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Pineapple Upside Down Cake

4 Jun

A friend from my Dragon Boat Team got a job offer in Switzerland and since she’s no dummy she said yes. This past Sunday there was a going away bbq being held in her honour and lucky for me it started mid afternoon and didn’t end until well after I was done at work so I got to go. Yay!

The invite said everyone was to bring whatever they wanted to grill and drink, a variety of salads would be provided. Well, I didn’t know what to grill, I haven’t ever grilled so while I know I could take some chicken or a burger patty or a hot dog with me to pop over the fire I would have probably made it inedible while trying to cook it. Also, who carries around just one burger patty or one hot dog? That’s just awkward lol

Instead I took a Pineapple Upside Down cake and hoped that would be an awesome enough contribution that I could eat enough salad for it to be a meal. See how my sneakiness works? lol 😉

Well, the cake turned out to be a hit! Thank goodness!

I forgot to take a picture of it when at home so the best I have is this one, not great but at least you can see what it looked like…

2015-05-31 18.38.47

The pineapple slices weren’t placed very well, my bad, sigh. And in the above picture the end of the cake closest to the camera looks darker but it wasn’t burned, honest! It just looks like that in the picture, shrug.

People really liked it, or they were lying about liking it lol but I’m gonna lean towards being optimistic and say I think they were being honest and liked it. 🙂

It is a really basic recipe, there are some super complicated, have a billion steps versions online but that’s crazy, who has time for that? *rolls eyes*

So here is what I did…

Make a basic white cake.

Melt 1/4 Cup of butter in the baking pan by putting it in the oven while it is pre-heating to 350F.

Once the butter is melted take the pan out and spread the melted butter around, I used a silicone brush to not only spread the butter around the bottom of the pan but also up the sides.

Spread 1 Cup of brown sugar on the bottom of the pan, the butter will melt the sugar in to a dark gooey yummy mess.

Spread pineapple circles in the bottom of the pan, I bought the smallest can of pineapple circles so I had 8 slices, if you wanted more you could always buy a larger can, cut some of the slices in half and fit in more, up to you!

Put a maraschino cherry inside each pineapple circle as well as between them, try not to nibble too many of them because whoa! so addictive lol.

Pour the white cake batter on top of the whole shebang.

Pop in to the oven for 42-48 minutes.

Once the cake is done immediately run a knife around the edges, you’ll notice the cake comes away from the side super easily.

Place a heatproof serving plate upside down on to the pan and flip the plate and pan over together. Try to center it when you do that because the cake doesn’t like to be moved which is why mine is nowhere near centered on my cake platter, oops!

Leave the pan over the cake for 5 minutes or so, allowing the brown sugar topping to drizzle on to the cake, Mmm!

Remove the pan, scrape any drizzle that didn’t drip on to the cake and put it on the cake, or eat it, whichever you prefer.;)

Quick Tip!

When making the white cake use the pineapple juice from the can, however much liquid your white cake recipe calls for, measure out the pineapple juice first then top it up with water, or milk or oil or whatever your recipe uses. You’ll infuse the cake with pineapple flavour, making the whole thing just that much better.

Baking info:

If you are using a glass pan heat oven to 350F and bake for 42-48 minutes. If you are using a dark or nonstick pan heat oven to 325F and bake for 44-53 minutes.

The cake serves 12, if you cut it to serve 12, I’m certainly not going to judge if you choose to cut it in to larger pieces lol 😉

Having said that, if you are following Weight Watchers Points Plus and cut the cake in to 12 pieces each piece will be 11 points. So yeah, not a healthy cake lol but sure is tasty! (fyi, that is the points for my version of the cake, depending on your white cake recipe the points might be different, shrug)

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Southwest Vegetarian Bake

31 May

I cooked! Again! This is becoming a habit that I am not sure I am comfortable with lol

Since I had success last week with making the Vegetarian Lasagna, mostly to be used as meals for work, I thought I would try again. I don’t mean try the lasagna again, I mean try making something in a large quantity that I could use for meals at work again and voila! I did it! 🙂

I found a recipe on food.com called Southwest Vegetarian Bake that looked like it might be good. I then read a variation on the recipe and liked parts of that version also. So, I combined the parts of both that I liked and made my own version – always good to customize!

My biggest problem is that the recipe is from the States so measurements sucked. It was all “use a 15 ounce can of black beans” and I’m all “canned goods in Canada are in milliliters!” sigh. Even when I converted the can sizes used in the recipe I was still screwed because apparently the size of cans used in the States is different than in Canada, lovely. double sigh.

If you want to see the original recipes I stole from click here.

I did attempt to get the correct amount, which involved way too much math in my opinion and in the end I’m pretty sure I ended up using wrong numbers according to the recipe, but right numbers for me since it turned out ok. 🙂

My Ingredients:

2 Cups Black Beans (canned)

1 Cup Corn (canned)

3 Cups Diced Tomatoes (canned)

1 Cup Salsa

1 Cup Shredded Cheese (I used Cheddar and Part Skim Mozzarella)

1 Cup Light Sour Cream

1 Can (114ml) Green Chilies

5 tbls Black Olives

1/2 Cup Red Onion (diced)

1 microwaveable Minute Rice – Whole Grain Brown (125g)

Mix everything except the black olives and the brown rice in a large bowl. Cook the rice, once cooked add it in to the bowl. Mix well. Pour in to a 3 Quart baking dish. Sprinkle the black olives on top. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Sprinkle extra shredded cheese on top (if you want), put back in to oven for 10 additional minutes. Take out of oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Easy peasy!

It looks a funny colour in the middle but that is because of lighting, in person the middle looked the same as the edges.

It looks a funny colour in the middle but that is because of lighting, in person the middle looked the same as the edges.

Fairly runny looking here...

Fairly runny looking here…

Mmm, dinner!

Mmm, dinner!

Some explanations though…

The original recipes said to use 3/4 Cup uncooked brown rice. I only buy the single serving brown rice cups from Minute Rice, the ones you stick in the microwave for, you guessed it, a minute. I wasn’t about to go buy more rice just so I could measure out 3/4 of a Cup and cook it. Instead I cooked one of my rice cups (each serving is 125g), added it to the rest of the ingredients and gauged how I felt the rice to other ingredients ratio was. See, I didn’t want to use a lot of rice because I am on Weight Watchers and rice is high in points, I would rather have less rice and more veggies, heck, even more beans since they have protein. I tend to view rice as nice but a waste of food, which is too bad because I actually really like rice. Ah well, the sacrifices a girl makes to get thin! lol

This recipe is a vegetarian recipe but I had intended to brown some ground turkey and throw that in there, however, my memory failed me when I was at the store and I forgot to buy any, oops! I think some ground meat would be a nice addition to the dish, especially since it would soak up all the flavours but I am still happy with it being vegetarian.

The original recipes wanted me to use Mexican Blend Cheese. When I went cheese shopping (which fyi, the cheese was the most expensive ingredient! What’s with that??) there was no Mexican Blend, or anything similar sounding so I opted for a Cheddar & Mozzarella Blend. Why did I pick that blend? Because it was on sale. 🙂

The final result ended up a bit runnier than I anticipated, I think because my ingredient ratios were all wonky. I wish I had put in the kidney beans I had bought, they would have tasted great in the dish, added protein and helped make it a little less runny. I suppose I could have also added more rice but we all know how I feel about that lol. 😛

This was a ridiculously easy dish to make since it mostly consisted of opening cans, dumping everything in to a bowl, mixing and cooking lol I did measure everything as I poured it out of the can so I would know exactly how much I was putting in, I did this mostly because I needed to be able to calculate the points per serving for Weight Watchers but I think its a good idea in general, otherwise you might put in more of a higher calorie ingredient than you realized and inadvertently make the dish not as healthy as you wanted.

I was super upset about the Light Sour Cream, even with it being Light it was crazy high in points for the quantity used, not cool! It tastes good, obviously, I mean c’mon, it is Sour Cream, of course it tastes good lol but I think I’d have rather saved some of it and used it as a topping, you’d taste it more and would have the option of saying no and saving the points (or calories, or whatever you track).

If you are following the Weight Watchers Points Plus Program your point information is as follows:

If you divide it up in to 8 portions, each portion is 8.125 points (so 8 points)

If you divide it up in to 6 portions, each portion is 10.833 points (so 11 points)

I chose to divvy it up in to 8 portions. Each portion is a fairly decent size, I find it is not quite enough to be a stand alone meal so I add some toast on the side or have some fruit for dessert afterwards, just a little something to help top me up. 🙂

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Volunteer for Yoga

29 May

A little over three years ago I signed up for 30 days of unlimited Bikram Yoga. I don’t remember why I did it, there must have been a promotion of some kind because yoga is not cheap and it is not something I can normally afford. I enjoyed it, sort of, and opted to stay on their mailing list in case I ever decided I wanted to sign up for it again and miraculously had the money to spend on it lol.

bikram yoga

Last week I got an email newsletter from them talking about all sort of things and at the bottom there was a blurb about how they are looking for Karma Cleaners.

Basically, they are looking for people who are willing to volunteer to help clean the yoga studio and in exchange they get free yoga classes. A lot of yoga studios do this and I’ve been meaning to look in to it for a while now but never got around to it. Well, there was nothing to look in to since they had emailed me (and everyone else on their mailing list) about it so before I could talk myself out of it I shot off an email asking if there were still spots available.

I got a response and eventually ended up with an interview this past Tuesday. 🙂

On the drive to the yoga studio I went to take a sip of water and managed to spill it all over my shirt and my lap, classic me, sigh. Luckily it was a warm day and my shirt managed to dry fairly fast. The pants though, um, not so much. They were black so it wasn’t obvious they were wet but lemme tell ya, sitting in an interview with damp pants, not comfy!

It was a really informal interview, I think if we hadn’t of gotten along she would have said she’d think about it or something along those lines but we did get along, my availability fit with what days they had openings and well, that was that, I start next Tuesday. 🙂

It seems like a pretty good deal to me, I will clean for a little under two hours a week, all in one session. I’ll be the only one there so I can listen to my music and dance around like a weirdo when cleaning (cause that’s how I roll) and it won’t matter. Also, the studio room will have just had a class in it and right when I am done another class will be starting so the room will be at the hot temperature it is at when the class is in session, which means I am gonna sweat like crazeeeeee! I’m looking at this as an opportunity to not only get an extra fitness session in to my week with the actual yoga class I will take but get an additional almost two hours of activity in to my week with the cleaning. Finding out the room will be at its hot temperature made me want to do this even more lol

I was warned to bring water and to be careful to stay hydrated, also, I was told to wear whatever I want because by the end of my cleaning session my clothes will be soaked with sweat, ew, but yay? lol I’m allowed to use the showers that are there when I am done so I don’t have to leave there looking all sweaty and gross, which is nice.

I’m not a huge fan of cleaning, but I’m hoping when I get in to the routine of being there every Tuesday afternoon it’ll just become another one of the random things I do in a week, shrug. The lady I interviewed with said most of their Karma Cleaners stay with them for quite a while, as in years, they love that they get the free classes and the cleaning isn’t that hard or time consuming.

The two options I had were (1) clean for one session a week and get one free yoga class a week or (2) clean for two sessions a week and get unlimited yoga classes. I chose the one cleaning session a week because I don’t want to over commit. Also, even if I had unlimited yoga classes I don’t think I’d be able to fit them in all that often so it’d be kinda wasted on me. For now I am perfectly content to try to find time for one class a week. 🙂 I was told if I ever wanted to change that and clean twice so I could get the unlimited classes to let them know and they’d find a second cleaning shift for me.

So there we have it, I have officially added another fitness activity to my week, and one I have to stick with because I made a commitment, not one I can shrug off when I don’t feel like it, which for me is a good thing because I excel at talking myself out of exercising lol 😛

Bikram Yoga, bring it on! 🙂

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Vegetarian Lasagna

21 May

Tonight for dinner I made Vegetarian Lasagna. I got the recipe from a friend, she made it one night when I was over at her place and it was oh so yummy. She’s really good in the kitchen whereas I am so-so. I thought since I watched her make the lasagna, I had a copy of the recipe that she had sent me right in front of me, and there was no meat I could probably make this dish without screwing up too badly lol

Well…it wasn’t hard to make, though I made some rookie mistakes that I will correct next time (if there is a next time!) but despite it not being that hard to make it wasn’t anywhere near as good as when she made it. Le sigh.

The layers go like this:

Noodles

Sauce

Sliced yams

Noodles

Sauce

Ricotta cheese

Mushrooms

Noodles

Sauce

Zucchini

Red and yellow peppers

Onion

Yams

Mushrooms

Sauce

Noodles

Sauce

Ricotta cheese

Lots of layers!

I used the Compliments brand Oven Ready Pasta, the Compliments brand Six Vegetable Pasta Sauce and some randomly chosen brand of Ricotta cheese…I figured all ricotta cheese options would be the same, regardless of the brand. Actually, I figured that about the pasta and the sauce also so I chose Compliments brand because it was the cheapest lol 😛

2015-05-21 19.10.15

Side view

Side view

It didn’t plate well, at least the first piece didn’t…

2015-05-21 19.32.20

The first piece basically became a mooshed all over the place mess, there was definite structural integrity issues. sigh. I figured every piece would be like that but when I was putting the left overs in tupperware it held together a lot better so maybe the mess you see above is just a casualty of being the first piece taken out of the dish?

Like I said, it didn’t taste as good as when my friend made it, I’m not sure what I did wrong…maybe I missed some seasoning or something…I know I didn’t use as much cheese and sauce as her, she just sorta put it on until it looked right whereas I measured everything so I knew exactly how good/bad the end result would be calorie wise lol

Even though it wasn’t as good as KL’s version it was still good, all those veggies, how could it not be? 😉 I’m pretty certain you could use any combo of veggies you like, personalize it to your taste buds. 🙂 It took almost 40 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees. That’s one of the things I would change next time, I’d cook it at 350 instead because some of the noodles got really burnt, and I don’t mean burnt but still tasty, I’m talking burnt so they are so hard it hurt my teeth when I bit down. Not cool.

Despite some issues that stop the lasagna from being as good as it could be I am happy with it. It made 8 portions which is great because I froze some and put the rest in the fridge, I plan on using it as meals for when I am at work over the next 4 days, yay for pre-cooked meals! 🙂

Oh, and in case you are following the Weight Watchers Points Plus program, one serving is 5 points.

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The Sweat of a Mushroom

7 May

Have you ever wondered why, when buying mushrooms, you put them in a brown paper bag instead of a plastic bag like all the other produce? I haven’t, shrug.

mushrooms

When I was a child and would tag along with my mom as she went grocery shopping I noticed that mushrooms went in the the mini brown paper bag, and I thought it was fun (yeah, weird, I know), but I never wondered why. It was just the way it was done.

As an adult, when I grocery shop, I automatically put mushrooms in the supplied brown paper bags and never question why I do it, it is just how things are done.

Normally I question everything so when I realized I had never questioned this it got me wondering why I never wondered about it, and would I have ever wondered about it if my grocery store hadn’t run out of those mini brown paper bags, thereby forcing me to either buy the over priced pre-sliced mushrooms or buy the non-sliced mushrooms and put them in a plastic bag?

Oh the oh-so-deep places my brain goes… 😉 (sarcasm people, that’s sarcasm!)

Last week I bought mushrooms and put them in a plastic bag because that is all the store had, I vaguely wondered if this was going to affect the mushrooms but once I put them away in my kitchen I didn’t think about them again. Go figure that mushrooms don’t hold a huge section of my brain’s thoughts. 😉

I discovered why we don’t put mushrooms in plastic bags and ew, it was not pretty!

Mushrooms sweat.

I thought about saying they cry, since that seems less gross, but nope, with the amount of liquid on those suckers it just has to be called sweat. Icky, gross, dripping sweat.

Why was I never told this??

I innocently pulled a mushroom out of the bag and was all “what the hell, why is it wet?” I washed it, then peeled the top layer off of it, sliced it and threw it in the frying pan and when it was mooshed in with the other ingredients I was eating that meal I didn’t notice it all that much.

My lesson from this was that it may be gross but it can be washed and salvaged.

However, the next day I went and grabbed another mushroom and it was even wetter, ugh. I washed it, and peeled it and well, there’s no nice way to say this, it had died a tragic, liquidy death, it just couldn’t be salvaged. It was gone.

Well ok, not gone gone since it was in my hand, but gone as in it wasn’t going to fulfill it’s life purpose which was to be eaten and provide nutrients to someone’s body.

I couldn’t even slice that thing, it just fell apart in my hand.

So my new lesson was: Don’t ever put mushrooms in a plastic bag, you will regret it!

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A Delayed Dinner

29 Apr

You know when you wait too long to eat and you are no longer hungry but you know you have to eat? Yeah, sigh, that was me this evening.

I went for a nice long walk (4.94 miles or 7.95 km) and when I got home I decided instead of showering, doing my hair, picking out a semi-decent outfit and running out to take care of a quick errand I’d just go in my workout clothes, that way I could keep my baseball cap on and since it had been raining while I’d been outside I just looked damp, not sweaty. Well, after the errand I got back to my place, showered, got in to comfy clothes, threw a load of clothes in the wash and realized I had missed my “hungry time” and was no longer wanting any food. I was super tired though, which I was attributing to the lack of food in my system. Crap. I hate eating when I don’t feel hungry, ugh.

I figured if I made something yummy it’d waken up my tummy so I popped some salmon in the oven and got to work building a salad to put the salmon on top of. I figure it’s almost May, break out the summer salads! 🙂

Well yeah, my plan failed, lol, I get the meal ready and am staring at it like it is something disgusting instead of something that’ll taste good. Stupid stomach. Obviously I ate it, I knew my body needed the fuel but there was not as much enjoyment out of the meal as there should have been. Also, by the time I was done eating I felt so overly full, even though it was a normal sized salad, that I sat on my living room chair and actually groaned. Groaned! From too much food, that is so not my style lol 😛

I found some snap peas in the grocery store the other day that are a “complete kit”, it is already washed snap peas with a little package of peanut sauce and a second little package of sesame seeds. According to the instructions on the bag you can either eat the snap peas hot or cold, well, duh lol. I opted to heat up the snap peas and use some of them as topping on the salad, the rest I put in the fridge and will eat tomorrow.

I bought them cause they were on sale lol

I bought them cause they were on sale lol

Second from the top layer of the salad

Second from the top layer of the salad

Underneath the snap peas there was half an avocado (sliced), yellow pepper (diced), mixed raw veggies (corn, carrot and beans), pumpkin seeds, and mixed greens. Everything except the snap peas and avocado had been mixed with a small amount of light ranch dressing. The snap peas had the peanut sauce and sesame seeds on them and then for the final touch I put the salmon on top.

The final product!

The final product!

I know the salmon looks a little suspect but I promise it tasted good! It is from M&M Meat Shops, you can buy these great salmon steaks individually packaged and they come with a variety of sauces, this one was herb & garlic. The reason the salmon is cut in half is because when I took it out of the oven at the 17 minute mark, when the packaging said it would be done, it was so obviously not cooked that I cut it in half and put it back in the oven. I am always paranoid about not cooking my meat or seafood properly and giving myself food poisoning so I’d rather cut something in half so I can be sure it is cooked and risk my meal not looking pretty if it means I can feel safe putting the food in my mouth lol 😛

Despite the random combination of flavours (the fish being herb & garlic, the snap peas being coated in peanut sauce and the rest of the salad being tossed in a small amount of ranch dressing) everything gelled quite nicely and tasted good. 🙂 …trust me, I wouldn’t have shown it to you if it didn’t lol

I was shocked at how filling it was, I mean c’mon, it is salad! *rolls eyes* but there ya have it, the salad that made me groan because I was so full after eating it. I didn’t even have room for dessert, and that’s just crazy talk! 😉

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A Green Smoothie Challenge

17 Apr

Last week a friend of mine suggested we try a green smoothie challenge she found online. You can sign up for free, every week you get sent an email with 5 new green smoothie recipes and a shopping list. The smoothies aren’t meant to be meal replacements, although you can add things to them to make them more substantial if you want them to be. The smoothies aren’t meant to be part of a cleanse or weight loss gimmick or anything like that. The point of the smoothie is to get more veggies and fruit in to your body in a healthy and tasty way.

I like 30 day challenges, I don’t know why but I do lol 🙂 I especially like 30 day challenges that don’t cost me money so I signed up!

We came in to the challenge late so we won’t get all the recipes which initially I thought was too bad; since I’ve received two weeks of recipes I don’t feel so bad about this anymore.

These smoothie recipes are not all that great. Between the two of us we’ve tried 4 recipes (I think) and none of them have impressed us. For liquid they use a lot of water, or coconut water, which means the smoothie turns out liquidy not thick, plus, some of the ingredient combos result in really bland smoothies. It’s not like I was expecting the most amazing tasting smoothies in the world or anything but I’ve come up with better tasting smoothies on my own which is fairly pathetic when you think about my lack of ability in the kitchen lol 😛

One thing most of the recipes have in common is the ratio of fruit to veggie to liquid. Most of the recipes favour a 3:2:2 ratio. For example, one of the recipes has:

2 cups fresh spinach

2 cups water

2 cups cherries, pitted

1 banana

Now just swap out the spinach for kale and the cherries for a different fruit and you’ve basically got another of their recipes. In case the ratio thing isn’t clear, there are 3 cups fruit, 2 cups veggie, 2 cups liquid…yes I am counting the banana as a cup because it makes my life easier to do so lol

So yeah, it’s not going great in the enjoyment-of-smoothie part of the challenge but it is going great in the I’ve-had-a-smoothie-every-day-since-we-started part of the challenge.

Both of us have decided to not follow the supplied recipes any longer. We got our second week of recipes on Thursday and ugh, they do not look good. One thing I learned from one of the recipes I tried from the first batch of recipes we received was I very much do not like oranges in my smoothies. I hate pulp. Pulp is oh so gross. The recipe had 2 oranges in it. I didn’t think much of it, figured the blender would smooth out the pulp but nope, it didn’t. With every mouthful of smoothie I was pulling pulp out of my mouth, ugh, how do people stand that stuff?? Blech! The only ok part with that smoothie was it used almond milk so it wasn’t as liquidy as some of the other recipes. Pulp combined with a runny smoothie might have been too much to handle *shakes head*. 😉

Something I do like about the recipes are the size. They purposefully make the recipes large enough you are making two servings of smoothie. On the website they say they do that so you can “share the smoothie love”, basically they are trying to get you to convert other people to the way of the smoothie but if you want you can just put one portion in an air tight container and store it in the fridge for the next day, which is exactly what I have been doing. So far I am loving that part most of all! Two smoothies out of one smoothie making session, nothing a lazy person likes better than a two for one lol

Of the recipes I have tried I have yet to see an actual green smoothie. I followed the recipes as they are written and this is the colour of my first green smoothie…

2015-04-13 19.07.46

2015-04-13 19.07.39

In case you can’t tell on your monitor the smoothie is purple. Purple! Not green. It has 2 cups of kale in it which you can’t tell from looking at it. It also has 2 oranges, one cup of blueberries, 2 bananas and 1 cup almond milk. It has a sickeningly sweet taste to it due to the oranges (I think) and lots of pulp. Never again will this smoothie be made by me, nuh-uh.

I am going to stick with the challenge, just tweak it a bit so it isn’t disgusting lol. I will use the same ratio of fruit to veggie to liquid but I will use combinations of fruit and veggie and liquid that I choose, not some random recipe some person I’ve never met says is good.

I’m treating the smoothies like the meals I have been trying to make, following guidelines that have been explained to me so I know what I am making is healthy but experimenting with flavours so I find enjoyment in what I create and eat. Hopefully it works! 🙂

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Two Meals One Kitchen Session

16 Apr

Last week I bought some pulled chicken. Now, a chef friend of mine says there is no such thing as “pulled chicken” but like I am going to argue with the packaging? Pfft, don’t think so! The first meal I made with it I kept the chicken chilled and unsauced (yes, I know that isn’t actually a word lol) but I thought I’d try to be a tad creative with it and so my second meal went something like this…

I put some of the chicken in a frying pan with BBQ sauce on a low heat to warm up the chicken, making sure to stir it around a lot so each piece was evenly coated. In a second frying pan I heated up some frozen veggies, the ones I used are from a huge bag I bought at Costco and are “stir fry veggies”, so mostly a combo of broccoli, carrots, snap peas, water chestnuts, baby corn and some other stuff I can’t recall at the moment. While the chicken was warming and the veggies were cooking I threw a couple handfuls of stir fry noodles in to boiling water and let them cook for 2 minutes. Once all three items were properly cooked I loaded them in to a wrap along with mixed greens, chilli sauce, diced cucumbers, diced yellow pepper, sliced mushrooms, a slice of marble cheese that I tore in to small pieces and half a sliced avocado.

The result looked like this…

with the avocado...

with the avocado…

without the avocado...

without the avocado…

I figured I’d show you a picture without the avocado because you get a better view of everything else, once I put the avocado on a lot of the veggies and chicken are hidden.

I then fought valiantly to get the wrap closed and succeeded only because I had toothpicks lol 😛

took forever to close!

took forever to close!

I purposefully cooked a little extra of everything, mixed it all together, added a little extra chicken and mooshed it in to a tupperware container then threw it in the fridge. Originally I was intending to save it for the next day and make a second wrap but mild inspiration struck and I thought of something else to do with the leftovers.

I took a medium sized tupperware container, filled it with mixed greens, tossed in diced cucumber and diced yellow pepper, Then I grabbed a little container and put in some sunflower seeds, sliced almonds and dried cranberries. When I went to work the next day I took all three containers and when I had my dinner I created this wonderful looking meal…

My salad of leftovers

My salad of leftovers

Okay, granted, it doesn’t look all that great in the picture but I swear in person it looked delish aaaaand it tasted delish, bonus!. 🙂 As you can see, I put some ranch dressing on the salad. Normally if I use dressing I put it on the side and dip every second or third forkful in to the dressing but I opted for putting it on top this time to make my life easier. I don’t really get a break on my evening shift so eating becomes a speed event and taking the time to dip every second or third forkful in to the dressing is just awkward…especially since I’m not only eating super fast but usually standing, shrug.

I was really happy with how the wrap and the salad turned out. Not only did I only have to cook one time to make two meals, both meals tasted good, were different enough I didn’t feel I was eating leftovers and filled me up. Also, I think both meals can be counted as healthy, maybe? I’m never really sure but I think I followed the guidelines set out for me, there is protein, veggies and well, ok the one meal didn’t have any whole grains/wheat (the salad), but the wrap did soooo I’m gonna say I did ok. 🙂

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Some Food

9 Apr

I’ve been working on putting together actual meals and not relying on spoonfuls of peanut butter for my main source of food, lol, I laugh but I’m not really kidding…

Anyways!

I’ve been cooking, and had a decent amount of success, success in the form of I have not gotten food poisoning and I’ve liked everything I’ve been eating, so yay! 🙂

Tuesday's Breakfast/Lunch

Tuesday’s Breakfast/Lunch

The above was my breakfast/lunch from Tuesday. On my days off I almost always combine those two meals cause ya know, I’m lazy, and I’m usually not up till noon-ish and well, why not? shrug.

So I made a two egg omelette and stuffed that sucker till it was hard to fold lol I put diced yellow pepper, mixed greens, a slice of marble cheese, turkey, and some diced avocado. On the side I had some baked beans in tomato sauce. Oh, and I had some toast as well. All in all a large, slightly too large, but yummy meal. 🙂

The mixed greens I used are these…

my mixed greens

my mixed greens: kale, chard and spinach

First off, no I didn’t buy them because they are organic, I bought them because they were on sale and therefore the cheapest option lol I have no idea how to tell kale and chard apart so when I randomly pull pieces from the container to add to dishes I don’t know what I’m picking, this means I tend to attempt to get an equal number of the various looking green leaves so I get the same amount of everything…being that I’m not completely inept in the kitchen I actually know what spinach looks like, so at least I know when I’m picking that one lol 😛

On Tuesdays I have dragon boat practice in the evening, after practice I had to stop to pick up some milk and bread and somehow that simple two item grocery trip turned in to a two bag trip, how does that even happen? *rolls eyes* While I was in the store I decided I wanted to make a burger for dinner, now, I already had the burger patty but no buns cause usually I just cook the patty, put some cheese on it, and eat it with a knife and fork. It’s not at satisfying but it is healthier so I suffer the horrors of a naked burger patty, or rather the burger patty suffers that horrible fate. Well, that evening I decided I’d buy a bun and make it a “real burger”. Once I picked the bun I figured I should go all out so I bought a couple other things to slap on to my creation, nothing crazy, just normal yummy burger toppings that I didn’t have.

In the end I had this lovely dinner…

My oh so lovely burger

My oh so lovely burger from Tuesday night

Ok, granted it doesn’t look like much but its whats inside that counts! There is the standard ketchup and mustard, I also added a smoked chilli deli sauce for a little kick, a slice of havarti cheese with jalapenos in it (fyi, I looooove that cheese lol), there was also sauteed mushrooms, the mixed greens again and thinly sliced tomato. On the side, as you can see, was sauteed yellow pepper and asparagus. The asparagus is cut up because I was using a small pan and it fit better that way lol

It was a messy, tasty, hit-the-spot, kind of meal. 🙂

And bonus, I cooked beef and didn’t kill myself! booya! 😉

The smoked chilli deli sauce I used is this…

The smoked chilli deli sauce from Weight Watchers, one of my faves!

The smoked chilli deli sauce from Weight Watchers, one of my faves!

It is from Weight Watchers and is da bomb! I put it on so many different things, its delish! 🙂 The only downside is I can’t buy it in Canada, laaaame! But lucky for me I have awesome cousins in England and they send me some when I run out and I beg and pester them. 😉

Then Wednesday for my combo breakfast/lunch I made a tortilla wrap. I found something new at Safeway the night prior, pulled chicken, I think its one of their rotisserie chickens that they shredded, least, it was in that area. So in the wrap I put 1 tablespoon of light ranch dressing, cheese, diced yellow pepper, sliced mushrooms, mixed greens, diced avocado, salsa and the chicken. I toyed with the idea of warming up the chicken but decided against it, mostly out of laziness.

2015-04-08 14.19.12

2015-04-08 14.20.50Some helpful tips from me to you:

(1) When I buy a pepper, the first time I pull it out of the fridge to use I dice 1/4 of it and store it in the fridge, the rest I slice in to large pieces, remove the seeds and store that in a separate container in the fridge. That way when I’m putting something together if I think “oh pepper might be nice in this” it is easy to grab and add to whatever I’m making.

(2) I like putting the dressing, in the above case it was ranch, on the wrap first unlike how restaurants like to put it on last, this way I use less and I’m guaranteed to have the flavour in every bite.

Dinner on Wednesday I heated up a delicious soup from Campbell’s called Tomato Basil Bisque, it is part of their “Everyday Gourmet” product line and I love it. 🙂

Mmm Mmm Good!

Mmm Mmm Good!

With it I had two dinner buns, I know, I know! I’m not supposed to be eating white foods but I am a sucker for these dinner buns and they go great with soup and well, I’ll never cut them out completely so there! 😛

But instead of just slathering the buns with margarine I took one of the dinner buns, put some miracle whip, some mustard (both in super small amounts!), mixed greens (starting to see a trend with those mixed greens? lol), a small amount of cheese and some sliced turkey. Basically, I made a dinner bun sandwich to go with my soup.

Wednesday's Dinner

Wednesday’s Dinner

Ok, yes, there is a second bun on that plate that is not a healthy mini sandwich but is instead meant to be eaten as is but let’s not dwell on that..instead, dwell on the rest of the meal! lol

So there we have it, my food from the past couple of days, all tasty, all made by me, all eaten with no side effects…other than making my tummy full that is lol 😉 None of it is hard to make and I tried my best to get a combination of protein, veg or fruit and whole grains in every meal, it doesn’t always happen (like the white bun incident) but for the most part I think I did ok and hey, I’ll keep working at it and I’ll get better, just gimme some time! 🙂

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Changing How I Eat

27 Mar

I’ve been talking with this nutritionist to get help with my eating, I don’t have the best eating habits and I thought getting some professional help might, well, help. 😛

She’s been really good about teaching me how to make small changes that are sustainable instead of giving me a list of drastic changes I should make that I’d never be able to keep up with. Baby steps people!

One of the things she wants me working on is eating small meals every three hours. That was one of the things I was trying to do this past week and lemme tell ya, it takes a huge effort! I don’t like eating that often, or eating that much over the course of a day but I had promised myself I would try so I started trying to eat something every three hours on Sunday, I thought it’d be easier to do on a work day and yay me, I was right lol

It’s not that I have to eat a meal every three hours, I just have to eat something, preferably a combination of protein, fruit or veg and whole grains. Now, eating that combo didn’t happen every three hours but I almost always managed to eat something at the three hour mark. 🙂 Sometimes it was as simple as eating a hard boiled egg, other times it was veggies and hummus, I varied it so I wouldn’t get bored.

Not gonna lie, I was kinda proud of how well I managed on Sunday and Monday but I totally dropped the ball on my days off, sigh. One thing I have managed to do for 3 days in a row is cook an actual meal each day! And not just something I would consider a meal, like a spoonful of peanut butter or some toast but food that I think almost anyone would consider a meal. Go me go! lol

The meals weren’t always the healthiest but they were better than things I have made in the past. I tried to make sure I had that combination the nutritionist had been talking about and I was trying to do this other thing she taught me which is building your meal. The idea is you take the dish you were already going to make and build on to it so it is healthier and more filling and provides more of the nutrients you need in a day. For example, I made a grilled cheese sandwich one day and to build on the meal I also prepped some raw veggies and got some hummus so I ate not just the sandwich but also carrots, baby tomatoes and hummus (the hummus was for the protein). Make sense?

Wednesday I made a dish I don’t have a name for lol it had noodles, asparagus, orange pepper, beefless tips (don’t judge, they are delish!) with a spicy thai sauce. It looked like this…

2015-03-25 18.57.43The beefless tips look burned but they actually weren’t and yeah I know, it doesn’t look that impressive in general but hey, this is me, baby steps! It has veggie, protein and well, not whole grains but a carb type thing so I think it follows the rules I am trying to learn. And sure, maybe I shouldn’t have added a sauce but it needed something to give it some flavour, I may be trying to eat healthy but I’m not trying to piss off my taste buds by depriving them lol

Tuesday I made chicken fingers and veggies which yes I am well aware chicken fingers are not healthy cause they are breaded but they were in my freezer and the meal I made was a better option than the peanut butter and nutella sandwich I was contemplating. 😛

Tuesdays dinner

Tuesdays dinner

To make up for eating chicken fingers I made a super healthy dessert of Greek Yogurt with sliced banana in it and a side of some sliced up mango. Only problem was I didn’t get to eat the yogurt and banana because it turned out the yogurt had gone bad, something I discovered with my first spoonful, blech. Least the mango was good! 🙂

Healthy dessert

Healthy dessert

The dinner I made on Monday wasn’t from scratch, though I suppose neither are chicken fingers lol I made a stir fry but it is a ready made one that is frozen so all I have to do is warm it up, takes a whopping 18 minutes when cooked on the stove top, something even I can manage lol

Mondays dinner

Mondays dinner

So yeah, I am trying to take what the nutritionist is teaching me and incorporate it in to my daily eating habits. It doesn’t always work but at least I have a bit more structure to my eating. Like today for instance, I had oatmeal for breakfast, well, lunch, umm…late lunch I guess, I ate around 3:30pm so I knew that I should eat again around 6:30pm. Knowing I would be eating again at 6:30pm helped stop me from nibbling on food around 5pm when I was feeling like having a nibble, structure can be your friend! 🙂 Course, you can’t always eat every three hours, life gets in the way, and that messes me up cause if I miss the three hour mark then I feel like I’ve screwed up and that doesn’t feel good at all, sigh. But I’ll get better the longer I try! 🙂

 

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