of heating something up in the microwave can not be overlooked. Gotta love that microwave! 😉

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Try It Tuesday: Skinny Cow

5 Jul

It’s summer and in my world that means a shift in desserts and treats. I tend to lean more towards fruit pies / tart type things and of course ice cream. Can’t go wrong with ice cream!

However, there is nothing remotely healthy or helpful to weight loss in ice cream. I figured I was going to have to give it up and was actively trying to not think about it but warmer days came to us and all I wanted was soft serve ice cream…or an ice cream sandwich…or a sundae…basically any form of ice cream lol

Then I remembered Skinny Cow! I don’t normally buy Skinny Cow items because they are suuuper expensive and in the past I tended to lean towards buying me some Ben & Jerry’s, they are two of my favourite men. 😉

Well guess what happened last week? Skinny Cow was on sale! Yay! So there I stood, in the ice cream aisle with my WW app open scanning each different products barcode to see juuuuust how bad for me Skinny Cow is.

Lemme tell ya, it ain’t good!

I eventually chose the Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches because, well, how could I not? Chocolate and peanut butter? Yes puh-lease! 😀

 

I know some people like to say that Skinny Cow isn’t as good as “real” ice cream, to those people I say hush up! You are obviously delusional because these taste great!

They are a perfectly acceptable size, in fact I am surprised they aren’t smaller. The cookie part is soft and sticks to your hand just like a so-called real ice cream sandwich, the ice cream is freakin delicious. I mean c’mon, they are real and beyond that there is a bit less guilt when eating them, which makes me a happy camper lol

They come in a variety of flavours, there is a cookie & cream, a regular vanilla, and I want to say there was one other flavour but maybe I am wrong…I was standing in that aisle so long scanning my brain might have gotten a little frost bite. 😛

Skinny Cow of course has other items, just walk down the ice cream aisle at your local grocery store and you’ll see them. I haven’t tried any of those but summer is long, I still have time!

Sidenote: for anybody on Weight Watchers, one ice cream sandwich is 6 smart points.

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Weight Watchers Wednesday

29 Jun

Last week we talked about decluttering, we were all given the challenge of decluttering something in our world.

I started with the bathroom but found I wasn’t really getting rid of anything, just cleaning, so I moved to the kitchen and decluttered the drawers, the recycling and the fridge. It is amazing how many things I could permanently remove from the kitchen drawers, they are sooooo tidy now! No more rummaging around through all sorts of things looking for a sharp knife or a clip to hold a bag closed, its a bit amazing how much my annoyance levels while in the kitchen have dipped from that alone.

My masterpiece was the fridge, I don’t know why, and it is really weird, but I love cleaning the inside of fridges. Freezers too, but mostly fridges. I took everything out, sorted through each item, actually read the expiration dates on my condiments (I was horrified at how many were waaaay past their dates!) and put things back in an organized fashion. Proteins all in one spot, fruit and veg in another, dairy products in a third spot, you get the idea.

I’d say I did well with last weeks challenge. 🙂

However, food wise I obviously dropped the ball, sigh. I only lost 0.2 pounds this week, putting me at a total weight loss of 3 pounds in two weeks. Pathetic. 😦 The lady at the weigh-in was trying to be nice and telling me that was good an stuff but let’s be real here, 0.2 pounds down is not good, it is, well, to re-use a word, pathetic. I know what I did wrong, super early in the week I ate pie, lots of pie, I wrote about that pie and it was freakin delicious, but also super high in points (something I didn’t check on until I had eaten a lot of the pie, *rolls eyes*) and I spent the rest of the week trying to make up for that pie but obviously failing.

I’ve already promised myself that this week I will do better.

ill do better

So now for this weeks meeting, we talked about two things, being encouraging and planning.

Create a support system for yourself, make sure you have people that are encouraging and also, be encouraging to yourself. I don’t know about you but I tend to be super mean to myself, waaaay meaner than I would ever be to somebody else, and that is something I guess I should work on. So, next time you are engaging in mean self-talk or putting yourself down in some way, stop it! Find a positive thing about yourself to say to yourself. Which yeah, ok, I know sounds way easier to do than it actually is. And sure, it will probably take a while because if you are like me I bet you think negative thoughts about yourself without even being consciously aware of it. But try, make a little goal for yourself this week, when you catch yourself being mean to yourself take a moment, breathe deeply, maybe close your eyes so you can focus, and flip that thought around.

 

Something that got brought up was one lady said how she had a bunch of clothes in her closet from when she was skinnier and while she was decluttering she decided to get rid of them. She found it hard because she was emotionally attached to some of the pieces but she was quite a bit larger than any of those articles of clothing and if she was being realistic, there was no point in keeping them. Then a second lady chimed in, said she had gone through something similar but while she was getting rid of her smaller sized clothes months ago she realized that when she loses the weight and gets down to the size of those clothes she will have earned new clothes.

I never really thought of that before, earning clothes. I, like most people who struggle with weight, have clothes from when I was thinner that I’d like to get back in to. I always saw keeping them as a way to motivate myself, or at least track my progress. But what this lady said resonated with me. Sure, maybe keep a couple items but not all of them. When you’ve put in all the work needed to get down one, two, ten sizes you have damn well earned the right to buy new clothes and not settle for all the old ones that you stuffed in the back of your closet!

The second topic was about planning. Specifically planning for parties, get togethers, trips, things like that. The upcoming long weekend, yay Canada Day!, is what seems to be prompting this weeks topic, apparently a lot of people party in the summer, shocking! 😉

Sooooooo there are a couple of ways to plan for upcoming social events. One lady said she saves up all her weekly points so she can use them at the party. That is definitely one way to go about it.

Other suggestions for how to plan were more focused on using your planning to prevent you from going crazy with the food and drinks at the parties.

Suggestions were:

  • bring your own food (if appropriate) so you know the exact points of what you are eating. This is easy if it is a potluck type thing but can also be done with pretty much any gathering being held at a person’s home, maybe check with the host in advance though just to make sure they are ok with this.
  • if it is a potluck or buffet type of deal walk the entire length of the table first, see all the offerings, and decide what items you are willing to eat that are high in points and find ways to minimize their effect on you. So say you really want that slice of cake, then maybe take a larger portion of salad and a smaller portion of foods with points for your entree.
  • once you have seen the foods being offered pull out your Pocket Guide or your WW app and look up the points of the foods that you are thinking about. If you are leaning towards eating the potato salad checking the app and seeing that one serving is 9 points might deter you from that choice, or at least help you to take a smaller portion.
  • focus on the fun, not the food. Instead of going to parties and focusing on what foods you are going to eat or how good things taste or how much wine you might indulge in focus on the friends you get to hang out with, the games you get to play, the time you are giving yourself to enjoy life. Don’t just sit at a table and chat with whomever is willing to sit near you, get up, walk around, the simple act of walking around and chatting with people will burn more calories than sitting in one spot chatting and it will help you feel more engaged in the party, more a part of the fun.

Our final thought of the day was Don’t Give Up! Maybe this week wasn’t a great weigh-in but forget about it. Last week is done, it is over, there is nothing you can do about it. Don’t wallow in the number on the scale, don’t keep thinking how you wanted to do better, don’t think there is no point to continuing with the program.

Don’t. Give. Up.

The act of trying counts. The act of working towards a goal counts. Sure maybe not every week will be easy, not every week will give you the results you want but remember the non scale victories. Remember that you feel better about yourself when you are trying. Remember that this whole being healthier thing is a journey and its up to you to make that journey positive. Remember that one week doesn’t represent the entire process, you started for a reason, probably for a lot of reasons, when you find yourself faltering remember those reasons and why they are important to you. And whatever you do, don’t give up! 🙂

dont give up

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Try It Tuesday: Chipotle Black Beans

28 Jun

I missed last weeks Try It Tuesday, not because I didn’t have something to write about but because time was not on my side. Lets get back on track shall we? 🙂

Jamie Oliver’s Brazilian-style Chipotle Black Beans- it is a stew with chunks of sweet potato and sweet red peppers. Lemme tell ya, none of the “sweet” veg took away from the spicy which maybe I would have clued in to ahead of time if I had noticed the two little jalapenos on the bottom area of the front of the box. Apparently Jamie has a warning system that I didn’t notice, oops!

This is a side dish, something else I also didn’t notice and according to Jamie is best served with “crispy griddled chicken thighs, brown rice, fresh greens and a spicy tomato salsa or in a fluffy baked potato with grated strong cheddar and a dollop of soured cream”. Despite Jamie’s so thoughtful suggestions I went my own way and ate it as a stand alone stew – I’m such a rebel! 😉 lol

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It heats up the same way all frozen meals do, take the tray out of the box, puncture the plastic top, pop in the oven for a while and boom! Food that took no effort on my part! This one takes 40-45 minutes at 350F. I could have microwaved it but I am already cheating by heating up a frozen meal, putting it in the microwave is just taking this whole lazy “cooking” thing too far.

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Not the prettiest thing when frozen, and I kinda failed at the whole piercing the plastic thing but meh, it all worked out in the end, shrug.

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I don’t know about you but I think that looks goooooood! Maybe it is because I am a sucker for sweet potatos, and stew, and easy cooking…who knows? After it is pulled out of the oven you are supposed to let it sit for a couple minutes and that helps it thicken up a bit. I left it a little longer than the box suggested because I like stews to be quite thick and it worked, it also made it so I didn’t have to blow on the spoon before every bite which was nice cause ya know, burning my mouth is not a thing I enjoy.

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It however lost some of its charming, yummy look once put in to a bowl, sigh. Now it looks like green mush, or slime, or something icky. It tastes way better than it looks, honest!

I tried some of it on its own and it was too spicy for me, sadness. I like spice but there has to be flavour along with the spice, not juuuust spice. So I added some ranch dressing to it, weird yes, but it works, lol, and it helped. If I had cheese in the apartment I would have topped it with that and I bet that would have cut down just enough on the spice while adding flavour and take it up that extra notch.

The entire package fit in to one of my small bowls so if you are eating it on your own it is a good size to be a meal by itself but if you are sharing it you’ll definitely need something else to go with it -perhaps one of Jamie’s suggestions?

 

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Pie, Yoga, Dinner and a Movie

24 Jun

Wednesday, oh Wednesday, such a great day this week, I wish more of my days were like it. 🙂

I went over to a friend’s place where we made Strawberry Rhubarb pie…from scratch cause ya know, that’s how we roll. 😉 That and homemade pie is the best! Mmm!

She made the filling and I made the crust and I gotta say, they both turned out quite well. 🙂

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While the dough was chilling in the fridge the two of us went and did some yoga, she has a Jillian Michael’s yoga workout which nearly killed me lol I figured it was going to help me earn a slice of the pie though so ya know, goals. 🙂

I started making lattices on the pies (we made three pies in total) while she went and picked up one of her kids, once everyone was under the roof I went and showered (I’m tellin ya that yoga workout makes ya sweat, ugh) and when I got back to the kitchen she had magically morphed it from a temporary bakery to a proper kitchen and dinner was well on its way. Something you need to know is she is a Chef -notice the capital C? Which means no silly little dinner is being made in her kitchen, she only makes awesome meals that I love eating but have no idea how to make lol

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Official Chef hands doing Official Chef type stuff!

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I don’t know why I took this picture as such a stupid angle, it is not doing the meal justice at all!

There is wheat barley, sauteed veggies (specifically mushrooms, baby tomatoes and peas) then salmon (perfectly cooked in case you were wondering) with grated white radish (there is a fancy, proper name for the radish but I can’t remember it) and of course a delicious sauce that had miso paste, two different kinds of mustard, honey and I think something else in it…I don’t have enough descriptive words to describe how great this meal was. She got the inspiration from the website http://www.cookswithcocktails.com The dish is a copy of a meal from the Cactus Club but I’d bet money my friend’s version is better than the one in the restaurant. 😀

After dinner there was no time for eating pie because we were off to go see Finding Dory, and all I can say about baby Dory is awwwwww sooooo cute! And before you think we were two weirdo adults going to see a kids movie we had one kid and two teenagers with us, so basically they were our camouflage lol 😉 The movie is totally worth the price of the ticket but I’d skip paying for 3D if I was you.

baby dory

Possibly even cuter than Nemo!

 

 

Being all tryna-lose-weight-girl that I am I packed snacks for the theatre…yes, I have become that person. Buuuuut I ended up buying some frozen yoghurt that I got topped with fruit, I haven’t been able to figure out the nutritional information yet so I kinda guessed when tracking. Oops?

Movie finished and back to the pies…er, I mean, her house, we went! The draw of going back wasn’t at all the pies, nope, of course not! 😉 We served them with a choice of vanilla ice cream or Cool Whip, turns out her kids had never had Cool Whip! The poor deprived souls, such a sad existence, *sad sigh*, so luckily I remedied that! teehee…I am not always a good influence 😛

And yeah, that was my Wednesday. I guess all-in-all a simple day but it was fun, and filled with people I like being around, and baking and eating and just enjoyable times. We should all have more days like that. 🙂

 

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The Weight Watchers Plunge

15 Jun

Last Sunday on my lunch break I said “screw it” and I signed up for Weight Watchers. And not in the I’m-doing-it-on-my-own kind of way but in the for real, paid money, am officially a member of Weight Watchers kind of way. It kinda feels like I’ve joined a cult…but full of nice people and so far none of them have asked me to drink anything suspicious or pledge allegiance to anything weird…or anything at all lol 😛

I chose to attend meetings as well as use the online resources, might as well utilize everything they have to offer, right? Right! Since I signed up online on Sunday that is my official start date even though I wasn’t able to attend a meeting until today, Wednesday. At first I was going to wait to start tracking my food and figuring out the system until my first meeting but changed my mind and started using the app and the website on the Sunday when I clued in to the fact that I was already paying for the services so I shouldn’t waste four days of access to the WW  info. This stuff ain’t cheap!

When you first sign in to the website you get asked a bunch of questions, the answers are apparently used to personalize not only the program to me but also the information that will be sent to me. So like, recipes, exercise ideas, food tips, and other such things. I’m thinking the more personalized the program is the better it will work for people…I hope!

I’ve gotta say, so far I have been kind of sucking at the whole Weight Watchers lifestyle, sigh. Which was not what I was expecting! Although, I did cook a healthy dinner yesterday instead of just eating some toast and a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter after I looked at my points tally for the day and realized I couldn’t just eat willy-nilly and not go over my daily points. So I guess that is something…a teeny tiny baby step towards progress perhaps? 😉

Today at my meeting I got given 4 different booklets:

  • a mini journal, I take it each week to meetings and use it to track my official weigh ins. It also has a section for you to write your reasons why you are starting this journey, what your final weight goal is and even a section to write down ideas on how I can be good to myself.
  • the next booklet is the Pocket Guide, this booklet has a food list with corresponding points, a portion estimate guide and FitPoints charts. Oh, there is also a note section at the back.
  • the third, and I think most important booklet is the “Your Plan Guide” which has everything in it. It is basically the how-to book for the entire program, it explains how the program works, how the points work, suggestions for how to distribute your points throughout the day, goal setting, fitness, and being kind to yourself. There are also recipes, meal plans, no-count option list, different fitness / exercise ideas meant to fit in to different increments of time (1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 15 minutes) and a bunch of other stuff – I’ll go in to more detail another day, after I’ve had a chance to read the whole thing.
  • the fourth and final booklet is a weekly booklet, I guess I get a new one each week. From what I can tell each week covers a new topic and the leader has a more in-depth version that she uses to direct the meeting. This weeks topic was about self-talk, how we think of ourselves and others and how it can affect your weight loss. A stat shared this evening said that a study showed that people experience 75% more weight loss when they have improved self-image, partly because they tend to treat themselves better and make better choices.

So I wanted to show you what the books look like but as soon as I put them down the cat decided he haaaaad to check them out lol I eventually managed to convince him to move – by plucking him up and holding him in a death grip while rearranging the books and taking the picture lol

The overall theme to this weeks meeting was: Be Positive!

Some ways to do that are to remember to give myself credit for putting effort in to changing. Be positive about how I think about myself. Remember that no matter how slow the progress or how many times I stumble I am ahead of those who are not trying.

Some ways to work on being more successful are to really question myself when I feel hungry. I might actually be bored, or thirsty, or emotional, or who knows what. By questioning myself before heading in to the kitchen I should be able to decrease my mindless eating which can only lead to good things. 🙂

Even though I am keeping track of everything using the app I bought the tracking journal when at the meeting this evening. I really like writing things down, something about being able to flip through the pages of the book to see what I did a week ago vs hitting the previous page button on my phone, I dunno, it is a tactile thing, shrug, just go with it, ok? The book cost me $12 and is good for three months. It is an unfortunate brown colour, ugh, but otherwise I like it.

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The actual tracking page (on the left) is pretty simplistic, you put the date at the top, write down your foods and their corresponding point values, then tally everything at the bottom. There is a line for putting how many of your weekly points you used, in case you went over your daily points. There is also a section for writing down your exercise and corresponding FitPoints earned. At the end of each week there is a 20:20 Hindsight page (on the right), where you can write down all kinds of things. Then there are a couple of pages for notes. Each week is the same, the only thing that changes is the weekly quote, this weeks is:

Some days you just have to create your own sunshine.

At the end of the book are a bunch of pages for notes. I am using one page to remember how many daily and weekly points I get as well as my weight. I know I have the little booklet to keep track of my weight loss but I figure I’ll write it in this book also since this book is only for three months and the little one I take to meetings goes for 16 weeks and well, I dunno, I figure one day the two books will get separated but I’ll probably keep the journal so if I check it out one day a long time from now it might be nice to see the progress I made…or depressing, depending on how this goes… 😉

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Try It Tuesday:Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

14 Jun

So obviously this isn’t the first time I have eaten Strawberry Rhubarb pie, it is just the first time I have eaten this particular pie. It is from M&M Meat Shops and currently costs $9.99. If I remember correctly mine was on sale so it cost a bit less, who doesn’t like a sale? 😉

First off, the finished product does not look nearly as good as the one on the package, the filling doesn’t hold its shape nearly that well. The filling is less chunky and more pureed, if that makes any sense? There is a lattice topping with the pastry but it is pretty lackluster, I mean c’mon, not like it is that hard to make the pie look pretty, this just looked lazy. Or maybe I am too harsh about the presentation of pies, meh, who knows? lol

To bake it you bring your oven to 350C, take the plastic wrapping off the pie, put the pie on a cookie sheet and pop it in to the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, then take it out and let it sit for 20 minutes. I am not certain why it needs such a long cooling down period, maybe they are worried about people being burned? lol Nah. I think it is most likely to give the filling time to solidify enough that it doesn’t completely ooze out when you cut a slice.

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frozen still wrapped in plastic

 

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fresh from the oven

The flavour was nice, had a stronger strawberry flavour than rhubarb and the strawberry seemed to more closely resemble jam rather than freshly chopped strawberries. Hell, I would have settled for frozen strawberries, thawed and cut, before being put in the filling but I guess I am asking too much from a commercially mass produced pie.

Even with the 20 minute cooling off period the pie was still warm-ish so I topped my piece with some ice cream and settled down to enjoy. 🙂

It’s not that it wasn’t an okay pie, but I wouldn’t really recommend paying the ten bucks for it when you can find a better quality pie at a bakery or one of those stands that pop up with fresh home made pies for sale at completely reasonable prices. Or hell, you could always make one. Not to boast but I have made a better strawberry rhubarb pie from scratch wiiiiiith a more complex lattice top and if I can do it so can you!

In a pinch I guess it will suffice but you can find better so my advice to you is to keep searching! 🙂

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Cat vs Human

9 Jun

A month or so ago the awesome cat I live with was puking every single day. Being a cat he didn’t choose to puke on the linoleum floor, nooooo, he chose to puke on the carpet putting my chances of getting my damage deposit back when we move in jeopardy. Oh, and on my bed, nothing like coming home at 10pm after work to find yourself having to do a load of laundry because your bedding has the contents of the cat’s stomach on it.

Don’t get me wrong, I felt bad for the cat, it sucks he was feeling so sickly he was throwing up daily but c’mon, the carpet? Whyyyyyy??

Neither of us like his current vet, she is mean and a pill pusher, and we haven’t found a new vet yet so I did what any sane person would do, I googled reasons my cat was puking daily.

The main result I found led back to his food. Apparently a cat can develop an allergy to their food and the lower quality the food the higher the chance they will develop an allergy or sensitivity. The recommendations for this problem is to swap the cat to a higher quality food but cats being cats you can’t just put some new food in front of them and expect them to eat it. Heaven forbid!

Cats tend to be picky about their food and this little guy is a champ at hunger strikes. If he is very unhappy, like the one time I boarded him while I was away, or he is travelling, or I try him with a new food, he just doesn’t eat. And I don’t mean he nibbles a bit but doesn’t take in enough to count as a meal, I mean he doesn’t eat. Anything. For days. Sometimes even weeks. It is ridiculous. He really is the example all the articles talk about of a cat who will starve himself to death rather than eat a new food he doesn’t like. How he knows he won’t like it if he doesn’t try it I don’t know but my pointing that out to him did not result in him being willing to try a bite, it just resulted in a sad kitty face and a meow. sigh.

More research taught me that I have to slooooowly switch his food over to a new kind. This involves putting a ratio of food in to the bowl that is 4 parts his preferred food and 1 part the new food. Over the span of a week gradually change the portions so eventually he is eating all new food and the original food is a thing of the past. The article said it should take a week but for some particularly picky cats it could take up to a month. I knew before even starting this wasn’t going to be easy and he’d take the month rather than the week. At this point I think it may take us all summer!

I did what the article suggested, a tiny amount of the new food mixed in with the old and it seemed ok. The cat ate, he didn’t look offended or shocked and he didn’t swear at me or try to kill me in my sleep: Point human!

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Look at those claws! Deadly weapons!

Over the next couple days I slowly added more of the new food and slowly decreased the old food.

The cat caught on.

Crap.

This resulted in his being picky about which pieces of food he put in his mouth. At the end of a day the only food left in his bowl was the new kibble, the old kibble was eaten. Sooooo I’d say that means: Point cat!

I didn’t back down though! I stayed at the same ratio and kept giving him a mixture, hoping he’d cave and eventually start eating the new stuff. At this point I am fairly certain he eats some of the new stuff but at the end of every day the only food left in the bowl is the new kibble and he won’t touch his food once it is only the new kibble in the bowl. sigh.

So now we are fully in the battle. I won’t back down and give him only the food he wants. He won’t back down and eat the new stuff in large enough quantities that he won’t starve to death.

Stalemate.

The only upside is he has stopped being sick. I guess he is eating enough of the new stuff, or maybe it is just that he is eating less of the old stuff, that his stomach is happy again. I think that is Point human and Point cat because it is a good thing for both of us.

The old food – apparently it is the McDonald’s of cat food, who knew?
The new food, supposedly better for the cat but only if I can get him to eat it!

In case you are wondering what foods I am talking about. Purina One smartblend for indoor cats is the food the cat has always eaten. After researching I learned it is basically the McDonald’s of cat food, who knew? The Hill’s Science Diet is theoretically better for the cat…assuming I can get him to eat it that is! Won’t do me much good if he keeps snubbing it, sigh.

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