Lunch and an Interesting Article

Yesterday was a pretty good, healthy eats day for me. I started out the day with lowfat cottage cheese and pineapple. Yum! That combination is about the only way I can eat cottage cheese and it was delicious. As I puttered around the house yesterday, I was trying to figure out what to do for lunch. The day before I had cleaned out my freezer and had taken out some thin chicken breasts to defrost so those HAD to be used yesterday. My sister had invited me over for dinner so chicken was on the menu for lunch. Frankly, I've been feeling a little uninspired by my chicken preparation ideas and yesterday was no exception.

Usually when I cook these scallopini-style breasts I pan-fry them and then make a caper sauce but I didn't want capers yesterday. I still pan-fried the breasts but this time, I made a very light sauce out of dry sherry, chicken broth, and a touch of half-n-half. It was so good! I forget how good sherry is for cooking until I use it. It just adds a layer of taste that is so unexpected. What I did was season the chicken with kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper and garlic powder on both sides while 2 Tbs of olive oil was heating in my pan. Then I quickly cooked the chicken (there was a lot) and layered the breasts on a plate while I got out the ingredients for the sauce. Into the still hot pan I poured a 1/2 cup of good chicken broth, 1/2 cup of sherry and brought it to a boil and reduced it by half, stirring occasionally to be sure all those yummy brown bits released from the bottom of the pan. Once the liquids had reduced I added about a 1/4 cup of half-n-half over low heat. I tasted it and added a pinch of salt and a couple of turns from the pepper mill and the sauce was ready.

While all this was going on, I put my microwave to work on my side dishes which were leftover rice and green beans. My meal was absolutely delicious and light!

I still have plenty of leftovers so it will be repeated today.

Last night for dinner, my sister fixed homemade steak and cheese sandwiches which were out of this world. They weren't heavy or greasy and were seasoned very well also. On the side, she fixed a salad which I topped with 1 1/2 tsp of light ranch dressing. It was so good! After dinner, we had some chocolate chip cookies which really hit the spot, too. I needed that chocolate! As I said earlier, yesterday was a good eats day for me. I felt really satisfied with it.

I don't know if I've ever said anything about my dieting past on here but a few years ago, I followed a low-carb regime and lost quite a bit of weight. I actually enjoyed eating low carb and because of choosing that lifestyle, I fell in love with a lot of vegetables that I had never tried before and still love to this day. However, when I hit a bump on the road of life, I fell off the wagon and used food to try and make me feel better and the weight piled on pretty quickly. That is pretty common for me, I gain fast and lose fast. At any rate, I didn't go back to low carb and I've been trying to lose weight ever since. That was in 2003. I was pretty bitter for a long time and blamed the low carb diet for my weight gain, which would have happened no matter what regimen I was following. Why am I telling you all this? Yesterday, I was reading the news on the internet and came across the following article:

Low Carb Beats Low Fat on Weight Loss

It is an interesting read which basically states that low carb, low fat, and low cal diets all produce weight loss but out of the three, low carb provides the best results in both weight loss and improved cholesterol. Check it out for yourself. What are your thoughts on that?

Not sure what today brings in the way of food but I'm going to do my best to make it healthful and delicious!!

Stress Eating

Y'all. I'm BRIZOKE! That's "Broke" for those of you who don't understand my pitiful attempt at being hip. The stress has really gotten me down and I spent the day trying to make myself feel better with food. There wasn't much here to float my boat but tonight we went over to my sister's house and had pizza. All in all, it could have been worse. Like I said, there wasn't a bunch of junk in the house so my stress monkey went hunrgy for most of the day. The only thing I munched on was a few chips with homemade salsa. I couldn't decide whether to be more depressed that I had no money or no junk food in which to drown my sorrows.

The economic times are hard right now and, even though we make a good living, the rising costs of fuel and food are hitting us pretty hard right now. Something happened at dinner though that made me realize that even as stressed as I am, there are people who are having an even harder time than we are. When my sister and I went to pick up the pizza, there was a young girl in the parking lot trying to sell candy. Her family was sitting in the car as she wandered from person to person, doing her very best to make some money. My sis and I felt terrible because we didn't have one iota of cash on us. We just never carry it anymore. When we told her we didn't have any money, she looked at our pizza boxes with obvious envy. It was quite a moment. One of those, "Ok, Evie, it's time to get over yourself" moments. Here I am, money is tight but at least I can afford to eat without resorting to taking my children to a shopping center to sell candy bars. Something has got to change and soon. If people like me are struggling, I can't begin to imagine what it's like for that little girl's family.

I'm sorry for going off on that tangent but that occurrence really affected me.

My goal for wednesday is to be more positive, to eat mindfully, and healthfully, and get up and move. Please come back and see how I did!

Everybody Loves Pie

Well, maybe not everyone but I sure do! Apple, cherry, Lemon meringue, Key Lime, chocolate Silk. Need I go on? While on our PA trip, my SIL had the latest issue of Cooking Light magazine and prominently featured on the cover was a beautiful cherry pie. I knew when I got home that a copy of that magazine was going to be in my cart on the next trip to the grocery store.
Being who I am, I couldn't make the recipe as printed. Nope, had to switch things up a tad. Instead of cherry pie, I made peach which required additional spices and some adjustments to the recipe. Without further adieu, here is the recipe for Evie's Rustic Peach Pie as adapted from the Cooking Light July 2008 edition's recipe for Fresh Cherry Pie.

2 TBS uncooked quick-cooking tapioca
5-6 large fresh peaches, peeled and sliced
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 TBS fresh lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon (all of it!)
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 TBS maple syrup (the real thing)
1/8 tsp salt
1 (15 ounce) package refrigerated pie dough (i used pillsbury)
Cooking spray
2 TBS water
1 large egg white
2 TBS turbinado sugar



Place tapioca in a spice or coffee grinder; process until finely ground (i used mortar and pestle). Combine tapioca and next 8 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl; toss well. Let stand for 30 minutes and then stir to combine.



Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Roll one of the packaged pie crusts into an 11-inch circle. Place in the bottom of a 9-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. (i forgot the spray, don't do that) Allow the dough to extend over the edge of the plate. Pour the peach mixture into the dough and be sure to scrape all the spicy goodness in there. You don't want to miss a thing. Roll the remaining dough into a 12-inch circle and then cut 12 1-inch strips. (i did 1/2 inch strips because I read wrong) arrange in a lattice pattern over the peach mixture. Fold edges under and crimp. (i SO can't do this well)



Combine 2 TBS water and egg white in a small bowl. Brush the egg white mixture over dough on top of pie and sprinkle dough evenly with turbinado sugar. Bake at 400 degress for 20 minutes. Then take from the oven and shield pie crust edges with foil. Put back in oven and bake for an additional 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Cool pie in pan for 45 minutes on a wire rack. Makes 12 servings.



Y'all. This pie is SO good. I might have to eat a slice for breakfast. It's only 282 calories so I can do that.

Our evening meal was courtesy of another cooking light recipe, this time from their website. Farfalle Carbonara. Again, I made a couple of tiny adjustments because that's just how I roll, yo, but for the most part the recipe remained unchanged. You can find the recipe HERE. The only changes I made were to add 1 cup of frozen baby peas that I heated in the microwave and 1/4 cup of half-and-half. It was really pretty good, see?



For those of you doing WW points, one serving of the pie is 6 points and one serving of the Carbonara is 8 points. Well worth every one. Oh, and I was 199 even today, yeah!!! This week I begin exercising in earnest!!

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!!!