Another delicious dinner

Last night, we ate a goooood dinner. It was simple, delicious, light, and flavorful. Oh yeah, it was healthy, too. I took two filets of salmon, with the skin still on, and broiled them, served that alongside a wild rice blend (not Uncle Ben's), and tomatoes fresh from my garden paired up with artisan mozzarella and organic basil. Yummy!


To prepare the salmon, I preheated my broiler for about 15-20 minutes. Of course I'm cooking on Wilma Flinstone's range so yours may not take that long to heat up. I seasoned the salmon with kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper, and a light sprinkling of lemon-pepper seasoning. Then I placed the filets skin side up on a foil-wrapped cookie sheet and placed them under the broiler until the skin started to bubble. Once that happened, I took them out, peeled the skin off and put them back under the broiler for 1-2 minutes and they were cooked perfectly.

While the broiler was heating up though, I cooked the rice in the microwave. THis is by far my most preferred method of cooking rice because I don't have to worry about messing it up on the stove and it is cooked perfectly every time. I had a wild rice blend that included white basmati rice, red rice, and wild rice which I placed in my Pampered Chef steamer along with 1 1/2 cups of fat free beef broth (to 1 cup rice) and about 2 tsps of butter. That took about 20 minutes to cook.

When those things were both done, I took the last couple of minutes before plating the meal to prepare the tomato-mozzarella dish. I had two beautiful tomatoes from my patio garden and after slicing them and the artisan mozzarella, I layered them with torn leaves of organic basil. Then I drizzled a TINY bit of olive oil and some balsamic vinaigrette on top and Voila!!

Dinner was served. It was really, really, good, didn't make a big mess in the kitchen, and was so easy to do. My goal is going to be to try and find a way to make all my dinners like this. I love to eat but I hate slaving in the kitchen!!

After dinner, we went to Baskin Robbins where I had one scoop of my all-time favorite flavor, Pralines-n-Cream. It is freaking DELICIOUS. Forget Cold-Stone Creamery, just give me a sugar cone topped with a scoop of Pralines and Cream and we'll be friends forever.

This week, I'm planning on making a peach pie from scratch so stay tuned and see how that works out.

Dinner was Good!

Last night I had leftovers for dinner and, really, I'm not such a big fan of leftovers. Well except that it means less work for me in the kitchen. I ate the leftover chicken and capers from Tuesday night (in spite of the coconut taste) and paired it with some steamed green beans and a small serving of smashed red potatoes.

It was actually pretty good the second time around. I still struggled with the sweetness imparted by the coconut oil but the capers helped get beyond that. I've gone back to using my smaller plate and find it to be a very useful tool in determining the proper portion size. I did find that yesterday I felt pretty hungry during the day. Not sure if that's due to an increase in activity or what but I've been busting my ass trying to get this house clean. You all know I'm not neat and cleaning house is a major struggle for me but I'm tired of looking around and being surrounded by cluttery shit.

Don't know if I mentioned this or not but this year, I decided to try my hand at gardening and here are the first fruits of my labor. Homegrown tomatoes!

Of course, they're not really that color, I was just trying to get artsy with the photo. They still need to ripen on the counter for a couple more days and then I think they'll be good and ready! Funny thing is I'm not a huge tomato fan but we'll see if homegrown tomatoes taste better to me.

And just because I've been holding out on the photo front, here are some gratuitous shots from our trip to PA. First is the view of Philly looking over the Delaware River from NJ.

I was actually pretty pleased with how this turned out and think it might look good blown up and on the wall.
Now this photo is of some pears on a tree in my SIL's yard. I'm so jealous that she has fruit trees!

I don't even like pears but I love the color of those!

This weekend I'm going to be spending time looking for some good, simple recipes that don't use a ton of ingredients in an attempt to plan my menu for the week. Sean won't be around for dinner most of the week so I may have my big meal for lunch. For some reason, it just seems easier to me to cook a big meal during the day instead of in the evening. Are there any recipes you can suggest or any websites you particularly enjoy? I'd love to hear!!

What's Up, Party people?

I'm back and SUB 200lbs! Yeah baby!!! I'm 199.5 but it's below 200 so that's all I care about for now. Thank goodness I nearly starved to death on our trip so I could break that 200lb barrier. LOL You know that's not true....

Yesterday, I started an exercise routine although it wasn't the one I originally intended. See, we have an elliptical trainer, a treadmill, and a Sears version of the bowflex and we use none of them. But my husband won't let them go because, I guess it's kind of like women and their skinny clothes. One day, you might be able to use them again. Yesterday was that day for me. My intentions were to get on the treadmill for 30 mins and ease back into a routine but the stupid thing wouldn't work so I had to get on the elliptial trainer instead. Man, I frickin' hate that thing. It's really, really, hard for me to use for two reasons. One because it's just tough. Two because it's missing the plastic pads that your feet rest on so I spent the 7 minutes on it trying to keep from falling off and getting injured. I think today I'm going to check out my extensive library of exercise DVD's and do something aerobic that way. It's less likely to maim me.

Eats-wise, things have been going pretty well. I made chicken last night which I sauteed in coconut oil which is supposed to be the "new healthy" oil. I'm not a big fan because in spite of reading that it doesn't give off a funny flavor, it really does. I'm going to stick with olive oil, thank you very much. I also made creamed corn which was delicious. Have you ever made that? It's so easy! Here's what I did.

3 ears of corn
1 TBS butter
milk
cornstarch

Take a knife and cut the kernels from the corn into a bowl, reserving all of the milk given off of the cob. Also, be sure to scrape the cob down really well to get as much milk as you can off the ear. My corn was a little too old for this which is why I had to use milk and cornstarch. Over medium heat, add 1TBS butter to a pan and melt it, then add the corn kernels and corn milk. Remember, if your corn gave off a lot of milk you may not need the cornstarch. You want to cook it over a medium-low heat until it starts to thicken up. If it doesn't do this, then make a slurry of 2 tsps of cornstarch and 3/4 cup cold milk and add to the corn. Add salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste and cook for a total of 20-30 minutes. It's really delicious when you use very fresh corn.

I steamed some broccoli and served it along with the chicken and corn. Tasty!

Right now, I'm following the WW points program but as soon as my 3 months are up, I'm not going to continue using it. If I keep this as my journal, then I don't see the need to continue paying for WW's. I KNOW how to eat right, it's just a matter of actually doing it.

I know I haven't posted any photos of food yet and I'm sorry about that. These blog posts are like dry bread without photos so I will try and fix that this week. I've just been lazy about it, frankly.

Well, I hope you had a wonderful 4th holiday!! I got my hot dog on and that's always an important part of the 4th for me. :) Stay tuned because this week, I'm going to try and make green bean casserole from scratch without using flour. Woo Hoo!!

Heading Out!

We're heading out for PA, baby! We'll be back on Sunday so I will get back to posting again on Monday.

Have a great 4th of July holiday!!!

Within POints but eating crap

I don't think the WW points system intended people like me to eat their day's points value in fun-size Baby Ruths. Call me crazy but, I'm thinking they meant for us to eat healthful things like fruits, veggies, and the like. Yesterday began with a container of Stonyfield Whole Milk Strawberry yogurt. Freaking delicious. I just can't eat the low-fat stuff. It tastes like ass. Not that I would actually have any idea what that is like...Moving on. For lunch, I had three ham roll-ups which is basically a slice of ham, a tsp of mayo all rolled up in a lettuce leaf because I'm still avoiding gluten. It was quite good although I think iceberg is a better rolling lettuce than say, romaine. Just my personal opinion on that one. That afternoon, I ate 3 fun-size Baby Ruth's and had 2 Cokes!!! People, I had gone for YEARS without buying Coke at the store but for some reason, this week, I bought them and drank two yesterday. Sheesh!!

Okay y'all. Here is the topper. For dinner we had MCDonalds because I was too lazy to get in the kitchen and cook anything. I pulled myself back a bit and didn't order my usual super-huge ass busting Filet'oFish combo and instead ordered a regular Cheeseburger and small fries. Yes, I know I ate gluten by eating a burger. Amazingly, it didn't bother me so now, I'm thinking I'm just plain crazy. And big. And that's why I feel yucky, because I'm a crazy, big, hypochondriac. Anyway, I only went over my daily points by 1. can you believe that??? Insanity.

This morning, I got on the scale and I'm at an even 200 lbs. It's kind of sad but I was happy to see it on the scale. A few months ago, I was 192. Throw in a hysterectomy and a 6 week recovery and BOOM up to 203. But now, things on are the way back down and that feels good. I really think cutting out gluten products has helped me drop the weight. I'm not cutting it out completely but I am still going to try and create meals that don't include it if I can. Now, we're going out of town on Wednesday so, on the road it's harder to avoid but I will do my best. Also from Wed-Sun you may not see any posts from me because I don't know that I will have access to the internet. No, we're not traveling to some backwoods cabin but since we're visiting family I don't feel right asking to use their computer all the time, just because I need to speak to my people. LOL

Today we slept until 10:30, how glorious is that? Thank god my kids are at an age where they sleep past the crack of dawn and we can all be slackers together on the weekend. Families that sleep together...wait. Eww. Nope, that isn't right. Well, you catch my drift.

Yesterday wasn't as bad as I thought

Quick update. For those of you doing Weight Watchers, my daily points value is 25 and when I wrote my post last night, I hadn't finished my log for the day so this morning, I finished it up and was quite surprised by what I saw. With all the crazy stuff I ate, I thought for sure I'd gone over my allowance but in fact, I was .5 a point under. Insane, isn't it???

Just had to post that here. PLUS, I'm down two pounds. Still over 200 (ewww) but on the way down at least. Today has started out well with cottage cheese and fruit for breakfast and a handful of raw almonds. Looking forward to the rest of the day!

First Day In

So today was my first day "back". As I said in my post yesterday, I'm trying to stay away from gluten and wheat, which was a bit more of a struggle than I thought but I did it. All I had for breakfast this morning was a small sausage patty I had cooked yesterday. It was a crazy morning as I had to get the boys up and dressed and ready to play gold with my dad at 9:30. That might not sound like much but my boys can SLEEP and my 6 year old is especially hard to wake up. Anyway, by the time they were out the door, I wasn't far behind and on my way to the grocery store. What the hell, people? I planned to spend $60. Yes, I know that was a freaking ridiculous idea to begin with but still! That was my goal. Well, apparently I needed more than I thought and then add $4.99 to my total to buy a pie for the troops on the 4th of July and I spent $152. Good Lord. That was a credit card purchase, let me tell you. Anyway, I digress.

After the grocery store, I met some friends for lunch at a mexican restaurant. I barely ate any of it because we were so busy gabbing so of course I had to come home and eat. Still avoiding gluten, I chose sour cream and onion chips and 1/2 a Cadbury bar. Mmmm. Doesn't that sound healthy? FF to dinner, I prepared baby back ribs in the oven which were to die for. I would have used the grill but it broke while it was on a couple of months ago and the fire dept came and yada yada yada, we can't use it anymore. I had a small green salad with a Ginger dressing and one small new potato roasted in the oven. I only ate four ribs. If you want to know the secret to fall off the bone ribs, it's cooking them for a couple of hours in the oven at 300 degrees, tightly wrapped in aluminum foil. Then top them with your fave BBQ sauce and put them back in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. They are Goooood.

All in all, it wasn't a TERRIBLE day. It could have been better and I used up some of my extra points but I actually do feel like I'm back on track. I'm better prepared and ready to face tomorrow and make healthy choices. Tomorrow will be MUCH different!