Friday 30 July 2010

Breakfast: 1 slice of flax toast with peanut butter and sugar-free jam.  2 cups of coffee with almond milk and half-and-half (1 shown).

Snack:  Mmmm, mmm!  Chia green tea!

Snack: 1 scoop of nuts and a bar (pre-errand).

I've been reading about "habit energy" in the book Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, and Lori mentioned it on her blog the other day.  Here's a comment I shared over there:

I'd say the habit energy that I want to grow is to SLOW DOWN!  I had gotten pretty good at this, then having kids meant bolting down some food in between all the other stuff.  The kids are bigger, and the need to rush with eating is GONE.  Especially since Thing 2 eats as slowly as my mom...like a little grandma clone, is Thing 2.  Scares me sometimes. ;-)  Anyhow, having to stop and take pictures first helps, I guess it's serving as my "bell of mindfulness."  I also sometimes do the breathing in/breathing out exercise.  Although mine goes something like, "Breathing in, I know I am eating nuts.  Breathing out, I wish I hadn't inhaled that last cupful."  With today's cup, I took my time and really chewed and spent time focusing on the flavor in each nut.

Lunch:  I went with a co-worker on an errand for our company picnic today, and there was a Starbuck's, so I got a medium skinny caramel latte.  The above is the iced coffee & half-and-half I made in the cup to go with the beans when we got back.  (That container was full when I started; 1 cup.)

Snack:  Whoops.  What was that I was saying about mindfulness?  Gotta say I enjoyed the Pink Lady apple, though.

Dinner: Hot wings (there were more, and I didn't eat all of them); Brussels sprouts with olive oil, salt, and garam marsala; chocolate chip cookie; and a sugar-free mojito!

Couple of notes:

Debby asked whether all my obscure seasonings are Indian spices.  Garam marsala is; I get the pre-mixed stuff from Schilling, but it's a mix of spices, and from what I've read, different families and regions have their own preferred blend.  It's sort of similar to curry powder, but a little stronger to my taste.  (I do like curry powder, too, but I ran out recently.)

The "piri-piri" marinade I mentioned isn't from India, but is used in Africa and Portugal.  It features a "piri-piri" pepper that grows in Africa, although the recipe I used doesn't call for it.  The variation I did just uses hot chili flakes.  It's a very bright, spicy sauce, with garlic, lemon, thyme, oregano, cumin, and hot chili flakes.  (recipe here)

About the mojito:  One of my favorite drinks!  It's a combo of lime juice, mint, sweetener, rum, and club soda.  Click here for the recipe I use.  I think it would taste equally good as a non-alcoholic beverage.  I've made it with splenda and tried it once with erythritol, a sugar alcohol that's very blood sugar friendly and reputedly causes less "intestinal distress" than other forms.  It does not dissolve very easily, though, so if I use it again for these, I'd dissolve in warm water first.  I don't care much for a gritty mojito.

...another mojito, some walnuts, and 7 sugar-free gummy bears...

...and 2 of these little cups with peanuts (I had some after dinner, then after our movie)...

And here's what's left of the walnuts!  Looks like I'm not the only squirrel in the family. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy requested that I no longer bring large bags of these home from Trader Joe's.  I ate these while we watched the (relatively new) Sherlock Holmes movie.  I know! Watching a grown-up movie?  Kind of nice!  (Earlier, we all watched the old Batman 1966 movie, and then Thing 2 and I watched Wallace & Grommit shorts.  It was a fireplace and TV night.)

I feel like I ate a lot more than usual today.

Thursday 29 July 2010

Breakfast: 2 eggs, 2 coffee (one with almond milk and half-and-half, the other just half-and-half), 1 slice of the usual toast.

Lunch: Lunch at the park today with my family and a coworker and her son were visiting from out of town.  I had 2 slices small cheese pizza. (1 of just the cheese-no crust) and a quarter of a half-order of a Greek salad.  Yum!

Afternoon trouble snack: I think Debbie can guess what my pillar would look like...and it's not the 1x1" brownie!

More nuts.

More nuts.

Nuts in exile.

I went for a run at the gym after work. I didn't want to do it, but I'm glad I did. The gym was packed! I jumped on the treadmill and jammed to the music and thought happy triathlon thoughts. How they can be happy when I'm feeling this out of running shape I don't know, but they were.  I ran for about 20 minutes and walked about 10 for warm-up and cool-down.

Mr. Handsome-and-Handy is a really good cook. His mom went back to school when he was in middle school, and with 6 kids, they needed to help with the chores.  They were given their choice of which chores they would do to help out, and Mr. H&H chose cooking.  Anyway, he's head chef in our house. He got the creative itch, and he made the Red Beans recipe from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American (with a few variations; for example, he substituted bacon for the pickled pork). No, I didn't eat this whole pot, but I sure wanted to try! (Darn cell phone and florescent lighting, it looked way more appetizing than this.)

Here's 1 cup over about 1 cup of baby spinach.

And another 1/2 cup over more spinach.

And I'm done for the night. I think I had my nuts & chocolate fix already! ;-)

Wednesday 28 July 2010

Breakfast: Whoops! I guess I wasn't being very mindful about taking a picture! Here's what 2 eggs and flax toast with butter/canola spread and sugar-free jam looks like about half-way done. Also enjoyed 2 cups of coffee with almond milk and half-and-half.

Debby asked about my flax bread.  I found Alvarado Street Bakery breads when I was just starting out with "eating to the meter" and wanted to find a bread that I could enjoy in the morning when my blood glucose levels were raging (http://www.alvaradostreetbakery.com/).  I also wanted a bread that had "clean" ingredients.  Their FAQ has some interesting info on their process of using sprouted whole wheat instead of flour.  I enjoy their Essential Flax Seed bread (2 slices=15 g. carb); the slices are smaller and less dense than other breads I've had, but I like being able to have 2 slices for one starch exchange.  Their "Diabetic Lifestyles Low Glycemic Index" bread is also good, but a serving is 1 slice. (That slice is more dense and a little larger than the Essential Flax slice.) I've also tried their sourdough, but same problem of 1 serving=1 slice.  If you don't already enjoy whole-grain breads, though, you might not enjoy these varieties. They do have a kid's bread that might be a bit closer in consistency to regular breads, but haven't tried it yet.  I don't know if it's because they recommend refrigerating their breads, but I much prefer them toasted.  I do pay more for it, but I'm the only one who eats it in our family, and one loaf lasts quite a long time.

Another cup of coffee with half-and-half at work...

Pre-workout Eats: A new food find from Trader Joe's. I have this thing for peanut butter and chocolate, and I liked the nutritional breakdown (200 calories: 12 fat, 10 carbs (1 fiber, 5 sugar), and 13 protein. The verdict? Meh. When I opened it, the chocolate coating was a little melty and made a mess on my hands. (Of course I was out of tissues.) I could definitely taste the peanut butter, but not so much the chocolate. It was crunchy from the wafer cookies. But there was a bitter undertone to it; when I checked the ingredients, stevia was low on the list but there. Could that have been the culprit, or was it their particular whey protein? Hard to say. Not something I'd buy again, there are other bars I greatly prefer. To their credit, no maltitol, which is why I chose it over other options in my stash.

Lunch and Snack:  I ate the peaches + cottage cheese + cinnamon + walnuts and the celery for lunch, and the crust + goat cheese later in the afternoon.  The peaches were a little bitter, and I don't think the cinnamon did much for this combo, so I'll leave it out next time.

Progress!  Only one dip in the Pecan Mix, this after the celery.  Not shown:  Tea.  I drink a lot of tea during the day, but I don't take pictures of it.

Dinner:  Probably-too-large of a very lean hamburger patty with extra-sharp cheddar cheese, BBQ sauce, and a salad with tomatoes, artichoke hearts, facon bits, crunchy garbanzos, and vinaigrette (with extra vinegar!).

Dessert: My "Taps" food, peanuts and 15 chocolate chips. Nothing says, "Day is done/Gone the Sun/(Eating is Done!)" for me like this combo.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Breakfast: Bright and early and "to go" (hello, 7 a.m. Pilates class that's 30 minutes away!). Kind bar and a mug of green tea.

Post-workout snack: 2 cups coffee with half-and-half at work. Coffee cake was about 3/4 serving. (I noticed that the cake puffed up in the middle; the center was nearly double the height of the sides. Anyone know how to make a sheet cake more level? I think that next time, I will go by weight, weighing the pan before I put in the batter and then again after baking, then divide by 12 to discover how many ounces or grams per serving.)

Notice that I delayed taking those fish pills until after Pilates class.  (We spend a great deal of class laying down on our backs and crunching our abs, then prone on an exercise ball, lifting our legs.)  You see, I am learning things in there!

Lunch: I got this idea from Debby, when she wrote about peaches, Laughing Cow cheese, and walnuts. This is lowfat cottage cheese and fresh peaches from a neighbor. Oh my gosh, it was so good!!! I think the peaches have to be very peachy tasting and sweet for best effect.

Afternoon snack: I was hangry after my lunchtime errands. I wanted to see if this meant I was having a low, so I measured my blood glucose levels. Nope, 95, which is definitely not a low! (But not overly high, either; I could still eat something.) I ate the cheese stick and celery first, then gradually ate about 3 ounces of that can of nuts.

While on my lunchtime errands, I thought to myself, "I can stop at Trader Joe's and get a big bag of JUST roasted, salted pecan nuts." And you know what? I remembered a guest post on FoodFoodBodyBody: "Pat Barone on Driving Permanent Weight Change". Pat stated, "Whenever I see myself becoming attached to a certain food, or I hear 'an energy buzz' around it, I know I’m putting more meaning into that food than it deserves or I want. Then, it’s time to take a step back and remember: Food is fuel." Whoa. Did I know what she meant by the "energy buzz." I was feeling an "energy buzz" around the idea of pecans. I don't think I wanted those pecans to be anything other than their lovely, pecan selves. But craving itself has its own energy, so I decided to skip TJs during that errand.

However, I did find a can of "Pecan Mix" at Rite Aid: Pecans, cashews, and pistachios. Well, I still really wanted some pecans, but the strong, "I want to eat a whole, big ol' bagful!" energy was gone. So I bought them and ate a bunch.

This is the part that will make anyone reading shake their head, because it sounds insane. It even sounds insane to me. I had a hard time pulling up from that can of nuts. So I tried the 74% Solution: maybe if I had a little chocolate, it would break the spell of the nuts. Oddly enough, 3 little rectangles did the trick. I think it worked because nuts + dark chocolate is often my dessert at home, and it said, "I'm done eating."

Dinner: No, not just these! But this is the part that gets really weird. Mr. Handsome-and-Handy and The Things had gone out to eat, and so I was on my own for dinner. I decided to pick up some goat cheese at...yes, Trader Joe's! I had no desire for pecans. The walnuts sounded really good, though, especially since Debby ate them with her peaches and Laughing Cow, and I thought they'd go nicely with my peaches and cottage cheese. I ate four before eating dinner. (Several things interrupted meal prep after this: a gorgeous sunset making the light on the hills behind our house AMAZING, watching a brief video that Thing 2 wanted me to see, and chatting with Mr. Handsome-and-Handy while putting away the TJ's swag.)

Here is one of my food finds from Whole Foods! It's a wheat-free raw crust. Gee, doesn't that sound appetizing? The nutrition stats might perk your taste buds, one of these planks is as follows: "Calories 210, Calories from Fat 139, Total Fat 15.4g, Saturated Fat 1.5g, Trans Fat 0g, Cholesterol 0 mg, Sodium 126mg, Total Carbohydrate 10.2g, Dietary Fiber 7.3g, Protein 7.6g". I like the flavor; they are savory and salty and crunchy. They're a little messy, but they go great with spreadable cheese. And each one takes forever to eat! (On seeing this, Mr. Handsome-and-Handy said, "I could have gotten you a bird seed brick from the feed store, you know.")

Here's the full meal: a crust, some herbed goat cheese, and a salad with my garbanzos, lettuce, tomato, and artichoke hearts. I wanted to love the TJ's red wine and olive oil dressing I bought, but alas! No punch of vinegar. So I added extra vinegar. I also had 2 strawberries (1 shown) from our plant. And the last of the Merlot.  (I bought a pot full of herb plants, including mint, so I'll be showing you all how to make sugar-free mojitos this weekend!)

This took a really long time to eat...so much so, I was reminded of Shauna's comment on the last Two Fit Chicks podcast, in which she remembers eating a salad one time by herself and how long she seemed to be chewing!  Everyone was off doing their own thing, so this was a quiet meal...a little too quiet.  Maybe next time I won't go for stuff that takes so long to eat, although that's usually a good thing in my book.

Dessert: The family saved me a cookie, and I ate it with some more walnuts.

Monday 26 July 2010

Breakfast:  1/3 banana before Torture Time with Jillian (aka Shred, Level 1) and Yoga Time with Rodney, and then 2 slices of leftover french toast (made with flax bread) with peanut butter and sugar-free maple syrup, plus coffee with almond milk and half-and-half x2.

Lunch: Big whoops on lunch today! The illustration will give you some idea of what I ate...it was half a package of Tuscan veggies, 3 oz. leftover sausage, and 2 Tbsp of light Italian dressing. And about 2/3 serving of the coffee cake. I decided to eat in the breakroom and visit with a coworker today, rather than skulking off to my cube. (I brought in my leftover coffee cake and warmed it in the toaster oven. It went quickly!)

Snack: Whoops! Snarfed down half already! Approximately 8 oz. Nonfat Chobani, 1/2 orange, 1
"donut peach", 1 tsp inulin, 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Dinner:  Steak (guessing 5-6 ounces, depending on how much that bone weighs), steak sauce, salad (yes, there is salad under that cheese) with Italian dressing, and cheese (I ate about double the shown square).

I ended up adding these to my salad, they're the crunchy roasted garbanzo beans I made yesterday.  I was trying for a piri-piri seasoning, but it didn't work too well.  I used lemon peel and juice, but it just didn't "pop" like it does when I make a marinade.  They still worked great as croutons, though.  (I originally got the recipe for piri-piri marinade from Sunset Magazine's Piri-Piri Chicken recipe.  Click here for the chicken recipe, here for just the marinade; the two are linked.  It's actually kind of tricky to cook with the whole chicken; we've had really good luck using it for a chicken and veggie shish-kabob marinade.  This would probably also go really well with veggies only or shrimp.  It's bright and warm and spicy-tasting.)

Dessert: About 1/2 ounce peanuts and 15 chocolate chips.

Sunday 25 July 2010

Breakfast:  3 mugs of coffee (almond milk + half-and-half), 2 donut holes (1 shown)...

...an omlette, which had exactly the same stuff as breakfast yesterday.  I love the bacon/chedder/tomato/chive combination.

...and the rest of Thing 2's chocolate glazed twist.  

Lunch: We ate lunch fairly late in the afternoon.  I had about 6 oz. of hamburger (3 shown here, and 3 not shown), 1 slice of cheese...

...and I ate peanut butter with the apples.

Snack: Peanuts and 15 chocolate chips.

Dinner: 4 oz. sausage, 1/2 plate broccoli with butter and garam marsala, salt, and garlic.  And 2 of the little cups of mixed nuts.

Dessert: If you couldn't tell, there was some stress feeding going on.  We had some bad health news about Mr. Handsome-and-Handy's aunt, so we were both on edge a little bit today, awaiting further developments.  I even did some compulsive baking...luckily of the somewhat healthy variety.  I tried making Georgie's (of askGeorgie.com) cinnamon streusel coffee cake.  (LOVE her site!)

Oh my, this turned out terrific, if I do say so myself!  I substituted some of the water in the cake part with vanilla extract and orange extract, and added zest from two oranges.  I also had to use a packet of plain oatmeal + some oat bran for the topping, since we were out of quick oats.  I had to double up on the vanilla instead of using the vanilla + rum extract, which is what she recommended if one didn't have the rum extract.  And I'm sure it would be amazing with the Saigon cinnamon she recommends, but I used the standard stuff and it worked out fine.  (I wanted to make it extra flavorful for Thing 2, in hopes she would like it plain, since she doesn't like cinnamon.  I forgot that she didn't much like muffins, either.  Oh well.)  I had the 1/2 (cut for me) + 1/4 (Thing 2's taste test) shown, plus two 1/4 pieces when it first cooled, for a total of 1-1/4 servings.  Three of the 1/4s were plain (no cinnamon topping), so they had less sugar; the total amount turned out to be pretty blood glucose friendly for me, at 116 after 1 hour. (So not something I'd eat with other carbs, or for breakfast.  It does have a generous amount of protein in there with that carb, good fiber, and low sugar for something this sweet-tasting.)  Mr. Handsome-and-Handy was pleasantly surprised by the taste and the portion size, and Thing 1 wolfed down his piece.

Since I was on a kitchen roll, I sort of messed up the cinnamon mood by baking up a batch of crunchy roasted garbanos beans....oh well!  I probably ate an ounce of those, and I was too lazy to photograph them.  I experimented with these a little, going for a piri-piri flavor, and I'm not sure it worked, although they're still very flavorful and tasty to me.

Good heavens! She's not done yet?  No, apparently not.  I almost didn't take a picture here, but wandered into my bedroom to get a shot, since that's where the camera was.  I at half of this half packet, and felt done. Finally.

[There!  Finally caught up!  Whew]