January 2009

We’re expecting my in-laws to arrive today. They’re coming from Ohio, so it’s a pretty long car trip. Jack Frost is already throwing a wrench in our plans; they’re forecasting a big snow storm the day after they get here, so that means we’re probably not going to be able to go to the city and other places like we had planned. Major bummer!! So, we’re probably going to be snowed in for their whole visit. *sigh* But, who knows? Maybe it won’t be so bad and we’ll get to execute some of our plans. *crosses fingers*

I’ve been a busy bee all week and haven’t been eating very much or consistently. My kitchen has been upside down and inside out while I clean and prepare for the them. So, we’ve been eating a lot of quick and simple meals like these:

2 Kashi waffles with Naturally More peanut butter and seedless raspberry Polaner All Fruit, Stonyfield Farm nonfat strawberry yogurt topped with fresh blueberries that weren’t so perky and a crumbled Kashi granola bar and a diet Snapple iced tea

I looooooooooove waffles with PB&J! Sooo yummy! Unfortunately, I discovered the hard way why aspartame is the devil; I’ve had HORRIBLE migraines all week and I believe it is due to my more-than-usual consumption of diet soft drinks. I usually avoid artificial sweeteners, but I started sipping on diet Snapples this past week and I enjoyed the extra flavor for a few calories, but my body greatly dislikes aspartame and I don’t blame it. It certainly doesn’t need it to exist lol. So, I cut back and I stopped getting headaches but I’ll probably still have one now and then. I treat artificial sweeteners like a recreational drug; sort of like a vodka martini or something. Definitely not something you want to drink everyday, but here and there isn’t a big deal.

Whilst cleaning out the freezer I came across some salmon filets that have been in there for awhile. I defrosted one and made a “salmon dog” with a side of sugar snap peas that were also hiding in the freezer:

I put about a teaspoon of butter on the sugar snap peas and about half a TBSP Hellmann’s olive oil mayo and organic sweet relish on the “salmon dog” which I ate on a Martin’s hot dog bun

I pan-fried the salmon in a bit of extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan. It came out really good and only took a few minutes to make. Yum!

My mother was being a naughty girl watching QVC after midnight one night and ended up buying this Sunbeam Rocket Grill. I never heard of it but she came downstairs all excited about it lol. A few days later UPS delivered it:

I haven’t looked at it much, but I looks like it works like a toaster. You put your food in these pouches and then slide it in like a toaster and supposedly it grills the food. *shrugs* We’ll see how it works I guess! hehe

My husband is involuntarily losing weight! So we went to GNC the other night to get him some whey protein powder, which I’ll probably also have in a shake once in awhile. While there I picked up some Lite Muscle Milk that’s only 100 each!

It said no sugar added so I didn’t even check the label until we got home and discovered that it has sucralose (Splenda) ! Way to avoid artificial sweeteners, Jenn! lol I thought it was just unsweetened and I would be able to add Truvia or stevia. Oh well, like I said, a little chemicals here and there are ok. I hope lol.

We’ve been eating at the diner a lot this week. Not exactly healthy but not quite as bad as other fast food places. I’ve been getting poached eggs with a bagel or a sandwich like this:

Turkey club on whole wheat with fries. Once we got it home I modified it, though. I took the bacon and 3rd slice of toast off. The turkey was great!! It was like home cooked turkey, not like you’d get at the deli counter unless it’s store cooked and minimally processed

I ate half of the fries and added some Hellmann’s olive oil mayo. Delish!

I haven’t been sticking to my planned workout routine, but I have been getting in about 40-60 minutes of recumbent bike everyday and hours and hours of walking while shopping. Lots of cardio, but I’m in the club that any activity is good, even if it’s not ideal. So, since I stopped officially counting calories and despite eating out almost every single day for the past week, I’ve managed to lose 13 lbs since the first week of January. YAY! I know once things settle down and get back to normal with my more ideal workouts and when I cook like I usually do, then I’ll do even better. My sodium intake has been really high and even though I lost weight, I still feel puffy. So I probably lost even more than the water weight is masking. Soon it will all balance out, I’m getting there!

It’s been an extremely challenging week but we have been pushing through like troopers. Our new furniture was delivered; it’s beautiful!! We couldn’t get carpets installed in time so we had them professionally cleaned and they actually look brand new. The guy that cleaned them said he does local celebs’ houses, too, like Tommy Hilfiger. That was pretty neat to hear. I’m sure he thought our house was a shack compared to their multi-million dollar homes LOL. Be it ever so humble!

Well, I have a bazillion things to do, so I’m going to get going. I wanted to do an update real quick though because it’s been sooo long and I missed you guys!! *hugs*

Wish me luck…. again!!! I’ll have updates later tonight. Give me an excuse to sneak into the office and spend some quiet time with my computer! *giggles*

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I am really sorry that I haven’t done any updates. It would seem that everything that can go wrong, has and our lives are as stressful as they can be right now. On top of our cat, Cleo ruining our furniture and carpets, the plumbing decided to chip in and add to the demise of our house lol. We have a room right up above our office that is unfinished and obviously we don’t use it for anything, so we tend to forget about it. When it was in the negatives, a pipe froze up there and then exploded. Water EVERYWHERE! It dripped down to our office and into the bathroom next door destroying our ceilings, walls, desks, floors and everything that was in the path of the water. We had to call a plumber to make an emergency service call on Saturday night. It was a nightmare. THEN, the next day our landlord in PA calls to inform us that they had a broken pipe in the basement of their building too! Thankfully we weren’t there or planning to go there anytime soon because he said there wouldn’t be any water until the plumber fixed it.

All of this is going on and my in-laws are supposed to be visiting next Monday!! So, on Sunday we were going to go out shopping for new furniture and order carpets, etc., but then Mother Nature had her poke at us and dropped about a foot of snow LOL.

Me in our driveway:

Our neighbor usually plows for us but I guess he wasn’t home yet, so hubby and I shoveled so we could get out, which was a total waste of time anyway because once we got on the road, the roads were HORRIBLE and we happen to have one of the only Jeeps in creation that doesn’t have 4 wheel drive, it’s rear wheel drive. I kid you not!! Our Mercedes is also rear wheel drive; a double whammy. So, we vowed to go get another car the next day because we couldn’t take it anymore. The Mercedes is almost paid off but it sits in the garage because we don’t drive it and the Jeep is a lease, so we called one of our local car dealers about what we are looking for but they want us to come in to pick it out and our salesman got sick the next day so we’re waiting to hear from him again. So, that’s way up in the air at this time. It would be a miracle getting a car loan with the way things are in the industry right now. Bad timing all the way around.

We didn’t get to go anywhere all weekend, but I did make some good food when I had time. We mainly paced around the house and cleaned the mess. On Saturday I made us all Applegate Farm turkey dogs:

I topped mine with organic sweet relish, chopped red onion, yellow mustard and Heinz no salt added ketchup. The hot dogs are only 40 calories each, but between them and the buns, the sodium was way over 1000mg. Such a shame because with the unsalted pretzels, it only comes to around 450 calories. They’re SO YUMMY! I wish I could eat them more often.

You can’t even tell they are turkey. They taste just like beef!

The next day I made a huge pot of chili with 96/4 lean beef that was so simple and took less than 15 minutes to throw together.

Chili recipe:

• ~ 1 lb lean ground beef (I used 96% lean which is 140 cal per 4oz, you can also use ground turkey or chicken)
• 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
• 3 small/medium red onions, sliced
• 1 can Eden no salt added kidney beans
• 2 cans (14.5oz) no salt added diced tomatoes
• 4 cans (8oz) no salt added tomato sauce
• Black pepper, white pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, garlic salt to taste

1. In bottom of large pot add in EV olive oil and saute (sweat) the onions and brown the beef while crumbling it up
2. Add in tomatoes and sauce along with the spices; stir and let simmer for about 20 minutes
3. Add in beans and more spices if desired, let simmer on low, covered for an additional 30-40 minutes

DEEEEEEELICIOUS!

I topped mine with shredded cheddar cheese (full fat), diced red onion, tomatoes and a dollop of Fage Total 0% yogurt:

On the side we had cornbread VitaMuffin tops — SO GOOD and only 100 calories each. I found them in the freezer at Shop Rite a few weeks ago and was planning to have them with this chili. It was fantastic!

YUMMY! Perfect for a cold winter’s day but I’d eat it in summer too.

So for the past few days my eating habits have been not-so-good, we’ve been eating out a lot and usually just one meal a day plus Starbucks and other drinks to keep me going. We went to 6 furniture stores and none of them could deliver by next Monday, except for one, which happened to work out perfectly! So, we bought a new living room set last night — finally! YAY! It’s being delivered on Saturday, but now we have to get carpet installed by then. This is like mission impossible! lol

Our plates are so full. Oh, and on top of that we went to our bank’s ATM yesterday afternoon like we usually do but it wasn’t working. So, we went to another branch when we got to Middletown but when we got home we discovered that the first one that we went to actually took money out of our account but didn’t give us the cash! So now, we have to call them first thing this morning to try and straighten that out.

I need to find someone to come install carpet before Monday, wait for furniture delivery, take our cats to the vet for the 10th time this month, clean the whole entire house and try to fix the ceilings, walls and everything else all while trying to maintain our usual business and attempt to fit in exercise and cooking. Aaaaaaaaaah! lol Plus, my sinuses are acting up. I have terrible pains in my head and neck. Thankfully Aunt Flo left town but she was here during all the other chaos, so you can imagine how stressed I am physically and mentally. *sigh*

Time to go take on the day. Wish me luck!

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As I’m writing this it’s negative 16 below zero with the windchill! Brrrr!

Aunt Flo rolled into town on the 14th and she is being a pain, literally. The first day wasn’t too bad, but today I woke up in so much pain from cramps and bloating that I could barely stand it. So, I took 3 Advil liquid gels (on an empty stomach, BAD IDEA!) and it gave me the worst heartburn. So, I tried to go back to bed, but the cramps combined with it being cold and the horrible burning in my throat/stomach was so uncomfortable that I got up to go eat a Pop Tart that just happened to be the first thing to “pop” into my mind. Well, not exactly a Pop Tart, a Nature’s Path organic Acai berry “Pop Tart” type of thing. It was good. Too good in fact because it spiraled into a biscotti blowout. After the Pop Tart thingie, I poured a cup of skim milk, then had a Nonni’s biscotti with it and then another… and another… and 3 more after that! No, that wasn’t bad enough. Then I had 2 Martin’s potato dinner rolls with a few pieces of roasted chicken breast and some mayo and about 20 Pamela’s mini chocolate chip cookies. They’re bite sized, but still. Oh, I refilled the milk cup, too. But that wasn’t even the end of my food frolic. I finished it off with a slice of Ezekiel 4:9 low sodium sprouted grain bread with a piece of Sargento reduced fat swiss cheese that I melted in the microwave. All of that within 10 or 15 minutes, like I was in a daze. Then I went back to bed and slept for 3 or 4 more hours. Aunt Flo makes me ravenous sometimes, but I was mainly looking for some type of comfort because I was hungry, cold, tired and in a lot of pain and I actually did feel a little better despite eating half a day’s worth of calories in minutes.

Ah well, I’m just glad to be feeling better after the painful way I woke up, even if that means taking an unplanned “the heck with it” day. I decided I’m not going to stress over it and that I also need the day off from exercise and work. Sometimes a girl’s gotta do, what a girl’s gotta do.

Let’s see… where were we? Oh, I know, Tuesday. Being we’re on this CRAZY sleeping schedule (going to sleep around noon) I don’t even know what day it is, it’s all a blur at times lol. Hubby and I woke up around 5:30PM on Tuesday and had to immediately fix software problems for our employees in China. Hubby was extremely focused on what he was doing, but I was starving, so I mixed a fat free Stonyfield Farm blueberry yogurt with 2 TBSP Kashi 7 whole grain Nuggets and let it sit in the fridge for a little while, then ate it at my desk:

I love how the 7 grain Nuggets expand when you let them sit for awhile (they’re just like Grape Nuts). Yummy! Then after midnight we went to Hannaford to go grocery shopping. I was so upset when we first got there; their “Organic and Natural” section was gone! I almost cried. But then I noticed that each aisle had a designated area of things that were “natural or organic”, which is awesome because it seems like they now carry way more stuff than they did. I love that idea! So, we got a whole bunch of stuff but I was too tired to take a pic by the time we got home. We were soooo hungry while we were shopping, even hubby was throwing stuff in the cart and he usually doesn’t have any interest in grocery shopping lol. Being we were so hungry, we decided to go to the diner at 4:00AM. Boy, did we eat our money’s worth lol. Hubby ordered scrambled eggs with a Virginia ham steak, a bagel with cream cheese AND a meatball sub. I ordered a garden omelet with swiss cheese, a bagel and cream cheese and hot chocolate topped with whipped cream. I ate half of hubby’s sub, one and a half bagels with cream cheese and jam, half of my omelet, a few home fries and a few of hubby’s fries. Our waitress refilled my hot chocolate, I didn’t request it but I drank it anyway. At least I did get all of my exercise in that day! We’re really strange sometimes, I know. lol Shopping in the middle of the night is fun though. Hardly anyone in the store and there’s no waiting at the checkout lane.

So, that was “all” I ate that day. Then yesterday was pretty routine and Aunt Flo wasn’t acting up quite yet, though I was craving salt like crazy. I always crave salt during her visits, as if I’m not puffy enough! I’m up 2 or 3 lbs right now, but that’s understandable. After the diner I came home that night and drank 2 small bottles of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. I was sooo thirsty and I swear, I could feel myself getting puffier as I was drinking. I don’t know if it’s my imagination or what, but it seems like my body wants to hang onto water so much when she’s around that it’s even harder to work up a sweat when I’m exercising. *shrugs* Sure seems that way anyway! lol

I got all of my exercise in first thing in the morning yesterday, but first I had this as a pre-workout snack:

1 slice Ezekiel 4:9 sprouted grain low sodium bread (80 cal) with Naturally More peanut butter and seedless raspberry Polaner All Fruit and an Organic Valley strawberry milk (150 cal). Yum! Did you know that Ezekiel 4:9 low sodium bread has 0g sugar? I didn’t until I read the label more closely. Pretty neat.

After I worked out, I wanted something quick but salty and crunchy. So, I indulged my salty craving with minimal damage and went with a turkey wrap with the leftover turkey from the other night and some Kettle Bakes baked chips on the side. The wrap was SO BIG that it was hard to close, but most of the fluff was from pickles and veggies. hehe

I spread Hellmann’s olive oil mayo over a Tumaro’s low sodium tortilla, then layered it with 2 slices Sargento reduced fat swiss cheese, turkey breast, bread and butter pickles, a plum tomato and mixed lettuce. It was awesome! A little hard to eat being it was so full, but I managed.

Later on I had a Fage 2% yogurt with side peaches with pecan granola on the bottom and an itty bitty roast beef sandwich made on 1 Martin’s potato dinner roll (45 cal) with 1 oz of this lean, fairly low in sodium (230mg for 2oz) deli roast beef that I bought the other night and about ¼ slice of Sargento reduced fat swiss cheese and a bit of Hellmann’s olive oil mayo.

I also had a banana right before this.

Then for dinner we had Trident salmon burgers with sweet potato fries that I baked in the oven on 425F for about 22 minutes. I coated them with extra virgin olive oil, then put them on a baking sheet lined with nonstick foil. I also made a whole bag of string beans while the salmon burgers and sweet potato fries baked. I had my burger on 2 slices Ezekiel 4:9 low sodium sprouted grain bread (160 cal) with Hellmann’s olive oil mayo, lettuce, tomato, red onion and bread and butter pickles:

I absolutely LOVE salmon burgers! I always forget that we have them. I seem to do that with a lot of things in the freezer lol.

After my 3 or 4 hour nap, we woke up and started the day but it was completely unproductive for me. We watched TV most of the night. And ate. We started with poached eggs on English muffins and yogurt for breakfast as if I didn’t eat all the cookies and other stuff earlier lol. I decided to try a different technique for poaching the eggs; ramekins in shallow water:

It would have been great but they stuck to the ramekins even though I sprayed them with EVOO. They also overcooked just a little bit but they were still delish.

On the side: 1 Stonyfield Farm fat free Key Lime yogurt topped with pecan granola and fresh strawberries from Florida. Hey, if you can’t be there in person, might as well be there in spirit, right? lol I also had a diet cranberry raspberry Snapple (20 cal). Aspartame, tsk, tsk!!! It was good though.

Mmmmmm, runny yolks! I think next time I’ll drop them in water and vinegar. The ramekin method is too much work and not so successful for me. hehe

I think I’m going to go back to sleep now. I’m just drained and feel gross. Hopefully I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel refreshed. Maybe she’ll leave early!!!! Wishful thinking lol.

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We had a very bad weekend; from one stressful thing to another. Like I said, some of our cats are sick with respiratory infections but they seem to be getting better with the topical ointment that our vet gave us. Luckily he gave us enough for all the cats without having to bring them all in, which would cost thousands of dollars lol. So, we’re relieved that they are getting better, as the vet said it could get fatal if it spread to their lungs (it’s only in their eyes right now), but Cleo (the one that just had babies in August) has decided to make our couch and our carpets her personal binky box — out of nowhere!! EWWWWW! Their binky boxes are cleaned every single day, so the vet said it’s probably because of her infection, they do weird things like that sometimes. Lovely. So now, we have to get new carpet and furniture, which we planned to do anyway, but we at least wanted to wait until we bought our new house because it would just be a waste in this one being we’re moving out of it sometime this year. Well, I’m sure most of you know that once a cat goes potty someplace, they always smell it, so we have to remove all the familiar scents. We have tried every cleaner, spray, home remedy and steam cleaner under the sun — we have a brigade of vacuums, spot cleaners, steam cleaners; I think 6! — but none of it is good enough.

Ah well, what can ya do? This house is just too small for all of us and our cats. Our last house was 3300SF plus the walkout sunlight basement which made it almost 5000SF. This house is only 2000SF and just not enough for us to work out of, live in with my mother and be a makeshift cat sanctuary lol. I cannot wait for us to move into our next house! Thankfully this one is just temporary, I can’t take being cramped for much longer lol.

Anyway, I have updates all the way back from Friday and I just didn’t get around to doing an update all weekend due to everything that was going on. Let’s start with Friday morning, which started off pleasantly enough with a sugar free chocolate VitaMuffin (80 cal), 1/2 a medium banana, 1 Stonyfield Farm fat free Lotsa Lemon yogurt (140 cal) topped with a few fresh blueberries that were past their prime and a heaping tablespoon of Kashi 7 whole grain Nuggets:

I just LOVE Stonyfield Farm Lotsa Lemon yogurt! OMG, it tastes just like lemon meringue pie. YUMMMMMMMM And the crunch from the Kashi Nuggets, kinda like crust! hehe

Bye, bye Christmas dishes! I’ll miss you!! I’m sad that I didn’t even get to use all of the dishes I had. I kept forgetting about them. Aww, can’t there be Christmas in July?! Hmm, maybe I’ll do that just for funsies! Hubby’s favorite thing to do as soon as he wakes up in the morning is to help me cart dish tubs out, as seen here being bashful and ducking from the camera in his manly moose (or polar bear?) robe lol.

I adore tableware. It’s so much fun to mix and match, but as seen here, it’s a lot of work, especially when you don’t have as much room as you’d like to house all of them. So, they’re going out into the garage until we move into a bigger house.

I had an excellent workout then came upstairs to fix us lunch. Hubby had Applegate Farm chicken tenders and a Mini Babybel cheese and I had a Morning Star Farms spicy black bean burger on a Martin’s 100% whole wheat roll with a slice of reduced fat Sargento swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, sweet bread and butter pickles, some red onion, a dab of mustard and Heinz no salt added ketchup with 1 can Health Valley no salt added Potato & Leek soup and a small Granny Smith apple for dessert:

No salt added soups are pretty bland but I spruced it up with some crushed red pepper flakes and a little parmesan cheese. It was GREAT! So filling for just ~220 cals for the whole can.

I LOVE this picture! Isn’t it gorgeous? I want to print it out and hang a picture of it in my kitchen lol! Maybe I will! That would be so cool!!

I was pretty full from the soup and burger combo, so I just nibbled the rest of the day on things like this:

This is the first time I ever had Barbara’s Ultima High Fiber cereal, so I decided to weigh the 90 calorie, 30g portion on my food scale so I would know what it should look like for future reference. Well, it wasn’t very much! That bowl is TINY! The serving size on the box says 1/2 cup, but I think it’s more like 1/4 or 1/3 cup. Geesh. For further fun, I weighed my skim milk and spoonful of PB being the bowl was already on the scale. It only needed 2.5 oz of skim milk and the spoonful of PB was 8g of Naturally More peanut butter. Nice snack. I liked it a lot. The cereal is so good, but it’s definitely only good for snacking or as a topping because I would need about 4 or 5 portions to get full on it lol.

On Saturday I woke up and immediately did my morning warm-up and then started on a huge pot of tomato sauce and ground turkey breast meatballs. Aaah, heavenly aromas were coming from the kitchen. Sundays are typically our pot-of-sauce-day, but I couldn’t wait. I’ve been wanting spaghetti or some other pasta with meatballs for sometime now and decided to go for it.

I don’t even know exactly what went into the pot of sauce; 3 cans of no salt added diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, 3 smalls cans of tomato paste, spices, water, a can of Cento no salt added mushrooms, 3 small red onions, LOTS of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, fresh parsley… *shrugs* I think that’s it lol. I made the turkey meatballs in a frying pan with some minced garlic, EVOO, and about a pound of ground turkey breast made into meatballs. Then I added them right into the pot of sauce to simmer for awhile.

The winning pasta for the evening: Whole wheat penne with a salad that I shaved some pecorino romano cheese over and Lindsay low sodium black olives. I made a vinaigrette with EVOO, red wine vinegar, a splash of balsamic vinegar and some dry spices.

The meatballs were NOT this golden, the picture does them no justice! Bad lighting

YUMMMMMMY! The plate of pasta looks huge, but when I put the sauce and meatballs on top of the pasta, it created a valley and pushed the pasta to the sides lol.

I was on an Italian food kick (when am I not? haha), so I made a mock chicken parmigiana sandwich with a Morning Star (original) Chik’N patty (140 cal) on 2 slices Ezekiel 4:9 low sodium sprouted grain bread (160 cal) topped with a sliced plum tomato and Price Chopper low fat mozzarella cheese. And some bread and butter pickles! I was craving salt like crazy being I am trying to keep my intake of it as low as possible and bread and butter pickles don’t have nearly as much sodium as dill pickles, so I decided to give it a try and it was excellent! Seems like a weird combination, but I really liked it. I like just about anything between 2 slices of bread lol, but I especially like a variety of food flavors and textures in my meals.

On the side I had some Kettle Bakes lightly salted baked potato chips with a scoop of roasted garlic hummus on the side and a clementine. Hubby doesn’t like sprouted grain bread, too rustic for him I guess. He’s a white bread boy, but he does like whole wheat when I force it upon him lol. He isn’t much of a bread eater compared to me anyway. Remember the old days when all you got to eat in jail was bread and water? Doesn’t sound like such a terrible fate to me ROFL.

Undressed!

Deeeeeeeeeeelish! The Morning Star Chik’N patties are high in sodium, but with low sodium bread and low sodium mozzarella, it sort of balances out, right? Right!! *giggles*

Like I said, I was craving salt because of staying low on it for the past week. So, I couldn’t think of many things saltier than ham, preferably on a pizza… with pineapple… and cheeeeeeeeeese… and BBQ sauce! But I had to compromise a little and came up with this beautiful creation.

Hawaiian style thin sliced chicken cutlets grilled and topped with Annie’s BBQ sauce, pineapple rings and Sargento reduced fat swiss cheese (I used provolone on mother/hubby’s version):

In a large bowl, I coated all the thinly sliced chicken breast cutlets with extra virgin olive oil and then grilled them on our indoor grill, then on just one side I brushed them with Annie’s BBQ sauce, then added a Dole pineapple ring to each one and split a piece of Sargento reduced fat swiss cheese on my 2 small pieces of chicken. On the side: Eden brown rice and kidney beans and fresh broccoli with a dab of whipped butter

My side salad with a generous sprinkling of reduced fat blue cheese crumbles, roasted garlic hummus, and the vinaigrette I made the night before:

Mmm, it was SO GOOD! It was a perfect (healthier!) substitute for Hawaiian pizza. It tasted almost exactly like it, minus the crust of course lol.

So then it’s Sunday. I asked my mom to make a large batch of whole wheat pizza dough earlier in the day so that it was ready by the time we woke up later on. But I was being careless when I was slicing my mozzarella cheese to put on my pizza and ended up cutting my finger pretty badly!! Ugh. I had to stop what I was doing and thankfully mom helped me finish making the pizzas. I insisted on slicing my plum tomato with my bandaged finger being I like uniform, thin slices and she probably wouldn’t do it to my liking. I’m a control freak in the kitchen! (Ok, all the time lol).

We made 3 pizzas: 2 margherita pizzas for Dustin and me and a mushroom for mom. I like my crust very thin, so while this looks huge, the crust is as thin as possible without breaking the dough.

I spinkled the crust with a bit of pecorino romano grated cheese, dry Italian seasoning, and garlic powder and brushed some EVOO on it before adding the cheese. Then I put the tomato slices on top, more seasoning, garlic powder and sprayed some EVOO with my Misto EVOO sprayer. It was absolutely delicious, but I only had about 1/4 of it and a few bites of salad before I lost my appetite. I just couldn’t eat anymore. Cutting my finger threw my whole night off, so I ended up eating just that and a few Kashi crackers with PB that I had for a snack earlier, which probably ended up being only 500 or 600 calories for the whole day. Needless to say, I went to sleep early on Sunday.

I woke up pretty hungry today but not as ravenous as you would think I would be after having so little the day before. I needed comfort food and my mom was already all over that before we even woke up! She was making “Thanksgiving Dinner.” We had another turkey in our freezer since Thanksgiving because we got a free one from Shop Rite but I insisted that we had the organic cage free (expensive) one from Whole Foods or else Thanksgiving would have been ruined!! LOL So, with the cold, snowy weather, and me being down in the dumps all weekend, what better time to warm the house up with a turkey roasting in the oven?

I don’t take any credit for this meal, my mother made all of it and it was just what we needed! Wonderful turkey, homemade lumpy mashed potatoes with gravy, jellied cranberry sauce and string beans with butter. Oh, and the ultimate comfort drink: Ginger Ale! I used to drink this when I was sick and it does give me a sense of comfort in every sip, even if it’s 130 calories useless calories. It perked me up a little!

I loved it!! My stomach must have shrunk overnight because I could only eat half of this (and all of the Ginger Ale) before I was STUFFED! And that plate isn’t a full sized plate, I think it’s a salad plate? I’m not sure but it was much smaller than hubby’s and from the same set. SOOOO GOOOD! I was a happy camper after this meal. It felt good to actually walk away without eating every bite on my plate. I noticed that since I “officially” stopped counting calories that I am not obsessing with food as much anymore. When I count calories, I’m constantly thinking about my next meal and how much of it I can eat. When I’m doing things like this, I’m not as worried about it and I feel much more satisfied. It’s like knowing how many calories I can have puts a mental limitation on me and makes me panic in a way; as if I’m not going to get enough food or something. I mean, don’t get me wrong, counting calories is fine and I don’t mind it, but if I can lose weight and become as healthy as possible without having a food scale chained to my ankle, then that’s even better!

Weekend in review…

The bad: Sick cats, needing to replace carpet, get new furniture, stress from the business, stress from in-laws visiting sometime this month

The ugly: Cutting my finger, not eating or drinking enough yesterday

The good: I am CRAZY about my recumbent bike! OMG, I can’t seem to stay off of it. I find myself doing 10-15 minutes just for fun. It’s awesome!! I lost 11 lbs in the past 5 days (water weight, told ya! lol) and I’m lovin’ this new “no counting, natural calorie cycling” and fitness plan, it’s working very well! So, the year is looking promising despite this weekend from hell lol. Oh, and my finger is healing up nicely. ME HAS STRONG IMMUNE SYSTEM, RAWR!

I’m going back on my recumbent bicycle again. I’m addicted to it! I haven’t done my strength training or HIIT yet today, but that’s ok because it doesn’t matter what order I do it in as long as I get it in sometime in the day. Hubby and I are thinking about going on a date tomorrow afternoon to see a movie and maybe get lunch. Totally goes against our 2 weeks stay at home challenge, BUT after this weekend, we deserve it. Plus, knowing that my new plan for ‘09 is working makes me so happy to know that I can go eat out for one meal and not take the whole day off if I don’t want to. I feel… free and calm for the first time in a long time. I guess I was building up anxiety about everything for a long time, now I’m venting and it feels sooo good. I might count calories again, I might not. I’m leaving it all on the table. I like this new system though and I don’t see me changing it anytime soon. YAY! There really is no reason to. I think… I graduated from calorie counting and portion control 101?

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