Fridge Friday, 6/3/11

Why yes, it HAS been almost 2 years! So I figured I'd start small and do a Fridge Friday. For your viewing pleasure, my fridge:

Not too bad at the moment. Milk, hummus, yogurt. Gross defrosted chicken in a bag at the bottom (there's something about raw chicken that grosses me out. I still eat it, but the raw stuff is slimy and...ew)

Cereal, frozen veggies, magnum ice cream bars (yum). The Pupperoni are very important, of course.

Some sauces. I moved recently and got rid of most of the condiments so the door is more empty than normal. And Mindi's wine from a couple weeks ago (that should probably be pitched).

Happy Friday!

Day 2

So I made it through Day 1 and learned a couple of things:

1) Jicama is weird. I'll eat it IN things and in small quantities by itself, but 1 cup of sticks? By itself? Eh, I couldn't do it
2) Same thing with tomatoes. I love them warm and IN things, but I wasn't a huge fan of the tomato salad
3) Hot sauce makes plain chicken awesome
4) Trader Joe's Thai green beans are spectacular

And thus far today, I've learned
1) greek yogurt must be an acquired taste. it's just kind of odd and
2) mushroom soup is pretty tasty, even if it looks kind of gross. And it's tastier with pepper.

I weighed myself yesterday so I'd have a starting point and plan on checking daily just so I can see how things are going. Today when I weighed myself, I was down 3 pounds! And, yes, that's got to be water-weight, but still...yay! :) I do NOT expect the same amount of loss tomorrow, that's for sure.

So here's the meal plan for today, Day 2. I swapped out the breakfast for another breakfast (greek yogurt, oatmeal, and a banana) since my bananas were ripe enough and also swapped out the lunch for a different day's lunch (mushroom soup, a slice of bread, and a wedge of cheese) since I didn't want to make or find sushi. :) Especially brown-rice sushi!

Breakfast

1 serving Banana Nut Oats

½ cup fresh blueberries

3 hard-boiled egg whites

8 oz fat-free milk

Tea or coffee

Snack

6 tablespoons creamy hummus

2 medium stalks celery, cut into sticks

Lunch

6 pieces California roll brown rice sushi

1 asian or bosc pear

Ice water or iced tea

Snack

PBJ: 2 slices Ezekiel whole grain bread with 1 tablespoon natural peanut butter and 2 tablespoons sugar-free black cherry all-fruit spread

Ice water or tea

Dinner

Doc’s Chili

1 ½ cups chopped romaine lettuce with ¼ cup sliced bell pepper, ¼ cup sliced cucumber, and 1 tablespoon low-fat vinaigrette

Ice water or iced tea

Jump Start Day 1

Ahh, Day 1. When you still have the best of intentions and you follow everything to the letter. Well, I'm trying.

Below is Day 1's menu, if you're curious. :)

So far I've only adjusted it a bit (adding a little bit of chocolate to my milk and using frozen fruit instead of fresh) so it's going well. The hardest part? I'm HUNGRY. I'm allowed to eat every 3 hours but I'm not used to eating limited portions. At least I know where my problem lies!

I made little lunch bags yesterday for today's meals which worked out really well. I'll have to do the same for tomorrow...

Breakfast

1 Ham & Cheese Breakfast Melt--YUM. I'd make this again every day.

¾ cup fresh blueberries--I didn't have fresh, so I had frozen. And added splenda.

8 oz fat-free milk--I added a touch of chocolate. I don't like regular milk.

Tea or coffee--neither

Snack

1 large apple--I had a small/medium apple. It's not really apple season.

1 stick low-fat mozzarella string cheese

Ice water

Lunch

Turkey Wrap

6 baby carrots

1 cup jicama sticks

Ice water or iced tea

Snack

2 servings (4 pieces) Hummus Deviled Eggs

Dinner

5 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast, grilled or broiled

8 medium asparagus spears, grilled or broiled

1 cup cherry tomatoes with 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar and 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil

8 oz fat-free milk

Jump Start

I bought a book recently, The Biggest Loser 30-Day Jump Start, with the idea to try some new recipes and to use as a guideline to help me eat healthier.

I read the book very quickly and found it really easy to follow. The ideas presented are all the same ones that you always read, but the good part of the book is that it's not a restrictive diet like Atkins or any of the other low-carb things.

They give 30 full days of recipes and food to eat and for once it's almost all food I'd eat! I've found that the meal plans are not as well-mixed as I'd like, but the food is interesting and the recipes are simple. I think I just need to mix up Day 7 with Day 14 (or something of the sort) so that I'm not eating fish 4 days in a row. :)

I went shopping today to get the first week's worth of food and, WOW. That was a lot of food. And a high grocery bill, but I'm hoping that a lot of the food can be used in the upcoming weeks. Yikes.

So tomorrow is Day 1. I've made the lunch and the snacks for both me and Bob for tomorrow and put them in lunch bags (hee) so we're all set. I just need to get up in the morning and make breakfast, which should only take about 5 minutes. Quick and easy! And it really is a good amount of food for the day.

My biggest problem is going to be cutting down on the diet coke. :)

Thursday Dinner

So I’m back on the cooking kick again. I spent a good amount of time earlier this week looking through cookbooks, trying to pick out healthy recipes to try out. After making a (huge) list, I went to the grocery store yesterday and bought all of the ingredients. And…only bought 3 things not on my list!! (pretty good for me, actually. Too bad one of the items was chocolate ice cream pops…)

Last night I made a recipe from my sister, cheesy chicken crescents. No pictures of that one (I forgot) but it turned out pretty well. It’s basically chicken, cheese, and onions rolled into crescent rolls and then covered in a sauce made of cream of chicken soup, milk, and cheese.

Easy peasy!

Tonight was white chicken chili from the Betty Crocker cookbook (page 543). It takes 5 hours in the crock pot and was really easy to put together. I’m not totally sure about whether it’s a repeat or not, but it’s healthy (about 400 calories a serving) and with cheese, it's not bad. Everything's better with cheese.

More dinners to come!!

Weekend, October 31-November 2

First off, the time change is totally messing me up. I got up at 7am on Sunday, watched a movie, and the it was 10am. And it felt like 3pm or something. And then at 8pm I wanted to go to bed. I know that the time change is only and hour but for some reason my body read it as, like, 4 hours. And leaving work tonight in the (almost) dark is going to suck.

Anyway, my weekend.

Friday was halloween so Bob and I went to our neighbor's halloween party upstairs. (so convenient!) We didn't know anyone, really, but had a good time. Everyone was dressed up which is always fun. Bob taped a bunch of pictures of Robert on himself and went as...Mucho Deniro (hee) and I was a biker. Yes, I have a couple of pictures. No, I'm not posting them. Sorry!

Saturday Liz and I did errands--target, Dominicks, etc.--and I bought my first Christmas present! Woo! I feel so accomplished getting stuff somewhat early! I'll probably still be scrambling until Christmas though...

Later that night Chris and Liz came over and we played Guitar Hero World Tour with all four of us, rotating who did what. I also made Corn and Kielbasa Chowder...yum...that's a good one. And EASY!Sunday (after my movie), Bob and I went out to the Aurora outlet malls for a bit and then pretty much crashed. Somewhat lazy day. Oh! I DID make some baja fish tacos that made my apartment smell like fish all night (Sorry, no pics. We were starving). They were ok. Kind of boring, really. It COULD be that I really like regular tacos so I felt that these were missing something. If I liked fish more, I'd tweak the recipe to make it more interesting, but...eh. It's just not worth it to me.

The highlight of my weekend might have been the gas we got for $2.55. $25 to fill the car? AWESOME. I think that last comment makes me an official adult. I'm way too excited about gas being less than $3.

:)

Wednesday, October 29th Dinner

Last night I went for the unhealthiest of my recipes. Oh my. Butter and cheese. LOTS of butter and cheese.

I made Ham and Cheese Cannelloni and garlic bread. It was super-easy with just a few ingredients, most of which were easy to find. The only weird one was the egg roll wrappers, but since I only used 6 of them, I'll have them for a while yet so I won't have to search for them again.
It took really only took about 15 minutes to put this thing together and stick it in the oven. The garlic bread took about 5 minutes more (mostly because I had to chop garlic. If you have that stuff in a jar, it'll be even faster). The recipe called for a 9x9 pan (which I don't have) and for 8 cannellonis. Um...I only had 6 pieces of ham (Bob had a sandwhich before I could stop him) and then I ran out of the cheese filling and room in the dish anyway, so it worked out well, actually.
The recipe calls for 20 minutes in the oven, but in order to get a browner top, I left it in for almost 30. The dish was crazy-bubbling when I pulled it out of the oven.And the final meal. All yellow. No vegetables. All butter and cheese. Oy. I think we'll have have to have something really green and veggie tonight to make up for it.
It was REALLY good though (was there ever any doubt? Cheese? Butter? Bread? Good stuff) and not that expensive. I just needed to buy the ricotta and the egg roll wrappers, both of which have leftovers so I could make this dish twice with the standard packaging. I'd say...about $10 total? Only because of I got good ham. Replace the ham with budding or generic ham and it'd be even cheaper.

Tuesday, October 28th Dinner

Last night's culinary feat (ha!) was...Chicken, Biscuits 'n' Gravy Casserole! It was pretty chilly last night and this sounded like a good idea. Total comfort food. Well, that and I needed to use the rotisserie chicken I bought from the grocery store before I went funky.

Not too many ingredients and it was easy to put together--just shred chicken in the bottom of a casserole pan, make the gravy and pour over, and then add the biscuits to the top. There were even vegetables in there so we felt somewhat healthy as we ate biscuits and gravy. :)

The recipe calls for you to make garlic butter and brush the tops of the biscuits. Yum, yes. But now our kitchen is TOTALLY garlic-y. Is there a way to make that smell dissipate a bit? I like homey, cooky smells, but this is a little much. Here's the dish before going into the oven:

And here it is just out of the oven:

Good stuff. It could use a little more liquid in the gravy (the biscuits make it a little dry) but otherwise it's pretty good. Bob and I kept throwing out ideas to adjust the recipe--sausage for a breakfast version, brown gravy for the top, things like that. Pretty versatile recipe, I think. Also, it was pretty cheap to make--about $10 in total. The biggest cost was the chicken and the mushrooms. Not bad!

Tonight I'll be using wonton wrappers. Oh my. We'll see how that works out...

Monday, October 27th Dinner

I spent a good amount of time on Saturday looking through recipes so that Bob and I could have real food instead of frozen chicken patties or pizza for dinner. We really want to try to eat healthier and while the foods that I picked aren't exactly low-cal, at least they're not directly from the freezer. :) Baby steps.

My first dinner creation was Gaucho Cheesesteaks.
It took me about an hour for the whole process, but then again I started using the food processor, decided it wasn't working right (it wasn't...I needed chopped jalapenos, not slices!) and then hand cut everything. And I cooked the meat after I did the sauce, so the whole "15 minutes prep" thing noted on the recipe? Not so much. They turned out pretty well through.I only used 1 pound of skirt steak (because...expensive!) but forgot to split the sauce part of the recipe, so there was a really strong flavor of red wine vinegar, but I still got 4 sandwiches out of the deal. So leftovers!It came to about $24 total for the ingredients (I had some on hand) for 4 sandwiches. Not horrible, but not that great. But then again...steak. So it was worth it. I'd make it again. Except I'd ask for help with the dishes. There were a lot because I had issues with what size bowl to use. :) You can't see it, but there are two more in the sink.