Jenn's Menu & Lifestyle Blog

I’m sorry I’ve been MIA for the past few days, but I have a good reason: We found an even better house to move into than what we were planning!! I was browsing houses online, like I do almost everyday, and happened to stumble across an awesome house. So, we decided to call the real estate agent that listed it and made an offer on the monthly rent; they counter-offered with $100 less than the asking price, which was still a great deal, so we made an appointment to see the house and we loved it!

Decisions, decisions! To move forward with it and change ALL of our plans or stick to our original plans? We decided that for just $10 more per day that this new house would be a much better home (and office) for us. We not only sleep and eat at home, we also work from home, so our humble abode is very important to us being we are home twice as much as most people. So, we filled out the application and then anxiously waited for the call that said that everything was “A-Ok” and ready to go! YAY! But while we waited, tension was mounting, as you can imagine in a house with more cats than people that are trying to pack up the entire house in between working and juggling schedules to meet deadlines, answer phone calls, and make it on time for appointments all while living 10 miles minimum from every single destination in the middle of tourist season. Oh, and of course, trying to live the balanced lifestyle of healthy vs. not-so-healthy.

I took as many pics as I could, but honestly, by the time we ate most of the times in the past few days, I was just exhausted and didn’t feel like snapping a pic. It’s been extremely tiring and we haven’t even reached the peak yet, we still have a long way to go. Once we are settled into our new pad, life and blog-life are going to improve tenfold!!

We did a LOT of eating out this week; my low sodium challenge TOTALLY bombed!! That’s ok though, I can balance it out, I KNOW I can. We ate a lot of things from the freezer and pantry, too. I found an unopend box of sugar free banana walnut VitaMuffins (90 cal) in the freezer. I popped 1 in the microwave for 20 seconds and then put 8g Peanut Butter & Co. White Chocolate Wonderful on top (45 cal) for a yummy 135 calorie pre-obstacle course snack.

SO GOOD!

Yesterday we ordered Chinese food for lunch. Yeah, NOT the healthiest choice, but seriously, an egg roll now and then isn’t the end of the world. Besides, they are delicious and enjoying tasty foods should never need to be explained to anyone, nor should they be the foundation for self-loathing. It is what it is and like I say a few dozen times a week, it’s all in the balance. Even if you make unhealthy choices for 3 straight months, you can change your trend at any given time and it instantly starts to balance out. There’s no end to this journey; there is no destination. There are many different paths to take along the way, but they are all intertwined and you can easily navigate from one road to another; speed up or slow down, but you’re always on the same journey no matter how lost you may think you are. I have an upcoming post that I am going to finish and publish as soon as things are more settled. It goes into detail about weight loss, weight gain, maintenance, calorie cycling, and why I am a happy chunky monkey.

Whoa, sidetracked — ! I’m very tired and I tend to ramble when I’m sleepy lol.

Anyway, I had shrimp with garlic sauce on white rice with an egg roll. I estimate the calories to be between 550 and 650 calories, but the sodium, I don’t even want to think about. *shudders*

It was delish! I <3 sticky white rice. I could seriously eat an entire pot of it by itself. It also makes me VERY full! OMG, I was stuffed like HOURS after this. The rice expands like 100 times in my stomach. Hmm… maybe I should eat it everyday? lol Yeah, yeah, brown rice is better for you… blah blah! There’s a few continents of people that eat white rice daily and they are doing pretty well. Of course, they also eat a lot of fruit, veggies and fish and very little sugar and fried stuff compared to Americans, but still, WHITE RICE rules! hehehe

I can’t imagine what’s in the garlic sauce but it sure tastes good. I didn’t really have that much of it from the container it came in. Now THAT is a huge portion, probably enough for 5 or 6 people. I had just a small amount off of the top and gave the rest to my mom.

One of my favorite foods this week has been pizza made on Tumaro’s pesto & garlic tortillas. OMGoodnesssssssss! Yum! I made it 3 times this week, that’s how great it is!

So easy to make too!

- 1 Tumaro’s pesto & garlic tortilla (120 cal, only 105mg sodium each)
- Tomato slices (20 cal)
- 1.5 oz fresh mozzarella cheese (120 cal)

1 serving, 260 calories

1. Preheat oven to 425F degrees
2. Top tortilla with fresh tomato, cheese and/or any other desired toppings; place on baking sheet (I lined mine with nonstick foil)
3. Bake for 8 minutes on lower rack

I highly recommend using a garlic/pasto flavored wrap. It made it even more enjoyable. The texture was PERFECT, too! It’s like a thin crust pizza. I really liked how the tomatoes made the top of the tortilla soft underneath, so it was crispy on the bottom but softer in the middle. Mmmm! It’s great, try it ASAP!!

I made 2 of them at a time for a super filling 520 calorie meal.

Today, Dustin, my mom and I went to look our new house again, out to LINNER and then shopping. We ate earlier in the morning, but by 4:30PM, we were really hungry again, so we decided to go to Ruby Tuesday. There just aren’t that many “real” restaurants in Middletown. It sucks! Ruby Tuesday is a pretty decent chain option, especially because they have an AWESOME salad bar that I want to build in MY kitchen lol.

Mom and I both got salad bar with our meals:

I went a little overboard… it’s all so tempting! I had 2 unsweetened iced teas while we were there, what was I thinking?! Sodium + lots of liquid = BAD! for me Tsk, tsk. Ah well.

I ordered the turkey avocado burger for my meal. And yes, I am well aware that it’s like a 1200 cal burger and definitely not as healthy as you might think, but I wasn’t trying to be healthy, it just sounded good and it WAS. OMG, loved it!

I had 3 of the fries… wasn’t into them at all. I ended up eating half of my salad and half of the burger, then I left the rest there.

Mmm… avocado is sooo creamy and probably the healthiest thing on the entire table. My mom ordered chicken tenders thinking they were JUST chicken tenderloins; she’s not familiar with breaded and fried chicken tenders being the norm in restaurants. She doesn’t eat out much, so she believes everything she orders is as wholesome as what she’d make at home. LOL Poor mom.

Everything below here is PINK !!!

I made this raspberry smoothie the other night. The flavor was excellent but I didn’t like the raspberry seeds. They made me not want to finish it, so I ended up only drinking half of it.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Friendship no salt added cottage cheese (90 cal)
2 TBSP Gefen raspberry syrup (80 cal)
140g frozen raspberries (80 cal)
1/2 cup skim milk (45 cal)

1 serving, 295 calories, 20g protein

Next time I am going to try it with Polly-O fat free ricotta instead of cottage cheese and maybe strawberries or blueberries instead of raspberries. I love the flavor of raspberries but I can’t stand the seeds.

Check out the new Hello Kitty lunchbox I got at Shop Rite today ($9.99, insulated!)