Yesterday after work Snackers and I loaded up a cute little picnic basket with a couple of sushi rolls, a bottle of wine, and some cheese and crackers and headed to our favorite ceramics painting studio. We ended up nibbling on the sushi and wine throughout the night and never took the cheese and crackers out of the basket but we had a really good time none-the-less.
I painted a little Kody figurine to go with the Piper figurine that I did on my birthday and the Casper figurine that I did in December. Snackers did a Kody coffee mug to go with the Casper coffee mug that he did on my birthday. I think they turned out pretty good but we won't know for sure until after they're fired which should be sometime between now and Sunday.
Snackers brought home two really cute valentines day cards for me: one from the pets and one from him. They were both so appropriate! He did also get me a box of chocolates even though I asked him a thousand times not to but he ended up eating most of the chocolates and the rest are still in the box so I'm pretty proud of myself. lol
Food:
120 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 fruit shake (same as yesterday)
1 healthy choice lunch
2 home made mini pizza's (from cook this not that)
1 can hearts of palm
1 cup popcorn
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Daily Caloric Intake: 1021
Activity:
Yoga: 30 minutes
Yard work: Weeded the entire front and side yards
Laundry
What happened to the chocolate-calories???
ReplyDelete;)
Sounds like a nice evening to me! I am glad to see your back into the eat this not that. Whatever happened to the recipe reviews? I was thinking you were going to showcase your favs? Or am I loopy as usual? LOL
ReplyDeleteBrandon: Snackers ended up eating them all! When he gave me the chocolates I said "I asked you not to" (nicely, not to sound ungrateful for the effort/thought) and he said "I just got you the box, the chocolates are for me." I kinda sorta thought he was joking but there were a dozen turtles in the box and he ate five of them while I was reading the cards. When we got home from painting ceramics he started munching on them again and I told him to hide them from me if he didn't finish them all - so he did. Out of sight out of mind works really well for me so I forgot about them until I saw him eating on them again after work last night and now they're gone. I WIN!
ReplyDeleteSwan: No you're right, we just haven't made anything really new from it. We got the new book and tried a couple of things but we weren't nuts about them. One thing I will say is that the first book is specifically meals that are under or near 350 calories but this new book has some meals that are like 500+ so I have to be A LOT more careful when picking out recipes from it. Also it has a HUGE section on slow-cooker meals which I don't do because I don't own a slow-cooker, nor do I have enough time in the morning to prep dinner before work. Most of the recipes are repeats from the first book but with small changes. Like the chicken mole enchiladas (the mole sauce is NASTY btw) is exactly the same as the chicken verde taco's from the first book only with mole sauce instead of verde sauce and rolled instead of folded.
I'm starting to realize that the absolute MOST valuable thing in both cook books is the ability to better understand cooking in general. We started out religiously sticking to the recipes in the books but what those recipes really did was teach us which ingredients we should cook with and the proper techniques to avoid high-fat. Coffee rubbed skirt steak, for example, was one of our FAVORITE recipes from the first book but we made it so many times that we kinda got sick of it. What we realized though, is that spices don't add fat so we could still make the skirt steak but change the rub up for a different flavor. We've tried it with chili powder and cumin; we've did garlic, rosemary, and oregano one time; I even used lemon pepper and cayenne one time (though the lemon pepper did add 15 enormous calories to the entire 4 serving, 1 lb steak lol).
Last night's pizza's were from "the pizza matrix" in Cook this not that. Both books have these matrixes that show you how to make some of your favorite foods and customize them to your personal taste but still be healthy about it. So it gives you bases to choose from (home made dough from the recipe in the book, flat-outs, Bertolli wheat pizza crust, english muffins, etc.) then sauces to choose from, proteins, veggies, and cheeses that are all good on pizza and smart choices for health.
We've been using the matrixes a lot actually. Most of the meals we've been making at home for the last several months have been things that we've come up with on our own using Zinczenko's guidelines.
We even made ... you're not going to believe this but it was AWESOME - LocoMoco!!! If you don't know what that is google it and then try not to freak when you read how (usually) fatty and evil it is. It is USUALLY ground beef patties on rice with fried eggs on top drenched in brown gravy. EVIL!
Ok so the way we did it was ground turkey patties over rice (I wanted to go brown rice for the extra umph but Snackers rejected it) with a POACHED egg on top and then I made my own brown gravy from "Cook this not that" and it was only 430 calories per serving. Granted, a little high BUT mostly that was the egg which is high in protein. You could use scrambled egg whites instead of a poached egg and cut the cals even more.