Tag Archives: fat

Soup and Yoghurt

7 Aug

I figured since I bought all that soup and yoghurt yesterday when in the States I might as well start eating it! 🙂

Today I chose the Progresso Light Zesty Santa Fe Style Chicken soup, it is 2 Weight Watchers Plus Points per serving (which is 1 cup) and there are 2 servings in a can.

Santa Fe Style Chicken

Zesty Santa Fe Style Chicken

Here is a close up of it…

2015-08-07 12.57.29

It is not a pretty looking soup, the broth is kind of a sludge type colour, not appetizing looking in person at all. The chicken pieces were nicely sized, I’d go as far as to call them chunks or cubes of chicken rather than pieces buuuuut the chicken was dry and chewy, sigh. There was one cube of chicken that was soft and tender and it was such an oddity compared to the other pieces I actually wondered what went wrong with that particular piece of chicken lol The rice, veggies and beans were excellent, Mmm! The first spoonful was a tad spicy but I like spicy food so I quickly adjusted and was fine with it.

For an overall review I would not recommend this soup, mostly because of the chicken being so dry and chewy. I feel that if a company is going to put meat of any form in to a can of soup they should make sure the meat is tender and tasty. Just sayin.

For the yoghurt I enjoyed a Yoplait Cherry Yoghurt that apparently has 25% Less Sugar.

Cherry!

Cherry!

It is 4 Weight Watchers Plus Points which seems a tad high considering it is just a yoghurt cup, shrug, but it did taste good! There were actual pieces of cherries in there which is always nice. 🙂

So far I am batting 50/50, one yah and one nay, and that’s alright, I mean I can’t expect everything I choose to taste good lol I expect most of the yoghurts to taste good but the soup is a total guessing game, shrug.

I’m picking randomly which soup and which yoghurt to eat so who knows which ones I’ll write about next! 😛

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Big Boned

10 Jul

Here is a conversation that happened this evening at work:

Him: Yeah, I’m from around here, well, now I live in Sechelt but I grew up in this area, went to such-n-such school, blah blah blah

Me: Oh, hmm, that’s nice.

Him: So are you from this area? Where did you go to school?

Me: No, I moved here from Edmonton.

Him: Oooooh! An Albertan girl! I could tell you are from Alberta because you’re so big boned. Yup, a big boned girl from Alberta.

Me: *stares in shock* What?

Lady who over heard convo: You should stomp on his foot, while wearing heels.

you said what

I excuse myself from the situation and go do something else. He follows about 5 minutes later and laughingly apologizes, but the kind of apology that means diddly squat because you know he doesn’t actually mean it, he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and while pretending to apologize he infringes on my personal space by trying to put his arm around me and be all chummy.

What. The. Hell?!?!?!

youre mean

I’d like to say I responded with a scathing remark but I was at work and had to stay professional so I had to appear to shrug it off and go about my business. I’d also like to say I promptly forgot about the insensitive jerky comment and it didn’t bother me but that’d be a big fat lie. It is still bothering me now and it has been hours, not a couple of hours, more like 9 hours. *sigh*.

I know that only I can give permission for other people to affect me but ya know what, what he said affected me and I don’t care if it is me giving him permission to affect me, or low self-esteem, or deeply buried anger because I couldn’t respond, or years of learned responses to how men treat me but whatever it is, it is affecting me, and I don’t like it.

What gives this guy, this guy that I met for the first time this evening the right to not only comment on what I look like but to comment in a negative way? Since when do our social norms allow anybody to do that without some sort of consequence? Oh wait, it’s been ok for, well…as long as I have been alive. *double sigh*

What the hell does “big boned” even mean? Is that another way of saying “fat”? Or is it a specialized way of saying “fat”, is it supposed to be more politically correct? Maybe it is the female version of “husky”, I’ve heard guys described like that, “oh he has a husky build” like he is a breed of dog or something!

I just don’t get it.

The whole situation makes me so angry. Angry that this guy seemed to think what he did was perfectly ok, angry at myself for not responding in a stronger way, angry at men in general because I can only aim so much anger at myself before I have to deflect it elsewhere and well, men in general are an easy target if I pretend they are all like this guy.

Ok, calming down now…

After work I was restless, I wanted to do something to work off my annoyance but on my drive home I found myself a bit teary eyed which is so not like me. That stupid little man had made one comment and it had me questioning all kinds of things about myself, what I look like, how I was dressed, what I ate today, how active I have been, am I bigger than I thought, am I big boned? Even though I don’t really know what big boned is supposed to mean I couldn’t stop wondering if I am that, is that what people see when they look at me, someone big boned? A big boned Albertan girl?

Since I finished work at 9:30pm and there really wasn’t much to do I came home, cuddled with the cat and made the conscious decision to not let how I was feeling affect my eating plan. I am doing Weight Watchers and the last thing I want is for some bump in the road to derail my weight loss. Normally when I am upset I either (1) eat everything! or (2) eat absolutely nothing, even if I am legit hungry. What can I say, I go to extremes. If I didn’t eat anything when I got home I’d be under eating for the day, if I ate the entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream that was calling my name I’d be waaaaay over my food budget for the day so I stuck to the plan, I made a healthy-ish snack, ate my points for the day (that is a Weight Watchers thing, if you count calories it would be like me saying I ate my calories for the day) and well, that was it. I didn’t let my emotions control my eating (or not eating), I didn’t derail my weight loss plan thereby making myself feel even worse about myself because of this comment and I will hopefully wake up tomorrow feeling better about things, cause time is supposed to heal wounds right?

Does time also heal anger because I still want to punch that guy in the face, or put on a pair of pointy heels and stomp on his foot, better yet steel toed boots!

kill you

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Nachos!

16 Jun

I looooove nachos! Haven’t had them in ages though. I generally think of nachos as a great pub food, something you order when you’re out with friends because you can share them. But when you’re actively trying to lose weight eating nachos is not exactly a great idea.

Well, a couple weeks ago I made a dish that used black olives and corn (among other things) and I had left overs of both those items. I immediately thought “oh those would be perfect to put on some nachos” but of course I didn’t have any of the other ingredients needed for nachos, except for salsa because I always have salsa lol

Not wanting to put those leftover items to waste I bought other necessary items to make nachos the following week and voila! Healthy nachos! Well, healthy-ish lol 😉

Before they went in to the oven...

Before they went in to the oven…

Fresh from the oven, Mmm! Melted cheese!

Fresh from the oven, Mmm! Melted cheese!

I had some light sour cream and some salsa in little dishes for dipping but I figured you don’t really need to see pictures of that lol

I can claim they are “healthy-ish” only due to the portion size I made lol

There are 16 chips, I used the Compliments brand bite size rounds. For toppings I used Cheddar & Part Skim Mozzarella cheese (1/3 Cup), black olives, jalapeno and corn. You can use whatever measurements of olives, jalapenos and corn you would like. I used less that 1/4 Cup of corn because that is how much I had, I used 18 black olive slices (again because that is how much I had) and the quantity of cheese used was because I was wary of using too much and making the nachos ridiculously high in Weight Watchers points.

All in all the entire thing (including the sour cream) was 8 Weight Watchers Points Plus points. Which is a lot considering the portion size wasn’t large enough to be a stand alone meal. But meh, I made and ate it on a day I had exercised so I had the extra points available to me and I’d been craving nachos for weeks so I feel the points were well worth it. 🙂

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Hawaiian Turkey Loaf

15 Jun

No. Just…no. This did not turn out well at all! Partly because I made mistakes, partly because the recipe calls for too much ginger and partly because, well, I dunno, it just isn’t good. 😛

I like meatloaf, no, scratch that, I love meatloaf, my mom’s meatloaf anyways. Nobody makes it better! I always intend to try duplicating it but haven’t gotten around to trying. Well, in my hunt for healthy recipes that I can make on Thursdays so I have food to last me through my working days (Fridays through Mondays) I came across a Weight Watchers recipe that looked easy and interesting so I thought I would give it a try.

It is called Hawaiian Turkey Loaf but in reality it is a turkey meatloaf with a pineapple chutney for topping. The original recipe can be found here.

In theory the recipe is an easy one, you make a puree using orange juice, soy sauce, onions, peppers and ginger. You then pour the puree in to a bowl, add ground turkey, bread crumbs and an egg. Once it is all mixed together put it in a loaf pan that you have liberally coated with non-stick spray, toss that sucker in to an oven that has been heated to 350F and about 45 minutes later you have turkey meatloaf. While it is cooking you combine crushed pineapple (and the juice), sugar, vinegar, onions, peppers, ginger and pepper flakes in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 3-5 minutes, add raisins, microwave for a couple more minutes then let stand for a couple minutes. You can use the chutney when it is warm or cold, serving it on the side or on top of your turkey meatloaf.

See how easy all that sounds?

Well…things did not go according to plan when I was cooking that night, sigh.

Thinking how smart I was being I chopped the onion and pepper needed for the puree in advance and left it in the fridge. Well, I didn’t chop the correct amount, somehow I read the 3/4 red pepper as 3 tablespoons red pepper and well yeah, those two quantities are so not the same. Oops!

Then the big screw up! When I was shopping for the ground turkey I was so worried about buying the correct quantity, because once again the recipe is american so it told me I wanted 18 ounces of meat and I was translating that in to kg and trying to find something close. And yeah I know that doesn’t seem too hard but I suck at math and I don’t really care for being surrounded by raw meat so I wanted in and out of the meat section as fast as humanly possible lol Once I’d found the package of ground turkey that was as close to 18 ounces as I could get I tossed it in the cart without double checking the label. Stupid move. It turns out that I bought turkey cutlets, not ground turkey. In my defence it kinda looked the same and it was in the ground turkey section so I just assumed it was what I needed.

So there I am with my puree in a bowl, trying to open a package of raw turkey without touching any turkey liquid or meat and then putting it in to the bowl with the puree only to realize the meat is not ground, it is solid. Aww shit. I tried mixing it up with a spoon, thinking it might break in to pieces. It didn’t. I tried hacking at it with two knives, hoping I could chop it in to small pieces. I couldn’t. So I did the only logical thing I could think of…I poured the entire concoction in to the blender.

FYI, don’t put turkey cutlets in to a blender…

My blender is now dead. 😦

It blended a teeny tiny bit but all of a sudden the blender stopped. Didn’t make any scary warning noises, it just stopped. I think maybe it blew a fuse or something, not an apartment fuse but a fuse inside the blender, if that is possible…is that possible? I now think that is possible…

I was so incredibly mad at this point, mostly at myself since it was my fault but a little bit with the universe cause well, I can only yell at myself so much before I stop listening to myself lol 😛

I took the meat out of the bowl I had poured it back in to, plopped it on to a cutting board and proceeded to cut it up in to itty bitty pieces…I also took this opportunity to remove some ribbons of fat that were running through the meat cause yuch! Once it was as chopped up as I could manage I put it back in the bowl with the puree, mixed, added the egg and oatmeal (I used oatmeal instead of bread crumbs because 1. it is a healthier option, 2. I already owned it and 3. I checked with my mom and she said it would be ok), threw it in to the oven then proceeded to clean and then bleach everything in the kitchen because I was paranoid due to the raw turkey.

I made the chutney according to the recipe, well, almost according to the recipe lol I didn’t add the raisins because I don’t like raisins, shrug, why add something I know I don’t like? Oh and I couldn’t find crushed red pepper flakes so I bought red jalapenos flakes and used that. The chutney was meh, nothing amazing and I won’t make it again cause it made a huuuuge batch that for the most part ended up in the garbage.

This is what it looked like in the end…

2015-06-05 00.09.52

2015-06-05 00.13.18

I’m sure it would have had a better texture if I hadn’t screwed up and bought the cutlets instead of the ground turkey but even if I hadn’t messed that up I still wouldn’t have liked it. There was too much ginger in it and the overall flavour was one that was kind of musky, it was gross.

Despite my not liking it I had to eat it, I can’t afford to throw food out. I tried eating it with light sour cream, ketchup, brown sauce, anything I could think of really. I did discover one thing that made it ok, I put it in a sandwich and disguised the flavour with cheese and pickles and mustard which sounds gross but I really enjoyed lol

So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend this recipe, it didn’t taste good, in my opinion anyways.

If you are following Weight Watchers Points Plus I cut the loaf in to 6 slices, each slice is 4.192 points, so 4 points. At 6 slices per loaf each slice is quite thick so don’t worry that it isn’t filling.

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Eagle Ridge Fitness

12 Feb

Two weeks ago I saw an ad for Eagle Ridge Fitness on my facebook news feed. I don’t know what made me click on it but I did and it led me to a video showing all these normal people who had joined Eagle Ridge Fitness and had lost weight, toned muscle and just in general gotten in better shape using this gym.

eagle ridge fitness

 

I called them, asked some questions, and ended up making an appointment for a one-on-one consultation. It was supposed to be last week but I pushed it to this week because I was still too sick last week to go.

Google Map lied to me, it said it was a 35 minute drive but it was longer, plus Google Map sent me to the wrong address so not only was the drive longer than 35 minutes, it was even longer due to me going to the wrong place. Lovely. *rolls eyes*

I was super late for my appointment, luckily the lady I was meeting was understanding about my getting lost, also lucky for me she didn’t have an appointment directly after mine so there was wiggle room for me to be late.

The place is super small, and it isn’t like a traditional gym. You don’t just drop in whenever you feel like it, you choose two days a week that you go in, and you pick a specific time, so say, every Monday and Wednesday at 7pm, That is your time slot and you are expected to be there, if you don’t show they call you to ask where you were – so you are definitely held accountable! You work out with the same people each time you go so you start to feel like a team (so I was told). The workouts are partially tailored to what your goals are, the classes are kept small, 8 people max per session, and the trainers know in advance of any injuries or medical problems you have so they can take those in to account when devising your workout plan.

The second part of their program is about nutrition. They give you a welcome package when you join that has recipes, a generalized meal plan, information on what you should be eating, in what portion, things like that. They also require you to keep a food journal that they look at every month, that is partly to help keep you accountable to what you are eating and also, if you are eating properly and you don’t lose weight in a month then they know to tweak your program. Sounds like a good idea, it helps you avoid plateauing. The lady I spoke with said it takes a couple of weeks for your personalized meal plan to be made, that is why they give you the generalized plan when you join.

All in all I liked what I was told about this program. I don’t like how far of a drive it is from where I live but I’ve driven farther distances for things less important than my fitness and health so the distance isn’t, in my opinion, a good reason to not join.

A truly excellent reason to not join, and my reason for not joining, is the cost. You can either sign up for a year, for 6 months or month-to-month. If you sign up month-to-month it is approx $300/month, the 6 month contract is two hundred something per month and the year long contract is $191 a month. Talk about out of my price range! I asked why it is so much more expensive than a gym membership and the response was it is combining a nutrition plan and personal trainer in to one program, so instead of a person joining a gym and paying for a Weight Watchers membership (as an example) they just join one program and get both, for less. Um…no. Just no. lol. Least not for me. I have access to Weight Watchers material without paying for a membership, so I’m saving money there, and the cost of my local gym is nowhere near what they are estimating. Sure, I don’t have a personal trainer, and sure I don’t have someone creating a program just for me, and sure this means my results will come slower, and sure I don’t have someone calling me when I skip the gym and getting on my case so that I never skip again, but I also don’t have an extra $200-$300 a month to pay for someone to hold my hand while I try to get in shape.

If I had the money I would probably give them a try, it’s not that I think their approach is all that original or amazing, but I think there are times in your life where you need a nudge, heck, a full on push, to get you on your way. I know I need to exercise more, even if I don’t have an amazing workout plan figured out I should at least be running three times a week and doing some basic muscle work if only to keep active, but I don’t. I also know my eating sucks and trying to figure out how to get that back on track leaves me feeling confused and a little lost, which oddly enough leads me to eating bad food in a weird attempt to make myself feel better…using food for comfort, not a good plan!…and yet, I do it, sigh.

But none of that matters, because I don’t have the money. I had a moment where I thought I could maaaybe afford one month, use that as a kick in my butt to get me in a routine of working out, then take what they taught me and do it on my own, but since you don’t get your personalized meal plan until 2-3 weeks in, and from the sounds of it the first month is sort of a learning curve not only for you but for them knowing what works best for you, in order to get anything out of this place you should really go for longer than a month and that I know I can’t afford. I figure, no point in straining to find the pennies to pay for one month when it takes two or more months to really get results.

So for now I will stick with my outdoor walks, my dragon boat practices and my attempts to get my lazy self to the gym – I may not get results as quickly as I would if I was signed up with Eagle Ridge Fitness but I’m determined to get results, even if it does take me a little longer than I’d like. 🙂

Determination-1

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Sick Girl = Boring Life

11 Feb

I haven’t been writing in a while but only because I haven’t been doing anything interesting lol I highly doubt anybody wants to read about how I was sitting on my arse, reading and watching tv while feeling like crap as I waited for my immune system to kick in and kill the bug that had invaded my body. Right? Right. 🙂

Luckily my cough is aaaaalmost gone and I feel like I can honestly describe myself as being more on the health side of the scale vs the sick side, so yay for that! lol

Unfortunately, when I am sick I completely lose my appetite and eat such a small amount of food that when I start to get healthy I struggle to get back in the groove of eating more normally. I don’t want to eat more food but I’m being more active, not necessarily with exercising but just with normal life stuff like going to work, running errands, meeting up with friends etc so if I don’t start increasing my food I get exhausted from my normal everyday things. The end result of that is me napping on my living room chair lol 😛

My first week after being sick I tend to focus on making sure I eat more than once a day and that I eat balanced meals, not just little snacks. I was doing fairly well with that, because I hadn’t indulged in any sort of sweets etc I wasn’t craving any of them, always nice to not be actively wishing I could eat a doughnut lol Buuuut Sunday was a bit of a disaster that left my poor tummy feeling off all the way until Monday evening, not cool!

We had a brunch at work on Sunday and instead of taking my own lunch I opted to eat the brunch food. I took a little bit of all sorts of foods and I’m sorry to say I caved and nabbed two pancakes and 1/4 of a waffle, sigh, such a weakness for those foods! *rolls eyes* I also ate a poached egg, some tomatoes with seasoning, a shrimp salad, some diced potatoes with fried onions, ummm…for the main course that’s about it. Then I took not one but two desserts! An absolutely lovely lemon meringue tart and a creme brule with blueberries and strawberries on top, Mmm!

I felt fine while eating but about twenty minutes after finishing my lunch my tummy felt, well, not sick, just not impressed. I think it was just too much too soon, for sure with those desserts anyways! Ooops…

So I’ve been trying to backpedal since Sunday and focus on choosing healthier foods and making sure I eat proper portion sizes. I am sorry to say, I haven’t been doing very well, sigh. I was out and about yesterday and had limited food choices for dinner, I ended up eating Taco Time which while tasty, and something I haven’t eaten in a freakishly long time did nothing for my weight loss plan lol Then today I ate some maple flavoured baked beans and toast (which I have no guilt about) but that’s all I’ve eaten, and it’s almost 10pm. Can you say below my calories for the day? Eesh.

I’m hoping tomorrow, instead of going over due to fast food or being under due to not eating I can somehow hit the middle ground and eat a normal amount while getting a bit of exercise in there. Theoretically it is a do-able thing, in reality though…who knows! lol

positive

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Dinner For Breakfast

24 Jan

This is actually about a breakfast I had a couple of days ago, I just didn’t want to publish two posts on one day so I put off publishing it until today lol 😛

Normally on my days off I make a toasted sandwich as my first meal of the day. Since I usually sleep in on my days off my first meal of the day is a combination of breakfast and lunch. The toasted sandwich is one of my favourite things to make and to eat, you can customize it so easily to suit whatever mood you are in and it takes a freakishly short amount of time to make – something that is crucial to me!

One of the main ingredients of my toasted sandwich is turkey bacon, it is imperative that my toasted sandwich have turkey bacon in it cause (1) I need to squeeze in protein wherever I can get it (2) I love how it tastes (3) without it my sandwich would just be egg, cheese and condiments and (4) I like it.

Well yeah, Wednesday I got up, stumbled in to the kitchen and realized I forgot to take the turkey bacon out of the freezer and plunk it in to the fridge on Tuesday so no turkey bacon for me. I know I could have taken a knife to it and hacked some of the turkey bacon off and used that but doing that messes with my sense of order so no, that wasn’t happening lol.

I was at a loss for what to make when I decided I’d have dinner for breakfast. I figure, people treat themselves every now and then and have breakfast for dinner, why can’t I reverse that? Out came some breaded chicken and on a whim I added some yam fries to that and boom! Dinner for breakfast!

2015-01-21 14.02.27

The chicken is a breaded cutlet from M&M Meat Shops, so tasty! The yam fries were something I picked up as a treat when grocery shopping one day, lucky for me they cook in the oven for the same length of time and at the same temperature as the chicken. The yellow stuff is honey mustard sauce. I dipped both the chicken and the yam fries in that lol 😛

Not gonna lie, it was too much food for a first meal, ugh. I felt really gross after eating it, just too full and icky feeling. I guess I am used to the toasted sandwich sized meal I normally have and swapping out was not appreciated by my tummy. I didn’t think it was that big of a meal when I was putting it on the plate but hey, my stomach doesn’t lie about these things so I guess my eyeballs were wrong, oops!

Even though it was too large of a meal it still tasted really good, as I knew it would since I have had it for dinner before lol Sadly, two yam fries committed suicide and jumped off my plate, one on to the floor and one into the sink so they didn’t fulfill their destiny of being eaten and instead were thrown in the garbage, what a waste, sigh. But probably good for my waist line! lol 😉

I definitely like having breakfast for dinner more, mostly because that usually means pancakes and who doesn’t love pancakes? But this was ok…though I made sure I put the turkey bacon in the fridge so I could go back to my toasted sandwich the next day!

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Don’t Skimp On Your Mac & Cheese

12 Jan

A couple of weeks before Christmas I was in a dollar store and on a whim bought macaroni and cheese. Now, normally I am brand loyal when it comes to certain foods and one of those foods is mac & cheese. Strange thing to be loyal to? Perhaps. But hey, why stray from buying Kraft Dinner when you know it tastes so good? But there I was, at the dollar store, hungry, faced with mac & cheese that was going to cost practically nothing and so I decided why not? How bad can it be?

This is what I bought…

Dollar Store Mac & Cheese

Dollar Store Mac & Cheese

I didn’t eat it that night, just stuffed it in the back of a cupboard and forgot about it. Well, tonight I came across it and decided, meh, why not?

Lemme tell ya, there is a reason this mac & cheese is so cheap, it isn’t good. *rolls eyes* lol

KD has that bright, artificial orange colour when all mixed together, this was more a pale yellow which made me suspicious about the flavour of the final product.

Not quite the bright orange I was expecting.

Not quite the bright orange I was expecting.

My suspicions proved to be on the mark when I finally took a bite and realized I was going to be eating mac & cheese that has no cheese flavour and really just tasted like pasta, which is fairly boring. If I had some cheese I suppose I could have melted it and mixed it in but sadly I do not so I was stuck eating it as-is. Blah. 😛

So heed my warning, don’t be tempted by the cheap dollar store mac & cheese, it isn’t worth the saved money lol spend that whole extra fifty cents and get the brand that has actual flavour to it. Or I suppose you could be healthy and just not buy it at all…yeeeeah, that’s probably the better idea, ya know, if you wanna get picky about these things lol 😉

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Stouffer’s Saute Sensations

9 Jan

Last week I came across a sale item at Safeway that I decided to try, it is the Stouffer’s Saute Sensations. I chose the Grilled Chicken Teriyaki and oh man was it tasty!

2015-01-01 16.44.13

 

It was on sale for about $6 and each package gives you two servings, even I can do the math that tells me my meal cost $3 – pretty decent!

The package contains brown rice and a medley of tender vegetables…that is a direct quote from the bag lol

Per serving (so half the bag) is 260 calories, 5g fat, 42g carbs, 3g fibre and 16g protein. So yeah, high in carbs but ok everywhere else, in my opinion anyways. 🙂

It tasted really good and one serving is plenty, I wasn’t left feeling hungry or deprived and it kept me filled up for hours, always nice when that happens. After I cooked it all I split it in half in the pan, put half on my plate and let the other half cool before putting it in a container to take to work the next day for my dinner. It heated up nicely in the microwave, the chicken didn’t dry out and the veggies weren’t overly droopy. Oh and the veggies kept their bright colour, which never happens when I make a stir-fry type dish from scratch…what’s with that?

It looked so good it impressed the people at work and one of the guys now thinks I am a good cook lol Since technically nobody asked me if I cooked it I wasn’t lying when I let it be implied I did in fact cook my meal and didn’t just pour it from a bag and heat it up lol

When I ate it at home I added half a diced avocado to the top, not because I thought the dish wouldn’t taste good on it’s own but because my avocado was at the stage of “eat me now or by tomorrow I will be brown and useless”, I don’t care to be threatened by avocados but whatcha gonna do? They always win!

a yummy and healthy dinner

a yummy and healthy dinner

I tried to push the avocado to the side so you could see the food from the bag unimpeded.

All in all I was really impressed with the meal. I don’t know what it’s regular price is so I can’t say if I would buy it all the time, but on sale it was definitely worth it! Something to keep an eye out for. 🙂

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Trying Out Green Smoothies

8 Jan

As I said in the post before this one I have decided to try the whole green smoothie craze. Though, I don’t know if it counts as a craze per say…how does one decide that?

Anyways! I started joining this bandwagon by doing a lot of googling, it netted me some useful information but also a lot of contradicting information.

The highlights that stuck in my head are:

-use fruit to hide the taste of the veggies

– use kale, because apparently it isn’t a “real” green smoothie if there isn’t kale in there

– remember it is a meal, so don’t eat all your meals aaaand drink the smoothie cause that’ll be too many calories in a day

– add the green stuff gradually so you have time to get used to it

Seems pretty easy, right?

I decided to make my regular protein shake and add green veggies to it since the recipes I was reading for green smoothies seemed vaguely similar, shrug. There are probably some green smoothie purist out there who will shudder when they read what was in my green smoothies but oh well, I’m the one who had to drink it and I wanted to make sure it tasted ok lol

This is day two of my green smoothie kick and the first consistent thing I noticed right off that bat is…my green smoothie isn’t green…

reddish. not green. there is no green colour there...

reddish. not green. there is no green colour there…

In real life the smoothie in the above picture looked more red than the brown it looks in the picture, due to the raspberries.

My smoothie today had:

1 scoop protein powder

1 tsp omega 3 oil

1 banana

1 cup of frozen fruit (today was mango and raspberry)

1/2 cup greek unsweetened yogurt

1 cup almond milk, unsweetened

broccoli, some sliced carrots and a mixture of baby greens that included kale and spinach

These are the baby greens I bought for the smoothies:

2015-01-07 18.42.57

No, I did not jump on to the organic bandwagon also, all the packages of kale I could find were organic, so I bought the cheapest, it was just coincidence it had the cutest name lol

According to the label it is a “nutritious salad mix of baby kale, baby spinach and other baby greens.”

Yesterdays smoothie was better, I had only added the mixed greens, not the broccoli and carrots so it was not as thick. If I’m going to add more solid veggies like that again I think I will have to add a bit more liquid, or some ice, to help thin it out.

It wasn’t a bad drink today, it was just, not as good lol Towards the end I could feel the broccoli, the bush type part of the broccoli, in my mouth, I guess when I poured the smoothie that part sunk a bit so I got it all towards the end of the drink. Which again, didn’t make it bad, it’s just not the consistency I am used to when drinking a shake…er…smoothie. The fruit taste wasn’t as strong today, I guess the ratio of veggie to fruit was too close for the fruit to stand out flavour wise, I don’t really want to add more fruit to the smoothie though because of the naturally high sugar content fruit tends to have buuuuut I want to make sure I am putting enough veggies in there to make it worth my while.

This is becoming a complicated balance to find, especially since I am trying to find it via trial and error lol 😛

The smoothie is definitely a meal though, it fills me right up and I don’t even miss having something to bite in to. Which is something I worried about. I’ve decided to try taking them as my work meal, at least for my evening shifts. They’ll be easier to “eat” at work on that shift since I don’t get an actual break and my ability to eat anything is limited to the desk being quiet enough I can escape for 5 minutes to warm something up and then scarf it down from an office that has the door open so I can be summoned at a moments notice either by phone or by someone coming to the desk. This way I can just sip on the smoothie as I sit at the desk and not worry about it. 🙂

I don’t know if swapping out a meal that may or may not have been healthy for a shake that may or may not be healthy (I haven’t calculated calories or fat or anything yet) will aid in my weight loss, but I know I felt better after drinking them. Not better as in I all of a sudden felt energized and could feel the kale doing wonderous things to my body but better as in there is no guilt associated with drinking a smoothie. I know all the ingredients in it, I know they are all healthy, and having it as a meal left me feeling I had made a good choice food wise for myself.

healthy choices

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